Chapter 294
Chapter 294
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 294
Chapter Title: Key to the Nine Myriad Long River (10)
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Jerolen had not agonized for long. He no longer hesitated to pierce the bastard's chest. Whether there was a way or not, it wouldn't be reason enough to spare its life.
With a tearing laugh, the creature's body faded away. It scattered into an abstract concept beyond this dimension. It was merely an echo heralding not eternal end, but a doom that would return again.
"What’s the method?"
"Let’s resurrect the gods. If this dimension is governed by concepts, then the gods' return could overwrite its existence, couldn’t it?"
Maleyrn's proposal was straightforward. Revive the gods who had become spirits, lost their power, and were fading away. Then reclaim the Pantheon domain as the gods' territory once more and purify the scattered remnants of its thoughts.
But at that moment, Gaimern spoke up.
"It sounds too risky."
"What?"
"How much time would that take? And during that time, could our kin survive? If war drags on and we have only a hundred years until our doom, how much less after the gods vanished and the World Tree burned?"
They couldn’t tell their kin what had happened here. That all their gods had fallen to the demon’s grasp, that the ancestors who had died until now had fattened the demon’s soul.
Even hiding all the facts wasn’t the answer. The demon was dead, the Pantheon laid waste, so now the World Tree would wither.
What followed was all too obvious. Civil war.
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We take these."
"These...? The gods...?"
Gaimern pointed to the fragments left by the ancestral gods.
"Even if these revive and regain power, they’ve already failed once. If we all became spoils of war as the price, there’s no reason to give them another chance to repeat the same mistake."
"Then...?"
"We become the gods. Living eternally, as it said. If it awakens when our race perishes, then we create a race that never perishes eternally. If civil war breaks out, we stand at the vanguard and end it as swiftly as possible."
Gaimern bent down and lifted the spirit fragment. As if intoxicated by its radiant power, he closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the god’s spirit.
"Let’s go back."
The three would become kings. They would topple the three dynasties that had been mere priests to the demon, and usher in a new era. Gathering their pitiful subjects who mourned the burned World Tree and the lost traces of the gods—
They would have revenge. Against these defeated soldiers who gambled with one race’s fate. Reviving those once called ancestors, and for even longer, called ‘gods.’
"Then, it won’t be us serving as the gods’ slaves, but the gods serving us eternally."
These frail gods who had survived only by offering all their faithful to the demon’s belly were no longer needed. Elves could be great in and of themselves.
That’s what they thought. Gaimern gathered the gods’ divinities, Maleyrn shattered and distributed them, and Jerolen—
* * *
"—followed without a word."
He gulped down his drink with eyes full of regret.
"All in the Pantheon died. Gods, demons, everything, without exception. Before leaving, we had to clean obsessively to leave no loose ends. When we finally crossed the gate to return after so long..."
The curse of ages clung to them too. The price of slaying their race’s gods and devouring their divinities.
"You will not escape history." That was the sole curse pronounced by the fragments of the gods we devoured. The moment we set foot on the land, we faced ruined cities and kingdoms. Only those weakened into refugees amid war. No more great, noble, resilient elves remained.
Only refugees who had lost faith, authority, power, even pride. The three heroes tried to save and lead refugees from every region.
At first, they regretted their choice.
Then, they cursed the demon’s resurgence.
Finally, they condemned the frailty of the defeated gods.
It wasn’t our fault, but our gods’. The three who killed gods for their race now looked at their followers and thought: They were no longer heroes. No longer destined saviors of the race.
The three tyrants suddenly saw their followers as pigs in a pen.
They couldn’t share power with these frail ones. Wiser, superior beings needed to lead them.
But the three tyrants thought of each other simultaneously: ‘Not you.’ They had seen enough of what followed after absorbing all the Pantheon’s power—enough in that space.
Power that couldn’t be given to the incompetent, nor taken by the too-competent. Clutching the shattered divinities of the elven pantheon—
The three tyrants parted ways. Leaving the continent that rejected them, toward the great ocean. Even if drifting eternally at sea, willingly.
For eternal drifting might mean eternal survival.
"I heard rumors. Did some research of my own. While hearing how the others pursued immortality, I aged amid disgust. Unlike them, I had no special talents."
Gaimern, who went east, inherited a witch’s forbidden art of body transference from some eastern coastal sorceress, they said. To prepare the most suitable body, he sired offspring.
Maleyrn, who went north, mimicked Eidaar’s method. To maintain his body’s composition, he extracted elven souls and implanted them into himself.
Jerolen, finding no such method, was fading in the flow of time.
* * *
"A dragon’s flesh is immortal, Fernandez. So why do you think no dragons remain in this era?"
"Because their minds are not."
"Exactly."
Rishir smiled softly. Was it a draconic trait? Her smile astonishingly resembled Abel’s.
"You’re a mage."
"Yes."
"Then do you know why such mighty flesh harbors such paltry souls?"
One couldn’t call a dragon’s soul paltry. But he understood her meaning. Fernandez gazed at Rishir with sunken eyes.
Dragons are unstable beings. Carrying immortal flesh and mortal souls. Their bodies were the pinnacle of evolution, the finest product life could produce.
But while flesh evolves across generations, what of souls? Are modern humans’ souls superior to those of ancient, barbaric humans?
No. Spirit, nature, soul, vital soul—the four components of the spirit body. Flesh influences only the vital soul, barely.
If divinity resides at existence’s peak, a dragon’s body is nature’s evolved god. But mismatched souls caused their minds to erode slowly over the long lifespan flesh granted.
That’s ancient dragon madness. Now passed in folktales and myths. The frenzy of old dragons.
"How did you survive?"
Thus, this was the crux. He intuited Jerolen’s survival method differed little from Lacrisir’s. The way to grant immortality to two immortals would remain with her.
"A dragon’s flesh can hold divinity."
If a being has enough ‘power,’ it gains divinity. So filling nature’s godly flesh with divinity was merely confirming proven fact.
"And he had a god’s fragment."
"Like the other Serpent Kings... Yes, it must have been."
Just as Gaimern tried embedding a god’s fragment in Abel’s corpse to revive the goddess. The same method wasn’t impossible.
Indeed, Melisildur’s fragment remained in Abel’s body. The goddess’s divinity guaranteed her lifespan.
If power to revive a dead dragon existed... Stabilizing a living dragon’s unstable soul would be easy. Then the remaining issue—
"You used a god’s power."
"Yes. More precisely, I bound his soul to mine. If one dies, the other follows."
"A demon pact, repurposed."
Like demons granting power in exchange for followers’ souls, she’d adapted that contract system. Fernandez quickly grasped what she’d done.
She was now a ‘created god.’ Mixing a living god’s flesh with a dead god’s fragment—the perfect god Gaimern sought. Her pact with Jerolen differed little from god and faithful. Devouring faith for power, or trading souls for immortality.
"No, it was... a terribly romantic proposal."
Rishir blushed in denial. At that sight, Fernandez felt a familiar déjà vu. Was even this irrational, romantic obsession draconic?
Rishir nodded firmly and continued.
"Only death shall part us. That was the one... yes, in your terms, ‘contract’ we shared."
* * *
"Gaimern sought to become a god using divine power, Maleyrn borrowed the archdemon’s method to become one himself. I just wanted to survive."
Leia didn’t respond. They all now knew his words held truth. At least a sliver of it.
A solemn air pressed down on the hall. A trial where history’s witness testified on the gods’ death and race’s fall.
It bordered on confession or atonement. That a once-great hero’s sole desire after ages was mere ‘survival instinct.’ Embodying the elves’ decline.
"Like Gaimern’s ‘chance,’ one came to me too."
"...That was..."
"Yes. Atailatle. A meeting of two survivors from the two races who fought fiercest in the war. A young dragon, escaped ancient madness, boarded my flagship amid storm to rest weary wings."
"Did you see it as opportunity? For survival?"
"No. A chance to lighten my burden... my regrets."
An aged elf approaches a despairing young dragon. The western sea’s summer storm raged, no islands for the dragon’s bulk.
The dragon boarded for survival. A gamble impossible in the Celestial War era. Elves and dragons were foes then.
Yet the young dragon remembering that era, and the old elf who lived it, felt kinship on the storm-lashed deck.
You want to survive.
You survived.
The last dragon and the elf, time’s final remnant, fell in love gazing into each other’s eyes, no words needed.
"I implanted gods’ fragments into her draconic flesh. She became whole thereby, and I found light in her embrace. If I had a god, it wasn’t the dead fragments, but her."
"Impossible to stomach."
Leia, past even anger’s timing, grumbled and drank. As her rage subsided and the shock over the banquet hall lifted, the Wild Princes sighed and raised glasses with their queen.
"All of you, mooning over lovers and such."
"To Her Majesty the Queen!"
"Shut it!"
Leia growled, downing her drink. She grunted, wiped her mouth, and asked.
"Melisildur lives. The goddess commanded me directly."
"To gather fragments and revive a god?"
"Yes."
"Meaningless. Ancient gods lack power against demons. Their only strength was cursing their creations. Why revive such, why enslave ourselves?"
"Then what alternative? Another way to tread the land. To reclaim our domain, revive our race?"
Elves were declining. Not just Celestial War era, but now. Once continent-shaking, now fewer than ten thousand, a minority.
Racial extinction loomed. She had duty to secure her people’s welfare, revive the nation.
"If the era when archdemons warred gods is called Celestial War, who were the victors?"
"...What?"
Leia’s brow furrowed at the non sequitur. Jerolen said flatly.
"War’s winners are survivors. Who rules the continent now? From that era when tribes and races crumbled, continents shattered, skies fell—who seized hegemony?"
"...Humans?"
"Yes. Call that era Great War or Great Exodus, none deny it’s humanity’s age now."
Gods retreated, archdemons sealed, dragons extinct, dwarves vanished, elves exiled—that chaos endured by the weakest, frailest. Short-lived, wretched flesh, frail tempted souls. Yet.
Even if civilizations crumbled despite full effort, even if hands held only will. Bending to grasp old tools, starting anew.
Call them flame. Burning soul and life in handfuls for one step. Then the next, and next, forging a path.
Era of flame. Such a race remained on this continent.
"That’s the only hope I see."