Chapter 87
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 87
Chapter Title: Echoes of a Smile
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Each of [The Ones Who Came] favored a different Eldia.
The intellectual Carduel received Karenden's favor, while Alkaios, who was more of a warrior, was treated as a close friend by Tervel.
Shurbiel received infinite love from Jyeannir. It was less like favor and more like the love one would have for a younger sister.
"Shurbiel, what do you think of this?"
Whenever Jyeannir painted, Shurbiel was always by her side.
"I-I think it's wonderful!"
The two always discussed what and how to draw, and the process seemed truly blissful.
"Right? It's the one we drew together last time, Shurbiel."
When she wasn't with Jyeannir, Shurbiel would often sit quietly somewhere, doodling in a picture book.
She was an Eldia who, despite having served in the war for nearly thirty years, still had the shyness of a young girl etched across her face.
If you approached and asked what she was doing, she would blush and hide her picture book.
"Th-this is… a storybook. I'm adding pictures, too…"
Their personalities were so different, and yet.
Those eyes.
Her clear eyes resembled Isla's, and my heart ached every time I saw them.
"A storybook?"
Could the foundation of purity be the same? Since all creatures were made by the Mother of Creation, was it possible for them to resemble each other so?
"When the, the war is all over… I plan to make a summary of everything that's happened…"
When I looked at Shurbiel, a chilling illusion that I was sitting with the deceased Isla would pierce me.
Why was that?
Why did Isla's smile as she made a pinky promise always seem to flicker across Shurbiel's face?
"I-I promised… everyone I fought with… that I would never forget… so I'm, I'm writing a storybook. To keep remembering."
The Age of Myths,
Tarhye RondelㆍEldiaㆍRebirth (8)
[Ryukael: This is Ryukael, Eldia Del(03) is critically injured! Requesting backup from HQ! A Class-1 Simyeon reaction is in continuous pursuit!]
*Beep…*
Ever since the appearance of Kelek-Shak, every memory felt like swimming through a nightmare.
*Beep… Beep…*
The form and nature of the Simyeon varied slightly for each of [The Forgotten Kings].
*Beep… Beep beep… Beep beep beep beep beep…*
The Simyeon of Kelek-Shak took the form of flies that fed on rotten food and laid their eggs there to multiply, and its rate of encroachment was faster than any other True King.
[Ryukael: Shurbiel! Shurbiel, stay with me! Shurbiel!]
A King's Simyeon reaches even the soul of a transcendent.
The Eldia are no exception. Just as the future Light Dragon Haraderiman died.
Shurbiel, clinging to my back, was muttering to herself amidst the corrosion of the Simyeon that had pierced her side and was now spreading, devouring both her body and spirit.
[Shurbiel: E-Enuel, l-leave, me, behind…]
Kelek-Shak was a True King more repulsive in form than any other.
It was said, the one who cannot exist.
It was also said, the one who must not exist.
"Uhm… hha… hha… hha…"
Kelek-Shak had no definite form.
It freely changed its own shape, an agglomeration of tens of millions of human maggots writhing with an eerie light.
Kelek-Shak, who had built this city of depravity with its ability to control the swarm of insects, cunningly twisted and warped the structure of its own creation.
"Are you… afraid… of me…?"
In the heart of that legendary darkness, the nightmare would begin again as a foul vapor swirled and surged forward.
That vapor…
Countless bubbles seethed within it, and from those bubbles, eyeballs would pop out, or cackling mouths would emerge.
"Do not… be afraid…"
The path the vapor left behind…
Spacetime itself was gnawed away and annihilated. Beyond the rifts of annihilated space, the stars of the outer cosmos pulsed chillingly.
"I… shall show… you…"
The vapor, which had charged forward at an insane speed with a sickening iridescent wave, once again took the form of the maggot king.
Kelek-Shak has no form, no voice, no eyes.
That voice was merely a sound created by bizarrely twisting and mixing the chorus of screams from tens of millions of human maggots. The mimicry was horrifying.
"…true… salvation…"
Everything was a continuous nightmare.
At first, we were escaping Kelek-Shak's pursuit successfully.
Passing through walls and corridors covered in wicked murals… climbing the spiraling outer wall, again and again…
[Ryukael: HQ, HQ!]
Even as Ryukael tore apart anything that moved to clear a path, screaming all the while.
The connection to the main force couldn't be established, and the path seemed endless.
Even if we had reached the main force, would reinforcements have been able to come?
Perhaps this was for the better. The situation on the surface was also a scene of utter chaos.
Each of [The Ones Who Came] had to face two or three vassals, and the disparity in forces was gradually turning against them.
[Karenden: …Find the Eldia, see if anything’s moving in the underground. The motion tracker…]
[Logistics Monitor: …Warning, movement detected. Class-2 Simyeon approaching…]
[Karenden: …Yeriserica, move north. You take care of that…]
[Meian: …Brother, there are two vassals here alone…!]
[Karenden: …I'm already dealing with two myself. Eldia? Eldia! What's your current status…?]
In the chase that felt like it had lasted for thousands of years, everything was slowly reaching its limit.
Would it just be the three Eldia who died?
The Moonlight Fleet and the intelligence department, currently operating on the surface of the City of Decay, were also on the verge of being annihilated.
[Shurbiel: Enuel… please listen to me…]
It was Shurbiel who proposed a solution to this desperate situation.
[Shurbiel: L-Lady Meian… she pierced a hole in this city with her Moonlight Sword, right…?]
As her voice continued, for some reason, a pain like being stabbed in the chest and bleeding erupted within me.
My mind didn't know.
But my heart may have already understood what was about to happen.
[Shurbiel: If I amplify the p-power of my Aizaiya with Sharrilion…]
This place isn't real.
It is merely a virtual space created to cultivate the same combat experience as the Eldia.
[Shurbiel: Fr-from here… it should be theoretically possible to pierce a hole all the way to the surface…]
Everything unfolding before my eyes is just a story whose beginning and end were decided long ago in the distant past.
Under the name of the Age of Myths.
Therefore, there is no need to linger on the lives and deaths of the characters who appear here. Everything is already set in stone.
[Ryukael: Shurbiel, what are you talking about right now?]
Here, this Shurbiel is a fake.
There, that Ryukael is also a fake.
[Shurbiel: If a path opens up like that… we can coordinate with Master Karenden and Her Holiness Meian…]
They are copies of ancient warriors who vanished from the annals of the Age of Myths at some point, their traces erased by death.
[Ryukael: You damn fool! You can't use your power now! The moment you do, the corrosion will accelerate! Stop talking nonsense and just sleep on Enuel's back! I'll take you to where Her Holiness Maxentia is!]
They die anyway.
They are beings who are fated to die according to the flow of history.
[Shurbiel: Enuel? Pl-please…]
Why does the word "history," in this place, feel synonymous with "destiny"?
[Shurbiel: Ryukael… and Enuel, please live…]
I think that.
I think and think and think.
And try to think it again.
[Shurbiel: In the end of the story I was drawing…]
But like Enuel, it was impossible to set Shurbiel down from my back.
And also like Enuel.
It was impossible to place Aizaiya in the hands of Shurbiel, who was gasping for breath, barely able to stand on her own.
[Shurbiel: Ryukael and Enuel were smiling together…]
There has to be another way.
There has to be a future where Shurbiel doesn't die.
A different way that Enuel and Ryukael failed to find in this era must exist.
[Warning: Synchronization Rate 23%.]
Like a girl, she smiled bashfully. Like a girl, she shyly drew her pictures. And like a girl, she laughed with pure clarity. Shurbiel.
Unlike Isla, she didn't laugh, cry, and pout, but she held the same clarity within her.
Was it because she resembled Isla? It was impossible to simply accept it as the flow of history and cast her to her death.
[Warning: Synchronization Rate 6%.]
Alarms blared in my ears like horns.
Time flickered, slowing and stopping repeatedly, and my vision began to flash red with warnings.
In that bizarrely distorted time, only Ryukael's scream was painfully clear.
[Ryukael: Don't do it, Shurbiel! Enuel! What are you doing! Why did you put Shurbiel down!]
Finally, my body's movements began to forcibly overlay the traces of the synchronization phantom.
[Remaining Synchronization Time: 10 seconds.]
- Failure to increase the synchronization rate to 50% will result in a re-evaluation of your Eldia qualification.
The synchronization directive was telling me to abandon my humanity within ten seconds.
To push a comrade toward death.
To use their corpse as a stepping stone to survive…
[Ryukael: Enuel, stop Shurbiel, please, I'm begging you.]
This kind of thing… is a qualification…
If this is what it takes, then I…
Just as the countdown ticked down—7 seconds, 6, 5—I saw a glistening dewdrop in the corner of the synchronization phantom's eye.
[Enuel: Shurbiel… I will see this war to its end…]
Only then did I understand exactly.
This situation wasn't a test of the cold-hearted qualification to drive a comrade to their death.
It was about whether one had the heart to inherit a comrade's will… whether one had the fortitude to receive that torch of will and carry it into the future…
[Shurbiel: Thank you, Enuel.]
If, at that moment, Enuel hadn't given up on Shurbiel…
The entire war would have ended then.
And the sacrifices and struggles of all those who had died dreaming of spring would have been in vain, their wills never to be inherited.
[Ryukael: Hey, Shur, Shurbi, sto, stooooooooooop—!]
So.
Therefore.
[Shurbiel: Ryukael, you have to live.]
A transcendent golden light flooded my vision, staining even my consciousness a brilliant yellow.
This was the unique color of Aizaiya.
Before the surging vapor, a storm of power erupted, crushing and shattering all darkness with the authority of light.
The command to release Aizaiya's power.
The moment that command ended, the moment its power was unleashed, Shurbiel's body was consumed by a deep blue-black Simyeon and began to melt into a thick sludge.
"—————!"
With a silent scream, as Kelek-Shak's vapor was repelled by the light.
That light.
That explosion of light.
It was drawn into the blade of the black sword extended in a reverent posture, pulsating with a light even more dazzling and magnificent than before.
It was a single pillar of light.
A light kindled by Shurbiel, who burned her own body and soul as fuel to protect Ryukael and Enuel.
"Pierce, Sharrilion."
Soaring to the heavens, the light swallows.
Everything that stood in the way of its ascent.
Not burning.
Not melting.
But simply by immense light pressure, twisting and distorting every ceiling and wall of the living city leading to the surface.
The light completely shattered the sealed chambers of the 118-plus-story underground city, then shot high into the night sky before losing its strength and crumbling away.
[Logistics Monitor: Eldia positions acquired. The location of Eldia Del(03) cannot be confirmed.]
[Karenden: I'm sending reinforcements immediately. Ryukael, are you battle-ready? Where is Shurbiel?]
[Meian: Asura! Leave that one to brother Karenden and get over here!]
[Fire Dragon Vel'dakidun: No way! If we go, Father will have to face five vassals alone!]
[Meian: Who's a pipsqueak not even a year old worried about! Do you know how strong my brother is? He'll buy time by holding them off, so instead of yapping, go and finish off the True King! That's how you can really be a good kid!]
***
The battle that felt like an eternal nightmare finally came to an end.
The flames of the Fire Dragon Vel'dakidun, said to incinerate even the source of the Simyeon, turned the underground city into a raging sea of fire.
Purgatorial flames blazed on all sides, drastically slowing the regeneration and transformation of the living labyrinth.
The light of the Light Dragon Haraderiman, which illuminates all darkness, lifted the ancient veil of shadows and fully revealed the trajectory of the vapor that had been hiding.
The water of the Water Dragon Yeriserica, blessed with tranquility, spread throughout the labyrinth, bestowing a miracle of healing upon those who were on the verge of annihilation.
As the three-headed dragon Asura collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, Meian stepped forward and performed her Moonlight Dance.
Then, flowers of moonlight twisted and ensnared the body of Kelek-Shak as it reverted from a vaporous cloud to its blasphemous form.
Ryukael screamed.
Even when her throat reached its limit and no sound would come out, she screamed, swinging Yoniullan again and again.
But Kelek-Shak was chaos itself. Its body spread and divided at a phenomenal rate, causing all things to rot and be consumed.
In that transcendent battle, Keshrendak, which had been like the innards of a cosmic monster, was nearly half-burned, twisted, and melted away.
[Meian: Shurbiel, where are you! Come out and finish it!]
In the time that felt like an eternity, hundreds, thousands of blows were exchanged.
Then, for a single moment.
For a single moment, thinner and shorter than a single strand of thread, an opening for the kill appeared.
[Synchronization Model Presented.]
Leaping forward, leaving deep footprints in the living floor, I drove sharply into that opening.
Sharrilion was different from an ordinary sword.
When one thinks of 'cutting' with a normal sword, that act of 'cutting' is bound by the laws of providence.
[Meian: What the—]
But Sharrilion had no such constraints. Specifically, when performing a 'Rune Slash'.
[Meian: —that speed?]
It is said that the Creator Gods, who made all things, created the world with a single word. If so, destroying the world should also be possible with words.
Shetadum, Division.
The power to bestow the force of creation as a curse upon a marked target, the power of the Heavenly Mandate Psalm, manifested.
For a moment, the maggots of Kelek-Shak, which had been clumped together in a monstrous form, began to split apart.
It was just for an instant.
Truly, in the blink of an eye.
As I felt the backlash of the Heavenly Mandate Psalm's power tearing my body apart, I tumbled to the ground, unable to even land properly.
Soul Rupture.
The blade of Yoniullan, lunging into Kelek-Shak's blind spot with an unnatural trajectory, howled with a violet light.
It howled again.
And then it howled once more.
Until the insect lord's core was torn to shreds at a microscopic level, again and again, until Meian approached and stopped her.
[Meian: Ryukael, that's enough. It's over.]
Ryukael eventually lowered the tip of Yoniullan, which she had raised above her head, but she said nothing.
A rotten stench emanated from the still-seething Simyeon at the spot where Shurbiel had died.
Ryukael remained standing there. Within Enuel's synchronization model, she stayed by that spot.
Through the hole torn in the ceiling, countless transport ships flew about, rescuing survivors and the injured.
Only after Karenden's order came down to leave, as they would be sealing the city the next day, did Ryukael retrieve Aizaiya and exit the city.
She made a grave at the city's entrance. The only memento to bury was a single storybook.
The storybook was drawn to the very last page. In the clumsy, childlike drawings, the five Eldia were smiling together at the end.
Isla, who died two thousand years in the future, and Shurbiel, who died two thousand years in the past, both lived with the same clarity and died just as fleetingly.
Both held fast to a promise made to someone else and went to a place beyond this world.
To keep a promise, one should live, not die, yet the two girls, different but the same, same but different, left the world hand in hand, as if going ahead.
As if that death was the path laid out for them. Just as one does not hesitate on a path one must take.
Standing before the grave, thinking of the different-yet-same smiles of Isla and Shurbiel, my mind felt like it was twisting.
Karenden also came to the grave.
He reached a hesitant hand toward Ryukael, intending to offer his condolences and sympathy, but in the end, he couldn't extend it and turned away.
Enuel saw this, but Ryukael did not.
Jyeannir couldn't even visit the grave. She was said to be bedridden with illness.
Ryukael, who had been kneeling before the grave for two whole days, finally dusted off her knees and stood up.
She tapped Enuel on the shoulder and walked ahead, her face devoid of any trace of sorrow.
She was expressionless, like someone who had just woken up to go about their day.
[Ryukael: Let's go, Enuel. Nothing's going to change by staying here.]
[Enuel: Ryukael.]
[Ryukael: Yeah?]
[Enuel: I'm sorry.]
[Ryukael: Sorry, my ass! Even that foolish kid who insisted on dying when we were trying to save her wouldn't want an apology like that.]
Within the motion synchronization, Enuel, who was about to follow Ryukael, stopped his forward step.
[Enuel: Ryukael…]
[Ryukael: What.]
[Enuel: You're holding the blade, not the hilt. You're bleeding.]
If Isla hadn't taken everything upon herself and died alone, I would have been the one to die sealing the Gluttony Duke back then.
I knew that.
Did my instincts, back then, wish for Isla's sacrifice? Did I want to live that badly? It was something I didn't want to think about, but always did.
[Ryukael: Ah, you're right.]
If Shurbiel hadn't sacrificed herself and died alone, Ryukael and Enuel could have also died at the hands of Kelek-Shak.
Ryukael must have known that, too.
I didn't want to know that she knew. I didn't want to become unable to hate her in the face of our shared experience.
But it was impossible not to know.
Because I, too, had felt the same pain that drives one's entire life to the brink with self-reproach and guilt.
And in the sight of Ryukael's retreating back.
My own figure, walking along the shore crying on the day Isla died, was overlapping with hers.
[Ryukael: Haha, look at me.]
Ryukael let out a short laugh, but instead of adjusting her grip on Yoniullan, she held it even tighter and continued on her way.
Upon her path, two droplets fell continuously.
One was red, and one was clear.