Chapter 596 48: Soul Burner

'I... can always hear them.'

'I can hear the voices of those who wish for death.'

"Life is so exhausting. When will days like this ever end?"

"Let's drink, let's drink, drink myself to death. On days like these, it's better to be dead than alive."

"I can't bear to watch this anymore. The country has fallen so low, I'd rather die before it does!"

Thirty years ago, Ross Country fell into a long, great depression. Separatist movements were rampant, the streets were filled with jobless vagrants, and the future was bleak. Despite possessing a world-class industrial system and technology, it was on the verge of collapsing under the weight of its own internal conflicts.

Back then, it wasn't uncommon to see people drowning their sorrows in alcohol, or even drinking laundry detergent, industrial alcohol, or gasoline. No one in the entire country held any hope for their lives. And living without hope is the cruelest torture of all.

Everyone was alive, but they all wanted to die. For them, life itself was pain, and death was the only peaceful release.

'I could hear these voices in their hearts.'

The tavern owner who adopted me had found me abandoned—I never knew if it was because my parents couldn't afford to raise a child. His wife had died young, and having no children of his own, he saw me as his salvation. He poured all of his love and affection onto me. In him, I heard the voice of hope. Because of me, he wanted to try his best to live.

But as I grew up, his pining for his late wife and the pain of not having his own children intensified, twisting his hope into its opposite. He began to suffer, to sink into despair. My very growth reminded him of what he saw as his failed life... He still loved me, in a different way, but the voice of hope within him grew weaker and weaker.

He, too, began to wish for death. His life slowly became a torment.

"I want to die."

One day, my gravely ill adoptive father said this to me. He had liver cancer, but he hadn't told me, assuming I didn't know. He thought he was joking when he said it, but in that moment, I heard the voice of hope in his heart sever completely.

My adoptive father died. His heart died.

But just before I actually made my move to kill his physical body, my adoptive father suddenly erupted with an unprecedented sound. It had nothing to do with hope; it was a voice purely for the sake of 'living'.

'You... want to live on...?'

'I was stunned. I had never seen such a spark before—pure, beautiful, and unlike hope. It wasn't dazzling at all. In fact, it was incredibly... gentle.'

'But it was also so fragile, so easily extinguished.'

In the decades that followed, I walked every dark corner of the Earth and witnessed this pure light countless times.

Of course, I also discovered that the opposite of light is shadow.

The mortal realm is filled with suffering: the poor and weak struggling on the edge of life and death; the natives of Africa tormented by war and bandits; the impoverished mountain villages in Southeast Asia, trapped in jungles, forever untouched by progress; and the primitive tribes on remote islands, still living as they did thousands of years ago, knowing only how to fish and gather fruit.

They say they want to live, but they truly want to die. They worship deities that may or may not exist, hoping for peace in the afterlife. They see the process of living in the mortal world as torture, or perhaps as a trial to accumulate merit.

In other words, they see their mortal shells as nothing but vessels for suffering.

Only when they truly face death does the suffering within the vessel ignite, briefly transforming this darkness into a brilliant flash of light.

From ancient times to the present, it has always been this way—

And I am the one who helps them reveal that rare, pure light within their lives.

Yet they always call me, in fear, the Silent Death God, the bringer of demise.

They call me the Silent, a quiet monster.

But I am taciturn only because I wish to listen in peace.

To listen to the true voices of their hearts.

As the Thunder Light rushed straight toward her, crystalline, snowflake-like patterns began to glow across the surface of her massive, crimson Exoskeleton Armor. The radiant light from the Strong Spiritual Power even outshone the black-and-white Fire of Sin. The red-haired Slav Lady sat alone in her cockpit, her gaze fixed forward.

'—Most living beings, from the moment they are born, have wanted to die.'

'Even those who speak of longevity and healthy living—setting aside the poor who never had a chance at a normal life—even those in the modern world, in big cities, chug high-energy drinks, keep irregular schedules, and indulge their desires for all sorts of reasons, all while suppressing their despair and burning through their body's potential.'

'Even the most cheerful and optimistic people entertain negative thoughts when they face setbacks. They feel sad when they're hurt and want to run away when they're wounded badly. The end of that road of escapism is death, yet they would rather face the terror of death than the reality of the world.'

'I want to find an exception... someone who never suffers, never thinks of escape, who is never saddened by anything they face, who never wants to die, yet feels no fear when facing death. A person full of contradictions, yet gleaming with light.'

'No... not a person.'

'I want to see a monster—just like the monster from the Spirit Summoning Association by my side, one who is completely cut off from all happiness, joy, delight, and peace. I want to see a monster who is completely cut off from all despair, pain, confusion, and hesitation.'