TL: Yul
PR: Gort
*****
Before traveling to the Sleeping Forest, Lee Sungmin was sitting cross-legged in the center of the Forest of the Fairies.
Behind him was the lake where Oslo lived. Ignoring the gazes of Oslo, Teresa, and countless fairies, Lee Sungmin closed his eyes and focused.
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing much.”
The Black Dragon replied to Teresa’s question. Although eating another being wasn’t something to be described as ‘nothing much,’ he had the common sense not to explain further to Teresa.
Even though she knew about Lee Sungmin’s peculiar body, which was that of a monster, she probably wouldn’t understand the benefits and drawbacks of cannibalism.
Oslo nodded, seemingly able to know what happened to Lee Sungmin without any explanation.
She silently flew toward Lee Sungmin and placed her hand on his shoulder.
[[I can help you, you know.]]
‘I don’t want to cause any unnecessary problems.’
[[What are you talking about?]]
Lee Sungmin reluctantly explained what worried him. Osla puffed her cheeks.
[[…Thanks for worrying about me.]]
‘What happens if the Queen decides to walk into the Forest of the Fairies?’
[[Are you asking if I can defeat the Queen?]]
‘Yes.’
[[…Hmm…]]
Osla flapped her wings, thinking for a couple of moments.
[[I don’t think I can kill her. Remember what I said? She’s an existence that surpasses that of a Transcendent. Even though my existence in this world is higher than hers, it’s not enough to completely defeat her.]]
‘In that case….’
[[We both can’t kill each other. I can’t die as long as I’m in this forest, and I can’t kill the Queen.]]
‘But how did you know earlier? About what I did?’
[[Your presence changed slightly. The essence of the yōkai increased, and it seems… more violent. I suggest not overeating. Even though your power didn’t increase significantly, feeding your body more humans is bad. Very.]]
Lee Sungmin engraved her words in his heart and nodded. He closed his eyes once more and delved into the Blood Demon’s memories.
His memories, not as a person, but as a martial artist
His understanding of martial arts.
To be truthful, Lee Sungmin did not need the Blood Demon’s achievements in martial arts. After all, he had the memories of Yang Il-Chun, someone who had transcended the limits set on this world.
Even if he hadn’t wholly comprehended everything, it was more important that he had the knowledge. It meant that Lee Sungmin still had room to grow.
‘I have to undergo body reconstruction.’
He had to at least do that much. If he didn’t, his limit would be the height that the Blood Demon achieved.
Although he killed the Blood Demon in the end, that was only because he could use the Ninth Art of the Nine Heavenly Spear Techniques, Martial End. If he weren’t able to, he would have died.
Would he be able to kill Geniella with Martial End? He thought that it wasn’t guaranteed. There was no ‘after’ after using Martial End. It was an ultimate technique used to finish off an enemy. It took everything he had to imitate it, and if he couldn’t kill Geniella with Martial End, he would undoubtedly die.
‘What do I do? How should I improve?’
He couldn’t see the road ahead of him.
He had succeeded in achieving One with the Spear with Martial End, but he couldn’t fully understand it, making it challenging to utilize.
How far could he achieve by only following a set of instructions? True martial arts was not just following something but using the knowledge to pave a new path that no one had walked before.
Would he have to first remove the frame of his techniques? With what time?
Lee Sungmin could perform 3 martial arts techniques.
The Nine Heavenly Spear Techniques, Shadowless Steps, and Divine Blood Ring Demonic Art.
Out of those, only the Blood Ring Demonic Art was a body-strengthening art and didn’t have a framework. Shadowless Steps and the Nine Heavenly Spear Techniques were different.
Lee Sungmin thought of how Yang Il-Chun fought. He had only used one technique: the Demonic Emperor’s Dark Storm Arts.
He couldn’t even say that it had a framework. The Demonic Emperor’s gestures were like a new art that transcended this world’s limits.
‘I’m running out of time.’
He had no time to do anything.
Could he take Denir’s Trial once more? No, that was impossible. Denir himself had said that one could only take his trial once.
Should he go back to Mush’s Mountain?
Going to Mush’s Mountain without knowing what would happen in the future… would be terrible.
Throwing away the framework of his martial arts, creating his own technique derived from the original, and then ascending to a new height with the new knowledge. One couldn’t do this even if they sacrificed their entire life…
[Don’t get discouraged.]
Heoju’s voice woke Lee Sungmin up from his thoughts.
[The first thing you must do is to do something you can do. Don’t focus on things you can’t or think you can’t do. Geniella is a calamity, but that doesn’t mean you have to fight her alone. You have your strengths as well as your companions to use.]
Lee Sungmin nodded, massaging his temples. He lowered his head, gazing at his ghost mask.
What if… Master was still alive?
No.
As soon as that sentence popped up, Lee Sungmin shook his head, clearing his thoughts.
It was useless to keep dwelling on impossibilities.
He had to first recover from the fight against the Blood Demon. After all, it would be unreasonable to teleport to the Sleeping Forest immediately.
The one thing that worried him was that the groups that went to Cheneron Great Lake and the Ancient Dahar site didn’t send any signals or updates. At this point, they should have finished dealing with the Spirit Kings…
***
By the time Lee Sungmin fully recovered, it was already night. He couldn’t sleep, and his head was too full.
He stood up from the meditative posture silently. He wanted to practice his spear arts but decided not to for the sake of the others’ sleep.
[Why don’t you go to the Sleeping Forest now?]
Heoju commented.
[I think you can ride the Pegasus now. And you can’t sleep right now, so why not? If the Queen of Spirits descended, that Lloyd guy would send you a message through the bracelet, but there’s nothing yet. I think it would be best to check quickly.]
‘Yeah, why not.’
It was a distance impossible to cover in a couple of hours, but the Pegasus could jump between space to instantly teleport to the Sleeping Forest.
He rode the Pegasus and thought of where he first found Heoju.
The Pegasus shook its head, huffing loudly.
‘What?’
“He can’t travel there.”
Oslo, lying on the lake’s surface, spoke in a drowsy voice.
“Even a Pegasus can’t travel anywhere in this world. He can only go to places that exist on this plane. I don’t know where you thought of just now, but that place isn’t somewhere the Pegasus can go. It means it doesn’t exist.”
“There’s no way….”
Lee Sungmin looked down at the Pegasus with a confused expression. He tried one more time, but the result was the same.
Lee Sungmin thought of the first time he visited the Sleeping Forest. Without the help of the tribe guarding the forest, it would be impossible to break through the barrier protecting it.
Was the barrier that strong to prevent the Pegasus from jumping inside it?
“Where are you going?”
Rubia walked toward Lee Sungmin, rubbing her eyes.
Lee Sungmin nodded, thinking that she had come at a perfect time.
As Rubia opened her mouth to speak, Lee Sungmin raised his index finger and pressed it against his lips.
“Get on.”
Time was of the essence. Being careful not to wake the others up, Lee Sungmin and Rubia quietly teleported to the Sleeping Forest.
The place they traveled to was none other than the entrance to the tribe near the Sleeping Forest.
“This is…”
As they arrived, Rubia’s eyes widened as she whispered.
“The Sleeping Forest? Why did we come here?”
“I wanted to check the conditions of the forest before the Queen of Spirits descended. I also needed to confirm some things.”
Looking back on it, Lee Sungmin felt he always had a few things he was curious about in the Sleeping Forest.
Primarily the reason why Envirus came to this particular forest in the past.
To this day, Lee Sungmin felt that Envirus had come to the forest to check for something.
Chasing Envirus’s tracks throughout the forest was a coincidence weaved by fate, and meeting Heoju there was also made possible through fate.
According to the Predator of Massacre, before his awakening, Lee Sungmin was too weak, so he needed Heoju’s help to fulfill his plans.
“Why did Envirus come to this forest?”
“…That… I don’t know.”
Rubia spoke while pouting.
“My master didn’t tell me everything he planned on doing. The only thing he told me before disappearing was… to wait and meet Lee Sungmin-nim.”
Envirus wanted to keep track of Lee Sungmin by sticking Rubia close to him.
He had glimpsed slightly into fate and had seen how dangerous of an existence Lee Sungmin would come to be. However, Envirus had not realized that Lee Sungmin was the Predator of Massacre.
The thing he was worried about was the fact that Lee Sungmin could transform into a yōkai and absorb Heoju to make himself stronger.
“Do you not know anything about this other than that?”
“My master tried to traverse to the edge of the Sleeping Forest… but he failed.”
“Failed?”
“Yes.”
Rubia nodded slightly.
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. We went in, traveling for a while. And suddenly, he turned around, saying that it was impossible. He had a somber expression on his face.”
And now, no one would know why Envirus had tried to travel to the forest’s edge; he was dead.
‘What’s in there?’
[I don’t know.]
Heoju replied.
[I might have mentioned this before, but this forest is a prison that contains the souls of fallen monsters.]
This was a story Lee Sungmin heard when he first met Heoju. The presence of the tribe guarding the forest and its barrier made it so that the souls were contained, unable to wake up or escape.
‘Is Kazuya still alive?’
Lee Sungmin thought of the tribe leader from years ago, who had led the tribe members in protecting the forest and looking for what the clan wanted.
However, Kazuya didn’t know what the tribe wanted or why they wanted it.
When Lee Sungmin first met Heoju, he asked, “Are you what the tribe is looking for?”
Heoju replied that he was only someone in the middle of the road, not the main objective of the tribe.
Lee Sungmin, along with Rubia, slowly walked into the town. It was nearly morning, but the town was silent.
Ten years ago, the town was small as there weren’t many people in the tribe. It seemed that with time, the outskirts of the town were abandoned. Lee Sungmin looked around.
A pungent stench wafted around the town.
Lee Sungmin walked to the nearest house and pushed on the door. The door, which wasn’t locked, slowly opened, creaking.
“Ugh…”
Rubia, who was behind Lee Sungmin, coughed. The smell was strong enough to make her wrinkle her nose.
Behind the door lay a decaying body sprawled in the hallway. Upon closer look, Lee Sungmin realized that no one had murdered the person, and they had died of…
‘A disease… an epidemic?’
It seemed that the person died a long time, considering that the body had decayed significantly. Lee Sungmin stepped over the body, walking deeper into the house. Even if there was a possibility of disease, to Lee Sungmin, who had mastered Ten Thousand Poison Resistance, it was nothing worth mentioning.
There were more corpses past the one in the hallway, all in distorted forms.
The entire town was like this.
[This is quite troublesome.]
Heoju whispered.
[I can see why they were so weak to this disease. This tribe, who did not accept outsiders, had to inbreed for many generations, leading to a fragile body. Even if they tried to learn martial arts, with this weak body, they wouldn’t suddenly be able to soar into the skies. Their lifespan is too short anyway.]
This type of disease, which had resulted from hundreds of years of inbreeding, was hard to cure even with the legendary Elixir, famed for its healing powers.
[It’s quite unfortunate that they died, but if everyone died, the Sleeping Forest’s protective barrier would die out.]
‘You don’t even know what the forest contains.’
[I know that it contains primordial beasts. Don’t you feel a sense of danger being near here? One of those ancient beings could be a calamity. An Apostle of the End.]
Lee Sungmin nodded, stepping out of the house. He headed in the direction of Kazuya’s house. The dark windows made him expect the worst, but as he neared the mansion, he sensed a faint presence. He slowly opened the door.
“Who’s there?”
A voice rang out: a voice without any power, on the verge of being snuffed out.
“Minor Heavenly Demon, is that you?”
Lee Sungmin’s expression hardened at that question.
*****
TL Notes:
Hello guys. Sorry for the late post. Got busy IRL with homework and whatnot. Hopefully, I’ll have more time to TL.
Have a good day/night 😀