Chapter 336
Chapter 336
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: Can One Who Has Seen the End of the World Plant an Apple Tree? (41)
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Swoosh—
Thud! Crunch!
“Damn it! They hit us! They’re clinging on!”
“Raturaaaa!”
“Forward, don’t hesitate, go forward! The light doesn’t look—”
Crunch! Crack.
I had to become indifferent.
“Sa-Saladin! Up ahead, knights from the inland are surrounded! With your power—”
“...We’ll go around.”
“Hey!”
“They jumped in on purpose from the start! They told us to bypass while they buy even one second! If you can’t, get off the helm! I’ll do it!”
....War is something that makes you accept the dead as numbers first, not names.
The Holy Knights of Radiance carve open paths with their signature penetration and aggressive holy magic, while the Holy Knights and priests of Abundance solidify those paths with the sturdiest and most stable holy power among the five great orders.
2nd World. The undead lord’s uprising nearly annihilated the five great orders, but that experience was faithfully passed down through the survivors to forge even stronger, more systematic Holy Knights. Those Holy Knights were then tempered into perfect combat Holy Knights across front lines created by black mages, heretics, and mutants.
Those who view their own lives merely as flames for their faith disregard their own survival, moving more strategically and devotedly on the battlefield than anyone else.
“Raturaaa!”
“As my Lord desires, I shall become a handful of dawn light descending upon a mound of blood without a grave!!”
Death seat. The position they rushed toward was the closest to death on this battlefield—and at the same time, the most necessary spot to sever the enemy’s waist and open a path.
A Holy Knight split in two by mantis-like forelegs meets my eyes. Seeing the ships push through the gap they created, a bloodied smile spreads across the Holy Knight’s lips.
The captain meets that smile as well. He can only grip the helm with his thick-knuckled hands as if to shatter it.
“Increase... increase speed!”
“C-Captain?”
“Anyone still wanting to freeze up, grab a weapon and get off! If not, risk your life to steer this ship! Anyone with idle hands, grab the oars!”
“Right-side steering wing! The steering wing’s hit! We can’t maneuver evasion!”
“Molton! Naruka! Go grab anything that can catch wind and slap it on! Deck scraps, cabin doors—fix it somehow!”
The Dry Oasis ship, carved away by the swarming malice from all sides, becomes a battered wreck as it repeatedly breaks through the front lines. Finally.
At some point. Like a curtain lifting, they reach the spot where the blood-and-flesh barrier vanishes.
A battlefield where both mutants and Holy Knights have been reduced to bloody pulp.
Pwaaak—!
“T-Tail! The dragon’s tail is coming!”
“Turn! Turn like hell!”
As several sailors handling the sails crowd the captain’s helm and struggle desperately.
Boom!
The professor leaps the instant it collides with the bow.
The ship is kicked back as if shoved,
And the golden pillar plummeting to crush the world bounces sideways.
Splash.
Instead of landing on the half-smashed bow, the professor settles at the boundary where the moon’s sea meets the sand sea.
It’s watching me. Cold, vertically slit reptilian pupils.
Likewise, heavily sunken human eyes.
“Otman.”
“You handle the sea. Isn’t a mage someone who imposes their will on the natural order as they please? If the moon wields the power of the natural order, then it’s a mage’s job to oppose it.”
『Moon. In the war between Kauladi and Nullak, that mage was truly impressive. Will you stop him?』
[Target - Mage. An existence that overwrites personal data atop existing data. Suppressing to control project variables.]
“Idrasil, Notum.”
“I know. Forest troll shamanism and my spirit arts are suited to binding feet and obscuring vision—perfect for blocking someone too strong in raw power to match directly.”
“Gruk. Six arms. Make blind, deaf.”
『Hyungnim.』
“I want to fight that ‘father’ you’ve been crying out for.”
『....Hyungnim.』
“Got it, got it. I’ve heard the ‘fate of the species’ and ‘mother’s final resort’ spiel over a hundred times. Rip apart that scrawny stick and lumpy flesh female over there, then kill the father guy after.
“Laksha.”
“She says she’ll get mad if you don’t even give her a chance for revenge?”
“....You—”
“In the desert, revenge is a virtue. That snake woman toyed with me like a plaything right in front of you, so she qualifies for payback. Don’t even think about leaving me out?”
“....Fine.”
The optimal lineup based on matchups. In terms of raw power balance, it’s heavily unfavorable for us.
‘If the battle drags on, we’re bound to lose. Nigmi’s side aside, give Termakian more time and no one can stop him.’
Judging from the ferocity of the outer battlefield with the Holy Knights and the caliber of mutants dying off, in about ten minutes, he’ll have the power to crater the desert with his bare fists. The level where he smashes Notum and Idrasil with blind punches.
The professor thought. At that point, the precarious balance of the battle would crumble in an instant.
『Father knows my goal. In the worst case, he might choose to end it himself.』
Palkatus thought. Given how Father cherished his people like his own life, before that ‘outside’ threat could seize Father’s body, Father would make the worst decision. He might even remove this ‘world’ along with his own life.
So, before that time came.
Before that resolve formed.
“Somehow, I’ll kill Palkatus and end this battle.”
『Somehow, I’ll secure Father and eliminate the variable.』
As the professor steps forward, the dragon coiled around the moon rises.
Like facing a mirror, before the two who name each other, their respective aces step forward one by one.
This place is the center, the end, and the peak of the battlefield.
Victory or defeat. For some, a matter of life; for others, the fate of their species—a dividing ridge.
-Thud!
“If we lose here.... I’ll have no face left to show those Holy Knights who fell first!!!”
『We are human too! I absolutely, absolutely won’t let it end like this!』
Creeeeong—!
A crimson-black fist clashes with a golden talon, sending out rings of shock.
They could not yield, each bearing their own weight.
****
Boom!
Absolute difference in mass. Even if power is equal, it can’t overcome the gulf between dragon and human physique, so the professor—who deflected Palkatus’s attack—flies like a cannonball toward the surface.
The moon’s lens flashes, turning the landing point’s waters into a forest of sharp blades waiting for him.
“Otman Bodler’s [Water Plate]!”
Splash!
In an instant, the blades transform into water discs brimming with repulsive force, softly catching the professor’s body and propelling him upward once more.
Otman and the moon’s battle was a fight for control of the battlefield’s environment. While the blind Termakian razed his surroundings wholesale with halberd and mace, vicious tidal waves repeatedly surged toward the desperately fleeing Notum and Idrasil, only to calm as if nothing had happened just before the waves could reach them.
Swoooosh!
Exploiting the gap in midair, the dragon’s tail comes flying once more.
‘....A thrust?’
Destructive power and physical ability overwhelmingly favor Palkatus in the dragon’s body. But if there’s a weakness, it’s that he’s been in that magnificent body for less than thirty minutes.
The tail thrusting in like the tip of a glacier evokes memories of my first encounter with Palkatus long ago.
‘Edeorna’s spear arts. He bragged about learning them.’
The thrust was identical, only the scale different. Thanks to that thorn-covered spear that dug in on contact, it wasn’t aimed at vital spots like the throat or heart but grazed from the hard-to-dodge outer edges—a barrage focused on speed.
‘The grazes being fatal is the same.... but using a dragon tail for spear arts? It’s practically advertising a lack of combat experience.’
Why bother with off-center spear arts when a dragon tail means instant death on hit? He was maximizing his combat knowledge, but it only created openings for me.
‘Elbow. Knee joint. Fake to carotid via shoulder. Next.... ankle!’
Kwaaaaaaang!
Each time I smacked away the ultra-hard, scale-covered muscle mass, chunks of black hide sheared off, but by the next attack, regeneration and reinforcement were already complete.
In this place where mutant blood churns like the sea, there are only two ways to kill someone near-immortal like him: an attack that shatters the body in one blow for instant death, or grinding down the body until pain exhausts all his mental fortitude.
‘Since his goal is for me to survive in this world, no worries about instant death. That leaves....’
Kwaaaaaaang!
‘Just enduring.... that’s all!’
Craaaack!
A third of his face, including jaw and cheekbone, flies off, but his adrenaline-soaked consciousness only sharpens like a blade.
In his half-torn field of vision, the enemy’s movements read crystal clear. The onslaught continues unabated, but his body is returning to its original position—the pose coiled around the moon.
A pattern.
‘He’s not a complete dragon. Half-baked. Can’t wield dragon words or magic. Closer to an imoogi than a true dragon.’
The body was forged from shamanism and king-blood flesh. What dwells inside isn’t a dragon soul with presence to tune the world with a single word, but merely Palkatus, a mutant soul.
The core of that power is the sun’s power that Palkatus handed to Kauladi. One of the two creation AIs—the sun’s power that birthed the sand sea teeming with ruins—serves as a substitute for the dragon heart. Likely, since it was described as ‘dead,’ not warped like the moon but a shattered fragment of the sun: its core piece. A component originally synced to the entire desert, now standing in for the heart.
‘That’s why this half-dragon can use a dragon’s signature technique, the breath. To fill the dragon’s power to tune the world, he borrows the authorities of the sun and moon—the once-creators of the world!’
That’s why he always returns to the moon’s side when unleashing breath. Why he can’t rampage directly in the Holy Knights-versus-mutants battlefield, why he clings to that metallic sphere rising from the moon’s sea like it’s one body.
He must guard his main body’s location while borrowing the creation AIs’ sun-and-moon authorities to move the dragon body—a vessel requiring not just quantity of power, but a qualitatively different dimension. The shaman who made the body, Kauladi, prepared means to fill a dragon’s presence, but Palkatus—who merely stole the shell—lacks such means.
‘The moment he fires breath, he must return to the moon.’
When an enemy’s actions are predictable, isn’t preparing accordingly a given?
Thud!
All the attacks he’s yielded his body to so far. He breaks the rhythm born in the barrage, strongly slapping away the tail aimed at his shoulder with his right hand.
Splash!
Otman, riding the ship while surveying the battlefield, creates a platform exactly where needed, precariously catching his body just before it launches from the tail’s rebound.
The dragon’s maw opens to gather breath. A brief but clear opening in guard. Stable stance.
Sssplaaash!
Boomboomboomboom!
Otman desperately creates platforms to aid me, countered by the moon’s authority as countless water droplets burst and scatter like mist.
No platform forms. The guard is open, but no brace to leap into his embrace. Heat shimmers between the dragon’s dagger-like fangs.
‘At that point, he can’t cancel!’
That alone. I waited only for this moment when he believes I’m perfectly hooked and can’t move!
Otman’s support is blocked.
But isn’t it just a simple 2nd-circle spell to make a platform?
“[Water Plate]!”
Bang!
Their weakness I knew from the start. Ignorance of magic!
They blocked Otman, but never imagined I’d cast myself—striking their blind spot.
Craaaack!
Blood flows from his burst right hand’s skin, forming a solid shape. A feat impossible normally due to regeneration cost, but in this battlefield where mutant blood flows like rivers.
Not just regenerating the body—he can even create a great axe of the same material as his hide.
And sharing material with his body means.
“Even for me, who only knows smashing aura wildly into the body, it means I can infuse a weapon with aura!”
Fwoooosh!
His body shoots like a bullet toward the gaping dragon maw. Grabbing the axe’s long handle, he swings his body like a bow, and white flames blazing between the swollen monster’s hide surge along the handle to the black axe blade’s tip in an instant.
Dragon scale armor, strong against impacts. He wields an axe for concentrated strikes, but for me, there’s only one way to handle an axe.
Before the enemy notices. Slip behind, gather all power in one go—
“One strike to lop off the head!!!!”
Swooooosh—
The instant his body, arched to its limit backward, swings the axe in a circle to cleave down.
In his burning-hot combat senses, time begins to flow sluggishly.
Scattering droplets graze his body and face, shattering.
The dragon’s pupil, dilated to tearing point, and its foreleg approach me slowly.
Crunch!
Sparks fly blindingly bright, the black great axe flickering with white flame slices through scales, severs bone.
-Clack.
Finally, it settles atop the dragon’s long neck, which can no longer move.
Sliiiiice—
.
.
.
.
.
.
That sound, for some reason, rings perfectly clear even amid the screams and shouts filling the battlefield.
Indomitable. The alien aura that rejects the impossible converts its condensed destructive power into destructive will, dropping the dragon’s neck in one go.
『Kuhhh....! Like.... this...!』
“Spare me the third-rate villain lines and turn your head.”
Thud—
The dragon’s maw, condensed with unfinished heat breath, unable to contain the power, spews flames in the direction desired by the one who kicked the severed head.
Toward the mutant swarm. Especially where the landbug gapes its maw wide.
Elimination of the dragon—asymmetric force. Next, block retreat to eliminate primary target Palkatus.
His state won’t be normal either. Having blown off the neck of a body linked to his consciousness, he’s probably unable to move properly.
‘His main body is inside the moon. Just a little more. Just a bit more and...!’
『To the end.... I thought you’d understand, at least you.... Even if our kind must die for the world’s goal.... If you knew we’re living intelligences, I thought you’d understand...』
“...You have your circumstances, and I have mine. I want to survive.”
『You’re.... surely.... a good person.... All these, countless personalities.... For personal ambition.... you can’t just.... abandon...?』
“The world’s like that. It looks like good versus evil, but from afar, it’s just good people killing each other and holding grudges. We just package it that way to ease the guilt when the opponent’s a bastard.”
Palkatus’s voice sounds plunged into critical condition.
Yeah. I could understand his intent. They’re all like conscripted laborers dragged in unjustly, data souls—and among them, the pitiful ones driven mad by the harshest treatment. A guy who loves his family that much would want to save them somehow once he knew their tragedies.
That’s why he kept trying to talk. Having observed me, knowing I’ve piled up enough good deeds to be called a saint, he thought I’d understand his cause. Maybe even permit a life together with them.
“...Sorry, Palkatus. Suckers like that are long dead in the wasteland.”
But I had no hobby of saving others at the risk of my people getting hurt. Moreover, that Palkatus planned to take only his kind out—not the people of the entire 3rd World. The implications of selecting who to save, I’d already noticed.
“Mutant numbers.... easily over several hundred thousand, right?”
『....Cough, kuh....』
“You said you’d go out and find a way, like me.... connect comatose bodies, give each one a new body and freedom. You, knowing the outside situation, saw there weren’t enough ‘humans’ to stuff them all into. Short on bodies to steal, so personalities outside my affection range—other races of the 3rd World—were excluded from rescue. Pity the intelligences kidnapped by the creators or whatever, but you made a choice. Removing other good people for the sake of your loved ones.”
『....』
“Told you. You’re just like me. Sorry I can’t hold your hand.”
『In the end.... it comes to this.』
I look around while listening to his fading voice.
Laksha seems to have won against Nigmi.
Otman sits slumped among the crew on the ship, while the Notum-Idrasil team has completely wrapped the massive lump in gleaming metallic wood roots and spirit-infused vines.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We won? Notum and Idrasil suppressed that Termakian? The monster that fully absorbs the physical abilities of allies equal to our dead? With those puny plant scraps?
“....Scheming right to the bitter end, huh?”
『Ha... haha.... When you’re happy about winning, I wondered what face you’d make if I killed off one or two....』
Scheming to the last.
Eyes fixed on the Idrasil side, I check my body’s condition.
My body, where embers of aura flame still smolder.
Badly damaged, but with mutant blood overflowing nearby, more than enough to continue fighting. Minimal damage, unbelievable for a dragon fight.
‘In the end, he’s not the type to seize victory through combat.’
Palkatus is ultimately a schemer. Even if he learned Edeorna spear arts, he’s a greenhorn who can’t match this battlefield’s level.
『....I tried to share wills until the very last moment. Losing the dragon was unexpected, but I learned one more thing thanks to it. A small loss, I suppose.』
Sleepy-like. The dragon’s head trembles its eyelids with effort.
『You ignored my small goodwill. As you said.... Now, we fight for each other’s goodwill? Define the enemy as evil to lessen the guilt?』
Finally, the dragon’s body draws its last breath.
The instant I bolt upright and charge toward Notum and Idrasil,
Crunch!
Termakian—six arms each gripping a different mutant bio-weapon—shatters the stems and swings his halberd at Notum.
Claaang!
‘Pushing... me!’
In the clash of axe and halberd, I glimpse yellow reptilian pupils in his eyes.
Dragon physical abilities. Strength, super senses, mental spell resistance—even scales.
This humanoid mutant, now near-dragon, crushes me with power and shoves his face right up to mine.
“What’re you doing to our cute little trickster pouch? Half-brother daddy. Because of you, Palkatus—who was already crippled—is wheezing worse, and I....”
Kwaaaak!
“Ended up becoming a monster!”
“Some shitty power that is....!”
Boom!
I kick him through the gap, shaking my head at the monster boasting insane physical ability fused with mastery of every weapon.
2nd phase is national rule, but a weapon master wielding dragon power? Over the line.
“Planned this from the start?”
『Heavens no.... Just mimicked your ever-ready ‘Plan B’.... Cough! That’s all.』
Palkatus pants his reply, no lie in it.
The professor stares at the black great axe in his hand, then absorbs it back into his body.
‘He only knows ambushes; it’d just get in the way in a frontal clash.’
Instead, he clenches his fists and lowers into stance.
The holy unarmed martial arts stance engraved in his mind. And the barehand techniques beaten into his body by countless strong foes.
“....Palkatus has reason to go around singing.”
As if pleased by that, the tips of the six weapons turn toward me.
Splash!
Amid an atmosphere like preparing for the final battle.
‘Somehow, do something!’
‘I got a way? Just vying for control of the moon and this place is aging me ten years!’
‘I can’t beat that thing! No way in hell! If I die, we all die here!’
The message magic water bubbles settled in the professor’s and Otman’s ears tremble amid their rapid-fire exchange.
****