After being swept away by the gigantic sphere of black darkness rotating together with the soul of the Heavenly Demon.
Drip! Drip!
The sensation of droplets wetting his cheek awakened Shin Mujo’s consciousness.
‘Where… is this?’
It felt like being bound hand and foot and slammed deep into the sea.
The body that had never once betrayed him, this time refused to listen at all.
‘My body won’t move.’
At least his vision had opened, but no matter how much he struggled, his body did not budge in the slightest.
Drip! Drip!
The only other thing he could feel was the touch of droplets presumed to be falling from the top of the cave.
Just as Shin Mujo was about to forcibly rouse his body.
“Ghk!”
An overwhelming pain began to rampage as if it would tear his entire body apart.
“Cough! Ghk!”
Coughing and vomiting black blood, Shin Mujo realized that his condition was far more serious than he had thought.
‘More than anything, the internal injuries are fatal.’
He sensed that if he did not take action immediately, his body would soon perish.
“Phew…”
Closing his eyes, Shin Mujo operated the basic circulation method and slowly ran his internal energy through one full cycle.
‘Huh, huh?’
But not long after, he halted the circulation in panic.
The reason was simple.
‘Why… why isn’t my internal energy circulating?’
The internal energy that should have flowed smoothly was getting blocked here and there. The acupoints of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and the Twelve Regular Meridians, which he had fully opened decades ago, were for some reason mostly blocked!
Shin Mujo felt a strange sense of incongruity at this situation.
‘It’s not blocked by some external influence. It’s as if they were firmly closed from the very beginning.’
The alien sensation was as though this were not Shin Mujo’s body, but the body of ‘someone else.’
‘No matter what the situation is, if I can’t recover this body, I’ll die.’
Even in the worst-case scenario, wasn’t it the way of a martial artist to remain calm, find a solution, and break through?
Shin Mujo shut off his pain receptors and plunged his consciousness deep into the unconscious.
It was a process to focus all of his will solely on recovery.
The platinum-white internal energy, only a tiny thread remaining in his dantian, began to race through the meridians to revive the body.
And at that moment. Memories he had never experienced in his life began to stab into his mind.
* * *
The memories began as though images were appearing within a mirror.
The boy was born into a family with many siblings. An extremely wealthy family, with an enormous number of retainers. And a family that wielded a power Shin Mujo had ‘never seen before in his life.’
‘A peculiar culture, a peculiar power. Is the West originally all like that?’
He thought they might be royalty, but after observing a little, that did not seem to be the case.
The child was born into a family that wielded a power called ‘magic.’ The bloodline itself was blessed with considerable talent overall, and based on that talent, they had built wealth and achievements. However, unfortunately, despite inheriting that outstanding blood, the child had no talent.
—Do it again, young master. The spellwork is not precise and is loose.’
—Uh, uhm...
No matter how prestigious a family one is born into, to fully enjoy the benefits of that prestigious family, one must produce results worthy of its name. But ‘Nerha Radeus’ failed to produce those results and ended up falling behind.
In the academic pursuit of magic, he was not particularly outstanding even when compared to his siblings or peers.
He himself continued to make endless efforts to live up to expectations, but the world did not fairly deliver results in proportion to Nerha’s efforts. Even as those who had started later gradually surpassed him, Nerha did not give up and continued to strive. But for one without talent, the ‘Radeus’ family was not that kind.
—Still level 1? Are you really of Radeus blood?
As time passed, expectations turned into disappointment. Then into neglect and contempt. Not only his direct siblings but even the retainers began to treat Nerha poorly.
Shin Mujo found that sight familiar. Because he himself had been born as a collateral branch of a prestigious family.
‘He’s not really any better off than me. No, is it even worse?’
If he had not met his master, who was seeking a successor for a one-man lineage sect, Shin Mujo too would likely have had his life gnawed away by the tyranny of the direct line of the Habuk Shin Family. Moreover, unlike Shin Mujo, who was a collateral branch, Nerha was from the direct line. And yet, despite being from the direct line, he had no talent.
He could somewhat understand how miserable that must have been.
Thus, unable to overcome the wall of talent, Nerha was gradually eliminated. The vicious cycle of despair at results that did not return in proportion to effort, loss of motivation, and consequently even slower progress repeated itself.
Even so, Nerha did not give up.
In order to somehow raise his realm, in order to be acknowledged within this family, he pushed himself again and again.
For that, he did not even shy away from the extreme act of sealing himself inside a cave for secluded training. But forcing oneself beyond one’s own capacity inevitably returns to oneself in the end.
—Ah… aaah...
On the 30th day of secluded training carried out inside the cave.
Nerha, in the end, tried to forcibly contain energy beyond what he could control, and instead, that energy ran rampant, plunging him into deviation.
An atrocious pain as the nerves in his limbs were severed and his organs twisted inside out.
Writhing in agony, Nerha’s body soon became a corpse sprawled on the ground. And the moment that corpse’s heart began to beat again was after Nerha’s body faintly glowed with a strange golden light.
* * *
“So that’s how it was.”
Regaining his senses, Shin Mujo stared blankly at the dark cave ceiling.
With memories of this magnitude flowing in, there was no way he could not understand now.
That the body he had desperately recovered was not his original body that had been struck down by the Heavenly Demon, but the body of ‘Nerha Radeus’!
“So I ultimately died in the final battle in the Central Plains, and ended up taking over the body of someone who had already died?”
Shin Mujo quietly called the name of the original owner of this body.
“Nerha Radeus.”
The fifth son of the world’s greatest magic family, ‘Radeus.’
A child of a family akin to a ‘noble clan’ of the Central Plains, and within the family, a famous dropout and loser.
Shin Mujo had taken over the body of such a person.
A sudden reincarnation that proceeded without knowing the reason, the cause, or the chain of causality. No, from the beginning, he still was not even certain whether this was reincarnation, rebirth, or possession.
If he had no memories at all, that would be one thing, but fragments of ‘Nerha Radeus’’s memories were intermingled and fused with Shin Mujo’s sense of self. That is, for now, there was no way to know for sure.
‘Is this life mine? Or is it the theft of someone else’s life?’
Did Shin Mujo’s soul reincarnate into Nerha and awaken at some point? Or did Nerha die, and Shin Mujo enter in his place, seizing the body?
As the memories of Nerha Radeus were scattered and fused into Shin Mujo’s ego, there was no clear answer.
“Haah… I’ll do the self-reflection after things get a bit better.”
Shin Mujo slowly raised his upper body.
He had escaped the brink of death, but the body was still in a severely damaged state from reckless use of energy.
Pain was still rising from every corner of his body.
To fully recover this body, sufficient nutrition was essential even before delicate internal energy manipulation.
“Let’s see.”
Though it was a dark underground room with not a trace of human presence, that did not mean there was nothing.
“As expected, he was in secluded training, just like the memories.”
Shin Mujo muttered as he looked at the piles of food crates. Even if Nerha had committed a crime and been imprisoned or confined, they would not have locked him in to starve without any food.
“Well, it’s not the body of a criminal anyway, so I can just go out and recuperate slowly.”
Rather than recovering his body while eating atrociously bad preserved rations, it would be far more helpful to go out and at least brew a medicinal tonic. Moreover, no matter how he looked at it, the amount of remaining food did not seem very plentiful. But…
Creak! Creak!
“Ah, damn it.”
Staring at the door that did not budge, Shin Mujo muttered a low curse.
“So unless one reaches a certain realm in magic, the door is designed not to open at all?”
A single-piece steel door engraved with magical spellwork.
‘Nerha’ had begun magical training to break the spellwork on this steel door.
A true do-or-die situation.
Shin Mujo pressed his forehead in frustration.
‘Restrictions and all that are fine and dandy, but seriously.’
No matter how much he possessed Nerha’s memories, Nerha was Nerha, and Shin Mujo was Shin Mujo. In other words, Shin Mujo was a complete and utter beginner when it came to the academic discipline of magic.
“Am I… screwed?”
As he stared at the steel door that did not budge, Shin Mujo felt cold sweat slowly run down his spine.
* * *
The reason Nerha had locked himself in this place was not solely for the sake of improving his attainment.
There existed within the Radeus family a training institution for combat mages, ‘Libra.’
Before entering that place, he wanted to raise his realm as much as possible.
The reason Nerha had overexerted himself here before entering the institution was, of course, because he was of the direct line of Radeus.
Libra was the place that nurtured the talents who would become the spear and shield of Radeus.
If a direct-line member of Radeus entered that place and showed substandard performance, it would inevitably become a major problem both for the family and for Nerha himself.
“Stupid bastard.”
Lying sprawled on the floor, Shin Mujo muttered a low curse at Nerha.
The more he traced back the memories, the more they overlapped with his own past, and a bitter feeling welled up.
‘I’m still confused whether I reincarnated as this guy, or whether I’m a completely separate person.’
From childhood to recent events, there were many memories mixed in of things he had never seen in a mirror.
Sensations so vivid that it would not be strange to say he himself had experienced them.
Amidst that deluge of emotions and memories, Shin Mujo spent a full day organizing his thoughts.
If Nerha’s soul were coexisting separately, Shin Mujo was willing to give the body back. But no matter how much he waited and observed, there was no sign of Nerha’s ego or soul to be found.
After long deliberation, Shin Mujo came to a conclusion.
‘At the very least, in the current situation, I can’t just do nothing and starve to death.’
If later Nerha were to return and demand his body back... he would think about that then.
Having already taken over Nerha’s body, he could not undo it.
Aside from suicide or ascending beyond the mortal coil, he did not even know a way to leave this body.
“Guess I’ll just live according to fate.”
That is, from this moment on, ‘Shin Mujo’ resolved to live as ‘Nerha Radeus.’
If Shin Mujo’s ego had not awakened and time had simply flowed on, Nerha would have died as he was anyway.
“No, that’s nothing more than self-justification.”
With a bitter expression, Shin Mujo pushed himself up.
He simply did not want to lose this new life he had barely obtained, whether by heavenly fortune or whatever else.
‘But there’s one thing I can promise.’
Watching Nerha, and inheriting Nerha’s memories, Shin Mujo had also inherited many of the emotions Nerha had harbored.
What Nerha had yearned for so desperately.
The obsession and grudge he had not been able to let go of even at the brink of death.
“The name ‘Nerha Radeus’ will become the most acknowledged name in this family from now on.”
He would sit in the most noble and highest place, looking down upon all.
“That is the promise of Shin Mujo, the one who will now use the name ‘Nerha Radeus.’”
Shin Mujo, no, Nerha, looked up at the dark ceiling and let out a vow tinged with lament.
