Subdued Soul Chronicle

Inside the heavy silence.

The question sank endlessly, like a huge rock thrown into the deep sea.

Seol Young noticed that he was sitting on the ground before he even realized it. Then an answer came from the other side of the chair,

“Right.”

Zaha that.

“Isn’t it too much if you think about it? How can one be so sly? Without parents who have spiritual power, their child ends up being born with the strongest spiritual power….”

“…”

“Of course, the spirits related to the God of Cataclysm killed your parents. The place where the tomb ghosts took the baby happened to be the tomb where the body of that evil being was kept. You grew up there and became a Hwarang, but unfortunately, there was this revelation that a great evil was hiding within the Hwarangs, and it was pointed at you.”

“…”

“Come to think of it, there are a couple of strange things. How do we add up all these strange things? That you alone were seeing the visions of that being wandering around the palace.”

“…”

“Should I still trust you?”

Zaha mumbled.

“Since the technique I used in the past failed, all I can think about is killing that evil spirit. The colleague who informed me of the one possibility, and the one with whom I came this far now, was someone who is actually the reincarnated body of that being? It is a plan that can only make me dumbfounded.”

He was arrogant yet furious, and a glint could be seen in his golden eyes sometimes.

It had always been like that, but it was now covered with mist. Seol Young felt like he would be suffocated.

Even when he was accused of being evil for the first time, he didn’t feel odd.

What if things really turned out like this? How did they get here…

His head felt dizzy, and a large lump formed on his chest.

“No. I really…”

When he barely opened his mouth with the emotions of wanting to cough blood,

“How is it? Did your heart sink?”

Zaha got up from the chair in front of Seol Young and clapped his hands.

“Calm down, Seol Young-rang!”

“…?”contemporary romance

Seol Young looked at him with a blank face. At that moment, a strange smell caught his nose.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Right. I drank.”

Zaha responded.

“Something felt missing from my body, so I had to replenish it. I drank a little, but how can you be more distraught than me?”

And then he mumbled,

“Why are we like this? If I am fine, you are out of your mind, and if you are fine, I am lost. Well, if you chase after such a spirit, there is no way one is fine.”

His golden eyes turned to Seol Young.

“Anyway, I am so lost with all the bleeding, so do not mess with my mind with nonsense. Reincarnation—isn’t that impossible? Mita’s soul continued to resurrect for hundreds of years and turned into the God of Cataclysm. How would she turn into you? Even the heavens know that it is impossible.”

His other words were more important than the heavens. Seol Young mumbled,

“Then you think I am not the reincarnation of Mita…?”

“Is your head spinning?”

Zaha shook his head.

“If I had thought of you as her reincarnation, I wouldn’t have let you come close to check my scars. In addition, there is no way you would have let those iron troops attack you.”

“…”

“I already made my decision, and it is similar to how the Hwarangs were first wiped out eight years ago. It was because some evil being had an influence.”

Zaha twirled his Dead Slayer sword, which had been placed next to the chair, with one hand.

“What is so important that Mita’s tomb was there? It is either a ploy to arouse doubts about you or a coincidence that means nothing. It is only natural that ghosts are drawn to the boundary between this world and the next.”

“….”

“Who am I, though? I did my own research before coming to a decision. It wasn’t easy. I’ve never been shaken like this, and it is unlike me to do something wrong. So it cannot be helped.”

Zaha drew his sword with his left hand and swung it into the air.

“Anyway, I cannot kill you. Now that this has happened, I have no choice but to believe anything you saw. Even if you lead me to hell, I have no choice but to follow. Was this because I made the wrong choice?”

In the end, to sum it up in one word, it meant that there was no doubt.

Only then could Seol Young relax.

“Then were those words something you just said?”

“Yes.”

Zaha said, nodding his head without any shame.

There was a bottle of alcohol next to him.

He didn’t notice it earlier since the place was dark, but now he could see it, and there were golden letters engraved on the drink. It must not have been a normal drink.

But it was definitely alcohol.

Zaha’s eyes, as if curtains had been shut, didn’t look suspicious anymore but now looked drunk.

‘I didn’t even….’

Seol Young got up.

“Right. Thank you very much. Thanks to you, I feel so enlightened. So get up before I pour cold water on you. This isn’t the time to have drinks. In the other world, there is a mess…”

“Sit down.”

Zaha said that, without even looking at him.

“I was planning to talk about that with you. I saw what you saw.”

“You saw?”

Seol Young didn’t understand and asked back,

“Then how are you this calm? The courtiers, the trainees, and the Golden Ring troops are dead. The kids we know….”

But after talking about that, it felt a little strange. Was it because his head had cooled down now?

He felt something rattle in his heart. Seeing Seol Young’s expression change, Zaha said,

“It looks like you noticed. That there is a part of it that doesn’t match with the start and end.”

“What is that?”

“This one.”

Zaha called out his sword, and a golden light shone on it.

Then he asked Seol Young,

“What is this sword?”

“Dead Slayer.”

“As the name suggests, if you kill with this sword, they will leave for the peaceful world. The Sword’s Spirit burns the core of the soul and brings a complete end to it. One cannot come back from that, so how can they appear in the other world?”

Right.

If one killed another with the Dead Slayer, then one couldn’t form again.

Seol Young knew that too. So when he thought about all of that, something felt odd.

“It seemed like the reality, but it really wasn’t. Then why show us such an illusion….”

“It’s probably to throw us into a panic like you did earlier. For us to stop wanting to go back into her place until the very end.”

“….”

The tragedy in the palace that he had seen earlier came back to his mind again. And Seol Young shook his head to brush it off.

“As long as we dig into her grave, she will continue to charm us this way. In an increasingly brutal direction.”

“Right. So we need to be prepared.”

Zaha nodded.

“Well, as Jung Myung said, we cannot turn back now. We just have to go until the end, no matter what is at the end.”

“Right.”

Seol Young nodded.

“I didn’t come running to tell you to kill the tree. We had already made our choice about that.”

In order to not bring that spirit into this world, they had to head back to the tomb.

And so he made a decision.

No matter what he saw, he would push ahead with all his might. But what if they got it wrong? What was the real bad thing that was happening in the other world? What if they had abandoned the place that they were supposed to protect?

Those thoughts lingered in his mind, but Seol Young believed in the power of Zaha’s sword.

‘It is an illusion. It is a trick to delude us, and I will not be shaken.’

His mind, which had been confused, finally cleared up.

“Nice. All good then.”

Seol Young opened his mouth.

“But it would have been better if you told me about your sword the first time I came rushing in.”

“You were so surprised that you couldn’t even hear my words right. I wanted you to calm yourself first, so I did that.”

Zaha spoke back without any shame and tried to look at Seol Young’s face.

“You cried?”

“No!”

Seol Young shouted.

Pushing people to the floor, pulling them back up, and making them angry. That was a trick, too. He looked at Zaha and sighed.

“Do not lie. From the start, you worked hard to do this, even at the tomb earlier, you were looking at me with odd eyes.”

“When did I?”

“Are you trying to walk out of this too? How many times did you do that? Should I remind you? When you said that I lived in the place where the tomb had been for ten years and didn’t even know…”

“Ah, right.”

It was only then that the thought came to his mind, and he got up.

“Come to think of it, I almost forgot. I was thinking about something very important since you said that.”

“What?”

“The family whom you lived together with in the grave. The tomb spirits.”

The tomb spirits?

Seol Young frowned.

Of course, they would exist in this world too.

However, it wouldn’t have been the tomb spirits who raised Seol Young in this world, right?

So he didn’t bother looking for them.

“Where are they?”

“I heard that they served a certain high-ranking person and got buried. Knowing fancy things well, they even prepared a birthday party for the Devil Lair Lord. Their clothes were just costumes, but now that I think back, didn’t the long robes that they wear look like the style in Gaya?”

“Now that you say….”

Seol Young was surprised.

The tomb spirits didn’t tell him much about their past. However, judging from the fact that they had been wandering around for a while, he knew that they weren’t from the city.

“Then are you saying that the high-ranking person whom they looked after is Mita?”

“Well, I don’t think they will match it so perfectly, but…”

Zaha frowned slightly.

“Even if you are from Gaya or a nearby place, it might be some help to us.”

“I need to meet them.”

“That is what I meant. But where will they be in this world?”

Seol Young thought.

“Seeing that I learned sorcery in this world, and that I disappeared in a carriage accident and was raised by them at the same….”

“All because you didn’t give up, there was no chance for the evil energy to collide in your body. You didn’t hand it over.”

“Then….”

Seol Young held out his hand and looked at it. The time when the tomb spirits were supposed to exist, it felt strange.

Just like that time, fireflies appeared in the palm of his hand. He infused spiritual power into it, and their figures appeared.

Lady Mo and To, Teacher Seo, and the two kids.

Five bodies appeared. They were the same as the tomb spirits in Zaha’s closet in the other world.

“I have been keeping them in secret.”

If anyone saw this, Seol Young would be in trouble.

Seol Young went and locked the door.

“Ask them quickly.”

Zaha urged him again.

To suddenly ask them something now that he hadn’t asked before. With a bit of a strange feeling, he cautiously spoke,

“Are you all from Gaya?”

The tomb spirits were silent, but then they all shone.

“They say yes.”

“As I thought.”

Zaha rushed to the bookshelf and brought out some books.

“Which nation is Gaya in now?”

The book shone brightly.

“It is a book with information about it. Because the brothers built it….”

“Is it a province or Great Gaya?”

At Seol Young’s question, the cover of the book shone at ‘Great.’

It was Great Gaya.

“Which era?”

Seol Young asked.

And the little boy stepped forward. While floating, he crossed his hands in front of Gaya.

“The same age as Uruk?”

When Zaha asked, they all blinked.

Uruk was the founder of Gaya and was originally from Great Gaya, but he ran away to Silla.

At that time, it was the reign of kings.

So they speculated that the legend of Mita spread during the reigns of those kings. Maybe it overlapped a bit with the first and second kings.

Then Seol Young asked them with a pounding heart,

“Do you know a woman named Mita?”

done.co