Chapter 108
Chapter 108
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 108
Chapter Title: The Land of Madness
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What brought my senses flooding back to every inch of my body was the cold. An extreme, utterly unbearable cold.
Cold.
So damn cold.
I barely managed to pry my eyes open, and the frost caked on my eyelids cracked apart, sending a spike of excruciating pain through me.
‘Where the hell am I……?’
I tried to push myself up from the snow with my upper body and scan my surroundings, but it was impossible. A gale-force blizzard was raging, slashing at my skin with sheets of driving snow.
“Ugh, urgh…….”
Right then, a ragged, labored breathing came from immediately beside me.
Even in this snowy wasteland, the faint lilac hair she’d inherited from the progenitor of magic stood out starkly against the white. Kasena Page.
And a bit higher up, Pipi was buried in the snow with only its legs sticking out, so I hurriedly conjured a fire.
The magic circle took the form of two overlapping triangles.
The runes I inscribed were Chi (持) for sustain and Jang (場) for expansion.
Imbuing a fire-attribute spell with sustain (持; prolonged duration) and expansion (場; wide deployment)… Soon, flames unfurled like a curtain, shielding us from the bone-chilling cold.
“……?”
As I built the magic circle, I felt no strain on my core at all. I’d definitely depleted nearly all my mana before… Instead, a densely concentrated power throbbed strongly within it.
‘How many days was I out? No, if it’d been that long, I’d have frozen to death already.’
Judging by the state of the scratches on my body, less than an hour had passed. Before I could even flinch in surprise, the surreal scene from earlier flashed through my mind.
- Sometimes you call me the Void, other times the Truth. Strictly speaking, both are wrong.
I couldn’t deny the strange pounding in my chest amid the bewildering unknown.
Me, meeting the creator of magic… One of the [Ones Who Came], the Black Sun Karenden.
And in that moment of encounter, my mana had clearly been fully restored by the dazzling light of the Black Lilac.
- I didn’t summon your soul from three hundred years ago into this era to stop that destruction. It was to record it and pass it on—the light of the final era.
It seemed Karenden himself had reincarnated my soul, dead three centuries ago, into this body. But the reason was profoundly enigmatic. Pass on the light of the final era? What did that even mean?
No, this wasn’t the time to get lost in thought.
I hoisted Kasena onto my back in the snowdrift and tucked Pipi inside my blouse to thaw its body with my own warmth. Both of them were like blocks of ice.
‘Cold’s not the only problem…….’
The concentration of madness permeating—no, dominating—the air here… It wasn’t quite at the Pope’s Palace level, but it was violently oppressive.
No ordinary person, no way Kasena could endure it. Without mana control techniques, even breathing would be a struggle.
For an emergency measure, I decided to use Bell Quirius. I shifted to cradling Kasena in both arms (within my line of sight) and directly controlled the mana flowing through her body.
How long had I trudged through the blinding snow? Sure enough, Kasena vomited blood in agony. It was blackened, death-tainted blood.
‘No way…….’
I charged through the blizzard, thighs sinking into snow up to my hips on the icy plain, pouring every ounce of strength into it.
But as if mocking my efforts, the swirling snowstorm made it impossible to tell where I was headed or even if I was moving forward.
The only thing marking the passage of time was Kasena’s breathing, growing ever steeper toward its final gasps.
‘I was hoping to find some shelter from the blizzard at least.’
It was painfully clear there was no time for that.
I widened the flame curtain from circular to elliptical and used earth magic to form a flat board, laying Kasena on it—then my blood ran cold.
Her neck’s skin had turned a deep bruised blue, and by now the corruption had crept past her throat to invade her jaw and cheeks.
‘Dark poison…….’
I’d planned to unbutton her blouse and check her abdomen, but at this stage, her upper and lower body were obviously beyond saving.
In short, Kasena was going to die.
If I left her like this……
A single, pessimistic option flashed desperately in my brain.
‘No choice but to use it……?’
Maybe that’s why, even in this brutal cold, the cold sweat beading on my forehead and instantly freezing felt vividly warm.
‘……Juyeo Soge Daeban (主濾小計袋反).’
I thought it while gasping for breath. I wasn’t a witch or a priest, so I had no idea how to purge the dark poison corrupting Kasena’s body.
The only method I knew was to force her into a human stasis state with Juyeo Soge Daeban and then restore her.
But wasn’t Juyeo Soge Daeban technically an incomplete spell? Even after three hundred years, it still hadn’t healed me fully.
‘Still, right now…… no other choice.’
After agonizing hesitation, I finally held out my palm, and lines of light wove intricately, slowly forming a high-order magic circle.
1-star, 2-star, 3-star……
I wiped the cold sweat streaming down my face and spoke, though she couldn’t possibly hear.
“Miss, you’re about to fall into a somewhat… rather long sleep.”
Click.
Anxiety from an unknown future, impatience toward an unclear one, terror from having no choice but that future.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right there when you wake up.”
Click, click.
Now I finally understood.
When my body had been encased in Juyeo Soge Daeban’s ice back then, what must my hero party comrades have thought as they watched over me.
If I felt this way toward Kasena, whom I wasn’t even that close to… how much more for those guys I’d spent five years with……
- Back then, all four of us together… let’s go see the world. Got it…? We’ll wait by your side until you wake.
And at last, 5-star……
Between the dazzling rotating rings of light, countless equations unfolded, and frost shards scattered from Kasena’s toes, soon clumping into ice.
Click, click, click……
In that moment of utmost concentration, a new terror hit me, and I whipped my head around like I’d been shocked.
Something was there.
In this blizzard, something.
I’d been hearing annoying noises in my ears for a while, but they were getting closer. Now they were unmistakable.
‘Maintaining a 5-star spell while doing multi-calculations is seriously tough…….’
Even as I thought that, a 2-star flame spell was already deploying on my other palm.
Silence, stillness.
A dry swallow, a heartbeat’s worth of tense quiet. The hush before battle. And the next instant, ‘they’ burst through the blizzard.
Screeeeech─── Whoosh!
The moment I clenched the magic circle in my palm, flames snaked out like serpents, coiling around their bodies and blasting them with immense heat.
Even Rain couldn’t hold back his shock.
The things shrieking as flames devoured them weren’t human, fairy, or beastkin—nor the common monsters that served as adventurers’ prey on the Akrad Continent.
“What the hell…….”
How do you even describe those nightmare-spawned abominations?
Their cores were clearly human. More precisely, cursed beings blending beast and human traits—werebeasts.
But no werebeast had rotting flesh with ribs protruding outward, scuttling across the ground like spiders on those twenty-four ribs.
‘I’ve read about this in a book before…….’
Those traits belonged to the undead servants of one of the [Forgotten Kings], the Spider Lord. Undead werebeasts? Then this place couldn’t be……
“KIIEEEEEHHHH───!”
I thought it was just a dying screech, but that was another misjudgment in this extreme situation.
Resonating with that cry, the scraping sounds exploded from all directions—clack… clack… clatter… rattle… ribs crawling over the frozen death-ground.
Cold sweat poured out in amounts I couldn’t comprehend. I hurriedly glanced down at Kasena’s condition.
‘Juyeo Soge Daeban’s only reached her thighs…….’
With everything I had barely enough for combat, I couldn’t keep maintaining Juyeo Soge Daeban.
But if I canceled it here, Kasena would be consumed by the poison and die without question.
The highest spells I could use were 2-star at most. If only Pipi were conscious, the situation might’ve been a bit better……
Whoosh─────!
I’d planned to spread the flames like a barrier to buy time until Juyeo Soge Daeban fully deployed, but that failed too.
Before the flames could fully arc into a semicircle, a dozen undead crawled through the gap and charged ferociously.
They were drawn to strong life forces and hunted the weak……
The instant I hastily converted the barrier flames into intercepting projectiles, fangs sank into my forearm with blinding yellow pain—and in that crisis, two more lunged teeth-first at Kasena’s nape and heart.
「Dra (Dragon).
Kyu (Spew).
veny (Fiercely).
Tos (Flame).」
A noble tongue rang in my ears, and a warm breath of life caressed my cheek in a whirlwind.
In this frozen world of death, a light of life pierced through—flames.
With an ear-shattering roar, transcendent flames surged in, melting the blizzard.
The flame storm didn’t just engulf the undead touching it—it incinerated them to ash before they could even scream.
Such overwhelming power, yet it never harmed humans—no matter how many times I saw it, it was unbelievable.
“Ha, haha…….”
Overjoyed, I could only laugh dumbly. I’d seen these overwhelming flames often, three hundred years ago.
The fiery annihilation authority breathed by the Red Dragon Legion, created under the Black Sun Karenden’s command of ‘Abyssal Annihilation’ to fulfill that purpose.
Unlike the Light Dragons made for ‘Order’ or Water Dragons for ‘Stability,’ these were purely for war—the ferocious flames of the Fire Dragon kin.
‘And this level of power… no doubt a true dragon on Yoruhar’s level.’
Silence fell after the flames instantly eradicated every undead in the area, broken only by heavy footsteps approaching.
「Do bal ru shi…… Who are you?」
As the blizzard melted by the flames began swirling anew, what appeared before me was a dragon embodying primal power in the form of fire.
Scales blazing red-hot across its body like flames, grotesquely twisted and torn massive wings… The sheer pressure of an absolute being.
「This is forbidden territory, a land of madness where children of light must not tread.」
The relief of survival washed over me then, but seeing me collapse to my knees, the red dragon narrowed its eyes suspiciously.
「Do you fear this form? Humans remain pitifully frail.」
The dragon’s massive frame suddenly wreathed in brilliant flames, scattering embers—revealing the figure of a beautiful woman.
Beneath hair more radiant than any flame in the world, golden dragon eyes slit vertically met mine.
Her mature, curvaceous body was clad in red scales like armor, and strangely, she carried a large basket on her back like a backpack.
“……?”
Before I could ask what it was, the red dragon heard Kasena’s plaintive moan, parted her lips slightly, and breathed into her.
A miracle bloomed from that red breath.
Kasena’s breathing, fading under the abyss’s corrosion, stabilized rapidly.
The abyssal energy that had climbed to her eyes was devoured by the flowing flames lighting her veins red, driven steadily downward.
Frid had once explained that miracle to me.
A purification authority only true dragons, entrusted with world stewardship, could wield—one no human shrine maiden or fairy priest could replicate.
As I stared entranced, the red dragon scooped up Kasena lightly and jerked her chin.
「More undead will come soon. Follow.」
Looking back, this was the starting point of that tragic bond. The end of the bond, or the start of another—it could be either.
In any case, the fateful encounter with ‘that child’ began abruptly, without any warning.
Thus dawned the prelude to my century-long journey.