Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is the second chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Synopsis
When the Corpse God was still a human child in the Other World. his parents sold him to the royal palace's sorcerers. He studied necromancy and was dispatched to various battlefields as a necromancer over the decades—until the kingdom itself eventually crumbled—never realizing that he himself was turning into the Undead.
 * Flashback

Wanting nothing but peace and quiet, he withdrew to a secluded coal mine for some time. When five hungry children took refuge there, he offered them a rib cage full of fruit and earned their trust; the group would live together in harmony for several years, with the eldest girl falling in love with the Corpse God as a young woman.

The Geldwood church, believing the children to be corrupted via the necromancer, granted them 'salvation' by impaling the four younger ones and delivering the young woman a fatal wound. With his loved ones dead, the Corpse God took his revenge on the Geldwood soldiers who had killed them and would wreak revenge on the organization for a hundred years thereafter.

In time, the abandoned coal mine would warp into a labyrinth of 'writhing undead'. There, he spend centuries waiting for someone capable of killing him to arrive; when such a person did, the Corpse God succeeded in the secret art of reincarnation.

Reflecting on his past, the Corpse God stares at Misaki Sakimiya and reaffirms his determination to survive, for the sake of his peaceful life. He wonders what continent he is on and how many years it took for his reincarnation to work; he had expected to be reborn in the corpse of one of his fallen kinsman, and thus finds his current circumstances strange.
 * Present

For now, he decides his first priority is extracting information from the assassin Misaki, still impaled against the wall. Acknowledging her skills, he summons his magic and prepares to overpower her; however, when she does not react, he is stunned to realize that she is dead. Confused, he uses one of his skeletal hands to shake her body upside-down - but he finds no restorative elixirs on her person. Compared to his hoe country's assassins, who could take 'twenty rounds', that she died simply by being impaled through the stomach once is hard for him to believe.

More concerning, however, is the fact that he will not be able to prove he was defending himself against an assassin if she truly is dead; his peaceful life will be over before it began should 'the guards' pursue him. This, coupled with the embarrassment from realizing he said "now...let's pick up where we left off" to a dead body, leads him to bury his face in his hands and groan.

At his desk, Takumi Kuruya—still monitoring the situation via a drone—grips his head and lets out a groan of his own. When Clarissa Kuraki calls him to ask why the mission is taking longer than usual, he sends her the video data from his drone and asks her to confirm its unbelievable contents.

The chapter flashes back to Misaki as a young girl, smiling with innocent joy as her mother picks her off the floor. Her parents remark that she is always smiling, and that they hope she finds happiness with those whose happiness is earned from her smiles. A few years later into her childhood, Misaki witnesses a man stab her parents to death. She seeks out this man once she becomes an assassin in her own right; while the man recognizes her as the assassin Zaki, he does not remember her from when she was a little girl.

As Misaki shoots a few nails into his hand with nail gun, the man warns her that she will not 'get away' with this even if she is Clarissa's favorite. Misaki replies that Clarissa specifically asked Misaki to kill him, since he has been killing too many innocents as of late. She asks him if she looks as happy as he did 'back then', triggering his memory of her, and he asks if she kills other killers out of some sort of revenge or justice kick.

Misaki denies his accusation of hypocrisy as she shoots a few more nails into his other hand, explaining that his laughter and amusement while killing her parents had simply made her wonder if the act of killing could really be "all that fun." With that said, she asks him if he thinks she kills "good people" and if he is a good person. He hesitates, tries to affirm that he is, but cannot finish his sentence as Misaki slams a pipe into his mouth and asserts that he is not.

In an immediate flashback, Misaki stares at a photo of Polka Shinoyama at Youtoukorou and informs Clarissa that she wants to take 'the job'. Clarissa points out that Polka is "just a kid," but Misaki replies that she "doesn't mind"—she has already achieved her life's goal, and now wants to find out "just how fucked up [she] can really be."

Misaki successfully carries out Polka's assassination, and later on reflects that she had no problem murdering him—which means she can kill both the good and the wicked without qualms. As she loiters on the chain-link fence on a building's rooftop, she muses that someone like her should not be allowed to live, that no one will ever be truly happy, and that the only thing she has yet to test is whether or not she can kill herself.

So saying, she steps off the chain-link fence. However, when her cell-phone rings, she grabs the chainlinks and flips up to the top of the fence once more to answer Takumi's call. She informs him that her life was "reaching its climax" when he rang, and looks up to find a drone when he says that he saw. He continues that she cannot die without finishing her work, informing her that the kid whose throat she slit is currently walking the streets like nothing happened.

Surprised, she asks if she really was not able to kill him after all. He confirms that her job is not over yet.

In the present, Misaki hazily recalls a conversation she once had with Takumi and realizes that her life has genuinely flashed before her eyes. She opens said eyes to find the Corpse God staring at her, and he high-fives the drone over their 'success'. With her memory returning, Misaki shamelessly yanks up the hem of her skirt to check her stomach. Despite her clear memory of being skewered, her stomach is smooth and unbroken.

The drone shorts out at her exposed chest, though she swiftly pulls her shirt down and asks why she is still alive. Catching the drone as it falls, the Corpse God mumbles that she was more 'reborn via magic' than returned to life. Misaki cocks her head, looking over at several men aiming handguns their way, and then asks what is going on.

Clarissa approaches them, flanked by two guards, and Misaki asks in surprise why she is here. Pulling Misaki close to her chest, Clarissa affirms that she cannot find a pulse and that Misaki is cold to the touch. With a smile and a thumbs up, she confirms that Misaki is completely dead. The Corpse God adds that in Misaki's language, one would probably call her a zombie. Misaki is left nonplussed.