The Swordmaster Wants To Live Peacefully [EN]: Chapter 271

Swordmaster Wants to Live Peacefully – Episode 270

Bound for Hell

People often said it.

“You’re going to hell.”

I can remember more than ten people who said that.

If you include what I didn’t hear, it would easily exceed thousands.

Yoosung ignored what people said, but in the end, they were right.

Because he ended up coming to hell like this.

Well, the only difference is that he arrived alive, not dead.

Yoosung arrived in a dense forest after crossing the dimensional gate.

It wasn’t just a simple forest. The leaves were incredibly sharp. When he touched them with his finger, they felt more like metal than plants.

The leaves had a sharpness like swords.

‘They called it the Sword-Leaf Forest.’

He doesn’t know much about hell.

He only dabbled in webtoons [Korean webcomics] when he was young, and he only knows that it’s terribly vast and requires multiple trials.

“This confirms that the afterlife exists.”

Where do people go when they die?

Hell or heaven.

Yoosung looked around again and then doubted his eyes.

A woman was walking in the Sword-Leaf Forest.

And she was an incredibly beautiful woman!

Even Yoosung, who wasn’t particularly interested in such things, wasn’t completely devoid of aesthetic sense.

“…Hehehe! A woman! A woman!”

“Woman! Woman!”

While he was doubting his eyes, several beggars ran towards her from the side.

They ran towards the woman, not caring that their bodies were being cut by the sharp leaves, causing flesh and blood to fall.

However, when they reached the woman, she disappeared like a mirage.

The beggars looked around with bewildered faces, and then ran somewhere again, as if they had found the woman again.

“…What is it?”

As expected, hell is hell.

Unexplainable things happen one after another.

If he had known this would happen, he would have read webtoons more diligently.

Or watched some slice-of-life hell animations.

“Hmm.”

Yoosung clenched and unclenched his fist.

And there was a sense of incongruity that he had felt since entering hell.

It felt like his power had become stronger since entering hell.

“Ah, that’s right.”

Hell and the Celestial Realm are divine domains.

A space closer to the divine realm than the human realm.

Yoosung’s interior contains not only Aura but also divinity.

Divinity is a power that is not easy to wield on Earth, but if he is standing in a divine domain, the story is different.

“Haa……”

He takes a long breath in and out.

The rising sense of omnipotence.

The feeling of liberation, as if boiling from divinity, awakens him to true divinity.

He has accumulated a lot so far, so enlightenment is quick.

A simple fact he hadn’t realized because he had never set foot in a true divine domain before.

It is a power that will weaken if he returns to the human realm, but if it is now…….

More than anything, it is the power that will be most helpful.

He bends down sharply and takes a foot stance.

Standing still quietly without holding a sword.

And subtly, very subtly.

When he moved about 1mm, a storm of swords raged around him.

A red flash flickered and swept away everything around him.

The Sword-Leaf Forest was swept away at once, turning into an empty field.

The beggars wandering nearby also suffered the same fate and disappeared.

Yoosung released his stance and exhaled a long breath.

“Is this what it feels like? Not bad.”

It’s a good opportunity.

Besides invading Takamagahara [the High Celestial Plain, a prominent location in Japanese mythology and Shinto cosmology] and killing Susanoo [a god in Japanese mythology], an opportunity to acquire divinity from various places.

Right now, he felt like he could easily take on a lower-level divinity.

If he were to fight a demon he barely managed to defeat in another world.

Certain victory.

“Then…….”

From now on, he has to find the way to Takamagahara.

Shuten-doji [a mythical oni or demon leader of Japanese folklore] was supposed to help with that, but he doesn’t seem to be coming.

In that case, he should make it easy to find him.

He knows the geography of hell better.

“Well…….”

Where should I start?

***

“Where is this?”

“T, This is the Congregation Hell!”

“I see.”

After causing a brief ruckus, Yoosung succeeded in capturing the woman who was occasionally seen in the forest.

The woman tried to escape somehow when Yoosung started chasing her, but it was impossible to shake him off, who had become even stronger in the divine domain.

He was recognized as a minor deity with just his power on Earth, so it was impossible for a woman who wasn’t even a divinity to escape.

“Congregation Hell, huh…….”

“P, Please let me go now…….”

The woman’s identity was an ogre jailer belonging to the Congregation Hell. She said that her role was to lure sinners and make them suffer eternally in the Sword-Leaf Forest.

“Hmm.”

After listening to her story a bit more, she said that the sinners of the Congregation Hell are those who have committed various sins.

Murder, robbery, sexual misconduct, etc…….

It wasn’t strange that the first place he fell into was the Congregation Hell.

It seems like he fell because he deserved to fall.

He must have easily committed hundreds of murders and righteous robberies so far.

“Is there a separate place where people like you gather? You don’t just keep wandering around here, do you?”

“O, Of course there is! Shall I guide you?”

“Okay.”

Yoosung followed the ogre jailer out of the Sword-Leaf Forest.

As she walked, the ogre jailer was surprised to see the Sword-Leaf Forest in such a mess.

“Wh, Who did this…….”

She muttered, glanced at Yoosung, and then closed her mouth.

She was a quick-witted woman.

Yoosung looked like a living human to her, but he wasn’t human.

He was clearly emitting divinity from his body, so she was guessing that a god from another country had mistakenly wandered in.

Before long, they left the Sword-Leaf Forest, and a bustling street appeared.

“…This is hell?”

The scenery Yoosung saw was similar to what he had seen in Kyoto [a city in Japan].

It meant that the old Japanese streets came into view.

Isn’t the image that comes to mind when you think of hell something like that?

Raksasas [a type of demon in Hinduism and Buddhism], demons, and devils wandering around and punishing sinners.

The Sword-Leaf Forest was clearly such a scene, but what unfolded before his eyes was very different.

“Welcome to Congregation Hell~!”

“Welcome to Congregation Hell~!!”

The people passing by looked at Yoosung and welcomed him grandly.

The divinity flowing from him made them mistake him for a visiting god.

Sometimes gods who want to look around hell occasionally visit, and they saw Yoosung as that kind of god. Their fellow ogre jailer brought him, too.

The ogre jailer who brought him said as Yoosung made an absurd expression.

“Hehe, hell is all like this these days? Work-life balance is important even for ogres, you know.”

“Work-life balance for ogres?”

“We get tired easily if we only torture all day long, too. We strongly argued that the balance between work and rest should be appropriate to increase efficiency, and that was accepted.”

“Interesting.”

Just as the current generation is turning into MZ [a Korean term referring to millennials and Generation Z] or something, it seems that such a thing has come to hell as well.

The ogre jailer said.

“I don’t know where you came from, but I hope you have a comfortable stay in Congregation Hell. Then, I’ll be on my way…….”

“Where are you going? I’d like to ask you for more guidance.”

“I, I’m busy with work…….”

The ogre jailer made a pitiful expression to get away from Yoosung.

It was a survival skill that came out because she was sure that something would happen if she got involved with him.

However, such survival skills did not work for Yoosung.

“Take a vacation. If the work-life balance is good, they’ll accept that much quickly.”

“W, Well, that’s true, but.”

“Then it’s decided. Take a vacation and come back. There are a lot of stories I want to hear.”

The ogre jailer had no choice but to nod with tears in her eyes.

***

The ogre jailer’s name was Setsuna. She guided Yoosung to a bar she frequented and treated him.

The ogres in the bar stared at Yoosung. There were ogres here and there, and they called themselves ogres, so.

It was definitely Buddhist hell, but it seemed to be Japanese hell.

‘Do the afterlife and hell differ by country?’

He learned something good.

If he was going to die, it seemed like it would be better to die in Korea. He would be tortured in foreign afterlives without exception, but the Korean afterlife would take extenuating circumstances into account a little.

…Or not.

“Then, is there some connection with Korean hell?”

“Ah, of course! There wasn’t much exchange in the past, but these days, since they’re the same Buddhist hell, there are often cultural exchanges. We discuss efficient torture techniques and such.”

“I see.”

In that case, it seemed like there would be separate Korean and Japanese branches of King Yama [a dharmapala said to judge the dead and preside over the Narakas or “Hells” and the cycle of rebirth].

Yoosung, who roughly grasped the structure, asked what he was curious about again.

“Do you know the way to Takamagahara?”

“Takamagahara is connected to hell, but… even I, a low-ranking ogre jailer, don’t know where it is. Even if I did know, I heard that you can’t use it unless you have divinity.”

“Hmm.”

He was thinking of taking the highest-ranking guy in Congregation Hell hostage and going to Takamagahara, but it seemed impossible.

‘If you’re talking about the highest-ranking person in hell, excluding King Yama… it would be the Ten Kings.’

Not the ten kings, but the Ten Kings.

They, who oversee the trials of the dead, are the real powerhouses of hell.

They are also gods who have reigned for thousands of years since hell was created.

It would still be impossible to face them with his current divinity.

Yoosung, who had finished a few thoughts, opened his mouth.

“In that case…….”

“Hey, who are you?”

Just as he was about to ask about the nearby terrain, an ogre suddenly cut in between Yoosung and Setsuna, spitting out a blunt voice.

The muscular ogre glared at Yoosung and said.

“Oh, a living human came to Congregation Hell? Is this guy crazy?”

“G, Goki! What are you saying! This person is……!”

“What are you?”

Goki glanced at Setsuna once, snorted, and fixed his gaze on Yoosung.

Yoosung had greatly reduced his energy because of the ogres’ gazes.

So that they wouldn’t pay attention unless they were deliberately aware of it or right in front of them.

So, the red ogre snorting, Goki, came over after seeing Setsuna and started a fight after seeing Yoosung.

It seemed that ogres were the same as humans when it came to showing off in front of a girl they liked.

“This bastard… how did you come to Congregation Hell?! As a human!”

The ogre didn’t seem to be able to distinguish properly due to such circumstances.

He should know that ordinary humans can’t come to hell.

Goki pushed his face closer as if telling him to answer quickly.

Yoosung pushed Goki’s face away with his hand and thought for a moment.

“As a human!”

The ogre, whose cry sounded like ‘As a human!’, swung his fist.

Yoosung turned his head and dodged slightly, then strongly pushed Goki’s face far away.

And then he finished thinking.

“I have a good idea.”

He stood up from his seat and approached Goki, who was a head taller than him.

Goki bared his teeth and swung his fist again, but none of them touched Yoosung.

He tripped Goki and said.

“I’d like you to cooperate in making a better hell.”