Chapter 281
Chapter 281
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 281
Chapter Title: One Empire, Three Legends (40)
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‘...Fucking hell.’
A secret last stand that would never be recorded in any history.
They had been abandoned. For the sake of humanity’s victory.
‘Is this what you wanted me to see?’
They hadn’t cut the bridge to stop the undead. With far-sight magic, they could observe how this last stand would unfold, and they knew there would be plenty of time to destroy the bridge even after these people retreated.
What those who severed the bridge had sought to block were the ‘surviving refugees.’
Tens of thousands, perhaps close to hundreds of thousands of starving refugees.
Those who had barely survived were a plague without malice, no different from bombs dropped on the territory.
There was no way a territory in the midst of war could have enough food to feed hundreds of thousands of hungry refugees.
These people, who had fled with only their families and a few valuables, would turn into hundreds of thousands of beggars the moment they arrived, starving once more.
Imagine a child who survived that hellish undead horde right before your eyes starving to death. As a father, what wouldn’t you do? Even if soldiers with spears and swords stood guard, beyond them thin gruel would be boiling away.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees would become hundreds of thousands of beggars, soon transforming into hundreds of thousands of bandits and rioters.
From the moment the territory’s defenses were breached, they ceased to be surviving humans and became another disaster that had outlived the rest.
If there had been time, it might have been possible to take them all in. If they’d had the time to gather resources scattered across the empire and reorganize, they might not have resorted to such extreme measures. There was no way they’d plan a massacre like this out of joy.
But with no leeway to buffer hundreds of thousands of refugees, they made their choice in the end.
For humanity’s victory, from a military standpoint, they all had to die. The empire herded them into the restricted Dallus territory and made them collapse the only bridge with their own hands.
『For the next time. As you said, a rational choice. As a commander, as a human.』
What she couldn’t endure was feeling Roharam’s arrangements in every single one of those events.
The war horse that had remained for her. Just one.
Twenty paladins, enough to break through the weak vanguard undead before the front lines were fully formed.
A clear path of light guiding her. An escape route.
Humans could do that. Advance through mistakes. Even commit horrific acts—that’s what made them human.
But a god? Her god, Roharam, why?
『So... for the first time in my life, I refused the Light’s Guidance.』
With every word from the witch, the scenery in the illusion shifted.
The saintess refusing escape and sinking to the ground right there.
Realizing they couldn’t pierce the rushing waters, turning back to the castle, then spotting the saintess and the refugees rushing toward her.
The undead swarming uncontrollably.
And blood. Endless slaughter.
“So that’s how... you were captured by the Undead Lord.”
『...Everyone must have said that. The saintess captured by the Undead Lord after a fierce struggle fell to corruption from that unclean power.』
Click.
Like pressing a shutter, the screen changed.
Finally, to that form. The place where they had first entered the witch’s domain, the saintess left alone atop the hill of rotting corpses, facing the Undead Lord.
『No power, not even from one called the Undead Lord, could corrupt the saintess’s soul. It is a fragment of god, complete in itself.』
The Lord, his gaze beyond the silence like his name, quietly looked down at the saintess who had lost her light and slumped, then passed by.
Leaving behind only one ghostly war horse for her to ride.
The saintess gazed at the corpse-covered plain with eyes drained of color.
Corpses already rotting from the Lord’s deathly aura.
Rivers turned pitch black where the blood that formed streams had seeped in, staining the river that had blocked them.
The Light’s Guidance still urging her to survive.
In that bizarre clarity, Maria recalled a secret of the Five Great Orders she had once heard.
Why those five orders were exceptionally strong among the countless benevolent gods.
It was because, to intervene in the human realm, they had discarded part of their perfection.
『A choice. A perfect being cannot project its power onto an imperfect world, so they carved away at their own existence and inserted the contradiction.』
Embracing imperfection and contradiction, they chose to demote themselves from perfect divine beings to imperfect ones, allowing the Five Benevolent Gods to intervene in human lives and share their divine power—essentially part of their own being—with believers.
Light shines on all, but always leaves shadows behind those illuminated.
Unyielding courage stole from them the ‘courage to let go,’ the resolve to choose life by releasing what they held.
For a bountiful harvest in one place, famine struck elsewhere.
Wisdom, as it accumulated, blinded the sage’s eyes.
And mercy, faced with all this, remained mere inaction.
『There was no corruption from the start. A saintess doesn’t fall that way. I simply made the same choice as them. To confront the contradiction hidden behind blind faith.』
The saintess had only made a choice in that moment. To turn from the Light’s Guidance. Because the Undead Lord had withdrawn his attention, even though all his minions parted ways before her, she mounted the ghostly war horse and rode to his side.
The souls abandoned by the god who chose her—all souls tainted by deathly aura, unable to become stars and left on earth, the twenty rotting corpses, the vengeful spirits—she embraced them all in her arms.
With that twisted affection, she vowed to return all they had taken and right this world of contradictory gods.
『All of that was my choice.』
In the illusion of the corpse hill, the witch said this while embracing all the rotting heads in her arms.
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After that, she moved faithfully as a member of the undead legion. As the Lord’s right hand.
Originally a bridge between humans and gods, she understood souls on a level humans couldn’t reach, and her noble soul was a feast for mighty evil spirits.
Like white drawing paper stained with ink, her black magic grew stronger day by day. Even offering cruel living sacrifices, she never hesitated.
It was merely accepting them into her embrace, not sending them away.
『As a saintess. As someone who was once a saintess. I can’t accept a world where the chosen of contradictory gods become stars, while the unchosen wander cold earth until they fade. If there are no stars for them, I’ll become their star. A massive star embracing every soul in the world. An ark heading toward it. Not as bright and warm as Roharam’s light, perhaps cold and grim like a mound of corpses! But a star that can hold them all!!』
Shhh—
『For that. For them, I’ll do anything.』
With every touch of her hand, the rotting corpses in the illusion seeped into her body.
This was no mere illusion. It visualized the vow of one who was once a saintess, clearly a fragment of god, however small.
‘The witch’s sacrifice ritual mass-produces cursed souls. According to the Church of Brilliance, souls distant from grace cannot become stars. And those left on earth, the unchosen souls... all end up in the witch’s embrace.’
And that twisted fragment of god, after decades of effort, succeeded in claiming part of the ownerless divinity—the power that had remained, bringing prosperity to the empire.
For one sole goal. To become the star for all herself, a ‘fair god’ that couldn’t exist in this world.
The illusion fully absorbed into the witch’s body, leaving only the Professor and the witch in the dark, damp space.
『When I heard a true saint had finally appeared, one touched by the god’s will, I wanted to talk to you.』
Rustle.
A bare foot covered in rot and pus took a step forward.
『What does ‘He’ say?』
Splat.
The saintess’s form sloughed off like shed skin, and the princess’s face opened its mouth.
『Did He say that since I’ve finally become an eyesore in His sight, to send you to punish me?』
Drip, drip!
That princess form rotted away too, new flesh endlessly growing, rotting, repeating to swell her body.
Finally, the witch’s true form revealed. Her inner essence.
『Am I still not to His liking, so He sent you—a false saint with not a shred of divine power—to convey His contempt to me...?』
The mother of the abandoned, embracing souls steeped in curses and decay.
Amid the curses burrowing chaotically into his mind with her breath.
Prick!
Like a pinch to wake from sleep, a touch prodded his inner self.
[Shell, that’s far enough. Go any deeper and you’ll go mad too.]
‘...Yeah. I’ve heard enough.’
While listening to her story, he’d become bound in the illusion somehow, his real body and soul disconnected, unable to move.
But in exchange, he’d read the deepest depths of the witch’s heart—a fair trade.
『Charging blindly after god’s will without divine power or special strength... You were just another child discarded for the plans of these contradictory gods... Poor thing. It’s okay. It’s okay. I can embrace everyone. Come here...』
Toward the unresponsive Professor came the witch’s embrace, filled with twisted affection. Beautiful and lascivious, yet maternally compassionate, dyed in curses to make one entity.
Twitch.
At the tip of his stiffening tongue, an unbearably rich flavor bloomed, something pulling from his toes to the crown of his head toward his tongue.
...Crunch.
It was as if every cell in his body broke free of his head’s commands to focus on it. His utterly exhausted body, soul even bound, bit down, felt the pulsing elasticity, ground his teeth to the breaking point, finally exposing the innards.
Crunch—
Vision returned. The boundary of reality and illusion sharpened, his newly grown left hand tore away the rotting corpses wrapped around him, repeating growth and contraction.
Crunch, rip!
There he was, mindlessly tearing into something and eating. White flesh. Sleek, flowing white curves with blood-red lines snaking through like viper venom. Erotically beautiful, mouthwatering.
The final arrangement. For the future, since facing the final boss with his already tattered body offered no future anyway, he’d saved it, saved and saved until the brink of death! His ultimate combat power.
The reward from Storm Hill whose meaning he couldn’t grasp.
Edeorna’s severed arm.
Even long detached from the body, it retained vitality like the living. The thing he’d feared pulling from sub-space lest he devour it uncontrollably—he finally put it in his mouth.
“Aaah... Laturra. Thanks for the meal.”
He knew without testing. Mutant flesh that regenerated by consuming blood. This bizarre body had fully recovered by ingesting the finest cells, called the queen’s avatar.
No, beyond recovery—the overflowing energy rampaged through every part of his body!
[Deep breaths, deep breaths! Your mental state dropped to rock bottom gripped by the witch, then shot too high in an instant! You’re losing it! Get a grip!]
“Hoo, hoo, I know that much, aaaaaa!!!!”
Heat surged to the top of his head. Left like this, he’d go mad like in the borderlands.
‘If excessive recovery is the problem... then burn it off!’
Crack, drip, crunch!
At the Professor’s will, the overflowing regenerative power throughout his body converged to one point, his right arm, splitting it with uncontrollable force.
Spurt, whoosh!
From the split gaps erupted his white flames—from god knows where—bursting through.
『Not divine power... Not aura, not mana, endlessly mixed...』
“I never even heard that Roharam bastard’s voice once, hoo—!”
Crunch, crunch, crack...!
Wielding massive power as efficiently as possible.
Using methods for powers he’d mastered himself and knowledge of martial arts etched in his mind, his body sank low, hugging the ground.
Like a catapult before launch. Using his sturdy planted left hand as a brake, he pulled back his white-flame-wrapped right arm, further back.
“So if you wanna ask about His gaze or whatever bullshit, go ask Him yourself.”
—Drop.
And to the critical point.
Like hurling his body, like throwing a javelin, his arm breached the critical point, sucked into the witch’s domain of mist and curses.
With no faith, unable to comprehend over a century of the witch’s pain, this was his only way.
Before she devoured the world and doomed herself, forcibly ending the witch’s endless despair.
The mist scattered, the curses faded, and a tiny, rice-grain-sized light seeped into the Tower of Curses.
“...Laturra, Saintess. Sorry. This is the only way I know.”
[Ah, aaaaaa...]
For a few seconds, faint groans leaked from the witch’s true body pierced by that small light.
Through the curse mist blanketing the capital, a massive trail of light streaked in.
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