Chapter 185
Chapter 185
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: How to Break a Nightmare (2)
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White Shadow Church.
Those who tread the path of injustice.
They chose any means necessary to achieve their goals.
Human decency was merely a vulnerability they could exploit.
Deception, therefore, was their privilege.
They schemed and betrayed with effortless grace to claim victory.
High Priest Kadin of the White Shadow Church.
He was no exception.
To claim his current position, he had woven countless schemes and committed innumerable betrayals.
He was forever the schemer, the betrayer.
"Kadin, you bastard...!!! You planned this from the start-"
Dedop could accept the apparent betrayal from his collaborator Kadin for precisely that reason.
Dedop—the old man with liver spots mottling his face—trembled in fury.
His murky yet profound eyes darted busily, scanning both Kadin and their underlings(?).
Amid his writhing rage and despair over the betrayal, Dedop glimpsed a faint thread of hope.
Kadin had yet to make a decisive move. He was hesitating.
Probably drunk on the triumph of his scheme.
'Arrogant fool!!!'
Dedop backed away to widen the gap, steeling himself for battle as he thought.
Kadin.
The bastard must be arrogant from his scheme's success.
'Damn it, what the hell is going on?!'
In truth, the reality was the exact opposite.
Intruders had burst in unannounced, offering aid for a betrayal Kadin had never even contemplated.
He couldn't fathom how they'd orchestrated this, but one certainty burned clear.
Both he and Dedop were mere puppets in their hands!
'That's... Frozen Breath Palrag...! And even Pilgrim Chender!'
Kadin swallowed hard upon finally recognizing the intruders.
Even allying with Dedop now would demand grievous losses from such foes.
Yet to fracture into infighting because of their ploy?
'Must've exposed a gap during the plan, you blithering idiot!'
Suppressing the urge to slaughter Dedop for botching the plan and endangering him, Kadin bellowed.
"Calm yourself, Dedop! If we turn on each other now, we're all finished!!! We're dancing to their tune!"
"Yeah!? So what should I do!? Blindly trust you and bare my back? Die without a fight!?"
"You fool! That's exactly what they want! They crave us divided, isolated! Their nightmare is facing us both at once!"
"Kuhahaha! Kadin! You wretched bastard's spawn! I'll grant you this—your tongue is a marvel! Tempting me even now!!! But heed this: don't overtrust it! Think I'll fall for your lies twice!!! Speak your fill!!! If I can't escape this place, I'll drag you to death with me, Dedop swears it!"
"You dimwit—think about it! What do I gain betraying you now!!!"
"…"
It was then.
Dedop fell silent.
Mulling Kadin's words, he sensed something off.
Setting aside betrayal's likelihood, one fact endured: Kadin coveted the holy sword.
So Dedop pondered.
Cooperation with him.
Cooperation with the enemy.
From Kadin's vantage, which offered the surer path to the sword?
Thus, doubt seeded in Dedop's mind.
Regardless, Kadin remained High Priest of the White Shadow Church.
His accumulated sins were inextinguishable.
For such a man to cooperate—
Would Frozen Breath Palrag and Pilgrim Chender hand him the holy sword?
'No…'
Dedop knew their reputations well.
They were no souls to sell to black mages or demons.
"Dedop! Finally seeing sense!"
Kadin shouted in delight, reading the shift in Dedop's doubt.
"…"
Meanwhile, Rishir harbored quiet unease.
The two High Priests' exchange.
It appeared a fierce standoff on the surface—
'If it were true mutual destruction, they'd have clashed already—'
The unbroken flow of words.
Rishir glimpsed Dedop's hesitation... and faint hope therein.
Doubting his foe, yet yearning to be persuaded.
And that persuasion seemed to be taking hold, to some degree.
'Damn…'
He ached to intervene, shatter their dialogue.
But rash action now would only breed suspicion.
'As expected, it won't be that straightforward?'
As battle loomed thicker, Rishir's face darkened.
No matter how optimistically viewed—
All-out war with those two offered no guarantee of unscathed survival.
Above all, her condition gnawed at him most.
'Klana—'
Rishir sidelong-glanced her state.
Something had seemed off since moments ago.
On the cusp of battle—a killer like her should revel.
Yet discomfort clouded her now.
'Body check for combat... and it came back unfit?'
The nightmare's untimely assault.
Halona's collapse had disrupted Klana's revival rite.
Forcing battle in that state? Ritual failure, or worse—bodily ruin.
As silence stretched between the High Priests, Rishir's torment deepened.
"Kadin. That's enough."
The pair's focus inexorably pulled away.
The voice carried an unearthly gravity.
Frozen Breath Palrag.
Former master of the Blue Tower and archmage, he addressed Kadin.
"You've played your part sufficiently."
His tone, his gaze—brimming with profound camaraderie, as to a longtime ally.
"What are you suddenly—"
Palrag pressed on, heedless of Kadin's fluster.
"Truth be told, I distrusted you at first. The intelligence you provided seemed suspect, as did your vow of total aid without casualties."
"Without casualties..."
Dedop mulled the phrase.
Palrag's words reframed Kadin's desperate bid to stay united.
More crucially, Palrag's demeanor.
The famously irascible, unyielding Frozen Breath—
Directing goodwill toward White Shadow High Priest Kadin.
A weight immeasurable against some nameless cry of "Kadin's one of us!"
"I'll trust your innocence. In recompense, stomach minor losses. Now, shall we join forces and subdue him?"
"Damn it all!!! What nonsense is this!!!"
Kadin shrieked like a madman, gauging Dedop's response.
"Dedop!!! Surely you won't swallow this doddering fool's drivel!?"
Sensing Dedop's aura shift, Kadin desperately cried out.
"...Now that you mention it, Kadin. Something you haven't explained."
Yet the flickering distrust had reignited fully.
"How did they learn of this place and breach it?"
"That's...!"
Kadin went mute.
He knew it too.
The defenses' ironclad rigor.
How utterly anomalous this swift penetration.
"You're not claiming they pinpointed the site in mere moments, subjugated the guardian demons, then traced us flawlessly through the disrupted stars?"
For a beat, Rishir's group's gazes awkwardly drifted into emptiness.
"...Damn it, not wholly impossible!"
Kadin blurted in frustration.
"Kuhahahaha!!!"
Dedop erupted in manic laughter.
"Now grasping at absurdities!!! How far you've fallen, Kadin!!! Or should I dub you Frozen Breath's whelp now!"
"...Kuh, kuhahahaha!!!!!"
Kadin joined the frenzy with his own wild guffaws.
"Blind bungler who can't save his own skin—... Very well. So you crave enmity. Can't be helped. Your wish is granted."
Dedop bellowed as if he'd foreseen it.
Kadin roared as if washing his hands of it all.
Between the pair, fully bereft of reason, true killing intent now surged.
'Wait, is this it!?'
Now!?
Rishir shouted.
"Kadin! We're with you!"
In that instant.
Ashen flames and glacial aura crashed upon Dedop in unison.
"Well done!!!"
Kadin seamlessly chained into the onslaught.
The alliance struck: White Shadow High Priest Kadin and Rishir's party.
Their prey: High Priest Dedop, erstwhile ally to Kadin.
"...Hah."
Chender, who had hung back, deflated with a sigh and threw in his lot with the collective "screw it."
How much time had passed since the two High Priests, unhinged by rage, clashed?
Mid-battle, an acute dissonance struck them.
Sharp enough to snap their lost reason back into place.
Rishir.
None other—he was deftly apportioning(?) strikes between the two High Priests.
Primed to fell Dedop first, easing the takedown of Kadin after.
"...!!!"
Dedop's eyes blazed with realization.
Far too late.
He had already crested his limits under Kadin and his "comrades'(?)" barrage, crumpling to the floor.
Thud.
Nearly simultaneous—Kadin too collapsed.
Rishir and Klana's twin ambushes delivered the killing strokes.
"Why..."
Kadin murmured.
He'd known they weren't true allies, yet the injustice beggared sanity.
Writhing in outrage, Kadin blacked out.
Crack—
Palrag's ice prison then engulfed him.
Dedop alone remained.
Rishir approached, looming over him.
"Now, will you awaken those trapped in the nightmare?"
"…"
Ha.
Haha.
Hahahahaha!!!
Dedop dissolved into frenzied laughter.
Faintly soblike at first blush.
High Priest Dedop was inhumanly rational.
His usual self would scheme any path to survival, biding for tomorrow.
Not now.
All that mattered little.
"Embracing Nightmare Slahan!!!" "Grant them eternal nightmare!!!"
⟨ Embracing Nightmare ⟩
Dedop funneled his power into Slahan's crystal—his ultimate ace, clutched till the bitter end.
Renouncing Slahan's revival, his bestowed might—
He unleashed the crystal's hoarded force.
One step shy.
Power primed to resurrect a transcendent being—
Squandered solely to eradicate a High Priest's foes.
"Ugh...!"
Rumble—
An eruption of potent aura, evoking physical detonation.
Space quaked; the site's essence overwritten in a flash.
"...!"
Waver!
Chender, Palrag, Klana—
Their forms shuddered violently.
"This is..."
A sudden somnolent curse assailed them.
Klana struck before it fully devoured her.
Her blade tip impaled Dedop's chest.
The curse lingered undispelled.
Her grip slackened; the sword slipped free.
"Fool... Not so simple..."
Cough!
Blood spewing, Dedop twisted into a grotesque grin.
"Unlike the prior nightmare... This is no ritual for power—pure authority incarnate... That which the Lord received from the Dream Ruler alongside his charge... Only He, or one greater still, can rouse from it... Let's see... If you can escape this nightmare too..."
Dead certain of annihilation, Dedop savored triumph in ragged breaths.
Thud.
Klana—poised to reclaim her blade and sever his neck—crumpled to her knees.
Chender followed.
Palrag next.
"Everyone...!"
Rishir, utterly untouched, moved to act—
-Wake up!
-This isn't time to slack off!!!
A vigorous voice resounded abruptly.
The sand spirit had manifested, issuing the command.
The sand haze clouding their eyes began to dissipate.
One by one, they stirred from the dream.
Dedop, beholding the scene, instead wore a dazed, dreamstruck expression.
"A mere spirit dares..."