Chapter 66
Chapter 66
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: Third Archive: Sirius (8)
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Long ago, there was a man who admired heroes.
There was a man who dreamed of becoming an honorable knight.
There was a man who yearned for glorious martyrdom.
But now, they were nothing more than dreams tossed into the gutter.
On this battlefield, Austin finally came to understand.
Just how greedy those so-called heroes truly were.
How dishonorable those so-called knights were.
How much sacrifice the name of nobility demanded.
How the purest of titles could only stand after so much had been cast into the muck.
- “————.”
A roar like a scream erupted from within the magic armor.
Not everyone could live nobly.
Nor was it possible for all to live honorably.
And so, he abandoned his dreams.
The heavenly guide never forsook him, not even at the end.
It was only Austin himself who, by his own hand, discarded the purest version of who he had once been.
‘I’ll bear it all—.’
Above the knight who had resolved to embrace the infamy willingly, the sky over the battlefield began to warp.
Rumble rumble rumble—.
The air trembled with violent vibrations.
Someone’s voice rang out, detecting the anomaly.
“W-Wait, that’s……!”
“…….”
Crack, craaaack—.
Space twisted as cracks spread outward.
Scattered light.
Shuddering air.
The dimensions themselves began to scream into the void.
“Your Excellency! It’s dangerous……!”
“Porfort! Didn’t you say the ritual was already over!”
“No, this isn’t my doing!”
Craaack! Craaaaack—!
The rift in the sky kept expanding.
“Ah—.”
A sigh slipped from a certain mage’s lips.
Beyond the shattering sky lay the far reaches of the cosmos.
Beyond the rift, choked with static.
A single red eye gazed down upon them from there.
Craaaaack—.
An alien gaze surveying the earth below.
The instant they met it, everyone present understood.
“…….”
“…….”
Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Boom—!
A spear of pure white light pierced Sirius clean through.
The pristine white beam, lancing from the broken sky, impaled the knight in his jet-black armor and drove him into the ground.
Screeeeech, screeeeeeech—.
Sirius, transfixed by the gleaming spear, unleashed a savage scream.
- “Ah…….”
No pain came from the pure white spear that had run him through.
Only then did Austin finally grasp it.
The message the doctor had left him long ago.
—Magic that no human body should ever wield.
Its true meaning dawned on him at last.
- “Ah, aah… Aaaahhhh……!”
The sky in ruins.
Beneath a cosmos tinged with crimson.
Sirius’s body became engulfed in white radiance.
Fwoooooosh—.
Wings of blinding white light unfurled from his back, enshrouding the fractured space in brilliance.
“…….”
“…….”
Countless eyes fixed on the knight wreathed in light.
White wings that clashed against his black armor.
The contradictory glow swelled ever larger behind him.
Clink clink clink—.
Chains of pure white light bound his body, anchoring the winged knight in place.
- “Aaaahhhh———!”
In the blanket of silence, only the knight’s scream reverberated.
If heaven’s angel were to face punishment, would it look like this?
A black angel with wings of purest white, impaled by the spear and chained to the earth.
Creak—.
The labored hum of the magic armor’s drives echoed through the stillness.
In that instant, angelic wings swept across the ground—.
And with him at the center, the entire world began to transform.
“Guh——?”
“Ah, ugh, aaaagh——!”
“Aaaaaagh……!”
Light swept over the earth in a single wave.
Right after, every human there screamed as one.
- “…….”
A mere few seconds was enough to reshape the battlefield.
The view in Sirius’s eyes had become utterly unrecognizable in that short span.
Amid the silence, violet eyes drank in the scene.
After the great archmage’s spell had unfolded.
Not a single cry pierced the once-chaotic battlefield.
“…….”
“…….”
Hell—
Austin’s eyes beheld hell.
It was hell.
A vision of mortal hell, straight out of ancient scriptures, sprawled before him.
A profane sight no baptized cleric should ever conjure.
The curse radiating from himself as its core began to swallow everything around it.
————.
A voiceless clamor echoed in all directions.
Creak, crick—.
Every human in sight moved with grotesque jerks, like malfunctioning magic armors.
An incomprehensible tableau repeated around Sirius.
‘……Forbidden Curse.’
A special incantation.
A taboo forbidden to humankind.
That curse spread outward, devouring all in its reach.
Fizzle, fizzle—.
Even Austin, puppeteering Sirius, found no mercy.
Overload assaulted every sense he used to control it.
—Forbidden Curse: Bottomless Pit.
A malediction that dragged humans into an endless abyss.
A vast illusion spell blanketed a full kilometer radius.
‘Mana… it’s draining nonstop.’
Whirrrrr—
Amid the ferocious tremors, Austin observed the mana flow.
A death curse that burned without end, fueled by his own body.
Every ounce of mana stored in Sirius hemorrhaged away at a terrifying rate.
Aaaaaahhhh—!
As the machine-shrouded angel spat distorted cries.
He registered the anomaly invading his senses.
- “…….”
Senses warped.
Vision shifted.
Everything grew acute, then numb, blurred, then razor-sharp.
And in the end, hell revealed itself.
It distorted one’s sense of time, shattered the mind, compelled endless slaughter—Avici.
It sprawled before his eyes.
“…….”
“…….”
Creak, creeeak—.
Puppet-like people began to fight.
Hallucinations in his sight.
Delusions in his mind.
Fragmented hearing.
Time sense obliterated.
No direct assault magic was this.
It offset every sensory lag, forcing ceaseless death threats upon its victims—an illusion spell.
A ruthlessly destructive calamity designed solely to make everyone slaughter one another.
“Por, fort… why, me……?”
“…….”
Stabbing sounds bloomed into ear-rattling phantoms.
Time looped endlessly.
In it, all bore witness to hell.
At hell’s heart, each sought their own purpose.
Who would survive this place?
No one could predict the outcome.
- “You… brought… the sealed… magic…….”
Sirius’s gaze absorbed the horrors.
Thud, roll—
A blood-drenched fruit tumbled before Sirius.
The World Tree’s fruit.
The prize every soul on the battlefield had lusted after.
- “…….”
All had staked their lives on this single thing.
How utterly fleeting.
Click—.
The knight’s arm twitched at last, scooping up the fruit.
Its crimson pulp stirred dark premonitions.
Wriggle—
Sirius’s shadow on the ground engulfed the fruit alongside Austin’s arm.
- “What… you were… thinking… I get it… now…….”
Sirius, mission complete, began to lose power.
Feeble mechanical whirs leaked outward.
From that Sirius’s mouth came, for the first time, a voice laced with murderous intent toward another.
- “……Doctor.”
The fallen holy knight lifted his head within the metal shell.
Fizzle, fizzle—
Fading mana destabilized the link.
The hellscape on the ground blurred before Austin’s eyes.
Sacred tableau.
Unsublime deaths dragged him to the Bottomless Pit’s depths.
* * * * * *
—Priella Atria.
One of the sword examiners of the Eight Sword Society, she was no friend to books.
To a mercenary, books were rarities hard to come by.
One tome rivaled dozens of lavish meals in worth—
A luxury for the affluent to call a hobby.
“Hmm—.”
In that light, the vista before Priella was nothing short of miraculous.
An antique edifice soaring without end.
Every level crammed with bookshelves stuffed to bursting with tomes.
As if erected for books alone.
A sight to awe anyone unfolded before her.
“……Nothing but books.”
Ssshh—
Priella’s muffled footsteps glided past shelf after shelf.
Left: books.
Right: books.
Books everywhere she looked.
The opulent structure existed solely to house them.
Even the imperial library couldn’t boast such splendor.
“…….”
What magnate had built this library?
The thought flickered through Priella’s mind.
No mere soul could manage it.
Erecting such grandeur, amassing endless volumes—
Only a house wielding both power and wealth could dream of it.
Swoosh—
Priella roamed the library’s nooks and crannies for a time.
Then, between the shelves, an unfamiliar voice drifted to her ears.
“Some people, fate just naturally guides.”
Priella’s eyes snapped toward the sound.
At the center of the towering shelves.
A desk stood there, a black-haired youth seated at it.
Rustle, rustle—
His hands flipped the book’s pages with practiced ease.
—Reading.
The pastime of the rich, forever beyond Priella’s grasp.
“A guest in the Night Library after so long.”
The master of the magic library.
The youth’s sharp eyes met hers.