Chapter 192
Chapter 192
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 192
Chapter Title: Midgard Ascent (1)
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-Whirrrrr……!!
The gateway activated, unleashing a tidal wave of mana. The hellish mana painted the air in iridescent vapors that distorted everything around it. Fernandez steadied his breathing and stared straight ahead.
Just then, a hacking cough came from behind him. No way. Fernandez grimaced and turned around.
“Benefactor…….”
“You idiot…….”
There stood Kirhas, gasping for breath, supported by Abel. The horse they had ridden lay collapsed in the distance, vomiting blood from the contamination of the hellish mana.
Abel was pale-faced, catching her breath, while Kirhas’s bloodshot eyes gleamed red and blood trickled from her mouth. Fernandez rushed to her side.
“I-I…….”
“Shh. Quiet.”
He grasped her wrist and slowly infused her with mana. Hellish mana contamination was extremely lethal to the living, potentially leaving permanent scars on both soul and body.
Her soul was still fine. Her spirit had already been strengthened by Kadan’s blessing. But the damage to her body was worsening. Fernandez’s face twisted in fury as he examined her flesh and glared at her.
“Why did you come here…… Abel. Did I give you too heavy a burden?”
“Fernandez. I couldn’t leave you alone.”
“You should have!”
Fernandez bellowed. Abel flinched, shrinking back as she faced his anger for the first time. Meeting her eyes, he slowly regulated his breathing. Controlling his emotions was difficult with Erik’s madness eating away at his soul.
“Benefactor, it’s not her fault. I-I wanted to be by your side.”
“You…… you had a better future ahead of you.”
“A future. A future……. Benefactor, I am not the ‘Kirhas’ you imagine.”
Kirhas pushed away Abel’s support and slowly straightened her back. Even on her deathly pale face, a resolute will shone through.
“I am not a mirror reflecting your regrets. Fernandez Cerned. You say you ruined and twisted my future? No. You saved me.”
“Kirhas…….”
“Look at me. I am already a different being from the woman you knew in that distant future, and I can never become her—nor do I want to. Shield of the Great Wilderness, Great Chieftain, Queen of the Alliance! I don’t need such empty titles.”
-Rumble.
The gateway creaked open, and the presence of demons began to grow more intense. Kirhas stared straight at Fernandez with her bloodshot eyes and slowly drew her sword.
“It’s fine to walk the path you paved for me. It’s fine to choose the path leading to you. If I’m just a pawn moving according to your plans, that’s fine too. It means you still need me. But, but……. You’ve become the compass of my life, so don’t leave me alone.”
If you must walk a path that leads to certain death, I will gladly be your companion. Even if used as a puppet, as long as I can be by your side. That was what Kirhas said as she gripped her sword hilt tighter.
Fernandez looked at Kirhas, then at Abel. Abel smiled softly despite her pallor.
“I’m more greedy than this girl…… but not much different. Don’t go alone. As she said, we’re not shadows projecting your regrets.”
“……I wanted you both to live better lives.”
“Better than this?”
At her words, Fernandez couldn’t help but burst into laughter. Kirhas and Abel smiled along with him. Fernandez nodded and gripped his shield in one hand.
“I’ll take the lead. Don’t fall behind.”
Without waiting for a reply, Fernandez hurled himself through the gateway. Kirhas and Abel followed after him.
* * *
Crossing dimensions wasn’t new to him. Fernandez didn’t remember it, but on the day he first fell into this world, he had already torn through the barrier between the horizontal worlds and the main world.
But doing so with his mind fully intact was a first. Fernandez frowned at the familiar sense of déjà vu and the sensation of his body and soul slamming into the ground. It was a brutal descent.
-Thud.
He had felt the ground rushing up at terrifying speed, yet he landed lightly. The velocity he sensed might have just been a spiritual illusion from the dimensional shift. He slowly looked around, breathing cautiously.
-The vegetation looks familiar, and breathing is fine.
‘It’s a divine realm to begin with. Asgard. There’s no way the afterlife of humans would be hostile to them.’
The natural environment wasn’t much different from the North. Just the scale. That was the only difference. The sky was impossibly high, the trees incomparably massive, and the spirit energy permeating this world was dense enough to crush mortals.
Mana, spirit, corruption—all swirled together.
‘More normal than I expected.’
-Realistically, Sadarkelia hasn’t been fully active for long. Considering the history of the Northern Pantheon, not every space in this dimension could be corrupted yet.
‘But if intact gods remained in the Northern Pantheon…… why would they allow Baldur to rampage in madness?’
Fernandez stroked his chin, lost in thought. It felt off. Baldur had fallen to insanity, Lofr had fled, and Freyja had to seal herself—the corruption should have spread terribly across the entire Northern Pantheon.
Yet this forest was too peaceful. Vast nature surrounded him. Still, the degree of corruption felt across the entire Northern Pantheon realm wasn’t severe.
“Everyone alright?”
Fernandez turned to the two who had landed behind him. Both Kirhas and Abel seemed to have passed through the gateway unharmed.
“Better than I prepared for.”
“Yes, much easier to breathe.”
They had passed through a gateway spewing intensely dense hellish mana, only to find an intact world? Fernandez frowned at the underbrush. Lofr spun lazily above the shrubs, looking down at them.
“Lofr. What’s going on here?”
“Bifrost isn’t just a gate to Asgard—it connects to the multiverse anywhere. That fool could only make it lead to Sadarkelia’s realm, it seems.”
If he’d made a deal with Sadarkelia, she wouldn’t have given him power beyond opening the gate. Fernandez touched the soil at his feet. No traces of corruption.
A chill winter wind rustled the branches. Somewhere, a faint charred smell lingered. Not from the forest, but like wind from a fire site.
“Even Asgard has places untouched by corruption?”
“Corruption…… strictly speaking, it’s hard to call it that. But does this place look pristine to you, friend?”
Hearing Lofr, Fernandez closed his eyes. What else was there? Relying on his mana sight was better for grasping the situation than keeping blurry normal vision.
He methodically checked his senses. First, smell: faint char. Not a forest smell; a forest fire maybe, but the sky was too clear. Strange.
Second, sound. Wind rustling. Leaves scattering. He examined each one closely. And…….
“No beasts.”
“Right? Haha, sharp as ever!”
At his words, Lofr slapped his knee laughing. He then leaped down and stood before Fernandez. A single leaf was clutched in his hand.
“No beasts in this forest. And that’s not all? No insects, no birds……. Not even this one leaf.”
-Crumble.
Lofr rubbed his fingers, crushing the leaf to powder without resistance. He extended his dry, bony index finger toward Fernandez’s nose.
“See, friend?”
“No life. This…… isn’t Asgard? Did it shunt us to a completely different dimension?”
“Half right. If Jörmungandr fully dominated Asgard, how would your world be intact? What hope would we have?”
Lofr dramatically waved his hand, parting the underbrush. The foliage receded, slowly revealing a path.
“Come, walk.”
“……Alright.”
No mage hates riddles. The world is a giant question sheet, and magic is the discipline of logically framing questions and solving them. As a scholar of magic, Fernandez naturally enjoyed such puzzles.
He followed Lofr. Lofr walked slowly, humming casually.
“Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim……. Silly names, no? Asgard for the Aesir gods, Vanaheim for the Vanir, Jotunheim for the Jotun. Midgard as the world’s center. Haha, foolish.”
“The divisions between dimensions are meaningless?”
“Exactly. You’ll grasp the essence easier than anyone.”
Lofr chuckled slyly at Fernandez, then at Feizashi Wildcast behind him. The god of death, an ancient one even older than the Muumto of the Great Wilderness……. He couldn’t have failed to notice.
-You knew.
“Of course! From the start, since the day I was imprisoned in the Great Wilderness, I knew you. Destroyer of Worlds, Great Black Mage teacher.”
Lofr, striding ahead, suddenly tilted his head back crookedly and stopped. No longer parting the trees, he stood in the forest’s heart, gazing at Fernandez.
The charred smell grew stronger. Now unmistakable with every breath.
“You who crossed from a horizontal world will understand this realm easier. Two worlds—no, parts of dozens of horizontal worlds. And gates crossing them……. Any guesses?”
“……Sadarkelia’s goal isn’t just opening the hell dimension.”
“Right! That’s why I like you!”
-Rumble…….
A distant tremor echoed. But Fernandez, gone pale, couldn’t tell if it was an earthquake or his pounding heart playing tricks.
Horizontal worlds. Parallel dimensions touching……. Asgard for Aesir, Vanaheim for Vanir……. Midgard as the center…….
What if this didn’t just mean divine realms of the Northern Pantheon? Calling them horizontal worlds specifically meant this Midgard was a dimension of the same plane as their own world…….
‘The Northerners see themselves as descendants of giants.’
Aesir, Vanir, Jotun, dwarves…… all rooted in ‘giants.’ And before him stood a survivor of the giant gods, smiling.
Insight flashed up his spine like lightning.
“Overwriting a dimension destroyed by demons…… Defying Heaven……!!”
“Ragnarokkr, the fate of the gods! Yes. And this…… is the process.”
-Crumble…….
Lofr snapped his fingers, and the shrubs cloaking him scattered. The greenery parted, revealing not forest.
Never forest. Before them loomed a massive cliff.
-Crash! Roooar!
A shattering world unfolded below. This was an island floating in the air. From high altitude under low red clouds, the ground below was visible.
Lava snaked like rivers, broken earth screamed as it crumbled. Occasionally, crust shattered, crimson flames erupting. Serpent-like demons crawled from the cracks.
“My…… God.”
Kirhas exhaled a crushed sigh, gasping. Could this simply be called hell? Floating islands scattered everywhere, barely sustaining scraps of nature. Not to escape earthly disasters, but flung upward like debris.
-Whoooosh…….
Wind carrying sticky hellish mana flowed. Mana crumbled at the forest’s edge, scattering light. Like a protective barrier.
“Fernandez…… look at that.”
Following Abel’s finger, far off in the haze. A backdrop so vast it hadn’t registered, now slowly coming into focus.
-Thump. Thump.
His heart thudded heavily. Five massive marble pillars gleamed under sunlight beaming from somewhere in the sky. Thick iron chains draped below their faint outlines…….
“Sadark……elia…….”
Glistening liquid…… probably mercury. Records said she slumbered in it. A massive waterfall of mercury sweeping somewhere, and a wall.
“That’s Yggdrasil.”
Lofr cackled, looking where Abel pointed. Not a wall. It was a tree so colossal it seemed like one, too vast for the eye, a mere faint afterimage.
“Almost the only thing still intact, ‘alive’ in this world. Odin’s palace. Where Jörmungandr is sealed. And where your god’s emissary sleeps. That’s our goal, friend.”
Lofr spoke with distant longing. Then, back to his playful tone.
“Jörmungandr seeks to overlay this world onto yours. And fully control Bifrost to build a grand conduit linking to other corrupted worlds. Mainly, the one you destroyed—your world.”
“That world still has great demons from other dimensions intact. Sadarkelia wouldn’t want to share her glory.”
“Of course not. So this is more like a conquest war. Swallow your world whole, claim all your pantheon’s spirit, then open gates to other dimensions. This is just a step. The end is the apocalypse of all dimensions…….”
So, will you go stop the world’s end, friend? Lofr laughed from the cliff’s edge. His hair whipped in the wind. Ominous wind laden with hellish mana.