Chapter 721: Each Person's Fight (11)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 721: Each Person's Fight (11)
Mary squeezed her eyes shut, then forced them open again. As her blurred vision cleared, Dipus’s figure gradually came into focus.
“Ugh…!”
The sight of his condition made Mary instinctively clap a hand over her mouth.
Her brother’s body was riddled with over a dozen fist-sized holes, and his lower half was twisted completely backward. The weight of the hellish reality crashed down on her once more.
“Finally… you’ve come to your senses…”
A streak of blood trickled from Dipus’s dry eyes.
He remembered how he had fallen. He remembered the atrocities he had committed while corrupted.
He knew what he had to do now. He knew what he had to say to Mary.
“You’ve come to your senses? So what? You think I shouldn’t kill you? How am I supposed to believe that…?!”
Mary’s gaze darted between the dagger embedded in Dipus’s hand and the look in his eyes.
This has to be another trap. Another trick by my corrupted brother. But… if he really has returned to his right mind, then what should I do?!
She was torn between pulling the dagger out to stab him again and listening to what would surely be his final words.
“Mary… listen to me… If the curse triggers now, it’s all over. And…”
Don’t lose like I did. Keep fighting bravely.
With our youngest brother.
Dipus barely managed to finish his thought before his eyes drifted shut.
“Brother!”
Mary frantically pressed her ear against his face, then his chest.
She felt an incredibly faint breath and a weak, fluttering heartbeat. Her mind was made up in an instant.
I have to save him for now. Even if I have to kill him again myself, I have to save him and hear why this happened.
If she couldn’t hear the reason for this nightmare directly from Dipus, she wasn’t sure she could keep living. She wasn’t sure she could keep the despair at bay.
The allied fleet was already preparing to retreat.
The flare! I need to send the rescue signal…!
But most of her belongings had been destroyed along with her chain sword, Viper. She reached into her clothes, where she’d pulled the dagger from, only to find powdered blood clots and sand.
She screamed toward the sky several times, but her allies were too far away to hear her cries. Normally, she would have infused her voice with aura to make it ring across the battlefield, but she was so exhausted she could barely stand.
Mary tried to lift Dipus, but after reaching for him a few times, her head slumped in defeat.
Unless a mage like Valeria sealed him or a healer on the level of the Holy King personally intervened, it was impossible to move Dipus while keeping him alive.
In the end, all Mary could do was wait for such an ally to find them, praying desperately that Dipus wouldn't stop breathing before they arrived.
*
“You’re quite persistent, Prophet,” Jin said.
On the battlefield near the inner castle, the fight between Jin and the Prophet was nearing its end.
[Kh, uwaaaah…!]
The Prophet’s true form, once large enough to fill all of Licarton Castle, was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a brilliant blue firestorm and a few lingering patches of Chaos.
Jin was in the midst of searing the last remnants of her energy, which clung to the air like patches of mold, with his Eternal Fire.
Only about five clumps of Chaos remained.
Every time Jin’s blue blade cut through one, the Prophet let out a blood-curdling scream.
“But I can finally see the end.”
Four. Another clump of Chaos vanished.
[Stop! S-Stop!]
“I’ve been waiting for this day ever since I first learned of your existence.”
As if reflecting Jin’s rage, the Eternal Fire swirled around them like a typhoon, fueled by the very Chaos that had once comprised the Prophet’s physical form.
Three. Two. The last one.
Jin glared down as he stepped on the final clump of Chaos energy.
“I’m ending this.”
Stab!
The shimmering blue blade pierced the final fragment of Chaos.
The clump shattered like glass, sending sharp shards flying—but these shards were composed of a power other than Chaos.
Spirit energy?
It was spirit energy. In the past, Dox had seen the Prophet’s spirit energy in Licarton and mistaken her for someone related to Jin.
Jin was momentarily taken aback, just as Dox had been, but only for a second. He had long suspected a connection between spirit energy and Chaos.
[Are you not curious how I can wield spirit energy, 12th Flagbearer? Let us make a deal! If you let me go now, I will serve you in the future—]
“Prophet.”
Jin cut her off, twisting the blade still embedded in the Chaos.
“There are people in this world who never yield. People who would never make a deal with you. I am one of them. As for why you can use spirit energy? It’s obvious. Solderet must have blessed Heluram in the past. Or perhaps Heluram stole his authority.”
[Aaaagh! You will regret refusing me! You may cause me pain, but you cannot extinguish me! That is an impossible task!]
Indeed, the Prophet’s final fragment of Chaos did not disappear, even as it was shattered and burned.
Jin silently amplified the Eternal Fire.
He didn't know what the Prophet’s criteria for "extinction" was, but he could feel a clear sensation through his blade—the sensation of the Eternal Fire gnawing away at her life force.
Jin had only one concern: the possibility of Dipus dying before the Eternal Fire could finish its work. Other than that, there was no way for the Prophet to turn this situation around.
[Bo-ooo!]
“Jin!”
A white portal opened, and Siris and Valeria appeared. The two had been searching the battlefield for remaining allies before rushing to his side.
It was because of the orb.
Valeria had brought the "Heluram’s Recording Device"—the orb Jin had taken from Joshua’s villa—to the battlefield. Before leaving for the Caldran Snowy Plains, Valeria had discovered that the Prophet had emerged from that very orb.
She had intended to investigate it more thoroughly during this operation and had just finished her analysis.
As Valeria pulled the orb from her robes and held it toward Jin, the Prophet’s energy, which had been resisting the Eternal Fire, became rapidly unstable. The orb was now stained a deep purple, unlike when they had first acquired it.
[M-Mother. How do you have that…!]
The Prophet could never have imagined the orb appearing here. She hadn’t known that Joshua possessed the spirit energy orb, nor that Jin had taken it from him.
Even after Joshua fell and became corrupted, he hadn’t told the Prophet about the orb. He knew exactly how he would have been treated for confessing such a failure.
“Jin, destroy this with your Spirit Sword.”
Valeria had uncovered the orb's true nature: it was the link between the sealed Heluram and the human world.
As long as this link remained, the Prophet’s soul would simply return to the orb even if her physical body was destroyed. This was why she had claimed Jin couldn't extinguish her.
Jin took the orb.
[Give it back! That is not something you dare destroy!]
“We have to find Dipus immediately,” Siris said urgently. “He’s barely holding onto his life to suppress the curse.”
Jin’s eyes widened.
“He’s holding on? My brother? To stop the curse?”
“It seems he’s come to his senses. This can’t just be a whim.”
“...Understood.”
Another white portal opened as Jin gripped the purple spirit energy orb as if to crush it.
[No, please. Mother, Mother! Can you hear my voice…!]
Jin tossed the orb into the air and performed Spirit Sword 1st Technique: Soul Slash.
[A-Ah! Mother!]
Crack…!
The orb shattered into pieces with a single strike.
Purple fragments splattered like drops of blood, and at last, Jin saw the Prophet begin to truly vanish.
Rumble—!
The Chaos energy consumed by the Eternal Fire scattered in all directions and was annihilated. The Prophet’s voice could no longer be heard.
In that same moment, Jin was struck by an intense, inexplicable intuition.
A feeling pierced his heart like a blade—the certainty that somewhere on the battlefield, Dipus’s final breath, which had held on until this very instant, had just flickered out.
*
The Authority of the Evil God that Dipus possessed was not returned to Rosa.
Instead, the moment Dipus died, the authority remaining within him went berserk. A massive black sphere began to rise from his body.
The Chaos energy forming the sphere did not empower Dipus or infect those nearby.
It simply caused a massive explosion. Chaos erupted incessantly from the sphere, as if hundreds of volcanoes were detonating at once.
Jin immediately ran toward the outer castle, chasing the sphere. If left alone, the blast would slaughter the retreating allies.
The first person Jin saw upon reaching the outer castle was Mary. She was kneeling before Dipus’s body, gasping for breath.
“I have to… save my brother and take him back… ah…”
Like a dandelion seed caught in a breeze, Dipus’s body was scattering into particles of light.
Mary reached out toward the indifferently scattering particles before she lost consciousness and collapsed.
A white portal and a steel gate opened in front of her as Valeria’s group and Orgal appeared.
Orgal looked visibly exhausted. As Jin had suspected, he had been interfering with the Evil God’s power until now.
[Jin, if only you and I remain to contain the explosion before escaping, the operation will be a success.]
Jin struck a clump of Chaos that had leaked from the sphere, sending it flying into the opposite sky. Each fragment possessed enough power to inflict fatal damage on the fleet.
Meanwhile, Valeria examined the records Dipus had left behind where he had vanished, hoping to find something she could later share with Jin and Mary.
Mort swallowed the unconscious Mary.
Siris and Valeria stood silently before the white portal leading back to the fleet. Jin nodded to them, urging them to go.
“Valeria, tell Veradin. Once the rescue is complete, have him fire the Kozec’s main cannon above the sphere instead of a flare. I don’t think we’ll be able to see a flare through this explosion.”
“Understood. Come back safely.”
As soon as Mort disappeared through the portal, Jin and Orgal threw themselves toward the sphere of the Evil God’s authority.
About ten minutes later, the Kozec’s main cannon fired, its beam passing high over the sphere.
Before stepping through the steel gate to escape, Jin glanced back at the spot where Dipus had vanished.
If he hadn’t returned to his senses at the very end, if he hadn’t resisted death until the Prophet was finally extinguished…
This operation would never have succeeded.