The Swordmaster Wants To Live Peacefully [EN]: Chapter 274

Swordmaster Wants to Live Peacefully – Episode 273

Hellbound (4)

The result was a victory for the Hell Labor Union.

The Hell Labor Office had no choice but to accept most of their demands.

If Goki had come alone, they might have tried to negotiate or threaten him somehow.

But Shuten-doji, smiling beside him until the negotiations were over, made that impossible.

He was just drinking endlessly, but there was a clear pressure to grant their wishes.

The Hell Labor Office couldn’t withstand the Hell Labor Union’s bullets.

No, cannonballs.

“Thank you! Lord Shuten-doji! It was truly an honor to meet a great demon like you!”

“I hope we have another chance to meet. Well, I’ll be on my way now.”

“Yes!”

Receiving Goki’s heartfelt farewell, Shuten-doji rode away in his palanquin.

Goki didn’t lift his head until he was out of sight.

The other oni [demons] were the same.

The oni had obtained something called ‘labor rights’ for the first time today.

***

“You’re doing something out of character. Wasn’t Takamagahara [the heavenly realm in Japanese mythology] your priority?”

Shuten-doji muttered, drinking in his palanquin.

Even though he was the only one riding in it.

But the answer came clearly. From above the palanquin, above the ceiling.

“Inari said that the flow of time is different between Hell and the mortal realm. It just looked like there were a lot of struggling guys here, so I helped a little. You weren’t planning on doing that much, were you?”

“As the same oni, there’s nothing wrong with improving the lives of our kin. But, you’ve completely turned their lives upside down, which is more than just a little. Aren’t you afraid of the backlash that will follow?”

“That’s none of my business.”

Shuten-doji laughed at his words. As expected, he was completely insane.

Confirming once again that he was a madman, Shuten-doji downed the liquor in his cup and said,

“You’re not wrong. The boundary between the living and the dead is different. Now, then… let’s head to Takamagahara.”

As Shuten-doji said this and raised his glass, the oni carrying the palanquin quickly began to move in a different direction.

It was finally time to head to Takamagahara.

***

The journey to Takamagahara took quite a while.

Yuseong-woo and Shuten-doji were undesirable elements.

They couldn’t use the bridge connecting Takamagahara and Hell, which was used by the gods, so they had to enter through a ‘backdoor’.

“We have to go in here?”

“Yes.”

The place they were headed to was called the Howling Hell (叫喚地獄), one of the Eight Great Hells.

The punishment in the Howling Hell was to boil water in a huge cauldron and then throw the sinners in to make broth.

But the cauldron that Yuseong-woo and Shuten-doji were standing in front of was a bit special.

Because what was boiling in the cauldron wasn’t just water, but shit water.

There’s a curse that goes, ‘You’re the kind of bastard I want to fry in shit water!’

As if to prove that the curse came from Hell, a cauldron full of foul shit water was boiling in front of them.

“This is insane.”

“I feel the same way. But what can we do? The path to Takamagahara is at the very bottom of this cauldron.”

Shuten-doji carefully tucked the bottle and cup into his robes.

You could feel his conviction not to let even a single drop of that shit water touch them.

“Then let’s go. Try to keep up.”

With those words, Shuten-doji first wrapped his entire body in demonic energy to avoid touching the shit water and dove into the shit water hell.

A fantastic dive that would get a string of perfect 10s.

Yuseong-woo, realizing that there was no other choice, also wrapped himself in a thicker layer of aura armor than usual.

There are two situations when a Swordmaster uses aura armor.

The first is to protect the body when fighting.

The second is to avoid touching shit water.

He’d rather dive into a lake of blood.

Shit water was too much.

Diving into the thick brown liquid, he pushed away the heat and shit water with his aura, following after Shuten-doji, who was already ahead.

There was a lot of stuff in the shit water.

It was full of sinners suffering from punishment, and human bones were floating around here and there.

And unknown foreign substances…….

Yuseong-woo stopped thinking. Because he didn’t know what would happen if he threw up inside his aura armor.

After swimming quickly for a while, they were able to reach the bottom of the cauldron.

The bottom of the cauldron was the hottest place.

What was under the thick iron was the flame maintained by the divine power of the Ten Kings, so even Yuseong-woo and Shuten-doji couldn’t last long.

Shuten-doji pounded the bottom of the cauldron with his fist.

But it didn’t break as easily as he thought, so he gestured to Yuseong-woo to do something.

‘Sorry, Ilseong. I’ll clean you up later.’

Yuseong-woo apologized to Ilseong in his heart and summoned Ilseong.

-You crazy bastard! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!

‘I said I’d clean you up later.’

-I know you’re just going to put me in water and swish me around, you bastard! Call someone else! Call that rude Black Death bastard!

‘Sorry, I’ve already summoned you.’

-You son of a bitch!!

Ilseong, grabbed in Yuseong-woo’s hand, was swung around, cutting through the shit water.

Then, the bottom plate of the cauldron, which Shuten-doji’s fist couldn’t break, split into a square.

And a surge of intense hellfire.

Followed by a bright light.

It was the light leading to Takamagahara.

Yuseong-woo and Shuten-doji didn’t hesitate and immediately threw themselves in, and the brilliant light enveloped them, leading them to another dimension.

When his vision returned, what came into view was clear water.

Not the dirty, filthy shit water, but clear water that was extremely transparent.

Yuseong-woo, along with Shuten-doji, who had also woken up, shot to the surface, creating a high pillar of water and heading to the nearby land to shake off the water.

“I thought I was going to die.”

“I agree.”

The shit water cauldron of the Howling Hell left them with terrible memories.

Even for a madman, it wouldn’t be easy to go into shit water and swim around.

Worried that the smell might have gotten into their bodies, they even washed their clothes cleanly in the clear water.

As if they felt better after being clean, Shuten-doji poured liquor into his cup and said,

“Welcome! You are the first living human to set foot in Takamagahara!”

“With an entry method like this, no sane human would even think of coming.”

“Hahaha! That’s true.”

Shuten-doji downed the liquor in his cup and continued,

“Falling beautiful waterfalls and incredibly transparent ponds… it seems this is the ‘Divine Beast Waterfall (神獸瀑布)’ on the 3rd floor of Takamagahara, where the divine beasts come to wash themselves.”

Yuseong-woo had heard a rough explanation of Takamagahara from Shuten-doji on the way.

Takamagahara is a multi-dimensional space consisting of 5 floors in total, and the higher the floor, the higher the rank of the god residing there.

The 1st floor is the lowest, and the 5th floor is the highest.

Susanoo, the target of Yuseong-woo and Shuten-doji, is one of Japan’s highest gods.

Therefore, they would have to reach the 5th floor to see his face.

Still, starting on the 3rd floor wasn’t bad.

In the worst case, they could have started in the outskirts of the 1st floor.

Besides, Yuseong-woo also needed time to face Susanoo.

“Not bad.”

“Yes! It’s not a bad start.”

Yuseong-woo took out the Book of Murder written by Dantalion from his robes.

Then he showed it to Shuten-doji and asked.

“Among the guys written here, can you guide me to the residences of the gods who are on the 3rd floor or higher and who can be killed without any problems?”

What he had to do was ‘groundwork’.

Susanoo is the god of storms and the sea, and also a war god who presides over war.

The indigenous gods of Japan are all possessors of organic traditions.

There is even a saying that most of Japanese mythology was born for political reasons.

So, if all the gods with traditions connected to Susanoo were killed, Susanoo’s power would naturally weaken as well.

That’s what Yuseong-woo was aiming for.

To kill all the guys under Susanoo and take their divinity.

If he went back like that, his sword would reach the end of Susanoo’s neck.

As if he knew Yuseong-woo’s heart, Shuten-doji smiled and said,

“Good! Follow me! Let’s stir up a bloodbath in Takamagahara!”

***

“Haaam.”

“Lady Inari… will he be okay?”

After sending Yuseong-woo away, when the sun was high in the sky, Inari was lying on Koyuki’s lap in the form of a fox that cost little to maintain.

The sun shone well on the floor, making it a warm day.

But, contrary to that, Koyuki was still soaked in fear.

She couldn’t forget the sight that Yuseong-woo had shown her.

The situation where her neck would have been blown away immediately if Inari hadn’t been there remained as a trauma deep in her mind.

“Of course he won’t be okay. There’s no way that the path walked by a madman (狂人) [kyojin – mad person] full of slaughterous energy won’t leave traces behind.”

Inari replied cynically.

She had opened the way to Takamagahara and Hell, but terrible things were surely happening in Hell as well.

If there was anyone blocking his way, he would cut them down and walk proudly with their heads in one hand.

A lot of blood would flow in Hell.

Whether it was the blood of oni or the blood of sinners.

He would build mountains with corpses and make seas with blood.

“The civil servant bastards working in Hell must be quite embarrassed too…….”

“T, there are civil servants in Hell?!”

“Of course. They’re poorly paid civil servants who do a lot of work but get little salary. Koyuki, if you die, I’ll get you a job as a civil servant in Hell. Kehehe.”

“N, no thanks…….”

Inari curled up and closed her eyes.

Where would Yuseong-woo have arrived by now? Quite a bit of time had passed, but he was probably still wandering around in Hell, looking for the way to Takamagahara.

There was only one way to get from Hell to Takamagahara.

‘…Was there only one?’

Come to think of it, she seemed to have heard something about a dog hole or something like that before.

But Inari stopped thinking. Her brain wasn’t working well because she was in the form of a fox.

All she had to do was take a long nap here and then go back to Takamagahara.

‘…No, I should just stay like this until next week. That madman might come up to Takamagahara and cause a ruckus, and I might get caught in the crossfire.’

She would consume quite a bit of divinity, but there was no choice.

She wanted to avoid Yuseong-woo that much.

She could use her full power in Takamagahara, so killing him wouldn’t be a problem.

It’s not that she’s afraid of shit, she just avoids it because it’s dirty.

It would be a loss just to get hurt by bumping into him.

“Koyuki, massage my back a little.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah, there, that’s refreshing…….”

***

Swoosh!

The red sword blade came out of the body of the ‘Straw Doll Curse God (藁人形呪神)’.

One of Japan’s indigenous gods, a god of curses mediated by straw dolls.