Ending Maker Chapter 38
Ending Maker Chapter 38
Chapter 8 - Nine Heavens Nine Gates #2
"A-are... you... awake?"
A voice reached him.
But it was too muffled for him to make out clearly.
Probably Landius's voice.
Shapes gradually came into focus through his blurred vision. Then a voice rang clearly in his head.
"Yuder? Are you okay? Huh?"
"Cordelia."
The moment he answered without thinking, his vision cleared.
Cordelia's fair, beautiful face was right in front of him, while Landius looked down at him from a short distance away.
"You're awake? Do you know how many fingers this is?"
Cordelia flinched when Yuder abruptly answered, then happily waved her fingers in front of him.
"Two. That's so you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Cordelia growled, but her eyes were smiling.
She seemed genuinely delighted that Yuder had finally woken up.
'Did it take long?'
He had lost all sense of passing time after beginning to memorize the mnemonic verse of Nine Heavens Nine Gates.
Still, judging by Cordelia's reaction, quite some time must have passed.
"If you have enough energy to flirt with the girl, you must be fine."
Landius approached with a rumbling laugh, and Cordelia quietly moved aside.
Landius spoke again.
"You don't seem to have realized it yet, but a full day has passed since you began memorizing the mnemonic verse."
"A day?"
"Yes, a day. It was night when you closed your eyes, and it's still night now, isn't it?"
Yuder nodded without thinking and took stock of his body.
Now that he noticed it, his whole body felt weak and he was ravenously hungry.
"That's why the girl is here as well. Her beloved fiancé didn't wake for an entire day, so she worried herself sick... What? Isn't that so? Lucas told me."
"No, that's right. It's right."
"Uh... yes! I was so worried because my beloved Lord Yuder wouldn't wake up all day that I couldn't do anything. Yes. That's right."
Yuder and Cordelia hurriedly answered when Landius narrowed his eyes at them, but Cordelia's delivery was the problem. As usual, she sounded as though she were stiffly reciting a textbook.
"Hmm, well. Anyway."
Fortunately, the bighearted Landius paid no attention to such trifles.
Besides, Cordelia really was there because she had been worried about Yuder.
"My disciple, if my eyes do not deceive me... it seems you opened the First Gate. Is that correct?"
"Yes, I believe so."
Yuder answered cautiously and placed a hand over his lower abdomen, where his lower dantian lay.
The place where the First Gate had formed.
Cordelia simply stared at Yuder's lower abdomen with a look that said, Oh, I see. Landius reacted differently.
He let out a disbelieving chuckle, then burst into hearty laughter.
"Indeed, indeed. So this is the Heavenly Martial Body."
"Master?"
"You're fast. It took me well over a month to open the First Gate."
Yet Yuder had opened the First Gate in a single day.
"As I thought... was the Immortal's divine art meant for the Heavenly Martial Body...?"
Yuder and Cordelia both focused on Landius's quiet murmur.
The Immortal's divine art.
It was a term that appeared nowhere in either Hero Legend 1 or 2.
"Master, when you say the Immortal..."
"Yes, you have the right to know. However......."
Landius trailed off and looked toward Cordelia. She flinched, then quietly began to rise.
If her presence was making him reluctant to speak, she intended to excuse herself.
'Yuder will tell me later anyway.'
But at that moment, Yuder grabbed Cordelia's hand.
'Why?'
Cordelia asked with her eyes, but instead of answering, Yuder looked at Landius and spoke.
"Master, Lady Cordelia and I are practically one. She has the right to know what happened to my body as well. Please allow her to hear this."
"Hmm. True enough. My disciple and the girl are engaged, so I suppose you're practically one."
'No, we're not. Yuder and I are two separate people, okay?'
That last thought belonged to Cordelia, but Yuder alone could read what she was thinking from her eyes.
"Very well. I shall tell the girl as well."
"Thank you."
"Uh...... Thank you."
Cordelia reflexively thanked him, then quietly sat beside Yuder. Landius dropped down in front of them and began his story.
"My disciple, girl. Do you know of the Infernal Lords of Hell?"
"Uh... yes. You mean the five Infernal Lords of Hell, right?"
When Cordelia answered, Landius nodded.
"Yes, the five Infernal Lords: Asmodeus of Lust, Belial of Corruption, Belphegor of Cruelty, Behemoth of Violence, and Lilith of Love-Hate. In truth, however, Hell originally had seven Infernal Lords, not five."
Yuder and Cordelia knew the broad outline of that story as well.
It was part of Hero Legend's lore: there had originally been seven Infernal Lords, but two disappeared, leaving five.
"Long ago—in an age we would now call ancient—two of the seven Infernal Lords descended into the human world. Countless human kingdoms fell before those two mighty demons, and several races met their final end."
The High Dwarves, ancestors of modern dwarves and regarded as a superior race, were effectively driven to extinction, while the elves lost the great empire that had once been the most prosperous on the continent.
"All the races living on the continent gathered their strength to oppose the demons...... and after countless sacrifices, they were ultimately victorious."
That much was fairly well-known history.
Ordinary people might not know it, but any reasonably educated mage, scholar, or priest would.
"Then who could it have been? Who brought down the Infernal Lords with their transcendent power?"
Landius's gaze turned to the sky.
He continued as though telling the story to himself rather than to Yuder and Cordelia.
"I wanted to know. If I could learn who defeated those Infernal Lords, and how, I believed it would help greatly in the battles against demons still to come."
Unlike Kamael the Sword Demon, who had joined the Guardians of the Holy Cross, Landius had wandered the continent alone.
"After a long search, I found a record in ancient ruins tied to the origins of the Guardians of the Holy Cross. It was a record of the heroes who defeated the Infernal Lords."
Yuder and Cordelia swallowed hard at exactly the same time.
Neither of them had ever heard this story before.
"Seven heroes who were neither demons nor angels, yet possessed power comparable to gods. They were a remarkable group: the greatest dwarven warrior, the elven queen, the champion of Solari the Sun God, the continent's finest assassin, and more. Every one of them deserved to be called a great hero."
Among them, one figure especially caught Landius's attention.
"The Immortal. The ancient guardians called this person the Immortal, though even their name, age, and gender were unknown. And the Immortal practiced a special martial art."
"That is......."
"Correct. Nine Heavens Nine Gates."
Landius's gaze turned back to Yuder and Cordelia.
"Only the mnemonic verse remained, and even that was incomplete. But I could not give up on Nine Heavens Nine Gates."
After obtaining the incomplete mnemonic verse, Landius did not struggle with it alone.
He sought help from his old comrades—Kamael the Sword Demon and the others who had defeated Demon Prince Vaikazel alongside him. Each of them began researching Nine Heavens Nine Gates and the ancient heroes.
"The Nine Heavens Nine Gates we have now was reconstructed by Kamael, me... and Lena. In the process, we concluded that fully mastering it requires a special talent."
There was no need to say what that talent was.
The Heavenly Martial Body.
An incarnation of martial arts blessed by heaven.
"Fewer than ten people in the last thousand years have been born with the Heavenly Martial Body. I had all but given up... and then I met you."
That was why Landius had demanded Yuder become his disciple before they had even introduced themselves.
The story was far grander than either of them had expected. Their hearts racing, Yuder and Cordelia looked at each other, and Cordelia spoke first.
"Um... Lord Landius. What exactly does Nine Heavens Nine Gates do?"
"It is a martial art that elevates the body and soul to a higher realm. Put simply, it is a means of becoming an existence beyond humanity—a Transcendent."
At Landius's words, Yuder nodded.
It matched what he had felt while opening the First Gate.
"Yuder, what changed after you opened the first gate?"
"My soul... felt as though it expanded. And my body... seems stronger too."
The part about his body sounded almost mundane after talking about his soul, but he really did feel physically better.
Landius nodded.
"Nine Heavens Nine Gates consists of nine gates, exactly as its name implies. Each gate you open brings you closer to becoming a Transcendent and strengthens your body and soul themselves. It can also grant various supernatural abilities."
"Special abilities?"
"Yes. When I opened the fifth gate, I gained clairvoyance."
Landius said, and Yuder turned to look at Cordelia, and Cordelia narrowed her eyes.
"What?"
"No, nothing."
Landius laughed merrily.
"It's quite conspicuous, since I can only use it with the Fifth Gate open. When I open the Fifth Gate, red energy rises from my entire body like flames, and when I use clairvoyance, even my eyes glow."
"That's a shame."
When Yuder sighed, Cordelia's eyes narrowed even further.
"The first four gates remain open at all times. Starting with the Fifth Gate, however, you open them only when needed. The strain on the body becomes too great from the Fifth Gate onward to maintain them for long."
That made sense.
"I have opened through the Seventh Gate. In fact, I turned to Ancestral Regression because I hoped it would give me a clue to opening the Eighth."
After saying that, Landius suddenly gave a broad smile and rose.
"Only the person who possesses the gates can open them. That means there is nothing more I can directly teach you about Nine Heavens Nine Gates, beyond offering a little advice. Of course, that doesn't mean I plan to stop acting as your master. I have countless other things to teach you."
After the unusually long speech, Landius proudly flexed his muscles. Yuder flinched despite himself.
But only for a moment.
Yuder quickly recovered his composure, rose as well, and spoke.
"Master, there is something I need to tell you."
"What is it? Do you feel as if you've lost muscle after sitting all day?"
"No, not that...... It's about the Nine Heavens Nine Gates."
Thirty-Six World Steps had advanced in response to Nine Heavens Nine Gates.
"It's a martial art I happened to obtain from a Dungeon Book..."
Landius's expression became intensely serious when Yuder told him about Thirty-Six World Steps.
"It reacted to Nine Heavens Nine Gates... Then perhaps the Thirty-Six World Steps you mentioned is another martial art of the Immortal."
It was plausible.
The Nine Celestial Steps and the Nine Heavens Nine Gates.
Legendary martial arts whose very existence had been uncertain.
"Good, then hurry and show me."
"Pardon?"
"The Thirty-Six World Steps, I mean."
Landius spoke with undisguised excitement. He sounded as though he wanted Yuder to teach it to him immediately.
"Uh... understood. It will take time to teach you both the movement paths and the mnemonic verse, though. Before that, there is something else I would like to finish discussing."
"What is it?"
Instead of answering right away, Yuder glanced at Cordelia for a moment.
'You're doing it now?'
'Now is the only time.'
Six days of hellish physical training had driven it completely from his mind, but learning Nine Heavens Nine Gates had never been the reason they wanted to meet Landius.
Saving Landius's life.
The warning about Duke.
'Though I wonder... whether he even needs it.'
Looking at Landius now, he honestly seemed far more likely to kill Duke than to be killed by him.
Still, there was always the possibility that something could go wrong.
There was no downside to telling him.
"It concerns what happened when we met the Witch's Soul in the Witch's Forest."
After the Fairy Queen came the Witch's Soul.
An ancient witch had supposedly left a prophecy about Landius. What could they do with that?
Should they verify it?
How?
"The Witch's Soul told us that the warrior of the sun we would meet would face a great danger. She said that danger would most likely be the venom of a red scorpion and warned us to prepare a countermeasure."
Duke was fond of using poison.
In particular, his red scorpion venom was so lethal that even a graze could kill.
"Hmm...... Understood. I shall prepare an antidote."
Yuder had worried Landius might scoff that poison could not frighten him, but Landius unexpectedly took the warning seriously.
"Right, then have you said everything you wanted to say?"
At Landius's question, Yuder looked at Cordelia. She swallowed hard, raised a hand, and asked:
"Sir Landius, may I ask just one thing as well?"
"Ask, girl."
"Um... didn't you originally use a sword? The Solar Blade, for example?"
The Solar Blade was one of the reasons Landius was called the Warrior of the Sun.
Landius laughed heartily at Cordelia's question.
"I still use it. I simply don't bother drawing it for the sake of training."
"Training?"
"Yes. That Kamael fellow said so. Once you grasp the principle, you can use swordsmanship even without a sword."
It was the so-called realm of the Formless Sword, or Mind Sword.
And yet the current Landius didn't seem to be using swordsmanship without a sword so much as simply using fist techniques.
"Uh...... So you don't use a sword?"
"I'm testing out this and that."
"Uh...... I see."
Either way, that mystery was resolved.
Judging by his answer, it seemed he still possessed the Solar Blade, the national treasure of the Paragon Kingdom.
'Then that settles it, right?'
'For...... now?'
It would have been strange to insist that he show them the Solar Blade here.
When Yuder and Cordelia exchanged glances, Landius smiled warmly as though watching something adorable.
"Hmm, good. It seems we have finished talking. Then now, the Thirty-Six... No. I let my excitement make me forget something important. I still have much to learn myself."
Landius abruptly chastised himself mid-sentence, then looked Yuder up and down.
"First, eat. Focus on protein. You've fasted all day, so replenish your nutrients before anything else. We can learn Thirty-Six World Steps afterward. When you lose weight from starvation, you lose muscle before fat."
Muscle was precious, after all.
At Landius's urging, Yuder began his meal.
The menu was chicken breast.