Chapter 160
Chapter 160
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 160
Chapter Title: The Beginning of Fate
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It was broad daylight, yet the sky was swallowed by pitch-black rain clouds, plunging the world into midnight-like darkness. On this new moon when even the sun had set and the moon vanished, complete darkness would soon descend upon the world.
“Light the fires.”
At Tureina’s command, flames erupted from the fifteen pillars of the Bellakior Temple, where corrosive acidic rain had been pouring down in waves.
In the past, these pillars had borne flames more precious than gold, illuminating the world’s darkness. Not like now, with their inky blue fires devouring the light.
At the center of power lay the Polantir Altar, where a baby dragon strained against iron chains, a boy was trapped in a block of ice, and the Beltar Sacred Stone shimmered with cosmic hues.
“Ah, out, about!”
From the center circle of the magic array drawn there, ferocious darkness overflowed, soon spreading in all directions like a bursting dam.
「Ah... Fate begins.」
As the darkness split, unfolded, and raced along its path, the rain-eroded ground crumbled, and the forests melted away.
The ritual power surged toward the other three peaks, waves of terror carrying the tomb’s damp chill, and the temples on those abyss-captured summits resonated, shooting unidentified darkness into the sky.
Rumble rumble rumble...
Amid thousands upon thousands of crows blotting out the sky in black swarms, the earth began to shake violently.
“The omens have started...”
The trio leaping over the rain-slicked mountainside saw it too. Valensidis narrowed his eyes, and Miria, who had been pulling Rain up, asked,
“Omens?”
“Think of it as preliminary work to time the ritual exactly at midnight. In magical terms, it’s like running the equations.”
“No time to chat... Let’s move.”
The high-frequency hum from the sky-piercing darkness gradually faded, but soon explosions, shouts, and screams echoed noisily from various points across the mountain.
Ritual power detonating, severed limbs spraying blood into the air, the clamor of magic, spells, spears, and swords piercing through the rain.
The bloody clashes of clashing beliefs had begun on the three peaks.
- The Seven Evils witches will be guarding the three peaks.
Valensidis had explained.
The Seven Evils were typically former Grand Witches or arch-witch level experts—not the “roots,” but the “flower buds.”
Yuliana had pointed out each spot on a detailed map of the mountain range.
- Rivendel will take the northwest ridge, the FakeWarrior legion the southeast Flame Summit, and the Martial God Alliance and Witch Association the south Blaze Summit.
- Where do we go?
- The center of the array, Myth Peak. Climb the Thousand Steps, secure the True Dragon’s remains. And meet Tureina.
The Thousand Steps weren’t a thousand individual stairs, but a staircase with a thousand landings.
That alone gave a sense of Myth Peak’s height—twice that of the other peaks.
Under Miria’s lead, they had quietly advanced, assassinating sentries, but even this stealthy progress had its limits.
“Intruders!”
From the murky depths of the stairs ahead, countless conical hats appeared, their outlines soon converging into myriad points of light from spells.
“Out of the way...!”
Before that power could take form, before the supernatural force could manifest. Before the words could even leave their mouths.
“...Bell Quirius!”
0101010001—the chants turned to agonized screams as their mouths filled with raging karmic flames.
I couldn’t kill them. Not me, who hadn’t steeled myself to kill Tureina.
That started the neutralization of the witches, and corpses lurched from both sides of the stairs.
The victims whose hearts had been eaten by corpse crows were mostly mountain villagers, but there were adventurers, soldiers, and even magical beasts.
And at the rear of the defensive line stood a witch in a jet-black conical hat, exuding an extraordinary presence. One of the Seven Evils.
“I can’t understand it, Valensidis. You, who received her greatest favor—why? As Fride once wisely said, men can’t be trusted.”
Almost simultaneously with her words, before even Bell Quirius could interfere, a 3-star spell’s high-speed chant completed.
“Regina’s a tough one. I’ll handle her. You go ahead.”
Valensidis stepped forward then, snapping open his iron fan.
He forcibly altered the wind’s flow. Crescent-shaped blades of honed wind shredded the flesh of the corpse-crow hosts charging from both sides.
At that signal, the witches Yuliana had assigned countered the waves of death surging from all directions. Amid the frenzy of flashes and blasts, I dashed forward.
‘We’re not at leisure to exchange sentimental words like “let’s go together to the end”—no time for that anyway.’
Far above, the abyss of darkness blanketing Myth Peak’s summit was thickening by the moment.
‘I have to go.’
I desperately moved my feet through the wind and rain. My still-unhealed body’s joints creaked in pain.
‘I have to reach those two.’
The ferocious gales whipped at Ceresia’s cloak, nearly toppling me more than once, but I never stopped.
- About!
- Master!
What if even a scratch marred Aki’s body? The odds were near zero since he needed to be an intact sacrifice, but what if the resistance delayed things and they started the ritual early?
‘Tureina.’
What if the FakeWarrior crushed Flame Summit with overwhelming force and moved to the array’s center, Myth Peak, to kill Tureina?
‘Hurry, I have to hurry.’
Behind me, the clamor of crow caws and clashing magic faded into the distance, eventually lost in the rain’s hush.
Whoosh...
The downpour was so fierce it was as if the sky had a hole, visibility zero beyond five meters.
At some point while dashing up the stairs through the curtain of rain, one of the shadowy pillars flickering vaguely beyond the veil faded rapidly.
Miria, with far sharper eyes than mine, said,
“Southeast... Flame Summit.”
“Flame, Flame, Flame, Flame.”
A signal that Millone Alter Gaumris had subdued the mission area and neutralized its array. As expected of the FakeWarrior... insanely fast.
I had to hurry.
Heavy moisture weighed on my shoulders, body heat draining rapidly from my soaked form.
‘This damned Clearlight Scripture... how much has it weakened my body?’
Every time I blasted obstructing crows or witches with pillars of fire, my scant stamina depleted faster.
“Damn, damn...”
In a blurry moment of vision, my foot slipped on the stairs, nearly sending me tumbling, but Miria instantly grabbed my arm.
“Just a bit more! We’re almost there!”
Meanwhile, at the Polantir Altar, the Beltar Sacred Stone glowed toward Tureina, who observed the unfolding chaos with a pipe in her mouth.
「Ru shi han ter... Proceed with the ritual of fate.」
“The sun hasn’t fully set yet.”
「Kirhak, the flesh may form unstably, but better unstable than not at all. Begin immediately.」
The ritual crows perched beside Tureina flapped into the storm, conveying the order to her minions scattered across the range.
“Isn’t this way too early?”
May, one of the Seven Evils guarding the Thousand Steps’ summit, furrowed her brow at the string message from the crow—right then.
“Hm...?”
From far below the stairs, dry explosions rang out in succession, and soon their source emerged. May’s eyes widened.
—It’s the Dragon’s Guardian!
—Block him from reaching Myth Peak!
The witches blocking his path tried to chant, only to clutch their mouths and collapse, or get struck by a staff and tumble off the stairs into the mountainside.
“Lady May!”
“What’s happening?”
We’d heard he was hit by the Clearlight Scripture.
But no matter how powerful one’s eyes, human vision always has blind spots.
May raised her hand, and with a tearing wail, thick shadows blanketed the area. Three-eyed monstrous birds.
The beasts swirled gales from the air and dove at the boy in a flash.
“Get lost───!”
The boy roared hoarsely, and blinding flames erupted from the ground, incinerating the monsters’ flesh in an instant.
“...!”
A single strike, executed in a heartbeat too swift to track—when had he even calculated it?
Even as her eyes thrilled with terror, May smirked. The six witches’ combined 4-star spell chant had finished.
As she thrust that air-shaking force toward the boy, silver flashed at the edge of vision, and the witches screamed.
“What...?”
Miria slipped from the shadows, subduing all six in a fluid, silent blur.
A perfect ambush exploiting the post-chant vulnerability.
May, pierced in the side by the blade tip, vomited blood but held her spell’s control.
“I won’t let you ruin her wish...”
She redirected the massive wave of destruction meant for the boy—straight down at her own feet.
───!
From the Genesis Era, the Thousand Steps that had led humanity to the god’s peak—a section shattered with ear-splitting tremors.
The already weakened ground, eroded by the abyss, collapsed in tandem, spewing thick earthen stench as a landslide poured forth.
He might have been swept away. No, he would have been. If not for Miria’s grappling hook snaring his arm in that instant.
‘The tree I’m holding can’t bear our combined weight...’
The tree, roots exposed in the crumbling earth, looked ready to be dragged into the slide.
Realizing it in a flash, Miria hurled herself into the new chasm born of the collapse. With a whir, the pulley principle using the tree pulled the boy upward.
Flung onto the stairs above, the boy gasped in shock and looked down.
“Mi, Miria!”
“Forget me and get to Aki!”
Amid the frenzy of rocks, mud, dust, branches, and landslide debris, Miria pointed to her other hand.
“I’ll catch up soon!”
Another hook from her grip latched onto an unburied boulder. The boy swallowed painfully and ran.
The altitude felt at its limit when, at vision’s far edge, the Thousand Steps ended, and the grand Bellakior Temple of Fire rose.
Pushing his exhausted body, he let out a scream-like shout.
“Aki───!”
At Bellakior Temple, as Tureina intoned the primal incantation and the yin energy forming the barrier thickened suffocatingly, shaking the temple—no, the entire range—that instant.
Simultaneously, the Beltar Sacred Stone emitted profane light and rose, weaving not vines but vine-like tendrils that clung like tumors to the baby dragon and frozen boy.
As the baby dragon wailed pitifully, the temple’s multi-layered gate barriers shattered outward as charred husks under rampaging divine flames... and from those flames, a streak shot forth.
“A-baat!”
The condensed staff-shaped blaze, roaring, left swirling red afterimages in the air and struck dead center of the Beltar Sacred Stone.
「Da ken ro... This is...?」
On the god’s stone, impervious even to the strongest steel—a crack echoed ominously across its surface.
The next instant, the staff reverted to ancient flames and blazed fiercely.
The Beltar Sacred Stone—and the formless foul soul within—howled wildly...
「Gu, gu guaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...!」
Instead of retracting the grotesque tendrils stretching toward reality, the baby dragon, and the boy’s ice, it spewed repulsive poison winds.
“No, no...!”
Her lifelong wish, centuries of anticipation, right before her eyes...
As if grasping at the ancient power scattering like dust in the gale, as if clinging to the ritual links with the three peaks, she flailed her hands in vain—then the boy spoke.
From amid transcendent flames devouring the temple-rotting poison, staggering as if about to collapse.
“Tureina...”
The name of his first disciple, thought forever lost to call; the girl’s name, resigned to echo unanswered—uttered in helpless sorrow.
“...you foolish little kid.”