I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel - Chapter 8

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

◈ I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel ◈

Chapter 8: Absolute Demon Sword

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Ten Armies of the Mad Demon.

Even in the original, they were only given significant attention for their martial strength. Their individual stories were barely mentioned.

But as I studied their faces, I could clearly see how the author had designed them.

You shouldn't judge people by their looks, but any one of these guys could walk straight into a villain role in The Roundup.

How should I put it? They all looked bleakly menacing.

Those eyes, coated in layer upon layer of madness, made you feel like you should never speak to them. They looked less like people and more like beasts.

Once again, the Demonic Cult, no, the Mad Demon from the original felt incredible to me.

He'd managed to tame men this brutal.

It felt like I was commanding ten legendary serial killers straight out of the news.

"Please command our execution."

They'd kept their heads buried in the ground, so I ordered them to stand because it made me uncomfortable.

But now they were endlessly repeating that line like parrots.

They wanted to die because they had floundered inside a formation while their lord had been stabbed.

"Come on, you can't kill people over something like that."

Huh?

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

It was such a lame line, completely unlike the Mad Demon of the original.

But their reaction was bizarre.

Thud! Thud!

With their eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, they slammed their foreheads into the ground in unison.

The men convulsed like mutts pissing themselves before their owner.

They hadn't been this bad when we first met. Why were they suddenly acting like this again?

I tapped the shoulder of the one who looked like their leader.

"What's wrong with all of you? I'm telling you, I don't intend to kill you over something so trivial."

They trembled even harder at my words.

Then I nodded.

I'd realized something.

Would dogs in a kennel be more afraid of their owner's indifferent face, or of an owner who suddenly started grinning?

For dogs, the moment their owner, after throwing back a few shots of soju, comes toward them swinging a hammer is the day of their funeral.

When someone who had always been expressionless suddenly started twitching the corners of their mouth, that was terror.

'Oho.'

My modern way of speaking must have been having that exact effect on them.

They'd probably wet themselves even if I stayed silent, but I was grinning and telling them it was fine. Of course that would be even scarier.

This would make things easier.

"Don't do that. Everyone, sit comfortably. By the way, is there any water? I'm thirsty."

Before I'd even finished speaking, one of the men lying prostrate vanished like a mirage.

The speed was so unnatural that I didn't even hear the air split.

Not even a few seconds later, the man who had disappeared was kneeling right in front of me.

I took the jade-green flask trembling faintly before my eyes and smiled.

"Ah."

Wow, it really did taste different.

It was sweet and sour, with the fresh scent of nature.

It was entirely unlike the filtered taste of modern water.

So this was what water was supposed to taste like.

I shook the empty flask, caught up in a strange exhilaration.

Monstrous mobility that could fetch river water from below the mountain in mere seconds.

Ten human weapons willing to stake their lives on the sound of my breathing.

The terror of nearly dying to the Swordwood Lord faded before the pleasure of overwhelming power, and my balls tingled.

But that incredible feeling didn't last long.

"Hm?"

Something sharp suddenly pricked at my nose.

It wasn't a foul stench, nor was it a pleasant fragrance. It was a slightly musty smell.

The moment the scent seeped into my nostrils with a sting, I felt as if something were cutting through my entire body.

"Chuk-ang. It is Hundred Snake Incense."

Huh, Hundred Snake Incense?

"Hundred Snakes Valley?"

I recalled what the Swordwood Lord had said.

Hundred Snakes Valley was one of the more powerful factions among the unorthodox sects.

They were nearly a match for Swordwood, which had boldly spread the Heavenly Net to capture the Mad Demon.

Which meant I was in danger.

"First, bury that old person!"

The heads they had cautiously raised all tilted crookedly at once.

I watched their suspicious eyes, then suddenly understood.

I was the Mad Demon.

Rather than exposing my cowardly modern instinct to destroy the evidence, I should have been ordering them to march out.

I forced a grin.

"Just kidding, just kidding. Go and wipe them all out."

"We obey!"

Whoosh!

The instant the words left my mouth, the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon, who had been lying still as dead mice, shot away like cannonballs.

I gasped for breath and barely managed to rise.

I'd expected the wounds from the Swordwood Lord to scream in pain, but I was quite surprised.

Only a dull sensation remained. The pain was completely gone.

'That medicine really is no ordinary medicine.'

The muscles that had been torn apart were knitting themselves back together, and the severed blood vessels were forging new paths and pulsing again.

The throbbing pain had turned into a pleasant heat that soaked through my body.

Using the Silent Aeon Demon Soul as a cane, I slowly stepped out of the cabin.

A suffocating sight unfolded before me.

"Damn it."

The midnight forest was no longer pitch-black.

Masters from Hundred Snakes Valley, dressed in pure white robes, had surrounded the cabin in layer upon layer.

Their white hems rippled beneath the moonlight.

They were so eerie that they resembled a grim procession of the dead.

But even facing such overwhelming numbers, our devout religious fanatics did not hesitate.

Tssssss.

Ten savage beasts threw themselves into the flock of white sheep.

Kra-boom!

The air screamed from that first collision alone.

Countless blades immediately poured down on the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon as they drove into the center.

Ssssh.

Flexible swords, bending freely like segmented tentacles, glittered beneath the bright moonlight.

They truly looked like white snakes.

Then something like black smoke erupted in every direction from the bodies of the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon.

Prickle, prickle.

Even from dozens of meters away, I felt a pain as though it were digging into raw flesh.

It gave me goosebumps badly enough to break out in a cold sweat.

Was this demonic energy?

Feeling for myself the demonic energy I'd only encountered in novel descriptions was no joke.

It was a suffocating sensation, as if something turbid had burned away all the oxygen inside my body.

If the hardened body of the Mad Demon felt this way, wouldn't an ordinary person faint from the demonic energy alone?

Clang! Clang!

Before I knew it, the Hundred Snakes Valley blades were bending joint by joint like snakes' spines, beginning to bite at the blind spots of the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon.

Numbers really couldn't be ignored.

Even a powerful male lion crouched and protected its balls before a pack of hyenas.

The Ten Armies of the Mad Demon had formed a circular formation, pressing their backs together.

But their numerical disadvantage had not changed.

Thwack! Crunch!

Bright red blood sprayed up in the distance like a fountain.

Wounds that a modern man would have fainted from before enduring even a single exchange.

Yet even with blades embedded in their bellies, the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon merely cut and stabbed their enemies mechanically.

A fire rose in my chest.

"Those bastards."

They said that when the comrade beside you got shot, fear finally disappeared and your eyes went wild.

I'd only just met them, but they were taking blades all over their bodies to protect me.

It infuriated me that I could do nothing before those dark bastards who called me Chuk-ang and offered up their lives.

If I truly had the power, I wanted to slaughter every one of those white snake bastards.

Then kill them!

The voice that rang through my head sounded like metal being scraped.

I blankly looked down at my right hand gripping the Silent Aeon Demon Soul.

Gray energy covering the entire blade flickered ominously.

Thump. Thump.

The vibration traveling through my palm was not my heartbeat.

It was the pulse of a sword aroused by the scent of blood.

The bizarre sensation of holding the heart of a living creature pierced up my arm and into my brain.

"...!"

My vision twisted sharply.

A world without color.

Across that dry landscape, tens of thousands of thin lines tangled together in layers.

The directions in which the White Snakes' swords curved.

The paths along which killing intent extended.

The trajectories tangled chaotically together, but the openings I could slip through felt vivid.

The realm of the Absolute Demon Sword, described in the original as reachable only by the most sword-crazed man in the world.

The Mad Demon's eyes, capable of reading every grain of the world.

'I can see it.'

The flexible swords of Hundred Snakes Valley, which had poured down like a storm, now felt like a slow stream.

The flaws in the footwork they used to maintain their formation.

The openings that appeared subtly whenever they breathed stood out as clear red lines.

But that wasn't all.

Fwoooosh!

My vision expanded once more.

Everything inside my body began to run wild.

The boundary between whether I was gripping the Silent Aeon Demon Soul or the Silent Aeon Demon Soul was gripping my soul grew hazy.

Dense power constantly filled me from within.

Before I knew it, white frost had formed around me.

Demon Calamity Snow Domain.

A mysterious phenomenon that appeared when the Mad Demon's spiritual energy was fully unleashed.

It was the Mad Demon's Kill Zone, like a declaration of absolute territory.

'I'll tear them apart.'

I imagined flicking a finger against the nearest red line.

Swish!

The moment I perceived it, I was already standing behind a Hundred Snakes Valley martial artist who had been swinging a sword dozens of meters away.

Shhk.

A slash so silent it made no sound.

The sensation of the blade sinking into a human cervical spine filled my hand.

I stepped on the head of the White Snake that flew into the air and launched myself through the sky.

I couldn't stop.

The thousands of red lines filling my vision drew me toward the next target like magnets.

Thirst, a mad thirst for slaughter, relentlessly burrowed into my mind.

Three steps to the right, then one diagonal step.

I slipped between the white robes like a precisely programmed machine.

I wasn't walking by my own will.

The red lines drawn in my vision forcibly dragged my feet and twisted the angle of my wrist, finding the optimal path of slaughter.

Shhk! Shhk!

Dozens of blades curled toward me like snakes, aiming for my entire body.

But even the vibrations of those blades appeared as lines to my eyes.

I passed through the gaps by the width of a sheet of paper and pierced the White Snakes' hearts.

Spurt!

Beyond the heart I had pierced, another opponent's throat was impaled.

White frost erupted from the blade and engulfed another White Snake.

Each time my hand moved, another red line vanished.

The Mad Demon's Kill Zone, the Demon Calamity Snow Domain, was already filled with a storm of blood.

"M-monster!"

I lightly slid my blade toward an opponent staggering backward.

Shhk.

I ran my tongue across the blood spraying up like a fountain.

It was hot and fresh, and tasted rather good.

But that blood quickly went cold in the spiritual energy of the Demon Calamity Snow Domain.

I felt irritation rise.

"Come at me."

Swish, shhk.

Cut, stab, then slash again.

I inflicted the greatest possible slaughter with the smallest possible movements.

One opponent stared blankly at their own shoulder after losing an arm before their head was cut off. Another tried to maintain the formation, only to have their ankle cut off and collapse.

A bizarre space where gray frost mixed with dark crimson blood.

With an indifferent expression, I raised the edge of the Silent Aeon Demon Soul once more.

When the final red line on my retina took shape.

"Ch-Chuk-ang."

The last red line remaining on my retina.

The end of that line was not a white robe of Hundred Snakes Valley.

It was the nape of one of the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon, drenched in blood and guarding my back all along.

Fwoooosh!

The colorless world that had filled my vision drained away like the ebbing tide.

At the same time, the absolute exhilaration that had supported my whole body evaporated.

"Huff, huff..."

...Fuck.