Chapter 374
Chapter 374
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: Saint and Completer (30)
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"A strange feeling, indeed."
Far off in the distance, the final clash was unfolding where the sea had swept through.
With Tobrun's walls crumbled and several heroes sacrificed, the mutes weren't getting reinforcements either. The outcome of that battle would soon decide victory or defeat.
"Never in my life have I been reduced to a mere spectator like this."
One black monster inside a white prison. Two companions for conversation.
"....Ottman. Are you listening?"
The waves roared.
Splash.
"....Hey, Edeorna. You listening? Huh?"
Poke, poke.
"....Dead, huh."
The white lump bobbing along with the waves like trash gave no reaction even when prodded.
To escape this place, I'd tried every means at my disposal.
Edeorna, who'd offered her own flesh as sacrifice and poured every last drop of her remaining power into creating this prison, was no match for me. I'd smashed and torn at the thrashing thing, unleashing countless attacks until it was unrecognizable, but the thorny prison only grew endlessly. No amount of divinity, aura, or magic could free me from this place.
And in the meantime.
Ottman had left my side.
A mage's miracle had seeped into my prison.
Notum's spell had descended upon the battlefield.
"Why didn't I realize? It's so utterly alien."
Why had the Argalian Sword still not revealed itself, citing the absurd reason of having 'lost its way'?
Why had this world, created for the 'player's' education—where every event up to now had been led by the player—now turned me into a perfect bystander at this very moment?
In GG, where everything mirrored the world with clear chains of cause and effect, why did only the final scenario unfold identically for every player?
[We are the player's supporters, educators, and examiners.]
The words of the World Tree and Atlahéva came to mind.
[GG is a program to select and raise great prophets who won't repeat failures like mine—the 'completers.']
Andrei Gedroits's eyes, mad with fervor, surfaced in my memory too.
Final scenario.
Completer.
Examiner.
Player.
.
.
.
.
Splash.
"Ottman. Do you see that?"
Swoosh.
"The battlefield without me."
Crash.
"They're... winning."
Her voice trembled as it sank into the seawater lapping at her calves.
Up to now, I'd thought this final scenario was the system's ultimate test to distinguish the completers.
The final battle, drawing everything together. This time, something I had to achieve.
But I'd been isolated, excluded from the results, left here as a spectator.
The final scenario wasn't a test.
"It was the place to grade everything up to now."
Just a spot to check the results of tests already more than sufficient.
"Is this.... Is this what you wanted to teach? That all worlds are for moments like this?"
[....Completer. I want to know what kind of person you are.]
Gedroits's voice from the video echoed.
[Gedroits's Game. My GG isn't just for creating future greats—it's a device to sift the gold from the dross and select those closest to supermen, the 'completers.']
A program for selection and learning. The masterpiece completed by a genius who reshaped the world, to revise the future.
An education program crystallizing the insights from his failure.
He prided himself as the greatest 'individual' in human history—and failed miserably.
[What will happen.... will happen in the end.]
Even for great heroes, prophets, or humanity's finest scientists, there comes a moment when outcomes slip from their grasp, leaving them to merely watch.
Since no exceptional individual can resolve everything alone, Gedroits must have hoped the completers he found would be different.
Hoping completers wouldn't save the world single-handedly, but change it as individuals.
That's why they isolated me. Not to see a world saved by leading as a player individual, but whether the 'changed world' led by that player individual could save itself.
"The 'qualification' the system insisted on was decided in this moment."
The World Tree and dragon. The system that wouldn't bend to the two administrators' stubbornness, nailing down that I needed the qualification for the remaining authority.
The qualification it spoke of was determined here.
No matter how the game was played, the final scenario every player faced. The last battle.
It was where the manual-following administrator, the 'system,' selected the completer's qualification.
Ting!
Crack!
Slash.
Thud.
Mutes and humans. Cards flipped and erased one by one, the results of my choices interlocking and vanishing.
Infantry and knights arrived because the empire was successfully saved—now vanishing against the exponentially growing mutes on the western front I couldn't tend to.
Heroes gathered under the banner of goodness. Priests and saints from all five great churches. Vanishing against elite mutes, named ones, white mutes.
The human lines completely disrupted by enemy ambush, and Ottman Bodler's life—interlocking and vanishing.
Vanishing, vanishing, vanishing, vanishing.
At the end of the vanishing.
Bwooooooo—
"That's the.... airship!"
"No way! The airship heading back to Tel Drat at departure—it's already round-tripped two countries and come back here?"
"Reinforcements! Magical barrage incoming!!!"
Splash!
"The enemies are thinning....!"
"....Looks like those blessed religion nuts finally pulled it off. No mute reinforcements! The suicide squad broke all those damned pillars beyond the crumbled walls! Kill these, and it's over!"
"This one's the last for us! Anyone with strength left, stick to that cursed white thing!"
"Damn it! Looks like I'll have to send off all those who went ahead alone! Should've died early!"
.
.
.
.
With victory cheers echoing everywhere, the tide tipped toward the side with more cards left.
In my absence. The survivors were reaching out toward the world's end.
Crash.
Splash.
Waves. The water that had reached her chest now at her ankles.
"....Ottman. How long have you known?"
As I took in the miraculous sight, I asked toward the receding sea.
"That it would end like this, that it was that kind of 'flow'—you went knowing that much, didn't you?"
Ottman's sea was utterly peaceful.
He might have instinctively sensed it throughout our entire journey together.
Some flow. The series of flows from my steps, my touch, my choices—converging toward one end.
Even if he didn't know what it was, he felt it. From what he said back then.
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'Ottman? Honestly, why are you sticking with this dangerous party? You've long shed the stigma of the Lead Flow school. Now all that's left is rebuilding the mage tower with your disciples waiting in Lordric. Oh, need money? Want me to borrow some from the church? Steal a few offering boxes?'
'Don't talk nonsense. It's just.... that kind of flow.'
'Flow? What flow? I have enlightenment in flow too, you know? I don't see it?'
'That's because you're lacking in training, Professor! From now on, avoid food touching dirt and fire, switch gradually to a diet of fresh seafood....'
'Ugh! Don't shove heretical magic rituals at a saint!'
'Hohohoho! Anyway, there's something I can't quite explain. It's just that kind of flow. Like a river—it splits when it splits. Flow together to the end, and someday.... when we reach that end, you'll know why it had to flow this way.'
'Hmm....'
'So, no fish? Huh?'
'Kack! Begone with your heretical ritual! Mage!'
'You're fourth-circle and still avoiding seafood? You're not a kid!'
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"So that's why it was a sea? This modest little sea ending with a few waves? The mage's miracle, Ottman Bodler's final spell, just....?"
Felix Drixiel's spell changed the empire's history and filled every wind mage's empty seat.
Gauman Delhurst's spell whispered to every wind in the valley and changed one mage's life.
Ottman Bodler's spell.... changed nothing. Just nudged the water's path a bit.
Because he knew everything had flowed toward this moment.
Because he knew the flow starting from the journey's beginning with them was fully prepared.
A bit of time. A breather. Just the chance to properly wield what they'd brought this far—that was enough, felt at the end.
"My god, Ottman. You....!"
What unwavering consistency.
The one who'd journeyed longest with me. The one I wanted by my side to the end.
The one who held deeper conversations sitting quietly beside me than in words.
The teacher who'd become family, though no blood bound us.
He understood everything in the final moment.
Unable to know a single thing about the system, completers, Gedroits, or the world as game denizens.
But he knew the massive flow starting with the journey had converged here, and it was fully prepared.
So, the sea.
Just,
In the end,
Finally,
At last.
The sea.
....Pfft.
It was so absurd. The incoming tide like Ottman raging in frustration, the receding ebb like Ottman clutching his head over another mishap.
Conveyed to someone isolated, merely watching. The miracle arriving without threat or rush, innocently wetting ankles with blue sea—so absurd.
"Pffft-haha, right to the end.... you stayed true to form, Ottman."
Boiling breath leaked out as deflated laughter. Whatever had boiled to bursting rose as faint smoke with a tiny scorch.
For a long while. Until the water cresting to her crown sank to chest, waist, calves, ankles, and vanished.
For a long while, she sat like that and ended up laughing.
Slash.
Far off, some nameless knight's sword severed the last white mute's neck.
『Waaaaaaaaah—!!!!』
The cheer of victory.
The people who'd journeyed with the player shouted aloud on the battlefield without him—they'd overcome annihilation, they'd won.
"No miracle needed, huh?"
Just a mage's miracle that briefly brushed the battlefield.
His last spell proved it by doing nothing.
This flow. The journey already flowed here, the life of mage Ottman Bodler born, raised, passed through with us. His life reaching here was already a miracle.
That he'd reached the end of that miracle of a life.
....Splash.
"As always, you say so much without words, Ottman...."
The mage who'd reached the river's end bid me his final farewell like that.
Crumble.
My exhausted prison finally shattered, revealing the battlefield packed with corpses, no room to step.
The survivors, mere handful compared to departure, shouted victory cheers, limping and exhausted toward me.
Ottman's sea vanished without a trace.
"Saint!"
"Saint!!!"
"Professor!"
Paladins. Yggdrasil. Notum. Tusan. And others.
Suddenly, it hit me—the elixir formula created by the great black mage and alchemist Aldrich, passed to mage Ottman Bodler. The dirt-brown potion called 'Magic Use Sedative' had vanished completely from the world.
The man who'd check the well first upon settling in.
The man who'd love even a single cup of water.
He'd occupied the seat beside me in every journey memory, and now the man first recalled with 'Professor Hero Saint Party' was gone. I felt it.
Ding.
[Player 'professor', qualification verification complete.]
"Damn.... ngh, you bastard...."
The Argalian Sword never appeared in the end.
Two lines of rain fell where the sea had dried.
A pass. Damn it all.
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