Chapter 285
Chapter 285
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 285
Chapter Title: One Empire, Three Legends (44)
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The battlefield was racing toward its conclusion.
Sword flashes slashed through the heavens and earth like lines drawn across the world. Axes blazing with death returned the undead who had crossed forbidden boundaries firmly back to the realm of the dead.
The World Tree's blessings descended upon the cursed land, and the passages from that weathered tome—chronicling the history of "magic breaking" from its origins to the present—dissected the structure of black magic.
Lightning storms ceaselessly devoured the rain of undead, while fragmented ancient ritual golems rose once more at their master's call, sweeping through the streets teeming with the living.
A single moment's lapse. Even the tiniest gap, like the eye of a needle, would sprout curse towers like bamboo shoots in an instant, blooming relentlessly, spreading beyond the capital into the empire itself—creating another ferocious star that would devour all those engulfed by curses, the baptism of the undead.
This curse had long surpassed the disaster stage. If etched into the annals of history, it might even be deemed the "Extinction" stage. Yet the seeds of calamity raining down across the entire continent were being perfectly contained by just six oathbound warriors.
And into the skies above that chaotic battlefield.
The man, launched like a cannon shell, soared beyond it all into the heavens.
Brushing past the violet mist that constricted his lungs and the cursed ones plummeting earthward with screams indistinguishable as agony or ecstasy, he finally broke through.
Above the clouds. Beyond that boundary dividing sky from sky, into the ferocious star.
Boom—
Professor's eyes, piercing the clouds, at last beheld the witch shrouded in violet aurora—the origin and end of it all.
A half-formed ferocious star. At its horrific core, where humans lay chaotically jumbled, sat a woman with hands clasped in prayer, encircled by purple petals.
『Ahh.... come here.... no more.... no one left behind....』
Clouded eyes and the repetition of meaningless words.
The witch had lost most of her reason the instant she achieved deification.
Professor kicked off the tentacles extending from the ferocious star and charged toward her without hesitation.
‘Probably because she sought to become a perfect god.’
The five great benevolent gods who had shared their power with the earthly realm. Even they had warped their own perfection to meddle in mortal fates. For her—who had ascended to divinity by absorbing the empire's power that was not her own, defying the natural order with curses—true function as a complete god had been impossible from the start.
A disordered mind and body. Traces of self-inflicted wounds filled that unraveled form, and Professor summoned strength into both arms.
The scars were not fresh, newly healed flesh. They were ancient wounds, weathered like those etched into an old man's skin. That body belonged to the princess the witch had seized, so these could not be marks from the princess's lifetime.
The body is the vessel of the soul, and the soul is the mirror of the body. Likely, scars engraved upon the witch's soul had seeped into her flesh, leaving those traces.
Black magic. The life force leaking through wounds in the soul. An unholy discipline that twisted that power—which should have dissipated—and imprinted it upon the world.
Aldrich had said that while black mages were often portrayed as wicked, they had not begun as such horrors.
‘Black magic is the art of mending the gaps in a shattered soul by patching in evil spirits, grudges, and the like, then wielding the leaking life force through their hands. Advancing in black magic means the evil spirits' domain expands within the soul, converting more life force into black mana.’
‘Thus, the higher the black mage climbs, the more they must contend with the evil spirits devouring their ever-shrinking soul. Even those with superior willpower who overcome it cannot escape becoming ever more akin to those spirits.’
‘A black mage is, in the end, merely the process by which an evil spirit burrowing into a human soul evolves into a living one. No matter how grand the soul or mind, it is inevitable. Their foe is the spirit fattened on that very greatness.’
That was the fall as the world described it. And Saint Maria had defiled everyone her touch reached with curses, drawing them into her soul.
She must have sensed her own transformation.
When the carriage that had given a lift to a stranger woman carried passengers who began rotting alive, screaming in torment as they burrowed into her.
When the humble, warm village where she had spent months was engulfed in flames, their melting souls forcing their way inside her.
When all that pain and resentment pierced the soul that had once shone like the sun, and she beheld herself dancing amid a bloody sea of agony and despair.
Each glimpse of her changing self tore her soul as if ripped by a jagged blade, and in those rents, the evil spirits she herself had birthed took root.
The black mage kinder than any other, who could thus harbor more grudges than any before her.
The witch, Mea Maria.
Her divinity was little more than the desperate thrashings of one with nowhere left to turn.
Her final proof of her own benevolence. Fallen and defiled though she was, if she could become a star together with them all—even one that shone not like Venus but so hideous none could bear to look upon it.
True to the vow she had made that day with light at her back. If she could become a perfect star, sharing equal radiance with every soul.
『I.... me.... aaaah....』
White light bloomed at the fingertips of the witch bereft of reason, and the corpses blanketing the ferocious star like its hide swarmed greedily toward it.
The gruesome crunch of flesh and bone pulverizing. Overlapping, crumbling, their irregular forms woven into spears by stems of curse flowers. Pale shreds of meat and blood mingled, overlapped, layered upon layer until they formed a glossy black mass.
A spear forged on the pillar of unparalleled benevolence, shaped by boundless malice. It formed in her grasp and launched toward the final obstacle to her desperate wish.
Like the countless starlights mocking her. Like the moonlight scorning her shabby, grotesque ferocious star. Toward the man who turned his back to it all, charging straight at her.
『Let it go.... let.... it go.... Ro Haram.... please....』
In a plea as innocent as a child's, the spear bearing the star's power rocketed skyward.
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Curse flower petals scattered in the wind. His spirit heightened to perceive even the crumbling motes of dust. Professor spread both arms toward that spear—the very essence of the god called Mea Maria—and poured every last ember of the white flame, the aura coursing through his veins, into them.
Crack-crack, fwoosh!
Like lava erupting from fissured earth, white flames surged from the splits in his outer shell.
He could feel it was no power that grew easier with use. His magic, Blood Armor, had fused so seamlessly with his body that it naturally reinforced him without thought, bolstering weak durability and deflecting impacts.
Magic was the power to comprehend the world and recreate it.
Aura was the power to reject the world and impose oneself upon it.
Opposing forces by nature. Thus, the moment he ignited aura's flames, the body wielding them crumbled under the same destructive force.
‘When I unleashed aura at full power inside the tower, my arm shearing clean off was for that reason.’
A technique verging on suicide—if mishandled, it would incinerate his Blood Armor entirely, exposing his fragile body to the foe.
Yet Professor summoned aura across his entire form without a second's pause.
‘If she's a star, the least I can do is be a meteor to match.’
—Kwaaaaa!
In the hush where even the wind held its breath. The star's spear lanced toward the heavens, meeting the blazing white meteor.
Kwadududuk!
The instant the black spear tip grazed his chest, Professor drove his splayed arms into its shaft.
“Krgh.... uuuuuugh!”
Power so vastly superior it defied resistance. He had poured everything in, but against a god's might—even an imperfect star—it fell short.
His fingertips gouged the spear, and by the length of those nail marks, it pierced him through, shoving him upward, beyond the sky.
“Uuuugh, uuuuuugh!!”
The witch and her ferocious star receded. Upward into the deep blue, into the dark realm of the stars.
His body ascending endlessly skyward with the spear. Professor channeled every shred of aura dwelling within him through his spear-jammed fingertips.
Push it back. Push it back! End it here—this accursed tale, this wretched story where no one finds joy... end it!
Kwaak!
At last, the moment his nails met the spear's core in his unyielding grasp. Professor superheated even the congealing droplets of blood, wrenching the spear from his chest.
—Kwaaaa!
The spear that had impaled his heart, soaked in his blood, blazed like a pillar of white. He clenched until his molars ground to dust, but this was the limit. Barely holding, barely scattering the aftermath.
Crick.... plop....
His body, incinerated by aura expended to its utmost. The Blood Armor binding muscle to muscle, skin to skin—all charred away by the flames. His crumbling flesh, on the verge of total collapse, could only dangle from the pillar-like spear.
Yet at the spear's heart. Breaching the husk of clotted malice, the instant his two hands met there. Professor—who had never once gazed upon him, just as he had never spared him a glance—reached out to that one.
“Faith, belief—not worth a speck of dust.... but just this once, lend your aid.”
Closer to him than any before, now. Laden with desperate yearning.
The hands that met at the spear's core. He clasped them together like a prayer.
“....She's your daughter. You made her this way.”
Latura. Ro Haram. Thy grace, oh Light.
.
.
.
.
.
And. In the vast expanse of the stars. Like a supernova's birth, a blinding radiance erupted.
Under normal circumstances, that alone would have rent his body asunder. The mana cloaking his exterior and the aura within—both would have rebelled against that sightless blaze and detonated.
But now.
Having poured every ounce to the dregs, his utterly hollowed core posed no barrier to divinity.
That force defying heaven's will did not merely mend his disintegrating flesh—it surged through his fingertips into the witch's spear, which he clutched with all he had.
A miracle granted only at the final instant, born of burning all to fuel it.
Crunch, creak, crrrack—
Paang!
The spear's cursed husk shattered against the divine torrent. What remained: the immense divinity within, the saint's faint lingering benevolence. And the saint, body hunched tight, hands buried to the hilt in the colossal spear of light.
“Huuuup, huuuuuuugh—ugrrrrrk.....!”
Amid euphoria searing his brain, breath stilled. Power gathered as if to immolate himself, amassed and amassed again, until the saint's flesh-and-hide trigger reached critical tension.
Hwaaaaa—
.
.
.
.
.
Crunch.
“LaturAAAAAAAAAA!!!!”
Kwaaaaaa!
A brilliant comet plummeted onto the crimson ferocious star blanketing the capital's skies.
....Plop. Plip plop.
Ruuuumble—
Beyond his own power's limit, having expended even the borrowed might, Professor's falling gaze caught the light-spear-impaled ferocious star in freefall.
“If only.... someone were there to catch it....”
Darkness descended upon his fraying consciousness, that sight his final vision.
In that blackness, he thought he glimpsed a strange light—like a tiny firefly, yet majestic as a sunset. It bathed him in gentle warmth before fading away.
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“Hup!”
Slash!
Silver sword aura erupted, cleaving a horde of obstructing monsters in twain at once.
The city beneath the castle not merely aflame—the very ground twisted into an unrecognizable maze.
For one who as imperial kin had trod only the grand avenues, there was no telling how far he had come.
“....”
With each sword stroke, strength did not ebb but welled ever higher.
Never had he known such fulfillment, such liberty.
The empire's power had stripped his reason, rendering that moment purity incarnate. Soul poured into blade, aura blooming for the first time—proclaiming his knighthood.
True to that oath, even bereft of will and reduced to puppet, he remained a knight.
The silver aura crowning his sword tip betrayed not a flicker amid countless swings.
Each alley of the burning capital stirred fragments of knowledge—the empire's implanted will—like pages from a shattered grimoire.
That blood-smeared lump: Bernard Count's estate. With all direct kin save distant branches slain in the capital, iron supplies would surely falter.
Trampled and burst, yet that opulent-sealed necklace marked Falex Marquis. His demise would plunge his granary fief into chaos, straining neighboring lands' provisions.
Such carnage empire-wide meant high nobles felled en masse—an inevitability. The empire would descend into turmoil.
And the scapegoats of that turmoil? Ever the oblivious masses.
Succession feuds. Fief wars. Famine. Perhaps.... even rebellion.
To avert it all, he must demonstrate the empire's enduring might as before, cowing nobles from stray thoughts. The colossal hand that had moved them—the emperor's power—was gone now.
“I.... might just like this nation.”
Injected sentiment perhaps, but so what?
He lacked the resolve to ignore the empire's commoners perishing pointlessly, knowing full well it would come to pass.
As that little lady of House Aedran had said, he was now a free man.
Heart's pull, will's whim. Advance as his knightly aura beckoned.
‘....I can save it. Before the innocent masses are sacrificed amid the tribulations. Make it all not come to pass.’
Injected knowledge though it was, all the empire's workings lingered in his mind. He had the ability, the justification. Recalling the multitudes he had saved by his hand, the heat swelling in his chest kindled the will to live onward for their sakes.
Perhaps it was all the empire's design. He thought himself freed, yet that faint thread might lead him to the throne after all—as if nothing had changed.
Guiding this nation peacefully as the empire yet endured.
Kuuuu—
Wandering some corner of the capital, the sky above his head began to fall.
That which had blanketed the empire's skies, sowing foul curses. Diminished though its maledictions were, its sheer mass alone would pulverize the capital and reduce all to naught.
Flustered, Gainax scanned about, but with hundreds now trailing him without aim, no safe haven existed to shelter them all.
“Symbolic, isn't it? Falling sky, crumbling empire. And that sword from the gutters in your grasp.”
He whirled at the sudden voice. A grim-faced elder and boy who seemed his page leaned against a ruined edifice.
“....Duke Glen.”
“I shan't chide the familiarity. Seeing not a speck of empire left, it seems you've cast it all off.”
“Why are you here? Even departing the instant the witch's power engulfed the empire, 'tis a journey of over a day from your house....”
“....A long-standing promise. And a whisper of wind aided.”
Gainax pondered the cryptic exchange but soon grasped it.
Sky-blue auras spiking here and there, black flames, trunks like clear wood—empire strongholds' champions like Duke Glen had converged on the capital.
Likely some final arrangement before the empire's power ebbed.
Rustle—
Duke Glen rent a curse-blackened tome's page and spoke.
“So. What are your intentions?”
“For what?”
“What else? This nation.”
Weary, with trembling hand turning pages, Duke Glen halted at the final leaf.
“Unlike most, some in the empire knew its secrets yet surrendered to its current. Thus I know well that inexorable pull. Dare you yield to it once more? Become emperor, and is it not mere empire's guidance? All passes as if undreamt, the imperials accepting the First Prince's ascension as natural. All threads of faint remnants leading you. Will you embrace the lion's fate anew, confident to fulfill the empire's millennium?”
Gainax gazed heavenward at Duke Glen's words—the sky looming shadow no capital inferno could veil.
Falling sky. Crumbling empire.
Indeed. Eerily symbolic. Suspicion dawned that all had maneuvered him here for the throne next.
Yet convinced of his inner freedom's purity, his newborn aura untainted by aught else.
He strode past the wall-propped duke, one step forward.
“Roads exist. Not all who tread them are ensnared.”
Sword drawn, soul infused. Silver aura cold yet vivid, resolute. Its splendor aimed skyward.
“I shall rend a new sky—but not the lion's.”
“....A diverting tale. Then whose? What sky?”
Hand tucked in doublet, Duke Glen smiled inscrutably.
“....”
Gainax voiced the empire's hazy silhouette stirring faintly within—not yet sharp enough for full utterance—and leaped starward.
“Pft, pfuhuhuht, puhahaha! Ha! Masterpiece, Mutou! A masterpiece! Heh, an emperor-to-be, resolve steeled for the throne, harboring such notions!”
To his receding form, the duke—long versed in peering into inner shapes as a mage's bane—could not stifle erupting laughter and drew forth a quill from his breast.
The last imperial might. Oathbound promise melted therein, the golden quill to herald history's dawn.
“Ah, my king. New master of oaths to be. If truly so, then take it. The empire shall walk that path beside you.”
The duke's quill inscribed the next emperor's name upon the hoariest code's final page, bringing it to close.
The tome thus sealed. Light streamed from its end, traversing the heavens to invest Gainax's blade—propelling the knight's sword with torrent force.
The power of the founding emperor, primordial hero who birthed the empire.
Five centuries' steward of empire, now unshackled at long last. From the successor's sword tip, its final gleam blossomed.
And that silver sword, bearing it all, swung toward the star.
Thwack—
A mere whisper of wind slicing pent-up air. Yet.
That dawn. Empire's citizens roused by nightfall's meteor.
Unanimously swore they had beheld silver lightning cleave the firmament with their own eyes.
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