Chapter 146
Chapter 146
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 146
Chapter Title: Will
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- Kieeeek!?
The demonic beasts of the saplings let out horrific shrieks in unison.
They lifted their legs and charged at Adel with their grotesquely twisted bodies.
He swallowed his fear, but what surged up beyond it was madness.
Instinct whispered to him.
‘You must kill that thing.’
But…
“Shut up.”
Purruk.
With a single gesture from Adel.
A motion as if casually flicking his wrist in annoyance.
And then… the abyss rose.
Violet.
An unfathomable darkness.
It writhed like tentacles, piercing through the sapling demonic beasts.
- Ki, kieeek….
Uncomprehending what had happened, the beasts dangled in midair.
Their twisted legs flailed about in panic, their bodies refusing to accept that they were already dead.
Then, slowly and futilely, they crumbled into ash.
“Hm.”
The will that had taken residence in Adel didn’t even tilt its head at the sight.
It simply lowered its gaze a fraction and opened Adel’s status window.
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
[ Adel ]
Limit Breakthrough: ★★☆☆☆
Stats
: Vitality: 15 (D)
: Strength: 5 (F)
: Intelligence: 30 (A)
: Mental Strength: 33 (A)
: Mana: ■ ()
Talents
: 【■】
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
“Wow.”
A sigh of admiration slipped between its lips.
The kind of wonder that escapes unconsciously when something is so pathetic it becomes intriguing.
“So damn weak.”
The will tilted its head slightly and scanned the status window again.
Vitality at 15.
Strength at 5.
Not a single stat sufficient to guarantee survival.
“Hm….”
Intelligence and Mental Strength were nominally A-rank, but…
To the will’s eyes, they merely seemed a cut above the average human.
“And it survived with this?”
The numbers didn’t lie.
An unequivocally trash-tier body with no room for denial.
“Hah.”
It could have sneered dismissively.
‘That’s what you get for being stupid.’
‘Your suffering’s on you.’
‘Still, you lasted pretty long, huh?’
It could have said any of that.
But… it didn’t.
“…….”
The will fell silent for a moment.
An emotion it couldn’t quite identify swirled in its mind.
Not contempt, not mockery.
Sympathy?
…No, not even admiration.
Just pure, genuine bewilderment.
‘How the hell did this trash body crawl all the way here?’
A pure, bizarre question.
“Doesn’t make sense.”
How on earth… had this garbage body made it this far…
It defied logic.
Yet… he had done it.
─────?
Persia twisted its body.
Ancient trees sprouted, and trunks wrapped around Adel in supplication.
But the will didn’t retreat a single step.
“Stay put.”
The will raised its hand.
From left to right.
Casually drawing a faint line as if annoyed…
Splash──!!
It was severed.
Persia’s two legs… shed shadows as they thudded to the ground.
────!?
With no time to react, Persia collapsed between the ancient trees amid a thunderous crash.
Shadows leaked out… but regeneration failed.
“Just wait a bit… I’ll end it soon.”
The will lowered its gaze.
Scanning Adel’s status window once more.
Very slowly, from top to bottom.
Chewing over each line meticulously.
“Everything that should be there… is.”
The stats were garbage, but the traits and skills were perfectly normal.
No—packed with things most humans could never acquire in a lifetime.
“Hm.”
Wing.
The will opened the inventory.
It reached in, pulling out items one by one.
“What’s this?”
What it drew out… a blanket and pillow.
A neatly folded white blanket.
A pillow with faint indentations here and there.
“Who the hell carries this around?”
The will shook its head side to side.
Then it plunged its hand back into the inventory.
Clack.
Fingertips brushed against various objects.
Next came…
A candy wrapper from an half-eaten sweet.
A pebble of mysterious origin.
And…
“What bullshit.”
The will snorted, staring down at the four-leaf clover that emerged from the inventory.
A four-leaf clover sparkling as if meticulously coded.
The will was tempted to jam the four-leaf clover into the dirt.
It wanted to dismiss it as useless junk.
But…
The will paused its hand.
“Damn it.”
Suppressing the reflexive curse, it tucked the four-leaf clover back into the inventory.
Luck?
Useless crap.
But… the fact that Adel himself had cherished and kept it made even the will hesitate to discard it.
“Tch.”
The will clicked its tongue.
No matter how you sliced it, he wasn’t normal.
It couldn’t fathom how he’d survived with those trash stats and this pile of junk.
“Crazy bitch.”
The will finally turned its head.
It started walking slowly toward Persia sprawled on the ground, but…
“Ah.”
Persia was gone.
To be precise… it was there.
Far off, dragging itself across the ground.
Legless, trailing shadows, using tangled roots in place of legs as it fled.
“Haa….”
It had planned a clean finish.
But now, even in that state, it writhed desperately to survive, making things messier than necessary.
“What a pain in the ass.”
Literally.
Adel’s body right now was in a state where moving at all bordered on the miraculous.
“Smack….”
The will ultimately raised its hand.
In that instant, mana writhed from Adel’s heart.
Crackle-crackle—
Mana flowed out.
…No, flowed was too gentle a word.
Rampage… rampage fit better.
But the will ignored that and extended its hand.
Even knowing this body couldn’t withstand it.
“Unique magic.”
The will drew a line.
A single stroke slicing through empty air.
That stroke soon split into hundreds, thousands of threads.
Futures writhed, devouring each other’s possibilities.
Thousands of futures.
Thousands of paths.
Thousands of endings existing simultaneously—
“Wave function collapse.”
The moment the will grasped the line, the threads converged like octopus tentacles toward a single ‘answer.’
The direction Persia crawled.
The destination it would ultimately reach, its fated end.
All possibilities, all endings, rushed toward one single point.
{ Space / Unique Magic }
「Wave Functi───
But…
Pffft──!!
“Eh.”
A small crack burst from its fingertips…
Spreading past the elbow, to the shoulder.
“Hm… as expected, no good?”
Unique magic.
The miracle condensed from one person’s life.
But right now, Adel’s body housed two ‘uniques’ simultaneously.
“Hm….”
The will ultimately raised its gaze upward.
Staring at the empty air… it murmured softly.
“Help.”
[ … … … ]
“Help me out here.”
[ Impossible. ]
“Why.”
[ Insufficient plausibility. ]
‘Plausibility.’
At that absurd word, the will scoffed.
“Plausibility… right.”
[ … … … ]
“Then it makes sense for that thing to start moving from day one?”
The will pointed at Persia.
The field boss that should awaken only after a week in the Great Forest.
Yet, for some reason, 「Persia of the Dirge」 had begun moving on the very first day.
“That’s a glitch too.”
[ … … … ]
The system maintained its silence.
And that silence meant admission… or impossibility of denial.
A moment later—
[ Attempting synchronization! ]
[ … … … ]
[ Success! ]
[ Synchronized with entity ‘Cornelia von Delbar.’ ]
[ Player temporarily acquires attribute 「Star」! ]
“Ah, thanks.”
The will extended its hand once more.
This time, not toward Persia… but toward Adel’s own shadow.
Purruk───
Like darkness inverting, the abyss bloomed like a flower from beneath its feet.
But that flower was not beautiful.
Roots without end, leaves flowing like a swamp, colors undulating like a violet storm.
────!!
The abyss surged across the ground, flooding the entire Great Forest.
Adel’s mana began to flow through the abyss as a conduit.
“Just helping out this once.”
The abyss absorbed Adel’s mana, and the mana emanating from the abyss became lines etched across the land.
The entire forest was consumed by that darkness, turning into a massive canvas.
“Consider it payment for the help.”
Blood dripped down its hand and arm.
The cracks deepened further, swallowing Adel’s body up to the neck.
Splash—
The abyss’s movement halted.
A massive magic circle had formed, but…
“Damn.”
The will lowered its gaze.
The final line needed to activate the grand miracle.
A single stroke was missing.
“Risky….”
If it drew more mana here, Adel’s body would collapse.
The will made its choice.
To complete the spell by collapsing only part of it.
Flick.
The will extended Adel’s hand.
Fingertips drew the line.
In that instant, the abyss blanketing the forest froze…
And the starlight piled atop it began to pour down.
─────!!
Soon after—
Explosive light engulfed the Great Forest.
The starlight scattered, flowing in one direction like musical notes.
“…….”
The will drew breath.
The voice resounding from that body held not a single emotion.
Mechanically… it uttered 【Word of Power】 from Adel’s lips.
“Star cluster’s—”
Light gathered.
Atop the abyss, atop the earth, from rifts in the sky.
Hundreds, thousands of stars converged to a single point, as if born for this very moment.
“Requiem.”
{ Star / Highest Magic }
「Star Cluster Requiem」
──────!!
The magic activated.
Persia’s body split apart on its own, and the sapling demonic beasts crumbled into light on the spot, unable even to scream.
The star cluster descended.
Converging to one point, it pierced Persia’s heart and soul simultaneously.
“……….”
A requiem for the dead.
The final farewell to a soul lost beneath the World Tree.
***
His vision was blurry.
Near and far alike blurred into smears of light.
His body felt heavy.
Shoulders, limbs—even a single finger was a burden to move.
His heart was little more than scrap metal barely fulfilling its function.
Before he could even inhale… something warm welled up in his mouth.
“Pff….”
He saw red liquid dripping down.
It was… blood.
“Try hard one more time.”
In that instant—
He heard his own voice.
But it wasn’t his.
“Our first and final ‘me.’”
[ Equipped 【Mask of Silence】. ]
[ The will dwelling in the World Tree 【■■ ■ ■■■■】 has released synchronization. ]
[ ‘System’ has released synchronization with entity ‘Cornelia von Delbar.’ ]
[ Attribute 「Star」 has vanished. ]
Messages flickered at the edge of his vision.
But his blurry sight made not a single word legible.
Only a few keywords registered amid the trailing text.
[ Field Boss 「Persia of the Dirge」 defeated. ]
[ Achievement ‘To You, the Immortal’ acquired. ]
But…
Messages weren’t important right now.
This was the heart of the Great Forest’s darkness.
Even if he felt like collapsing, like his body would crumble…
He had to stand.
[ The will dwelling in the World Tree 【■■ ■ ■■■■】 sends its praise to your unyielding, indomitable resolve. ]
The word ‘praise’ faintly registered in his blurry vision.
…He didn’t need praise.
‘Haa….’
He lifted his head.
Gazing at his shadow, still unbowed amid the hazy world…
He began to move his body once more.