Chapter 91
Chapter 91
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 91
Chapter Title: Trial of the Dead God (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*
His life had always been the same. Pitch-black darkness, terrified flight, desperate struggles for survival, a heart filled with malice.
For a brief moment, a gentle mountain breeze had given him respite. That breeze was named Aria. The woman who followed silently behind him, a smile swallowing her sorrow, her head bowed gently.
Fernandez gazed at that image and took another step. The painting changed.
Aria was prone to frequent illnesses. Her frail body couldn't withstand the harsh wandering, pursuit, and flight.
She should have always kept only joyful things close, living a modest but fulfilling life. She was truly a woman worthy of that.
She didn't belong in an era where demons howled in every shadow. Fernandez clenched his jaw until his teeth threatened to shatter.
-Thud.
Now, even taking a single step required pouring in all his strength. It wasn't that his senses were distorted. Even using all the tendons and powerful driving muscles of the Religiosa Demonica, bending his knee was no easy task.
In fact, each step now echoed with a heavy impact down the corridor. Like the beat of a drum.
-Thud.
-Thud. Thump.
The violent pounding of his heart pumping blood filled his ears. Blood surged beyond the limits of his flesh, red congestion rising on his skin.
-Thump!
Heartbeat, footsteps, rupturing sounds from his entire body. They mingled, resounding like drumbeats. Fast, sticky, intense rhythm.
-Thump. Thump.
The images enveloping the deep, endless corridor ahead of Fernandez began to ripple. In time with his steps, with the drumbeats.
-Thump!
The Knight of the Heavens, Parian Deadrican. There was a hero called by that name. To Feizashi in his twilight years, a hero who posed no particular threat.
Back then, Feizashi reigned at the peak of his power.
His body, twisted by long-term mana corruption, was slowly dying. Yet in contrast, his magic, strength, and minions had grown to threaten an entire kingdom.
That was when it happened. When an assassin scaled his spire. When he watched the assassin's retreating back after plunging a dagger into the heart of the dying Aria.
“Aria!!!”
It was a roar so immense it was hard to believe it came from his throat. Feizashi never raised his voice or screamed. He always whispered quietly, like a snake slithering through a swamp.
But in that moment, Feizashi's diseased lungs tore forth a massive scream. The bed was soaked in blood, and his demons greedily lapped up the blood pooling on the floor.
The curtains fluttered in the night breeze. Through them shone the night sky with its emerald clouds. Beneath it lay Aria, pale and gasping.
“Aria, damn it. Get out, you cursed bastards! Get out!”
“...Teacher.”
Aria gasped, spitting blood mixed with flesh. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over.
“Don't speak. It missed your heart. You're still... still okay. Don't speak. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. My Aria. Aria.”
“Teacher.”
Aria grasped Feizashi's trembling wrist. At that slender, stubborn resistance, Feizashi froze like stone.
“I'll... I'll bring you back. I swear I'll... Even if you become a vampire, a lich. Even if only your soul remains, wandering. I won't let you go like this.”
At those words, Aria quietly shook her head.
“Teacher, have I become your regret...?”
“...Aria.”
“Lonesome one. Now who will cry in your place...?”
Her cold hand touched Feizashi's cheek. Coughing, blood flowed from Aria's mouth. And from Feizashi's heart. Deeply, profoundly.
“Don't speak anymore, Aria. For me... live.”
“I have no regrets. From the moment I first met you, until now.”
That evening confession of regret was a lie. Aria smiled sadly. That was the end. Feizashi would never hear her breath again.
Amid the scent of blood was a familiar fragrance. Freesia flowers. Feizashi stood silently, clutching Aria's hand. The trembling gradually faded.
His dry eyes, broken from long experiments and hellish mana corruption, shed no tears. Feizashi looked down at Aria, peacefully asleep.
She was smiling. As innocently as the day they met. If he revived her corpse, bound her as a specter. Would she still smile at him then?
Mana twisted in Feizashi's hand, then faded. He let his hand drop powerlessly.
“I'll honor your death. Aria.”
-Awoo...
Instead, Feizashi stepped out of the cradle and grasped the shaking, small, pale hand. It was warm and soft. Completely unlike his own rough, twisted, bony fingers.
His long life had been a torment to his soul. Now, merely one more line added to that history.
Feizashi looked down at the deep blue eyes staring up at him, eyes identical to his own. Clear, pure, brimming with tears.
“Ha...”
His hand moved quickly, weaving, and soon a single flower appeared. A sprig of freesia dangled from his palm. He placed it on Aria's cold chest.
There was no time to collapse in grief. He had never lived complacently. Cradling his son's body, he turned and left the room.
*
“Huh... Huuuh...”
Short breaths escaped Fernandez's mouth. He was now practically crawling along the floor. The weight pressing down on him grew ever more intense.
-Crack.
The sound of his ankle shattering rang out. Or perhaps his knee.
-Kwach!
Fernandez hurriedly thrust his sword into the floor to support himself. His eyes met the wall. In the mural, an old man held a child. The baby extended a white arm, pointing to the end of the corridor.
-Sinner, walk toward the rack.
“Fine...!”
Blood trickled from between his shattered molars. He spat—phlegm mixed with blood and tooth fragments. Fernandez took another step.
And the painting changed. The corridor twisted. Gravity warped, the corridor coiled into a spiral. Fernandez pressed on, barely crawling forward.
*
Looking back now, his son resembled his mother more. Feizashi inwardly sighed in relief as he watched the child smile purely at him.
The child grew rapidly. With that, Feizashi felt his own body dying. As if his son were sucking away his life. Fortunately.
In the mural, the old man always scolded the infant, the toddler, the boy, the youth. Wielding his twisted fingers harshly, spewing vitriol.
“No, that's not it!”
Fernandez cried out with bloodshot eyes. No, no... I just hoped he wouldn't take after me. That was all.
Toward the old man turning coldly away, the boy raised a small arm. The boy's arm clenched at empty air a few times, then fell limply.
Whatever Feizashi wished, the child grew even stronger instead. Like his father, refusing to yield. He became a youth with prominent deep blue eyes and black curly hair.
“Father, this time I burned their stronghold. Father...”
The son looked up at Feizashi with eyes tangled in fear, terror, sorrow, and rage. The old wizard, gasping on his throne, clicked his tongue and gazed coldly down at his son.
“...What of Karamar Fortress?”
“Not yet... but soon it will fall to us...”
“Useless fool.”
The son flinched and froze at the words. Feizashi's cloudy eyes looked down at him. As always, his father avoided meeting his gaze. Merely overlooking him.
-Kekeke, kek.
The demons lining the throne room laughed at him in unison. The son trembled briefly, then clenched his fist tight.
“Next time, I'll bring you something that won't shame you, Father.”
The son turned and left. The throne room doors soon closed.
*
Gazing at the jaw, lips, nose bridge that took after his mother. Feizashi crumbled, as if staring into a mirror reflecting his failure to protect his wife.
Hearing the eyes, hair, gruff voice that mirrored his own. Feizashi distanced himself, as if seeing the trials and thorny path awaiting his son's future.
The son was his mirror. Reflecting his bare face and wretched soul. Feizashi hated his son.
Until he faced his corpse.
“Keheuk...!!”
*
“Keheuk...!!”
Innards-mixed blood poured from Fernandez's mouth. His lungs torn, even breathing was agony. With half-lidded eyes shedding bloody tears, he walked on.
-Kwach!
That day's memory—emotions, colors, scents, sensations—lingered on his tongue and nose. The murals didn't just project and revive memories. They manifested his entire experience directly in his mind.
“Hoo...!”
-Kwach!
Another step. One more time.
-Kwach!
Half-crawling, using his blade as a cane, barely advancing. The greatsword's blade beside his face reflected his visage.
In that dark steel gleamed an old man vomiting blood. Fernandez glared at the blade through tear-blurred vision.
The old man glared back at him.
*
-Kyaaaagh!! Uwaaagh! Father!! Father!!
It was a horrific wail. The revived corpse son clawed out his own heart, confirming it black and dead. Then, gazing at his hollowed chest, he confirmed he still moved.
-Kuuuu... Kuuh...
He tore himself apart until he became a pile of flesh. As long as Feizashi's mana sustained him, the son couldn't end it.
So Feizashi ended his son's second life with his own hands.
That day, he lost his son twice.
He stared at the son's mangled flesh, unrecognizable. Amid the cold corpse pile, ridiculously, Feizashi recalled Aria.
The nose, lips, jawline like hers... Now he possessed nothing to remind him of her.
“I regret it. Aria.”
Trembling, touching his son's corpse, Feizashi's eyes slowly closed. He recalled the small white hand reaching for him.
He should have grasped it once more. Smiled warmly once more. My son. Even now facing you like this.
I remember the day you were born. Even the moment you cooled in my arms.
“I regret. Aria. I regret it.”
A single tear fell from Feizashi's dry eyes.
*
Fernandez could move no further. Physically, emotionally. He knelt, eyes closed, motionless.
The corridor walls bore no more murals. No more warping, no spiraling twists.
It stretched straight ahead. In the center of that cold, silent passage, Fernandez knelt with eyes shut.
-Ascend the rack. Sinner. Feel the weight of your sins. Judgment begins.
Ahead, at the distant end of the corridor, loomed a massive altar. The path was nearly at its end.
-Whoosh.
Light blazed. From Fernandez's chest and back. The war god's stigmata flickered. Immortality, indomitability.
“Yes.”
Fernandez's eyes gleamed blue through his disheveled black hair.
-Kwaduk.
One more step. Fernandez slowly rose. The greatsword flashed, reflecting light. His eyes fixed on the jackal god's statue ahead.
The jackal was smiling. Its brass spear gleamed.
-Thud.
Another step. His foot moved. The crushing pressure still bore down, making even one step grueling. But without pause.
He had never lived complacently.
Toward the dead god declaring judgment upon the inquisitor.
“I'm coming. Kadan. If your curse ends here, pray.”
To any god, any words. Desperately. Somehow twisting those dead lips.
He resolved to regret no more.