Chapter 311
Chapter 311
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 311
Chapter Title: The Wheel of Causality (3)
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“Just as I thought.”
As the woman craned her neck to escape, Zenoger slammed the back of her head into the wall without mercy.
A series of dull thuds echoed as the porcelain skin masking her face shattered and fell away.
It was the hideous face of a man. No, visually, it was impossible to determine a gender.
There were no eyebrows, no eyelids. Only the eyeballs, set in their sockets, darted from side to side.
“Hahaha, a face specialized for disguise? You’re as hideous as I am.”
The unidentified assassin spoke in their own voice for the first time.
“Ah, this must be your first time seeing it. I, on the other hand, have seen your hideous form more times than I can count.”
Zenoger’s expression soured.
It was the same line he had once said to Arius. If this was psychological warfare, he couldn’t let it shake him.
But a thought suddenly crossed his mind. Theraze’s children were always assigned one bodyguard. Yet, he had never seen Uorin’s.
“No, that’s impossible. You never registered on my senses? Where could you have been hiding?”
The assassin’s voice changed again.
“What are you talking about? I was always behind you.”
Zenoger’s face turned pale.
He knew exactly who this voice belonged to. It was the nameless official who had delivered orders from Zion.
‘Damn it! So that’s how it was!’
Specialized in disguise, a unique way of walking, the same line spoken to Arius.
Piecing together all the evidence, it was clear this was the assassin sent by Uorin.
‘Calm down. His combat power is lower than mine anyway. I can’t fall for these mind games.’
Zenoger used his six hands to pin down the points where his opponent’s power amplified. There was no way for the frail assassin, who had even burned away his muscles for the sake of disguise, to escape.
“Now, answer my questions. Lie, and I’ll tear you limb from limb. Does Uorin know where the Spatur clan is hiding?”
“…She does.”
“She does? Tell me where. Answer quickly! As her personal guard, there’s no way you wouldn’t know!”
“The Waveform Mountains. The Valley of True Name.”
Zenoger felt his world crumbling.
If Uorin knew their hiding place, it meant she had already dispatched a subjugation force. By tomorrow morning, the Spatur clan would be erased from history.
“Give up. Even if you escape from here, there’s nowhere for you to go.”
“Ugh… Uaaaaah! Shut up!”
Zenoger didn’t give up.
If his clan was to be annihilated, he had to survive, now more than ever. If it ended like this, where could he find the value in his clan’s thousand years of forsaking their humanity?
“Die! You bastard!”
Zenoger raised his middle left arm, forming his hand into a sharp point. Like a spear, he swiftly pierced the assassin’s solar plexus and grabbed his heart.
As the heart burst, the assassin’s body twitched. His shocked eyes trembled violently.
***
*Clang!*
One of El Krauch’s porcelain dolls, lined up on a shelf, shattered. Its body rolled off the shelf, making a second cracking sound as it hit the floor.
Uorin, sitting at the table, blinked slowly as if she hadn’t heard a thing. Then, she walked over to a cabinet and took out a bottle of strong liquor.
Filling a crystal glass halfway, she returned to the table, sat down, and crossed her legs. She tapped her white calf rhythmically as she fell into thought.
“Hmm…”
A porcelain doll had broken.
That meant another life had just been extinguished.
The crystal glass parted her cherry-like lips. The clear liquid flowed in, moistening her tongue before the glass was pulled away.
“What a truly boring night.”
***
Zenoger glared at the assassin with terrifying eyes.
He had killed countless beings, but never had he encountered something so beyond comprehension. He had pierced the solar plexus and crushed the heart. He could still feel the heart growing cold in his hand. But why…
“…aren’t you dead?”
“I died. Once.”
Zenoger processed the assassin’s words, a dawning realization striking him.
A flicker of curiosity crossed his mind, but it was a fleeting thought. A man about to leave this world had no need for answers.
“So you’re an assassin.”
“It’s not people who kill.”
The assassin swung his only free hand, his left. A flash of light, and Zenoger’s head went flying.
“Circumstances do.”
Watching Zenoger’s head bounce across the floor, the assassin pulled Zenoger’s arm out of his chest. Zenoger’s body, collapsed on the floor, convulsed violently, and a fountain of blood erupted from the stump of his neck.
The assassin felt no emotion. Even if he did, his face was incapable of expressing it.
The doll maker, El Krauch.
Few people knew that he, active 200 years ago, had been deeply engrossed in black magic.
During the time he was gaining public attention for his “seamless jointed dolls,” a woman came to visit him.
Surprisingly, the visitor was Theraze, the ruler of the continent.
The two talked for a long time, and the day after Theraze left, Krauch died. At least, officially.
Hundreds of famous figures attended his funeral. But while they were shedding tears, Krauch was on a small boat heading to a certain country in the East.
The place he arrived at, following Theraze’s instructions, was the home of a family of doll makers. Already well-versed in black magic, he quickly mastered their techniques.
How to imbue dolls with spirits. How to create a perpetual motion machine said to be taught by a demon. How to install these mechanisms into the bodies of the dead.
Krauch mastered every process and left the East.
By the time he returned home, a full 180 years had passed. But having already modified his own body into that of a doll, he could not die even if he wanted to.
The first thing he did was collect the works he had created long ago. This was because he could only disperse his life force into dolls crafted with a doll maker’s soul.
However, most of his works had been sold, and he could only retrieve a few pieces.
At that point, Theraze gave him his first order: to attend to her daughter, Uorin.
Uorin took a liking to Krauch, and from then on, she began collecting El Krauch’s porcelain dolls.
“Lady Uorin, it is I.”
Krauch knocked on Uorin’s door.
It was an unnecessary act for an assassin who could infiltrate anywhere, but today, it was only proper to announce himself formally.
“Enter.”
Krauch slowly opened the door and went inside.
He saw Uorin leaning an arm on the back of her chair, sipping her drink. Seemingly tipsy, she greeted him with a seductive smile he had never seen before.
“Well, what is it? To think you’d come to my room.”
Krauch laughed cheerfully. But without the muscles to form an expression, he couldn’t convey that he found her joke amusing.
“I have eliminated the stray dog of Spatur, Princess Uorin. No…”
As if a simple bow wasn’t enough, Krauch knelt and prostrated himself on the floor.
“Your Majesty, Empress Theraze.”
Uorin chuckled and glanced out the window. The surroundings were still dark, but there were signs of the approaching dawn.
“You’re quick on the uptake.”
Krauch shook his head and confessed honestly.
“To be honest, I didn’t know until yesterday. I realized it when Pungjang arrived. To think you deceived even me, who stays by your side 24 hours a day. When did you awaken?”
“Two years ago.”
Krauch was speechless.
As a doll maker, he knew every detail of human expressions. The fact that he, who never missed even the slightest twitch of a facial muscle, had been unaware of Uorin’s awakening for two years was astonishing.
‘Then again… she has lived through eons.’
Theraze is ‘Mitochondrial Eve’.
Mitochondria are passed down only from the mother to her child. Therefore, by tracing the lineage, one can eventually find the ancestor of all humanity—Mitochondrial Eve.
A very long time ago, a woman’s mitochondria underwent a strange mutation. It was an absolute genetic ability that allowed her to pass on 100 percent of her memories to her children.
Theraze’s daughters fully awaken their ancestors’ memories after the age of ten. When a mother gives birth to a child, the child becomes the mother once more.
This was merely borrowing the means of reproduction; it was the same as a single human living for eternity.
She must have existed even before she took the name Theraze. Perhaps even back when she was nothing more than a primate. That is why she doesn't know the moment of her own origin.
But all of history since her origin remained in her mind. From the beginning of humanity to the present day.
That is why she was the only human who retained the déjà vu of McClain Guffin.
Theraze had known for a long time. The ability to simply clone herself would eventually lead to extinction.
She could be struck by a plague, caught in a war, or swept away by a natural disaster.
She strove to enhance the efficiency of the individual. And after a staggering 4,000 years of breeding experiments, she figured out how to selectively incorporate the father’s genes into the zygote.
From then on, Theraze became superior in every aspect.
She inherited the traits of physically superior men, becoming even more beautiful, and inherited the blood of an absolute being, gaining a powerful will.
The resourcefulness of a wealthy merchant, the physical prowess of a grand swordmaster, the intellectual capacity of a great mage—she absorbed into her body all traits that would help her rule the world, passed them on to the next generation, and then reawakened her memories to repeat the process endlessly.
In this process of self-repetition, Theraze grew stronger.
Since these traits did not manifest in her sons, she founded a nation herself, in a woman’s body. And now, she reigns over the world as the Emperor of Kashan and one of the Three Sovereigns.
“It’s been a long time, Krauch. That handsome face of yours has been quite ruined.”
Krauch realized these were not the words of fourteen-year-old Uorin, but of the Theraze who had visited him 200 years ago, and he bowed his head respectfully.
“Thanks to Your Majesty’s help, I have attained immortality. To a doll maker, a face is merely wrapping paper. My pride lies in the mechanisms that make up my body.”
“Hehe, that’s just like you. Then again… you were like that on the day we first met, too.”
Uorin would remember everything, but Krauch’s memory was hazy.
Unable to give a ready answer, he broke the awkward silence with a question.
“Pungjang was here. I imagine Your Majesty anticipated this and summoned him. Did you know that Shirone would survive?”
Uorin walked to the window and drew back the curtains. The garden, viewed from the apartment, was still sleeping peacefully.
“Politics isn’t about giving one to get one. It’s about making a proposition where you win no matter what the other party chooses. It would have been good if Shirone lived, but his death wouldn’t have been a bad outcome either.”
“I see.”
“However, I can say this much. He was more than qualified to survive.”
“I understand you have tested him several times.”
Uorin looked up at the ceiling, recalling those times.
“First, I tested his luck. He won an excessive prize when he spun the . I thought it might just be a coincidence.”
Krauch tilted his head, unable to understand.
“Did you also know that my creation would arrive as his prize?”
Uorin nodded.
“The world is like a gumball machine. Inside the machine are blue events and red events, all mixed up. People looking from the outside can’t know the pattern in which the gumballs will come out. That is humanity. They simply stand before the machine and turn the knob, not knowing what will emerge. Krauch, do you believe in something like luck?”
“Luck. Well. Looking back, I think I’ve been quite fortunate.”
Uorin smiled and continued her story.
“There is no such thing as good luck. Nor is there bad luck. The order in which the gumballs will come out of the box is already determined. Whether one perceives it as good or bad fortune is simply because humans cannot see inside the box. Someone might keep getting only blue gumballs. Then another person might get only red ones. Of course, far more people will get a mix of blue and red. And all of that, I suppose, is what we call a human life.”