Chapter 283: The Blessed Country and the Cursed Human - 6
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 283: The Blessed Country and the Cursed Human - 6
Even when we were right in front of her, Yuel kept her hands clasped in prayer. The sight of her, piously praying with a corpse on her lap, made her look like a stone statue.
It seemed as if nothing in the world could break her concentration, but I suppose there are no absolutes. The moment Captain Abbey mentioned the corpse, Yuel’s emotions returned, and she became human again.
“This is our first time meeting in person. It’s nice to meet you, Abbey. I’ve truly, truly wanted to see you at least once.”
After offering a pleasant greeting, Yuel’s expression completely changed as she looked up at Abbey.
“And I curse you.”
She says the most terrifying things with a smile. Captain Abbey seemed to take it impassively, but Yuel’s eyes remained cold.
“To think that you, the signaller most like me, would betray the Military State… This was the worst-case scenario I envisioned. And of all things, you bring the most dangerous person right to me. I took every precaution to keep my identity hidden, but in the end, it was revealed, and you betrayed the State?”
“Negative. This officer has not betrayed the Military State.”
“Are you trying to cover the sun with your hand, Abbey? You, who guided the State’s enemy all the way here. What gives you the right to say you haven’t betrayed the Military State?”
“That is precisely the point. This officer does not understand why Headquarters insists on antagonizing them and labeling them as enemies, even at the cost of immense losses. It is not rational.”
In truth, Captain Abbey had no record of ever attacking the Military State. At most, she had defied and persuaded other signallers. In other words, her claim was the whole truth, spoken from the heart.
Yuel’s head turned with a creak.
“…You don’t understand? Really?”
“Affirmative. Setting aside my personal feelings, this officer still judges it to be the rational course. Antagonizing him and his group without any room for negotiation is not only meaningless, but it also does not promise a better outcome.”
“‘Him’?”
Captain Abbey faltered for a moment, unable to answer. Seeing her reaction, Saintess Yuel scoffed.
“Ha, ‘him’! She said ‘him’! Kyahahaha!”
Yuel’s scoff gradually turned into a hysterical laugh, which at some point began to sound like a sob. When she finally stopped, she pressed a hand to her heaving chest and muttered.
“…I take it back. You really are just like me, Abbey! To think you’d fall for such a feckless man, of all people!”
I expected Captain Abbey to deny it, but she said nothing. Yuel’s expression softened into a distant haze as she caressed the corpse’s face.
“You didn’t need to resemble me in that way.”
Everything was a question for Captain Abbey. The shrine in the headquarters’ basement. The signaller, Yuel, sitting in its center, cradling a corpse. And to top it all off, she was the true identity of Eimeder. The secrets revealed in the information vacuum threw Abbey into confusion.
Still, she was every bit the signaller who handled information. Even amidst the chaos, Captain Abbey calmly organized the facts and addressed the most urgent matter.
“Yuel. I cannot clearly comprehend the intent you are trying to convey. However, if you are a signaller and also the Six General Eimeder, then I ask that you comply with this officer’s request at this time.”
“A request? What kind?”
“A request to cease these meaningless hostilities and make a rational judgment.”
“Hah!”
Yuel clicked her tongue as if the idea was absurd.
“Abbey, you watched Tantalus and still haven’t realized? How unexpected. Did I overestimate you?”
“Your manner of speaking lacks a clear object. I request a more precise line of communication.”
“About the Arcane. I placed you there so that you could witness the Arcane with your own two eyes, yet it seems you felt nothing.”
“Re-query. What was this officer supposed to have felt?”
“In the Abyss, which even I cannot see into unless I am looking down from directly above it. Are you saying you didn’t feel the terror of the Arcane?”
Captain Abbey tilted her head. In her memory, Tyr, Azzy, and the Regressor were powerful, but they hadn’t displayed any behavior that would inspire fear.
“Partially affirmative. Their power is indeed frighteningly strong. However, this officer believes the Military State has room to negotiate with them.”
Yuel’s tone was mocking.
“Don’t you see that as the problem? Why should an entire nation have to conduct serious ‘negotiations’ with a mere handful of malcontents?”
“Because they possess the capability to warrant it.”
“The capability to destroy a nation on a whim, you mean? Such incredible power, isn’t it? For a bunch of escaped convicts. They leisurely toured the Military State and then waltzed right into Headquarters, and we couldn’t even stop them!”
Captain Abbey flinched and froze. Yuel let out a short, sharp laugh and muttered self-deprecatingly. Her fingertips once again touched the corpse’s cheek.
“This is the fruit that he and I created. A nation born from mutual trust, reliance, effort, and understanding. A home for one hundred million people, with billions more to be born and die here in the future. A sanctuary made from his corpse. To ensure that this precious dream… isn’t shattered by someone’s whim. I must protect this country from the Arcane.”
“…I understand your intentions.”
“No, you don’t understand at all. The Arcane doesn’t just mean the strong.”
Yuel explained.
“Patraxion is powerful, but he is an individual. There’s a limit to the harm he can inflict upon the world. They praise him for single-handedly bringing down the kingdom, but… if he hadn’t stepped in at the right time, Patraxion would have eventually worn down and faded away like so many others. In contrast, what about the Progenitor? She created the existence of vampires, commands a legion by herself, and is even the queen of the Duchy of Mist. She changes the world on a whim.”
It seemed Yuel wasn’t fully aware, but the Regressor was, without a doubt, a hero who held the world’s fate in her hands.
I might converse with them casually, but they were beings who could toy with the destiny of the world. Their actions could reshape everything.
And yet, they were just individuals.
“I understand, Yuel. Are you saying that no matter how rationally one approaches an individual with a grand perspective, it is ultimately powerless before their whims? No matter how strong they are.”
Amazingly, Captain Abbey grasped the core of the issue in an instant. Yuel looked surprised for a moment, then her expression clouded over with a faint, weary smile.
“…You were brilliant, Abbey. If it weren’t for your mental contamination, you would have surely become the central pillar of the signallers. Then, this nation he created could have continued on without me. But now, both are gone.”
She spoke as if both she and Captain Abbey were already dead. I sensed a foreboding tone in her thoughts, but it wasn’t my time to intervene yet.
“Query. You have been repeatedly using the pronoun ‘he.’ Who exactly is the ‘he’ you are referring to?”
The corpse was mentioned once again. Yuel’s hand, which had been trying to steer the conversation away, froze mid-air, as if Captain Abbey’s interest made her deeply uncomfortable.
It was an absurd demand—to not pay attention to the corpse she was cradling in her arms, stroking its face at every opportunity. But humans are profoundly contradictory creatures. They desperately try to avert their eyes from shameful memories, yet once forgotten, they lament the void left behind.
Yuel dredged up a painful memory and murmured.
“You all don’t even remember him anymore. He is the father of the Military State, yet you know nothing.”
“Objection. The Military State is not a living organism; therefore, it has no being that can be called a father.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“However, the only being in the Military State who could be called a father, even metaphorically, is…”
Captain Abbey trailed off and examined the corpse again.
Even a signaller would have seen a picture or painting of the Warlord who laid the foundations of this nation. Captain Abbey was no exception. As a signaller who handled all sorts of information, she had seen the Warlord’s likeness before.
It was just that the Military State had no interest in things like idolization and didn’t pay any more respect or grief to the dead than was necessary, so she had quickly forgotten.
Yuel’s words pulled the old memory from Abbey’s mind.
“…Warlord Valiorant? But he was killed in an attack by remnants of the old guard three years after the State’s founding. Why is he here?”
“Hah! Remnants! Remnants, she says! Ha, haha! Hh, heuuu…”
Yuel’s words devolved into a gloomy laugh. It seemed she was suffering from some sort of bipolar disorder. Then again, spending nearly twenty years alone in this dark, dreary basement with a corpse by your side would do that to a person.
Yuel muttered like a madwoman.
“If only it had been remnants! If only! I ‘saw’ it! But it wasn’t remnants. How could I have seen that! Me, who is supposed to be arcane and elegant!”
This was no longer a conversation. It was just Yuel’s solitary lament. With my mind-reading, I could roughly understand, but Captain Abbey was completely lost, tilting her head in confusion.
“Yuel?”
“The place by his side. I wanted it so badly I couldn’t bear it. My heart ached with jealousy, yet on the other hand, I was steeped in a sense of superiority. She could never replace me. But I could more than replace her. And so.”
Yuel’s thoughts contained some rather interesting details.
Warlord Valiorant had a family. A daughter of a prestigious house, arranged for him by the royal family during the kingdom era.
Of course, they wouldn’t give the daughter of a powerful noble to a mere commoner; it was a family that had fallen into decline, with only its name carrying some weight. The Warlord was bestowed a wife as if he were being given an old, worn-out title.
But the Warlord was a faithful husband. He cared for his wife with the utmost devotion, and as he was an exceptional man to begin with, his wife gradually came to love him. The two were famous throughout the country for their loving relationship.
Naturally, even after overthrowing the kingdom, the Warlord took meticulous care to ensure no harm came to her family.
But they were still a family of noble knights. The noble knights were all connected by tight bonds, and most of her relatives had died during the rebellion. No matter how much she loved her husband, she must have felt a sense of unease.
And then, if he had returned from a visit to the Sanctum with a woman of arcane air riding behind him on his horse… if the Saintess showed a strange affection for him… perhaps that would be enough to drive someone to do something crazy.
Hmm. I can’t read that side of the story, so I can’t be certain, but it’s a plausible theory.
“I should have watched. Even if it was sordid and base, I should have watched her. I should have thrown away my pathetic pride, set aside my superiority. I should have monitored every single detail of her private life! If I had, he…!”
“Yuel. This officer cannot understand what you are saying. Wasn’t the Warlord killed in an attack by remnants?”
“It was an attack by remnants! What, should I say he died in a crime of passion?!”
Yuel threw her arms around the Warlord, shielding him from our gazes. Her messy hair fell over his pale face. The man, who had met his end by drinking poisoned wine, looked as if he were merely asleep.
“That woman took him from me… but unfortunately for her, I won. She couldn’t have his child, but I bore fruit with him. This blessed country. I gave birth to this nation that will bear and raise hundreds of millions more.”
“Yuel…”
“And this nation. The Military State, the fruit I bore in pain. It will continue on, even after I die.”
Yuel clenched her gaunt, bony hand into a fist.
At that moment, something happened. The underground shrine shook violently. Broken pieces of stone rained down from above.
We were dozens of meters underground, in a place that held the Military State’s most fatal secret. To bury a secret, the simplest method is often the best.
“Oh, this isn’t good. It really looks like this place is about to collapse. Is this some kind of cliché trap?”
“…Don’t tell me!”
This is bad! By talking, I gave her the time she needed to act! I should have prioritized subduing her!
Captain Abbey’s face went pale as she rushed to Yuel and grabbed her by the shoulders. But Yuel didn’t budge.
Not because she was resisting with strength, but because she was frozen in a physical sense. It was a form of Holy Power that protected her.
“Stop, Yuel!”
“You are like me… but there is one major difference.”
Of course, Yuel wasn’t going to stop. In the first place, she couldn’t be stopped.
Clairvoyance was merely the power to ‘watch,’ but a high-ranking cleric like a Saintess could invoke Holy Power. Just as she had summoned the angel Eimeder.
The pillars supporting this room, thirty meters underground, began to lose their integrity due to some unknown force. It was clear that this entire area would soon collapse.
Even with Holy Power, she would die if she were buried alive. Yet Yuel showed no sign of regret.
“My taste in men is far better. Goodbye, Abbey. It was a short meeting, but I enjoyed it. I’ll see you in heaven.”
Hey, why are you suddenly bringing me into this? What’s wrong with me?
Just as I was about to protest, Captain Abbey unleashed her Unique Magic and shouted.
“Negative! I cannot accept this!”