Chapter 100
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 100
Chapter Title: The Final Chapter, Yuri Ha Geldina (6)
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The assault on Shuyulkelis, the beginning of the final nightmare… Is it even possible to fully describe the memories of that desperate battle?
[Ria: "It's the Abyssal Trees! There are so many of them! At least a hundred thousand! First division, form up into thirty-three migratory bird formations! Magic corps, advance!"]
The battle for Shuyulkelis, which had risen to the ocean's surface, was chaos from the very threshold.
First, the endless headache was suffocating. It was because of the Thunderous Fragrance Mind Resonance Formation I had cast in Lady Setsunen's stead...
Had Her Ladyship always performed such an agonizing task—shouldering the Abyss of all others—without a word of complaint?
[Vimon: "Holtranx formation! Show these cursed beings the power of the firstborn!"]
Dimensions tore and shattered, and from the rifts, beings squirmed and crawled out endlessly...
The Absolute Aberrations.
Blessed by Yotos, the Absolute Aberrations were superior versions of all the old ones and the dead.
[Johan: "Activate the magic squares!"]
[Ria: "Fire!"]
[Vimon: "Thrust!"]
The sixty-six True Kings who were said to have served Yotos.
The Absolute Aberrations possessed all the abyssal characteristics of those throne holders.
Gigantic and grotesque, as if torn from a madman's imagination, their numbers were endless.
A war of attrition was meaningless.
Breaking through to strike at its heart—that is, to cut down the leader, Yotos—was the only way.
[Grifveren: "Finally, a proper warm-up. Warriors! Charge with valor! Let them taste the blades of the assault squad!"]
The sight of the Beastkin assault squad slaughtering the Absolute Aberrations as they advanced was a spectacle.
But they did not die.
As long as even a speck of flesh remained, they would tenaciously revive and burrow into a victim's ankle or the sole of their foot.
Only by purifying them with fire or light could the threat be completely eliminated.
[Liam: "Siren!"]
The conditions were abysmal, but it wasn't all bad luck.
Akirea of Crimson Flame and the three-tailed fox, Siren.
Because we had two of the most powerful flame mages of the last two millennia.
The crimson flames and the light-green foxfire spread like waves, sweeping away the Absolute Aberrations.
[Akirea: "I don't see Sh'yulkyulra, but I can feel Nen's energy in the distance. She must be stuck in the heart of Shuyulkelis."]
Furthermore, Shuyulkelis's structure as a primeval demonic labyrinth, which caused cognitive confusion through its geometrically paradoxical design, failed to exert much of its power.
The colossal god-giant, Type 0.
The power unleashed by God-Giant Type 0, merged with the flagship Teritos, was nothing short of 'absolute violence'. This was followed by naval support from the Steel Fleet.
[Halvaron: "Go to Lady Setsunen! Follow her, Kaisen! I'll provide cover!"]
The vast labyrinth's ever-changing stone pillars, ceilings, and statues were shattered and pulverized by its fists and cannon fire.
"Will the god-giant be alright?"
I couldn't help but worry.
I thought it had died once before, along with God-Giant Type 49.
[Halvaron: "It took some damage fighting two True Kings at Mu Rondel, but this is nothing! Don't worry, just go!"]
As the eclipse accelerated, the very seasons turned bizarre.
It would become unbearably hot as rain poured down, or an eerie chill would be accompanied by a blizzard...
Control of the world had passed to the absolute master of malevolence.
「Now, the true darkness shall arrive... Unbelievers who do not accept the truth of darkness shall meet eternal death.」
A wicked relief sculpture, born from the fusion of an octopus and a dragon, cackled as it whispered so.
[Liam: "Sharrilion, we've approached Lady Setsunen's signal, but it's a sealed chamber... There seems to be a room on the other side, but it's blocked."]
"Where is it?"
[Siren: "I told you. The path is blocked."]
"If the path is blocked, we just have to break through."
Taking the form of a crimson thunderclap, I plunged through the ceiling of the sealed chamber, simultaneously gripping Sharrilion's hilt.
Rune Cut, Benekom.
Its meaning: Shatter.
It unleashes a power that inscribes the command of creation as a curse upon all that exists, forcing it into action.
KRRRAAAAAAACK─────!
Beyond the brutally shattered debris and dust, I saw Setsunen, her body mutated as it was being corroded by Sh'yulkyulra.
A horror that warped the very scenery.
Had the ritual to violate spirit and flesh already concluded in the deep-sea ossuary? The tentacles began to stir.
「I open the gate to the sanctum of the true ruler, a passage for the Lord of the Abyss to come... Mhuhahahahahahahaha!」
The True King's illusion reached into my consciousness, scrambling the laws of all things, even perspective.
Tentacles shot up from the ground.
The sea surged up massively from all sides, crashing down in waves of fiercely bubbling, viscous foam.
"Sharrilion, Sh'yulkyulra is now as strong as five kings combined."
"I know."
"In that case."
Liam began to speak, then hesitated.
Was he going to say we couldn't afford to be complacent? Or that we couldn't save Setsunen?
"No. There is one way. You know what I'm thinking."
If you're the one who fought beside me hundreds of times in other worldlines, in other timelines.
You'll surely know without me having to say it.
For a moment, Liam met my gaze, then nodded with a resolute expression.
"Yes, I'll take the left."
As the flames of Akirea and Siren held back the crashing waves from both sides, I grasped the hilt of Galadiel.
Phase shift into a lightning strike.
I coursed through a blood-red world where even time couldn't keep up, tearing apart the tentacles surging from all directions in a single stroke.
The tentacles numbered forty-eight in total.
I negated the illusions fumbling with my consciousness by deploying Yoniulan, shredding the space around my head.
「I open the path of darkness, and the glorious leader shall personally descend upon this world to enlighten all!」
At Sh'yulkyulra's command, a sea of decay rose to my ankles.
Cleaving through that treacherous, stinking mudflat was the primordial light, the blade of Verkensia.
Kaisen and Liam, who had split apart to avoid Sh'yulkyulra's checks, their two streaks of swordlight merged into one.
[Halvaron: "Kaisen, we're tearing off the tentacles as fast as they appear, but the number of the dead is endless. The allied forces are at their limit. Finish that octopus head, quickly!"]
Even as he said that, hundreds of light shells fired from God-Giant Type 0 slammed into Sh'yulkyulra, buying us a considerable amount of time.
"Let's go, Liam."
A dance of light opened the way.
The primordial blade flashed brilliantly, and the inevitable gap between its strikes was filled by the flash of the Sword of Psalms.
We cut our way forward.
We pierced our way forward.
Each filling the void in the other's power, each opening a gap in time for the other.
[Alphonse: "This is God-Giant 144, the core has been destroyed! Ejecting!"]
[Edric: "It's a mutated Kyulryun!"]
[Graham: "Follow the example of your predecessors and fight bravely, O firstborn!"]
As if we had been one body from the start.
Perhaps.
Like two bodies controlled by a single consciousness.
"Liam!"
"Sharrilion!"
The moment the distance to Sh'yulkyulra became zero, we both shouted without prompting.
Rivelden's wavelength conversion.
Unleashing the power accumulated throughout all those strikes, in the instant we cleared away all the tentacles of Sh'yulkyulra's main body.
Sword of Light and Flame.
Verkensia's blade cut through Setsunen's body, revealing the core that had been hidden deep within her soul.
[Akirea: "Nen...!"]
A core like a slimy tumor.
And a core as dazzling as the sun.
The two cores were merging, forming concentric circles.
[Siren: "But how do we deal with that?"]
Rune Cut, Bakhu.
Its meaning: Isolate.
The letter of creation, precisely carved into the center of those concentric circles with Sharrilion's blade.
*'The corrosion has already progressed, so even if her body is restored, she will soon die.'*
For a moment, the corrosion stopped.
*'But if I kill Yotos before that, the power of the Abyss itself will disappear.'*
Setsunen's core, isolated in a transparent cube, in a separate space-time.
From Sh'yulkyulra's core, which had been extending hundreds of tentacles toward that core, its cosmic body began to reconstruct.
If it thought I would let that happen, it was gravely mistaken.
K-k-k-k-krack...!
Spewing a swordlight of transcendent heat, the tip of Sharrilion pierced its core in that instant.
[Akirea: "We did it...!"]
[Siren: "Yotos's power is incredibly weakened now... With this, even if he descends...!"]
[Halvaron: "You succeeded! We wouldn't have lasted much longer. The number of Absolute Aberrations is starting to decrease!"]
In this world, despair always arrived at the very moment hope began to sprout.
The sensation from the blade was strange.
A core is a jewel created by the soul. This didn't feel like piercing a jewel. This was...
"Move."
So I muttered it instinctively.
If I had to describe it, it felt like breaking open a tightly locked box, and in doing so, waking something that had been sleeping inside...
So I found myself shouting urgently.
"Get back────!"
The next moment, the green laughter of a primeval god, filled with twisted madness and distorted ecstasy, erupted.
In an instant, the world's light went dark.
All light hid, trembling in fear.
From the terror of that cursed descent, all humans across the world with sensitive minds died, their heads exploding.
How could I describe that frenzy?
The sight of all matter and psychic energy gruesomely twisting, creating a contradiction in the cosmic order.
The stars aligned themselves.
Yotos Yolle Yotiatos—the great lord of the fallen Abyss, confidant of the creation god Geldharia—shattered the providence of creation and descended.
「Good morning, children of my creation.」
A frenzy of the mind, a delirious nightmare... a seven-headed dragon writhing nauseatingly.
Before its throne, the lifespans of all created beings festered and decayed. A child became an old man, a man became a woman, an old man became a fetus in the womb.
The absolute finger that made even the corpses of stars tremble, the outline of an absolute form that transcended even the realms of time and space.
A melody...
A melody of madness could be heard...
Kaisen, caught head-on in the storm of its descent, bounced off the ground several times before being slammed into a pillar.
*'Just by descending, it's causing space-time to collapse...?'*
If the four True Holy Swords hadn't simultaneously unleashed their light to counter that blow, my body would have melted on the spot.
And not just melted.
The very time and space where one existed would melt away. Those swept into Yotos's Abyss would have their very existence denied by space-time itself.
「Did you think I would be fooled time and again by your pathetic little tricks?」
A greeting tinged with an almost friendly laugh.
It was a greeting with no threat or killing intent, yet blood poured from my eyes and nose.
「I put a few devices in place. One was a transfer field installed in the new power I gave Sh'yulkyulra, and the other was to have the power of all the True Kings gather to me the moment its core was shattered.」
"...?!"
「Sh'yulkyulra deceived you all quite well. And you were all deceived quite well. There is no need to despair. It was a reaction befitting the level of dull beasts.」
Amidst the suppressed melody of madness, only the space where Yotos and Liam stood began to disappear, as if being eaten away by invisible insects.
「Now then, shall we start by retrieving Verkensia?」
Kaisen and Siren moved at the same time.
Kaisen aimed for Yotos; Siren dashed to Liam's side. The former failed; only the latter succeeded.
Yotos, effortlessly deflecting Kaisen's strike, smiled faintly.
「So you're the one who killed my dear Sharly. In a short while, I will let you taste the greatest pain in the entire universe.」
***
Above the sea, the heart of the abyssal palace Shuyulkelis was surrounded by a barrier of absoluteness.
["...Liam...!"]
The barrier was the size of the entire ocean.
It was not a barrier.
It was a universe unto itself, blocking all outside interference.
["...Siren, don't come this way...!"]
Through a fragment of Setsunen, I could hear the chaotic tremors roiling within the barrier. The situation was dire...
Things were no different outside the barrier.
Mad groans... chilling laughter... the echo of sorrowful wails...
From the dark blue sky, stars were melting into a viscous liquid and falling.
[Johan: "Kaisen, what happened? What's going on?"]
Wherever that liquid touched, nature changed.
"Yotos has descended! And Liam, Liam was taken by Yotos!"
It changed to a form from the distant past, then to a future where everything had rotted and collapsed, then back to its original state.
[Ria: "Kaisen, the first line has fallen. The Beastkin soldiers are holding on, but the second line is about to be breached too! If that happens... we'll be annihilated."]
I slashed at the barrier again and again with the True Holy Sword, reading the situation inside through Setsunen's tremors.
Liam, with two Verkensias, seemed to have the upper hand at first.
But in the end, he couldn't defeat Yotos—who had absorbed all the power of the sealed [Forgotten Kings] and reclaimed its authority as an absolute being—by a hair's breadth.
[Liam: "...Even with two Verkensias, it's not enough...?"]
All I could do was listen helplessly.
Because there was no way to get inside the barrier.
[Liam: "...Then how, just what kind of power must I build up..."]
If I'd had the True Holy Sword Aizaiya, would things have been different? No, even Rune Cuts aren't working...
My body was powerless.
More than my body, my heart was powerless.
This endless game, which began in 1692—no, which began even before that, in my mother's time—was it going to end as nothing more than the prank of an absolute being?
[Liam: "...To think that even the Soul-Box World of the Verkensia from the future can't reach it..."]
As I finished my strike and landed weakly on Akirea's back, a white cliff unfolded in my mind.
I couldn't accept it.
This situation, where everything was ending again in this untouchable, irrational way.
And I couldn't forgive.
This powerlessness that approached with a smile at moments like these.
[Halvaron: "Calm down and think, kid! I'll take responsibility for protecting the survivors left on the front lines! You find a way to break through this situation!"]
A suffocating graveyard... The yellowish laugh of a cosmic being. The stench flowing from a lightless universe beyond the stream of time...
"Why won't the field cut..."
I was too bewildered to even finish such a simple sentence.
Yotos was laughing at me.
Yotos was cackling as it trampled on my hope. Just like that day, the day it stole my most precious treasure.
- *Mom's most precious treasure in the world...*
Again, in a place my hands cannot reach.
In a place my sword cannot cut.
It's trying to complete its despair however it pleases.
「Kaisen, have you finished preparing to fight?」
I answered Akirea's sudden question with dazed silence.
*'I can't even get inside, what's with such a meaningless question...'*
Akirea was holding Setsunen of Thunderous Fragrance.
Setsunen, breathing heavily, had succeeded in restoring her body but remained unconscious.
Akirea was burning away the abyssal tumors rapidly corroding her sister's body with her flames.
「I will open the way. The time has come to end my life's journey. You go beyond, to fulfill the calling given to you.」
"Your Ladyship, how on earth will you open the way...?"
「All True Dragons are born to seal the kings and their kin.」
"Your Ladyship, you know better than anyone! Your body is at its limit! It was a miracle you crossed the continent in half a day and helped in the fight against Sh'yulkyulra!"
Akirea suddenly caressed her sister's hair with a sad smile that looked as if it might shatter at any moment.
「The reason I've endured until now, the reason I've held on and on, was because I hoped to proudly speak of my life when I met Father and Mother again. But I always felt I was lacking...」
"Your Ladyship, what are you saying..."
「Even now, I am not certain. But the time has come. I can delay no longer.」
*I'm wrong. Lady Akirea is also not in her right mind because of the abyssal corrosion.*
Is it because the power of the Abyss is being strengthened by the absolute eclipse?
A moment later, I realized. It wasn't Akirea who was wrong, but my thinking.
「I, Akirea, the eldest daughter born of Alakish's love and raised by Yong-hyeon's grace, am the one and only True Dragon who possesses all five Yeouijus of flame.」
"...?"
「If I can concentrate this sealing power on a single point, amplify it, and unleash it... don't you think a path might open, even for a moment?」
Only then did I understand. Why Akirea had begun with such words.
[Halvaron: "Your Ladyship, I can help. Teritos has a function that can concentrate power to a single point to amplify and release its force."]
And only then did I know for certain.
Why Lord Karenden, in the experience of the Mythical Age, had sacrificed Shurviel to rehearse the path to the future beyond.
[Halvaron: "Kaisen, the decision is yours. Whatever you decide, I will help. ...If you're going to do it, stand with Her Ladyship before this cannon port."]
This kind of moment.
Was it in preparation for such a time?
"...Your Ladyship, you have brilliantly illuminated this world with your great life."
I don't know why my vision blurred when I said that.
Perhaps.
No, certainly.
The blood and soul I inherited from Yong-hyeon were sobbing.
"Now, entrust the flame of that life to me... and go in peace."
Did Akirea know what I was trying to say? She must have.
「Yes, I leave it to you now.」
Otherwise.
She wouldn't have let out a laugh like that—a laugh of relief, of gratitude... one that layered the storms, memories, regrets, and joys of three hundred years.
Just before her body erupted into a flame so fierce it could illuminate the entire world for an instant.
「My beloved sister, Nen, is a pure child. Please, let her live in a pure and beautiful world.」
Even if I must bear a pain the size and weight of the entire world.
[Halvaron: "Energy charging, 200, 1600, 4400, 9500%!"]
Using all those deaths as stepping stones.
Even if there is no other way but to trample on the corpses of those who, though nameless, all possessed the same measure of sorrow, anger, and hatred.
[Halvaron: "Now, Kaisen!"]
I will go.
I will go, to the very end.
To where you are, Yotos Yotiatos, master of all this endless despair and nightmare.
"Devour it────!"
I will go.
Though I am nothing but a fake.
Because I am a Warrior, and you are a Demon King.
"────Sharrilion!"