I don't want to curse a dead person, especially my own father, but it was still evident that, objectively speaking, he was far from normal.
"Son, the truth is, this old man's homeland is not these grasslands. Nor does it lie in the far Eastern lands. Your old man hails from a different world altogether, the Otherworld."
“……”
At the tender age of eight, I may not have comprehended matters fully, but I knew that my father was crazy.
At first, I assumed he was drunk. They say he spent his days inebriated, idling without a care in the world, so he must be drunk once more.
But his eyes, as he professed that he hailed from another world, were clear and unusually serious, and he didn't stop his rambling with just one time.
“This world is a world in a game called Sage Academy. I was toying with the idea of creating a character named Kim Han-nam, and pretending to be a reincarnated individual from another world, but when I came to my senses, I found myself stuck in this garbage world. Is this making sense? Did they force me to reincarnate simply because I experimented with the character concept in the game?"
He spewed out a stream of incomprehensible words, his frustration building, while I stood there, bewildered, not knowing what to say.
My father's incessant ramblings, for some inexplicable reason, concluded with the preposterous notion that the world would soon face ruin due to a resurrected Demon Lord.
The Demon Lord, the creator of the demons that rampaged everywhere, an ancient evil that belonged in fairy tales, not history.
Well, for the sake of argument, let's say that the Demon Lord will indeed resurrect according to ancient prophecy. But why am I the one who has to stop it?
I am no descendant of heroes, merely the son of a delusional madman who claims to have come from another world.
"Do not worry. Originally, the player was not the son of the hero who defeated the demon lord, but a person who had nothing to do with the hero's lineage. So, you can do it too."
Even when I presented these doubts to my father, he skillfully brushed them aside with convoluted explanations.
From that day on, the harsh training with the goal of defeating the Demon Lord from the fairy tales began.
Naturally, I had no desire for such training, but given that I depended on my father for everything, including food, clothing and shelter, I had no choice.
"Why must you wield two spears at once, Father? They're too heavy, and I can't even hold one properly, let alone two, why can't I just hold one?"
Extending my hand, now blistered and bloodied, pleading with my crimson-tinted fingers, the response I received was not permission, but rather a chiding.
"No, it won't work. If you train with only one spear, your dual-wielding weapon skill won't improve, and you'll waste time in the future. It might be tough now, but dual spears are a superior setup, with best move set as well as 005 and being excellent. You'll become unbeatable as an attacker."
“What kind of crap is that? Can't I just fight with something like a shield instead of just a spear?”
"Ridiculous!!! You think a warrior would carry a shield that women and girls use! Besides, while a shield-spear combination offers stability, when you face enemies who learn penetration skills in the mid-game, it becomes extremely challenging until you get a shield that nullifies penetration!! It's much wiser to go with dual spears from the start and focus on evasion and counterattacks!"
'Someday, I'll hit him with a shield and finish him off...!'
My father's training was hard and difficult, but also bizarre, unlike any other form of training.
Because he kept overusing unknown words such as DPS, PVP, and PVE*, I couldn't understand half of the words and even had the illusion that he was speaking different languages.
The training was arduous and bizarre, exhausting my mind and body, yet I still remained within the realm of endurance.
Unwilling as I was to admit it, as I received my father's teachings and immersed myself into training, I began to sense a growing strength within me.
However...
"Son, try repeating after me. 'Pink hair represents promiscuity.'"
"'Pink hair represents promiscuity'?"
"Yes, indeed. Those with pink hair are inherently lascivious and vulgar by nature. In my homeland, they even refer to prostitutes as 'pink ladies,' a term born from the wise knowledge of our ancestors who recognized the connection between pink hair and promiscuity. So, you must never associate with those who have pink hair. All pink hair are whores."
"Um... but Father..."
"What?"
“What is a prostitute? Are they like a spearman?”
"Ah, we need to start explaining from the basics, then. Well, let's begin by enlightening you about the most reviled existence in this world, the 'non-vigins'**."
Enduring the bizarre lessons was one thing, but the peculiar moral education conducted night after night was simply unbearable.
Upon hearing the phrase 'all pink hair are whores,' I once called a pink-haired girl my age in the village a 'whore,' which earned me a hearty thrashing from her parents.
That girl, who only later learned the meaning of a whore, still cast chilly glares whenever I visited the village.
Although she later became a real prostitute, things wouldn't have gone so twisted if it hadn't been for her poor father.
Even if I went as her customer, she wouldn't let it go.
But the torment, masquerading as training, didn't end there.
There were times when I was left alone in a remote area deep in the mountains where demonic beasts broke out, and there were times when I was forced to participate in a fighting tournament where killing was allowed, all under the guise of martial arts training.
It would have been nice if we had at least one good memory, but why do we not have a single ordinary memory?
"If only once, instead of these insane training sessions, we could have gone on a picnic to a field or something..."
No longer trapped in gruesome memories, I stared at my father's lifeless body resting peacefully on the bed, my thoughts briefly focused.
Today, or perhaps it was yesterday, my father passed away.
He had been ailing for some time, and this morning he lay in bed, his expression serene in slumber.
Usually, when parents pass away, tears tend to flow. But since our father-son relationship was so unique, laughter escaped my eyes instead of tears.
"If I had at least one good memory, I might have bid him farewell with tears."
The statement held both truth and falsehood.
At times, I had sworn to eventually provide everything I'd endured back to my father. However, when he grew weaker, there was also genuine concern in my heart.
Regardless, my father was gone now. Finally, I was liberated from the tyranny of his mad training.
“……….”
But why am I not very happy when it was the moment I had been waiting for my whole life.
━━━◇◆◇━━━
The funeral was held quickly.
My father, who had been scorned as a savage by those around him, had no one to mourn him, and thus, there was no need to invest time in preparations.
"Is it really okay to send him off like this?"
"Well, this is the funeral custom from my father's homeland. So, I suppose it's alright to send him off like this."
At some point, my father had taught me about a funeral custom called 'cremation,' where the deceased's body is burned, and the ashes are preserved in an urn.
It might have been just a passing story, but given that my father rarely spoke about matters other than his training, I thought it best to send him off this way.
“Is it okay to burn those items? After all, they must have been a keepsake left for you.”
“…… it's okay."
Honestly, even though the books were of no use, I still wanted to keep them if possible. However, I felt that true liberation from my father's madness wouldn't be complete without burning them.
I nodded, saying that it was okay, and Mallock understood my feelings and chanted an incantation, holding back from wanting to say something more.
Then, along with the surging mana, flames leaped from my father's body, soaring high into the sky.
I closed my eyes for a second, feeling that everything was finally over, and opened my eyes again, reminiscing about the past.
【Transfer of System Complete. Due to the death of the owner of the system, the authority of the system is transferred from 'Han-nam, the man who would do anything' to his kin 'Han Yujin.'】
“……Huh?"
I began to see things that I should not have seen.
...Why is this actually happening?
Footnote:- * Damage Per Second (DPS), Player vs. Player (PvP), Player vs. Environment (PvE). ** The Non-Virgins here refers to women with past history or body counts from my limited understanding of the conext.
(End of Chapter. . . . . . . .)
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