"By the name of the Asura King, I command you! The Asura Realm has been pacified, so cease your fighting!"
Today, Cha Geon-mu pacified the Asura Realm.
***
"So you have pacified the Asura Realm, something no one else ever managed."
On a red floor thick with clotted blood stood an old man whose white beard and white robes were utterly out of place there, and he spoke.
His face had grown frail with the years, yet the aura he gave off could by no means be called that of a feeble old man.
The old man was the ruler of the Heavenly Realm, the one called the Heavenly Venerable.
"Are you pleased?"
At the old man's question, at the Heavenly Venerable's question, the man sprawled across a throne made of swords answered.
"How could I be?"
The man replied in a listless voice.
"Would you be pleased to be worshipped by things that are mad for slaughter and go about reeking of blood? It only leaves me slumped here like this."
"Then why did you become the Asura King?"
"By the time I came to my senses, that was how it had turned out. This is that kind of place, isn't it? A place that drives people mad."
The man made a gesture, twirling his index finger in circles at his temple.
The Heavenly Venerable agreed with him.
The Asura Realm was that kind of place.
Any human who fell into the Asura Realm went mad in the end.
A madness that thick ran through this place; a month was the very longest anyone could endure.
Yet Cha Geon-mu had lived here for thirty years and eight months.
'And even so, to keep his reason intact like this is a remarkable thing.'
The very fact that this man, Cha Geon-mu, could speak with the Heavenly Venerable in his right mind was itself a miracle.
'Just like a man who survives no matter what.'
The Heavenly Venerable knew that Cha Geon-mu had lived three lives.
The Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord, who pacified the martial world thrown into chaos by the great war between the righteous and the unorthodox.
The Dragon-Slaying Emperor, who brought true peace to Yuresian, the fantasy continent that had entered a dark age under the rule of dragons.
And now the Asura King, who had pacified this Asura Realm, a place bound to endless battle and strife.
In three lives, Cha Geon-mu had left behind three great achievements.
Having seen it with his own two eyes, the Heavenly Venerable did not doubt the situation.
Unfamiliar though it was.
"So, now that I have become the Asura King, did you come to gift me a congratulatory drink? The Heavenly Venerable, supreme one of the heavens, has come in person, so I suppose I will be treated to rare wine in this life as well?"
"Do not gloat. This one came here because no one foresaw this situation."
"No one foresaw it...... What you mean is that I did not die?"
"That is so."
They had tried to kill him.
For someone saying such a thing to his face, the old man was far too calm.
"I had guessed as much, but so you did drive me into this place to kill me."
The throne of swords trembled.
It looked as though the blades might tear free at any moment and fly at the Heavenly Venerable.
But the Heavenly Venerable did not waver.
"When your second life ended, what did you beg of me?"
"Complete death, was it not?"
"I meant to keep my promise to you."
"But you failed. And I succeeded at everything."
Geon-mu's laughter cut off abruptly.
"Have I not lived exactly as you told me to? In the first life I pacified the Central Plains, and in the second life I destroyed the dragons. And the reward that came back to me for that was being dropped into a place like this?"
He stared at the mass of light with resentful eyes.
"Do you resent me?"
"It is less resentment than sheer disbelief. If you had caught all the rabbits, you should have thrown me in the cauldron and boiled me."
"I did push you into that cauldron, and there you became a king."
Geon-mu snorted a laugh.
"What do you intend to do now?"
"I do not know. I pacified the chaotic Asura Realm, so perhaps I will just settle down here."
"That cannot be allowed."
The Heavenly Venerable answered Geon-mu firmly.
"Just as a cauldron exists to boil something, everything has a role of its own."
"Are you saying it is my fault that order took hold?"
"The world of the asuras must fight without end. It is a place where disorder is itself order, and the natural law besides. In such a world, you are an existence that must not be."
"Wonderful. I broke the balance, so I am the greatest goddamn bastard under heaven. Then kill me. Hurry up."
Geon-mu bared his stomach.
He struck an obnoxious pose that said cut me open if you dare, but the Heavenly Venerable only shook his head.
"I would like to, but I cannot."
"So there are things even the great and mighty Heavenly Venerable cannot do."
"What an insolent bastard you are. Had I known you were this sort of bastard, I would have given up on you long ago."
The Heavenly Venerable clicked his tongue and looked down at Geon-mu, but Geon-mu's face could not have been more indifferent.
"My desire to kill you rises like smoke from a chimney, but by now it is far too late."
"Why is that?"
Geon-mu tilted his head, not understanding what that meant.
"A soul already strong to begin with hardened far too much in the first reincarnation. That hardened soul was forged in the second reincarnation, and in the third it became complete."
"Speak so that I can follow. I am not as bright as you think."
"It means your immortality has become complete. To this one, at least. When you can bring even the Asura Realm under your rule, what trick could a Heavenly Venerable possibly work?"
Geon-mu's expression twisted.
"Then are you telling me I must live like this forever?"
"It is not that there is no way. Undertake the Ascension."
Ascension.
To rise to the seat of an immortal, which meant coming to the Heavenly Venerable's own world, where he lived.
It was the offer he had received when he ended his life reigning as the Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord, and it had been the same when he was the Dragon-Slaying Emperor.
But Geon-mu shook his head.
"I do not want that."
"Cast off the mortal world and the torment of life and death will vanish. You have come once already, so you know, do you not? There, nothing will make you suffer like this."
"I went twice. And...... I do not want it."
He thought it over once more, but Geon-mu's answer was still No.
"Kill me right here, right now. That is my condition."
"Tsk."
Geon-mu had refused that offer flatly.
The Heavenly Venerable fiddled with his beard.
He had to ruin the ordered Asura Realm by any means.
To do that, he would have to make an offer that whetted Geon-mu's appetite.
"......So there is nothing else for it......."
After deliberating over it several times, he decided to use his last resort.
"It is not that there is no answer at all to your death."
Geon-mu's body twitched.
"Do you know the world you once lived in?"
"Of course. Earth."
"Do you know what is happening there now?"
"I do not."
"The dimensions are warping, and the sources of evil from all across the universe are turning toward the world you lived in. And......."
"And if I kill every one of those sources of evil, I go free?"
A single sword that had been driven into the floor vanished.
Before anyone could see how, it was in Geon-mu's hand, and the blade stood at the Heavenly Venerable's throat.
The Heavenly Venerable did not flinch.
"If you mean to spout that nonsense and use me as a puppet, go deceive some other brats."
"Hear me to the end. I stake my own name on it, and I have no intention of deceiving you. What I mean is that if you go there, you may find a clue that can sever the karma of your reincarnations. There is an edge of the abyss that even this Heavenly Venerable has never reached."
"......."
"You need not go. The affairs of the present world have nothing to do with you now. If you wish to live as a king in this pit of blood, you may."
Damned old geezer.
Did he think Geon-mu could not see the scheme to pull him out of the Asura Realm?
The Asura Realm, where they were meant to trade blows without end, had no need of peace, so the old man was trying to turn his interest elsewhere.
But Geon-mu had no wish to live in a place like this either.
Being the Asura King was not fun.
The Asura Realm was full of hatred and gloom, and the Asura King always stood at the center of that hatred and gloom.
Either you hated your opponent, or, when that hatred disappeared, you turned gloomy.
Burn with the will to fight or lose it entirely, there were only those two extremes to choose from, and Geon-mu had been on the verge of growing sick of it.
"Fine, then."
Geon-mu withdrew the sword he had leveled at the old man's throat and apologized to the Heavenly Venerable.
"Sorry about the beard."
"The beard?"
"A few strands got cut. I have not used a sword these past few days, so my precision has slipped."
"What was that? Why, you......."
When the Heavenly Venerable looked down at the floor, he saw four severed strands of beard.
To have touched the Heavenly Venerable's beard was the sort of thing that should have turned the Heavenly Realm upside down.
"Take this much as a harmless prank. I have suffered plenty at your hands until now, have I not, old man?"
"Wretched thing....... So, will you go?"
"Where would you find a man who turns down a trip home?"
"I say again, the place you are going is your world, but it will be different from the world you were in."
"It is not half-destroyed like some apocalypse or anything, is it?"
"It is not so far gone as that."
"Then it is fine. I will get a taste of home."
When the Heavenly Venerable unclasped his hands from behind his back, a white fan was held in both of them.
A white fan made from the tail feathers of a white crane.
To be reincarnated, he had taken the wind of that white fan three times over.
The Heavenly Venerable swung the fan hard at Geon-mu's body.
FLAP—
A gale began to rise from beneath Geon-mu's feet.
It climbed from below his feet all the way to his head.
At the same time, he felt something inside his body being hauled up and drawn out.
It was a familiar sensation to Geon-mu.
The feeling of a soul moving into a new body.
Geon-mu's blood-stained field of vision narrowed little by little.
***
"Ah."
With a short exclamation, Geon-mu rose from where he lay.
A soft, cushioned sensation he had not felt in a long time.
It could hardly be called good, but considering the life he had lived in the Asura Realm, where he could not even lie down, it was a five-star hotel and then some.
Once on his feet, Geon-mu unconsciously looked at his hands first.
'These aren't my hands.'
Then he checked his face in a mirror.
The hair and beard he had grown out like a beggar were gone, and a neat-looking young man met his eyes.
'So I've possessed someone's body this time as well.'
Only the soul could travel to another world, so lodging in someone's body was the best option there was.
As he was exploring his new body at length, a semi-transparent window appeared with text upon it.
[Restarting Thousand World System.]
[Detecting soul.]
[Error.]
[Error.]
[Error.]
[Normalization complete.]
[Connected as <Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord Cha Geon-mu>.]
[Connected as <Dragon-Slaying Emperor Cha Geon-mu>.]
[Connected as <Asura King Cha Geon-mu>.]
A great many messages appeared before Geon-mu.
Among words he could make no sense of, Geon-mu spotted three familiar ones.
'They're all monikers I was called by in my past lives.'
What did it mean that those three had connected?
Just as he was thinking that, a message appeared before him.
Name: Kim Jin-hyeok
Level: 1
Patron Constellation: None
Lineage: Asura
Titles: <Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord><Dragon-Slaying Emperor><Asura King>
Unique Traits: <Heaven-Breaking Divine Art (EX)>,<Myriad Phenomena (S)>, <Nine Dragon Divine Meridians (SSS)>
Traits: None
Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Perception: 3
Stamina: 3
Magic Power: 3
The moment Geon-mu saw his trait window, he tilted his head.
'If this is what tells me my condition...... then this trait window ought to be packed as full as a king's royal banquet table.'
He wondered whether it was even possible to display everything in a window like this.
Those had been days of clawing to survive through battles on mountain and water alike, so he had cared about his own specifications more than at any other time.
He had swallowed inner cores and elixirs and the like without discrimination, and learned anything at all that was needed to win.
'Come to think of it, none of those were particularly useful.'
They were nothing more than incidental factors.
What he truly needed were these three traits he possessed.
The Heaven-Breaking Divine Art, which had made it possible for him to become the Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord.
The Nine Dragon Divine Meridians, created by absorbing the dragons' power at the very moment he destroyed them.
And last, Myriad Phenomena, the eye of wisdom he had gained upon standing at the summit of all asuras.
They were important enough that everything else, weighed together, amounted to no more than three parts in ten.
'Level, Strength, Agility, stats like that...... it seems this is something like an RPG.'
Even after living more than three hundred years he could still call up memories of the present world, which meant his memory had not deteriorated, and that pleased Geon-mu.
"Hmm......."
Geon-mu let out a breath.
He had opened the trait window and checked it, and there was one thing about it he did not like.
Geon-mu got to his feet to deal with that one displeasing detail.
'Let's go file for a name change.'
Thirty minutes had now passed since his return home.
The first thing Geon-mu would do was apply for a name change.