Cyberpunk Martial Hero Chronicles

The world was completely white.

An icy wind swept across the endless snowy expanse with a faint howl. The snow that had fallen throughout the night slowly covered the horrific remnants of blood, fire, and corpses.

Furthermore, the world was submerged in profound silence.

The flames that had burned as though they would devour everything, the sword energy that tore through the atmosphere, the screams and shrieks of people, and even the horrifying sounds of bones and flesh being torn apart had completely faded away.

All that remained was profound silence and a cold so intense that it was suffocating.

In the middle of that silent snowy expanse, two figures barely remained standing.

Neither of them moved. They simply stared at each other.

Even when blood occasionally poured from their open wounds, neither took his eyes off the other.

One of them was a man dressed in black who had dared to proclaim himself the Heavenly Demon.

His breathing was practically imperceptible.

The dark red demonic energy that had enveloped his entire body until just moments ago flickered faintly, like the final embers of a fire about to go out.

His body, once as resilient as steel, was covered in countless sword wounds and looked as though it could collapse at any moment.

Above all, the black blood he incessantly coughed up revealed the severity of his internal injuries.

Everything indicated that the death of the man dressed in black was imminent.

However, the swordsman standing before him was in exactly the same condition.

That man, dressed in an old white robe, was also on the verge of death.

His clothes, once as white as snow, had been stained red by the blood pouring from his wounds.

Five swords were embedded in his body. With a short breath, one of them slipped out, leaving only four.

As if that were not enough, his left arm was completely gone from the shoulder down.

Even so, he continued to stand with his back perfectly straight and retained that piercing gaze, as sharp as biting frost.

His eyes had not left the Heavenly Demon for even a single instant.

From the day his sect was completely exterminated, his entire existence had been devoted exclusively to this moment.

Driven by a single, terrible desire for revenge, he had endured countless trials that repeatedly pushed him to the boundary between life and death.

And finally, he had made it this far.

He had reached the end of his revenge.

At last, he had achieved victory.

However, the price had been his own life.

It was, quite literally, mutual destruction.

Although, strictly speaking, it could be considered quite a favorable exchange.

After all, he had stormed the main headquarters of the Demon Cult completely alone, massacred every one of its members, and was now about to take even the Heavenly Demon’s life.

It was the culmination of several decades of suffering and torment.

The Heavenly Demon, who could barely remain standing, began to cough and spat out blood.

Fragments of his internal organs mixed with the dark red blood spilling from his mouth, but he did not seem to care.

He gazed at the man dressed in white with unfocused eyes and spoke.

“Kunlun Blood Immortal…… That’s what they call you now, isn’t it? Hehe, don’t you think it’s a truly fitting nickname?”

There was no trace in his voice of that scorching hatred or his usual boundless arrogance.

On the contrary, it conveyed an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

“Although I think it falls a little short. How about Kunlun Blood Demon? No matter how I look at you, you don’t exactly look like a Taoist.”

His opponent, the Kunlun Blood Immortal, replied in a low voice.

“Call me whatever you want. I abandoned the Dao a long time ago.”

The wind blew.

The Heavenly Demon, who until then had managed to remain precariously on his feet, finally collapsed.

His posture made it look as though he were kneeling.

A few moments passed.

After slightly catching his breath, he opened his mouth again.

“……Ever since I made my appearance in the martial world, I’ve met countless people. Many swordsmen who proclaimed themselves great heroes ended up kneeling before me or reduced to mere pools of blood. However, among all those heroes, there wasn’t a single one comparable to you. Don’t you find it amusing? To think that the brat from the Kunlun Sect whom I met immediately after announcing my appearance in the martial world turned out to be more powerful than any other martial artist in the Murim.”

The Kunlun Blood Immortal did not respond.

He simply continued watching him in silence.

The Heavenly Demon did not seem to expect an answer either, as he continued murmuring.

“I suppose everything was decided from the very beginning. When I first met you, I had already conquered the Central Plains……”

The more he spoke, the more pronounced the smile on his lips became.

It was a smile steeped in a profound sense of emptiness.

“I often dreamed of that day. The day I cut you down with my sword, but ended up letting you escape.”

Upon hearing those words, the Kunlun Blood Immortal replied.

“And what did you do then?”

“I chased you down and killed you by any means possible. Since you appeared in my dreams again the next day, I killed you again. I killed you over and over again. Perhaps that’s why this situation doesn’t feel particularly unfamiliar to me.”

“The same is true for me.”

“Oh, really?”

“That’s right. In my dreams, I always died by your hands. I died over and over again. Perhaps that’s why this situation doesn’t feel particularly unfamiliar to me either.”

“You died……? Does that mean I was always the one who won?”

“There was also one occasion when I managed to kill you. Although it only happened once.”

“Oh. And when was that?”

“Yesterday, in fact.”

The Heavenly Demon finally burst into laughter.

“Hahaha! So you had a prophetic dream!”

The bubbles of blood rising through his throat sprayed from his mouth as he laughed.

“……Then, what do you think? Now that you’ve achieved what you desired so much, are you satisfied? Is the end of your path of revenge…… sweet?”

There was a brief silence.

Finally, the Kunlun Blood Immortal murmured calmly.

“……I don’t know. I’m not really sure.”

“It always takes time to process things.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did conquering the Central Plains have any meaning? What I want to ask is whether killing so many people was really worth it.”

“Worth it. Worth it……”

The Heavenly Demon, whose breathing was so weak that it seemed it might stop at any moment, laboriously managed to raise his head and looked at the Kunlun Blood Immortal.

“Do you know something? My appearance in the martial world was also motivated by revenge.”

“……What?”

“That’s why you don’t need to ask me. After all, we’ve both walked the same path…… Perhaps we could even consider ourselves companions of the Dao.”

A broad smile spread across his face.

It was the smile of a corpse, a smile in which only the corners of his lips rose while his eyes remained completely dead.

With that final smile, the Heavenly Demon collapsed.

A truly empty end for a great demon who had devastated an entire era.

“……”

Snow continued to fall from the sky.

The Kunlun Blood Immortal slowly raised his head and gazed at the grayish heavens.

A small snowflake gently drifted down and settled on his cheek.

For the briefest instant, he felt a cold so intense that it seeped into his bones.

And that sensation of cold finally brought everything crashing down.

The Kunlun Blood Immortal, who until then had remained standing as firmly as Mount Tai, began to slowly collapse.

Now that the flames of revenge that had burned within him for several decades had finally been extinguished, the flame of his own life had also exhausted its last strength.

He closed his eyes very slowly, in complete silence.

The pure and serene landscape of the Kunlun Mountains seemed so close that he could almost reach out and touch it.

The blood-soaked Taoist willingly departed for that place.

Toward the profound and peaceful silence.

Toward the white snow.

And thus, he finally became one with it.

An icy wind swept across the endless snowy expanse with a faint howl. The snow that had fallen throughout the night slowly covered the horrific remnants of blood, fire, and corpses.

The flames that had burned as though they would devour everything, the sword energy that tore through the atmosphere, the screams and shrieks of people, and even the horrifying sounds of bones and flesh being torn apart had completely faded away.

All that remained was profound silence and a cold so intense that it was suffocating.

The world was completely white.

Furthermore, the world was submerged in profound silence.

In the middle of that silent snowy expanse, no one remained alive.

***

Death.

Disappearance and absolute nothingness.

An eternal silence in which light, sound, and sensation did not exist.

In that stillness of a bottomless abyss, where even time had lost all meaning, absolutely everything began to dissolve.

All worries and suffering, all joys and sorrows, blended together until they transformed into a profound peace.

Perhaps this was precisely the rest he had longed for so deeply.

[!@#$_INIT_ERR]

How much time had passed?

A tiny crack appeared in that absolute darkness that had granted him rest.

[RECOVERY MODE ACTIVATED]

[SYSTEM INTEGRITY CHECK. . .]

A series of green characters with an incomprehensible meaning appeared and disappeared like a flash.

Like a small stone falling onto the surface of a calm lake, that brief sequence of characters began to create enormous ripples.

[LOADING BACKUP. . . OK]

[MEMORY FRAGMENT DETECTED. . .]

[CORE TEMP. . . UNSTABLE]

[POWER SOURCE. . . EXTERNAL]

[NEURAL MATRIX. . . ERROR]

[REATTEMPTING NEURAL SYNC. . .]

[SENSORY INPUT. . . RESTORED]

[VISUAL/AUDIO ONLINE]

[AWAKENING SEQUENCE. . . NOW<<<]

The final sequence of characters began to flash intensely.

At the same time, the darkness that had seemed destined to last forever dissipated, and sensations began flooding into him like a gigantic waterfall.

They were artificial sensations, terribly unnatural and unpleasant.

His field of vision cleared.

However, what appeared before his eyes was not that expanse of white snow, nor the Heavenly Demon who had finally collapsed, nor a natural landscape resembling a traditional ink painting.

A dim orange light flickered weakly.

Fragments of all kinds of metals.

Pieces of plastic.

Thick bundles of cables and circuit boards whose purpose was impossible to identify.

Not only was this place completely unfamiliar to him, but it was so far removed from everything he knew that he could not even comprehend what the things before him were supposed to be.

The same sequence of characters appeared once more.

[VISUAL CALIBRATION. . . DONE]

[AUDIO NOISE FILTERING ACTIVE]

Electronic beeps and the noise of rusty machinery in operation.

It was a clamor completely opposite to the silence he had experienced during his final moments.

He tried to cover his ears to protect himself from those strange warning sounds, but it was useless.

He could not feel his arms.

Although he had lost his left arm, he was certain that he still had his right.

However, it was not only his arms.

He could not feel his legs, his torso, or any other part of his body either.

It was a truly grotesque sensation, as though only his head remained and it was floating in midair.

The only thing his mind received was a constant stream of visual and auditory information completely foreign to his usual senses.

Those sensations were radically different from his final memory, from the penetrating cold of the snowflake that had settled on his cheek.

“Is it…… done? Does this really work?”

He heard the youthful voice of a girl.

Wait, a girl?

Was there a girl there?

“Can you see me?”

The humanoid, discarded like a pile of junk in a corner, with only his head attached to a support, adjusted his optical sensors to follow the subject moving in front of him.

Only then did he manage to clearly distinguish the girl’s figure.

Perhaps it was because of her hair, tied up haphazardly, or the grease-stained coveralls she wore, but she gave off a somewhat rough and unkempt impression.

In contrast, her facial features were perfectly defined.

Her face conveyed a coldness that, at first glance, could even seem arrogant.

However, her behavior did not match that impression at all.

The way she clenched both fists and let out little exclamations of excitement made her seem like a completely ordinary girl.

She was a bewildering young woman, whose clothing, appearance, and behavior did not seem to possess the slightest harmony.

“It worked!”

The girl, apparently excited, shouted as she made a complete lap around the worktable. Then she positioned herself in front of the humanoid again.

She began moving from side to side, striking strange poses as she shifted left and right.

The humanoid’s optical sensors, which emitted a turquoise light, moved from side to side as they followed her movements.

“I knew I’m a genius!”

Suddenly, the girl moved so close that their noses nearly touched and embraced the metallic head with both hands.

She seemed genuinely happy.

However, the humanoid did not share her enthusiasm.

He had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on.

To make matters worse, the girl was speaking in a strange language he had never heard in his entire life.

Consequently, he was unable to understand a single word she said.

It was maddening.

He wanted to say something, even if it was only a single word.

He wanted to ask her where he was, who this young lady was, and why he had ended up in such a state.

However, he could not produce any sound.

Every time he tried to speak, all that appeared was that same sequence of characters.

[VOICE OUTPUT MODULE. . . OFFLINE]

[ERROR:HARDWARE NOT DETECTED]

[RECORVERY ATTEMPT. . . FAILED]

[CONNECTION UNSTABLE]

Not only had he lost his voice, but he had no arms or legs either.

All he could do was frantically blink the optical sensors installed in his metallic head.

The girl watched that behavior for a few moments before tilting her head curiously.

“Huh? What’s wrong? Can’t you talk?”

Realizing that something was wrong, she quickly picked up a data tablet resting beside the worktable and began operating it rapidly.

It did not take long for her expression to become serious.

“I see. All the other modules are completely broken. You could say that only the main core is barely functioning. It looks like approximately half of the memory section has also been lost.”

After murmuring those words to herself, the girl turned her gaze back toward the humanoid.

Toward him.

This time, her eyes displayed a completely different composure, as though she were carefully examining him.

For an instant, a cold glint seemed to pass through her gaze.

There was something in that expression that bore no relation whatsoever to the cheerful and lively personality she had displayed until only moments ago.

“No. Looking for another core at this point would be absurd. I’m already lucky to have managed to get one in this condition. As long as the main core isn’t damaged, it’ll be enough. I can repair everything else. It’s fine. I can do it. After all, I’m a genius.”

That piercing gaze disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

The girl regained her friendly expression and moved a little closer.

“Even though you’re a little uncomfortable right now, you’ll have to endure it for a bit. I promise I’ll have you as good as new soon. I’ll install arms and legs for you, and I’ll make sure you get your voice back too. So…… when I’m completely finished repairing you, then……”

The girl pouted slightly for a few moments.

Then she vigorously shook her head and brought her face even closer.

Her mischievous smile widened enormously before the humanoid’s optical sensors.

“You’ll help me, understood?”

She pointed at her face with one finger.

“My name is Akina. Akina Greenwood. I hope we’ll get along well from now on!”

He still could not understand absolutely anything that girl was saying.

However, there was one thing he had managed to vaguely understand.

That young woman’s name was ‘Akina Greenwood’.