Chapter 154
Chapter 154
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 154
Chapter Title: Loner Beside a Loner
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The acidic rain poured down in a torrent, unleashing a sudden flood that overflowed everything.
Without a moment to react, the swelling waters swept it all away in an instant.
To protect everyone, the mage Muzkang burned through his own magic from within the lake, holding back the deluge.
As a result, Muzkang's strength was spent, and his breath gave out.
It was the price of giving everything he had.
There was no regret on his face.
The regret belonged to those who remained.
"This idiot... you moron..."
Luzrang, in particular, was hit hard.
"...We can't take the body."
Before dying, Muzkang had emptied his subspace, leaving everything he could behind.
There was no mage left to carry their luggage now.
They would have to shoulder their own burdens and press on.
And without the protection of magic anymore.
"I'll... I'll take it."
"No, it's fine."
Luzrang, tears streaming down her face, shook her head when Evelask said she would carry the body.
"Your subspace isn't infinite. This is enough."
Luzrang wrapped her arms around her belly.
Seeing that, Evelask understood what she meant.
In the acidic rain.
Muzkang, with no regret on his face, simply faded away.
The journey of the three continued.
And not long after, the second sacrifice emerged.
The second was Luzrang.
She had shown the pinnacle of skill as a one-armed swordswoman, but her missing arm sealed her fate.
The venom spewed by the swarming monsters struck her empty sleeve, piercing straight to her heart.
"Luzrang, no! No!"
Evelask screamed and poured every potion she had on her to save her.
But her life ebbed away rapidly.
"Ahaha... Muzkang, she... couldn't even save one... after they passed it to her."
Luzrang coughed up blood, her face full of regret as her eyes slowly closed.
"If only... I'd been alone... it would've been fine."
Clutching her belly, steeped in profound apology, Luzrang met her end.
Of course, her body couldn't be taken either.
Evelask's mana had reached its limit.
"...Let's go."
The Iron Lion and Evelask continued their journey, now just the two of them.
Conversation between them dwindled more and more.
Sensing it, the Iron Lion slowly spoke of his daughter as if to himself.
Evelask could only listen in silence, unable to open her lips anymore.
Then one day.
The ground beneath Evelask's feet—confirmed safe by a corpse scout beforehand—suddenly collapsed.
Unluckily, acidic underground waters had filled below the surface, melting it away in seconds, and the ground above gave way too.
Ah, so this is how I die.
Evelask thought as she watched the sky recede.
I wanted to see Aimi again.
Her spirit long broken, her body exhausted, she closed her eyes with that regret.
The moment she plummeted toward the acidic lake.
The Iron Lion grabbed her.
Her body soared upward.
When Evelask, yanked up in an instant, opened her eyes wide.
She was tumbling across the surface.
After rolling far, she coughed and lifted her head.
All that was there was empty ground.
"...Mr. Iron Lion?"
Evelask called for him.
But he was nowhere to be seen.
Evelask's face went pale.
Rushing back to where she had fallen, all she saw was raging acidic groundwater.
In that final moment.
The Iron Lion had thrown himself to grab Evelask and hurl her up, falling into the acidic lake himself.
"Ah... aaa."
Overwhelmed by despair at the situation caused by her own mistake, she sank deep into it.
He had come all the way to the surface to save his daughter.
Yet he had prioritized her over himself, unable to save his own child.
Evelask knew.
Subconsciously, the Iron Lion had come to see her as his daughter.
Being the same age as his girl, such impulses slipped out often.
The way he looked at her always mixed longing and pity.
And in the end, he chose to save her.
Evelask stood up.
Dragging her acid-burned skin and legs, she pressed on once more.
The Iron Lion had given his life for hers.
So she had to achieve what he aimed for.
His one and only goal.
Saving his daughter.
And Benapoci's goal.
Saving the city.
True to the name of hope, she clung to it and kept moving forward.
It was grueling.
The world marching toward doom kept tripping her up, her body growing more wrecked by the step.
"Cough... hack."
And finally, her body hit its limit.
Death loomed right before her.
But she couldn't die.
Not after everyone sacrificed to get her this far.
So she chose to become a corpse herself.
"Aaaah!"
With a scream, she ripped out her heart and cast necromancy on herself.
She became a monster—not human, yet human.
Clutching her dripping heart, she moved her lifeless body.
Her body, now distant from death, wouldn't stop and kept advancing.
"Soon... almost there."
The signal grew stronger by the moment.
So she pushed on with all she had.
And.
At the end of it all.
Her journey finally reached its close.
Drip—
She slowly lifted the magic signaler buried in the sand.
The acidic rain had indeed stopped there.
True to the spot the first survey team had staked their lives on, no rain fell.
But it wasn't a place for humans to live.
Just no acidic rain, nothing more.
The sun beating down without it melted everything away.
Evelask felt the warmth of the sun she had seen on day one.
But with the ozone layer gone—not even the atmosphere itself—humans couldn't survive its direct glare.
The survey team had seen the cloudless empty sky and thought the surface was recovering.
But the truth was this.
No bodies from the first team remained.
Their food gone, paths back blocked by acid storms and magic barriers, they had melted under this sun into sand.
Only the faint mana in their distress signaler kept the protection spell barely active, holding their lingering wills.
"It's... too much."
Evelask's cracked voice broke into sobs she could hold back no longer.
They had risked everything together to reach this place.
One for a daughter.
One for a friend.
One to be hope.
One to find paradise.
They had come this far.
Yet this was the result.
Evelask drowned in unbearable bitterness.
All their efforts felt for naught.
Roooar—
Boom!
And as if to herald her end, an acid rainstorm approached the path back.
Staring at it, she smiled in resignation.
Then she wandered blankly under the sun she had once thought paradise.
Hoping against hope for a scrap of it here.
Through the apocalypse, she wandered aimlessly.
When all her mana for protection ran dry, leaving not a scrap.
She finally collapsed.
The blazing sun began melting her body.
But she had no strength left to resist.
She just thought she should have done this sooner.
Time to see her comrades again.
Her friend Aimi again.
As she closed her eyes for the last time.
The sand beneath her suddenly sank away.
And as her limp body was sucked into the pit.
She opened her eyes again.
Cold water hit her head.
When she came to, she saw a lake and forest.
Staring blankly at the scene from books.
Paradise came to mind.
"Everyone!"
As Evelask bolted up.
The same forest stretched out.
She staggered forward in a daze.
Gone.
The fierce sun, the acid rain—vanished.
And her comrades, her world—gone too.
Even after finding paradise, nothing remained for her.
As that reality reared its head again, a piercing chill of solitude seeped in.
Cold.
So cold it felt like her insides were rotting.
The sense of being the world's sole survivor gnawed at her instantly.
"N-no... No! I'm here, I'm here! I'm a necromancer!"
And she began denying reality outright.
She was a necromancer.
One who commands the dead.
A necromancer's pinnacle: reviving corpses indistinguishable from the living.
Reach that, and she could reunite with comrades in paradise.
The paradise they all longed for.
Denying this reality with not even a single body to revive, she clenched her fists.
Evelask Benapoci.
The world's sole necromancer became a World Erosion entity.
And that World Erosion entity now faced a boy before her.
"Evelask Benapoci."
The boy stared straight at her with blue eyes.
"How long are you going to keep denying reality?"
Krash's words pierced deep into Evelask's chest.
Her hair trembled faintly.
She knew.
She had denied reality for so long.
That's why she had holed up alone, avoiding facing it.
"What do you know? What could you possibly know?"
Thick tears fell from Evelask's eyes.
It had been such a harrowing journey.
Yet she longed to return to it.
No other time in her life had she pushed forward so fiercely.
Here, she was an Eroder.
An outsider, nothing more.
"I know."
Krash chuckled dryly as he gazed at her.
He had heard it plenty—annoyingly so.
Locked in her cell, she spilled her past daily.
Back then, Krash couldn't grasp her feelings.
But now he did.
Even stubbornly enduring comrades' deaths, pushing through.
Yet failing to stop the end that day.
Krash had despaired just as profoundly.
The weight of everyone's hopes crushed human shoulders without fail.
"The ones I was with are gone from this world too."
Even if they were the same people, those in Krash's memories no longer existed.
They couldn't return from that doomed world.
Just as Evelask saved none of her comrades.
Krash had saved none of his.
Only memories remained.
"But we live on. Because they saved me and got me this far."
To avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Krash poured his all into living each day.
That was his way of repaying them.
"And you're the same. You've lived clinging to that unfulfilled goal all this time."
Krash took a step forward.
Evelask's body flinched.
"It's scary. Being left all alone."
Solitude was vicious.
The loneliness of a world no one else remembered was beyond words.
So Evelask denied reality.
Otherwise, she'd be eternally alone here.
"That's why you hide. Scared that even if you leave something in this world again, you'll lose it all once more."
Evelask's eyes wavered.
Snow began falling lightly from the sky.
And through it, Krash's eyes gleamed blue.
In the falling snow, Evelask's lips quivered.
"Evelask."
Krash spoke to her—eyes brimming with tears, speechless.
"Let's make a deal, like back then."
Her "back then" and his beginning were surely different.
"Krash, let's make just one deal."
After the Black Witch's death, she had begged him from her cell.
"I'll tell you one secret the Epania Palace hid."
With a smile of surrender, she leaned against the bars.
"Have Arthur smash my heart."
Back then, Krash had traded for her death.
"I'm going to inherit Crimson Garden's immortality."
But now, he spoke an entirely different deal.
Evelask's eyes widened.
To Evelask, immortality meant something else than Crimson Garden.
But she could choose to smash her heart and die if she wished.
She simply strove not to, for her saviors.
She was half-immortal.
Crimson Garden was different.
True immortality.
And Krash, inheriting it, would be the same.
"Even if you crumble to dust, I'll keep living in this world."
Everyone by her side so far had crumbled away.
Comrades, friends, her world—nothing left.
Terrified of that solitude, she fled into resurrection obsession.
She still feared it.
Those beside her leaving, the loneliness to come.
Into that black solitude.
The boy who stepped in painted over it.
Krash's hand enveloped Evelask's head.
The warmth from his hand, infused with Cataclysm Erosion, flowed through her head.
Evelask looked up.
In her tear-filled eyes, the boy grinned innocently.
"If you're lonely, just stick by my side. I'll make it so cloyingly full you'll hate it."
Tears streamed down Evelask's trembling eyes, tracing her cheeks.
He would take on the solitude she had endured.
Stealing curses was his specialty, after all.
"So help me out."
Krash pointed to the mountains beyond.
"Saving this world together once wouldn't be bad, right?"
On the snow-blanketed peaks.
Two who had lost worlds, everything.
The moment they met in this one.