TTAS 04

Chapter : 4. Ending a Life of Swords and Beginning a Life (2)

thud. thud.

The man slowly approached.

“Just a little more. Come on, grab it already.”

His hand moved toward the hilt.

“A little more. Hurry.”

The man’s sluggish movements made impatience rise.

click.

At last, his hand grasped the sword’s handle.

crackle…

“Grrrgh…”

It was obvious this man would also fail the sword’s test.

A powerful surge of lightning-like energy poured through his hand and stiffened his entire body.

“Ughhh…”

‘He’s lasting longer?’

The man, groaning in pain, suddenly pulled the sword out.

‘Huh?’

I had assumed his frozen body was simply moving on its own.

His mana was even less than that of the comrade who had already died, so it was hard to believe this was his will.

crackle…

The sword’s trial continued until either the applicant accepted the energy or died from it.

Again, lightning energy struck his body.

“Grrrgh…”

The man’s wrist, which had been gripping the sword in reverse, could not withstand the energy and bent downward.

The tip of the blade pointed toward his chest.

And slowly, his body began to fall.

‘He’s going to die like this?’

It was an unexpected situation, but the fact remained that he would die. I decided to focus on absorbing his soul and building up my mana.

The sword’s hilt touched the ground.

thrust.

The blade pierced his chest and sank into his body.

‘Huh? Wait!’

The sword should have pierced through his back, but instead it kept sinking deeper into his chest.

‘What is happening?’

In a thousand years of sword-life, I had never seen or heard of anything like this.

The sword kept burrowing into his body.

The moment even the hilt disappeared into his chest—

I felt as if my soul was being pulled somewhere and lost consciousness.

How much time had passed?

As my awareness slowly returned, I tried to understand what had happened—but soon realized it was pointless and looked around.

‘Something feels… off.’

It was different.

I wasn’t perceiving the world through the eyes of the magic sword anymore. It felt like I was seeing through human eyes.

‘What happened to me?’

A strange sensation followed as more time passed.

A familiar sensation.

The sensation I had naturally felt before being forcibly summoned into sword-life as a magic sword.

I could feel hands and feet.

It was undeniably the feeling of a human body I once had.

As a magic sword, the only sensations I felt were the pressure when a contractor gripped the hilt, or the resistance of flesh and bone when cutting or piercing enemies.

This was not the sensation I used to feel as the magic sword “Veradion.”

‘No way…?’

Recalling my human past, I ordered my hand to rise in front of my eyes.

My vision was suddenly blocked.

A human hand covered my sight.

“…Ha.”

A laugh escaped me without meaning to.

‘Is this real?’

The sound of my involuntary laughter was unmistakably human.

“I can speak… human speech?”

I gave the command to speak—and naturally, a human voice came out.

I pushed strength into my abdomen and sat up.

Looking down at myself—

I saw blue jeans and a round-neck T-shirt I used to wear before my sword-life, along with perfectly intact arms and legs.

“I can’t believe it.”

Even while seeing it with my own eyes, I couldn’t believe it. I touched my body, confirming every part of it.

I didn’t understand how, but I understood the result clearly.

After touching the sword and being stabbed in the chest by the magic sword, my soul had clearly transferred into that man’s body.

My soul had moved into another human body, not the magic sword.

“…Ha. Hahaha.”

Laughter came out naturally.

A hollow laugh at obtaining something I had failed to achieve for hundreds of years—by sheer coincidence.

“This might not be an accident.”

Another thought followed: interference.

The continent and Earth were clearly different dimensions. The “seal” had crossed over to Earth, met Earth’s explorers, and among them, the magic sword had infiltrated a human body and transferred a soul. It couldn’t simply be called coincidence.

“I don’t want to know. I’m back on Earth. That’s enough. I’ll live again.”

I forced myself to push away the thought of some predetermined intervention.

What mattered now was only the fact that I had returned to Earth.

Then one thought followed:

‘What happened to the magic sword?’

I touched the chest where the original owner of the body had been stabbed.

There was no wound—nothing but smooth skin.

‘Did it get absorbed into the body?’

It was an absurd thought, but no other conclusion came to mind.

I pushed the question aside and stood up.

My body felt slightly awkward, but it was only the dissonance of a body accustomed to a thousand years of sword-life.

Moving with increasingly familiar control, I searched the charred corpse nearby.

If I had escaped the seal, I would need cash.

I found a wallet and took the money.

‘Why are they carrying so much cash?’

Fortunately, even after all this time, the banknotes hadn’t changed.

Green and yellow bills—just like those I remembered from when I lived as Min Woo-hyuk.

‘And this?’

Inside the bulky man who was called the team leader, I found something familiar.

A rough, white crystal-like object.

White Ether.

The condensed essence of monster life force and mana.

I quickly stored it in the bag the body’s owner had been carrying.

After collecting everything I needed, I took one last look at the seal.

It was nothing more than a memory to leave behind.

I left the seal behind, abandoning the past of the magic sword “Veradion.”

A different space.

In a fairly large cavern, there was the corpse of a deer-like monster with enormous horns, and a blue gate.

“That’s the leader Ar.”

On the continent, they called it Ar. It seemed this creature had been the one holding the White Ether.

I turned my gaze away from the corpse and looked at the blue gate.

“A spatial transfer magic?”

So this was the so-called escape portal they had been talking about.

Judging by the situation, it was definitely a transport magic that led outside.

My thoughts were brief, my actions fast.

I stepped into the portal—and my body was pulled in.

For a moment, I experienced a strange sensation of inversion—left and right, up and down flipping—along with chaotic multicolored energies filling my vision.

Then a new scene appeared.

“You’re safe. We were worried since the estimated clear time had long passed.”

At the unfamiliar man’s voice, I looked at him briefly, then past him.

Soldiers armed with modern weapons in combat gear were aiming at the portal, ready for battle.

Sensing my gaze, the man quickly spoke again.

“This is the Capital Defense Force. We were dispatched in case a dungeon breach occurred.”

No further explanation followed.

“Are the rest of your team members still inside? And do you need treatment for that arm injury?”

‘Arm injury?’

His words reminded me of the burn marks I had seen earlier.

Lightning-shaped scars caused by exposure to lightning energy.

I raised my arm again.

Not only burns, but torn wounds caused by the lightning energy were everywhere.

As soon as I recognized the injuries, pain surged in.

An unbearable agony—along with the confusion of swapped soul and body, the relief of returning to Earth, and the hope of a new life all at once.

Before I could answer, I lost consciousness.

When I opened my eyes again, everything was white.

‘A hospital?’

It looked like the hospital room where I once lay after an appendectomy in high school.

‘A hospital on Earth… it’s nostalgic.’

It wasn’t a healer’s chamber or a temple prayer room.

It was a hospital on Earth—and that alone brought relief.

“Hyun-woo!”

“Shin Hyun-woo! Are you awake?”

Worried female voices filled the room.

Two women came into view—likely the body’s mother and older sister.

A woman in her late 40s and another in her mid-20s.

Their similar appearance made it clear they were mother and daughter, and their voices were full of concern.

“Mr. Shin Hyun-woo. Thankfully, you’ve regained consciousness.”

There was another person in the room.

“That’s a relief. It would have been problematic if you’d stayed unconscious any longer.”

A man approached the bedside and handed me a business card.

“Sorry for the late introduction. I’m Kim Yoon-sung, an E-rank dungeon investigator from the Accident Investigation Division of the Dungeon Management Agency.”

He had a sharp, intimidating face—like a detective.

It wasn’t hard to understand his identity.

He was here to investigate the expedition team that died in the dungeon.

“I know it’s difficult right after waking up, but I need your cooperation. What happened inside the dungeon that day?”

Inspector Kim Yoon-sung clearly knew nothing about what happened inside.

Seeing my blank stare, he continued.

“As you know, gates to dungeons are not two-way entrances. Once you go in, you can’t come out—unless you clear the dungeon and open an escape gate. Even then, the escape gate only works as an exit; you cannot enter through it.”

Seeing that I lacked basic knowledge, he explained briefly, though his face showed annoyance.

“Five entered. One came out. After Shin Hyun-woo exited, the gate disappeared, so we assume the rest are dead. Correct?”

According to him, it was natural that I didn’t know what happened.

That meant the truth had no evidence left behind even if it was distorted.

‘I can’t say they fought over the magic sword and burned to death.’

Reading his expression urging an answer, I spoke.

“When I arrived late at the boss area, the escape gate was already open. I assumed the team members had gone out first and followed them. I only realized they hadn’t come out after I escaped.”

Inspector Kim Yoon-sung looked suspicious.

“I also need an explanation for the wound on your arm and the mana stone in your bag.”

His eyes turned to my right arm.

Wrapped tightly in bandages.

“Maybe something abnormal happened when passing through the gate. The injury wasn’t caused inside the dungeon.”

“So you don’t know about your teammates, and you don’t know about your arm injuries. Then how do you explain the mana stone?”

I understood his position.

A sole survivor insisting ignorance would naturally seem suspicious.

“The large bag was mine, and the smaller one was carried by the team members. I found it near the boss and brought it out.”

“So you’re saying there were no people—only bags—and you left without searching for them?”

“I thought they had already escaped first.”

“The incident site has already collapsed and disappeared, and the only survivor cannot give a clear statement. It seems further investigation will be difficult. Thank you for your cooperation.”

His sudden withdrawal surprised even me.

Perhaps sensing my confusion, he spoke again.

“Dungeon accidents are always like this. There’s no evidence, so we rely on survivor testimony. It inevitably becomes a formal investigation. If we don’t investigate at all, it creates even more problems. Since this was your first hunt with the victims, you may not know—but that team was infamous for being extremely unethical. This won’t be dragged out.”

Despite his first impression, he was quite talkative.

Thanks to him, I gained useful information, and the investigation seemed to end smoothly.

“Take care of yourself. If we meet again, so be it.”

As he left the hospital room, his footsteps felt heavy—though that might have been my imagination.