Chapter 296
Chapter 296
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 296
Chapter Title: Shadowed Sky (1)
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What is romance? To the elves who occupied most of the space here, romance was a word with connotations similar to foolishness. To those who had lost their gods and wandered solely for survival, romance felt no different from the delusions of drug addicts escaping reality.
However, even they—even in their hearts—this faint moonlight would not signify dullness.
The sight of the king who had led their race since the era when gods dwelt, sharing a sword dance and clasping hands with an outsider.
The dragon, thought lost to distant ages, had returned, and the age had come when fragments of dead gods gathered. A millennium. The time needed for faded faiths and color-drained fairy tales to regain their vibrancy.
That passage of time, those accumulated years, had stripped the elves of their prime vigor… but it was enough to instill a longing for forgotten legends.
“Rain’s coming.”
Leia murmured, watching the two step aside. The moon was shrouded in a thick halo, and through the dim moonlight, sea mist drifted. Before raindrops even fell on the deck, the sensitive elves’ ears caught the sound of approaching wind and rain.
“Let’s head inside. Time for a drink. You lot over there—you come too.”
She jerked her chin at Jerolen’s retainers and trudged toward the gangway. Matching the queen’s steps, the nobles and Wild Princes offered brief nods toward the pair before departing.
* * *
Meanwhile, Abel glanced at Lishir, who was biting her lip, and spoke quietly.
“Do you trust your spouse?”
“Of course…”
“Then why so tense?”
At her words, Lishir squeezed her eyes shut. Shaking off her fear with effort, she said,
“I… If that man harms him… I…”
“You’ll oppose me?”
“I will!”
Lishir cried out without opening her eyes.
“I will! I’ve… I’ve lived longer than you! Even longer now! I’m not… the me from back then. I…”
“Heh. Lishir. Yes… I’m gladder than anyone that you’ve grown so well.”
Abel smiled softly and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Lishir trembled and leaned into her, sobbing.
“Abel… I can’t live without Jerri. He’s everything to me. I don’t even care about living forever. But… I can’t bear to watch him die.”
“I understand your heart, Lishir. I know it well.”
For those left alone, if they stumbled upon a lighthouse amid the vast ocean, how could they not love its light? She, of all people, couldn’t dismiss the feelings of her young kin.
A way to quell an ancient dragon’s madness… Abel gazed down at Lishir sobbing in her arms, lost in thought. If there were an easy method, no. Even if it were the hardest path, someone had to survive.
If divinity were needed for dragons to endure, then the dragons of that era would have defied the gods. Standing with Hell held no reservations in that war. Perfect allies didn’t exist from the start.
Just as Fernandez had pondered Jerolen’s methods while listening to Lishir, Abel now pondered Lishir’s condition. An ancient dragon’s madness was a shackle closing in on an aged soul. One that could never be undone…
A half-baked solution. No, a mere stopgap, the lesser evil. Infusing divinity. She, who bore divinity in her own body to live in this mortal world, knew that truth better than anyone.
‘They don’t grow.’
To suppress an ancient dragon’s madness, one must not become an ancient dragon. One must not grow. A way to evade accumulating years meant those years wouldn’t settle into body or mind.
Lishir… was still a young dragon. Like the elves cursed by their own god after stealing his divinity, paying the price for their entire race. She was cursed. A curse of eternal immaturity.
Manufactured immortality…
‘To great gods, a curse is… much like a blessing.’
Abel ended her brief reverie with a shake of her head. Stroking Lishir’s hair, she whispered,
“Just as you trust your spouse, so do I. Lishir. He never retracts what he’s once affirmed. Today’s fight between him and your spouse won’t drag on.”
“Yes…”
Whether from fear of Abel or emotions toward kin reunited after ages, Lishir nodded without complaint.
* * *
“Have you ever met a god?”
Jerolen sat at the portside rail, gazing at the undulating night sea, and spoke. He tossed a bottle of liquor to Fernandez.
Fernandez caught it midair, wet his lips with a sip, and sat beside him.
“Yeah.”
“Not a great experience, I take it. And you a priest.”
“How could any son love his parents?”
“Sometimes a prodigal son pops up for balance. Right?”
Jerolen guffawed and took the bottle back, gulping deeply.
“Gods. What a joke. Transcendents. Immortals. Souls structurally forged tougher than mortal ones, built to hold concepts… or those who endured ages to attain such spiritual rank.”
Boiled down like that, nothing so grand, is it? Jerolen shrugged.
“Not something anyone can become easily, sure. But hardly noble in their essence.”
“Soul parasites.”
“What? Hahaha! Uhahaha! Yes! Exactly! Parasites!”
Jerolen laughed till tears welled, then tilted the bottle with a melancholic smile.
“You heard from Lishir. About the end of the elven pantheon.”
“Yeah.”
“That was the fate of defeated gods. Not sure about the dwarves, but for you humans, it’s fortunate. Your pantheon didn’t fall.”
“What’re you getting at?”
“Our gods… our ‘parents’ who shaped us. Our distant ancestors, our great leaders. In that moment, souls torn out and devoured by the great demon’s grasp—what did they pray for?”
“What?”
Jerolen stared unwavering at the approaching storm clouds and continued.
“Whom did the gods pray to? Even they couldn’t face death impassively.”
If they’d been impassive before their deaths, closer to mere concepts, it would’ve been better. They wouldn’t have laid a ‘curse’ as payback for stolen divinity.
So then. Those petty personality gods, baser than we imagined. Facing encroaching doom, whom did they pray to?
“And what must we pray to?”
“Do you see the end times?”
“Must it be visible to know? Did we need to see to sense rain hidden in that mist, or what lies beneath the night sea we must behold? We feel it.”
Jerolen’s eyes gleamed faintly. He passed the bottle to Fernandez and said,
“Unlike humans, we’re more sensitive to such things.”
“……!”
In that instant, a memory flashed through Fernandez’s mind. From his past life.
The era when doom’s countdown began. Early in the great war, as hellgates opened and angels descended from heavenly gates to fight—when demons grinned from every shadow, reveling in triumphs and screams—
The sea lords who hunted any bearing divinity at random. The elves vanished from some turning point.
Some said they fled to safe havens known only to them. Others, that they sank into deep, perilous seas to meet the end.
Unknowable. Nomads adrift on oceans, not settled on continents—the exact moment of their disappearance. Back then, Feizashi cared little.
“If…”
If doom comes. What happens to you?
When Fernandez had asked that, Jerolen bowed his head and chuckled softly.
“We vanish.”
“What?”
“When doom nears, Hell covets this material world, and that endless war… after a millennium’s truce, the new war dawns.”
It would awaken. The ancient demon that devoured our gods, grinning at us from the pantheon’s domain. The parasite that deemed the time not yet ripe, now become our tribal god itself.
“The moment we sense doom, our entire race kneeling before approaching despair. It rends the veil of reality, descends to devour our souls, and is reborn a true god.”
“So that’s why the island?”
“What?”
“Have you pondered why your flagship is an island? Other Serpent Kings’ flagships were ships. Ready to sail anywhere, anytime. To wander toward safer shores. But yours is an island. Islands don’t move.”
A fortress on vast oceans, escapable anywhere, anytime. Such power brings assurance. Belief that, whatever threat, escape and survival are possible.
The moment that belief crumbles. Realizing no escape remains. What despair would elves feel?
But an island. Becoming settlers. From a homeland to defend, no escape left. Ultimate desperation. Considering the race’s welfare, never to choose.
Yet… in this dilemma, where kneeling to doom’s despair heralds true end, one king thought thus.
Better no path of flight. Desperation sharpens resolve, unyielding.
Wise. Continent settlers, humans—till the very last, they gripped weapons against doom. In other words, the elves’ disappearance in that past life was, precisely, tied to Jerolen’s flagship falling.
“Truly… wise. No human I knew, nor even kin, grasped that point as you have.”
“There was one more.”
“…One?”
“A further safeguard, I mean. Not mere desperation, clinging to survival in futility.”
“Care to guess?”
Fernandez handed the bottle to Jerolen. Jerolen shifted from the faint horizon to meet Fernandez’s eyes.
Fernandez watched Jerolen drink deeply, then suddenly said,
“You mimicked that great demon who devoured your gods.”
Devouring divinity, lurking, now the tribal god itself—a parasite’s method, replicated perfectly.
Implanting divinity in a young dragon to revive as god. Not so different from Gaimeirn’s way, up to there…
“Not as a servant, but a true tribal god. Not defeated past gods, but a new symbol of hope. If a doom god descends when the race drowns in despair… serve a new tribal god symbolizing hope, uprooting doom’s precondition.”
“It failed, though.”
“Too soon to abandon?”
“It required the faith of all kin. Only when all pray to hope in despair’s moment could it manifest as their symbol. How? With three dynasties split, even seizing control to enforce faith barely allows the attempt.”
Sea hegemony lies with Leia now; Jerolen is but an exiled king granted a truce in defeat. He wouldn’t have resisted had she poisoned him.
“At least one was saved. Enough to live for. She couldn’t become our god, but she became mine.”
“So, despair then?”
“No. One more remains. Can you guess?”
Jerolen shook the bottle, gauging the dregs. Empty. He tsked briefly and hurled it toward the night sea. It arced cleanly, shattering into black waves and sinking.
“What is it?”
“Humans.”
The heavenly war was humanity’s victory. How? Jerolen, fled to seas evading war’s frenzy unlike other kings, never underestimated humans.
Vermin luckily claiming empty lands. Other Serpent Kings viewed them no more, no less. When they scourged continents, humans fared little better than livestock or slaves.
Yet Jerolen judged by results alone. Process be damned. They won the war. Survival and prosperity proved it. So how? Sealing the great demon didn’t mean Hell’s defeat.
Myriad hellgates then. Gods meddling ceaselessly in soldier games. Amid other mighty races and beasts, their survival demanded reason…
“I met one just like you, and knew for sure.”
Karos. Humans called him Charlos the Great. His existence was the key to victory.