Chapter 65
Chapter 65
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: Finale: Elegy for the Dead King
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*
Kirhas bounded from rooftop to rooftop, crossing buildings as she raced toward the market street. The mission Fernandez had given her was simple: deliver a warning to Byemier. Surely nothing had happened to Fernandez...
‘This anxiety.’
What should she call it? Kirhas pondered as she planted her foot on the edge of a roof and launched herself toward the window ledge of the next building. Dependency? Since when had she become someone who relied on another?
In the wasteland, when her tribe was destroyed and she alone was sold into the slave markets. Even when she was sold as a sacrificial offering to a heretical sect because she was too proud and arrogant to serve as a dancer. She had never entrusted her fate to anyone.
Yet. As she stepped onto a gutter along the roof railing and twisted into a leap, she remembered. Inhaling the thick scent of ash and flame wafting from the market alleys, she recalled a not-so-distant past.
-Reasons don’t matter. For people like you and me, purpose is what counts. ‘Save the world.’ ‘Burn the demons.’ ‘Exterminate the heretics.’ They’re all fine goals, but not our concern.
In the blood-soaked underground sewers, as he opened the door to the world. Fernandez had said that to her. She remembered. The cold air of dawn, and his eyes looking down at her against the deep indigo sky.
The scent of embers. A pungent, scorching smell. His words, tone, manner of speech, even his small gestures—nothing about him wasn’t seductive to her. She remembered his sharp jawline bathed in dawn light and his somber gaze.
‘My benefactor.’
Call it dependency if you must. Even if her ancestors condemned her for it. Even if they scolded her for forgetting the great bloodline of the Kalani clan and acting like a pet, like a slave. She had already sworn loyalty to Fernandez.
-Tat-dot.
Kirhas dropped to one knee at the edge of a market alley roof and scanned the street below for signs of Fernandez. Traces of magic and combat were etched everywhere in the alleys. The smell of ash masked his scent.
‘This anxiety...’
-Plop. Drip-drip.
A raindrop fell with a soft tap on the bridge of her nose. She stared blankly up at the sky. The heavens, which had been proudly moonlit moments ago, were now shrouded in thick storm clouds.
-Rumble!!
Dark green lightning arced through the clouds. They were gathering toward the royal castle. She had no knack for sensing mana, but her instincts screamed warnings of impending threat.
“Urgh...!”
Soon, an immense presence loomed over the sky. The suffocating pressure made Kirhas lose her balance for a moment and slump down. Something lurked up there in the heavens. Atop the black clouds, some entity. An ancient being.
A godlike being!
‘My benefactor...!!’
The battle at the abandoned mine village flashed in her mind. Fernandez had fought to protect her when her legs gave out from the pressure and tension, nearly dying from his wounds. It couldn’t happen again.
Never again. She couldn’t be a burden to him!
-Thump, thump, thump.
Strength surged into Kirhas’s lithe legs, her heart pounding with willpower as fuel. Her blood raced, warmth returning to her body. She rose to her feet. After a brief wobble, she bolted toward the royal castle once more.
A sense beyond her five senses—intuition and instinct—instinctively tracked Fernandez’s trail, guiding her path. An optimized route accounting perfectly for her physical condition unfolded before her eyes.
Black rainwater blurred her vision, and the slick ground threatened to send her sliding. But she didn’t stop. The path she saw gleamed with the deep indigo light of that dawn sky.
The road to her lord.
*
Abel stood atop the church spire, gazing at the vast barley fields sprawling below the capital. Once the harvest season ended, they’d probably plant something else. Abel remembered a time when this entire hill had been soaked in blood.
Hill giant, child of a god. Or fallen demigod. Its true nature was shrouded in the secrets of the mythic age, but it was one of the divine-blooded survivors from the War in Heaven. She recalled how Knight King Dane had felled the beast alone—a fortress in itself just by sitting there.
My child.
Abel pictured the barley fields as grasslands, when crude fences and huts dotted the land instead of this grand city. The radiant king. Lord of knights. The great hero who slew the hill giant. Dane.
Countless people who followed him, and the knights who swore to protect them—they all came to mind one by one. Her inner world of imagery, the tombstones of winter.
I fell alongside those heroes.
The Burial Cult’s final army had been a horde raised from the remains of dead knights. Powerful warriors in black plate, displaying their martial prowess from life, had assaulted Dane’s kingdom. Abel had soared above this plain and plunged into their midst.
If shattering their forces and protecting these young humans required only her life—nothing more—then if safeguarding her children cost only that much. Abel was content with it.
As the boundary between life and death, the underworld and the material world. The divinity flowing in Abel’s soul had nailed her there eternally. Death was no rest for her. It was an eternal elegy for the knights she had to slay once more.
‘If this is the price returned to me, I will gladly honor their deeds forever.’
Then a man entered her world. Fernandez. Abel rolled his name on her tongue and blushed faintly.
The inquisitor who awoke her, cast rude spells on her, and shamelessly reached out for help. In his bloodshot eyes, she saw attachment deep within. To life, and to someone.
Curiosity, chivalry. Call it what you will. She decided to step into the material world once more. Even knowing her body wouldn’t last half a day.
-I wish you could see those sights yourself.
After her long sacrifices, there could be a better reward. Fernandez had said that. A life not for sacrificing to others, but for oneself.
‘You rascal. You don’t live that way yourself.’
Fernandez himself was charging like a buffalo, throwing away his flesh, his life, his soul. For the ‘salvation of the world,’ by his words. Or for the ‘salvation of his son.’
-Roooar!!
“What the—!”
An earthquake engulfed the bell tower where she stood. Abel snapped from her thoughts and gripped the shaking tower wall. Immense power emanated from the sky above and the earth below. Strangely linked mana was blanketing the entire city.
A familiar presence prickled her nerves. Necromantic mana, foul and filthy, just like the mages who mocked her end. Abel glared at the sky with eyes blazing blue.
-Rumble!!
-Shoooaaa!!
Storm clouds enveloped the royal castle, and black rainwater poured down like a waterfall. Abel watched the dark green lightning threading through them. Amid it all, a sinister gaze gleamed clearly, along with fragments of screaming souls.
-Roooar!!
Lightning struck the heart of the darkened city, illuminating it. The city flickered white and black, stripped of color. Abel knew this sight.
“The Burial Cult...!”
Rage blazed in Abel’s eyes. She seized the shaking spire’s railing and leaped toward the ground.
*
Having heard Moria’s final breath, Fernandez sat still for a moment. He stared at the flames encircling him, consuming the market alley. Even without his intervention, the massive blaze would devour him where he sat.
‘Yeah, that might be for the best.’
Officially branded a witch, he didn’t want Moria’s corpse strung up on a gibbet as an example for the pantheon. Even if it was mere whimsy.
-You’re being overly sentimental.
Feizashi said quietly. Pain laced his voice too. For a talented mage driven to infernal power amid abuse, discrimination, scorn, and ridicule, it was all too familiar.
Wordlessly, Fernandez lifted Moria’s body. He gently laid it into the rising flames.
-Tat-tat-tat.
Fire leaped to his arms, scorching them viciously. Amid the agony of searing flesh, Fernandez gazed at her serene, sleep-like expression.
-Fernandez. Can you hear me?
‘Yeah. No more time for sentiment now.’
-Rumble...
Fernandez’s mystic vision detected mana boiling far underground. Cracks crumbling the boundary of life and death were spreading slowly from the depths, now toward the entire city.
If the Bronze Throne had functioned, it could have blocked the grand ritual below. But Fernandez didn’t lament what he lacked. There wasn’t time.
‘The castle.’
-Correct.
The epic spell’s core was the underground altar, but its catalyst lay in the royal castle. Fernandez eyed the dark green mana traces spiderwebbing across the sky. Traces stitched from shattered soul fragments.
‘Mumto’s back.’
-Pissed off, huh? Rightfully so.
‘Using so much power while sealed?’
-It’s all self-harm. Stop him here, and it’ll hurt his forces.
Then it was worth the gamble. Fernandez watched the storm clouds gathering over the castle. At the vortex’s center, a sinister gaze lingered. Nightmare Mumto blessed this region.
-Crackle.
The boundary of life and death crumbled once more. No one in the city had noticed yet. This area had become a land of death. Literally—deaths here now fell under Mumto’s domain.
Fernandez checked his condition. The Bronze Throne was out for a full day, and his right arm, burned by Chellini’s mana, was useless. He was armed with only a dagger. Hardly at full strength.
-Tat-tak.
After loosening up, Fernandez dashed toward the castle. Demonica blood infused his body with fresh vigor. He wasn’t on the verge of collapse, and with that much stamina assured, he would never stop.