Chapter 217
Chapter 217
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 217
Chapter Title: Scars Left by the Calamity's Claws (4)
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Crimson Palace.
The madman's lair.
Once you pierce through countless illusion spells, barriers, and hundreds of curses to reach the deepest chamber... a hell crafted by human hands unfolds before you.
The Saintess groans as she faces this hell.
"I can't purify it."
Gloria, the first Saintess.
She who had purified even swamps formed from centuries of filth now confronted her own powerlessness before a hell made by mere mortals.
"It's already too broken. Their souls are twisted beyond repair... They can no longer cycle through the natural order. They've escaped the providence of the world."
Gloria bit her lip.
Blood beaded on her tightly pressed lips.
"It's horrific."
"They can't be saved. They'll be bound here forever and ever. To save them... you'd have to kill the being that binds their souls together."
Who was that being?
No such question was needed. All of humanity now knew of it. The scorched lands it had swept through bore witness to its name.
"...The Demon King."
The born calamity.
Ganikalt uttered its name. He gripped the hilt of his holy sword tightly. He glared at the horrors before him.
"I've wondered how many humans it took to birth that thing, spawned from grudges and malice."
And the answer lay right before his eyes.
Ganikalt slowly raised his holy sword.
The first Hero swung his blade to cleave through the hell spread out before him. Yet nothing met the edge of his sword. It sliced through nothing. The tip didn't even touch anything.
A sword that cut all things.
The swordmaster whose technique severed everything.
Even Ganikalt's blade could not cut this hell. For it had escaped providence. Unbound by any law, it was beyond Ganikalt's reach.
"...At the very least, we'll seal it away."
The Grand Sage groaned as he stepped before the hell.
Isolating this place from the human world with hundreds of barriers was the best they could do for now.
"When we subjugate the Demon King in the future... we'll return here and save them. This isn't abandonment, so don't make that pained face, Gloria."
"But..."
"We have no means right now. Neither to save them nor even to erase their existence."
With that, the Grand Sage patted the Saintess's shoulder.
"We'll finish everything and come back."
"Yes... we will."
As they made their vow before the hell, the dragon shaman who had remained silent spoke up.
"So."
Belial glanced toward one corner of the Crimson Palace.
There lay a human dying with a sword pierced through his heart. Belial continued, eyes fixed on him.
"You're the one who planned all this."
The master of the Crimson Palace.
The madman who lurked in the palace's deepest depths.
The magus who birthed this hell.
"Of course. Who else could claim to be the lord of this place? Are you asking because you don't know, Dragon Shaman?"
Even as he lay dying, he still smiled.
He burst into mad laughter at the Heroes looking down on him. Cardy frowned at the savage cackles.
"What were you thinking, pulling off something like this?"
The elf, unable to comprehend human madness, asked.
"Did you hate your sister so much—the one who's to be this kingdom's next queen? Was it unforgivable? Did you have to drag her down to the depths, even resorting to this?"
She couldn't understand his motives.
Unable to grasp it, she posed the question, only to receive an even more incomprehensible reply.
"Not at all. I love my sister, esteemed Grand Sage Cardy."
The madman burst into laughter.
"Because I love her, I wished for her to shine even brighter. Surely you, as a fellow practitioner of forbidden magic, can understand? Because I loved that child..."
He spread his arms wide.
"I only wanted her to become an eternal being. So, how did it look in your eyes?"
The twisted human's laughter echoed.
The madman smiled at the Heroes who had faced the Demon King. It was a grotesquely warped smile.
"Wasn't it truly beautiful?"
Gloria's face crumpled. Belial gnashed his teeth. Even Ganikalt widened his eyes, staring at the madman.
"Ganikalt."
The Grand Sage pointed at the madman.
"Cut him down. He doesn't deserve another word."
"I was planning to anyway."
Ganikalt swung his sword.
Starlight incinerated the madman. Until his flesh and soul crumbled to ash, the madman never stopped laughing.
2.
"There are two key things you need to learn here."
Cardy raised a hand.
"One is the origin of the Shadow."
He held up his index finger.
"The other is understanding the Shadow."
He pointed his raised index finger at my heart.
"More precisely, it's about understanding the 'curse' that's gnawing at your heart."
"...Curse?"
"Yes. Haven't you ever found it strange? Why the Shadow curses humans. How simply scattering it can rot away the body of a mage like you."
"That's..."
I had no real answer.
Until now, I'd vaguely thought it was because it was the Demon King, a being beyond providence, so anything was possible. That was it.
'I was just trying to find a way to resolve the curse...'
Why the Demon King could cast curses.
I'd never really pondered that part. As I fell silent, Cardy spoke.
"It's not simply because the Demon King is evil or chaotic. Understand the origin of the Shadow. Then you'll naturally comprehend it."
With that, Cardy removed his bracelet and handed it to me.
It was engraved with the emblem of the Ashen Mage Tower.
"A magic tool that lets you enter the barrier. It'll also protect you from those things."
I bit my lip hard as I took the bracelet.
'...The Demon King was born in Arcadia.'
All the signs pointed to it.
The altar presumed to have birthed the Demon King stretched beyond the barrier. Contextually, the lunatic who created the calamity was this Crimson Palace's master.
'In that case.'
Countless speculations filled my mind.
But nothing I could confirm right now.
"Hoo..."
A long sigh escaped me.
My breath cut through the heavy air.
And Cardy posed a question.
"What will you do?"
Will you do it, or not?
That's what he was asking.
Click.
I answered wordlessly by slipping the bracelet onto my wrist. In the end, there was only one path for me.
'I have to face it head-on for now.'
There was no other answer.
"...I have to."
I gazed beyond the barrier.
Taking in the hell spread there with my own eyes, I took a slow, deep breath.
A forgotten history, absent from everywhere else.
The path to the history that had to be forgotten lay before me. The answers lay beyond that hellish sight. The answers I'd been searching for all this time.
'The Demon King's origin.'
The Shadow's origin.
'How the unknown entity gnawing at me—and humanity's history for centuries—was born.'
A truth unrecorded anywhere.
Step.
I stepped forward to reach it.
The barrier rippled, enveloping my body. Gray light flashed repeatedly before my eyes, so I closed them briefly.
Blink.
When I opened my eyes again, a human-made hell greeted me. Standing before it, I pulled off my gloves.
3.
It must have once been a royal corridor, but the hallway of human corpses was a demonic realm beyond description. Raniel steadied her breath and narrowed her eyes.
What she saw were countless corpses.
Even Raniel, who had witnessed every horror on the battlefield, instinctively stepped back from the gruesome sight. An indescribable revulsion permeated the place.
Mashed and broken things.
Yet they still lived.
『■■, ■. ■■■■■■■■.』
Emitting unknowable sounds, they clawed at the floor. Though everything else was pulverized, their black hands remained intact. Human hands raking the ground.
The floor, clawed for centuries, was deeply gouged.
Raniel gazed at it. She watched the procession of humans who neither lived nor died, escaped from providence. She listened to their groans.
They were mere noise.
The sounds held no apparent meaning.
But she could tell they were groans.
Though escaped from providence, these once-humans endlessly groaned in ceaseless agony. It was wailing, a cry of anguish.
'Pain.'
Raniel did not avert her eyes from any of it.
'Endless pain inflicted upon them.'
Amid the incomprehensible, she methodically identified what she could grasp. Calmly, with endlessly cold eyes, she surveyed her surroundings.
Scraaatch, scraaaatch.
The sound of the floor being dragged.
Raniel looked at the floor. There was a reason their hands endlessly scraped it. They wanted to erase the letters carved into it.
Letters etched in filth.
Though unreadable, Raniel realized they were part of a circuit. From that fragment, she envisioned the entire circuit filling this place in her mind.
As expected.
The circuit existed to inflict pain on the traces of humans here who could neither live nor die. Why inflict pain on them?
"The reason."
What was that reason?
What could be gained from their endless torment? The answer rang in Raniel's ears.
『■■ ■■■ ■■■.』
『■■, ■ ■■■, ■■■■.』
Groans.
'Groans soaked in pain.'
And Raniel realized.
This was to create the Shadow, the antithesis of the stars. What did the Shadow desire?
'To pull down the stars.'
Thus, the Shadow hated the stars.
It resented everything tied to them.
That was the Shadow's nature.
『■■, ■. ■■■■■■■■.』
Listening closely to the groans, Raniel pondered.
They resembled the prayers of devotees. The faithful of the Delorim Church borrowed the stars' divinity through prayer. The stars sometimes answered their fervent pleas.
"The stars answer wishes."
Saintess Sara had once said that.
"They respond to our prayers, hopes, and desperate yearnings. That's why they embody wishes."
Raniel saw the stars as objects of trade.
But not everyone did.
From ancient times, they were depicted as godlike, responding to human aspirations.
'Can aspirations become a form of currency?'
Raniel wondered.
Could humans' desperate wishes serve as trade goods? It didn't seem impossible.
'Stars and Shadows are opposites, yet alike.'
If stars answered human wishes.
Then the Shadow likely shared that trait.
'Wishes.'
Hopes, prayers.
『■■, ■. ■■■■■■■■.』
Raniel looked at the floor.
The clawing hands and the noise ringing in her ears seemed like curses against something. Like resentment, hatred.
Resentment and hatred.
Pain to draw them forth.
What do you call the language born from resenting and hating something? No need to look far. Raniel murmured it aloud.
"Curses."
The Shadow's essence.
"An altar to produce curses."
That was this place's true nature.
Raniel felt the curse rooted in her heart. Now suppressed to its limit, but once unleashed, it had clawed her body raw.
Scraaatch, scraaaatch.
The scene before her was the same at its core. Raniel came to understand the essence of the curse within her.
'Wishes born as resentment.'
Harnessing hatred as currency to lead something to ruin. That was the curse's essence. In understanding it, Raniel grasped the Shadow's nature too.
"Human screams."
She voiced it.
"Screams humans let out in agony, resentment, intense hatred toward something."
Wishes born from that.
'What is the target?'
The curse in her body hated Raniel herself, naturally. And the Shadow, formed from gathered curses, always resented one thing.
"The stars."
It hated the stars.
"How?"
Questions remained.
Before her lay countless human corpses. Innumerable clawing hands. Did they all hate the stars, even as they died?
Enduring endless pain.
Used as materials for the Shadow.
Even then, hating the stars.
'Why?'
She couldn't know the reason. Because she didn't, Raniel walked. She sensed the truth was just one step away.
A path piled with what were once humans.
She followed it. Endlessly toward where their wishes pointed. And at the end, Raniel confronted something.
At the path's end sat a jade throne.
"Oh, faster than I expected."
A shadow occupied the throne.
"Welcome to my palace, Ashen Mage."
The shadow smiled.
Raniel asked the shadow's name.
The shadow answered.
"First Prince Isaac."
Or.
"The first madman. The nameless one."