Chapter 206
Chapter 206
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 206
Chapter Title: Reunion (1)
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Elves live lives dozens or even hundreds of times longer than humans. Before the Demon King's forces overturned the world and trampled the elven territories, the elder who ruled the elves was said to have lived for seven thousand years.
When Cardi had just turned a hundred, he once asked that elder who had lived for seven thousand years.
A life of seven thousand years.
When looking back on that long, endless life, what memory came to mind first?
"Ten days."
The elder who had lived seven thousand years answered without a moment's hesitation: "ten days."
"The ten days that a certain human spent in the elven territory after arriving there. Those ten days with that man are the most precious... and unforgettable memory to me."
Though he had lived seven thousand years, the deepest刻ed memory was just those ten days with a human. And for an elf, ten days was but a fleeting moment.
'A mere fleeting moment holds the most meaning?'
That's what he thought back then.
Cardi at the time couldn't understand the elder's words. It would be much later before he came to comprehend them.
"Armiel."
A fleeting moment.
"Thank you."
The moment that shone brightest precisely because it was so fleeting.
There are pasts from hundreds of years ago that one can never forget. Slowly, he opens the eyes he had closed at some point. What comes into view upon opening them is a land turned to ashes.
Yet Cardi sees something else there.
Cardi recalls.
The day, hundreds of years ago, when this place burned and vanished.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ They had failed to subjugate the Demon King.
The journey with his comrades had become something no one remembered. All the countless achievements and honors they had built were reduced to nothing.
Only he remembered.
'Only I myself.'
Cardi was engulfed in a profound sense of solitude. He couldn't sleep at night and spent sleepless dawns wide-eyed. Holed up in the topmost floor of the Mage Tower, Cardi lived like a wreck.
He delved into research after research.
Believing there must be some answer.
'Forbidden texts, alchemy, taboos.'
Engaging in all that was prohibited, Cardi desperately sought a way. Naturally, no answer came. Upon the loneliness piled helplessness. How much time had passed since he shut himself in the Mage Tower?
"...Tower Lord."
Someone had come to see him.
The mage with a face pale with fear said they needed his help. Someone was attacking the kingdom.
"A white-haired woman with emerald eyes, calling herself the 'Saintess'—a madwoman..."
Upon hearing that, Cardi bolted out of the Mage Tower. He ran frantically in the direction the mage pointed. That place was the Delorim Church's sanctuary.
The site of the church's main cathedral.
The place where Gleria was born and raised.
From the sanctuary's entrance, a foul stench assaulted him. The rot of corpses, the acrid smell of something burning— it filled the air everywhere.
"Aaah, aaaaaaah!"
"U, uwaaaah!"
Screams echoed in his ears. Cardi's face hardened. The screams were familiar. But the laughter mixed in between the screams dried up his mouth.
"Ahak, ahahaha!"
Laughter ringing out as if in delight.
Chasing that somehow familiar yet longed-for voice, Cardi walked and walked.
Mangled human corpses littered everywhere.
Demonic beasts fused with humans defiled the sanctuary.
The stench of blood permeated the air.
The place that worshipped a god, called a sanctuary, had already transformed into hell. Cardi kept walking through that hellish place.
Squelch.
The place where he stopped was in front of the main cathedral.
There, amid what had once been humans now reduced to flowing sewage, Cardi faced the comrade he had lost.
"Ahak, ahaa..."
White hair matted with blood.
Emerald eyes gleaming with madness.
A cracked, parched laugh.
Drip, drip, drip.
Blood dripped from the woman's fingers. The spilled blood pooled on the ground. Seeing that, Cardi's eyes shook violently.
Gleria Bell Armias.
Gazing at her, Cardi couldn't bring himself to utter her name. She who had become something else entirely was desecrating lives with the power meant to save others. The rot emanated from beneath her feet.
Step.
Cardi took a step forward.
Reacting to the sound of his footsteps, the woman turned slowly to look behind her.
"Ah..."
The laughter faded.
The eyes gleaming with madness fixed on Cardi.
"It's you, Armiel."
Gleria smiled brightly.
Cardi's expression twisted.
"Gleria, what in the world have you..."
"What do you mean, what?"
She smiled.
"It's salvation."
"The world needs salvation."
"They believe in a broken god while possessing proper bodies, so no matter how long they wait, salvation won't come. So we must break them. So that the broken god can see them."
"And with the miracle granted by the god, I want to save those who suffer. That's my wish."
"I have a duty to do so."
A shattered faith.
A shattered mind.
"I'm still the Saintess, after all."
Grind.
Gazing at his old comrade who had become a madwoman, Cardi gritted his teeth. He bowed his head silently. He could no longer bear to look at his broken old comrade.
Cardi sensed intuitively.
His old comrade had crossed a bridge of no return. There was no room for compromise there.
"Forgive me, Gleria."
Cardi rolled up his sleeves.
The hem of his robe fluttered fiercely.
"This is how I'll protect you."
To cast a spell he had developed but hoped never to use, Cardi extended his hand. A massive circuit etched itself into the empty air. Soon, a new sun rose in the sky.
The sun fell toward the ground.
Flames incinerated the sewage. The inferno erased every trace of the massacre and heresy Gleria had wrought. Yet the heretic did not burn to death. Amid the flames, she swung her hand.
Squirm.
New demonic beasts were born from the corpses of the dead ones. Even as they melted into the embers, the beasts charged at Cardi. The demonic beasts' teeth finally tore into his flesh.
Thus, the desperate battle continued.
Burn them, get bitten, burn them again—repeating endlessly. In the end, the victor was Cardi. Limping, he approached the soot-covered church.
"Still the same as ever, Armiel."
The Saintess, leaning against a church pillar, smiled.
"Just like you."
"......"
"Armiel said it, didn't he? Don't lose your righteousness. Don't forget your path. If you do..."
"I'll set you straight," he had said.
"Yes."
Gleria let out a soft laugh.
"Because that's our promise."
"Contracts every day, contracts! Mages can't promise anything without a contract, can they?"
Cardi's steps halted.
"Not a contract—a promise."
"This is a promise, Armiel. What contract between us? That's too stiff."
Slowly, Cardi raised his head.
He met the eyes of Gleria leaning against the pillar. Though broken, her memories remained intact. That made the current situation all the more tragic.
"You'll set me straight, right?"
Gleria posed the question.
"Mages find ways, you said."
Cardi fell silent at the question.
"Can't it be a promise instead of a contract?"
"...No."
He had tried to find a way.
Sought countless means. But no answer came. It was impossible for him.
Countless words rose and fell in Cardi's mind. Yet not a single one passed his lips.
"I..."
With Gleria before him, Cardi couldn't voice the impossibility. In the end, what he squeezed out was a promise without a timeline.
"I'll find the answer. As long as you remember the promise, I won't forget it either. I..."
At those words, Gleria smiled.
She asked nothing more.
"Then I'll wait."
Be it a hundred years or a thousand—it doesn't matter.
I'll trust you and wait.
As if saying that, before Gleria, Cardi couldn't utter another word.
"......"
Leaving those words, she leaned against the pillar and closed her eyes. Utterly defenseless. With a flick of his finger, he could end her life, but in the end, Cardi couldn't bring himself to kill Gleria there.
It was absurd.
What bound the great sage called the Grand Sage was not contracts spanning hundreds of lines. A flimsy promise made of mere words, unenforced by anyone, had bound him.
The sanctuary turned into a fiery hell.
The kingdom burning away.
Amid it all, the Grand Sage bowed his head.
Loneliness, helplessness, and futility.
He hadn't fallen, but he too was breaking. He merely stared blankly as the kingdom burned to nothingness. For that was all he could do.
"...In the end."
Hundreds of years later, now.
Cardi stands there once more, gazing at the past.
"I still haven't found the answer."
"You're still in the midst of searching, aren't you?"
Someone responded to his murmur.
Cardi turned around. Raniel, who had been following behind him, was now standing right beside him.
"You're still looking for it, right?"
Step.
She walked past Cardi.
"There was a mage who kept seeking an answer even beyond human lifespan—and found it. It was fairly recent when I saw it, but... people like that exist."
Raniel, now ahead, turned back to look at him.
"You haven't even lived out your lifespan yet."
"...Elves live eternally. They have virtually no limit to their lifespan..."
"Anyway."
Raniel smiled.
"You're still searching. You haven't given up."
It was illogical stubbornness.
Yet at those words, Cardi gave a wry smile.
"...Yeah, I suppose so."
His footsteps, which had halted unnoticed, moved forward again.
Cardi stepped ahead once more.
2.
At the heart of the ashen wasteland.
No sunlight reached the place said to have been the site of the ancient kingdom Arcadia. Not even starlight touched it.
A cursed land.
That's what the Delorim Church called it.
The result of incurring the god's wrath, abandoned by the god. Thus, no light shone upon this land.
"Thinking about it, it's funny."
I pointed at the ground.
What we were walking on now were the ruins of the Delorim Church, so I was pointing at the church itself.
"Their main cathedral is right here. Isn't this the first church the denomination built?"
"It was the first, yeah. They just kept expanding it."
"And this was their sanctuary."
"Until a few hundred years ago."
"So they call their own sanctuary a cursed land? What kind of baseless..."
It was like denying their own roots.
As I shook my head in disbelief, Cardi spoke up.
"The current Delorim Church is probably just a shell. All the important records, knowledge, and holy texts were buried here with Arcadia's fall. Naturally, no one who remembers them remains."
The Delorim Church's main cathedral.
The origin of the faith. As I walked through it, I listened to Cardi.
"Once, the Delorim Church's doctrines spread far and wide, adapting to local cultures. Of course, the roots were in Arcadia, but..."
With Arcadia's destruction like this, well.
Cardi shrugged as he muttered that.
"After hundreds of years, hardly any of the doctrines I remember from the church remain. You're right. The current Delorim Church has no roots."
Indeed.
"No roots, so that Saintess bitch turned out like that..."
I sighed, thinking of Sara.
Roots matter wherever you go. Things without roots are always twisted somehow.
"...Just what was the Saintess of that era like? I'm curious since you put it that way."
"Well..."
Saintess Sara.
As I pondered how to answer Cardi's question about what kind of person she was, I just shook my head.
"Best not to get involved with her."
It was a fuckery hard to explain in words, so I didn't bother elaborating.
"If the heretic fell and went mad, that one's been crazy from the start..."
"...That bad?"
Feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, I nodded.
"Divine Archer elf or Saintess—best not to tangle with them. Breathing the same air as those bitches lets you realize the beauty of the world?"
"Beauty of the world?"
"You realize that everything you've seen so far is at least more beautiful than those two..."
Cardi wore a deeply puzzled expression.
"...If they're like that, why the hell are they called Saintess?"
Right?
That's always been my question too.
3.
The legendary mercenary who survived facing a sage and a grand sage as enemies is still guarding the gate today.
"Boring..."
It was a feat, but the man himself was unaware, simply guarding the gate.
"Leave this place within a week."
Chewing over the warning the man had left, the mercenary let out a long sigh. It wasn't easy to just up and leave on such short notice.
'How do I wrap everything up in a week?'
This place was like a second hometown to the mercenary. To leave such a place in just a week? He'd nodded at the time, but it wasn't something to decide so abruptly.
"If the whole ashen wasteland suddenly blew away, maybe. Suddenly leaving my post..."
As he muttered and let out a hollow chuckle—that was the moment.
The sound of carriage wheels rolling reached the mercenary's ears. He narrowed his eyes.
'...What lunatic rides a carriage here?'
Coachmen who knew about the ashen wasteland wouldn't dream of driving here. Only a rare few carriages with special permission from the wasteland would bring guests, but...
'No reservations today.'
The mercenary placed his hand on his sword hilt. A new hilt he'd bought expensively to replace his broken sword.
"Halt there!"
The mercenary shouted, and the carriage actually stopped.
The mercenary approached with sword in hand.
"Unauthorized carriages can't enter. Coachman, turn the carriage around right..."
"If you don't want to get roughed up, step aside."
The coachman showed no sign of fear at the mercenary's warning.
That pricked the mercenary's pride. Still smarting from the beating he'd taken from that man a few days ago, the mercenary glared and thrust his sword at the coachman.
"You think the gatekeeper of the ashen wasteland is a joke?"
"If you knew who was riding..."
"Who the hell's riding?!"
The mercenary pressed the sword closer.
"Get off here and walk in. The laws of the ashen wasteland are fair to all."
The coachman sighed.
"That's what I said, Hero."
...Hero?
The mercenary blinked.
"Coachman, what did you just say?"
"I told you."
The coachman shrugged.
"If you knew who the guest in the back was, you wouldn't say that."
The mercenary's face drained of color.
And then the carriage door opened. The mercenary stiffly turned his creaking neck to look at the open door.
"Rules, was it?"
Tall stature.
Shoulder armor emblazoned with knight order insignia.
At his waist, the iconic sword of the stars.
"I didn't know. This land has an owner?"
The most renowned Hero, Kyle Toven.
He looked down at the gatekeeper. Under that cold gaze, the mercenary's face grew even paler.
Author's Note
The legendary mercenary who doesn't yield even before the Hero...!
*Packed it generously :D