Chapter 168
Chapter 168
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 168
Chapter Title: Old Tale, Knight Commander and the World (3)
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“Escape?”
I couldn’t understand what he meant.
But before I could ask more, I thrust a plate toward him. It was dinner prepared by the most skilled cook among those I’d brought along.
Kisis didn’t even glance at the plate.
“Yeah. The moment we return to the capital, report it and start preparing an organized escape.”
“Eat first.”
“The mages draw up a dimensional transfer array and we slip out through it. They’ve honed it for ten years, so it won’t explode even if a bunch of people go through.”
“Eat.”
Thud!
Kisis swatted the dish away with a heavy hand.
I smoothly caught the flying dish with my left hand.
Not a single drop of food spilled.
Kisis stared at me in disbelief.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Encouraging you to eat.”
I meant it.
When I looked him straight in the eyes, his voice dropped.
“You don’t get the situation, do you?”
“If you really can’t stomach it, I’ll regurgitate some for you.”
I actually wanted to offer him a bath, too.
But that felt like truly crossing the line, so I was sticking to just the food. Honestly, I hadn’t been able to shake off my unease for two straight days. Slicing away his contamination had let me glimpse fragments of his ten years of life, which only made it worse.
Where the hell had he even gotten anything edible?
Hiding my inner thoughts behind a brazen expression, I held out the plate again.
“If you really don’t want it, I’ll seriously regurgitate.”
“You’re the puker who loves to bluff. Still getting called the World Tree’s ungrateful son?”
“I’ve heard ‘unfilial wretch,’ too. And keep the puking a secret from the juniors.”
Everyone knew I was the World Tree’s child. The golden eyes were our telltale sign.
But I stubbornly refused to use suction or regurgitation. That’s why those who hated me called me the World Tree’s ungrateful son. ‘Unfilial wretch’ was a recent upgrade. Guess ‘ungrateful’ wasn’t hitting hard enough anymore.
But isn’t it too much to call me an unfilial wretch just for not using the World Tree child traits?
Ungrateful might be fair game. Of course, my knights under my command couldn’t stomach the nickname either. I’d had to leap forward multiple times to hold back subordinates charging at anyone who dared use it on me.
But that wasn’t important right now.
Since he didn’t seem like he’d eat, I stood to suck it in and regurgitate.
That instant, Kisis lunged.
Thump!
“Hey, what’s your problem!”
“If he’s offering, you eat it.”
This madman was on a whole other level.
Normal people would just eat by now. Or at least quietly accept the regurgitation.
But this swordmaster prince hated things going anyone else’s way.
Kisis pinned me down and gripped my wrist.
I rolled my eyes and grumbled.
“You need palm contact for easy regurgitation.”
“You lot even suck in magical beasts?”
“Yes.”
So I figured there was still hope for this world.
Beast tamers had succeeded in taming some magical beasts, and we’d succeeded in sucking them in. We could purify the spreading contamination, and for beasts born from it, we could tame, kill, or suck them up. I didn’t want to believe Kisis’s words that this world was beyond saving.
Dimensional transfers and such mage nonsense were hard to grasp anyway.
Kisis crushed my hand in his grip.
I let out a sigh.
“I’ll regurgitate for you.”
Where had Cecil gone? The silent beauty of a mage. She was the only one who could appear at Kisis’s side unannounced, grab his neck, and teleport him to the capital.
Too scared to ask about the mage’s safety, I started regurgitating before the question could slip out.
Two days’ worth of missed meals while he slept.
“The ashes left after burning are no good for suction fodder.”
I didn’t understand the words he spat out with a sneer.
***
Day five since finding Kisis.
I finally understood his mutterings.
“Let’s go back.”
Amid shouts of “Call the mages!”, “Get out of the way!”, and “Bring water!”, I looked at my knights and said,
“To where the flames can’t reach.”
It was blue fire.
Dizzying heat blanketed the camp. Kisis wasn’t surprised. If anything, his eyes gleamed like he’d been waiting, coldly watching the blue flames that smothered the contamination. He must have foreseen this exact crisis.
Normal means probably wouldn’t extinguish it. It would devour everything in its path until the contamination ran out, then fizzle.
To cut off the fire’s path, I sliced away the contamination.
“Where’s Cecil?”
I finally asked the question I’d put off for days.
Kisis smirked and reached for his sword.
“Gone.”
“What?”
“She got dragged into the dimensional gate while opening it. Couldn’t bring her back.”
My face hardened.
Kisis kept his eyes fixed on the roaring blue flames.
“For ten years, I racked my brains for a way to evolve past that thing, but no solutions came. Magic doesn’t work. Holy power doesn’t work. It advances while burning contamination, and nothing can live where it’s passed.”
“That’s why the dimensional transfer talk…”
“You magic-illiterate would call it nonsense.”
The unit retreated.
To the point where Kisis and I had severed the contamination completely with our sword paths. The knights followed us in silence. Even when contamination spread faster, it hadn’t felt this hopeless. A few years back, we’d succeeded in breeding magical beasts, after all.
I’d actually rallied the knights with that very evidence.
Things are getting worse, but not that destructive.
We’re working on it, so the world won’t end…
“Isn’t there a way?”
A rookie knight broke the silence.
I turned to him, but Kisis snorted without looking back.
“Like always, we’ve found ways before… There must be something this time, too, right?”
“Stop dispensing blessings, and hope might appear.”
The prince muttered in a low voice.
“But that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
A state we couldn’t return from.
I knew it was impossible, too. Obviously. Who would give that up? No matter how much we petitioned, it would never be fully eradicated. Even now, with recipients limited, desperate struggles to obtain blessings caused endless incidents.
Was it from tampering with nature’s untouchable order?
Anyway, as I was consoling the rookie knight with “We’ll have to try,” Kisis muttered beside me.
“Too late.”
I barely caught the quiet grumble meant for himself.
“That arrogant old fart will see I was right.”
***
Grand Duke Jacques understood Kisis’s claim.
Hours later, the duke emerged from his office with a terrifying expression and said to me,
“Assemble the mages.”
“Grand Duke.”
“We’re way past late already.”
I read the crisis in his blazing voice.
The prime minister, with his neatly combed white hair, glared at me with burning eyes.
“It’s the calculated result. Even starting organized escape prep now, not everyone in the capital can make it out. But dawdling makes it worse! Call the archmage holed up in the tower first! Assemble the mages!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m off to His Majesty.”
As I snapped to attention, the prime minister told his attendant,
“Right now.”
We moved fast.
After that, a flurry of events unfolded. The imperial family mobilized. They never took Prime Minister Jacques’s words lightly. Already too late, but the leader heeded his brilliant subordinate and son’s advice without delay.
No hesitation after the hopeless report.
The capital moved to survive.
Even from his sickbed, the emperor issued nonstop orders. The crown prince and princess halted their power struggle and joined hands. Nobles forgot age-old feuds and clasped hands with enemies. What choice did they have? Burn with the world, and power and life alike vanish.
Every nation’s strength focused on escaping this place. Mages slowing the contamination’s approach to the capital, mages preparing dimensional magic arrays. Kyle, Ray, and I slashed contamination alongside them, led the squads, and quelled disturbances.
Hecate oversaw internal security and organized escape teams.
Meanwhile, the world beyond the capital burned.
“The World Tree’s probably burning, too.”
Ray muttered, watching the plains—once dazzling with golden horizons beyond the capital’s mountains—go up in flames.
I probed my sixth sense for the World Tree’s presence.
Golden spores cascading from the tree.
“Not all of it yet.”
The vivid presence I’d felt sharply whenever checking my heart was now faint.
“You feel it, too.”
“The fire’s speeding up.”
Ray didn’t answer, but Kyle, slumped on the ground, muttered,
“At this rate, it’ll hit the capital in under fourteen days.”
Our hands were caked in bright red contamination. We slashed and slashed at the stuff covering the ground to buy time. When it all felt futile, I thought of Kisis’s ten years.
Ten years.
He’d accomplished much in that time. Learned the fire burned contamination and scorched the world. Confirmed no magic, no swordmaster’s blade, no holy water could quench it. Calculated that the capital would fall to contamination—or flames sprouting from it—even if not overrun.
Once calculated, he didn’t despair. He found a way to survive.
A way for us to live, even abandoning the world.
Through countless sacrifices.
Kisis’s unit had been wiped out, leaving only him.
“If we’d thrown more manpower in when contamination first started, would the outcome have changed?”
Ray muttered to himself.
I pondered his words, then slowly shook my head.
If we hadn’t stopped the blessings sickening the tree, it would’ve just been a matter of time.
“No.”
Kyle, thinking the same, answered for me.
“We’d have seen this sight eventually.”
Blazing plains.
We gazed at the reed fields consumed by blue fire.
The capital at our backs came to mind.
Citizens packed belongings, knights directed them, Grand Duke Jacques repeated incomprehensible calculations hundreds of times to input destination counts the moment the dimensional array activated. Kisis smirked while advising folk, then attended the emperor; prince and princess rode about confirming transfer prep.
“So we keep fighting to survive, holding onto hope till the end.”
Everyone was trying to live.
That’s life’s essence.
“The dimensional array’s perfect, so we should escape smoothly like this.”
I muttered with desperate wishful thinking.
Forgetting the world had never once granted my earnest prayers.
I stood for a long while with old friends, watching the beautiful, rippling flames.
***
Three days later.
The fire engulfed the capital.