Descent of The Demon Master [EN]: Chapter 1879

Drip, drip, drip.

A slender stream of violet liquid flowed from a large decanter, filling a clear glass.

The man, who had been quietly watching, reached out and picked up the glass.

He savored the rich aroma of the wine before taking a sip with a smooth motion.

‘Hmm.’

Thud.

The glass was placed somewhat roughly on the clear glass table.

‘Do you not like it?’

‘No. I do. It’s the best wine I’ve had recently.’

Liu Yang’s face brightened at the praise.

The quality of wine isn’t always determined by its price, but in a market dominated by money, valuable wines are inevitably expensive. What the Black King was drinking now was an unbranded wine.

It was a product from a small batch of handmade wines produced by a few artisans, and it was the best vintage they had managed to acquire.

Of course, the price was jaw-dropping, but if it made the Black King say it was good, it felt almost cheap.

‘However…’

‘……Yes?’

‘Yes. It’s just good.’

The Black King lightly swirled the glass, and the violet wine sloshed within.

‘Living long isn’t such a good thing.’

‘Everything is fun at first. You know how they say, when you were young, even a simple game was so fun you’d stay up all night, but now, even with eye-popping graphics and diverse systems, you can’t play for more than an hour?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why is that? Is it because the current games have forgotten the essence of the old games?’

‘I… I don’t know.’

He didn’t play games.

‘That’s not it.’

The Black King said indifferently.

‘People get used to stimulation. Especially when the brain is still malleable, new stimuli are incredibly enjoyable. Fun games, more delicious food, drinks that please the palate.’

‘But when the experience is repeated, all of that becomes dull. No matter how good the wine is, it can’t match the intensity of the first time you tasted wine, and no matter how delicious the food is, it can’t beat the memories of the food you ate as a child.’

Liu Yang quietly nodded.

He didn’t enjoy games, but he had already had similar experiences. This was a story that anyone could relate to.

‘Of course, this wine is better. Than what I drank in the past.’

The Black King chuckled and took another sip of wine.

‘But it’s just better. That’s a very good evaluation, but it also means it’s nothing special.’

His hand, now devoid of attachment, put the glass down.

Leaning back on the sofa, he crossed his legs with a languid expression.

‘Do you know what it means to become dull to stimulation?’

‘I do not.’

‘The day becomes longer.’

‘For those whose bodies are aging, time might even feel shorter, but for a human like me, whose physical aging has stopped, the same amount of time becomes more tedious.’

Boredom dominated the Black King’s face.

‘Frankly, this is close to torture.’

‘It’s like understanding why people have to die? If this time continues endlessly, anyone would either go crazy or become an enlightened saint.’

‘Aren’t you the latter, Black King?’

‘Me, a saint?’

The Black King chuckled.

‘Ah, don’t misunderstand. I’m not laughing at you. It’s just a little funny.’

‘I can’t possibly become a great being like a saint, but even if I could, I would refuse.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘That’s what a saint is, isn’t it?’

The Black King slightly opened his hand, pretending to grasp something.

‘Someone between human and god, not quite a god, but too great to be a human, a being whose level is beyond that of other humans.’

Liu Yang nodded.

It didn’t completely match his definition of a saint, but it was roughly the same feeling.

‘I’m just content being a human. Being praised by people as a saint is not my role.’

‘The achievements you will accomplish are enough to call you a saint.’

‘Let’s distinguish between a saint and a great man. Well, the word great man is strange too. It’s strange to call Hitler a great man. Hmm, what should I say? A historical figure?’

The Black King laughed softly.

‘That doesn’t quite fit either.’

The Black King reached out and grabbed the wine again.

‘Humans are truly interesting beings. Everything gradually becomes dull, but they can’t give up on that slight difference until the very end. Even if the pleasure of taste no longer brings happiness, they can’t just eat anything.’

‘It’s not just taste, is it?’

The corners of the Black King’s mouth curved into a smile.

His life wasn’t much different. Perhaps what he wanted wasn’t a grand cause.

What he wanted was just stability.

No.

It was no different from someone who couldn’t forget the taste they had as a child, and as they got older, they would go back to the neighborhood they used to live in to taste it again.

The store he used to go to was already closed, and there was no way to find the person who made that food.

Ordinary people would give up around that time, but the Black King had too much time left to give up. That’s why he had come to the point of recreating it himself by recalling his memories.

In the end…

He knew that it was almost impossible to find the perfect taste by relying on memory, and even if he did find the perfect taste, it was impossible for that taste to give him a great feeling now.

It could just end in disappointment. No, that was more likely.

But…

‘Still, trying is what makes us human.’

The moment a human forgets they are human, everything goes wrong.

Learning martial arts to fly in the sky, or breaking mountains with bare hands, doesn’t make a person a god. He was just a human with a little more power than others.

He must not forget.

The Black King knew very well that the moment he forgot that fact, everything would collapse.

‘So…’

The Black King quietly looked at the wine.

‘What about what I said before?’

‘The preparations are complete.’

The Black King nodded.

‘How old is this wine?’

‘The vintage itself isn’t that old. It’s only five years old.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

The Black King turned his head and looked at the decanter.

‘Timing is similar to wine.’

‘Even if you make wine with perfect grapes and a perfect production process, it still needs a maturation process. A time when it harmonizes with time and fully ripens.’

‘That is correct, Black King.’

‘But.’

The Black King reached out and grabbed the decanter. The wine inside the round bottle rippled slightly.

‘Sometimes, you can’t wait any longer. In that case, you need something to forcibly make up for the lack of time, like this decanter. Isn’t that right?’

‘You are correct.’

‘Then let’s begin.’

The Black King’s lips curled into a bitter smile.

‘The difference between wine and life is… with wine, you can estimate the maturation period through the vintage, but with life, you can’t know until you open the lid. Whether the time is ripe, or a little early, or if you’ve already missed the timing.’

The Black King took a swig of wine from the decanter.

‘That’s why life is interesting.’

If he didn’t have this kind of fun, his life would be even more colorless.

‘Liu Yang.’

‘Yes, Black King.’

‘What do you think? Do you think the time is ripe?’

Liu Yang stared at the Black King before opening his mouth.

‘One thing is certain.’

‘What is it?’

‘At least, it won’t be late.’

‘Why?’

Liu Yang said firmly.

‘If we had missed the timing, there’s no way you wouldn’t know, Black King.’

‘Flattery.’

The Black King laughed and leaned back on the sofa.

But it wasn’t exactly wrong.

He waited and waited. Looking only for the moment when all conditions were perfect.

So, was everything perfect?

‘I don’t know.’

As he said, he wasn’t a god.

Humans only try and predict the results, they can’t know the future. Until the results come out, there’s no way to know if the choice was the best.

So…

‘Now, I have to go and check.’

Whether his waiting was right. Whether the future he would change was right.

Whether his choice was right. He had to check so many things.

‘Issue a summons to the Twelve Blades.’

‘Yes!’

‘Once we move, we can’t stop on our own. You know that, right?’

‘I have been waiting only for this moment. Even if there was a way to stop, I wouldn’t stop.’

‘Yes, I see.’

The Black King chuckled.

Perhaps it was the moment when history would change. It was ironic that the place where he was giving this order was the sofa of a modest villa.

But that’s what life is like from the start.

Wasn’t it the same back then?

When he first spoke to Kang Jin-ho, it wasn’t like he had a grand scheme. He was just looking for someone he could use, someone who best fit his plan.

Those small, trivial things snowball and change the world.

So…

It was the same this time.

The Black King slowly got up from the sofa and walked to the window. Through the full-length window that surrounded the huge living room, he could see the foamy waves crashing on the shore.

‘You can’t stop a river from flowing into the sea.’

‘You can only hold it back for a while.’

The Black King’s hand touched the glass.

‘Yes. I want to change that. I want to change what everyone says is inevitable, and break the flow of the world. I can do it. Because I’m a regressor [someone who has returned to the past]. Because I’m a returnee who deviated from the natural flow of the world from the start.’

Crash!

With a loud roar, the glass shattered and fell to the ground. At the same time, a rough wind rushed in where he was.

‘Begin, Liu Yang.’

‘Yes!’

Liu Yang knelt on the spot.

But the Black King didn’t even glance behind him, his eyes fixed on the raging waves.

‘I am human.’

Saints tell you to conform to the world.

They tell you to accept and be gentle. But he was still human.

Humans are not those who conform, but those who resist.

Humans have come this far by conquering diseases, trampling on the environment, and even killing each other. Humanity has come this far because it has resisted everything it could resist.

‘So, I must resist.’

Even if his resistance is a dying gasp and shatters, it would be a hundred times better than a life of conforming and rotting.

His gaze turned to the other side of the sea.

He couldn’t see him, but he was there.

‘Now, you have to choose. My friend, my lord.’

The Black King smiled faintly, hoping that his choice would be the right one.