Chapter 51
Chapter 51
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 51
Chapter Title: Test Subject (4)
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A kingdom in the midst of war. At the time, the kingdom's greatest problem wasn't the war itself, but the monster waves pushing down from the north and the expansion of the Demonic Realm.
Therefore, to solve the problem, fundamental research on this thing called ‘Magi’ was necessary.
It wasn't as simple as saying, "The opposite of Magi is divine power, so let's just solve it with that!" because even the Holy Kingdom couldn't pour all its strength into the Demonic Realm alone.
“Hmm. Honestly, the risk is great. No matter who it is. Magi itself is not something humans should get close to.”
“I think so too. That's why we should rotate research personnel every month. After their research period, the personnel will cooperate with the Holy Kingdom to ensure any residual Magi is completely cleansed during their leave.”
“Is it really necessary to go that far?”
At his subordinate's question, Prometheus chuckled and flicked his index finger.
“Hey, you said it yourself that Magi is dangerous! The more high-class the personnel, the better we have to treat them. What are you going to do if one of the researchers gets addicted or consumed by Magi? You punk. Are you trying to ruin the country?!”
“Aah! I get it! Stop flicking me! How old do you think I am?! I'll do as you say, Lord Prometheus!”
The secretary, rubbing the spot where he'd been flicked, flipped through the documents and then presented one as if he had found a suitable candidate.
“I believe Victor Braak would be a good choice for the first researcher. His research record is extraordinary. However, he's also quite dogmatic and has a lot of friction with his colleagues, so a solo research project might be fine.”
Victor Braak. I remembered him clearly. A researcher from Rahen, near the Chalkis Mountains. He had a rather bright and sincere image.
“Ah. That guy? I remember him. From a village near the Chalkis Mountains.”
“Yes, yes. Is there anything you don't remember, Lord Prometheus?”
“Don't be sarcastic. It's okay if the research is slow. Safety is the top priority.”
However, contrary to my worries, he demonstrated his abilities to their fullest. As if it were his true calling.
That's why, when I went to the laboratory a few months after the research began to check on the situation, it was Victor Braak who greeted me.
“I want to follow in the footsteps of Da Vinci and leave my name in the history books!”
“Don't try so hard to follow in his footsteps. It might be better to leave your name as yourself, rather than trying to follow someone else.”
“Thank you for the advice!”
When I met him in the lab, he seemed completely engrossed in his research. His eyes were hollow, and his whole aura had grown a bit darker.
It was at a dangerous level.
“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.”
“Pardon?”
“Always be careful that the abyss does not gaze into you. How sad it would be if a talented individual like yourself were to fall into it.”
“Thank you for your concern!”
After leaving the laboratory, Prometheus put a cigarette in his mouth, stared blankly up at the sky, and asked the secretary beside him a question.
“Victor Braak. You are rotating him every month, right?”
“Yes, of course. It's just that he reapplies as soon as his mandatory rest period is over.”
“Keep a closer eye on him. This seems dangerous.”
“Understood. I will be more careful.”
“Don't just say it.”
I could only hope that the terrible thing I was imagining would not come to pass.
***
“Hoo… Victor Braak.”
“Youuu. Who? Know. Me?”
“You gazed into the abyss, and you let the abyss gaze back into you.”
“N,o. I. Am the abyss. I. Have. Evolved.”
I wondered what kind of life he had lived over the past ten years or so.
He was completely different from the man in my last memory. Age aside, if it weren't for my memory, I would have thought he was a completely different person.
Could a being so consumed by Magi be purified? Or did I just have to kill him? All sorts of thoughts swirled in my head.
“Absorption. Interrupted.”
Bundles of Magi shot out from Victor's fingertips, writhing like tentacles as they flew in all directions.
I pulled out the embedded sword and sliced through the bundles of Magi. A sword was, after all, better suited for cutting than a hammer. A hammer in one hand, a sword in the other.
Spiritual Power gathered in my feet as I kicked off the ground. I thrust the sword toward his abdomen.
“Hmph-!”
But his skin didn't yield in the slightest to the sword's tip. It was a little different from the beast knight I met at the laboratory.
If the beast knight felt like his armor and skin had become one, Victor's skin itself had hardened.
The Magi writhed like tentacles again, digging into the ground, while a few others aimed for my blind spots and lunged.
“Tch.”
When I struck the ground to cut the tentacles lunging from below, the sword snapped in half.
It was still too difficult to operate Spiritual Power in three places at once—continuously circulating it inside my body to block the Magi while also maintaining the energy in the weapons in both hands.
After all, it wasn't easy to injure him with a normal weapon.
Besides, this power was anything but ordinary. A common sword couldn't withstand it.
I grabbed one of the swords stuck in the ground, threw it, and charged forward at the same time.
Victor was a researcher, not a being skilled in combat. Thus, his attacks were powerful but simple.
Clang-!
The hammer struck his temple. His neck snapped to the side as if it would break.
Crack- crack-
With the sound of bones setting, his neck returned to its original position.
“What the hell! It can even recover from something like this?!”
It wasn't just a matter of regeneration. I had struck him precisely with Spiritual Power. There should have been damage.
I struck the nape of his neck with the hammer again, but now the speed of his recovery was faster than my strike.
Even then, he reached out, grabbed the head of the hammer, and began to extend his Magi toward it.
The hammer twisted with a grating screech. It seemed this hammer had also seen better days.
“No. You. Don't.”
“Damn it!”
Spreading my Spiritual Power wide, I detected the Magi he was continuously absorbing, as if from an infinite source. I had no chance of winning unless I dealt with that first.
The source of the Magi he was endlessly absorbing. I launched myself toward the city center.
“Where! Do not. Interfere!”
He seemed to know what I was after and followed, but I kicked him in the stomach as he charged, sending him crashing into a building, and then dashed toward my destination.
Hadn't he lost his sanity? Or was this an act of instinct?
My final destination was the bloodstained lord's castle. The castle was filled with corpses, both inside and out—the bodies of the soldiers and knights who had been nowhere to be seen. However, there was no sign of the lord or any of the other nobles.
“Damn. Those rotten bastards. They abandoned the city and fled?”
Moreover, in the middle of the lord's castle were stacks of obviously suspicious barrels. The Magi connected to Victor Braak was surely being continuously supplied from here.
When I shot out my Spiritual Power, the barrels burst, releasing an enormous amount of the Magi of Wrath that filled the castle.
Only then did its purpose become clear. They had obviously collected this Magi through the stones laid beneath the city. To think they could produce the Magi of the Seven Deadly Sins from human emotions.
I didn't know which bastard came up with it, but it was a clever scheme. Though I'd have to find out what they planned to do by creating Magi in such a way.
“You-! What. Have. You done!”
“Not 'done.' 'Undone.'”
Grabbing the head of Victor, who was charging from behind while sputtering slurred words, I poured my Spiritual Power into him.
The tentacles extending from him clawed as if to tear my body apart, but they were blocked by my Spiritual Power and couldn't easily reach me.
“Sorry, but I'm not into tentacles.”
“Gurgle- No. You can't!”
He suffered as if he were suffocating, then slapped my hand away and broke free. I shook my head at the sight.
“Hah. So it was like that after all.”
It was already irreversible. I had tried to purify him by directly injecting Spiritual Power, but the extreme rejection meant he had no intention of breaking free from the Magi. In other words, he had accepted it himself.
“Fuck.”
I felt like shit. The fact that I had to kill someone I knew, with my own hands. Victor Braak was, in a way, a connection to my past, even if it wasn't a deep one.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that he created chimeras and experimented on kidnapped people.
It was just a little painful. A sense of guilt, wondering if the man before me would have changed so drastically if I hadn't initiated the Magi research in the past, if I had paid just a little more attention to them.
I picked up a fallen soldier's sword.
“Then I'll have to be the one to send you off.”
I cut down the incoming tentacles and smashed his jaw upwards with my hammer. It was clearly different from the first attack. He couldn't properly absorb the shock, nor could he recover.
“Kraaaack-!”
Unable to regain his senses from the continuous attacks, he shot Magi in all directions.
I was repeatedly wounded by the blind tentacles, only for the wounds to heal.
I grabbed his outstretched wrist, pulled him toward me, and punched him straight in the face.
“Keoheok-”
He spat out a dark red clot of blood and staggered.
“You bastard. How can you… the Magi.”
His speech was less slurred than when the Magi had seeped into his very marrow. The sclera of his eyes also slowly changed from dark red to a pale gray.
“This can't be. This can't be happening! I am the abyss!”
“It's time to wake up from your dream.”
The surrounding Magi rushed toward him.
“Die-!”
The Magi, gathering like a cloud, materialized and poured down like rain. The sharpness of each and every strand was beyond description.
Dodging it all was impossible. I used Spiritual Power to defend only my most vital areas and stretched out my hand, unleashing more Spiritual Power. Leaking blood soaked my clothes and dripped to the floor.
However, the Spiritual Power voraciously devoured the Magi, gradually purifying the surroundings.
“Huff- huff-”
After that one attack, Victor was breathing heavily. Moving energy to attack consumes a corresponding amount of stamina and mental strength, and it was surely a burden for a man who had dedicated his entire life to research.
No matter how much the Magi had enhanced him.
I secured the hammer's handle with Spiritual Power and threw it at him. He twisted his body to dodge it, but when I exerted my will, the returning hammer struck his back, making him stagger.
In that opening, I deeply slashed his leg with the sword. He stumbled and fell to his knees, still spewing Magi. It was now an act of final desperation.
“Why, why! Why doesn't it work! This can't be!”
I felt no need to answer the screaming man's questions. I simply approached slowly, grabbed the hand he was attacking with, and then gripped his head with my other hand, pouring in Spiritual Power.
Unlike the first time, the Spiritual Power began to penetrate his insides.
Slowly, the strength drained from his hand, and he began to pour blood from every orifice. His whole body trembled violently, subsiding and then shaking again.
Starting from his fingertips, his skin died, turning black as if the blood were draining from it.
Victor Braak, completely drained of strength, collapsed to his knees, gasping his few remaining breaths.
No matter how much Magi one accepted, for the body of an ordinary human—neither a swordsman nor a mage—there was a clear limit.
He thought he was using the Magi, but it was the Magi that was making him think so, all while eating away at his life force.
“What… what have I done.”
Having finally regained his senses just before death, Victor Braak saw what he had done and sobbed with a choked, breathless voice.
Granok had always been a city he admired. Not just because it was a neighboring city next to his hometown, but because it was the starting point of magitech engineering. Hadn't he also stayed and researched here in his youth, full of dreams?
And yet, he had destroyed such a place with his own hands.
“Did I not tell you? To be wary of the abyss. So that the abyss would not gaze into you.”
“You… are. Ah… Ahh- I just. Wanted to become… someone like you.”
“Make sure you ask for forgiveness from the people you killed.”
As his last breath escaped, along with his soul, Kratos closed his eyelids over those last words.