Chapter 149
Chapter 149
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 149
Chapter Title: Superhuman, Mere Human (4)
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Everyone has a glorious era.
The reason everyone cherishes and remembers that time so deeply is because it doesn't last forever. Brilliance eventually loses its luster. Sometimes it gets buried in the mud. Life without that brilliance is grueling. Excessively so.
“...Ah.”
This man's life was just like that.
Sword Ghost Draka stared at the broken blade. The blade that had endured decades of battle had finally snapped. A sword forged from unbreakable steel. Named Indestructible. And yet it had broken—but Draka felt no surprise.
It was time to break, so it broke.
It had held up remarkably well until now.
That was all he thought.
What crumbled before his eyes was the blade, but the blade alone wasn't what had shattered. A sword is half the soul of its wielder. A companion of the spirit. And half of his had just broken.
After all.
A life in which he had abandoned his pride.
The pride he had cast away was trampled once more.
After all, it ends like this.
Gripping the broken blade, Draka thrust his arm forward.
The swordsman's pride lay crushed. His half-soul lay in ruins. Yet Draka remained the Sword Ghost. A man who had ascended to the superhuman realm through sheer tenacity alone.
That tenacity burned like an unquenchable flame.
The roaring blaze drove his body into motion.
But even as he moved, Draka's instincts told him the truth. No stratagem could secure victory. This place was his final destination. And yet he swung his sword because... he was still shackled by an oath from the past.
“No matter what happens, this father will protect you.”
An oath with his daughter.
An oath he had ultimately failed to keep.
Crunch.
He had wanted to keep it.
Crack, creak.
Because he had wanted to keep it.
“Cough...”
He had endured a brutal life through tenacity alone.
He had lived by tenacity, but it couldn't resolve everything. And so Draka had schemed relentlessly. He had grasped at every possible means for success, scorning no method or tool.
But even that had reached its end.
It had finally come to an end.
His arm twisted. The fingers clutching the sword bent beyond endurance and snapped outright. He could no longer hold it.
Thud.
In the end, Draka released the broken sword.
The blade sank into the snowfield.
“......”
Draka gazed ahead. There stood a girl with ash-gray hair. Her appearance had changed, but those pale blue eyes remained unchanged. Beneath that chilling stare, Draka let out a hollow chuckle.
The Ashen Mage, Raniel van Trias.
Still a monstrous sorceress.
Still the obstacle barring his path.
“I see.”
Draka laughed emptily.
“I've lost.”
He had lived a life filthier than sewage.
And the one who would end that life stood before him.
2.
Some liken the Four Calamities to natural disasters. Drought strikes, floods sweep away villages—no one points fingers in blame. In essence, the Four Calamities are no different.
A happenstance, like any other day.
Something that arrives without reason.
Someone's life lay in ruins for no reason at all.
“Draka van Haroct.”
There once was a lord by that name.
A lord who cherished his people, admired by every knight.
“Milord, the lady...”
A chance accident claimed his wife. But he blamed no one. He simply lived for the treasure she had left behind—their daughter.
Once could be called coincidence.
He could convince himself of that.
“Milord, you must abandon the territory.”
“Armel, where is Armel?”
“......”
“Answer me. Where is she? Armel—that child—where is she?”
Then what of the second time?
How was he to accept this second unbidden coincidence?
Twice was too much to bear. Draka strode into the burning territory.
Squelch.
The ground was a mire.
Blood and human remnants mingled in a reeking sludge. Draka pressed forward, cleaving the shambling sewage that was neither dead nor alive.
He cut down the people he had once cherished.
He killed those who were no longer human and kept walking.
How much sewage had he felled?
When his blackened blade finally dulled, Draka came upon a woman. A woman with white hair.
“Ah.”
She smiled.
“Such a devoted one. Isn't she?”
The woman tossed something at his feet.
Draka watched it splatter before him with a wet splat. A black clump of filth. The squelching mass made a sound.
Daddy, it said.
“She called your name right up to the end.”
The woman smiled as if amused.
“A fun experiment, even if it failed.”
The woman vanished into the black forest beyond.
Draka could not pursue.
He stared blankly at the thing before him. Gazing at the half-dissolved human remains, Draka unleashed a guttural howl. A sound impossible to call scream or laughter poured from his mouth.
Decades had passed since then.
For revenge, Draka had forsaken his pride.
He had forsaken human decency as well. Only by discarding everything could he reach the calamity. He discarded and discarded—but one thing he could not cast away.
“...The First Saintess.”
“The miracle of resurrection that brings back the dead.”
He had lived a trash heap of a life.
To hunt heretics, he had become one himself. He had treated other lives like flies. A life fit for damnation to hell... yet Draka dreamed.
He could not forget that brilliant light.
He dreamed of the past he could not forget.
And now, it was time to awaken from the dream.
“Ah.”
Draka groaned.
“Ashen.”
He moved his body.
Not in resistance. Slowly, ever so slowly. Raniel narrowed her eyes. A flicker of bewilderment crossed her gaze.
“...What are you doing?”
Raniel asked without thinking.
With defeat all but sealed, Draka's actions defied her expectations.
Crunch.
Snow crunched underfoot.
Draka dropped to his knees. He bowed at the waist. The man who had abandoned all pride prostrated himself before the far younger mage.
“I beg you.”
He said.
“I grant you all my rights. I've heard you mages can forge a 'Subjugation Contract' under the stars' oversight. Bind me with it.”
A contract impossible without mutual consent.
Overseen by the stars themselves, impervious to any coercion.
Thus, a contract stronger than any other.
Choose death over a Subjugation Contract.
For it is worse than death.
So it was written in ancient grimoires.
Annihilation of the self, reduced to a mindless puppet.
A punishment worse than death itself.
No one in their right mind would speak of it. Yet Draka uttered it gladly. He had been mad for a very long time.
“I'm a superhuman of the sword. I'll make for a usable piece.”
“...The price?”
“My daughter's face.”
Draka spoke without hesitation.
“Let me see my daughter, just once.”
3.
He's utterly lost his mind.
Raniel clicked her tongue inwardly.
Subjugation Contract.
A pact with the stars, staking one's soul.
Impervious to any form of brainwashing.
Its coercive power, born of mutual accord, surpasses all others.
The subject's wish must balance their own life on the scales...
She had never attempted it, of course.
It was forbidden magic now, something the ancient mages had wielded long ago.
How does the Sword Ghost even know of it?
Raniel harbored no such doubts.
If he knew of the First Saintess... then the Sword Ghost had delved into ancient records as deeply as she had.
“Phew...”
Raniel exhaled and spoke.
“...I can't pull off resurrections like a saint.”
“I figured as much.”
“Meaning I can't show you your dead daughter. I could tamper with memories to conjure an illusion, but...”
“I have no need for phantoms.”
Draka drew a wooden box from his bosom.
The one he had stolen from Raniel.
“The altar stands on the verge of completion. With this, it can be finished.”
“...Reviving the First Saintess?”
Raniel scoffed.
“You actually think that'll work?”
She glanced at the altar.
Counting the sacrifices and gauging the ritual's completion, Raniel tsked softly. The cult had poured their hearts into it... but to her eyes, it was a disaster.
“This isn't someone who just died. Hundreds of years dead. The First Saintess, no less.”
“...I know.”
“The soul's weight is different. Not tens or hundreds—millions wouldn't cut it.”
The subject herself was alive and well to begin with.
A miracle meant to revive the dead would only fizzle against the living. Raniel looked down at Draka with disdain.
“That, I know as well.”
Draka replied evenly.
“I never intended to revive the First Saintess in the first place. With materials like these... I merely assumed I could save my daughter.”
“......”
“What I'll revive on that altar is my daughter. I'm not asking the impossible. Let me use it. Grant me that, and I'll enter the Subjugation Contract right now.”
Raniel fell silent.
...It's possible.
Factoring in the First Saintess's holy relic and this many human sacrifices... snaring one ordinary girl's soul in the ritual was entirely feasible.
Possible, yes, but...
Raniel narrowed her eyes.
“You shouldn't.”
“...What do you mean?”
“Consider this a warning. Advice, if you will: alchemy earns its name for good reason. There's always a rationale behind the prohibitions. Things that seem conveniently perfect...”
Draka scowled.
“I didn't come this far to hear sermons. So—contract or no?”
“...You'll push through anyway?”
“Forge the contract. You can do it.”
Raniel sighed and extended her hand.
Rotten or not, Draka was a superhuman. Directed properly... he could save countless lives.
Knight Commander Heinkel would know how to make good use of him.
She clapped her hands.
A few Stocked circuits floated into the air. Dismantling them, Raniel wove a new incantation. What emerged was a ring of light.
Click.
The ring settled around Draka's neck.
Draka lifted his head to meet Raniel's gaze. A scale hovered between them. A star whispered in Draka's ear.
『Fulfill the wish.』
In accordance with the stated wish, Draka moved.
His creaking body carried him before the altar.
Draka opened the box. The moment he did, his eyes trembled. He twisted his head to look behind him.
“...Why this?”
“It'll activate the altar all the same. Without side effects. Perfectly.”
Raniel tilted her head.
No lies could stand before a star's contract. The star itself deemed it truth.
“......”
Draka's eyes shook as he stared at the blackened arm.
Fragments of knowledge slotted together in his mind. A sneer curled his lips—a sneer aimed at himself.
So that's how it is.
Suppressing the urge to rip the arm apart then and there, Draka spoke.
“...You said it was possible.”
“The sacrifices match.”
Draka placed the arm upon the altar.
The arm melted into it, and light overflowed. The completed altar posed its question: whom to revive? Draka answered without pause.
“Armel van Haroct.”
He said.
“My daughter.”
The ritual activated. The divine miracle took form once more.
Raniel, standing a step from the surging light, closed her eyes. It wasn't a sight she cared to witness.
The miracle of resurrection.
Raniel knew its principle.
At the peak of the Kurakt Mountains, in the ancient memories left by Cardi, she had witnessed the First Saintess—Glerea—perform the miracle. She understood what that resurrection truly signified.
Precisely because she knew, Raniel kept her eyes shut.
“I did warn you.”
Raniel tsked.
Draka paid her no heed.
“O, oooh...”
Blinded by the light, Draka reached toward it. Gradually, the glow subsided. Something weighing as much as a single girl materialized atop the altar.
“Armel, Armel!”
He cried out.
Raniel sighed and turned around.
“Rak.”
“...Yes?”
“Close your eyes.”
Raniel doffed her robe and draped it over Rak's face. Utterly baffled, Rak simply obeyed.
And the ritual concluded in perfect success.
Accompanied by a gruesome splat.
“...Ah?”
Draka uttered a puzzled sound.
It was not Armel upon the altar.
To be precise, it had been Armel—but no longer was. Draka recognized it at a glance.
Because he recognized it.
Because he realized.
Draka's face drained of color.
“A, aaah...”
A wail escaped Draka's lips.
The outcome Raniel had foreseen.
Resurrection miracle.
The alchemy wielded by the First Saintess, Glerea, was never omnipotent. She had never once saved a soul with it.
It merely anchors the form at the moment of death to this world, if only briefly.
A fleeting instant. A word or two at most.
That was the final miracle permitted by the stars.
Once the allotted time expires, consciousness fades. They become wrathful shades, haunting the living. And so it is called alchemy.
At best, a momentary dream.
A fleeting dream.
A reunion in an instant.
Yet.
“Aaah, aaaaaaah...!”
Even that was denied the Sword Ghost.
Raniel slowly opened her eyes. Through narrowed lids, she watched Draka. Vacant-eyed, he stared at the altar. Wails spilled from his mouth.
Black sewage oozed from the altar.
The sludge, fused with a beast, uttered a single word.
“Ah, pa.”
With that, it melted away and collapsed. Not even a proper ghost. No time for conversation. In the end, Draka was forced to witness it once more.
His daughter dying.
His daughter defiled, entwined with the beast.
“Ah.”
Draka's mouth fell open.
“Ah, ahaha.”
He let out a parched laugh.
“Ahaha, ahahahaha!”
The laughter of a shattered soul.