Chapter 65
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: The Warrior's Heart
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“Are you ready?”
In response to the question, I closed my eyes, still seated in a cross-legged position.
The pulse of the soul, coiling directly around my spirit… I entered my inner world once more, guided by the crimson flames.
This time, the 'me who held the sword' was not there. Instead, there was a 'younger me' who had not yet entered the world of the blade.
And my mother was there.
Her face had grown so faint I could barely recall it, but perhaps seeing her again through Ratel had brought the memory back.
'I' was with my mother.
Just like in my childhood, amidst that familiar scenery, I was running and laughing atop the cliff.
On the cliffs of my homeland, where the waves sang and the sea birds chirped.
*'So, this space was that place. To think I didn't even recognize it…'*
That cliff, which had always been a part of my daily life with my mother, sister, and father…
I wonder if an acorn tree has grown on that cliff by now.
Has my mother's body already rotted away in the earth, under the sweltering heat of midsummer?
Then, my mother recognized me. The 'younger me' also turned to look.
While the 'younger me' tilted his head and looked to our mother, she simply smiled warmly and beckoned for me to come closer.
I wanted to go, desperately.
I wanted to run and fall into her embrace.
But I couldn't. The time was not yet right. It wasn't time to return. I had not yet fulfilled the mission I inherited when I first took hold of Aradamanthel.
“Mother.”
And so, before that world I could not yet approach, must not approach.
I simply knelt and bowed my head to the ground.
Pressing my forehead to the earth where my hands were politely placed, I wept in silence as the world blurred with overwhelming sorrow.
“There's… so much… I want to tell you… So, so much… But… not yet… Please, just wait a little longer… I'll be back soon…”
When my tears subsided, the cliff had vanished, and the abyss within me was no more.
With no abyss left to swallow, the King's Abyss could no longer overflow, and its rampage was halted.
For the next month, I learned from Akirea how to suppress the King's Abyss.
“The more powerful the target, the faster the King's Abyss erodes it. In that regard, you are better off than the Light Dragon or the Blue Star.”
This was because the transcendent power only manifested throughout my body when the Dragon Spirit was released; in my human form, the erosion of the King's Abyss was extremely slow.
“Do not release the Dragon Spirit unless you are in a moment of extreme crisis. Your body is weak.”
*Crackle.* The King's Abyss that had been consuming my body and soul crumbled like static. Kaisen opened his eyes.
“How many more times will I be able to fight properly?”
“Once. Remember that. The next time you release that power, your body will expend its last strength and be swallowed by the abyss, and you will die.”
“So I can still fight one more time.”
*One more time…* The thought brought a bitter smile to my lips. The edge of that smile felt heavy.
I can still fight one more time.
The words echoed like the hand of fate, telling me that I *must* fight one more time.
A destiny with a time limit,
The Warrior's Path, The Warrior's Heart (4)
The four Supreme Holy Swords rested in the Page family's training grounds, breathing in their own distinct colors.
Even after beginning my training to control the abyss within, I hadn't visited any of the holy swords.
On the day my training ended, I lay in bed, silently staring at the ceiling. Then, around midnight, I rose and went to see an old friend.
“It's been a while, Aradamanthel.”
Since inheriting it, I had always kept it by my side. This was our first reunion in three months.
Meeting the holy sword after nearly a hundred days apart felt stranger than reuniting with my family after five years.
Its texture, even its weight, felt like that of a blade I'd never seen before.
“Were you always this heavy?”
Was it just heavy?
The blade wouldn't even come out of its sheath. The very blade that had flashed from my grasp tens of thousands of times.
A strange realization dawned on me.
No, it wasn't so much a dawning as a confirmation of what I already expected, and a hollow smile formed on my face.
“Right, of course you'd be upset. The vow I made to you that day was all a lie, after all.”
Gaumris, the holy sword of my fallen friend, required immense strength just to lift due to its sheer weight.
“So now I'm disqualified even as a FakeWarrior, is that it?”
The answer came from the flame.
“You have merely returned to the starting line. Back from the wrong path, and now before the signpost of the right one.”
The living flame.
The last flame to illuminate this world.
Before that flame, unlike last time when I was half-mad, I showed proper respect.
“Your Excellency, Akirea.”
“Are you planning to return to the battlefield?”
“Yes. But as you can see, it seems I'll have to go without a holy sword. They were always more than I deserved, anyway…”
This is what suits my station.
It should have been this way from the start.
But I met people through connections that could only be described as miracles, became a FakeWarrior in that pit of slaughter, and inherited the holy swords.
“Originally, a Warrior needs no sword.”
Stunned, my eyes widened.
Then.
“What is a holy sword to you?”
“...?”
“Slaughter. Your sword contains nothing but killing intent. You cut. You cut to kill. You kill to end things. If you walk a path illuminated only by violence, you are bound to stumble and fall.”
Only the path of the sword.
The path of cutting and cutting again, creating a mountain of corpses and a river of blood.
Akirea was directly criticizing that path, which was like the tantrum of a child.
“Answer me, Kaisen. Were the moments Raminea seemed truly great in your eyes only when she swung her sword to kill someone?”
“You already know my answer.”
“Raminea carried a sword called love in her heart. You must become like that as well. For that is the true sword a Warrior must possess—a sword of one's very nature.”
It felt as if my body, which had been merely drifting through the empty darkness of my heart, was suddenly bursting out of the water.
Is this the feeling of enlightenment?
Her teaching sounded like a self-evident truth, like 'a stone is a stone,' or 'water is water.'
“A Warrior who possesses such a sword has no need for a worldly blade.”
I don't know.
As if this too were natural, I found myself kneeling out of an inexplicable sense of awe.
“Please, teach me. What is a sword? What is a Warrior? As a FakeWarrior, I know nothing of such things.”
My mother would have known.
What in the world did I learn in all my time with her?
“The word 'Warrior' is merely a signpost.”
“...?”
“It is a signpost pointing to the final marker on a path. A path of loving one's family, loving the weak and powerless, caring for the poor, protecting them, holding their hands, helping them up, and pushing them forward.”
Akirea's words were warm.
Like the old tales my mother used to tell, stroking my hair by the fireside when I was young.
“All who follow that signpost and walk the same path are the same kind of person.”
And just like in my childhood, when I knew nothing.
Just as I had naturally believed all those old tales were true, I naturally believed these words as well.
“There are only those who give up on that path midway and those who walk it to the end. How can there be a fake or a real one among them?”
I could only stare blankly, dazedly, at Akirea's face as she finished her words with a poignant smile.
It wasn't her face.
Beyond that face, I was witnessing something clearly shimmering… the shadow of a great being that must have guided her to such an understanding of life.
“If you wish to know what my words mean, go beyond. It will teach you.”
Akirea took a step back and pointed toward the entrance of the training grounds.
What was 'beyond'...? Who was 'beyond'...?
The answer to those two questions was a single word. A single word, an echo that had changed the boy's life entirely.
“The world.”
* * *
Imperial Calendar, August 1698.
Kaisen Alter Aradamanthel, who had vanished after the subjugation of the Lizard Lord, Neigallas, begins to leave his footprints on the pages of history once more.
During a time when the bloody winds of religious reformation were at their peak in the Empire, the Warrior who appeared for the sake of imperial unity was said to have carried four holy swords.
The Warrior who had disappeared one day in April, when azaleas were in full bloom across the Empire.
In August.
He reappeared in the season when the balloon flowers began to blossom.
Was all of this a coincidence?
Raminea Alter Aradamanthel.
The day that hero was born into this world was also a day in August, when the fields were awash with balloon flowers.
Or was it all according to the plan of creation?
* * *
It took a great deal of time to equip all four Supreme Holy Swords.
Without a specially crafted harness, it was impossible to bear the weight of those heavy weapons.
Since all the holy swords were rejecting Kaisen, he had to borrow worldly techniques to forcefully wear them.
*'So, this was your true weight…'*
The weight of Aradamanthel felt unfamiliar all over again.
As I strapped Gaumris to my back, I felt a sense of déjà vu, like carrying Isla's small, sleeping body.
Hanging Solang on the harness, its massive weight strained my side, but Scherpang was so heavy it was suffocating.
*'So this was your weight, my predecessors.'*
The lives of their masters were layered within the holy swords, making it feel as if I were shouldering the corpses of my comrades, one by one.
Corpses… No, let's call them souls…
I believed that the embers they left in this world after burning themselves away still held their heat.
- Take them and go into the world. The world will teach you.
- That's too vague… How will I know if I have received the right teaching?
- It is not difficult. When the time comes, those swords will respond to your heart. Then you will know you are on the right path.
Something other than hatred…
The sword a Warrior is meant to hold in their heart—not a Holy Sword, but a sword of one's very nature…
I couldn't understand how the swords the fallen had held in their hearts were born, or how they cast their light.
If I just keep moving forward.
If I carry these swords.
If I take this unfamiliar weight as a new guide for my destiny, will the day come when I understand?
Will I come to understand why they all died smiling in their final moments? I hope so.
No, I pray for it.
Even with this dull, beast-like mind.
Even with this wretched heart that has only ever known a beast's life in days of slaughter.
“You're leaving.”
As I strapped Aradamanthel to my back for the last time, I heard my sister's voice from behind me.
“Yeah.”
My sister didn't ask where I was going or when I would be back.
I was grateful for that.
Because I would likely never see her again in this life.
“Won't it be hard?”
The affliction of the power that shaved away my lifespan to reach transcendence had already spread to every corner of my body.
Like a thief trying to steal my life, the destiny of a Warrior was drawing its sword to cut my throat.
And after the subjugation of Neigallas, that sword was almost completely out of its sheath.
“It's strange. When I swung my sword out of vengeance, everything seemed so simple, but that was actually when I was in the most pain.”
If I just cut and cut and cut again.
Would this hole be filled with the bodies of my enemies? Would the wounds in my heart be sterilized by their blood?
That's what I had believed when I swore an oath to my own soul and the blade within it.
“Now, everything seems much more complicated, but my heart isn't in as much pain.”
“Is that so?”
“Sister, what's it like raising a child? Do you think you understand Mother's heart a little better now?”
“I'm not sure. But sometimes, I think I do.”
I asked with a small chuckle.
“Will a day come when I, too, can understand that feeling?”
If there were a paradise in this world that one could reach by running away, then perhaps I could go there.
But in this world.
I felt that such a paradise could only be reached by cutting a path forward, so that others could follow.
“Why not? If you really can't figure it out, you could always try getting pregnant and having a baby yourself.”
Even as she teased me, my sister came closer and held my hand tightly.
Like in those distant childhood days.
When she would hold her little brother's hand and lead him somewhere, telling him amazing and fun stories.
“I'll always pray for you. The greatest treasure Mom ever gave me, in the name of a little brother.”
As my sister hugged me tightly, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
My sister, and all the mothers and fathers in this world living with their children, just like her.
I don't want them to suffer the same sorrow I did. And that is why I must go and fight again.
*Vmmmmm…*
In that instant, Aradamanthel, hanging at my back, suddenly felt lighter and once again unleashed its brilliant, blood-red light.
*Vmmm, vmmm, vmmm, vmmm…*
The light spread faintly, like twilight over the surface of the water, soon shimmering and expanding with hues of gold, silver, and blue.
*'Gaumris, Scherpang, Solang.'*
Amidst that dazzling banquet of light, a dazed realization came to me.
*'This... This is what it was?'*
Master, was this kind of heart the core of the vow you held and recited...?
You were in so much pain.
Did you fight your entire life with the hope that others would not have to suffer that same pain...?
“Ah…”
Aradamanthel, the sword that flew into my hand on the day my master died. You wanted me to continue walking that path.
It's because I was lacking that I'm only now beginning to understand your heart.
Ratel smiled brightly and placed her hand on Aradamanthel's hilt.
“I'm a little more at ease knowing you're going with Mom's sword. Aradamanthel, please take good care of my little troublemaker. He's the type to get into trouble the moment you take your eyes off him.”
Was Aradamanthel happy, too?
Was it rejoicing to see Ratel, who resembled our mother? Its resonance was loud, clear, and trembling.
In a voice that trembled even more, I said.
“Sister, then… you have to be happy.”
As I received my sister's final farewell and climbed into Bloodwind's saddle, I wondered why.
At this moment, it didn't feel like I was leaving my family's embrace for the battlefield…
Instead, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was finally returning home.