Chapter 317
Chapter 317
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 317
Chapter Title: Junior, and Descendant (3)
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Shadow Dragon's Sorcerer, Belial.
He had a family.
A beloved wife and a young son so precious it hurt to even lay eyes on him. Those two were everything to Belial—they were the very reason he lived.
Belial, a renowned sorcerer, was constantly called away to minor battlefields and subjugation missions. Each time he left home, he would pat his worried young son's shoulder and say,
"I won't die."
"I'll sweep them all away and come back. Don't worry."
It wasn't bravado.
Belial was an exceptional sorcerer, and every battlefield he set foot on was swiftly resolved. Eager to send soldiers with families back home quickly, Belial gave his all in every fight... and his fame only grew.
Then one day.
On a day when the battle ended unusually fast, Belial witnessed a black wave surging from the capital. Even as the knight commander, called the Sword Saint, slashed at the wave, it overflowed and engulfed the mortal world.
Countless people were swept away by the wave.
Countless people died.
Belial's family could not escape the calamity either.
When he returned home, what Belial saw was his son and wife transformed into filthy sludge. They had died, but Belial could not. True to his promise to his young son, Belial survived. He kept his word, but his family could not.
He had lost what was most precious to him.
Belial felt the agony of loss.
He spent a long time immersed in that pain. Then the Hero came to him, and Belial rose again, stepping over his suffering. With no more promises left to keep, Belial made a new one.
"So that child can smile."
A world where he could smile happily.
"So no one else suffers like me... no one else loses their family..."
A world with no one bereft by calamity.
"I will fight for such a world."
That was Belial's conviction.
He lived his entire life by that belief. Offering even his soul, Belial upheld it. He could only surmise that the end he met was far from pleasant.
Countless time passed.
After flowing endlessly, Belial now sees before him.
A boy from the future stands there.
A distant future for him, but to that boy, Belial is a figure from the distant past. The ancient sorcerer gazes at the young sorcerer of the present.
Ka-ga-ga-ga-gak!
Each time the boy swings his arm, fierce winds rage.
The edge of those raging winds is still weak. Winds too immature to call the flap of a dragon's wings. Yet amid that immaturity, Belial senses familiarity. The winds he wielded in his youth were just like them.
In the boy from the future, he sees his own path.
"Indeed."
Belial lets out a chuckle at the fact.
'It has been passed down.'
In the end, it continued.
Even after countless time flowed, even if his name was forgotten and erased from history... the path he left behind had ultimately been continued. A boy walks the path he left.
Grateful for this miracle, Belial speaks.
"Boy."
He swings his arm briefly.
The raging winds clear in an instant. As Belnoa, charging at Belial with full power, comes to a halt, Belial smirks.
"You've grown quite a bit. You still have far to go, and I'd love to pass everything on to you, but..."
Belial points to the sky.
"Time isn't on our side."
The sky is cracking.
Different from before. The Holy Grail creating the illusion itself is breaking. Both Belial and Belnoa sense this is the end.
"Well then..."
"Regrettably, this will be my final lesson."
Belial smiles bitterly.
"Shall we walk a bit, boy?"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ The first Hero, Ganikalt van Galatrick.
He who lived by the sword(?). He had no one he could call family. Having lost his parents young, Ganikalt took up the sword. He lived with it. To him, the sword was friend, family, and one with himself.
A life lived by the sword is lonely.
Even after rising to high rank and receiving acclaim from many, Ganikalt felt only solitude. He walked his path alone. No one thought to follow him.
In the sword's holy land, Ganikalt was an object of admiration, the same for knights. To swordsmen, he was an idol, not someone to chase.
Thus, he was lonely.
He walked the lonely path alone.
Along that path, Ganikalt encountered a boy. The boy he had saved in the past. The boy knelt before Ganikalt and bowed his head.
Take me as your disciple.
I want to learn the sword from you.
The boy said as much. Even when told the sword didn't suit him, he stubbornly refused and swung it. Swinging relentlessly, he visited whenever Ganikalt stayed at the palace. How much time passed like that?
"This is my sword."
"My sword, imitating yours from glimpses over your shoulder."
Ganikalt turns back.
At the start of the path he thought empty, someone stands. The boy stands at the path's entrance. The gap between boy and himself is so vast Ganikalt sees him as a mere dot, but...
"Someday, a sword that reaches you."
Still, it exists there with definite weight.
Ganikalt bursts into laughter.
On the path he thought eternally solitary, he takes the boy as disciple. To the boy, Ganikalt was master and father, a senior on the same path.
'He resembles him.'
Now, after vast time in the distant future, Ganikalt gazes at the boy before him. The boy strongly resembles his ancestor. In appearance, in how he wields his weapon.
"...Is that so."
Ganikalt parries Rak's axe.
As he does, a faint smile crosses his lips.
'Still trying to follow, even now.'
Ganikalt looks back on the path he walked.
The boy once a mere dot now takes human form. Approaching him over countless time. One step after another.
To finally reach him.
A brutally stubborn method, but that stubbornness and tenacity are exactly what Ganikalt upheld.
'And...'
Ganikalt eyes Rak's swinging axe.
'It has been passed down.'
The weapon differs. The stance slightly too.
Yet what dwells within is his sword(?). They share the same root. Thus, as master, there is only one thing to show.
"Rak van Grace."
Ganikalt turns his back to Rak.
"Take up your sword and follow."
Without glancing at the cracking sky, Ganikalt walks forward. Rak follows behind. A sword is now in Rak's hand.
2. They walked the desert for a long while.
Even the endlessly stretching desert has an end. It is the end of the path one sorcerer walked. The severed path looms like a sheer cliff.
Thud.
At that end, Belial stops.
Sand falls endlessly below the cliff. Truly the world's edge. Nothing lies beyond; this is the end Belial met as a man.
Darkness writhes on the precipice.
Glancing at it, Belial turns his head.
"This place...?"
"My end, I suppose."
Belial says calmly.
"You've heard from my lord about my final moments?"
"...I have."
Offering everything to become a dragon.
To cast down the false god that set foot on this land, Belial staked all he could.
"Even that you became the Black Dragon."
"You've heard quite a lot. Yes, my end was as a beast lost to reason. Your presence here means I ultimately failed."
Belial smiles bitterly.
"They called me a calamity, didn't they."
"Yes."
"I must have killed many."
"......"
"What became of me? Still infamous as a calamity?"
"No."
Belnoa states firmly.
"The Black Dragon was subjugated."
"...What?"
"My master, who is teaching me now, subjugated the Black Dragon. It was relatively recent."
Belial's eyes widen.
"Subjugated... subjugated."
Soon, Belial bursts into laughter.
As if relieved, like a weight lifted.
"What truly grateful news. Truly, truly..."
Muttering that, Belial asks Belnoa,
"What is your master's name?"
"Raniel van Trias. Called the Ashen Mage."
"Ashen Mage, indeed."
That rascal Cardi managed it after all.
Muttering that, Belial exhales deeply. Then he stretches both arms forward, loosening them lightly.
"Boy."
Belial turns to Belnoa.
"This is the end of the path I walked. At this path's end, I will show you."
This will be the last.
If there's one thing to show at the end, it's this alone. Belial smiles at the path's terminus.
"Watch closely."
The realm you must one day reach.
"This is all I can show you."
My final attainment.
Thud.
Belial leaps beyond the cliff.
Before Belnoa can stop him, he plummets into the darkness. Rushing to the edge, Belial has already vanished into the endless abyss.
What am I supposed to see?
As Belnoa blinks, a flash erupts from the darkness.
"...Ugh!"
Fierce winds follow.
Dry winds blow from below upward. Sand that fell from the cliff surges skyward. Amid the rising sand, something massive approaches.
Ku-gu-gu-gu-gu-gung!
As air tears, something rises from the darkness. Shadow falls over the sunlit desert. The shadow is immense, vast enough to blanket the endless sands.
Its owner soars the skies.
Belnoa looks up.
"Ah..."
There, a single dragon.
Black scales gleam against the blue sky. Each flap of massive wings sweeps sand away. Belnoa stares, entranced, at the sky's ruler.
The dragon casting shadow on the earth.
The most perfect being.
Black Dragon, Belial.
The ancient dragon gazing down at Belnoa slowly moves. Winds rage madly with its colossal frame. The onslaught makes it hard to even keep eyes open.
"Open your eyes." At the voice, Belnoa opens her eyes.
Suddenly, beside her stands the Lord of Shadow Dragons, who hadn't appeared since entering the trial.
She reveals herself now.
"That is the most beautiful and noble form of the Shadow Dragon in the world." The dragon roars.
Amid the deafening boom that threatens to rupture eardrums, Belnoa stares wide-eyed at the sky. She witnesses the realm reached by a hero from the distant past at his end.
Flames flicker in the dragon's maw.
The Black Dragon breathes fire toward the endless darkness. Heat assaults with blinding light. The dragon's flames become a blaze. The fiery path burns through the darkness. As if heralding the world's end.
A path opens beyond the endless darkness.
Beyond the severed path, a new one continues.
That path is distant. Too far to reach. But it exists. Belnoa sees the small path carved in the crumbling world.
And.
The Black Dragon flaps its wings.
Raging winds envelop Belnoa. Riding them toward the path pierced through the collapsing world, Belnoa soars. Thus, the trial crumbles.
The crumbling trial.
In the raging storm, the dragon stares straight at Belnoa. She engraves that noble form into her eyes.
A sight she would never forget.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ At the canyon's end, Ganikalt stops.
There lies the end.
An impassable barrier ahead.
Standing at the world's edge, Ganikalt grips his sword.
"I have seen your sword."
Ganikalt speaks.
To Rak, and to the boy from his distant past who became his disciple.
"A rough sword."
A crude one.
"Not a sword for facing people. A sword for facing nature. Not suited for a swordsman. But."
Ganikalt lowers his blade.
"Amusingly, it gave me the answer."
He meant to teach, yet received teaching. The unique sword(?) of that child Grace boasted of. It gave Ganikalt the answer.
"What I must cut is no tangible being."
There was something to sever.
"A god seated in the heavens, a false entity descended to this land. Something that should not exist. Could not exist. I had to cut it down."
Because it existed, he agonized.
"The answer I found at that end is this."
Ganikalt exhales shortly.
He snatches the tossed sword with his left hand. Closes one eye, lets his right arm dangle. His body intact, yet to Rak, Ganikalt appears to have lost an arm and eye.
"What does the sword pursue?"
He questions himself.
Swordsmanship has evolved endlessly.
Better forms, deadlier strikes, perfect sword paths.
Many lived immersed in the sword pursuing that. What did they seek at the end? What sword(?) should he have pursued?
The answer is simple in the end.
Sword arts branched endlessly, sprouting myriad fruits. But tracing to the root, one remains.
"The sword exists to cut."
Unchanging over hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years.
"To inevitably cut what it would cut."
If achieved, form(?) is meaningless.
What is held matters not.
The swordsman obsessed with perfection his whole life could only cut the divine after letting all go.
Let go of everything.
To cut, discard all.
"Form is unnecessary."
Imbue the will to cut into the sword(?).
My blade will sever all it touches.
The formless sword cuts even stars in the sky.
"This is the sword's extremity."
Formless Sword for lacking form.
Heaven-Defying for opposing providence.
Srrip.
The formless sword swings.
A single line bisects the world.
Ganikalt's blade severs even the world's blocking end. The massive slash cleaves the world asunder, everything begins crumbling.
Concepts, common sense, providence, laws.
All collapses.
In the crumbling world, the steadfast swordsman turns to Rak.
"Rak van Grace."
He removes his helm.
Revealing a human face.
The face of a master beholding his disciple.
"Never forget what you just saw."
Rak slowly lowers his head.
His gaze falls to the greatsword in his hand. It could be a greatsword, a slender longsword, even an axe. What he holds is a formless sword.
The technique Grace showed Rak in the holy land.
Rak beholds its original(?). He cannot fully comprehend it. Though incomprehensible, someday he must.
Grip.
Rak clutches the sword. Watching, Ganikalt smiles faintly.
"Never forget that resolve."
Ganikalt extends his arm.
His fingertips point to the severed world's end.
There lies the path outward.
"Walk your path."
Walk the path continued from me.
End it your way.
That is a master's best counsel.
"Refine yourself."
Rak bows in respect, passes Ganikalt, and heads to the path's end. This is their final meeting. If they meet again...
He would be not a master, but an enemy to cut.
Engraving Ganikalt's sword(?) in his mind, Rak exits the trial. He has seen all to see. What follows must be by his strength alone.
3. Crack, cra-ack.
Raniel eyes the Holy Grail in her hand.
Cracks spiderweb it. Beyond cracks, it begins shattering. Sensing the end, Raniel looks up ahead.
Hummm.
From the resounding well of light, Belnoa emerges. Rak follows, ejected from the trial. It does not mean success.
But nor is it failure.
The vibrating well of light shatters. The Holy Grail breaks with it. Shattered fragments become particles of light. They flow with direction.
Swish.
The split light enters Belnoa and Rak respectively. It is the will of ancient heroes who forged this Grail, akin to the paths they walked.
Paths severed in the distant past.
The one to continue them has been chosen.
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