Chapter 136
Chapter 136
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 136
Chapter Title: End of the Wasteland (1)
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*
“Do not.”
“Do you even know what I’m trying to do?”
“Even if it’s not what I think it is, do not.”
Fernandez Cerned gazed at Kirhas Hearttaker’s gleaming eyes and slowly smiled. His blue eyes shone through his graying, half-white hair.
Kirhas perked up her tail and ears, glaring at him as she growled low.
“Why do you always refuse me? Am I so lacking in appeal? Abel gets to, so why not me, why... Am I insufficient? Am I not enough for you?”
“Kirhas...”
“I saw it. I saw you kiss her. And it wasn’t just once! Why can’t I be in that place?”
Fernandez rose unhurriedly. Her breath brushed his lips. He caught the hesitating Kirhas as she tried to pull back, seated her on his lap again, and slowly stroked her hair.
“You’ll get hurt.”
“More than now?”
“Probably. The feelings you have for me are an illusion. I freed you from slavery, taught you, gave you power, and raised you to this position. The version of me you like isn’t all of me.”
“The version of me that you see isn’t all of me either.”
At her petulant words, Fernandez chuckled softly.
“That’s true. You’ve grown splendidly.”
“I’m confident I could beat you now.”
“That you could.”
“Then what’s the reason I can’t just overpower you and finish what I started?”
“Because I cherish you.”
Kirhas’s stiff posture tensed even further at Fernandez’s low voice. Her face flushed crimson. As she bowed her head, Fernandez gently placed his hand on her crown.
It was a hand scarred and rough from calluses. A hand marked by harsh years and selfless passion. The hand she loved. Her tail slipped down, coiling around Fernandez’s thigh.
“The night grows late, and I have much to tell you, Kirhas Hearttaker.”
Where to begin? Fernandez paused for a moment. Then Feizashi’s whisper came.
-Why not just do it? It’d be easier. Better to collar her before she grows any more, no?
‘Helpful advice, Feizashi.’
-I mean it. That dragon or this beast—they’re both just pawns for us. The chessboard we see is bigger than childish games. Don’t tell her the truth. It’s like pouring poison into her.
‘Could you leave for a bit, friend?’
-Hah. Friend... Selfish one.
Feizashi shrugged and vanished. Fernandez smiled faintly and brushed the nape of Kirhas’s neck with the back of his hand.
“It’s getting harder and harder to hold back, my benefactor.”
“Do you think I have no feelings? If I can do it, so can you. Now, Kirhas. This will be a long story.”
Yes, start with that. Fernandez wet his lips slightly and spoke.
“I have a wife.”
Like a startled cat leaping away, Kirhas shot to the opposite side of the room in a flash.
*
It was four hours after the story ended that she finally fell asleep. Fernandez perched on the edge of the desk, sipping tea as he watched Kirhas sprawled on the bed, breathing steadily.
[Wise choice, wizard.]
“Kadan.”
Suddenly, a jackal-headed man appeared beside him. He fixed Fernandez with sharp eyes.
[She’s too precious to waste on you.]
“You remember.”
[Of course. Who do you think I am? Hah, but I am curious. Why didn’t you take her?]
“I have a wife...”
[That unborn human is just an excuse. That girl is attractive, promising, and already the great chieftain. Probably the youngest in catfolk history. So why not claim her?]
“Because it wouldn’t be right.”
Fernandez took a sip of tea and gazed at Kirhas, curled up and sleeping soundly.
“Taking her would just be using her. I cherish her too, Kadan. But if she learns the truth later, how will she see me then?”
[Cowardly. She’d still be happy.]
“...Maybe. But it would be deception.”
[You live a complicated life, wizard.]
“The world isn’t simple.”
Fernandez stared at his cooled tea. Winter was approaching. He draped a blanket over Kirhas’s pale shoulder and stroked her hair.
“She deserves happiness. For as long as possible... The path ahead won’t be all flowers. I’ll lead her down it myself. Until then...”
[A victim of yours, is that it?]
“Isn’t she? Even without me, she would have claimed all this in the end. Didn’t you see my memories? In the spirit realm.”
[Those weren’t memories, Fernandez.]
Kadan, arms crossed across the campfire, eyed him intently.
[He wove in countless lies, but if one truth... Those few years you endured weren’t illusion. It was a real parallel world he created.]
“What does that mean?”
[Can’t you tell from how she’s changed? Her soul is merging. When he died and that world collapsed, and I returned to this material plane... In between, the soul of that world’s ‘Kirhas Hearttaker,’ with whom I’d contracted, merged with this world’s soul.]
Kadan licked his lips.
[You’re right, wizard. You’ll lead her down a thorny path. You already have. She’ll change more. The process of her ‘undefeated’ identity shaking and her nature shifting—how horrific it is, you know better than anyone.]
It’s your responsibility. Kadan smirked mockingly. Fernandez glanced at the sleeping Kirhas, then approached Kadan.
“Taking on more regrets won’t change me, Kadan. Is that all you have to say?”
[Take responsibility for her? Well, I’d like to dissuade you from leaving now. If you go, she’ll abandon everything and chase after you.]
“She has her own path. I have mine. Kadan. Let’s talk business. What’s the state of the Great Wasteland now? What happened to the remaining pharaohs, and why has the beastfolk cat clan alliance expanded to this point?”
[That’ll be an interesting tale.]
Kadan licked his lips. His razor-sharp fangs gleamed in his mouth.
*
It had been a month since Fernandez had broken through the buried necropolis from underground. That meant a month since Mumto’s death and the aftermath had spread.
The Great Wasteland had rained nonstop for that entire month. The first week, soul realm mana flowed into the rainwater, making it uninhabitable for humans. The next week brought geological upheavals—grass sprouting, jungles rising.
The emperor and sultan officially relinquished claim to the Great Wasteland. It was deemed unlivable, or more loss than gain.
Thanks to that, the two surviving pharaohs could expand freely. The two nations signed a peace treaty and renamed themselves West Ashit and East Ashit.
And... there was Kirhas.
*
[After I took over, that world’s Kirhas began merging into her soul. Bolder, more seasoned, sharper. A true undefeated one. The ragtag rival great chieftains scattered like leaves in the wind.]
Kadan chuckled as he continued. He remembered those days. Her charging into the heart of a rival great chieftain’s legion, severing his head with mere dozens of cavalry, then declaring truce amid a mountain of corpses and sea of blood.
In that moment of penetration, no one could stop her. That’s what she had become. Overwhelming force, charisma. Ruler of the Great Wasteland, to whom all beastfolk bowed willingly.
[And then she started searching for you. Inquired about your last disappearance, realized Tutan Gartep’s vanished city was suspicious, and scoured every inch of dirt nearby, desperate even for your corpse.]
It bordered on frenzy. The month-long searches always ended fruitless. In the Great Wasteland, where rain-sodden mudslides collapsed dozens of times a day, finding one body was no easy task.
Day by day, her obsession and anxiety intensified. Razor-sharp one moment, fragile the next.
[No one dared approach her then. They thought their heads would roll.]
Even if not true. She was fair and just, but all who saw her feared for their lives before speaking. Then he appeared. Fernandez Cerned.
[After you showed up, Kirhas smiled for the first time in ages. Fernandez. I’m like her father. I pity her plight, especially wanting her happiness. So stay here, wizard. You can at least be her beacon.]
“Kirhas can stand alone. I taught her that.”
[She’s weaker and more unstable than you think. She only pretends strength before you or enemies.]
“Then no worries. Soon the whole world will be her enemy.”
From emperor and sultan, two pharaohs, to the coming Karadschar. Enemies littered her path. The beastfolk cat clan alliance held by her charisma alone; any weakness could shatter it.
Thus, she’d grow stronger. Harsh for her, but necessary for both.
He’d taken her in solely to preemptively secure a counter to Karadschar. Don’t confuse emotion with purpose. Fernandez self-hypnotized as he stood.
-Maybe you just don’t want to use her as a pawn anymore.
Feizashi snickered beside him. Fernandez ignored it and turned to the tent flap.
[Leaving after all. To that dragon?]
“Time to finish the job.”
He donned rain gear. Brief rest and food had restored his health. Even without divinity, a Demonica’s body far surpassed a normal human’s.
Kadan watched Fernandez go wordlessly. The flap lifted, fierce wind and rain rushed in. Then it fell, leaving only rain pattering in the silence.
Kadan looked at Kirhas on the bed. No breath audible. He clicked his tongue.
[You’re awake, Kirhas?]
“Yeah.”
A voice cold as a blade. Kirhas sat up shakily. Her slender hand fumbled at the bed’s edge, retrieving a long pipe and lighting it.
With a hiss, she lit it from the campfire’s embers and inhaled deeply. She said nothing until then. In the dark, her turquoise eyes burned with inner fire.
[I don’t recommend it. Sincerely.]
“Spare me, Kadan.”
She exhaled, thick smoke filling the tent.
“My benefactor is kind. If he truly wanted to use me, he’d have taken me. I’m the one who wanted it...”
[That’s what they call rose-tinted glasses, child.]
“But you felt it too. He doesn’t have his old power. Beitasser’s... that metallic divine scent is gone.”
[Yes. I saw it happen. He lost his divinity.]
-Hiss...
Kirhas tapped ash to the floor, extinguished it with her tail, and rose slowly.
“Then he needs me more. He said those things to push me away, but no chance, Kadan.”
[You’ll follow?]
“Until death do us part.”
[Passionate. If only you showed half that zeal to your people. They need you as much as your master.]
“I don’t need them.”
Kadan tsked at her words. Fernandez had wanted her to grow into a great chieftain leading legions, but he’d made her too dependent.
Her purpose, her life, burned like a fuse toward one person. Kirhas donned rain gear and armed herself.
“And I can’t fall behind anymore? The hunter’s master, in the hunting grounds.”
Fernandez’s long tale of reincarnation, gods, demons, apocalypse—fantastic and hard to believe. But from his lips, truth.
The part she heeded most: son and wife. Fortunately, the wife wasn’t born yet—
‘Abel got two kisses. I got three, and sat on his lap.’
Silly number game, but vital to her. Now Fernandez headed to the Eastern Kingdoms Federation, back to the Inquisition.
No intention of yielding to Abel on that journey. She was no longer a pitiful slave girl.
[What of the clan?]
“Entrust it to Piel for now.”
[That prophetess absorbs divinity well. Her constitution, I suppose.]
“Yeah. Give her full proxy, have Partak assist. With Batras, maintaining status quo is easy.”
[Planning to return?]
At that, Kirhas smiled dazzlingly.
“If I give him a reason to come back here.”