Chapter 67: The Heavenly Demon (2)

Chapter 67: The Heavenly Demon (2)

“...If it weren’t for you, I would have lost all my equipment and been left wandering in the slum... I honestly can’t imagine how that would have gone.”

The Chemist closed her eyes. After a moment, she slowly opened them, revealing a sharpness in her gaze behind the glasses.

“Yes, I want to repay what you did for me. I won’t think about anything else but making the cure... But I’m really not aware of my surroundings when I’m occupied with my work. I probably won’t keep my manners. Still...”

“It doesn’t matter.” I nodded. “Do whatever it takes to bring out your best.”

This wasn’t the time to worry about manners. I needed the future leader of the Alchemist Office.

“...Okay.” The Chemist adjusted her glasses and then turned to look at the Medicine King. “Sir.”

“Huh? What is it?”

“I’ll need your full assistance from now on.”

The Medicine King scowled, his deep wrinkles reflecting his stubbornness. “Assistance? Assistaaaaance? You insolent girl, there is a proper order for everything! How dare a greenhorn like you ask the Medicine king to assist you—”

“Open my Skill Cards,” the Chemist quietly said.

“...What?”

One golden card and three silver cards floated above the Chemist’s palm. An ordinary Hunter would kill to have one Skill, but she had four of them. On top of that, all of them were above Class B.

The Medicine King’s eyes widened. “W-what? Are you trying to show off your Skills? Tsk, tsk. Young people nowadays think Skills can solve everything. Your true ability—”

“You can see them,” the Chemist said.

“What?”

“You can see what my Skills are.”

For a moment, the Medicine King was too perplexed to answer. For Hunters, Skills were their ace in the hole. They should never be discovered by others until the last moment. Revealing their Skills equaled exposing all of their strengths and weaknesses at the same time. In summary, the Chemist was making a very foolish move.

However, the Chemist flipped the cards anyway and showed them to the Medicine King.”Or do you want me to show them myself? This one is the Mobile Hospital. It can conduct any test in real-time, from blood tests to EEGs, and I can even store and retrieve medical herbs at will—but there is a two percent chance of misdiagnosis. This one is Life Analysis. It tells me a patient’s condition down to the genetic level. I use these Skills together to minimize the chance of misdiagnosis—”

“Now, wait, wait, wait!” The Medicine King finally pulled himself together. “Why are you showing me your Skills? Aren’t you worried that I might tell the Alchemist Office or the partners in my shop?”

“It’s okay. I promised I wouldn’t worry about the trivial things,” the Chemist said. “If you want to tell others, do it, but I want your full assistance until I make the cure.”

“Why would you go this far...?”

“Because I need you to speed up development even if it’s just by a day.”

The Medicine King stared.

“I’m an eyesore to you, aren’t I?” The Chemist looked him in the eyes. Her eyes weren’t just distant, they were cold. She often floundered before, but her face now was completely expressionless. “You’re angry that a young girl like me doesn’t know her place but keeps shoving better results at your face. You’re annoyed that someone like me has a gift. But I have a lot more years to live than you and I’ll be respected a lot longer than you are. That makes you mad, right?”

The human voice was often compared to a bird’s, but I was certain that the Chemist’s voice could not be imitated by any animal. If I had to pick one...yes, her voice reminded me of the fire ant’s sizzling chattering.

“If you give me your full assistance this time...” The Chemist adjusted her glasses. “...you can have all of the potion recipes I’ve ever made. I won’t tell anyone they’re mine. Take them, and use them. Tell people that you invented the recipes—”

At that moment, the Medicine King slapped her on the cheek, knocking her glasses clean off of her face. The Chemist silently picked up her glasses and wiped them on her sleeve before putting them back on. After that, she looked at the Medicine King in silence.

The Medicine King trembled with anger. “Shame on you...”

“I’ll analyze the zombie virus.”

“You’ll see that there is always a bigger fish.”

“Please follow my instructions.” The Chemist’s voice was monotonous.

“The day will come when your pride will be broken and rancid.”

“What are you trying to say?” The Heavenly Demon frowned.

“When will your qi run out?”

Her face darkened.

“You’re blocking the acupoint between your brain and spine, which means that you do everything with your qi: your heartbeats, your breathing, and every other movement.”

The Guardian had said that it was the same as using Sword Telekinesis all the time.

I shook my head. “No amount of qi can help you keep doing that forever. I’ll ask you again. When will you run out of qi?”

The woman had said some time ago, “Everyone dies someday.”

Her words had a weight to them, the kind that spoke of wisdom. The only way for humans to learn wisdom was to go through it themselves.

“...Really.” The Heavenly Demon groaned. “You’re a perceptive one.”

“You only have a few days left, right?”

“...I take it back. You’re too damn perceptive, child.”

How was the Heavenly Demon Chronicle, this world, going to end? It was a surprisingly simple question if I thought about it.

“Once your qi is depleted, it will be impossible for the two of you to move,” I speculated.

“You’re right.” The Heavenly Demon looked up at the sky. From the cave’s open ceiling, we could see the blizzard raging like the sky had vomited.

“Our qi will stop circulating in one body part after another. The parts that our qi don’t reach will rot. First, our toes and fingers will no longer be under our control; next will be our calves and wrists; and then it’s our knees, shoulders, and waists.”

Every part of their body would become necrotic, like a building slowly breaking down piece by piece after the power ran out. At some point, the two wouldn’t be able to move at all.

“Our hearts and lungs.” The woman pressed her finger against the breast of her ragged suit before touching the top of her head. “And our upper dantians. Everything but these three parts will rot. No, our qi leaves them to rot.”

“...You already know what’s going to happen.” I shut my eyes.

“The Shaolin Temple’s monk held out with us for a year.” The Heavenly Demon smiled bitterly. “As if he had to prove he was a monk, he passed away in the lotus position. In his last moment, he didn’t look much different from a jiangshi except for his face. Every other body part was blackened because they were all rotting... His last word was just, ‘Amitabha’.

“You asked earlier if I am afraid. Yes, I am afraid.”

The human voice was often compared to a bird’s, but I could guarantee that no animal could imitate the Heavenly Demon’s voice.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, soft as a falling petal. “I fear the day my qi and life force will wither away. Blizzards and the lack of sunlight scare me. When I go out at dawn, I’m afraid that my subordinates, or rather the creatures that were once my subordinates, might have gone missing. With every breath I take, I wonder how many more I have. Each heartbeat makes me question how many more beats I will feel.”

The Heavenly Demon sighed in lamentation. “I am afraid that I won’t be able to kill the old man and that he might not be able to kill me. The day may come when the old man and I are unable to move in our beds, and it scares me that we would just have to wait for our qi to dry up.”

It would be a meaningless death. Their struggle to the end would be equally meaningless. When they died and disappeared, they would just leave behind a colorless landscape painting, marked by nothing but the snow.

This was the ending that the Heavenly Demon Chronicle, this world, would meet.

“The world is truly filled with terrors.”

Another day passed, marking the Hunter expedition team’s eighth day after falling into the apocalyptic book. That also meant two days were left until the world ended.

“Demon,” the Murim Alliance's leader mumbled in his bed. “I can’t move anymore.”

He was laughing and crying at the same time.

“I’m sorry.”

His whisper signaled that their world was coming to an end.

1. It sounds like he misheard truffle. ☜