Chapter 85
Chapter 85
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: The Name of the End: Johan (6)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Sometime ago, I had fallen into deep water.
I remembered reaching out toward a single ray of light visible in the distance, grasping for it.
The feeling of breath filling my lungs, my head spinning, my body refusing to move as I willed—
If I had to describe my current state in one phrase, I could liken it to that memory.
Everything was incomplete.
Within a vessel that was cracking, shattering, and breaking apart, I felt as if I were submerged in deep water.
- “…….”
It was uncomfortable, as if I had been forcibly fitted into something that wasn’t mine.
Unlike the cozy, comforting scenery of the library, everything here worked in reverse.
It felt like thick iron chains were binding me.
A sensation as if I had stepped beyond the flesh into the depths of the ocean floor.
Even the slightest movements approached me as massive discomforts.
‘Is this descent ritual a failure too?’
The pressure crushing my entire body was breaking down my flesh.
The doctor’s descent ritual was incomplete.
I understood that fact fully.
Before long, this body would completely collapse.
It would shatter into pieces, crumble miserably, and ultimately return to dust.
Hoo—
The breath escaping my mouth was mixed with the stench of blood.
My own imperfection came into sharp focus.
Yet, even so, that imperfection felt sweet to me.
- “Now that I’ve come outside, I suppose I need to handle it with my own hands.”
Crackle, crackle—
Overflowing mana shattered the flesh, staining the ground black.
Amid it all, I exhaled roughly.
I gazed at the distorted scenery reflected in my own eyes.
A world confronted not through another’s aid, but with my own gaze.
A world I stepped upon with my own feet and beheld with my own eyes existed here.
“Could that be Acheronar—?”
- “…….”
As Rafaria’s voice echoed in my ears, I tried to etch the world’s scenery into my memory, even just a little.
The fleeting scenery felt utterly lovable.
The sticky scent of earth was more fragrant than any flower.
They were things so beautiful that I never wanted to lose them again.
- “Let’s begin, then.”
However, I already understood clearly.
The time granted to me was not long.
This opportunity had come from a confluence of countless coincidences and the doctor’s ingenuity.
Yet, I wouldn’t achieve results of the ‘same caliber’ next time.
The gravitational pull binding me felt ever stronger.
Thus, while time remained, I had to fulfill the role given to me.
- “I will now bring down the mobile citadel.”
Craaaack—
I quietly raised my hand, watching my splitting skin.
My hands, filled with cracks, met in the air.
Perhaps because I had already performed several magical acts.
The body containing mana was nearing its limit.
Judging by the state of my crumbling flesh, even using a Fourth Repository spell would be difficult to complete fully.
But an incomplete spell would suffice.
Its power was more than enough to topple the citadel before me.
‘The mobile citadel Laplacia, was it?’
Through my warped vision, I looked up at the sky.
The aerial citadel floating in the heavens.
The puppet castle that hadn’t descended to the earth for ages existed before my eyes.
—Mobile Citadel Laplacia.
An isolated citadel ruled by the magician known as the Heptagram.
‘Facing that sight ends today.’
I could no longer coexist with it in the skies.
The time to tie up loose ends had come.
Swish—
A sharp sensation transmitted from my meeting fingertips.
From my flesh gazing at the citadel, rippling mana began spreading in all directions.
It was a spell too vast in scale for a simplified casting.
From my formed hands, the formal ritual proceeded.
- “—[Mana Corridor] activation.”
The procedure to enact a transcendent-scale spell without a grimoire.
A completed closed world of a single magician moves, using itself as the axis to expand the magic formula.
Whooooom—
The expanding waves of mana.
The surging black mana began reproducing a series of mysteries centered on me.
Crackle, crackle—
Scars extended from the ground where I stepped.
The space where cracks spread shook all at once, and layered mana circulated around the designated axis.
- “———.”
Space vibrated as mana scattered wildly.
Concentrating mana.
The collapse of my body, crushed by the shaking mana field, accelerated further.
Hoo—
As my blood-tinged breath adorned the air, I uttered the name of a certain spell long left behind in the library.
- “Divine Flame Fall.”
A clear phrase flowed from my mouth.
The words proclaiming the end to the citadel that had endured countless ages echoed out.
An irreversible declaration—
The moment that single phrase resounded, the scenery of the world transformed.
————.
In just an instant—
A single instant was enough for the world’s colors to change.
The entire world was dyed crimson.
Everything in my sight took on a red hue.
Roooar—
A red carpet stretching to the horizon’s end.
The heavens of divine flame unfurled, indistinguishable from edge to edge.
“Ah—.”
A sigh escaped Rafaria’s lips.
Soundless screams spread in all directions.
Rumble, rumbllllle—
Scorching heat.
The pulsing roar of the burning atmosphere echoed.
Filling the sky was boiling crimson blaze.
Sacred flames that even burned the sunset.
As the blazing world descended upon Alperatz’s skies.
Kwach! Kwooooaaang—!
Amid it, a vivid crimson pillar pierced the aerial citadel.
- “———.”
The beam vertically penetrating Mobile Citadel Laplacia.
The axis of divine flame connecting heaven and earth impaled the arrogant citadel seeking to reenact ancient legends.
Screeech, screeeeech—
A heat source slamming down as if to pin the massive citadel to the earth.
At its center, the citadel tilted with a deafening roar.
The scenery adorning the finale of a grand execution twisted the laws of the world.
- “Flame Fall—.”
Sizzle—
Moving along the axis piercing the citadel were transcendent flames rising endlessly.
Extreme flames bearing beauty.
Judgment flames turning all to ash began descending along the heat source.
—Divine Flame Fall.
A combat spell from the Fourth Repository, designed to deal fatal blows to localized areas.
The decisive battle spell specialized in destruction revealed its true worth.
Fwoosh, fwoooosh—
The swirling curtain of flames fell downward, sequentially clashing with the citadel’s mana barriers.
- “…….”
Boom! Kwooooaaang—!
Craaaack—
Echoing roars and bursting explosions.
The mana barriers of Mobile Citadel Laplacia collapsed, scattering fragments.
The crumbling citadel’s barriers could no longer protect the magic puppets.
Whoosh—
Flying embers spread in all directions, beginning to melt everything they touched with heat.
“……Acheronar.”
Rafaria lowered her head, a certain name slipping from her lips.
Crackle, crackle—
Traces of divine flame burned the magic puppets.
The expanding heatwave swallowed the surroundings.
The minions comprising the puppet castle—
The magic puppets filling the citadel crumbled into ash in an instant.
- “So that name was the true name of the castle lord, it seems.”
Along with the acrid scenery of flames, black ash scattered everywhere.
Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands of puppets burned away.
Rumble, rumbllllle—
The tilting citadel was drawing ever closer to the ground.
The deviated trajectory of the mobile citadel meant only one thing.
The fall come to the eternal aerial castle—
The long legend built in the name of Castle Lord Corios Baclayr reached its curtain call.
- “Even if all the names I’ve heard until now were false, it doesn’t matter. I won’t hear that name again.”
No matter how splendid the play, it cannot continue forever.
The absurd puppet show of Laplacia, assembled from countless puppets, was the same.
All things must come to an end.
Just as the citadel had begun from an absurd wish one day—
Now was the time to put an end to that foolish wish.
- “It’s over.”
Curtain call—
The end of the play had arrived.
* * * * * *
In the heart of the fortress engulfed in pure white flames.
There sat a middle-aged magic puppet upon a melted throne.
Castle Lord, Corios Baclayr.
The great archmage known to the world as the Heptagram.
And the sole protagonist of an old puppet show crafted by an elf mage exiled from the Great Arbor.
“…….”
Corios’s hollow eyes gazed at the sky.
Roooar—
Reflected in those eyes was only the fortress wrapped in flames.
The aerial castle was burning.
Everything was burning hotly.
All this scenery had been wrought by a single mage’s spell.
“This sight… what in the world…….”
A voice steeped in emptiness flowed from his mouth.
It was an unreasonable spell.
The sheer magnitude of the unreasonableness left no thought of resistance.
It wasn’t even within the realm of what could be blocked.
Beneath the crimson blaze filling the heavens, the citadel burned cruelly.
Could such a sight truly be called magic?
It was ‘the end’ in the form of magic.
—Heavenly calamity.
An absolute disaster beyond human will.
Before it, Corios himself was a mere pitiful puppet.
“The citadel… is burning…….”
He had anticipated it to some degree.
He had expected something absurd to be summoned from the start.
But this scenery far exceeded his predictions.
The fortress of solitude that had guarded the skies for over a century.
Corios found it impossible to accept its burning, plummeting form.
“The citadel… my citadel……!”
It was something he had poured everything into creating.
A ritual to reach the great laws of the outside world.
A journey to turn the fake into the real.
Yet now, it was all turning to bubbles.
Like endless foam spreading, the old dream slipped through Corios’s fingers.
“My ritual… to reach the great laws……!”
Desolation settled on the bowed castle lord’s shoulders.
Crackle, crackle—
The acrid smell of burning pierced his nose.
Heat melting his entire body was felt.
The magic puppet Corios’s body was melting grotesquely.
The acting as the stern king, familiar over long years, could no longer continue.
“…….”
Fizzle, fizzle—
Corios’s sensory link shook from the heat.
He had reigned as absolute ruler within the vast citadel.
Even this endless puppet show was nearing its end.
Failure.
Corios Baclayr had failed.
The challenge of the great mage who dreamed of a puppet kingdom would meet its finale here.
In the end, he—she—hadn’t even earned the right to face the curse-like tree rooted in the Great Arbor.
“Aaah, aaaaaaah……!”
A despairing scream echoed through the castle.
Puppets burning within the tilting citadel were flung aside powerlessly.
Thud, roll—
Puppets that seemed would serve him eternally now rolled across the floor as broken trash.
In the end, puppets were puppets.
The belief that they would alleviate his loneliness in place of kin had been his delusion from the start.
The empty shell shattered before his eyes.
A sticky emotion spread from deep within his chest.
Ah—
A sigh escaped.
Vomit burst from the surging emotions.
“I can’t… I can’t let it end like this……!”
The dream was ending.
With the crumbling massive fortress, the exile’s dream neared its conclusion.
The fortress would crash.
Once this massive fortress collapsed, it wouldn’t be the ruined Corios awakening, but the lonely immortal in her own body.
A solitary long-lived being branded a traitor.
As memories of her wretched self resurfaced, a soundless wail flowed from Corios’s mouth.
“…….”
Crack, craaaack—
Cracks spread across the puppet’s flesh.
Unable to withstand the heat, the puppet began collapsing.
And within that, Corios’s sensory link grew ever fainter.
Fizzle, fizzle—
Vision blurring.
The moment Corios closed his eyes amid fading sounds.
“Ah—.”
Plop—
The castle lord’s daydream came to an end.
* * * * * *
When the great mage who had lived for centuries opened her eyes again.
She was not the lord of the mobile citadel, but returned to the body of a branded elf.
Exile, Acheronar—
An elf mage bound by thorny vines.
Before her, who lifted her heavy eyelids, stood a puppet of unfamiliar form.
- “…….”
Shing—
A sharp blade aimed at Acheronar’s throat.
Wielding that blade was a knight in pitch-black armor.
Magic Mech.
A puppet made for combat.
- “Warning. Do not move.”
Her weary eyes looked at the puppet.
The magic puppet left on the earth at war’s end was not the benevolent sovereign she had admired.