Chapter 60
Chapter 60
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: Boss of the Underground Vermin
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Linian shuddered in astonishment, her hand trembling.
"You... How is this even possible... This doesn't make any sense... There's no way it's a mistake. That repulsive aura of those scum that flooded into my consciousness on the day the goddess fell... Why am I sensing it from you? Do you have any idea how much hell I went through hunting for those goddamn bastards... I gave up because I couldn't find a single clue, and just when I finally thought I'd caught a lead—what the hell is this..."
Solaris simply watched her silently, as if urging her to continue.
With no response, Linian pointed at him in fury.
"Say something, damn it! Why do you give off the exact same vibe as those accursed Underground Vermin? You're not about to confirm the worst thing I can imagine, are you!?"
Solaris replied indifferently, his expression unchanging.
"No point in lying to each other. The worst thing you're imagining? That's exactly the reality. The Usurpers... That's what you call them, right? Underground Vermin? Not wrong. Anyway, right now, I'm the one leading them."
"What...? You... You're 'leading' them...? What the hell does that mean? It sounds like you've joined forces with them..."
"Exactly."
Linian's eyes turned bloodshot with rage.
"What kind of insane bullshit are you spouting!? Do you even know who those bastards are!? Whose fault is it that we're in this state right now!? Don't tell me you have no clue, you so-called 'Son of the One True Sun'!"
"I know full well. Thousands of years ago, the human ruling class couldn't contain their greed and betrayed the goddess who had descended to the surface. They bound her and began exploiting her power. We, the races intimately linked to the goddess, lost the ability to take our draconic forms the moment she fell, and the divine authorities she granted us directly vanished as well."
"You know that, and yet what? You're siding with those psychotic bastards? Are you out of your mind!?"
"Of course not. While you were futilely chasing the Usurpers' whereabouts in the past, I found their stronghold long before you did and headed straight there. The humans who toppled a god faced divine retribution—they couldn't even maintain their physical forms on the surface lands once blessed by the goddess's grace. They'd holed up in the grand cathedral buried deep underground on the day she fell, where hymns to the goddess once echoed, and were siphoning her power from there."
Linian gasped in shock at his words.
"No way! Humans couldn't possibly wield the goddess's power however they pleased!"
"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. By the time I tracked them down, it had been over 300 years since the goddess's fall. And among those who betrayed her were high priests of her own faith. People who could already handle her power from the start—figuring out how to exploit it wouldn't have been hard for them."
"Then you should've wiped them all out right there! If the goddess had been freed—"
"Liniaras, have you ever seen the aftermath of humans passing through a place?"
"?"
Linian blinked in confusion at the cryptic remark.
"Humans are insatiably greedy, with no end to their desires and no concept of restraint. The lands they inhabit have every resource stripped bare and turned to wasteland, forests razed, rivers and seas polluted, and all life eradicated. Even the goddess, their creator, was no exception."
"No..."
"When I found the Usurpers' lair, the goddess was already so decayed that maintaining her divinity seemed impossible. Betrayed and bound to the earth, she'd been reduced to that state in a mere 300 years—what an achievement, right? All that time, her power had been used by the Usurpers to restore their own bodies and fulfill their 300-year-old dream of becoming gods themselves."
"Those lunatics..."
"To hide the fact of her fall, they siphoned off portions of her power to appoint sham holy warriors, and they lured in fools from the outside world who dreamed of godhood to serve as their proxies and limbs... Even if I'd freed her then, the goddess—already weakened beyond recovery—wouldn't have had the strength to return to the heavens, and we couldn't have regained our original forms either."
"Then you should've killed them all! The culprits who did this to us were right in front of you—what the hell did you do!?"
"I did kill them. Quite a lot, in fact. But exterminating every last one of those humans who were devouring the goddess's power with their frail bodies and wielding it at will proved too much. So I absorbed the power from the ones I killed. Know what happened then?"
Solaris closed his eyes and spread his arms. Wings sprouted from his back.
In Linian's memories, they had been pure white, but now large portions of his wings were discolored black.
As Solaris unfurled wings dozens of times larger than his body—true draconic wings—Linian muttered in shock.
"W-Wings...? No way, how...!"
"It restored part of my body to its original form. But ironically, my skill in handling the goddess's power was inferior to the Usurpers'. I could only absorb a fraction of what they wielded. So I changed my approach a bit."
The draconic wings vanished once more, and Solaris stepped forward.
"Instead of freeing a goddess too feeble to even hold herself up, I figured it would be far quicker and simpler to subjugate the Usurpers as my subordinates, take the power they properly extracted from her, and restore my body and authorities that way."
"You mad bastard."
Linian spat the curse.
"Of course, there were some side effects. Like the Usurpers, I became unable to roam the surface world freely. But by fully claiming that power through their expertise and properly regaining my authorities, that issue would resolve itself—and it pretty much has. Far more reliable and rational than banking on a goddess whose restoration was uncertain even if we killed them all."
With that, Solaris looked up at the ceiling, his face full of regret.
"I tried to let you and Lunarin know, but you were off gallivanting somewhere chasing the Usurpers—I had no idea where you were. I couldn't roam freely outside back then either, so it was hard to find you. I started with Lunarin. There she was in her lair, dutifully praying to the goddess under the moonlight.
Isn't it ridiculous? The goddess she prayed to had been betrayed and bound by humans 300 years ago—reduced to a chained brood hen, her power milked away."
"You... Don't tell me you..."
"I explained my plan to Lunarin, and she flew into a mad rage and attacked me. We fought nonstop for weeks. But I was always the strongest of the three to begin with, and now that I'd partially regained my original form, she couldn't win. If she'd accepted my proposal, none of that would've happened. A sad loss for me too."
"You... Youuuu...! You killed Lunarin...! You were behind it all!!!"
"It wasn't a choice I wanted to make."
Only then did Linian realize the meaning of Lunarin's dying words had been slightly different.
Underground Vermin, Solaris, danger, stop him.
Lunarin had been too far gone to even form full words, so Linian had interpreted it as 'The Underground Vermin will attack Solaris, and he's in danger.'
But the truth was, it wasn't that 'Solaris was in danger'—it was that 'Solaris himself was the danger.'
"Linian, join me even now. Face reality. The goddess has already fallen. She's nothing more than a relic from ancient times, her power drained by those who were once her followers. Soon, her power will be fully depleted, and she'll vanish.
When that happens, we'll stand as new gods. Our forms, our authorities—everything will return to how it was. I've already reached the point where I, and even the Usurpers, can move and wield power on the surface to a decent degree. Everything is in the final stages. Lunarin's death is regrettable, but—"
An explosion erupted inside Solaris's mouth as he spoke.
His lower jaw was completely blown away, but black smoke rose from the corners of his mouth, and the missing jaw regenerated almost instantly.
"If that's how it's gonna be, you shouldn't have done that to Lunarin."
Linian raised her middle finger, and Solaris gazed down at her with an emotionless face.
"I was going to show mercy since you're the last of our kin left in this world."
"Shut your trap, you filthy scum. It's shameful that a piece of trash like you shares blood with me and Lunarin."
"No point in hearing more responses from you."
Solaris drew upon his power. His body twisted, transforming into a massive white dragon... or rather, now closer to a black dragon, its body heavily darkened.
"I did say I'd nearly regained my original form and could wield considerable power even on the surface."
"Who cares about the power you got from stooping to the level of the Underground Vermin."
The colossal dragon lunged at Linian, and the Temple of the Sun began to rumble violently.
We fled into the heart of the empire, hiding our faces as we made our way toward a Lunia Church.
But wanted posters describing our features were plastered everywhere in the cities, so we couldn't stay at any proper inns. We could only buy essential supplies, camp out, and wash ourselves in clean lakes or rivers.
Truth be told, the real problem wasn't the lack of lodging in the cities...
"Elfin, how long are you gonna keep this up? Come eat already."
"No! I'm... gonna get stronger! This isn't the time to be leisurely eating! Just leave me alone!"
It was that Elfin had turned into a total brat.