Chapter 146
Chapter 146
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 146
Chapter Title: 46. Cataclysm (1)
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The blindingly white light that had been blazing away vanished, leaving behind nothing but a dull, cloudy lump of stone that could no longer be called a gem.
Crack.
Even that soon cracked apart, shattering completely.
The old man stared at his staff, which stubbornly clenched a fragment of the broken gem between its teeth.
Then, he abruptly vomited blood.
The old man clutched at his chest. Leaning on his staff, he gasped for breath.
"Master!"
The mages who had been watching screamed and rushed toward him.
The old man raised a hand to ward them off.
"Hoo..."
For a long while, he leaned on his staff alone, heaving breaths through his shoulders, before letting out a sudden sigh.
"What a pity. Truly a pity."
Was he lamenting the loss of one of the rare mythical relics from the "Mythical Age" that even the Magic Tower barely possessed, now rendered useless? Or was it the failure to achieve his goal despite deploying the relic? The old man's regret was ambiguous.
The mages didn't dare guess at his meaning and simply watched their pale-faced master with anxious expressions.
As they gazed at him, they belatedly realized something.
The old man's eyes weren't fixed on the ruined relic, nor on the flooded area where his target had been.
He was looking much farther away.
To the west, somewhere. In the direction of the empire's territory ruled by the Bourgogne imperial family.
"Now the knights will rush to report what I saw to the Emperor. His existence becoming known is only a matter of time."
To the mages' ears, it was an utterly bizarre statement.
The old man had joined the war on the Emperor's orders. His mission had been to eliminate a certain knight from Dotrin.
Hadn't he unleashed his spell at the final moment, even sacrificing the relic in the process?
Yet here he was, worrying that the Emperor would hear news from the battlefield.
A few mages paled.
"C-Could it be that at the end, Master, you forcibly cast the spell because..."
One of them opened his mouth to voice his guess, then clapped a hand over it in shock at his own words.
The old man neither scolded the mage nor clarified his doubts.
"Let us return."
"If we go back like this after receiving the Emperor's command, we might face retaliation later."
When one mage voiced his concern, the old man replied flatly.
"We strove hard, even destroying a precious relic, but our power fell short, and we failed. Report it that way, and the Emperor won't pursue it further."
The old man even seemed somewhat relieved.
But fear alone clouded the mages' faces.
A pure terror toward someone, distinctly different from their reverence for the old man.
Seeing the emotion on his disciples' faces, the old man added with a sigh,
"If you're truly worried, destroy Dotrin's forward base and inflict heavy damage first. Report that ahead of time so the Emperor has no pretext to make an issue of it."
At his words, the mages could only bow their heads and promise to obey, not daring to argue further.
As the old man turned to leave the edge of the floodwaters, he suddenly halted mid-step.
His face hardened like stone; he stood frozen in place, unable to move.
And it wasn't just him.
The wyvern knights, who had arrived late to the battlefield and were massacring the empire's knights and mages, froze in midair.
Grrrrr.
The fierce wyverns, fearless by nature, let out suppressed, low growls.
The wyvern knights looked up at the sky with pale faces.
It was just past dawn; the dark clouds had already dispersed, leaving a perfectly clear sky. Yet darkness was encroaching upon the entire world.
"Th-There!"
One of the wyvern knights pointed at the sun.
A black blotch was slowly devouring it.
The larger the blotch grew, the darker the world became.
It wasn't a solar eclipse.
It was far more sudden—and ominous.
Soon, the black blotch completely consumed the sun.
Night fell upon the whole world.
The knights who had been waiting with the wyvern knights for the First Prince's return froze at the sudden anomaly.
Moments ago, the sun had been shining brightly; now, pitch darkness made it impossible to see even a foot ahead.
"Aaaah..."
The mute elf let out a groan like a terrified beast.
Thud.
The handmaiden, who had been desperately praying for her master's return, clutched her chest and fainted.
Blue light burst from the eyes of the men who had taken in the souls of ancient knights.
"At last."
"The time."
"Has come."
As they uttered incomprehensible words, the heir of the Ilai family scowled in disgust.
"What the hell. It's bad enough already, and now you too?"
His eyes brimmed with an inexplicable fear.
"Light the bonfires! All rangers and knights, fully arm yourselves and man the walls!"
In the darkness-shrouded Winter Castle, the castellan bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Recall all scouting rangers!"
At his command, the rangers fired signal flares into the sky.
Toooooot!
Horns blared without cease.
The castellan of Winter Castle peered beyond the walls.
Lights flickered to life here and there on the snowy plains adjacent to the mountains. The scouting rangers had lit their torches.
With unprecedented anxiety on his face, he watched the lights steadily approaching the castle.
Caaaaw!
Grrrrr.
Roooaaar!
Behind the lights, hordes of monsters roared. It was as if the entire mountain range was howling in fury.
"What in the world..."
Even in the centuries-long history of Winter Castle, this ominous portent was unprecedented. The castellan's face hardened.
"Damn it. Not a single day of peace."
A ranger squad leader, grumbling nonstop, glanced at the sky.
The sky, devoid of sun, moon, or stars—just an endless black void—was chillingly terrifying.
"What's happening now... Gah! What the—!"
The ranger squad leader muttered under his breath, then jumped back in shock.
"N-No presence at all. You nearly scared me to death."
Beside him, the lord of the new Magic Tower was gazing at the sky.
A voice as eerie as if echoing from deep within a cave.
"What? His Highness is coming back?"
The ranger, having missed the end, perked up and asked.
But the mage gave no reply.
He merely watched the night that had descended upon the world.
"Huh?"
"It's brightening!"
The night that had come so suddenly vanished just as abruptly.
"I thought something else was happening and got scared for nothing."
The rangers, trembling with unease, sighed in relief.
"Just in case, search the castle interior and confirm no anomalies. For the time being, no long-range scouting—keep constant watch only on the mountain pass exit!"
The castellan of Winter Castle issued orders to prepare for any potential follow-up anomalies.
"The dwarves have arrived!"
In the midst of it all, the dwarves appeared.
They had kept delaying the installation of the iron cannons, claiming they were swamped with migration work and building the Magic Tower. But now, for some reason, they brought the cannons, struggled with them on the walls for a while, and left.
Throughout the work, they didn't utter a single word.
They only occasionally glanced anxiously at the mountains.
The bizarre phenomenon had ended abruptly, but the mountains were still howling.
A dry laugh echoed through the empty throne room.
"How fortuitous. Truly fortuitous."
Upon the lofty dais, the Emperor seated on his throne was laughing.
"To think that man was a scion of the Bayern family, whose whereabouts had been unknown."
Whatever amused him so, the Emperor kept bursting into laughter.
After laughing for a long time, he suddenly spoke in a parched voice.
It sounded like a prophecy, or perhaps a verse from a poem.
The Emperor repeated the prophecy—or poem—several times.
In a relentlessly arid voice.
At that moment, the air trembled uneasily.
But the knights and attendants outside the throne room felt nothing and simply breathed a sigh of relief at the anomaly ending without further incident.
The darkness lifted. The sky regained its clarity as if nothing had happened.
But my heart was still pounding fiercely.
Something had occurred.
I didn't know what, but it was certainly no auspicious event.
Agnes said as much.
She claimed today's anomaly was surely a harbinger of something.
But she didn't know what it was any more than I did.
I shook off the anxiety as best I could.
If today's event was a sign of something, its true nature would reveal itself soon enough.
Clinging to a puzzle with no answers wasn't wise.
Besides, Agnes had said she wouldn't have much time to converse with me.
Even approaching me so suddenly had been possible only because her main body had greedily devoured lightning bolts, replenishing her energy. She was already mostly depleted from shouldering the burden of the [Cataclysm Poem] that I had to bear.
"Why are you in there?"
I asked the question that intrigued me most.
Her words left me stunned.
If she was right, then not just her—many other entities might be trapped inside my main body.
And she confirmed my suspicion.
That numerous beings dwelled within my main body.
She added that most of them had lost their sense of self from life, existing yet not truly existing.
Like ghosts.
"Besides you, do you know who else is intact?"
As I opened my mouth to ask more, she spoke first.
Her voice had already grown faint.
She sighed.
But it was only for a moment; she quickly poured out her words.
It was hardly a proper farewell—more like nagging.
"We'll meet again, right?"
She chuckled lowly.
A faint laugh, barely audible without intense focus.
She called to me.
Her voice was filled with pity and compassion I couldn't comprehend.
Her voice grew exceedingly faint.
She said she'd always wanted to tell me that someday. Her voice was gentle.
That was the end.
"Anne? Anne!"
No answer came, no matter how many times I called.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I engraved our conversation into my mind, committing her voice to memory so I wouldn't forget.
Mulling it over silently, I frowned.
'...and you shall reclaim the glory you have forgotten.'
It felt oddly off to interpret it merely as regaining my lost caliber as a sword.
A sense of incongruity lingered.
After much deliberation, I pinpointed the source.
She hadn't said I lost it. She said I forgot it.
That didn't quite make sense to me.
"Hm."
Suddenly, my head throbbed as if it might split open.
I gritted my teeth. But a groan I couldn't swallow slipped through.
"Just hold on a little longer! Mages are standing by at the camp!"
Through the ringing in my ears, the wyvern knight's urgent voice penetrated.
I tried to say I was fine, but my vision spun.
Consciousness blurred.
I no longer felt the wyvern's regular swaying motion.
A floating sensation, as if drifting above the clouds.
"Don't fall asleep!"
"Stay with us..."
The wyvern knight's voice now broke off in fragments.
"We're almost... keep it together... please..."
"Damn... it..."
Even that faded, and soon, I heard nothing at all.
