Chapter 278
Chapter 278
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 278
Chapter Title: Declaration of War
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Her real name was Byoren Jeblam.
Sixteen years old, just like Krash, and the top student in Raheln Academy's special class.
She had originally entered disguised as a burly man, but thanks to Krash, she could now live as her true self.
Her life story, no matter how charitably one tried to frame it, could not be called a good one.
Around the time she turned four.
Her mother, the barrier master, left.
She didn't leave a single word for her daughter.
Instead, the barrier master left behind just one book on barriers that she had written herself.
Byoren read that book every single day until she had memorized it cover to cover.
Looking back, it might have been her way of clinging to longing.
At the very least, her mother had been with her until she was four.
Byoren didn't know much about why her mother had left.
Perhaps due to her naturally mature personality, for the first few years, she simply thought her mother would come back on her own.
But her mother never returned, and Byoren eventually had to go searching for answers herself.
And she thought her father might know.
Once a week.
The Magic Emperor visited Byoren faithfully, conversed with her, and checked her progress in barrier arts.
She asked her father about her mother, but he gave no real answer.
Just as before, he only asked questions, inspected her progress in barrier arts, and left.
And in the year she turned ten.
Even her father stopped coming.
Byoren was left alone.
As the child of the Magic Emperor, she lacked for nothing in material terms.
But she had never once stepped foot outside the Jeblam royal palace in her entire life.
Moreover, the servants who attended to her life were mostly golems created by magic.
"Lady Byoren, it's time for your meal."
"Is that all you can say?"
"I cannot respond to unprogrammed queries. I am Domestic Golem M-28. I repeat programmed behaviors."
The golems only repeated their pre-programmed responses.
They never gave the answers she wanted.
"Aaaahhh!"
As time passed, the power of World Erosion began to slowly erode her.
She sought out the Magic Emperor, but he showed little interest in her plight.
"I see. So this is possible too."
Sometimes, indifference hurts more than persecution.
He regarded her like an experimental subject whose every possibility had already been tested.
He tossed her a few pointers for his experiments but offered no solution to the World Erosion gnawing at her.
If anything, he seemed to view even her death as just another experimental outcome.
He merely observed her.
Byoren's personality grew increasingly prickly.
She became sharp over trivial things and started growing wary.
She kept imagining herself being devoured and killed by World Erosion.
That was why she threw herself into personal research on barriers.
The book on barriers her mother left was her only solace.
One day, she spotted mages visiting the palace.
They were the mages who visited her father, the Magic Emperor, regularly.
Byoren used her innate barrier arts to erase her presence and followed them.
"Did you hear? His Majesty the Magic Emperor has a child."
"You mean that paper he published? I'm sick of it. So boring."
"No, no, it's real. He really has a child."
Hearing the word "child," Byoren froze.
After all, she was the Magic Emperor's only child.
She held her breath quietly and listened.
"I heard he kidnapped a World Erosion being directly and impregnated her."
"The Magic Emperor? ...Well, that's exactly the kind of thing he might do."
"It's true. You saw it in the paper too. No one could get those results without experimenting firsthand."
Kidnapped?
Byoren blinked.
It was a story she'd never heard or even imagined.
"You know what the Magic Emperor is trying to do, right?"
"Hey, don't go blabbing about that or you're dead."
"No one's here but us. Anyway, he kidnapped World Erosion beings for research material to create a magic race. The child is just one byproduct of that process."
Byoren was still young.
But she had completed genius-level education through her training golems.
Even a rotting fish is still a carp—she was the Magic Emperor's daughter, after all.
Her intellect had developed far faster than a normal child's.
And now, it was all turning into a curse.
Because she understood every word they said.
If she'd been stupid, she might not have grasped it.
Byoren's body began to tremble slowly.
"Then the reason I was born..."
All the cold attitudes her father had shown her finally made sense.
The Magic Emperor truly treated her as an experimental subject.
"And my mother was the vessel forced to bear that experiment."
Byoren's memory of her mother's face was growing hazy.
Perhaps because of that, her memories began to distort under the influence of her unstable psyche.
Her mother had always looked at her with sadness and never truly cherished her.
The sky felt like it was turning pitch black.
A swamp coiled around Byoren's legs, slowly dragging her down.
She couldn't tell what was real anymore.
But it was easier for her to think this way.
Otherwise...
Her mother would have abandoned her and run away.
Thick teardrops fell from Byoren's eyes.
Perhaps she had known all along.
She had just desperately denied reality.
She was an experimental subject.
One that had outlived its usefulness.
And her mother, kidnapped by her father and forced to give birth to her...
Had fled, abandoning both her bundle of hatred and her father.
Byoren engraved this truth deep in her heart.
At some point, she found herself in the Magic Emperor's magic research lab.
As always, he was immersed in research to create the magic race.
Byoren clenched her fists tightly.
Instead of resentment toward her mother, she harbored deep hatred toward the Magic Emperor.
But she didn't vow revenge.
"Hic, hic."
She was in constant mortal peril from the World Erosion devouring her body.
For her, survival was the goal.
Ironically, with death always closing in, she could avoid sinking into despair.
She had to cling to barrier arts to survive.
That kept her from letting everything go.
And so, she began rummaging through the Jeblam royal palace.
One day, she sneaked into the Magic Emperor's magic lab while evading his eyes.
There, she glimpsed some memories he had preserved through dissection.
Among them were the reasons for his obsession with creating the magic race.
"...Is that all my existence amounts to?"
She was just one result of research to create this magic race.
The thought choked her.
A profound loneliness and torment welled up from within.
It felt like bugs were crawling all over her body.
Nausea surged.
Her trembling body seemed on the verge of collapse.
"...I want to get out."
Byoren no longer had the will to stay in the palace.
She was certain she'd go mad if she did.
Byoren slipped out of the palace secretly.
The Magic Emperor didn't pursue her.
He had long since lost interest in her.
And he had no reason to capture her.
Only after leaving home did Byoren realize.
If she had wanted to leave, she could have at any time.
She felt hollow.
And she recalled why she had stubbornly stayed in the Jeblam royal palace.
A faint hope that her mother might return someday.
That vague hope had kept Byoren there until now.
"I see."
But now she knew.
Her mother would never come back here.
There was no reason for her to return to this utterly hateful place.
Her mother had abandoned her.
Old memories now only reflected her mother's face, filled with the desire to leave.
"I don't have to come back here anymore."
This wasn't the home she remembered.
A home was a place where someone welcomed you back.
There was no place for her here.
Her heart felt strangely lighter.
So, she came to take Raheln Academy's special class entrance exam, hiding her identity.
But she couldn't use the name Byoren Jeblam.
Nor could she simply use a commoner's name.
She had no experience living as one, so she'd be found out immediately.
So, she used her wits.
Her identity didn't even exist in the world anymore.
She sold some magic tools she stole when leaving the palace to raise funds.
Then she bought the name of the now-defunct Sedney family, which had only a name left.
Thus, her new name.
Byoren Sedney.
With that name, she took Raheln Academy's special class exam.
She was already a full-fledged barrier master.
The entrance exam was laughably easy, and she secured the top spot effortlessly.
For someone who had spent all her money buying the family name and had nothing left, the top spot's scholarship exemption and extra benefits were too good to pass up.
Surrounded by nothing, she had lived alone like that.
Half her blood was from a World Erosion being, unacceptable to humans.
Half was human, unacceptable to World Erosion beings.
Without mother or father.
Just silently, all alone.
Even if her life's value was merely being born as an experimental subject.
Even if she had to endure World Erosion eating at her with barriers.
She had survived to this day.
And one day.
She encountered a boy.
Krash Valheim.
To Byoren, he was the one who taught her how to resolve the curse-like World Erosion.
And now, they were entangled through various events.
Krash was a peculiar person.
Though he wielded World Erosion power like her, he always had people around him.
Unlike her, whose mother fled, father ignored her, and who was surrounded only by golems.
Countless people gathered around him, living together.
Krash might not realize it, but for Byoren, being connected to him like that had a greater impact than she imagined.
Her sole life goal had been resolving the World Erosion devouring her body to survive.
So she had always vaguely wondered.
She could do anything for survival, but what would she do after surviving?
She was just a discarded experimental subject, after all.
But on the day Byoren made a barrier to evade World Erosion being eyes through a deal,
Krash told her,
"Byoren, if you want to find your mother, complete the barrier and come see me again. I'll give you a lead."
Krash knew the face Byoren made when he found the barrier master's corpse.
Emptiness and despair.
From that day, she had cut off all conversation with others.
So Krash gave her a new purpose—finding the barrier master—instead of mere survival.
The vague thoughts she harbored deep inside.
Her mother would never return, yet she still wanted to find her.
Krash had touched that buried desire and brought it to light.
It was perceptive of him.
Even if she survived World Erosion, she had no purpose in life.
Now he had given her a reason to keep living.
Byoren knew it too.
So after completing the barrier, even though she survived as per his advice, she didn't go straight to Krash.
With her one purpose in life created,
Ending it hastily would just leave her purposeless again.
So until today, she had lived with that new goal in her heart.
"That's the story of my life up to now."
Byoren finished recounting her life.
It wasn't a story she was eager to voice,
Yet her face was utterly serene.
It was clearly the face of someone who had grown accustomed to it all.
Byoren let out a hollow chuckle as she saw Krash gazing at her silently.
"You know, I've thought this before, but you seem surprisingly weak to stories like this."
Byoren had spent quite some time around Krash.
Perhaps because of that, she had seen through his soft spot for such tales.
"Don't worry. Thanks to you, I've been able to live pretty peacefully. I don't even need to use the body made from barriers anymore."
Since the day Krash gave her the hint for the barrier,
Byoren no longer needed the barrier body she had made to protect herself from World Erosion.
That alone had been life-changing for her.
"You have no idea how huge it is not to have to think about how to endure tomorrow."
Byoren fidgeted with her hands as she said it.
"So, Krash, I'm truly grateful to you."
Unaccustomed to thanking someone, she smiled awkwardly.
"And Ixion, whatever that World Erosion group wants with me, you're a target too."
From the moment they asked her to make a barrier to evade World Erosion being eyes,
Byoren had known Krash was being hunted.
During the time Krash was kidnapped to the Giant's Forest,
The empire claimed he threw himself to save the fourth princess.
But Byoren saw right through it as clearly targeting him.
"Put yourself first, whatever happens. Don't get dragged around because of me. Don't be bound by my mother's request. She's already someone who abandoned me."
It's not a situation where you protect me, Byoren said.
"The world needs you more than me."
As if her life's value had long been spent, and dying anytime was no issue.
Byoren smiled like that.
Seeing it, Krash realized.
Why, before his regression that day, she threw her body forward, deploying her final barrier against the Worst and died.
"Fuck it. Whether I'm a World Erosion being or not. No matter how much you point fingers, you bastards will live your whole lives indebted to me. Thanks to mixed-bloods like me—half human, half World Erosion."
It was somehow similar to him.
His half-assed life had felt meaningless, wasted time.
Then, through Black Hood, he stole curses and became bound to contributing to the world, like a curse itself.
Byoren, after surviving, found purpose in protecting the Generation of the Sky through barriers, even though her life as an experimental subject held no value.
"Damn, birds of a feather really do flock together."
At some point, Krash's hand rested on Byoren's head.
Byoren flinched, expecting her hair to be grabbed,
But Krash was petting her head.
Was this girl really smiling now?
Regrettably, it didn't look that way to Krash at all.
This was just a reflexive smile, far from true happiness.
"Hey, Byoren."
"Yeah?"
Byoren wore a blank expression, not expecting Krash to pet her head.
To her, Krash continued.
"Do you know what the most satisfying moment of my life was?"
"...What?"
Krash grinned widely.
"When I landed a massive blow on them."
"Landed a blow on who?"
With that, Krash immediately turned and left the building.
It was a sudden, impulsive move.
"W-Wait, Krash!"
Flustered, Byoren hurried after him.
Soon, she spotted Krash's back.
Krash stood in the middle of the village, halted, drawing in a deep breath.
The moment Byoren grew even more anxious, not knowing what he would do.
"Terrasius Jeblam!"
Krash bellowed the Magic Emperor's true name at the top of his lungs.
Byoren's eyes widened hugely.
The name slipped out before she could stop him.
Then, the Magic Emperor—who had been gazing at the sky far away—turned toward them.
He hadn't expected Krash to call his name directly in this situation.
As puzzlement entered his eyes, Krash drew Thunderclap.
"Let's have a go, you bastard."
The moment he threw down the gauntlet to the Heavenly Demon Sword.