Descent of The Demon Master [EN]: Chapter 881

“Kuh-uh-uhk.”

Pain has a strange quality.

When you’re experiencing it, it’s agonizing, nothing but pure agony. It varies depending on the severity, but most people can’t endure the experience of being in pain itself.

That’s why humans always seek to be free from pain.

Those being tortured want the pain to stop, even if it means revealing everything they know, and those who are sick want to lessen the pain by taking painkillers.

However, being freed from pain doesn’t mean everything is over.

Just like Nobuo now.

“Hoo….”

He is now free from pain. He was free from Nakata Yuji’s brutal hands that were crushing his body. But that fact didn’t completely liberate Nobuo.

The pain inflicted on his body was over, but the pain inflicted on his mind was not over at all.

They just took their hands off him for a moment. Nobuo knows their ways very well. They never tolerate traitors.

“Heh heh heh.”

A hollow laugh escaped him.

Why wouldn’t he want to curse those dog-like bastards? They suck the blood of their subordinates without giving anything in return, yet they demand loyalty as if it’s their right.

What kind of loyalty should he give to such people?

Even so, Nobuo couldn’t curse them. It was Nobuo himself who swore that loyalty and crawled under them.

If it was something he couldn’t do, he shouldn’t have done it. If it was a path he couldn’t walk, he shouldn’t have walked it.

If he wasn’t going to silently endure the falling filth, if he was going to jump off the cliff because the filth was dirty, he shouldn’t have stepped onto that path in the first place.

Wasn’t it Nobuo himself who decided to endure that filth?

Then, what right does Nobuo have to curse them? If he were in the same situation as them, he too would have brutally tortured and killed a traitor.

“Kkyo-uh….”

It was Nobuo himself who pushed his life into the gutter with a decision he couldn’t even understand.

So he couldn’t curse anyone, and he couldn’t resent anyone.

“Keu heu heu heu.”

He raises his trembling hand and rubs his face. At the same time, he felt a sharp pain at his fingertips.

The part where his fingers should be is empty. There are severed fingers on the floor, but stitching them back is out of the question.

And those fingers were no longer a problem. What does it matter if a guy who’s about to die has fingers or not?

Nobuo was trembling with fear.

Now that Nakata Yuji knows that he contacted them, Nakata Yuji will surely take countermeasures. His plan to make a surprise attack the moment they reach the peninsula was literally shattered.

Then what’s left?

They will either find a new route to land on the peninsula or return to the Japanese archipelago. If the former is chosen, it might be better. But if they choose to return to the archipelago and wait for the next opportunity, it would be the worst for Nobuo.

Then they will take their time and leisurely torment Nobuo.

There are no others who can follow them when it comes to humans tormenting humans. Nobuo had experienced such things a few times. He knows very well how cruel they become when they get their hands on a human they can play with as they please.

Unfortunately, the one who will experience that well-known thing is Nobuo himself. In their eyes, Nobuo now looks like a fish on a cutting board.

They’ll be thinking about how to slice him thinly without killing him.

‘Maybe….’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to bite my tongue?’

Nobuo laughed lowly.

It’s just an urban legend that you can die by biting your tongue. The human body is surprisingly strong, so you won’t die just by biting your tongue. You’ll just end up with a severed tongue.

The stories that the muscles of the tongue curl up and block the throat, or that you die from excessive bleeding, are just pipe dreams. If there was such an easy way to die, there would be no reason to make the walls of prisons out of urethane to prevent suicide.

Nobuo’s body slumped.

With his arms and legs tied up, he didn’t even have the option of killing himself by banging his head against the wall. Like a fish caught in a net, he had to entrust his entire fate to them and wait for death.

Why did he do it?

The question wouldn’t leave Nobuo’s mind.

What did all of that bring to Nobuo that made him make such a foolish choice?

Even though he half-guessed that this would be the result, what kind of guts did he have to commit such an adventure?

What makes Nobuo even more empty is that even if he hadn’t been caught, the situation wouldn’t have changed.

If Nakata Yuji hadn’t known that Nobuo had contacted them, Nobuo would now be feeling like he was walking into hell.

Because only Nobuo would know that the place he was arriving at was a death trap.

Then, he would have wondered if it was right to speak honestly and get out of this crisis.

It’s laughable.

In the end, Nobuo is just this kind of person.

He doesn’t have the will to throw away his life like a piece of straw for a great purpose. Someone might be able to do it, but at least Nobuo couldn’t.

Because he’s just a commoner.

A commoner with no clear purpose or will.

Yes. He’s just that much.

Not realizing that fact himself brought misfortune.

Nobuo leaned his head against the wall. The cold feeling of metal was transmitted to his head.

This coolness.

Nobuo bit his lip tightly.

He’s going to die.

Yes, he’s going to die. There’s no way to avoid death. They will never let Nobuo live.

If he cries and begs, they will enjoy his appearance and kill him, and if he grits his teeth and endures, they will not stop torturing him until he sheds tears. Either way, the fact that he will die after being tortured remains unchanged.

Then?

‘Let’s not die like a moron.’

If he can’t avoid death anyway, he didn’t want to die pathetically. He can’t be like the martyrs who choose death with dignity for their beliefs, even though they could have avoided it.

But at least he shouldn’t face a trashy death.

If he can’t avoid it.

‘I will never die in a cowardly way.’

It was the moment he made that resolution.

Kuuuuung!

Nobuo’s body was thrown back.

“Wh-what is it!”

A scream burst out without him realizing it. His cracked throat burst open again, and blood gushed out.

But there was no time to feel such pain.

His body was thrown back, and an explosion loud enough to make his ears ring erupted. It was even more confusing because the room was filled with darkness.

Kooong! Kooong!

Before the pain of being slammed into the floor could even reach his head, a series of shocks were hitting him.

Nobuo’s eyes widened.

The vibration of the entire ship shaking was bewildering him.

‘What happened?’

Is it an attack?

No, that can’t be. This is a passenger ship. No matter how reckless Korea is, they can’t attack a passenger ship with civilians on board.

And if it was a direct hit by a torpedo, it wouldn’t end with this much of an impact. There’s no feeling of the ship tilting either.

Then?

He listens carefully.

“……Ah!”

He can hear it.

Screams, and shouts.

From somewhere far away, he could hear sounds full of chaos.

‘What on earth?’

What’s going on?

On this ship!

Death is always by the side of humans.

But people don’t realize that fact. If you just turn on the news, you can see that dozens of people lose their lives every day in accidents that have nothing to do with their own faults, but no one thinks that death will come to them too.

They just think it’s someone else’s misfortune.

Then when do humans realize that death is near them?

It’s exactly at times like this.

Chwaaaaaak!

It sounded like the sound of water gushing out forcefully. If not, it sounded like the sound of hitting stagnant water with a whip.

But the identity of this sound is not that.

It was the sound of a sword wielded by a human cutting through a human body.

He retreats.

He retreats backward frantically.

He pushes off the deck with both legs and throws his body backward with his hand touching the floor.

Because he can tell.

That death is right next to him right now.

The way to realize death was very simple. You just have to watch the scene of those who were laughing and talking with you just a moment ago become corpses.

Not just any corpses.

The head of someone who was fine a moment ago is cut off and soars into the sky, and the body is cut in half, and severed arms and waists fall to the floor. And the blood gushing from that body dyes the deck red.

A hellscape.

A hellscape that no painter in the world could ever create, a vivid hellscape was unfolding right before his eyes.

When such a sight enters their eyes, humans finally realize. That hell is right next to them right now.

And….

Splash.

A hollow laugh comes out.

The sound of stepping on a puddle of blood on the floor sounds so refreshing. The discrepancy between what he sees and what he hears is so extreme that he feels nauseous.

A man walks over, stepping on a puddle of blood.

No, it’s not right to call him a man. A man is a word that refers to a male human.

But look.

How can you call him a human?

A blood-soaked person [血人 – literally ‘blood person’, referring to someone covered in blood] who has dyed his entire body with blood.

Even just by looking at his face, which is dyed red as if he deliberately applied blood as makeup, and the drops of blood dripping from the ends of his not-so-long hair, it was clear that he was not a human.

It’s not just because of that appearance.

If he were a human, at least someone with a human heart, he wouldn’t be able to laugh like that in such a state.

The only white part visible among the red and black dyed form.

The pure white teeth revealed at the man’s mouth are so eerie that it feels like it could stop his heart.

“Ah….”

The man walks over. Very slowly. Of course. There’s no need to rush.

This is on a ship. And this is on the sea. There’s nowhere to run. So there’s no need to rush. For the man, this place is like a well-set banquet table.

The man slowly approaches. And then he stops in front of him.

His pants are getting wet, but he didn’t even have time to feel it. With a grim reaper standing in front of him, who would care about his pants?

The man, that is, Kang Jin-ho, slowly opened his mouth.

“I gave you a chance.”

“A-uh….”

Swoosh.

It’s a strange thing.

Even though he knows very well what the sound coming from his neck is, the man was not trembling with fear. He wasn’t even trembling with dread.

What he felt was rather a great sense of liberation.

Even in the midst of having an experience that he could only have once in his life, seeing his own back and neck without a head with his own eyes, the man was feeling a sense of liberation.

Because now he doesn’t have to tremble anymore.

Sometimes death saves humans.