Raw provider: Tsalispark
Translator: Rhyme
Editor: Milac
All the murders, even those that she had forgotten, started to appear in front of her like bubbles; rising and falling slowly. As if she was a spectator watching herself killing others.
She saw herself hiding behind a person, holding her breath. Instantaneously, she wrapped her arm around him and inserted a knife deeply into his neck. These memories were enough to remind her of her codename, ‘Reaper’.
Unlike all her miseries and experiences that passed in a flash, her memories drifted up slowly. Her sharp blade pierced into the pulsating neck as if it passed through soft butter. She threw him to the right. The dark red blood sprayed from the carotid artery into the air like water from a fountain.
From the strongly attached limbs to his upward looking face, like ink spreading into the water, the stiffness spread swiftly. Along with the blood flowing out, she felt his life leaving his body.
Some were hit with nerve paralyzing poisons, while some had their cranial bones blown up with a bullet. There were also some whose neck bones were crushed when strangled by a rope.
There were also many whose flesh and organs were blasted apart because of her bombings. She had even tortured people by cutting their flesh little by little to extort information.
Those memories of killings, which appeared to continue forever, at some point changed into the pain and fear of the victims. Furthermore, it directly entered into Kasia’s soul.
When Kasia was alive, the pain that accompanied her was the physical pain, the pain inflicted by flesh wounds. In death, she was devoid of any flesh or blood. The pain which lurched through Kasia then was mental pain which was loads different from physical pain.
The flaring of memories of their last moments was something very difficult for Kasia to comprehend. For most of the people killed at her hands thought about other people in their last moments.
Some thought about their parents, some about their children, while some thought about women. Many lamented at that moment about not expressing how much they loved the other. They felt remorseful on their self-restraint; a small portion of them pitied themselves.
She was unable to decipher their emotions but their bitter remorse, their pain, their regret in leaving behind their loved ones dug into her like nails. For a long time, she quivered in pain just like a fish thrown ashore.
Even while suffering from the pain, she couldn’t understand why they felt those kinds of emotions or why they cared for the people that were left alone, more than their lives.
A long time had passed; a very long time.
The pain remained for so long a time that she was unable to recognize when the pain faded away. The breathlessness of her soul, felt by the waves of deathly silence and stillness, finally came to an end. She felt herself being dragged into a warm and bloody beach. All she felt was exhaustion as she was wrecked inside out.
Bright, but not so hot, sunshine along with a soft breeze carried a floral scent. Her bare soul stood among the illusion of refreshing waves of water rumbling in and out. Only then did the tears flow out. Just like a newborn baby, crying to gather its breathing, she cried because of her existence.
To her rushing out sorrow and serenity, the only comforts were the sunshine, the breeze and the waves, other than those there was no one beside her. She felt a pang of loneliness once again. All those feelings and emotions that she never experienced when alive became a vortex that caged her in, to torture once again.
GO BACK ONCE AGAIN.
An unknown voice rang out. Though it was laced with fear, that voice held a sort of longing and affection.
The warm sunshine and breeze she felt a moment ago disappeared. The body she thought was left behind felt like creeping onto her. And just like that, all of a sudden, she gained consciousness. She didn’t want to live like an Asura once again.
‘NO! I DON’T WANT TO!’
She wanted to struggle and break free from that feeling but she couldn’t escape the feeling of nerves stretching throughout her body. She fell into despair as she felt herself being rejected, even by death.
If she had to relive a miserable life as Kasia del Roman, she would rather slash her neck and die the instant she opened her eyes.
At that moment her five senses and physical body were being reconstructed to make Kasia a person again. Like powering on a shutdown factory, the blood pumping from the heart flew through her blood vessels to awaken her senses. The newly awakened senses proved that she was alive, again.
Her sense of smell was awakened first. The smell of rotting corpses that her nose seemed to forget was rekindled.
‘Ugh…’ She mentally retched.
She tried to turn her body to avoid the smell but her body was like a stone statue and didn’t even flinch. She was determined to gather all her power to move her body, but the instant she tried she was drowned into a torturous pain.
“Urgh…Umm”
With her dry lips, a groan escaped as she failed to conquer the tethering pain. She felt like she was being cut into pieces. She realized that she was not reborn but rather inside an adult body.
When her sentience connected to the body, unlike a newborn child she felt a great deal of pain. The way she grunted was miles apart from the voice of a baby. Once again realization hit; all the memories of her previous life and her death were completely intact.
She suppressed her pain and exerted force to her fingers and made another effort to move. She sensed stiffness of her joints and felt something like a pinch that gave her hope. She put in more effort and in a sudden moment, her finger slightly moved. Just this slight movement and she felt her temples soaked in sweat. After moving her fingers she braved the pain and put all her effort towards her eyes.
Under her closed lids, she moved her pupils sideways. She felt like her eyes were rubbing against sandpaper which stung like hell. Intuitively, she concluded that her current body was heavily injured or it had been in that state for quite some time.
She once suffered something similar when she was in Camp X. She was starved and also suffered from dehydration for a few days. At that time even opening her eyes was rather difficult.
‘If it is in such a bad condition, it would be troublesome…’
To recover from long dehydration and hunger she had needed a lot of time. So considering her current heavily injured body, she wasn’t sure about other bodily functions but it would be hard to see clearly.
Among all of these, she sensed a different physique than that of the previous Colonel Kasia Del Roman. Her current body was unlike her real one which she used for a long time.
She was a Soldier as well as an Assassin with a very good build and proportions but her current body was quite abnormal.
“Mmmm…mmmm…he…lp…”
She didn’t know where she was lying at the moment but it didn’t seem like the place she died at. It could have been a morgue. Though she was not sure whether there was anyone near her, she felt the need to ask for help first.
It would be detrimental if anyone near her were after her life. She focused her numb senses and felt no life nearby. So she raised her voice as much as she could.
“Oh! Here! Someone is alive! Here! Nurse!”
She heard someone calling out for a nurse.
‘Damn! A Battlefield… Again!’
Rather than the relief of being found by someone, she was dispirited to wake up in a place where people called ‘nurses’ existed.
The despair was soon followed by intense rage. Why was it a battlefield again? Why was she being made to live like an Asura again? Was she created to be a murderer?
While there was a storm brewing within her, someone hurriedly ran over. They lifted her eyelids and shone a light into them. When the unexpected light flashed into her eyes, her body flinched.
“It’s a miracle. She is alive! Hey! Bring a stretcher!”
She felt a momentary relief. Due to the overwhelming stench of corpses, she was sure that the place she was lying was somewhere similar to a mortuary.
It was possible that she was in the middle of a battlefield where bodies were tossed out. If she was not found by someone then it was apparent that she might pass out because of the smell.
‘Since God sent me back I won’t die right away, but it is still possible to torture.’
She was carefully moved onto the stretcher. The moment she heard the sound of people moving the stretcher, she felt the air freshening, but with her memories of crawling in the battlefield, she could sense the smell of death mingled with the air.
‘Crap…!’
Either because of the anguish remembering her previous life or the pain she felt, her face was distorted.
Her nerves which seemed to be paralyzed slowly revived.
It caused her to pass out because of the pain.
She felt that she was being moved into a nursing ward as she distinguished similar groans, as she made, around her. In any battlefield, the doctors and nurses will be the busiest ones. Still, she, someone who just crawled out of death’s door, was subjected to special attention. Someone near her soaked her dry lips with moist gauze. Her wounds were carefully handled. Into her now moist lips, a bitter pill was thrust in along with some water.
She was suffering from nightmarish agony. She groaned constantly, in a semi-conscious state. Her eyes opened suddenly when she felt the pain of gauze wiping her wounds.
“Aargh”
Her suddenly opened eyes, the wounds covered in medicines, the internal organs inflicted with injuries, all reeled in pain.
With such a harsh stroke of pain, as a physiological response, her tears flew out. Her dry eyes seemed to relax in the presence of the moisture.
The burning pain slowly sunk as she strongly held on to her consciousness. Her body was soaked in cold sweat which poured out of all her pores.
To discern her surroundings, she slightly narrowed her eyes and she saw the yellow ceiling of barracks. Through her blurred vision, she could vaguely make out the silhouettes of soldiers wearing special headscarves and nurses scampering around. There were also some military doctors trying to save the soldiers at the brink of death. Their hoarse growls could be heard everywhere.
Suddenly, she felt a strange sensation. According to her memories, however harsh the frontline was the situation of nursing barracks was much better than here.
It was at that moment, she heard a sound from the opening where sun rays were penetrating.
‘…It should the sound when one walks in armour…’
The voice moved towards her and stopped beside her bed.
“Is it this soldier?”
“Yes. It is. She was the only survivor found when the Mist Forest was scouted to ascertain the damage.”
Their voices seemed to move closer. She spotted a man bedecked entirely in a silver armour carefully observing her. It was difficult to distinguish his face because of the dark atmosphere and her dizziness due to the pain. She could make out his dark hair and piercing gaze towards her.
‘Who is it? He is wearing an armour. But it doesn’t seem like a movie set…’
Kasia blinked her eyes as she tried to focus as much of her attention as possible toward him.