Chapter 451
Chapter 451
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 451
Chapter Title: Tribute to the Hero
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Acceleration.
Platinum starlight wrapped around Raniel's body.
The starlight passed from Kyle Toben pushed Raniel's back, which had already reached its limit. It allowed her to run just a little further. With the starlight filling her, Raniel softly chanted.
"Acceleration." The spell settled once more into her body, which had long surpassed its limits. The moment the spell took hold, a cracking sound rang out, and cracks spiderwebbed across Raniel's vision. Her field of view, already narrowed to one eye, shrank even further.
But it didn't matter.
Through her blurry, narrowed vision, Raniel saw the heretic. She felt the grip of her own hand around the heretic's throat, the sensation of the chains binding her hand and the heretic's neck together. Even if she couldn't see clearly, it was fine. As long as she didn't let go.
"You... what..."
For the first time, the heretic showed signs of panic.
She couldn't comprehend the dark crimson lightning enveloping Raniel. From the gutters? Defying heaven? No, it was fundamentally different from what she had tried to achieve.
...The heretic, Glerea Bell Armias, had wished to overturn providence. To correct and revise the existing order of the world.
'But...'
That dark crimson lightning was different.
It wasn't for the sake of revision. It was more like...
Crunch.
Raniel gripped the heretic's throat a little harder. Her remaining fingers dug deep into the heretic's neck with a squeeze. The heretic let out a choked gurgle. Thud. Raniel drove her foot deep into the ground.
■■■■. ■■■■, ■■■■■■■■.
For a split second, Raniel's body wavered.
It looked like afterimages lingering, or like the world tearing apart around her. The shaking image of Raniel imprinted on the heretic's retinas for only an instant.
Immediately after, the heretic's vision flipped.
Her view kept shaking. Toward the sky, then the ground, then bouncing rocks, blocked by dark crimson lightning... Even in the splintered fractions of a second, her vision continued to invert.
She couldn't see. None of the scenes connected continuously. Without continuity, they simply wouldn't link up.
Sizzle!
Amid the sounds of something shattering, crushing, and splitting, the clear sound of liquid evaporating rang out. The heretic felt it. The shadow she kept in her heart was rapidly diminishing.
Splat. Blood splashed across the heretic's face.
It wasn't hers. It was Raniel's blood. Feeling the boiling heat of the blood, the heretic realized instinctively. A war of attrition.
'Whether you collapse first...'
Or whether the shadow I harbor runs out first.
The heretic slowly closed her eyes, then opened them. When she did, a black radiance flooded out around her.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ 2.
Enveloped in lightning, Raniel charged forward.
She relentlessly pummeled the heretic's body and unleashed every spell she could muster, accelerating again and again.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
Enormous craters formed wherever she passed. The black hands rising to protect the heretic couldn't steal even a single second of her time.
'Like this, press the attack.'
Raniel eyed the heretic through her fractured vision.
The hands guarding her heart were vanishing at a rapid pace. Not much time left. Neither for those hands nor for her own remaining time.
'If it ends like this, that would be ideal...'
But her opponent wouldn't go down that easily.
Flash.
Black light particles overflowed from the heretic. Realizing shadows were ineffective, she began using divine arts. Raniel immediately slammed the heretic's head into the ground and extended her unchained hand.
Whoosh!
Vast divine power erupted from the heretic. But Raniel's spell was faster than it could take form. A strike without warning pierced the divine power. It pierced the heretic's tongue.
Divine arts are completed through prayers with hands clasped, holy signs drawn with fingers, and incantations spoken aloud. One of the heretic's arms had been torn off, her fingers broken. Now, with her tongue pierced, there was no way the divine art could complete properly.
Divine Art: Judgment. However, that logic applied only to priests within the bounds of common sense. One couldn't expect the same countermeasures against a calamity beyond those bounds. The completed divine art blazed fiercely.
The black light particles formed into blades.
Dozens, hundreds of blades shot toward Raniel. Most shattered against her lightning-clad body, but some embedded in her side. The pitch-black light particles were sucked into the lodged blades.
Divine Art: Flames of Purification. Divine Art: Verdict. The blades swelled until they exploded. Raging flames and a black pillar of light bored a hole through Raniel's side. Yet Raniel didn't stop. Her senses were already numb. She felt no pain.
Boom!
As she slammed the heretic's head into the ground, Raniel stomped on it. With her empty hand, she clutched her own side. She shoved her spilling entrails back in and cauterized the wound with seared flesh. Dark crimson blood sprayed from her mouth. Her vision blurred further.
But she still held on.
She yanked the hand gripping the heretic's throat. The heretic's body, smashed into the ground, bounced up amid rock fragments. Their gazes met. Each reflected the other's eyes.
The filth already facing the ground.
The dark crimson lightning, its momentum weakened from the start.
Both understood the other had reached their limit. The light particles around the heretic flashed brilliantly. Gripping her throat allowed continued attacks... but it also meant no evasion.
Sizzle!
Bursting light particles scorched Raniel's body. Relying on the lightning to endure the heat, she clenched her fist. Still holding the heretic's throat, she aimed for the final blow.
"Ashes to ashes." No ashes gathered.
What gathered was the dark crimson lightning swirling around her body. In a flash, all the lightning drained from her body into her clenched fist.
Squelch.
Enduring the flames, Raniel yanked hard on the hand holding the heretic's throat. As she pulled, she thrust her fist toward the heretic's heart.
Snap.
The chains, unable to withstand the heretic's heat, Raniel's lightning, and the relentless assault, shattered. Revealed within the broken chains were her three remaining skeletal fingers. Even those melted in the heat, and Raniel could no longer hold the heretic.
The heretic's body tilted.
The moment Raniel's fist sliced through empty air.
Whistle!
The sound of cutting wind brushed her ears.
Even through her blurry vision, she saw it—a streak of light crossing the battlefield. An arrow trailing light pierced the heretic's back, where Raniel had lost her grip.
...Raniel had continued fighting beyond the splintered cognition of a second, but she had paused to prepare her final strike. With the chains broken, she missed the time granted to her.
The time she lost.
A mere fraction of a second.
To seize that one second, Remia loosed her arrow. The true shot held fast the second Raniel had let slip.
Flash!
Moonlight burst from the embedded arrow, shoving the heretic's body. Where she was pushed was right into Raniel's fist. The heretic's heart was repositioned before Raniel's fist. Slowly, Raniel's fist advanced.
Crack.
The fist, trailing lightning, struck the heretic's heart. It battered it. Surging lightning devoured the filth remaining in her heart. Lightning bolts sprayed everywhere, pushing the heretic's body back.
"Ah, ah..."
Bitten by the lightning, the heretic still reached out to draw a holy sign. Resisting to the end... but
Slash.
A crude sword thrust from Raniel's side severed the heretic's arm. There stood Rak van Grace, gripping the sword of the sword demon Draka. From the moment Raniel began accelerating, he had followed her, finally reaching her side. With a short exhale, he extended his sword path.
The continued sword path twisted into a sharp awl.
Following the sword path, Rak thrust his blade.
The thrust blade embedded right beside Raniel's fist. Dark crimson lightning arced along the blade that obliquely pierced the heretic's heart. Explosions of lightning and gusts of wind pressure hurled Rak from the battlefield.
And Raniel.
Let out a laugh as she twisted her thrust fist slightly to the side. The leaping lightning flashed massively for an instant. A fierce burst of light erupted. Dragging the light cluster, Raniel uttered the name of the lightning she had created.
Her voice was buried in the flash and roar... but the heretic heard it clearly.
The third answer, neither Opening Heaven nor Reversing Heaven. The moment she heard it, the heretic burst into laughter inappropriate to the situation. Immediately after, a massive torrent of light engulfed her. It burned away everything she harbored.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ 3.
The light incinerated everything.
She felt it—all she had harbored over centuries burning away, everything that had gnawed at her vanishing in flames. Her body grew light. The whispering voice of heresy in her ear grew faint, then disappeared entirely.
Vanishing, vanishing, vanishing.
With everything gone, what remained was no longer the heretic. What was left was the saintess, Glerea Bell Armias. In her pure white vision, Glerea gave a bitter smile.
...How cruel, truly.
* * * The whirlwind of light slowly subsided.
Above the wasteland where motes of light and mana drifted like snowflakes, I let out a long breath. My entire body throbbed. The belated surge of pain made me feel like I would collapse any moment. But... I couldn't fall yet.
There was still something I had to do.
Staggering, I took a step forward.
There lay the calamity I had so desperately tried to reach. She, collapsed on the ground, looked up at me and spoke.
"...In the end, you won."
I looked straight at her.
A hole pierced through her heart. The shadow completely devoured by lightning. Her once dark crimson eyes had returned to green. Gazing at the calamity slowly dying...
No.
Facing the saintess, Glerea Bell Armias, I slowly opened my mouth.
"I told you."
I said.
"The people living in this era aren't as weak as you think."
"...You're really trampling everything without leaving a trace."
Heh heh. She let out a laugh.
As if the denial of her final words as the heretic was absurd, as if that fact amused her, she laughed.
"Yes, your victory. My defeat."
"The heretic's defeat. Your victory."
"...Grateful words, but."
She smiled bitterly.
"It's not something that can be separated so neatly."
"......"
"Eaten by the shadow, I had no choice. Consumed by madness, I couldn't resist. Making excuses like that to run away is just too ugly, don't you think? I have no intention of going that far."
The saintess let out a long breath.
"I..."
"I know."
I cut her off.
"I know what you're trying to say. Even so, this is what I'll say. It's your victory."
"...Victory?"
"I stand here having received the arrangements you, all of you, left behind. I stand here carrying your will. Standing here is the successor to the contract you forged."
Successor to the contract.
The one who carries the will, standing right here.
"Even if you say you can't separate the heretic from the saintess within you..."
Not the heretic Gletus.
Even if you consider yourself the heretic, Glerea Bell Armias.
"Still, this is Glerea Bell Armias's victory."
I smiled.
"You weren't wrong. In the bet you made with the Demon King that day, you didn't lose."
My existence proves your sacrifice. It bears witness that the choice you made there was right.
"Because I'm standing here."
Thus, as the successor to the contract...
"I'm also the witness."
Her gaze wavered at my words.
"And."
Squeeze.
I placed something in her hand. It was what I had prepared for this day. After setting it down, I took a step back.
"This is my tribute to you."
The artifact I placed in her hand glowed pure white.
"A tribute to the hero, Glerea Bell Armias."
I smiled and took another step back.
Light burst from the artifact, engulfing her.