Chapter 447: Trial That Defies Fate - 10
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 447: Trial That Defies Fate - 10
Lunken’s charge was devastating. Kicking up a spray of blood, he lunged, leading with his tusks aimed straight for the Progenitor. The sharp tusks descended upon her small body.
His charge was powerful but direct. It required no mastery of martial arts to read its trajectory. The Progenitor chose to fight back, the Bloodcraft filling her body moving at her command. The girl's fist shot toward Lunken's face.
It looked as though Lunken would beat her to a bloody pulp, but Tyrkanzyaka, who had drawn a line between herself and the world, was more absolute. Her fist blurred for a moment, shattering Lunken's tusks and burying itself halfway into his head. Squish. Lunken's body crumpled grotesquely, like something out of a grim fairytale.
CRASH! Lunken was thrown back, slamming into a wall. The blood-built castle screamed from the successive impacts.
“Hmph! A small fist, but it packs a punch!”
But Lunken regenerated in an instant and kicked off the wall. Even his broken tusks were perfectly restored as if they had never been damaged. He wiped his nose and shouted.
“But I can feel your hesitation! Progenitor, is that all you've got!”
“Kghh…”
Tyrkanzyaka's fists were dull. The reason was simple. Sensation, emotion. Everything Tyrkanzyaka had so desperately wished for was now holding her back.
She could feel the pain of being torn by his tusks. It was momentary, but even that moment felt long. And while she was furious with Lunken, she found it difficult to feel the same intense hatred she had for the servants of the Sanctum.
Nothing was going her way. Not the Elders, not the fight, not love. The only thing she could control as she pleased was her own body.
‘Is this… the life of ordinary people that I wanted?’
She had grown weak. Compared to the Tyrkanzyaka of the past, who possessed godlike power, the authority trapped in this small body felt wasted. Having been reduced to a human, Tyrkanzyaka felt the emotion of helplessness for the first time.
‘If only Hughes were here at a time like this…’
A thought flashed through her mind, and Tyrkanzyaka shook her head. Had her mind weakened along with her body? Even if he was the King of Humans, if he were here without his power, he would only be taken hostage.
“Have the soul of a warrior! Progenitor, if you had power, you could afford to hesitate, but if you don't, you must fight and seize what you want!”
Lunken charged again. Once more, head-on.
Instead of his tusks, he brought both hands down as if to crush her. It was slightly more technical than before. Tyrkanzyaka considered taking the hit, trusting her regeneration, but flinched at the thought of the pain she would feel in the process. She hastily withdrew the fist she was about to throw and blocked Lunken's attack instead.
Seeing Tyrkanzyaka choose to block rather than counter, Lunken roared.
“Wro-ong-!”
Once forced on the defensive, it is hard to counterattack. Lunken shouted triumphantly as he battered Tyrkanzyaka dozens of times. Having already chosen to block, she had no choice but to block the next blow, and the next. Feeling a throbbing pain in her arms, Tyrkanzyaka was steadily pushed back.
“Is that it? Is that really all you have! Fight properly-!”
“Ugh…!”
THWACK. Lunken's sudden kick slammed into Tyrkanzyaka's abdomen. A dizzying pain, as if her stomach had been pierced, made her gasp. Compared to the attacks Tyrkanzyaka had dealt, it was a minor blow, but because of her senses, she perceived it differently.
Tyrkanzyaka's body slid backward. A fight between vampires was often a war of attrition, each chipping away at the other's dominion, but Tyrkanzyaka, having regained her senses, felt as if she would succumb to the pain first.
‘Are my senses and emotions truly nothing but a burden that weakens me…?’
Her resolve wavered. For a moment, Tyrkanzyaka was seized by the desire to stop her heart. To endure the immediate pain and crisis and hope for a better future.
Lunken roared with joy, relentlessly driving Tyrkanzyaka back.
“Good! This is a real fight! Maybe it's because I'm free of those shackles or whatever, but I feel much lighter!”
“You…. Lunken…”
“Still not enough! More, more! Give it your all, Progenitoooor--!!”
CRASH, CRASH. Giant fists and feet rained down on Tyrkanzyaka. Lunken felt no pain. He charged as if to kill, heedless of his own body being broken and crushed.
Unable to bear the pain, Tyrkanzyaka finally reached for another power. Darkness gathered. She who had once stood against the light now became an idol of darkness, wielding its power.
Countless dark knights, seeming to sprout from the floor, rushed to strike the Progenitor's enemy….
“Dark knights without even a shroud of blood energy. I... cannot help but lament the Progenitor's faintheartedness.”
As a dark knight stepped on the floor of blood, a red flower bud shot up as if sensing it. The spiraling bud enveloped the dark knight. Snap. A fan folded shut, and the flower bud constricted, crushing the knight to pulp. With a single gesture from Erzsebet, the dark knights were instantly reduced to dust and scattered.
The remaining darkness was drawn by Tyrkanzyaka's power, forming a wall between her and Lunken.
“This is nothing!”
Of course, a power meant to counter the light of the Sanctum had little effect on Lunken. He broke through it in an instant and continued to land blow after blow on Tyrkanzyaka's body.
Unable to hold on, Tyrkanzyaka swung her arm. Her strength was still immense, and Lunken was sent flying like a cannonball again. It was a meaningless attack to a vampire, but Tyrkanzyaka needed that brief respite.
If she stopped her heart here.
She might be able to regain her dominion. But the moment she did, she wouldn't be able to try and restart her heart again. She already knew she would run rampant, to a degree the Elders couldn't handle.
She could execute all the Elders, destroy this country entirely, and then just ask for it to be returned... but no matter how she thought about it, that wasn't a rational method.
…In the first place, could Hughes even use that power again? This card was a piece of the human Tyr that the King of Humans had found. It was uncertain if she could just throw it away like a toy and pick it back up.
“We're in a fight-! Fo-cus-!”
The moment he noticed her mind was elsewhere, Lunken charged like a boar. As if everything until now had been a mere probe, he scraped the ground with his hands and feet and threw his entire body at Tyrkanzyaka. A sound that wasn't even a scream, more like a gasp, escaped her. Thrown back, Tyrkanzyaka slammed into a wall, feeling a dizzying agony.
Kavila watched the miserably staggering Tyrkanzyaka with pity.
“Ah, my poor sister, choosing pain and suffering for herself. You must know that I am the only one who truly thinks of you. Not the Elders, not Valdamir. Not even that man, your consort…. You are not his priority.”
Even amidst the chaos, Kavila's murmur reached everyone's ears. Lunken and Tyrkanzyaka both paused and looked at her.
“…What are you talking about? What about Hughes?”
Even under everyone's gaze, Kavila nonchalantly took out a Dragonfang Puppet. It was an open secret that her puppets were modeled after the dark knights commanded by the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka. Due to the vast difference in power, her cumbersome and weak Dragonfang Puppets were considered mere toys compared to the blood-energy-enhanced dark knights. But Kavila had never given up, improving and strengthening them for hundreds of years. Though now, there were no dark knights to compare them to.
“Sister. That man... you introduced him to us as the King of Humans. Everyone thought little of it. They were too dull. Only Valdamir and I watched what he was doing with any care.”
“…You were spying on Hughes?”
“Spying? Kehehe. Sister, there was no need. He never bothered to hide his actions.”
Pitying the Progenitor who had been abandoned by the Elders for choosing love, the small, ancient black mage recited her knowledge.
“The King of Humans. The embodiment of savagery that the Sanctum tried to exclude from humanity, long before we existed. Sister, he... no, ‘it’ can never be yours.”
Black mages. Madmen who delve into the taboos forbidden to humans. For Kavila, who became an Elder at a young age, black magic was about the only way to catch up to the other, already established Elders. Black magic, which uses one's own body as a catalyst, has good synergy with vampires. As her efforts bore fruit, the young and innocent Kavila fell deeper into its grasp.
The last Elder. The corruption that held the original blood. And her subordinate... or rather, her closest ally, the Great Witch of the South, the vampires' greatest friend.
Having sought teachings from the Great Witch, the guardian of taboos, Kavila had witnessed forbidden knowledge.
“Did you know? The deeper they delve, the more black mages subconsciously feel the shadow of savagery. Human sacrifice, offerings, cannibalism, curses, splicing. Every act that uses the human body as a price, that acts upon the human body. All those things called taboos have existed since before the dawn of the new era. The age of barbarism, when all manner of beasts lived in their own packs, and the King of Humans walked the earth freely. And the King of Humans was a king even then.”
Kavila murmured, recalling knowledge she had thought useless and put aside.
“He is neither good nor evil. He is one who affirms everything humans do. No matter how terrible the act, even if it is a rebellion against himself. The King of Savagery, who neither denies nor blocks anything. He is not your king alone…. He is the king of us all. Even if we do not accept him as our king.”
“What... are you... saying...”
“Ah, my poor sister. So fragile and naive, you live deceived by a wicked man. Do you still not understand?”
Looking at the gasping Tyrkanzyaka, Kavila cruelly laid out the truth, piece by piece.
“He noticed the rebellion against you. Luscynia's fools even dared to attack the Progenitor's consort. How could they commit such a reckless act? On top of that, they were contacting Elders, looking for others to join their cause to defy fate.”
“Hughes was attacked? When?”
It was the first she had heard of it. In the past, Tyrkanzyaka had ruled the duchy as if it were her own body, aware of every detail. But now that she had lost her dominion over blood, she no longer had the same access to information. If she had heard that Hughes had been attacked, she would have been on guard and dealt with it somehow.
Perhaps because she was cornered, a slight sense of resentment bloomed in Tyrkanzyaka's heart. And then.
“Sister. ‘When’ is not what's important. It's the fact that he did not share what he went through with you.”
Kavila said, driving the final nail in.
“He stood by and watched. He didn't stop it beforehand, nor did he warn them not to. In fact, he went about his days peacefully even after the attack, can you believe it? To accept something is to condone it. He even affirmed the rebellion against you!”
She hadn't originally planned to reveal this much. Kavila, like other vampires, lacked emotions and hadn't realized that a lover's betrayal would be such excruciating pain.
But seeing the expression on Tyrkanzyaka's face—a face that hadn't flinched from Lunken's attacks—crumble, she felt a pang of regret.
Ah, if I'd known this would happen, I should have told her about her lover's betrayal sooner, she thought.
“Your man is not yours alone. He can never give you the love you desire. Never.”
Was it a reflection of Tyrkanzyaka's emotions? The darkness scattered ominously, as if it had lost its direction.