Chapter 201
Chapter 201
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 201
Chapter Title: The Scale-Covered Empress, Sadarkelia (2)
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Cracks raced through the frozen time. Red thorns tore the sky apart, and fissures spreading like cracks in glass or spiderwebs began raining down across every visible inch.
Fernandez gazed at the shattering barrier through his fading vision. The halted time, the burning earth—it was all Sadarkelia’s “dream.” The barrier manifesting her dream in the present world was crumbling away.
[You, mortal!!]
Sadarkelia’s roar, as her flesh scattered into the sky like chunks of meat, shook the ground. From that cry as the starting point, the fissures shattered like glass, and time began to flow once more.
The wind picked up. Screams and howls echoed again. Fernandez quickly turned his back. Against the backdrop of the blazing Yggdrasil. Resisting the heat scorching his back, his exhausted body, and the hellish mana coursing through his veins...
“S-Silver Grace? What in the world?!”
“Shh. Kirhas.”
-Swish.
Fernandez slowly pulled Kirhas into his arms. He had to shield her as much as possible from the heat and mana surging from behind. Utterly confused, she panted in his embrace.
“S-Silver Grace, oh my god! Y-Your wounds. Your arm?!”
“Any trouble breathing?”
“I’m fine! I’m okay, but...”
“I’m fine too.”
[Is that so?]
At Fernandez’s words, Botan chuckled softly from his waist. He gave Fernandez a quick diagnosis and marveled.
[Such dense mana. How are you holding onto your sanity?]
“I’ve been through it before.”
Unlike others in his past life who had to refine their souls to survive lands corrupted by hellish mana, he—obsessed with spiritual purity—had sought different ways to endure.
Filtering hellish mana completely and nullifying its harm was impossible, but he had reached a master’s level in minimizing the side effects accumulating in his body.
As a result, Fernandez could maintain his reason amid Sadarkelia’s mana. His flesh was dying moment by moment, but reason mattered more to him than his body.
“Fernandez!!”
A sharp voice rang from beyond the sky. Up there, a dark red dragon soared through the heavens. It was Abel. Spotting Fernandez, she dove straight toward him.
“Are you alright?”
“We’re all running on fumes, Abel.”
“...Yes. Sorry I couldn’t keep my promise.”
-Thud!
The earth trembled as Abel’s massive form landed beside him. She looked down at Fernandez and Kirhas with conflicted eyes for a moment. Then she turned to gaze at Yggdrasil. Beneath its roots, engulfed in flames, an immense presence was surging.
“She’s coming. Any hope left?”
“Clinging to hope is foolish. For me, for you, for this world. Time’s almost up.”
“True. Let’s not cling to hope—let’s resist despair.”
-Whoosh.
Abel spread her wings wide, blocking the path in front of Kirhas and Fernandez. The wind blasting through the flames collided with her wings, scattering embers. Abel calmly withstood the fiery blasts as she stared at the world tree’s foundation.
-Crack!
A small fissure raced across the ground. First a claw, then a thick forearm. Soon, a body erupted from the earth, clawing and crushing Yggdrasil’s massive trunk.
-Crack, crunch!!
A colossal serpent—a winged serpent—coiled around Yggdrasil and reared its head. The world tree, more like a fortress wall than a building, vanished beneath the snake’s body, its edges blurred by flames.
Amid it all, two eyes blazed like smoldering coals.
-Grind!
The earth began to shatter, twisted beings crawling out from the gaps. With her emergence, the ground lost its vitality and crumbled. Flames, fissures, and screams echoed across the entire vista.
Far off, the legions of Jotun and Helheim wailed, isolated amid demons. Fernandez slowly stepped out from under Abel’s wing. Pushing him back gently for a moment, Abel whispered.
“Got a plan?”
“Get me atop her head.”
“Fine. I’ll lead. You follow.”
Abel grinned, then faced forward. Sadarkelia, coiled around Yggdrasil, silently gazed down at her—and at this world.
“Sadarkelia!!”
Abel bellowed at the top of her lungs. The dragon’s roar cleaved through the flames blocking her front and reverberated.
“Do you remember me!!”
[Ah, of course. Abelessa. Sadarkelia’s old sister.]
-Grind.
Yggdrasil’s massive branches crumbled, revealing the serpent’s writhing body within. Sadarkelia slowly lifted her head and murmured.
[Have you come to offer your soul to Sadarkelia?]
“Nonsense! I’ve returned to stop you, your crimes, and the atrocities you’ll commit!”
[Stop Sadarkelia? Stop ‘me’?]
The hissing grew louder. Even the battlefield’s clamor around Yggdrasil seemed drowned beneath it. The serpent laughed as if shaking off madness, slowly rising.
-Grind!
Massive branches collapsed, the serpent’s body writhing atop them. Sadarkelia lifted her head skyward, surveying the crumbling earth. Glaring at Abel with burning eyes, she cried out.
[‘I’ am Sadarkelia. The end of all creation, the doom of thousands of worlds, the fate of gods! I am destruction and ruin and the gale of eternal winter, and also the sun of drought. No one can stop me! Not even those heavenly proxies cower in the shadows behind the clouds, fearing me!]
“Verbose.”
Fernandez clicked his tongue. Hearing it, Sadarkelia’s eyes flashed as she lowered her head to glare at him.
[Sadarkelia’s name is Ragnarok itself! Your twilight has come!]
-Grind!
The earth rippled and shattered around her. Dimensional fissures intensified, boundaries between Muspel—her hellish abyss—and Asgard crumbling.
Fernandez lifted Kirhas onto Abel’s back, then leaped atop Abel. At that instant, black chains emerged from Abel’s nape, wrapping his wrist.
“What’s this?”
“Reminds you of old times?”
“Hah!”
Mana resonated between Abel and Fernandez. The chains of dominion. The bond she’d willingly allowed burned fiercer than when first cast. Time spent together—perhaps memories—flowed through the spell entwined at his wrist.
The dragon’s soul, the divinity and mana of elf gods forming her body, and Fernandez’s own holiness pulsed fuller than ever. Fernandez stroked Abel’s scaled nape and murmured softly.
“Yes. Old times indeed.”
“What you said back then too?”
Now, a single thought between Fernandez and Abel conveyed more than a hundred words—faster, clearer. Abel recalled the moment she first met Fernandez in her mental world.
* * *
‘Tell me why this era is called the ‘Age of Man.’’
* * *
What is humanity? Fernandez sank deeper into the question than ever. What even is a human? Abel was a dragon, he no longer just a commoner, and even Kirhas now bore divinity—could they be called human?
What of his past life? Could Feizashi Wildcast, the black mage obsessed with spiritual purity above all, be called more human than human heroes who refined souls to save civilization?
‘You were wrong, Beitasser.’
Regressed because he was the only true human? No. He couldn’t accept that. Even if no better candidate existed, that arrogant god shouldn’t obsess over human purity.
Purity of soul, purity of flesh—secondary concerns. Fernandez stroked Abel’s sturdy nape as she soared into the sky and smiled.
“Yes. I get it.”
Show the Age of Man. That’s what the dragon—who seemed more human than anyone—had said. And he as well. Fernandez gripped his sword hilt, thinking. The sword of the many-named king. ‘Compassion.’ That would be the truest measure of humanity.
‘My son.’
Fernandez briefly recalled his son, whose face now faded in memory. Fierce winds whipped his hair. Amid boiling mana, as soul and flesh slowly perished, he acutely empathized with his son’s pain and terror like never before.
‘Now I understand why you feared so much.’
Self-loathing for resurrection as undead? No, his son’s fear and madness stemmed not from that. It was fear of losing his humanity. His son—Aria—was Feizashi’s last conscience, the final shred keeping him human.
Losing that last piece would make Feizashi no longer human. Conversely...
‘The flesh is but a shell.’
If he could hold onto compassion—humanity—then flesh and soul’s states couldn’t define humanity.
-Shing.
“Abel.”
“What?”
“Draw the serpent’s gaze.”
Fernandez stroked Abel’s nape once more, then leaped from her back, sword hilt in hand.
* * *
Abel, sensing his thoughts through the chains’ mental link, didn’t stop him. Watching him plummet, she smiled quietly to herself.
“S-Silver Grace, Silver Grace!”
Kirhas screamed, staring at the falling Fernandez. Abel soothed her.
“Calm yourself, Kirhas.”
“You...! Turn around now! Silver Grace is down there!”
Far below, even if the ground were solid, no mere human body could survive a fall from this height intact. And now the earth was hellish, riddled with fissures to Muspel.
Falling there meant certain death. So Kirhas thought, gazing desperately at the ground shrouded in black smoke and raging flames.
“He has his path. We have ours.”
“My path is... uh...?”
Kirhas halted mid-growl. In the crimson sky staining the world, a faint blue light glimmered.
A thread to ‘victory,’ instinct and intuition cried. Visible only to her.
“What do you see?”
As if reading her heart, Abel asked. Kirhas swallowed, staring ahead where flames raged fiercest. The harsh wind made it hard to keep eyes open, but...
Dead ahead... At the center of Yggdrasil where Sadarkelia roared. From that spot screaming reason to flee, slowly, faintly, yet brilliantly... the path to victory blazed.
“Where to?”
“Lower right. A bit more... lower. Yes, that direction.”
“Good.”
Abel grinned and opened her maw. Harsh flames erupted, streaking toward Kirhas’s pointed direction.
-Roarrr!
Her mana already held divinity. The elf goddess’s imbued breath incinerated Sadarkelia’s mana, creating a momentary mana vacuum. Sadarkelia’s form sharpened in the wake.
Beating wings toward it, Abel felt her life force rapidly draining. Fernandez plummeting to the ground below fared the same.
Even if this was her final flight, so be it. Even so.
“Sadarkelia!!”
[Pathetic vermin. Greedy beyond your station despite lacking strength or power, acting eternal yet crumbling in an instant. Moths scorching wings in flames...]
Rage and madness blazed hot from the inferno’s heart. Soon, a massive arm burst through flames toward Abel. She twisted aside, dodging and clawing the scaled forearm before soaring up again.
[Humans. Mortals! Repulsive, writhing whiners. Hypocrites, poseurs, self-deceivers blind to their own ugliness. You dare oppose Sadarkelia for those you claim to love?]
“No, no. Sadarkelia. It’s not...”
-Crash!
The serpent’s claw slashed wildly through empty air. Dodging, Abel cried out.
“Fragile, weak, small—unlike you and us, their time flows. Unlike us long-lived frozen in eternity, stars, jewels, gold may glitter. But the most beautiful treasure I see is the flame that burns itself out in a single instant!”
[Disgusting! You merely pity them. Hypocrisy—Sadarkelia loathes your hypocrisy!]
Time must be bought. Abelessa calmly evaded Sadarkelia’s strikes while flying the skies. Her attacks emerged unpredictably from flames, but Kirhas spotted them first, signaling Abelessa each time.
Dodging another arm, Abel cried.
“Desires beyond our station? For millennia, all we did was add a few scales’ weight! How can aspiring beyond what we have be condemned? Behold their progress, their advance. Their resilience we lack... mortals, short-lived ones... How could I not be drawn to their light?”
Her words were now pleas more than persuasion. Rebelling against her waning life force, Abel shouted.
“Fernandez. How could I not be drawn to you?”
To the man burning soul and flesh for one goal. Not personal glory, but to undo his regrets. Cynical toward humanity yet sacrificing happiness and peace to sustain civilization.
What dragon wouldn’t be captivated by such a life’s light?
Abel spoke, hovering midair, then spewed flames. Perhaps her final breath. No life force remained.
“Abel!”
She shook off Kirhas, grabbed her swiftly, and tossed her onto Yggdrasil’s nearest branch. Then plummeted straight toward the ground.
Hoping her brief efforts aided him. She felt scales peeling, her body shrinking. Transforming to human form, Abel fell earthward.
“Now I’ll lead.”
-Thud.
As she neared Yggdrasil’s pillar, rough, scar-covered hands seized her arm. In her blurring vision, Abel smiled softly.
“I’ll follow.”
Facing her, Fernandez smiled too.