Chapter 112
Chapter 112
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 112
Chapter Title: Judgment of Atala (15)
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Duncan couldn't make heads or tails of it. He had no clue how this utterly chaotic final match was unfolding.
“Ugh! Uwaaaaaah!!!”
“Kyaaaaaaaah!”
The last clear memory he had was of some unidentified something smashing through the isolation barrier and barging in. After that, it was all screams and getting swept up in the panicked crowd, his soul nearly fleeing his body. Pushed around like a paper doll, Duncan only snapped back to his senses right before escaping the stands.
…M-Master! Is Master safe?
He flailed against the human tide. After barely surviving being trampled to death several times, he finally made it back to his original spot.
Tragically, that's when the stands began collapsing entirely.
――――― Kwarrrrr rumble - !
“Eek, uwaaaaaah!!”
His survival instincts awakened superhuman physical prowess. Duncan bolted forward like a shot—forward, forward. He stomped over crumbling stairs and slabs, leaving falling spectators and gamblers behind, and heroically hurled his body into the arena interior alone to survive.
By sheer coincidence, at that very moment, the veil over the air lifted, revealing fragments of the ruins' landscape.
Kiriririring...
When he finally came to his senses, he saw a dim passageway.
“Huff, huff, huff...”
Where am I? Did I die or something?
He could feel the weight of his heavy bag and the pounding of his heart, so he wasn't dead. Far off at the end of the passage, a faint golden light twinkled.
He had nowhere else to go. Duncan hesitated, then headed toward the light source. Reaching the entrance where light seeped out, he beheld a bizarre sight.
“[……‘The Guardian of the Earth’ shall reduce you to specks of dust smaller than grains! If you wish even your corpse to remain intact, choose self-destruction now...!]”
A room overgrown with bushes sprouting golden flower buds. An old woman muttering to herself like she was possessed, and Agon's Furious Horn half-bathing in a glowing pool.
His mind went blank at the utter absurdity. He first thought of asking the old woman for the full story but quickly scrapped the idea.
“[Insolent fool! Those who have not passed the trials can never set foot in these ruins!]”
Thud - boom!
That lady... doesn't seem like she's all there mentally...
Duncan aimlessly switched targets. He'd sneak over to Agon's Furious Horn and ask him what was going on. Not knowing the man had passed out in a frenzy, it seemed like the best option to Duncan.
...He wouldn't try to kill me over that fight last time, right?
He gripped his dagger hilt just in case. Anyone else would have been spotted ages ago, but luckily, Duncan had a knack for hiding his presence. He approached right behind the pool without alerting a soul.
However, by sheer coincidence—utter coincidence...
“[……The moment you meet your doom!! Until that very moment, the trials shall never end!!!]”
...the shamaness whipped her head around while shrieking, exposing him completely.
Her murky pupils dilated. The shamaness recoiled in horror as if beholding a ghost.
“[W-What? W-What are you, you wretch! How dare you sneak into the sacred ruins...?]”
Duncan panicked in tandem. Reflexively, he drew his dagger and thrust it at Goltaran's neck.
“H-Hiiiik! S-Stay still, granny! O-Otherwise, something real bad and regrettable's gonna happen!”
Whoosh - !
Hellfire singed Goltaran's beard. The threatening hostage-taker wore a dumbstruck expression, while the threatened old woman twisted her face demonically and bellowed.
“[Insolent cur!! Get away from him this instant!! Fail to do so, and I'll grind you to bone shards and motes of dirt, burying you forever in this parched wasteland!!]”
“Eeek, h-hiiiik...”
The standoff dragged on. The shamaness finally regained her composure. Breathing raggedly, she swiftly drew a ritual circle behind her back in secret.
“[Hoo, this old body was foolish... There was a way to drive out the intruder without harming the Great Warrior...]”
Thud – boom!
“...Yikes!”
The expulsion ritual shoved Duncan's body away. His tiny silhouette vanished from the ruins in an instant.
Ting, ting, whoosh -
But even after its owner vanished, the hellfire dagger remained, falling amid the bushes and igniting them.
“[Hm...? ]”
Whoosh - !
Hellfire spread in a flash.
The flowers and bushes, devoid of moisture, blazed fiercely. The precious herbs she'd painstakingly cultivated burned to ash in the blink of an eye.
“[……N-No!! Nooooooo!!]”
The shamaness's agonized scream echoed. Yet the flames mercilessly devoured the fuel, belching acrid sulfur smoke until the space was choked with it. Amid coughs, her eyes fell on something far more vital than mere herbs.
“[Kuh-hack! Hack, kuh-luk, kek, kek! Gr-Great Warrior! Pull yourself together, Great Warrior!]”
Goltaran remained unconscious. The shamaness finally rose from her seat for the first time in centuries.
Crack, crrrack -
Severed rootlets dangled from her bony thighs. With her ‘Roots of the Wilderness’ broken, her spells halted and divine powers greatly diminished—but now wasn't the time to care.
She staggered forward, lost balance, and toppled dramatically. Still, she crawled desperately through the flames toward the pool, seized Goltaran's arm, and swiftly slashed a symbol in the air.
Placing her hand on the ritual circle, their outlines scattered like dust.
“[Kuh-hack, hack, kuh-luk, kek...]”
Due to the unexpected intruder's visit, the shamaness embarked on her final outing from the ruins.
The arena and ruins still bizarrely overlapped in space.
Atala's Great Warrior finally confronted her. The wilderness shamaness who had mocked him and forged a false Great Warrior.
Shrrrr...
“[Kuh-luk, hack, kuh-hack, huuu...]”
“...”
Beneath the shadows of halted stone giants, the shamaness crumbled like dust. Though the ruins partially overlaid this space, its essence remained the exterior. Her enduring long was inevitable fate.
Between Great Warrior and shamaness, the Great Warrior spoke first.
“Why'd you suddenly crawl out? Chattering like a rat... you holed up in that damn hole forever.”
“[Kuh-hack, luk... The real rat is that wretch clinging to your side... Daring to sneak into the sacred ruins and burn it down...]”
The shamaness glared at Duncan murderously. He flinched, shuddered, and hid behind Kadim. Kadim decided to ask for details later and signaled with his eyes.
“Good work, Duncan. Now run as far from here as you can.”
“P-Pardon? B-But wouldn't it be safer by your side, Master?”
“No. Right now, I'm the most dangerous thing here.”
His hollow gaze fixed on Duncan. His dark-red eyes shook violently, on the verge of shattering. Duncan paled, trembled wildly, then yelled as he bolted away in a panic.
“T-Take care, Master! You must come back safe without a scratch!”
“...”
Kadim fiddled with his left hand, all fingers broken.
Suppressing the frenzy was nearing its limit. In the blood-red world, the scattering shamaness looked like blood mist shaped like a person. Grinding his teeth—gnash gnash gnash—he quelled the mad impulse and barely parted his parched lips.
“Mutual... we won't last long. Before I lose it... just one question.”
“[......]”
“For some reason... I couldn't summon the divine relic. Do you know why? That fake used it fine... Did you perhaps seal ‘Judgment of Atala’ somehow?”
The shamaness slowly shook her head, bitterness etched on her dry lips.
“[No. The reason is... you abandoned the mission of struggle and fled.]”
“...!”
“[......Why, why did you abandon us and leave?]”
“[Where did you go, only returning now? What mood swing made you turn your back on this world? To fulfill slaying the archdemon...? Were the days of struggle too tiresome...? But, but even so, weren't we still here... the blind shamaness of the wasteland who trusted and relied on you alone...?]”
“...”
“[We waited... only for your return. Forsaking life's sweet fruits, we chewed the bitter roots of solitude harsher than death... for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of days... Alone, we cried your name, wailed, sobbed, vomited blood, smashed our heads against the floor until our brows split! Yet you never returned... Had you not left! No, if you'd only died! We wouldn't have suffered such agony... I wouldn't have forged a false Great Warrior with my own hands...]”
A litany steeped in eons of shattered resentment.
But the moment she finished, the shamaness wiped away her thick grief. Instead, her eyes gleamed venomously as she drew a ritual circle.
“[You... are not ‘Atala's Great Warrior.’ No, you must not be... That title is forbidden to a deserter who betrayed the struggle. Now, I shall drag you down to a hell of defeat and subjugation, birthing a new Great Warrior to inherit the mission...]”
The moment the stone giants, felled by sorcery, raised their massive bodies again.
Kugugugugu, kugugugugu -
Kadim's consciousness snapped.
A pale demonic landscape filled his vision.
Mounds of corpses piled around, a shovel gripped in his hand. Against his will, his body moved on its own. He plunged the blade into the demon-tainted earth, stomped it deep, dug out chunks, excavating a pit.
Perhaps digging a grave for the corpses. He couldn't fathom why this vision appeared now. But one truth dawned crystal clear.
The reason he couldn't summon ‘Atala's divine relic.’
Because he was not Atala's Great Warrior.
Because he was not Kadim.
The man had severed his modern self from his warrior self. He denied the acts as Kadim's, not his own. A shallow defense mechanism to stave off a crumbling mind and endure bloodstained reality.
But it became a stumbling block denying even the Great Warrior's identity.
It was fine in the first playthrough. When he gained ‘Judgment of Atala,’ there was no leisure to reflect. The problem came right after slaying the archdemon.
[......You have to accept reality. You can never meet them again.]
Warrior's life and moderner's life. At the pivotal crossroads, he abandoned all for the latter. Starting the second playthrough, he hastily reburied his modern self, but the once-dug pit had already bared its depths.
The divine relic—a god's blessing upon followers. A deserter who abandoned all could never claim it...
Just for that petty reason... I lost access to the relic...?
On one hand, boiling rage surged.
Staying in this world was impossible anyway due to the frenzy. After near-death struggles defeating the archdemon, it forced a second playthrough willy-nilly and stole even that blessing? Fury hot enough to pulverize the culprit with his axe, leaving no bone or flesh, flooded him.
Yet on the other, solemn remorse weighed heavy.
What he abandoned wasn't just comrades and wilderness shamans. He forsook this world itself—the endless struggle encompassing all. Shamelessly returning after turning his back, claiming Great Warrior proudly—it felt hypocritical even to him.
Clunk - !
Suddenly, the shovel tip hit something.
Dread washed over. Not another one of those crimson silhouettes of unknown identity.
Thankfully, no. What it struck was another shovel. Peering into the pit's bottom, he saw a man from the opposite world digging.
The man dug steadfastly, as if eager to show something. After ample time, he widened the pit vastly, fully revealing his world.
There lay not corpse mounds, but living people.
All the continent's souls saved by the archdemon's demise. Far more than the corpses he personally piled—people who would never have seen the world's light without his struggle, numerous as stars in the night sky...
He grasped the message. The man and Kadim chuckled simultaneously.
Yes. All were two sides of a coin, inseparable from the start. Where there was the man, there was Kadim; sin, then feats; the judged, then the saved.
Thus, the man finally affirmed Kadim.
No more denial. No more escapism. He resolved to fully bear Kadim's sins, feats, and mission. Solemnly admitting they were his own deeds, his choices.
With selves merged, only one path forward. The path he believed would ultimately save himself and all. Doubting not that his will was the War God's, the path of struggle.
Kadim knelt and recited the prayer resolutely.
"[God of Struggle and Wilderness, Atala...]" "[Look upon your Great Warrior, raise the torch to guide to the battlefield...]" "[Grant strength against profane foes, unyielding spirit amid gales...]" "[Even if my soul and flesh become bloodied, returning to the wasteland's dust...]"
⟨ Pledge of Eternal Struggle ⟩
No more turning away.
Never abandon anything again.
Never deny the footprints I've left.
If bathing in that blood and traversing endless wastes is my mission, I accept it gladly.
“[......I pledge to struggle eternally, never submitting.]”
I am the outcast foreigner from reality.
Kadim.
And Atala's Great Warrior.
Kiriririring...
The demonic vision lifted like a curtain. Beyond blood-red vision, majestic silhouettes emerged. Apparently, he was now berserk, clashing with the stone giants.
―――― Kwagagak, kwagagagagang - !!
“Grraa, kuh-haaaaaah!!!”
“[......At last, your true colors show! As expected, you are the root of calamity that will doom the world...]”
But it didn't last.
Kadim halted his rampaging body. He gripped his axe haft tight. From the jet-black axe, a yellowish aura seeped, swelling into a massive gale, finally engulfing the ruined arena like a sandstorm.
Whooooosh - !!
The shamaness, half her body lost, widened her eyes in shock.
“[N-No, how can you wield ‘Atala's divine relic’...?]”
Yellow afterimages soothed his frenzy-ridden flesh. Kadim exhaled sharply, purging tainted residue.
“......Hoo.”
Atala's divine relic. Its effect amplified all combat stats and granted immunity to all debuffs.
Even the worst debuff, ‘frenzy,’ was no exception.
Kuhooooo - !!!
No paltry madness could bar the Great Warrior's will now. The wasteland vortex overwhelmed the solar eye. The heavens spun golden, scattering brilliant afterglow.
“[Th-That can't be! It makes no sense! You betrayed the struggle... abandoned us... Why, why...?]”
The relic's torrent intensified. The broken-willed shamaness crumbled in the gale. As heaven and earth roared like colossal beasts, even the massive stone giants faltered unsteadily.
- Kugugu...
- Kugugugu...
Only Kadim.
Only Atala's Great Warrior.
Only the one pledged to walk the path of struggle eternally.
“In this hall of depravity that mocks struggle right here, right now...”
“......Before the false Great Warrior who claims salvation, and the wilderness shamaness who mocked the Great Warrior...”
“......The solemn ‘Judgment of Atala’ has arrived.”
Stood firm, unmoving.