Cold.
The stone beneath my skin was clammy with moisture.
When I breathed in, the stale reek of mold and wet moss filled my lungs.
I coughed.
There was dirt and grit between my teeth.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying in a dark cavern where almost no light could reach.
I tried to sit up, but every joint in my body screamed as though I had been beaten half to death.
"Where… am I?"
Was this the afterlife?
A hallucination?
Or had I truly entered the world she created?
I was still trying to make sense of it when footsteps echoed through the darkness.
Step.
Step.
I turned toward the sound.
A woman stood at the edge of a faint pool of torchlight.
She wore a tattered gray robe, the sort of thing one might expect from a nun or priestess.
Something strange floated above her head.
▼
A small, inverted triangle.
Unless I was imagining things, it was a blue cursor.
Like something out of an RPG.
If the usual rules applied here, blue meant neutral, green meant friendly, and red meant hostile.
Which meant this probably was a game world.
And she was probably a neutral NPC.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then she slowly raised her head toward me.
"...!"
My breath caught.
Her face belonged in a nightmare.
She must once have been beautiful, but where her eyes should have been, there were only two black, hollow cavities.
Dark blood ran from them like tears, tracing lines down her cheeks.
She should not have been able to see me.
Yet somehow, horribly, she was staring straight at me.
"You have come."
Her voice was dry and eerily calm.
"I have been waiting for you, Sinner."
"Who are—"
"Unfilial child who murdered the Mother. Bearer of the original sin of deicide. Sinner. Sinner."
She cut me off and slowly reached inside her robe.
When her hand emerged, it held a dagger with a gleaming blue edge.
"I bring you the Mother's final command."
She raised the dagger in both hands as though presenting an offering.
"There is only one path to atonement."
"Gather the cursed, forsaken sinners who share your fate, and kill every false demigod who defiles this land."
"Then take your place upon the empty throne and become the new god. Replace the woman you killed."
"…What?"
Instead of answering, the priestess calmly reversed her grip on the dagger.
"That is all. I will go on ahead."
"Wait. What does that—?"
Before I could stop her, she drove the blade into her own throat.
Thick.
Dark blood erupted in a fountain with the sickening sound of punctured flesh.
"Ghk… khh…"
Air leaked from her lungs in ragged gasps as she choked to death on her own blood.
Then she collapsed at my feet.
The blue cursor above her head dimmed and disappeared.
When her body struck the ground, warm blood splashed across my face and hands.
It was red and warm.
Just like the blood that had flowed from Jisoo's head.
I did not scream.
I was not even particularly surprised.
I simply stared down at her and found myself thinking about what had happened to the woman I killed.
"At this rate, I'm going to get used to this."
That made two deaths I had witnessed.
Beyond the priestess's body, a set of battered equipment rested against the wall near the cave entrance.
A rusted one-handed sword.
A dented wooden shield whose emblem had been scratched beyond recognition.
The sort of gear that could not have looked more like a beginner's starter kit if it tried.
I picked up the sword.
It was much heavier than I expected.
"Damn. How do people usually do this…? Status."
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
I had read enough novels, webcomics, and game-fantasy stories to know the routine.
Apparently, I had guessed correctly.
A translucent window appeared in front of me.
[ STATUS ]
Name: Kim In
Class: Sinner
Level: 1
Sin: 0 / 10
[ ATTRIBUTES ]
Magic: 5
Strength: 11
Endurance: 10
Dexterity: 7
Sanity: 10
Faith: 0
Luck: 0
"…Hah."
The interface looked strangely familiar.
Apparently, even a genius like Jisoo had not bothered inventing a completely new UI.
My attributes were fairly ordinary for a level-one melee fighter.
Except Faith and Luck were both zero.
Perhaps someone who had killed a god could hardly be expected to possess faith.
And the fact that I had fallen into this place was proof enough that I had no luck to speak of.
I closed the window and looked toward the mouth of the cavern.
A gray wind blew through the unfinished world beyond.
The hell my lover had traded her life to create.
The hell I was expected to complete.
"Ah…"
The sight outside the cave stole the breath from my lungs.
A beige plain stretched endlessly beneath a black, shifting sky.
Ash-gray clouds smothered the heavens, allowing only the faintest traces of light to bleed through.
Far in the distance, enormous structures curved upward like arches.
No matter how long I stared at them, they looked like ribs.
I was walking across the chest of a colossal corpse.
White grass covered the ground as far as I could see, whispering softly in the wind.
"Pampas grass…?"
Without thinking, I reached toward one of the pale stalks that rose to my waist.
For a moment, the autumnal landscape almost comforted me.
Then my fingers touched it.
A sharp jolt ran through my hand.
"...!"
It did not feel like plant fiber.
It was lukewarm and wet, with the repulsive elasticity of a tendon or blood vessel freshly stripped from an animal.
Worse still was the faint vibration inside it.
Tiny electrical impulses crackled beneath the translucent outer membrane.
"Urgh…"
The moment I understood what I was touching, my stomach lurched.
It was not grass.
It was a nerve.
A shriveled bundle of nerves growing from the surface of the enormous corpse, still writhing after death so it could continue carrying pain.
I gagged and wiped my hand frantically against my clothes.
"This place is insane."
That was when I heard it.
"SKREEEE!"
A shrill cry tore at my eardrums.
The forest of nerve bundles thrashed violently.
I raised my shield on instinct.
Something burst from the pale growth.
Green skin.
Pointed ears.
Yellow teeth.
A textbook goblin.
But unlike the priestess, the cursor above its head was red.
"Red means hostile. Right. Of course it does. It's a goblin."
The creature smacked its lips the moment it saw me and raised a club made from bone.
Its cursor was only a pale shade of red.
Presumably, that meant it was weak.
It was only a goblin, after all.
It would have been ridiculous for something like that to be strong.
I had never swung a sword in my life, but I tightened my grip and braced myself.
Some strange certainty told me I could kill it.
"Come on!"
I shouted and swung.
I knew immediately that I was fucked.
The sword did not move the way I expected it to. I swung far too wide, lost my balance, and twisted my shoulder under its weight.
The goblin cackled at the sight of me stumbling and darted inside my guard.
Thud!
"Ghk!"
The club slammed into my solar plexus.
All the air vanished from my lungs.
Something cracked inside my chest.
A heartbeat later, white-hot agony spread through my ribs, and I staggered backward with a scream.
"Ghh—aaagh!"
"Kikikik!"
While I reeled, the goblin hooked my ankle and pulled.
I tried to regain my footing, but it was far stronger than it looked.
I went down face-first among the cold bundles of nerves.
The moment they touched my skin, they began writhing madly, responding to my pain.
I have to get up.
If I don't—
I understood what needed to be done.
My body, consumed by pain, refused to obey.
While I struggled on the ground, the goblin climbed onto my back and brought its club down against my skull.
Again.
And again.
My vision turned red.
Each blow seemed to erase another one of my senses.
"Kikikik! Kyaaaak!"
After battering me several times, the goblin shrieked with delight.
It dropped its club.
Then it sank its teeth into the back of my neck.
Crunch.
"AAAAAGH!"
The scream tore itself from my throat.
Flesh ripped away.
Muscle fibers snapped.
Hot blood erupted across my cheek.
I thrashed beneath it, overwhelmed by pain so vivid and savage that nothing else existed.
The goblin refused to let go.
It chewed the flesh from my shoulder and swallowed.
I heard the lump of meat slide down its throat right beside my ear.
It's eating me.
Was this how all the animals I had eaten in my life had felt?
No.
At least the meat I ate had already been slaughtered—
Thick!
"AAAAAGH! GOD—AAAGH!"
This time, it tore into my throat.
Blood surged upward, drowning my vision in red.
My consciousness began to fade.
It felt as though someone had driven a red-hot iron rod into my neck and was stirring it around inside.
I struggled on reflex, but every movement earned another brutal punch to the face.
I could not breathe.
Strength drained from my limbs.
Cold crept over me.
The world darkened.
Jisoo.
It hurts.
Save me.
Save me.
Please.
Please, please—
Thick!
The goblin's fangs pierced my carotid artery.
[ YOU DIED ]
[ FIRST DEATH ]
And that was how I died for the first time.
"Gah!"
I woke with a scream.
My heart hammered so violently that it felt ready to break through my ribs.
My hands, my legs, my entire body shook uncontrollably.
"Hah… hah… aaah…"
I scrambled backward on instinct.
Only when the back of my skull struck a solid stone wall did I begin to understand where I was.
I clawed frantically at my throat.
The skin was unbroken.
My ribs, which had been shattered moments earlier, were whole as well.
But the pain remained in my memory.
The feeling of my flesh being torn away.
The sensation of fangs punching through my throat.
It had been branded into my mind with a hot iron.
"Hhh…"
My teeth chattered too hard for me to speak.
I curled into myself like a wounded animal and wrapped my arms around my body.
I did not know how long I sat there trembling.
Eventually, I managed to raise my head and look around.
"Is this… where I started?"
The dark cavern.
The wet stone floor.
And—
"..."
The priestess lay at my feet in her gray robe.
Blood still pooled beneath her throat.
I reached down with a shaking hand and touched it.
It was warm.
She had not been dead for long.
"This is a game world. So I… respawned."
A laugh escaped me.
That was it.
Death here was not permanent.
No matter what happened, I would eventually come back.
But the pain of dying had been real.
There had been nothing false about it.
"I have to keep doing this?"
I pressed my forehead against the corner of the cavern and shook.
This was Jisoo's world.
She had not forgiven me for killing her.
She had denied me even the peace of death.
She intended to make me suffer forever.
That's right.
Jisoo's voice echoed inside my head.
I had never heard her speak with such emotion before.
Her voice was thick with hatred and clinging malice.
You will never rest until you sit upon the throne.
"Jisoo?!"
You will die again and again. You will be torn apart again and again. You will suffer without end. That is the punishment I have chosen for you.
"…Jisoo."
Whenever you try to run, I will show you a deeper hell. Whenever you try to be happy, I will take that happiness from you.
Keep moving forward.
Keep walking.
I will be waiting at the end of the road.
The voice of the woman I loved mocked me with naked hatred.
Then it distorted.
Static crackled through my mind several times, and the quality of her voice changed.
When she spoke again, there was something almost sorrowful in it.
"…Come save me."
"What?"
The voice vanished.
I sat frozen in silence.
Then I lifted my head and looked toward the cave entrance again.
Hell waited beyond it.
The goblin with the red cursor would not be the last creature to charge at me, kill me, and devour me.
There would be others.
Worse ones.
Still, after hearing that… how could I refuse?
Perhaps I had truly loved the woman I killed more than I understood.
I reached for the sword on the floor.
My hands shook so badly that I dropped it twice.
Even after I managed to close my fingers around the hilt, my legs gave out beneath me. I fell several times before I could stand.
But I had to go.
There was nowhere else to run.
And somewhere beyond that cavern, she had promised she would be waiting for me.
Using the wall for support, I dragged myself upright.
With tears and snot streaking my face, I stumbled out into hell once more.