Blood Demon of the Past Life – Chapter 89

Chapter 89: Countdown （4）

His head felt as if it was overflowing with something.

Rather than rationally judging the situation, he felt the need to kill that monster right away and save his parents.

A black-shaped monster.

He didn’t gauge how strong it was.

He ran.

Before the monster could snatch his parents, Kang San flew first and thrust his sword into the monster’s body.

Puck!

“Die!”

Ughhhhhhhh!

The monster roared.

It shook its massive body, trying to throw Kang San off, and Kang San clung on tenaciously, pushing the sword embedded in its body with even greater force. The monster collapsed more easily than expected. Black blood gushed like a fountain from the torn area, and Kang San raised his head, covered in the spray of blood.

There wasn’t just one or two monsters.

Right behind him.

To protect the terrified child and his parents, he had to slaughter all the monsters rushing at him.

He gripped his sword tightly.

Crack━!

The monsters collided with him.

Kang San tore apart the limbs of the monsters he encountered, and in the process, his own body was scratched and torn in many places. This wasn’t the fighting style Kang San usually pursued. Kang San was someone who judged rationally and responded efficiently, but now it was like he was entangled with the monsters, betting on who would kill the other first. Even if he got injured, it didn’t matter as long as he could take the life of an enemy.

Flash.

Puck.

He blew its head off.

Breaking through the scattering blood, Kang San didn’t allow a single monster to pass him.

His parents were behind him.

Behind him, there was a young child who might be him.

He wanted to protect them.

If his parents hadn’t died that day, Kang San would have lived a normal life under his parents’ care like others. Whining because he wanted snacks, causing trouble at school and making his parents come in. Not a life where he had to mature and be mindful of adults’ opinions while moving from one relative’s house to another just to survive, but a life where he could grow up like his peers and be a bit naive.

He was enraged.

He killed and killed again.

“Pant, pant.”

He was out of breath.

He raised his head.

At some point, there were no monsters left, and only Kang San, drenched in blood, stood alone in the hellish scene.

He turned around.

He approached his parents.

He wanted to ask.

If they were really his parents.

What the hell was going on.

The moment he stood in front of his parents who were looking up at him like that.

“……Huh?”

The world changed.

His parents running towards him from across the crosswalk.

A child frozen like a statue.

He didn’t understand this situation.

To be precise, he couldn’t remember how this situation came to be.

‘Why am I here?’

He looked dazed.

He quickly grasped the situation.

Those people over there.

They were his parents in his memory.

His parents were in danger from the monsters right now.

Kang San moved his feet.

“Don’t touch my parents, you bastards.”

✦✦✦✦✦✦

It was an endless loop.

After killing all the monsters.

Kang San would once again see his parents from afar, running to save his younger self.

He would rush over, worried that they might get hurt, and slaughter the monsters, then somehow find himself watching his parents from a distance again.

A repeating situation.

Only Kang San remained the same.

His face was covered in blood, making it impossible to recognize him properly, and his sword was smeared with blood and flesh from killing so many monsters. Yet, every time he saw his parents, Kang San didn’t question the situation for a moment and kicked off the ground to save them. He showed a genuinely urgent and desperate look, unable to bear seeing them torn apart before his eyes.

Ten monsters.

Twenty monsters.

Thirty monsters.

Before he knew it, a hundred monsters.

He couldn’t count how many monsters he had slaughtered.

He killed and killed.

And as the monsters continued to appear, Kang San reacted like a machine, blowing their heads off.

Puk.

Blood splattered.

His memories faded.

He began to forget the reason for the slaughter.

Then.

Crack.

He was bitten hard by a monster.

His movements had slowed down from the repeated battles, and despite thinking he had dodged the attack, a sharp sensation pierced his skin painfully. Kang San didn’t even blink. He shoved his sword into the head of the monster trying to tear off his flesh. Meanwhile, the monster that had left claw marks on his back strode over and tore his body in two. His wounds increased. He felt dizzy. His mouth was dry, and his body no longer obeyed his commands. His vanished memories kept returning to the moment he first encountered this situation, but at some point, he couldn’t even save his parents from being attacked by the monsters.

His feet wouldn’t move.

He was too slow.

“…San-ah.”

Kwak.

A monster snatched his mother.

Seeing a human being chewed up alive, a fragment of forgotten memory suddenly surfaced in Kang San’s mind.

It was the same back then.

His mother smiled brightly.

Even though there was a monster behind her.

Even though she knew she was about to die.

She caressed Kang San’s face and spoke as if nothing was wrong.

“San-ah, it’s going to be okay. Everything will be alright.”

He stopped in his tracks.

Kang San’s eyes wavered.

His mother’s appearance just now.

It was somehow different from the mother he had repeatedly tried to save.

As the feeling of doubt quickly spread, his unfocused eyes suddenly regained their original color.

“…Why am I doing this?”

At that moment.

Kurururung.

The world collapsed.

The monsters, his parents.

Everything became entangled and created a new world.

And when his vision cleared again.

Kang San saw the training ground, the last thing he remembered.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

“Ugh, ugh.”

He buried his face in the ground.

The world spun.

After vomiting for a while, Kang San finally checked his surroundings and groaned.

“……What is this.”

A wide space.

It was filled with Werewolf corpses.

The fact that they were living beings until just now, with the heat still lingering, sent chills down his spine.

‘Don’t tell me.’

He realized it then.

The penalty of the Blood Demon Art.

What it was.

Kang San vaguely remembered fighting the monsters, and it seemed that it wasn’t just a simple illusion. The real Kang San had fought the same battle. When he blew off the monster’s head, the real Kang San would have blown off a Werewolf’s head. When he saw a monster rushing at him, the monster’s true identity would have been a Werewolf.

Illusion and reality.

The boundary between them had collapsed.

Recognizing the Werewolves as monsters, Kang San didn’t stop slaughtering them to save his parents.

And so the corpses piled up.

His hands were drenched in blood.

Facing the unrealistic situation with his own eyes, Kang San understood what this meant.

‘……If it hadn’t been for the training ground, I might have become a murderer who lost his reason. If there were people around instead of Werewolves, I would have recognized them as monsters and killed them indiscriminately.’

“Ugh.”

He vomited again.

It was hard to bear.

He had guessed that the penalty of the Blood Demon Art was an uncontrollable emotion, but after seeing such a cruel result, he realized how dangerous it was. It had to be controlled. The moment this demonic power manifested among ordinary people, he would understand how the Blood Demon of his past life had accumulated his evil deeds.

Then suddenly.

Kang San had a question.

‘If I had been in the same situation, could I have suppressed the killing intent?’

Right in front of his eyes.

If his parents were dying.

Could he really leave the beings who killed his parents alone, even after witnessing their limbs being torn apart? If it’s a monster, it’s paradoxically not a problem because it’s a monster. But if the opponent is not a monster but a human, or someone’s malice. He couldn’t guarantee that he would be able to respond rationally then.

From his fragmented experience, Kang San empathized with the reason for being consumed by killing intent.

It was understandable.

He thought it could happen.

It was understandable because the opponents were not humans, but he couldn’t guarantee that he would be able to control his emotions even if the opponents were humans.

“……Damn it.”

He was afraid.

Perhaps both his past and present lives were the same human.

At the truth that he felt anew, Kang San closed his eyes tightly as if to avoid reality.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

A moment of respite came.

Perhaps because he had killed too many monsters, silence descended upon the space, and Kang San focused on recovering for the time being.

“Healing Aura.”

Hwaak━

Divine power swept through his body.

Strangely, while he was unconscious, skills like the Blood Demon Sword Technique had their cooldowns reset, while there were no traces of him using recovery-related skills. He was literally a berserk warrior who had lost his reason. When he took off his clothes for treatment, he saw marks of being torn, scratched, and chunks of flesh ripped out here and there.

‘It’s a very dangerous penalty. The fact that innocent people could die because of me, and if I push myself to the limit in this state, I’ll eventually die. From now on, I’ll have to rule out actively using the Blood Demon Art. If I cross the line while walking a tightrope, the consequences will be irreversible.’

Of course, he couldn’t completely rule it out.

Since the stats of the Blood Demon Art accumulated just by killing someone, he was thinking of setting a standard for an appropriate level this time.

Gulp gulp gulp.

He poured the recovery potion onto his wounds.

Even after drinking a few, the pain didn’t subside easily.

“……Was my mother’s appearance real?”

Overlapping memories.

Among them, there were two slightly different appearances of his mother.

The mother who was desperately running towards him and being torn apart, and the mother who told him it was okay until the very end and died.

He didn’t know.

It was something that happened when he was young, and he couldn’t remember the situation clearly, perhaps because his memory was damaged by the trauma. What was certain was that no matter what happened, his mother and father risked their lives to save him. Thinking of their sacrifice, Kang San could never live his life in vain.

It was for the three of them.

This life wasn’t just his own.

Fortunately, no monsters appeared while he was recovering.

Kang San, who had fallen into a deep sleep while tense, first checked how much time had passed.

『Day4 18:20』

“……Huh?”

For a moment.

Kang San’s eyes widened.

In preparation for the possibility of a time discrepancy between inside and outside, Kang San had activated a timer to display the date in advance. As far as he could remember, the day he fell into Qi Deviation was the third day. No matter how much time he spent recovering and sleeping, he couldn’t accept the part that said Day4.

What that number meant was.

A day had passed without Kang San realizing it.

Then, with high probability, Kang San must have fought a bloody battle with the Werewolves for over a day while unconscious.

‘How many Werewolves did I kill while I was in Qi Deviation?’

This training ground.

Originally, it would collect the corpses, but when the trial was activated, he saw the corpses evaporate. However, the numerous corpses that Kang San saw last still felt warm. Since 24 hours would have been enough time for them to cool down, it could be interpreted that the corpses that had died besides the ones he saw had already evaporated.

Questions piled up.

Before falling into Qi Deviation.

Kang San had entered Burning Time.

If Burning Time had continued, would the number of Werewolves he had killed during that time have been converted into stats?

His heart pounded.

It was just a hypothesis.

He had to confirm it.

Kang San carefully opened his stat window.