Chapter 01 - A Hero in the Mountains
…When I was young.
People called me ‘trash’, or ‘slave’.
As I grew older, I was called ‘weed’, or ‘bastard’.
After I came of age, they called me things like the ‘Viper Spear’ or ‘the Spear Demon’.
Once I reached the pinnacle, for a brief time, I was even given the undeserved title of ‘Spear King’.
But what is this?
“Waaah-”
It looks like I’m about to be called trash again.
* * *
He looked to be about fifteen or sixteen.
A boy with a youthful face stood at the foot of a mountain.
“Waaah?”
The boy mimicked the cry of a baby, his tone full of disbelief.
“Hmm. I see. I’m not quite that young.”
Chui.
No surname, just a name.
In any case, he had returned.
From the other side of a battlefield where blood and demons had mingled, he had returned to the body of his untainted youth.
And there was a crowd to welcome him.
“Die!”
The Green Forest.
A wretched bandits who hide in the mountains to kill travelers and steal their possessions.
They were in the middle of a night raid on an escort agency passing through the deep mountains.
“……”
Chui stroked his smooth, beardless chin.
‘Right. Come to think of it, it was around this time. When I worked as a Porter.’
Chui was originally from a minority tribe in the south.
After his tribe was wiped out by foreign powers, he spent his childhood drifting from one job to another—an attendant, a Porter—before eventually enlisting in the army.
After joining the army, Chui roamed countless battlefields.
For clothing, a single set of tattered military fatigues was enough. For food, a single potato from his rations would suffice.
His home was the battlefield.
He slept with his spear as a pillow, covered himself with corpses, and washed his body with hot blood and cold night dew.
Was it his innate nature, or had his aptitude simply blossomed?
Clutching a single spear, he killed countless people, yet he himself managed never to die.
Perhaps it was the curse of the dead, who had wished for him to wander battlefields his entire life until he died.
Even after regressing, Chui found himself standing stock-still on a battlefield just like this.
…However.
Then and now, he could not keep his body still.
It wasn't in his nature, and the world simply wouldn't leave him be.
“Who’s this little brat?”
A passing bandit spotted Chui.
He raised the tip of his spear and said.
“Not an escort. A Porter?”
Chui did not answer.
He simply stared at the enemy before him.
Bloodshot eyes.
An overstrained body.
A head that failed to realize it.
It was the typical reaction of a man on a battlefield for the first time.
A greenhorn who’s lost his mind to the taste of blood has no room to spare a thought for women, children, or the elderly.
As expected, the bandit charged at Chui, spear held ready.
“All you Howling Tiger Escort bastards are gonna dieeee!”
That was his misfortune.
*Shnk- Thwack!*
Chui dodged the spear that came within a hair's breadth of his nose with far too much ease.
Then, using the grappling arts he had once trained in until his fingerprints wore away, he snatched the man’s spear shaft.
“Huh?”
The bandit’s expression went blank.
And then it froze.
*Thrust-*
The moment Chui took the bandit’s spear, he used it to pierce the man’s heart.
“The martial arts may be gone, but the martial principles remain. This is enough.”
With every breath, a searing heat bloomed within his dantian.
A minuscule amount of internal energy had gathered.
Though the martial art he had learned in his past life was a high-speed demonic art, it had been essential for survival as a low-ranking soldier.
As he drew upon his internal energy, Chui’s eyes turned a dark crimson.
*Grip-*
He lifted the spear still piercing the bandit’s heart.
His body remembered how to kill.
Just as a person who loses their memory does not forget how to breathe, Chui’s body was perfectly recreating the killing arts of his past life.
Just then.
“Aargh, you monster!”
A shriek, almost a scream, came from behind him.
He turned his head to see a bandit aiming a bow at him.
*Twang- Thud!*
The arrow the bandit fired flew toward Chui’s forehead.
But…
“……”
Chui tilted his head to the side, letting the arrow fly past.
It had only grazed his forehead, leaving a single trickle of blood.
It had torn the skin but failed to pierce the skull.
The bandit had no idea what had just happened, and that became the cause of his death.
*Splurt!*
Chui’s spear pierced the archer’s side.
Now, two bodies were skewered on the spear.
But as if that wasn't enough, Chui lifted the spear high.
“What is this crazy bastard!? Die!”
A large bandit who had come up the ridge swung an axe at Chui.
*Crack!*
He, too, was pierced through the chest by Chui’s spear and went limp.
The first bandit, the second bandit, and the third bandit were all impaled on Chui’s longspear.
Chui effortlessly lifted the spear, which had to weigh well over seventy geun, and hoisted it onto his shoulder.
*Drip- Drip- Drip-*
The falling raindrops were crimson.
As he carried the skewers made from mountain bandits on his shoulder, the fourth piece of meat didn't dare come close.
They merely retreated, pale with fright as if they had seen a ghost.
“…The Howling Tiger Escort Agency. Brings back memories.”
Chui lifted his head and looked beyond the darkness-soaked forest.
The clash of swords and the death cries of escorts and bandits were tangled together.
With a leisurely gait, Chui headed into the forest.
The Spear Demon has returned.
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