Wash away the karma.
Lester, who had spoken confidently, brought a shovel.
“I never thought I’d be shovelling dirt even in the afterlife.” An unpleasant sense of déjà vu washed over him.
Yet Valen’s hands gripped the shovel with such familiarity it felt almost intimate.
“Now!
You must honour the spirit of the soul you killed.
Dig into this ground, bury a single strand of your hair, and apologise.”
“Damn, this is a pain in the ass.”
“Yee-ha!” Lester leapt into the air and kicked Valen squarely in the back with his shin.
Thud.
Valen’s upper body toppled forward.
“You’d have to genuinely honour the soul you killed for even one bit of karma to fade.
Don’t you want to return to the living world?
Or are you planning to live out your days here with me?” After spitting out those words, Lester seemed quite satisfied as she eyed Valen up and down.
Might be useful enough to raise as a subordinate?
Valen caught the strangely greedy meaning behind that gaze and quickly dug into the ground.
The sun of the Underworld never sets.
Not only that, but here, hunger didn’t touch him, nor did sleepiness.
Valen dug aimlessly at the ground, unable to gauge the passage of time.
“Jen Award.” Lester called his name, sitting in a tree with her legs dangling.
“Chen Award.
Sorry I killed you.
Be good over there.”
“It’s Jen, not Chen!
Can’t you get it right?”
Thud.
A shoe landed on Valen’s head.
He grabbed it so hard he nearly crushed it, then hurled it skyward.
Lester caught it effortlessly with one hand and slipped it onto her right foot.
By the time he’d buried over a hundred graves filled with hair instead of bodies, Valen plunged his shovel into the ground.
This is going to give me hair loss.
Not knowing how many more times he’d have to repeat this, digging endlessly felt like death.
And then—.
“Just one question.”
“What?”
“How much time has passed in the world of the living?”
“Let me see… Sixty-eight days.
It’s a miracle your body is still alive.”
He’d thought it would be only two or three days at most.
Time had passed far more than he’d imagined.
Valen couldn’t help but feel anxious.
As Lester had said, the fact his body had endured two months without consuming anything was already a miracle.
Moreover, he didn’t know how many more graves he’d have to dig.
Considering that time in the mortal realm passed much faster than the time Valen perceived here, it felt like it would take at least two years.
And that was the absolute minimum estimate.
Right now, setting aside any sense of mission or duty, Valen could at least consider returning because his body still clung to life.
If his body died, all this hellish suffering would become meaningless.
But Lester seemed completely unconcerned, utterly at ease.
Did she truly intend to make Valen her subordinate?
Valen had to make a decision.
“Lester.”
“Why do you keep making me talk?
You could dig at least one more grave in that time.
Tsk.
That’s what young people are like these days.”
“Does falling into the river alone cause the soul to vanish?”
“No.
It’s fine as long as you don’t lose your way in the river.
Sometimes the guides show off their skills by splashing around in the river.
What nerve, huh?
I’ve caught a few and lectured them myself.
They’d cry their eyes out, sniffling and sobbing.
Grown men, I tell you.
I’m not that scary of a supervisor.”
I see.
Valen tossed his shovel aside and sprinted with all his might.
Lester, perched in the tree, didn’t even have a chance to try and stop him.
He bent his body like a dolphin and plunged into the river.
Splash.
Droplets flew up roughly, clinging to Harjan’s startled face.
“You… you bastard!!”
Valen’s body sliced through the water, pushing forward with all his might.
Harjan stared blankly at his retreating back.
“Tsk.”
Lester, who had come down from the tree a step too late, stood at the water’s edge, watching him fade into the distance.
The Book of Life was summoned along with the light.
Due to Valen’s actions affecting the Book, a magic circle had been cast around it, preventing the pages from opening.
Whether life would be recorded in the Book or completely erased remained unknown.
“Even if he had much karma, it wasn’t from evil deeds.
He lived only to sacrifice for others, so I felt sorry for him and intended to take him in.
But he kicked away his own fortune.”
“…Are you certain?”
“That bastard… Even if luck lets him survive now, he’ll return here again before long.”
“……”
“He won’t last a year.”
Lester seemed deeply regretful, as if she’d lost a valuable talent.
Though their meeting had been brief, it was clear Valen had made quite an impression on her.Harjan, watching Lester, thought.
Perhaps… choosing annihilation had been the best choice after all.
Water cold enough to freeze the bones poured relentlessly into his nose and mouth.
He kept swimming against the current, yet no end was in sight.
He had no idea how long he’d been swimming.
Only the signal that his body felt like it was dying gave him a rough sense of time passing.
“Gasp, huff…”
Perhaps because it was a mystical river, this was no ordinary water.
The further Valen swam, the more his mind grew hazy, and his past began unfolding before his eyes.
From his earliest memories to the moment his younger brother was born, to Leto falling into the lake, to his parents being murdered… Memories that brought no comfort, no joy, appeared vividly before him.
There was nothing pleasant to reminisce about.
Valen had lived not for himself, but for the responsibilities he had to shoulder.
He had a mountain of things to sort out back in the living world.
He had to plunge back into his breathless, relentless daily grind.
But as he looked back on his past, his breath caught in his throat.
What difference would opening his eyes make?
Behind the scenes already laid out, more of the same would surely follow.
He couldn’t even begin to guess how exhausting and horrific the life remaining before him would be.
His pupils trembled painfully.
His mind began to waver feebly.
Even swimming against this current felt unbearably heavy.
He was so cold his teeth chattered, his skin frozen stiff.
His flailing limbs grew increasingly sluggish.
The cold felt like it was shattering his entire body.
He was certain that if he just sank like this, everything would finally be at peace.
It was just as Valen’s legs completely stopped moving.
“When he wakes and realises he can no longer hold a sword, wouldn’t life itself become hell?
Some lives are more agonising than death.”
“I’m worried Lord Argen might collapse trying to save No Name.”
“I am unshaken.”
“…Catch your breath before speaking.”
Their voices reached him.
The waves began revealing what Valen’s body was enduring.
It wasn’t like the scenes he’d witnessed and experienced firsthand in the past, unfolding before his eyes or voices ringing clearly.
Yet, through the sporadic snippets of conversation, he could piece together the situation.
He listened intently to the story that Argen had taken out the curse with her mouth to protect his right arm, and the sound of the kitchen guys cursing him.
He especially wanted to hear everything Argen said.
But the fragmented voices only left him agonising alone.
Did they not know Valen had tried to steal the heirlooms left by Argen’s parents?
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have cared for Valen with such devoted attention.Valen had always been a disposable entity.
Accustomed to this treatment, he didn’t even care for himself.
Losing an arm?
He’d drown in booze for a day and forget about it.
But Argen didn’t take it lightly.
Why.
Why me.
What did I do to deserve this.
Her warmth flooded into his heart.
It was an unfamiliar warmth, almost overwhelming.
Yet it felt so welcome, so good, he wanted to grasp it tightly in his hands.
He knew he shouldn’t think this way, but he couldn’t stop the greed rising in his mind.
Right now, whether Argen was demon or not didn’t matter.
Valen needed the warmth she offered.
He wanted to hear her voice again, saying indifferently, ‘It’s alright,’ ‘Do as you please.’ He felt the blood that had stopped flowing begin to spread once more to the tips of his limbs.
Then, the warmth he’d only imagined in his mind became tangible on his skin.
This wasn’t a desperate delusion on the brink of death.
It was real.
Real warmth.The warmth stretched like a single beam of light along the broad river.
Valen used it as his compass and swam onward.
To the river’s end.
On and on.When he finally discovered a place filled with pure white light ahead, he could at last feel relief.
Now he would return.
Passing through the light, he would surely forget all memories of the Underworld.