Chapter 114
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 114
Could there be some undisclosed relationship between them? What kind of relationship? Were they lovers? Or perhaps master and disciple?
As the situation spiraled out of control, Azi Dahaka’s thoughts spiraled right along with it. She tried her best not to let her mental state show, but with her facial muscles starting to twitch, she knew she couldn’t keep the facade up for long.
“I, I, this great one…”
Under the barrage of their gazes, Azi Dahaka stammered, feeling like she had to make some kind of sound. She was entering a state where she couldn't even comprehend what she was saying the moment the words left her mouth. Her mind was going completely blank.
It was utterly pathetic. The Dragon Lord, who stood at the pinnacle of all great creatures, was rendered completely helpless.
“Y-You see. This Azi Dahaka, that is to say…”
Should she submit?
Or should she hold her ground to the very end?
At this crossroads, her instincts screamed at her reason to choose carefully. The moment she made the wrong choice, there was no telling how horribly things would go.
With Bathory and Hexabel having effectively abstained, only Azi Dahaka and the Orc Legion Commander, Kurak, were left to make a choice.
If she voiced her displeasure with Swallow's actions and rebelled, and if Kurak took the same stance, they would have at least a slight chance of winning.
However, if she rebelled and Kurak, seeing her reaction, sided with Swallow instead—she would be completely isolated. While everyone else remained silent, she would be the only one airing her grievances.
To put it bluntly, she wouldn't leave this cave alive.
‘Must I submit...? Must I, the great Azi Dahaka, submit?!’
Barely swallowing her resentment, she glanced at Fafnir, who was making a tearful face from the sidelines.
Fafnir was frantically mouthing words at her. Reading her lips, she could see a single, desperate plea: Stop.
Azi Dahaka's own lips trembled. Her heart was already halfway inclined toward submission.
‘No. No.’
Just before her mind went completely blank, Azi Dahaka managed to pull herself together.
Tens of thousands of monsters lived in the White Mountains behind her. The dragons of Margar surely trusted her as well. She could not disappoint them.
“Swallow.”
Azi Dahaka finally uttered his name.
Swallow, who had been hovering on the border between reality and dream, slowly raised his eyes.
The look he gave her was fierce. It was hard to believe this was the same lazy bum who had been rolling around on the floor just moments ago, complaining about how annoying it was to get up. Just meeting his gaze felt like it could drain a person’s will to fight.
But she had to continue.
“Since the Black Disaster Advent Incident of Riaze, human forces across the Empire have mobilized on a massive scale. This included the requisition of northern troops. In the process of these subjugation squads bypassing the edges of our mountain range, there were clashes with several dungeons.”
Squeezing out every drop of courage her sense of responsibility could muster, Azi Dahaka pressed on. Her gaze, however, drifted slightly downward. Maintaining eye contact with Swallow felt like her very life force was being siphoned away.
“Furthermore, as the humans moved through the mountains, they slaughtered wild animals indiscriminately under the pretext of replenishing their provisions. As a result, monsters unable to find food descended upon human villages. Consequently, hundreds of monsters died on our side of the White Mountains alone.”
“...”
“Th-that's not all. Our dragons of Margar, because of what you did in Hastin…”
“And?”
“What did you just…”
“Get to the point.”
Only then did she raise her slightly bowed head to look at Swallow again.
Upon seeing his expression, Azi Dahaka froze.
For a moment, she stammered as if she’d been struck mute.
“I-I just… wanted to know if you were aware that such things happened… Well, just that… I was just asking, just in case…”
“No, speak so I can understand you.”
“I-I just… since your influence is so vast, if you could be a little more careful… No, actually, it's our fault for poor management… I'm not trying to force you or anything.”
“He's saying they suffered damages because of you, idiot.”
“Ah, is that what she meant?”
Unable to listen any longer, Bathory summed up the situation in a single sentence.
Azi Dahaka felt her breath catch in her throat.
Bathory’s words echoed in her mind. The fact that she could call him an idiot so casually meant she was incredibly close to Swallow.
‘I… was not careful enough.’
She had never so acutely understood that words, once spoken, could never be taken back.
Swallow, who had been slumped in his chair like a melting slime, stood up at Bathory’s words. With his eyes still fixed on Azi Dahaka, he began to walk toward her.
Because her mind was so unfocused, this time she could clearly see the other gatekeepers looking at her. She also saw the Blade Maid staring at her with a murderous gaze.
[I'm sorry, Fafnir.]
Sending a telepathic message to Fafnir, Azi Dahaka closed her eyes.
“Ah, sorry.”
Swallow's response, which followed immediately, was dumbfounding.
“I didn't know things would turn out like that.”
“Hey, that’s the textbook excuse of a perpetrator. What do you mean, you didn't know? You knew, you just did it anyway because you couldn't be bothered.”
“Anyway, I'll try to make an effort to make an effort to be careful.”
“If you're going to be careful, just be careful. What in the world does 'making an effort to make an effort' even mean?”
After that, only the sound of him bickering with Bathory could be heard. Azi Dahaka cautiously opened her eyes. She had been in her half-human, half-dragon form, but the tension had been so great that her polymorph had partially undone itself, causing her body to swell in size.
“Ha… ha… haha.”
Azi Dahaka let out a hollow laugh. Suddenly, she couldn't think of anything but a firm resolve to never get involved with him again.
* * *
The atmosphere finally settled down after Patrick joined the nagging, another ten minutes passing before the verbal assault ended. Swallow, having been thoroughly thrashed by his gatekeeper and his fellow Great Evil Cave boss, rested his face on the table, his neck stretched out as if in utter exhaustion. His eyes looked even more strained, as if he had aged rapidly in those ten minutes.
“Do you have something to say, too?”
His exhausted gaze finally turned toward Kurak.
Kurak of the Red Axe.
‘So this is the boss of Nilkumbal, the one who dominates the eastern highlands…?’
It was his first time seeing him in person, but he knew a fair bit about him. Nilkumbal was famous even among the Great Evil Caves, so there was plenty of information floating around.
Of course, it wasn't knowledge Swallow had picked up himself, but rather information Patrick had force-fed him.
‘He's more ordinary than I thought.’
Swallow thought, scanning Kurak's appearance with a hint of appreciation.
The leader of a race was usually larger than its average member. The Arch Lich, Erebos, for example, was twice the size of other liches.
But Kurak was different. Aside from being more muscular than other orcs, there wasn't much of a size difference.
He seemed to be in the same class as Patrick—someone who had reached the pinnacle through his own unique strength rather than the inherent power of his species.
“...I ask for everyone's attention.”
The Orc Legion Commander, who had remained silent from the moment he arrived, finally spoke.
His solemn voice was more than enough to command the room. Every eye in the cavern turned toward him.
“Sending the letters was my doing. I ask for your forgiveness for summoning you all without prior notice. The reason I went to such lengths is because I, Kurak, have a favor to ask of everyone here.”
A silence, much like the one at the start of the meeting, descended. Amidst it, Kurak made his declaration.
“We of Nilkumbal will destroy the Empire before this season ends.”
Phase. 2
Ar Edelbreas Galf Rivisten.
—Day 4 of Erosion.
He coughed up blood.
It was thick and clumped, almost like slime mucus, but what he spat out was unmistakably blood. It was something that had traveled through his body, along his blood vessels, and occasionally, like now, boiled up past his throat.
Therefore, the blood knew his body well.
The dark red blood, which knew him so intimately, spoke to him.
See how much blacker I have become in four days. And see your body, filled to the brim with me.
That body is steadily drawing closer to death.
“…”
He wanted to examine it more closely, but with one eye no longer functioning properly, he could only sigh in disappointment at his blurry vision.
Ar washed the blood from his hands in running water. Even as he did, the stream surged upward for a moment like an evil spirit, but he ignored it.
The water trickled down normally again, as if nothing had happened.
That was the nature of madness. If you treated it as an equal, it would always be growling, waiting for a chance to devour you. Ar was desperately holding his ground to avoid being swallowed by its maw.
“Have the hallucinations gotten worse?”
“...I've adapted to it to some extent, so it's fine.”
“In the outside world, people call that going mad.”
Leaning against the office doorway, Garot looked at Ar and let out a deep sigh.
Adapted.
It was a lie.
If he had truly adapted, his eyes wouldn’t look like that.
Watching Ar, who was sitting on the office sofa and staring at her, Garot thought to herself, He must be seeing a hallucination behind me. Otherwise, the Ar I know would never look at me with such eyes.
He had been in this state for four days straight.
“Can you see me properly?”
“The hallucinations don't appear on people. After four days, I'm certain of it—they only ever appear on objects.”
“...”
“Or perhaps they just don't appear on humans yet.”
“Stop talking nonsense. Your condition is only getting worse because you're cooped up in your office all day.”
At Garot's words, Ar let out a faint, pained laugh. It took him a few more seconds to catch his breath.
Only then did Garot approach and sit on the sofa next to him.
“How many times a day does this happen?”
“About three times so far today. It lasts a minute at most, so it's fine.”
His final reassurance was undoubtedly a lie.
In a ‘world of distorted senses’ that struck without warning, a single minute was more than enough time to shatter a person's mind. In fact, ever since the erosion began, Ar had stopped carrying the dagger he used to keep in his breast pocket. The pain was severe enough to drive him to suicidal impulses.
“It seems they’ve reached a conclusion regarding the attempt to block the erosion with recovery magic. The medical report has arrived.”
Stumbling up from his seat, Ar took a teacup from a shelf. As he poured water into it, he spilled about half onto the table. The water hit a piece of paper, causing the ink to bleed rapidly.
“...`<Cure>` didn't work.”
Although it had only been four days, they had already exhausted every basic method to improve Ar's condition.
There were no results.
Whether they used `<Cure>` or `<Dispel>`, nothing improved in the slightest. They couldn't even identify the root cause. They had reached the absurd conclusion that his blinded eye was, medically speaking, in a perfectly normal state.
“They say the reason recovery magic won't work is because your body itself doesn't recognize that anything is wrong. In short, from the perspective of `<Cure>`, which only fixes abnormal areas, you are currently in an extremely healthy and normal state.”
An extremely healthy and normal body. Ar let out a hollow laugh at those words. It was absurd, and Garot knew just how ridiculous it sounded.
“So it's a condition that cannot be resolved by current common sense.”
And not just for now. It was a problem that might never be resolved.
Because Swallow was that kind of existence—an anomaly that felt as though it shouldn't even exist.
There was no immediate solution, not even a temporary fix. Even searching through medical logs from before the founding of the Empire yielded no precedents with similar symptoms.
“What about gouging out the eroded eye?”
“You said you're seeing hallucinations, didn't you? That's a sign it has already affected your brain. If you're going to gouge something out, you'd have to gouge out your brain as well.”
“...”
“Captain, you have to make a choice.”
Currently, Ar had two options.
Either spend his remaining time desperately searching for a cure, or give up and focus on other matters.
“Garot.”
Garot’s voice lacked strength as she presented the choices. Ar called her name in a flat, monotone voice as he poured another cup of water. This time, he didn't spill a single drop.
After drinking half of it, Ar asked nonchalantly, “If I devote all my remaining time to finding a cure, what do you think the chances are that my efforts will bear fruit?”
Garot couldn't answer. Her silence was, in itself, the perfect answer.
Even hundreds of years might not be enough. To find a cure in his current state, where he could die at any moment—it was impossible. Absolutely impossible.
“Then there is only one choice left. No need to agonize over it.”
“Captain…”
A breeze blew in through the slightly open window. The damp wind did nothing to improve his mood. Ar frowned.