Chapter 131
Chapter 131
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 131
Chapter Title: 54. The One Who Cannot Be Forgiven (6)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Damn it..."
Kori clamped a hand over his mouth at the curse that had slipped out unbidden.
This was no time for that.
He peered closely at the letters again. For some reason, their shape stirred a strange sense of familiarity within him.
How could he feel this way about script he'd never seen before?
"Myeong..."
Muttering the word, Kori suddenly looked up.
Everyone had read it that way, but it didn't feel right to him. Expressing that sound would require a vocal structure different from a human's.
Kori experimented, trying different approaches to voicing the letters.
Gradually, the sound began to refine into the form he sensed it should take.
It wasn't perfect yet.
He persisted, repeating it without giving up.
At some point, he felt a resonance between the meaning, the sound, and the mana. But he couldn't grasp how to unify them.
So he simply spoke it with desperate longing.
Fighting Gert, Yuri suddenly noticed the fierce light in his eyes dimming. His movements were slowing too.
Yuri peered into the Heart-Soul realm.
A faint ember had begun to flicker once more in the core, which had been left scarred like wood charred by fire.
Had Kori succeeded?
But like trying to ignite damp logs, no flame returned to his core, already overrun by the power of darkness throughout his body.
Yuri looked up.
"Gert."
Yuri called his name.
Gert, who had offered no reply before, turned to gaze at him.
Heat surged anew from the rune inscribed on his core.
"Do you remember what I said?"
Gert's body was now a battered ruin.
Forcing his crumbling skeleton to move had cracked it in places, with bone dust crumbling away. The ribs encasing his core lay shattered, exposing the interior.
Even the rune Kori had revived on his core was fading.
Emitting a sickly dark crimson glow as if on the brink of death, he spoke to Yuri.
"Yes."
"Of course."
Yuri slung Guilty over his shoulder.
"Everything I said is the solemn truth."
It would be great to save Gert too and bring him back. He might even make a fine skeletal companion. A Death Knight ally would be reassuring against the Empire.
But no such future awaited.
Just as Gert's life hadn't ended as a tale of an honorable knight triumphing over black magic, so it was this time too.
"So, Sir Gert."
Yuri gazed at the Devil's Flower, now perilously close.
"Leave the rest to me."
Gert stared silently at Yuri.
Then he approached, grasped Yuri's wrist, and pressed it to his own chest.
Yuri, led by him, seized Gert's core.
It burned hot.
And cold at the same time.
Yuri realized Gert had fulfilled his promise first.
Over the turning back of Gert, the image of the rigid knight with his cloak billowing overlapped.
That Gert had been marching alone toward the grand library.
"Sir Gert, we must retreat for now."
"It's dangerous!"
"Fall back first, then..."
But he did not stop.
The Devil's Flower had fully taken root in the grand library. Rumors of it devouring people had evolved beyond mere whispers; it openly ensnared minds, mechanically stealing lives.
With each life it consumed, the Devil's Flower grew stronger.
The army attacked it, but the situation only worsened.
The Devil's Flower had become too powerful—even seasoned knights fell under mental thrall, walking entranced to offer their bodies.
It was a monster beyond containment.
Its foul scent spread across the kingdom.
No one retained their sanity.
Adelwein teetered on the brink of ruin.
The king summoned Gert.
The king was preparing for the final battle. Adelwein's last king was no sage ruler, but he possessed virtues enough to earn Gert's loyalty.
"Gert, my most loyal knight."
"Yes."
"I give you this command."
"Yes."
"I am sorry to issue such an order."
"Whatever it is, I shall obey gladly."
"Bar anyone from approaching the Devil's Flower."
"They..."
"Kill them if you must."
The king clutched his head.
"We must stop that evil from growing further. So..."
He descended from the throne and raised the prostrating Gert to his feet.
And embraced him.
"On the day I give such an order, will you forgive me?"
His voice was calm, as if he already foresaw his fate.
Gert merely placed a hand on his chest in reply.
"By your command."
Gert led his knights, patrolling the Devil's Flower.
He cleaved through the endless human chain. Even as someone died right before them, the people did not stop.
The more blood stained his hands, the blacker Gert's heart grew.
The measure worked. After Gert began the slaughter, the Devil's Flower gradually weakened.
But he could not kill forever.
When it seemed sufficiently enfeebled, Adelwein's king led the army to assault the Devil's Flower in the grand library.
A protracted battle ensued.
They lost.
Gert crawled to where the king had fallen.
The king's eyes still blinked.
Gert tried to lift him, but it was too late. A massive hole gaped in his abdomen.
With fading eyes, the king murmured to Gert.
"Gert. My most loyal knight."
"Yes, Your Majesty. It is I."
"Stop it."
"Yes."
"Stop i..."
He spoke no more.
Before the king's eyes fully dimmed, Gert bowed his head one last time.
"By your command."
After the war ended, the same cycle repeated. Survivors walked to the Devil's Flower to become its fodder.
Even knights who had once resisted now yielded.
Gert overcame the temptation.
Standing amid the ruins after fleeing the grand library, he realized he was already dead. His heart had stopped, his flesh rotting—perhaps from prolonged exposure to black magic.
Yet he did not die.
One thing drove him.
Command.
Dead yet undying, he carried out his duty.
He killed those approaching the Devil's Flower.
Call it obsession. For a knight who had lost everything, only the will to uphold his given command remained.
At its end, he collapsed.
He could no longer sustain his body or resist the Devil's Flower's miasma.
All was worn away.
Yet one thing he never forgot.
The scene of Adelwein's fall that day, and the single command given before death.
Stop the Devil's Flower.
Even by annihilating approaching lives.
Leaning on his sword, he rose. But fell. He repeated rising and falling.
In that, he ruminated only on the command given him. Gert was now mere carrion without form.
Then someone appeared before him.
Red scales.
Vast wings.
Golden pupils.
The being spoke.
"You're a mad one."
Not a human voice. Something was off.
"I came just in case, and here you are, a lunatic striving away."
"Lives... annihilate..."
"Humans are such clumsy, wondrous creatures."
The being stood there awhile, observing Gert intently.
"I see. That's what drives you. Command."
"Lives... annihilate..."
"Very well. Guard this land as you will."
And a miracle occurred.
"권능언령 (Word of Divine Authority)" "명 (Command)"
⟨ Divine Command ⟩
His shattered body began to mend.
Broken bones realigned, the rusted sword was reforged, light returned to the extinguished core. Upon his skeletal frame reappeared the armor and helm long lost.
And a single rune was etched onto his core.
Gert rose.
The crumbling flesh and fracturing mind were sustained by the rune on his core. And that rune was upheld by an obsession-like will surging endlessly from his soul.
He moved again.
He wandered for ages.
He slew every approaching life.
Starving the Devil's Flower that destroyed Adelwein so it could grow no more, he endured eternal erosion.
And at that end, he met a band of humans.
They claimed they could slay the black magic entity.
Hard to believe, but he had no strength left. Even the miracle granted had collapsed. Only moments remained.
So he demanded an oath.
The human swore willingly.
Thus Gert transmitted his memories and launched his final charge.
This entire chain of events flashed through Yuri's mind in an instant.
"Gert!"
Yuri shouted.
By now, Gert cleaved through all resistance hurtling toward him, plunging toward the Devil's Flower's core.
There was no time to dwell on the memories Gert had shared. Yuri gripped Guilty and followed.
He could see Gert burning himself up.
His body disintegrated in real time, the core losing its light. Bones powdered into the air.
Yet each time it seemed the end, the rune 'Command' blazed blindingly from his core.
And he took another step.
Yuri and the others, awestruck by Gert's struggle, advanced into the Devil's Flower's depths along the path he carved.
At its heart lay a massive organ.
With each throb, blood-like fluid surged outward.
Vast, ravenous vitality.
And Yuri's eyes beheld something else.
There writhed a hellscape of humans devoured by the Devil's Flower, mashed together in agony. Mouths fused to mouths, eyes to eyes, moaning as one.
So many lives piled that even overlapping fell short; it merely pulsed as a black-red mass.
Gert, before it, turned to Yuri.
He had burned his last ember to guide Yuri here.
Now he asked.
Could he truly fell it?
Yuri could only smile bitterly.
Had he known such an absurdity lurked here, he wouldn't have spoken so lightly.
But what could be done?
He had already sworn.
He raised Guilty. Heart-Soul Severing raged wildly in his chest, like a mad dog frenzied at the sight of its foe, yearning to lunge and tear.
Yuri calmed it.
Gert's very form was now seeping into the heart. The madness and obsession he had amassed over ages were ironically nourishing the Devil's Flower.
Delay any longer, and it would become an unstoppable monster.
Yuri raised Guilty.
The blade hummed deeply.
The sheer scale of the tragedy before him, the layered thickness of souls, threatened to crush him—but Yuri advanced.
"Your Highness, any closer is dangerous."
Rolang tried to stop him, but Yuri took another step.
Two steps.
Three.
Now Gert was fully merging into the heart.
Yuri's eyes whitened.
He saw anew.
A knight in tattered cloak, stern-faced, knelt on one knee. From the amalgamated mass of Adelwein's sacrificed lives, an aged man emerged.
The knight bowed his head; the king placed a hand atop it.
They remained thus for a long time.
Yuri raised his eyes.
Over them floated other figures, faces he didn't know.
All of Adelwein's landscapes—of weeping, laughing, sorrowing, rejoicing—dwelled within.
What he must sever was Adelwein entire.
Too many.
Yuri gripped Guilty tight.
All these souls.
All the hearts they had held.
Vast beyond reckoning, impossible even to face.
Toward that.
Yuri swung his sword.
