The Grill-Wielding Saintess of the Dead

Chapter 8 Return 1

“Sniff, sob…sniff…”

Munch munch.

“……..”

“Sniff, my Emperor Goblin Head Soup…sob…”

“I’m really…sorry about that again…”

Slurp.

Munch munch.

Gulp.

“Sniff, this place does miso soup so well…sob…sniff…gulp…Auntie, five more bowls of rice here please.”

“Five? Oh my, we’re all out right now. I’m just putting on a fresh pot, so please wait a moment.”

“Sniff, I can’t wait…”

“Dear, then I’ll get some from the neighbor. Just wait a moment, okay?”

“Yes…”

Sniff sniff, slurp slurp.

Sigh, gulp.

Woof woof, oink oink.

A large barbecue restaurant near Hapjeong Station in Seoul.

A long-established meat restaurant that had been operating even before the Great Rift.

Although the prices were high, the quality of the meat and the service were equally guaranteed, making it a well-known restaurant.

It was famous not just for its meat, but even for its rice, side dishes, and water, making it a popular place where hunters often gathered.

The Icicle Nine and Yeonhwa Association had even come here for group dinners.

This was also the first restaurant they had brought the “Saintess of the Dead,” Shia, who was currently shoveling food into her mouth non-stop, despite looking quite gloomy.

This place could be said to hold memories for both Yeonhwa and Shia.

“….But, unnie, you eat so well even while crying.”

“Sniff sniff, beef…beef…gulp…so delicious…this sirloin is divine…”

Not long after the Saintess of the Dead, Shia, made Emperor Goblin Head Soup, a flood of investigators and researchers dispatched from the Hunter Association and government agencies rushed into the Goblin Empire.

Naturally, since Shia had essentially conducted illegal poaching without reporting it, all the byproducts of the Emperor Goblin, including the soup and every piece of meat, were confiscated by the government researchers.

Although they promised a huge compensation in return, what mattered most to Shia was not the money, but the heartbreaking fact that she didn’t get to eat her “Emperor Goblin Head Soup.”

“Unnie, try this too.”

“Thanks, gulp…sirloin, ribeye, tenderloin…all so good…sniff…”

“This is called hanger steak. It’s a rare cut, even from beef, but it’s supposed to be quite delicious. Try this one too.”

“Thank you…gulp…!”

As a result, S-rank hunter Icicle Nine was now grilling beef diligently just to comfort the Saintess of the Dead.

Knowing Shia’s appetite well, Yeonhwa had rented out the entire restaurant for the day and bought not just the displayed meat, but all the beef stocked in the restaurant’s storage.

Of course, the restaurant had a lot of concerns since this kind of spontaneous and hefty transaction wasn’t common, but Yeonhwa’s fame as an S-rank hunter and her offer to pay double for all the meat and services made them gladly accept both Shia and Yeonhwa as their guests.

The restaurant employees, who had previously served not only celebrities and politicians but also hunters, showed no signs of questioning Yeonhwa and Shia.

Shia, who was now devouring her 80th serving of sirloin, along with 30 bowls of rice, and slurping down 10 bowls each of cold noodles and spicy mixed noodles, was being served without complaint.

The experienced staff, familiar with eccentric hunters and wealthy clients, kept bringing more meat and rice without a word.

Some of the employees even went so far as to bring a separate grill to Shia’s table to cook meat directly in front of her.

“Is it good?”

“Sniff sniff…yes, it’s good.”

“Come on, please stop crying.”

“Do you even understand, sniff…the Emperor Goblin Soup…sniff, it’s still calling out to me…”

“How would I know that…”

Sniff sniff sniff, Bingu-ya!

I thought you would understand me!

“Unnie, I do like you, but I really can’t understand your taste.”

“…….Is that so?”

Well, when I think about it rationally, that does seem to be the case.

Shia quickly wiped away her tears and grabbed another piece of meat sizzling on the grill.

Still, it was true that her previously sinking mood had improved somewhat.

Honestly, she had wanted to smash everything and take back her “Emperor Goblin Head Soup” from the investigators or the association, eat it all, and then shout “Yessss, hell yeah~~,” but fortunately, she still had enough human decency, rationality, and conscience left to stop herself.

Even though she was a Returnee and the Saintess of the Dead, there were lines that should not be crossed.

In fact, maybe because she was a Returnee, she felt even more responsible to uphold these boundaries.

“Unnie, after you finish eating, I’ll need you to go to the association and give a statement.”

“What should I write in the statement?”

“They already have your broadcast recorded as confidential material, so they probably won’t need a detailed statement. Just a basic account of how you discovered the Goblin Empire, how you identified the Camouflaged Dungeon, and maybe some of your thoughts or analysis about the Goblin Empire.”

“What? That sounds like a lot to write…?”

“Don’t worry, unnie. Just scribble something down, and I’ll edit it for you.”

Being a Returnee, this sort of thing was incredibly annoying and tedious.

However, even though it felt like the Returnee Control Bureau and the Hunter Association were hounding her, she could understand their position.

A few years ago, there had been an incident where a Returnee caused a massive terrorist attack.

I think it was in China.

From what I’ve heard, the unique dictatorship system there and their leader mistreated the Returnees, and it all escalated until it exploded…

I wasn’t particularly interested, so I didn’t look into the details.

A Returnee, huh… That’s right, I’m a Returnee too.

From the perspective of someone who didn’t know me, I’d probably look like a ticking time bomb…

○○○○○

There was an event called the Great Rift.

It shook the Earth, a planet ruled by the species known as humanity, without any warning signs.

One day, as people went about their daily lives, rifts began to appear in the sky above them, and strange creatures emerged from these rifts, leading to events where people lost their loved ones, their lives, and their possessions.

That was the First Great Rift.

Forests, cities, government buildings, military bases, hospitals, rural areas, oceans, mountains, underground, and even the sky.

The rifts opened simultaneously, indiscriminately, in various places, bringing great chaos and death to society.

The aftershocks of the Great Rift led to the deaths and disappearances of many people.

The rifts not only disrupted human lives but also caused major upheavals in human society, culture, and politics.

Moreover, as the rifts opened, individuals began to manifest strange abilities that didn’t exist in reality.

These individuals were called Awakened, Psychic, Superhumans, or Heroes, but today they are all commonly referred to as Hunters.

Someday, I’ll have the chance to talk about the sociopolitical impact of the Great Rift and how it changed human life.

But for now, I’ll tell you about someone named Isiah.

His real name was Isiah.

As of 2024, he was a 21-year-old man.

While traveling with his family to celebrate his military discharge, he was caught in the First Great Rift and went missing.

People caught up in the Great Rift were generally declared dead.

Whether they were killed by monsters emerging from the rift, consumed by a dungeon, or succumbed to a natural disaster, it was common for them to be declared dead.

But Isiah didn’t die.

Well, his body died.

When the rift opened, his body was torn apart at the molecular level.

However, his soul, unlike his body, wasn’t shredded.

Instead, it flowed into the dimensional gap created by the rift.

Well, no need to drag this out.

Isiah’s soul found itself in the body of a saintess from a medieval fantasy-like world.

‘But’ the original owner of that body had already died, leaving the saintess’ body soulless.

Though he hadn’t yet fully grasped the situation, Isiah was initially excited, thinking he had somehow reincarnated into another world, just like in the subculture media he had seen.

At first, being a young man who had just finished his military service but still had a childish side, he didn’t find it too strange that his gender had changed and that he was now in the body of a saintess.

But soon, Isiah realized there were four major problems.

First, Isiah hadn’t possessed the body of a living human saintess.

He had taken over the body of a saintess who had lost her soul in an accident, making her a dead body.

It was confusing enough for a man to suddenly become a woman, but on top of that, the body wasn’t even human anymore.

It was highly abnormal, a corpse, yet capable of wielding divine powers and miracles, powers that were distinctly holy and strange.

Second, in this world, the dead were not treated as humans.

No, it wasn’t just a matter of treatment—they were considered terrifying children of Satan.

In the world Isiah came from, the term “dead” simply referred to someone who had passed away.

But in this world, the dead were synonymous with zombies, undead, ghouls, liches, and other hellish, grotesque beings that were beyond human comprehension.

They were creatures that deserved to be exterminated, pests that couldn’t truly die even if killed.

Fortunately, the saintess’ body was incredibly beautiful, with an angelic appearance and a completely intact mind, so there were no visible signs that she was a “dead” person.

Third, this dead saintess was a living natural disaster, a biological weapon, and a terrible catastrophe just by existing.

Isiah was human.

He possessed rationality, conscience, and a modern sense of ethics.

Though he wasn’t overly saintly, he wasn’t a rotten or trashy person either.

He was an average person, one who felt sympathy for the poor and the unfortunate, and naturally harbored compassion when seeing people in hardship.

And lastly, the fourth point: this damn fantasy world wasn’t some peaceful, happy fairy tale.

It was a brutal, bleak, apocalyptic cesspool, worse than the most grotesque game imaginable.

The world was infested with monsters that were the very embodiment of evil and catastrophe.

These creatures frequently trampled human cities and villages as casually as kicking stones in a yard.

Humans in this world were worth less than dust, their lives overshadowed by constant wars, strife, sorrow, anger, and hatred.

And human Isiah did nothing.

The greatest achievements in Isiah’s life were completing military service and getting into a good university by luck with stellar exam results.

He was an adult by age, but not yet fully matured in mind.

So even though Isiah had immense holy power, miracles, and unbelievable physical abilities due to the Saintess of the Dead’s body, he spent the first year in hiding.

He set up a home in an abandoned hunter’s cabin deep in the forest where he woke up, living as far away from humans as possible.

Ah, Isiah was not only terrified of the harsh, survival-of-the-fittest world, but there was a more fundamental reason he stayed away from people.

It was the “hunger” he inevitably felt as a dead person.

Human hunger wasn’t that bad.

Even if a person skipped a meal a day, it wasn’t a huge deal.

A healthy person could even fast for a week or maybe two without significant damage to their body.

But Isiah was different.

The hunger of the Saintess of the Dead was completely different.

Isiah had never known hunger to be such a severe and terrifying torment.

Even the word “pain” didn’t suffice.

Despite only experiencing a brief moment of hunger, it felt like enduring a year without food or water, an unbearable craving that tormented him.

And while this craving could be satisfied with food, ordinary food wasn’t enough.

At first, Isiah managed to stave off hunger with roasted mushrooms from the forest and fish he caught from a lake (he was strong enough that just a few punches to the lake would make fish float to the surface).

He also sometimes survived on deer meat from animals that had died from unknown causes.

Instinctively, Isiah knew.

If this “hunger” manifested while he was among humans, something terrible would happen.

Isiah didn’t want to harm humans, nor did he want to devour them.

No matter how terrible his hunger was, he refused to give up his humanity.

“Ah…No. I can’t…not again!”

But Isiah quickly realized he was reaching his limit.

After nearly passing out from hunger, he would wake up to find his hands and mouth covered in blood, with the corpse of a deer or some animal in front of him.

The intervals between these episodes of losing control and devouring animals were becoming shorter.

Isiah felt so wretched and frightened that he eventually gave up even the thought of venturing outside.

If I went to a human village in this condition, with this mindset, I might actually eat someone.

Eventually, he could even smell human villages far away.

When humans entered the forest unknowingly, gathering herbs or hunting, Isiah would sometimes catch the sweet, tempting scent of human flesh.

Every time, he had to bite his hands until they bled to maintain his sanity.

When he lost control for the tenth time and devoured the body of a wild animal, Isiah locked himself in the cabin.

Luckily, from the moment he possessed the body of the Saintess of the Dead, Isiah had full control over her powerful miracles and holy energy.

Maybe it was because of the memories stored in the saintess’ brain cells? Or perhaps from that moment on, Isiah suspected that the saintess’ soul and his own might have fused.

In any case, Isiah used her strongest miracle and holy energy to create a barrier that locked him in the cabin.

If I don’t do this, I might actually eat a person.

I could turn into a monster that invades human villages and devours them indiscriminately.

Just the smell of human flesh makes me lose my mind.

This time, I managed to devour a wild animal.

But next time…?

What if the next time I lose control and open my eyes, I’m holding a part of a human in my hands instead of an animal’s?

What scared Isiah the most wasn’t the act of eating human flesh, but the possibility that he wouldn’t feel any guilt after doing it.

Isiah was determined to starve to death and committed suicide by creating the barrier.

But to get straight to the point, the barrier was eventually broken.

Isiah had smelled human blood from a very close distance.

The barrier was meant to bind and confine, but it couldn’t block the smell of human blood and flesh.

As a result, Isiah smelled human blood coming from a location very close to the cabin, accompanied by a loud explosion. He prayed desperately for it to go away.

His prayer turned into a plea, the plea became anger, and the anger quickly turned into hunger.

And then, Isiah lost consciousness due to the overwhelming hunger.

No, he had become a famished undead, having abandoned his rationality and morality.

Despite the powerful barrier, it crumbled entirely under Isiah’s overwhelming craving and monstrous strength.

Isiah burst out of the cabin and dashed toward the source of the smell of blood and flesh.

By that point, his rationality had already half melted away.

He charged forward, breaking trees and not bothering to assess his surroundings.

When he arrived at the source of the smell, he found a group of humans lying dead.

And a towering giant-like monster, clad in armor and wielding a massive sword, was single-handedly slaughtering an army of humans.

He later found out that this was a creature often referred to as a mid-boss in games, or a direct subordinate of the Demon King, known as the “Titan of Wrath,” Atalyd.

The knights clad in dazzling armor fighting against Atalyd were the first humans Isiah had seen since arriving in this world.

Whenever Atalyd swung his sword, dozens of knights fell dead.

Even so, the knights continued to charge at him.

Naturally, the hunger-driven Isiah didn’t care about any of this.

He had no concern for why they were fighting or what their circumstances were.

All Isiah wanted was to satisfy his hunger.

Drooling at the scent of blood and flesh, Isiah stormed the battlefield.

The monstrous aura and pressure emanating from Isiah were already so overwhelming that ordinary humans would pass out just from being near him. Both Atalyd and the knights who had been fighting him froze at the sudden arrival of this anomaly.

Blood, flesh, meat, scent, hunger.

At that moment, Isiah’s mind was filled with nothing else.

And he charged at the largest and most appetizing piece of meat he could find.

“Kyahhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

A beast-like scream.

However, the result was that Atalyd’s head was shattered in an instant by Isiah.

As the massive body of Atalyd collapsed to the ground, Isiah, oblivious to the stunned knights behind him, began tearing into the titan’s body.

He didn’t roast or butcher it.

The rich, intoxicating smell of blood and life. Isiah was drunk on it, lost in the ecstasy of the first taste of divine flesh.

He reached a state of “bliss” in an instant.

It felt as though everything in the world belonged to Isiah, an all-powerful, euphoric sensation.

A smile spread across his face as if he were floating through the sky.

It was as if a lethal dose of drugs had been injected directly into his brain, causing his brain cells to burst with a euphoric rush.

It was the first time Isiah had ever felt anything like this.

So happy, so ecstatic.

Isiah devoured the flesh of his first sentient being, lost in bliss.

When he finally came to his senses, he realized he was lying in a luxurious bed covered in white sheets, waking up in an opulent room.

Where am I?

Why am I here?

He remembered killing and eating that strange titan-like being.

But everything else felt wrong.

Waking up in a room so grand it seemed like it belonged to royalty in this fantasy world was enough to tell him something had gone terribly wrong.

-Creek.

“Are you awake?”

At the sound of a voice, Isiah jumped in surprise and looked toward the door, seeing a figure enter.

“A beauty who sleeps so much, it must be true. Well, I sleep a lot too.”

“…..Who are you?”

“How strange. I thought I was well-known, but I guess not enough yet. I must work harder.”

The woman who entered had striking blonde hair and wore a red cape, adorned with luxurious clothing and accessories. She exuded an air of commanding beauty.

“My name is Menelapie Hailam. I’m the emperor of this land.”

And so, on the other side of the world, Isiah formed her first connection with a lofty figure—the Empress.

Now that I think about it, Isiah surprisingly had good fortune with people.

In this other world, her first connection was an emperor, and upon her return, she managed to form ties with an S-rank hunter.

Whether this was luck or misfortune was not something easily judged.