INV 24

“…If everyone here dies, my superiors won’t be too pleased with me either, will they?”

“Then I shall kill them as well.”

“I think the problem would be solved if the people here didn’t die.”

At that, Chacha laughed.

“My, you feel compassion for humans. How useless. Half of them are those who tried to kill you, and all of them looked down on you. I saw it all.”

“…!”

Kwon Yihyeon fell into confusion, unsure whether to believe Chacha’s words or not. What did he see? That he was being slighted in the Underworld? If so, why appear only now? With a temperament that would have long ago torn them all to death?

Chacha stroked Kwon Yihyeon’s cheek as if he were pitiful.

“I know that you wish for humans not to die, Kwon Yihyeon. I, too, have endured for a long time. I have suppressed it for a long time.”

“If you know that…”

“But they have crossed the line.”

Moving Kwon Yihyeon’s hand to make him stroke his own head, Chacha spoke softly.

Kwon Yihyeon silently watched his own palm become stained with the blood covering Chacha’s body,

And Chacha sneered.

“Since your kind is capable of nothing more than insulting even the Emperor behind his back, I do not ask you to abandon your despicable murderous intent. As long as it remains a delusion, that is. It matters not, for if you were to leave even a single scratch on what is mine, I would surely mince your internal organs and dismember your body… However, what is unforgivable is your behavior of daring to ‘judge’ Kwon Yihyeon. You ignorant fools. You must have thought I would remain still. You, who dare to ‘evaluate’ what is mine. To think I would overlook you, who dare to mock what is mine…”

Then, he held out one hand.

“Did I seem funny to you? Have I… failed to prove myself?”

As if to say they were not Buddhas, but merely sitting upon his palm.

“You are foolish and do not deserve the compassion of my young groom.”

He slowly curled the fingers he had spread into a grip and laughed deeply.

“If so, I must step forward. I shall personally butcher you and scatter you across the rivers, the fields, and the mudflats. I must do so to make it known.”

“…”

The disaster, who had severed and crushed the legs of hundreds in an instant,

“That my young groom belongs to me.”

Was revealing a possessive desire for a single human.

“If I do not punish you because I am intoxicated by the pleasure Kwon Yihyeon gives me, should you not naturally be grateful to Kwon Yihyeon?”

Chuckle, chuckle. The Adam’s apple swallowing back the laughter trembled slightly. At that moment, a silence akin to tyranny was forced upon everyone. Even those who were struggling with severed legs covered their mouths and suppressed their screams, tears streaming down their faces. No one spoke. It was because they felt instinctively that they must not make a sound.

Capturing the desolated landscape in his two red eyes, Chacha’s lips moved.

“Do not kneel and bow. My young groom is embarrassed by such things… But bear this in mind. O Underworld.”

Chillingly vivid.

“Remember me, who stands behind him. To despise Kwon Yihyeon is to insult me. I shall let you know clearly what the price for insulting me is. I shall destroy the human world. I shall burn it with the fires of the kalpa. I shall show you the Avici Hell. I shall make you burn to death for longer than three asankhyeya kalpas!”

It was not a blood-stained curse.

It was merely a declaration.

A being fully capable of doing so had simply proclaimed that he would.

However, it was enough to cause those who remembered ten thousand years ago to have a seizure.

Just before someone, who had been holding even their breath out of the obsession that they must not make a sound, was about to suffocate, a bewitching breath flowed from between Jae Angshin’s teeth, violating the void.

Like a sinister enchantment.

“So, please, make sure to fear my groom… Do not dare believe that just because this child overlooks you, I will do the same. Do you understand…?”

Tenderly, kindly.

As if granting them room to breathe…

Only then did gasping breaths burst out heavily. Chacha, who had been looking around the panting surroundings gracefully, suddenly fixed his gaze on one spot. Kwon Yihyeon moved his gaze along with Chacha.

There stood a man clad in black armor.

When assessing his overall energy, he was a man who, in Kwon Yihyeon’s eyes, looked like a shroud would suit him better than armor. To put it indirectly, a jet-black suit would suit him; he seemed more like an office worker than a general breaking through a battlefield. He emitted an aura that wasn’t exactly frail, yet wasn’t bellicose either, as he looked at Jae Angshin.

The man, wearing armor that made one confused about the era—literally looking as if he had popped out of the Three Kingdoms period—had a considerably cold impression. With a slender jaw and delicate eyes, it wouldn’t be hard for him to be called handsome anywhere. That is, if it weren’t for the strange sorrow, gloom, and cold current emanating from his face.

He was draped in an atmosphere as if he had just walked out of a funeral hall. He suited a corpse in a morgue better than a freshly dead body with lingering warmth. A corpse already prepared for burial. Or an undertaker. That kind of image…

‘Now I know. That person is…’

Presently, the lord of hell and judge of death, Great King Yama, moved his cold lips expressionlessly.

“I sincerely apologize for the lack of preparation in the Underworld, as we did not know you were coming.”

“Seeing as your neck is still stiff, that is not an attitude befitting an apology.”

“…”

Chacha gave a sharp, mocking laugh on purpose, and Kwon Yihyeon, caught in the middle, was restless. Thinking about it, he was in the position of having a bride who was telling the group chairman of the company he worked for to get down on his knees, so it was quite understandable. Even more so since the bride possessed the martial power to kill everyone if they didn’t kneel.

However, Yama, who had been silent for a moment, suddenly bowed his waist and bent his knees, attempting to perform a prostration. It was such a casual movement that even the officials holding the registers of the dead belatedly let out gasps of bewilderment.

But at a certain point, Great King Yama, who was about to touch his forehead to the floor, found he could not move as he wished. Instead, Great King Yama was forced to see a flickering blue foxfire passing before his unclosing eyelids.

The heat was so dangerously intense that his corneas were at risk of being damaged, but Great King Yama did not let out a single groan. At that, the ever-leisurely Chacha manipulated the foxfire to pull Great King Yama back up to his feet and let out a tsk, clicking his tongue.

The moment his interest faded, Chacha’s face turned beyond heartless to stone-cold. However, there were few in this place who realized that Chacha had suddenly felt like staining the boring scenery with blood. If there was anything surprising, it was perhaps that Kwon Yihyeon had also noticed Chacha’s murderous intent and was on guard.

A sudden playfulness flickered in his downcast eyes.

“Never mind. You and I have known each other for how many years.”

Chacha, shaking off the murderous intent all at once, put on a brilliant smile, confirming that the claim of being old acquaintances was not a lie.

“Yes. Kanglim. You are late.”

“…”

Chacha casually called out the name of the Underworld Reaper, a name that had been passed down in folklore for so long that even Kwon Yihyeon knew it well.

At that, Great King Yama bowed his waist even deeper.

It was true. The Great King Yama of the current era, who had cleared the registers of the troubled times where deep-seated evils were rampant and set the Underworld straight, was none other than the first ‘human’ Underworld Reaper, Kanglim Doryeong.

“The one who was a mere doryeong has become a Great King; your lot in life has certainly bloomed. If a country bumpkin becomes an official overnight, one might expect his belly to get fat, but you’ve managed to keep your liver fresh. Good boy. Did you save it to give to me?”

“You are quite the same as always, Master.”

Kwon Yihyeon, who had been absorbing information while listening intently to the conversation between the two giants, almost tripped for a second but barely regained his senses with Chacha’s support.

…It seems that even for the Great King Yama, calling Jae Angshin by the name Jae Angshin to his face was too much.

‘But even so, Master?’

Though Chacha is a person from the old days, he is the Jae Angshin who tried to exterminate the celestial realm, far from being benevolent or reasonable…

‘At least say something that makes sense…’

Why not just call him a deity instead?

“Your banter is quite peculiar. Why don’t you give me a reason why I should overlook you all.”

Chacha looked at Kanglim expressionlessly with a bored and flat gaze, as if he were unmoved.

Kanglim recalled the past. He reflected on history. And he reminded himself that the anomaly before him was a pleasure-seeker driven by interest and an incarnation of madness. Such a being is tied to a single person.

Since a human is fragile, he cannot be a perfect sealing vessel in himself, but at least he will be a stopgap measure.

Kanglim was a pragmatist. The leading figure who strongly opposed Geom Biyeon’s argument to throw Jae Angshin’s contractor into the torture chamber and make him confess his purpose was also Kanglim Doryeong—no, Great King Yama.

Looking at it so far, Kanglim’s judgment was right. He is being cherished and obsessed over more than the world could have imagined. If you touch him, things will explode.

He didn’t know how long Chacha’s whim would last, but…

‘When Jae Angshin loses interest, he will die. Since the celestial realm won’t leave him alone, and he has no one to protect him or a place to rely on.’

That was a pitiful thing, but Kanglim was Yama, not a Reaper.

He could no longer act out like the days when he was bickering and causing trouble with Jeon Woo-chi. Therefore…

“I will personally observe Intern Kwon Yihyeon’s schedule for the duration of today.”

Kanglim Doryeong, who had become Great King Yama, decided to act out only for the sake of the Underworld.

“Excuse me?!”

Gwak Deukcheon, who suddenly found himself in the position of having to drag the group chairman around all day, glared at Kanglim as if he wanted to kill him, and Kwon Yihyeon’s face turned pale…

But since this was all for the sake of the Underworld, he didn’t care in the slightest.

“Hahat! Ahahahahat!”

Jae Angshin was laughing loudly, saying that the situation was simply delightful.