Chapter 440
Chapter 440
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 20
Chapter Title: Offroad (14)
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Ottman had said that memories weren’t something passed down—they had to be recalled.
‘So this is what he meant.’
Whoosh!
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‘Hyde! My name is Hyde!’
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Something without form yet was shouting Hyde’s name,
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‘Hm. That’s pretty low compared to the others.’
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and the voice of someone attending his naming ceremony, in a place that didn’t yet exist, reached him too.
Another fragment of the past leaking through the cracks in the dam of his memories.
Likely the most precious one to him. The one he couldn’t forget, the starting point for all other recollections.
His name. Hyde.
And the one who had first called him that.
“Do you... know me?”
Crunch!
His cracked voice pierced through the freshly resurfaced memory.
He knew him. But he didn’t.
Was this a warlord who had entered his journey? Or was he the man from his memories, always wandering with a sly grin instead of that blank expression?
“Why... did you do it?”
He had to ask. Even though every nerve in his body screamed against the overwhelming hostility of this far superior being, the gun aimed at him was a trigger-pull away from firing, and the deep-sea mage could drown him with a single twitch of his finger, broken submersible gear and all.
“Why... did you go around killing all those people?”
His memory of overlooking a ruined city from charred battlements shifted to a battlefield tangled with dozens of knights and trains. Then to a burning rocky village and the feel of a shovel, Pablo’s eyes brimming with resentment.
I can’t understand you.
If you truly are the man from my memories, what reason could turn you into this warlord?
“Who are you? Why? It’s something I’ve heard at least once in every region I’ve visited.”
“You— who are you? Why do you come to us and attack without reason? You don’t plunder as a bandit, spare no one to rule as a conqueror, or revel in murder itself as a pleasure killer. So why? Eyes devoid of any attachment to life, filled only with questions— why.”
.
.
.
.
Crack. It felt like something snapped.
The warlord’s impassive face twisted, and the calm currents began swirling in from all directions.
‘What the hell is...’
Through the shattered calm, his expression flickered— something Hyde couldn’t even fathom.
“Why. Why must you kill people?”
“Why does it have to be that way?”
“Is there truly no other method?!”
“Why! Why me! Why did I make that choice?!”
As if echoing the warlord, the currents raged fiercely around him.
“I asked myself more times than the number of people I’ve killed! Why! Why couldn’t I find another way! If I’d had just a little more time, a little more preparation! If there’d been power to overturn the foundations of Gedroits’s Game without killing and absorbing everyone on this continent! Even the slimmest possibility, and I’d have clung to it!”
“Two hundred years! Even after struggling that long to save everything, this world crumbled in just two hundred years! Do you know?! The anxiety that it might already be too late, the pressure of the world dying moment by moment— standing before the one possible means, not knowing if it was the ultimate evil or a necessary one— do you know what it was like?!”
Even that brief glimpse unleashed emotions that sent the nearby sea into uncontrollable frenzy.
“Everyone told me! Stop! Stop the meaningless slaughter! Stop! Just stop!”
Splash!
“Already so many have died by my hand, piled high as the shards on this arm— how! How could I turn back now! I’ve killed this many already; excuses are more than I deserve. The only atonement left is to finish the task as quickly as possible and free everyone!”
“You ask ‘why’? You’ll never understand my ‘why’! What I gave up to not abandon you all, the agony of doing what only I could— you’ll never understand!!”
“There’s work to be done! The answer I could give you is only that much!!!’
Roooar!
Finally, the heated currents exploded outward with his emotions.
Bracing his sword grip against the deck, water sprayed past, leaving the bloodshot-eyed warlord panting.
Like a bag on the verge of bursting finally popping, the agitated warlord returned to his initial calm.
“I... must have known you. Seeing me this shaken, making excuses— you must be ashamed of the fallen me somewhere in your lost memories.”
“You don’t seem eager to draw that sword either.”
...Click!
The gun trained on him again. This time, without the slightest tremor.
“Draw it. Killing an unarmed old acquaintance might jeopardize what little ‘me’ remains anyway.”
He couldn’t. For some reason, the face declaring ‘I’ll leave no one behind’ overlapped with the man from his memories.
“...Your attire is from the Teldrat region. Once I’m done here, I’ll head to the old Teldrat lands. And repeat what I did in Lordric. Some civilians might survive to preserve memories, but it’s only a delay. All will die without exception.”
“If you don’t like that, just cut me down here.”
But it was fading. The trace of the man in his memories, from the enemy before him.
“You.”
“Do you feel like it now?”
“...”
He had sharp observation skills. Even without focus, even with his vastly superior foe’s shard armament aimed at his head, he noticed the smallest details.
“...There was a ship up there.”
The edge of his cape.
Tattered from the start, but one mark stood out vividly. A recent tear, uniquely scooped in the center.
The Deep Blue Line teemed with aggressive sea creatures, and even a salvage ship’s path wouldn’t change that.
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‘Captain. Why the hell use that as a weapon?’
‘It’s what I handle best? Works great too!’
‘No, even if you’re good with it, who swings a ship’s anchor around?’
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The captain’s weapon was that ‘half-anchor’ used to crest high waves.
As heavy as it was destructive, requiring immense strength to wield.
When it hit, it left a scooped, torn mark like on that cape flap.
“What did you do up there?”
Kiiiiing!
The overcharged scabbard ignited with green mana from the mana veinstone.
“...No exceptions.”
The warlord answered.
His goal— incomprehensible, but to kill all sentient beings and become something.
The salvage ship Whale had been right on the surface where they were, and the warlord’s cape bore the captain’s anchor mark.
The captain, and the rest of the crew except Eggwill here— they’d faced the warlord.
No exceptions.
He was the warlord.
Click.
“Grim Rock. Tarimus. Tuadal. Isena. Bymus. The five aboard that ship.”
“I’ll forget them. Except for the one task I must remember. For their sakes, even in death.”
It had come to this, inevitably.
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‘Find him...’
‘...find him and...’
.
.
.
.
.
“Kill him.”
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Find him.
Find the warlord. Kill him.
His hand hesitated, but that only made him grip tighter.
“I’ve forgotten it all. Kill and forget. Heh, now I get why everyone hates Shard Knights so much.”
Tears mingled with the sea, shimmering like silken threads before scattering.
Coincidence or fate.
If he sought to forget everything but his one duty, then he...
“Since I’ve held onto that one name, Hyde, and made it this far!!!”
...Crackle!
The sword gripped as if to shatter, infused with the green mana that once cleaved the old world.
Borrowing the power of magic and machinery, it traced a massive arc from the blade tip.
A green arc slicing through the deep sea’s darkness, far beyond Hyde’s expectations.
“...Yes. You do resemble him.”
Toward it, the warlord’s gun spat sunset-hued mana.
Ruuuumble—
For a moment, the entire Deep Blue Line rocked violently. Green and sunset lights intertwined, illuminating everything brightly.
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...Blurp.
He didn’t know how long he’d blacked out, but it couldn’t have been long.
‘Air, I need...!’
If it had, he’d already be dead from drowning.
Looking around, the submersible straddling the sea trench had snapped in two, sinking deeper with collapsed canyon rocks.
‘The warlord... what happened to the warlord?’
The explosion’s glow blinded him, but one thing was certain.
‘Even after that, he had leeway.’
A swing he’d never unleashed in his life, never even seen from another.
Yet before passing out, he’d seen the warlord’s beam casually neutralize it.
Boom boom boom!
And if he hadn’t misheard.
‘To fire off blasts of that magnitude multiple times in succession.’
It was definitely three-point-four. After blocking the Shatterblade’s strike, two more beams of equal power had fired at him.
So how was he alive, suffocating like this?
[Good thing we made it in time.]
“...Blurp! Ottman! Gahh!”
[Oh? Right, you can’t breathe underwater, can you?]
Clack—
“Pha! Heuk, that’s— heuk— obvious just— heuk! Looking at me!”
[Well, I figured if I left you alone a bit, your magic talent might sprout like summer weeds. You’re his spitting image, after all.]
The translucent, water-like form of the old man— Ottman— teased the gasping Hyde.
“What about... the bastard? The warlord?”
[Professor. He doesn’t deserve a name like that.]
“But—”
[I parted the sea for a moment. Aldar Shax went wild enough to barely buy us the time.]
“Then that dragon...”
[...If it returned to the currents, great, but probably... best assume it fell to that serpent.]
Hyde couldn’t hide his shock at Ottman’s roundabout mention of the dragon’s death.
The Shatterblade, known as the mightiest mana tool extant, its mana veinstone strike— rare even in shard armaments— blocked so futilely.
They said his ally World had beaten a near-demigod dragon.
[Urgh... So much I want to tell you, but no time. That professor bastard’s magic grows like weeds... No time, so head to the surface now. My spell’ll let you breathe till then.]
“...What happens after I leave?”
[Me? Finish up with my cute disciple and this not-so-cute reunion. Don’t worry. I may look like this, but I’m a fragment of the Last Spell, called a miracle of magic. I can buy a few minutes, so relax.]
A few minutes. Just enough for him to flee to the surface.
In other words, this kindly old mage before him had only minutes left to live.
The dragon had sacrificed itself to bring Ottman here,
and Ottman would sacrifice himself for the few minutes it took a drowning fool to swim to the surface.
Why did everything revolve around him like this?
“If I go up... what can I even do? Against those transcendent beings, what can a half-baked Aura Knight possibly...”
[You can. You absolutely can. No one else in the world could, not even if the Five Archons returned— but you can! Because you’re Hyde, you can do it for sure!]
“What... why?”
[Possibility. I saw it in you. Because you were the beginning! Hyde, your existence is more anomalous than anyone in this world! More than dragons, maybe even that professor! You were the start of change, the one holding back this world’s total collapse, the sole countercurrent against its crumbling flow!]
“So with no certainty, no plan ahead, you and the dragon throw away your lives? Just because I remembered the name Hyde?”
[If the one who threw away five lives for just that stands before me now, yes. It’s possible.]
Tap.
Something flew from Ottman’s fingertip into his jacket pocket.
Rumble.
Ottman flicked his hand, and the current pulled him toward the surface.
Why. Why must everything end in death?
Why must this world’s tale only complete in tragedy?
He flailed his limbs, but Ottman’s face receded.
“I can swing once more! Just let me fight with you!”
[Can’t. Then Aldar Shax’d rise from the dead and slap me silly for all that trouble just to send you off.]
“The ship... The warlord attacked our ship. Ship’s gone, crew too. Even if I surface, I’ll just die adrift!”
[...He did? Said from his own mouth, ‘I smashed the ship you came on and killed all the crew—’?]
...No way?
Ottman, now a mere speck, bent over laughing.
[Wordplay’s his specialty and habit. That gap between his facade and truth is proof hope remains for us. Didn’t I say? It’s not time for you two to meet yet. Too early.]
“Then...?”
[You’re just at the upstream. Plenty more flow before your final meeting.]
Far off, a white streak cut through the blue sea.
White hair. World was ripping through Ottman’s barrier, entering the ward with the warlord.
[Still as hot-tempered as ever. Go, Hyde. The dam’s cracked big once; your memories will all return soon.]
“Ottman! Ottman!”
[The waves will guide you... When you two meet again after winding far—]
Rumble!
Splash!
“Pha!”
“Ottman? Sir Ottman! Ottman!”
In the blink of an eye, he broke the surface, and Ottman’s voice cut off.
Rustle.
Gasping, he felt something small and hard against his chest.
The thing Ottman had given him before parting.
The blue gem that had once been embedded in his chest, now empty and lusterless.
Splash.
Roooar—
Splash.
Roooar—
As if the tension had been a lie, the sea merely undulated rhythmically.
He clutched Ottman’s gem.
‘It’s been entrusted to me.
I can’t agree with the warlord’s mad plan, but I understand now why he says there’s no turning back.
Too much left behind to retreat. To not let it all go to waste,
forward.
To where the waves lead.
To where my remaining preparations await.’
Splash.
Roooar—
Splash.
Roooar—
The waves crashed against something vast on the open sea.
A ship.
Half-destroyed, but the [Salvage Ship Wha-] was still legible.
Wedged between two utterly wrecked vessels, the salvage ship Whale, covered in colorless transparent crystals.
“Captain.”
One, two, three.
Short three of the five who should be there, but presences nonetheless.
Hyde swam toward the salvage ship Whale with every ounce of strength left in him.
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