Chapter 168
Chapter 168
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 168
Chapter Title: Nariaduk, the Triad of Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Nariaduk, granted the authority of the present from the Queen of Time.
The absolute being who controlled the time and space known as the present unleashes a ferocious scream that threatens to tear the eardrums from mortals' heads.
「Shariaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…… Your Majesty, Your Majesty the Queen…… Ru Rudum has, th-this, th-this……!」
Even the choice of spreading its wings and flying into the sky seemed impossible, crushed by the pressure of the light pillar still pinning the ground from the heavens.
The ground exposed to that explosive chill began to freeze over, and the ice that had already encased the craters started spreading toward them as well.
Milone thought they had to evade it. Until the freezing momentum—even capable of locking the geothermal foundations of the Red Mountains—gradually weakened.
“Still…… for me…… it wasn’t enough…….”
It was for that reason that the caster Valensidis muttered in a voice laced with a sigh.
Indeed, it had fallen short—for wielding the ritual of the shrine maiden who had lived three hundred years as legend incarnate.
The theory of the ritual was flawless enough to draw gasps of admiration.
A grand reversal ritual that forcibly twisted and wove together the flows of divine energy coursing through the entire Red Mountains, converting them into ultimate frigid cold.
Beyond Juyeo Soge Daeban, the so-called glimpse of azure shores.
‘But it’s lacking.’
Inevitably, Valensidis lacked the talent, experience, mana, and spell power to fully command that vast knowledge.
Had it succeeded completely, it could have sealed that thing away eternally within absolute zero ice……
But now, with mana and spell power exhausted and its power steadily waning, hope was lost.
“Shu (power), A (grant), Paris (vitality).”
In that moment, a great language that reigned not as mere sound but as power itself echoed in a dainty voice.
Dragon Word.
Among all light-born creatures on this land, only dragons could imbue language with absolute power.
The dragon word uttered now was far from the highest tier, yet it more than made up for the scant shortfall in mana and spell power.
“Aki, you……?”
As Miria muttered in faint bewilderment, the sealing power surged with blinding intensity, and the absolute one’s screams swelled accordingly.
Then, just as Milone had thought moments before, the ice swallowing the ground spread in an instant across the entire area.
The absolute vortex of extreme cold froze everything in this world in its very form—even transforming the pouring rain into hailstones.
“With this…… is it all over?”
Miria and Milone, beholding the frost storm, could only exchange hollow laughs as the tension ebbed from them.
So impeccably designed was it that Nariaduk’s control over space-time couldn’t reach such a vast expanse.
Delete time though it might, transfer space though it might, beyond any escape awaited the storm of absolute zero.
Before it could muster its next ability, that body would freeze solid……
The instant that conviction took root in his mind, Milone scooped up the two and the hatchling dragon before leaping urgently backward.
“No…….”
Every eye quivered in dread.
For a whirlwind of venom raged through the very space where they had stood until now.
“Impossible…….”
A half-beat too slow to escape, Milone shrieked in agony as his legs rotted, decayed, and melted away.
「Heh, heh heh, hahahahahahahahahahaha……!」
From amid that scream loomed the shadow of nightmare over their heads.
In the backlight of the frost storm, shedding the ice shards encasing its body and spewing bloody tears, stood none other than……
The great mage Lin.
No—Nariaduk.
「Yes, those eyes…… Asas, for you lowly things who cannot escape the vortex of causality…… eyes brimming with terror suit you exquisitely…… heh heh hahahaha……!」
Endless despair, terror, madness—invading body and mind alike.
Milone frantically shattered his greave with his fist, wrenched the knee joint beneath, and severed muscles, flesh, and tendons in one go.
Miria set Aki down and stepped forward in place of the crippled pair, gasping for breath like a madwoman as she brandished her broken blade against it.
In that moment, Valensidis blankly assessed the situation.
‘That ice—the ice it’s shedding—isn’t from Tureina’s grand reversal ritual.’
Yes, precisely.
Once encased in Juyeo Soge Daeban’s ice crystal, even freezing from Tureina’s grand reversal ritual merely glazed its surface.
「Raios, you man and woman worthy of truth’s gift—I shall make you the king’s faithful servants.」
From within Juyeo Soge Daeban, it had deleted time or transferred space to climb atop……
「But that wench who disrupts the kings’ causality, and that dragon’s vital fluid—here and now, I, Nariaduk, claim their flesh!」
Had Tureina miscalculated?
No.
Tureina could never have foreseen Nariaduk endlessly deploying Juyeo Soge Daeban through Lin’s body.
‘It’s…… it’s all my fault.’
The hatchling had supplemented its power, but the ritual had been flawed from the casting.
‘I squandered our last chance to defeat it…….’
They had seized the upper hand at first, yet lack of power prevented fully freezing it time and again—so it would have broken free even without Juyeo Soge Daeban.
Failure. The end.
Even if FakeWarriors, the Papal Court, or water dragons arrived, it would be after they lay dead or ruined……
It was then.
“Holy Light regards light as good, thus divides light from dark.”
The tremor of that sacred power.
From the frame of the mind’s image, quietly rippling amid the frost storm and venom whirlwind where it lay concealed, the power of genesis awakened.
Noble words kindled light in sequence, then rose as fierce conflagration.
In the beginning, Holy Light created heaven and earth. The earth was formless and void, darkness upon the face of the abyss. Holy Light’s spirit moved upon the waters’ face. Holy Light said, “Let there be light,” and light was. Holy Light regarded light as good, thus divided light from dark.
At once, a cage of flames woven from character strings deployed unyieldingly around Nariaduk, who had reached to seize Miria’s throat.
「Hmm?」
Milone, regenerating his legs with dragon blood vital fluid and yanking Miria back in the same breath, froze for an instant.
‘That’s…….’
Valensidis too witnessed the spectacle in a stupor.
‘The reason he asked us to buy time…….’
For the first time, something akin to dread flickered in Nariaduk’s third pupil.
「This power, so eerily immense……」
But it soon twisted into a grin as it spread its wings and soared skyward.
「Ro ho tabekeris! To think such a hole-ridden cage as ours could contain I, Nariaduk…… no?」
It had deleted the very time of “flames’ cage deploying around me” to rocket aloft—yet what was this?
「I cannot escape……?」
Had the pursuing flames charred its three pairs of wings pitch-black?
Stripped of its overwhelming flight, Nariaduk crashed ignominiously onto the frozen ground, scattering ice shards far and wide.
Soon a voice thick with anguished doubt erupted.
「Why, why…… Rohotas, why does the regenerative power, the power, fail to activate……!」
The Psalm of Radiance, crowning the Seven Genesis Psalms’ forefront, was renowned for its unmatched might among the seven.
Only four shrine maidens in history—including Fride and Tureina—had wielded it, for that very reason.
That verse, infused with the genesis god’s power, bound all untouched by creation’s hand and all it had touched alike, reverting them to the pre-genesis state.
In essence, severing the bonds linking soul and matter, exiling to the nothingness era.
Though transcribed to scrolls and chanted by mortals, its power had withered to incomparability with the genesis god’s own……
As he intoned the holy words, the red-eyed youth recalled a distant past. Memories shining lovelier than stars, shared with all.
That divinity’s majesty never fades, I tell you. Staggering up close, isn’t it? Now you see how sublime Lady Fride is, wielding it?
Since reclaiming his memories, those distant past’s warm touches had propped him up whenever collapse loomed.
Can I wield it too?
You’d need to learn incantations first? Hehe, ditch Lin and come to Lady Fride? This Fire Dragon’s Shrine Maiden’ll treat you to the full witch course—specially. Chances like this don’t knock twice.
N-no, I don’t wanna!
Tease, tease, tease.
No returning to that tale now.
Fride and Tureina were dead.
Time to close the book on his story. Far too late, though.
Master, sleep in bed. You’ll catch cold.
Like slashing memory’s echoes, blood pouring as the final sacred prayer rose, genesis power liberated from that spot.
“Arise, Radiance.”
Every holy word framed in the mind’s barrier radiated light. The Psalm of Radiance, bearing genesis’s tale, touched something beyond providence.
Flute-like, a pure melody flowed as characters lifted, linked, wove into a gentle hymn resounding.
When the hymn ceased, the characters had fused into chains of flame cradling genesis’s beauty.
“And incinerate.”
At the word, it shackled the old great mage’s flesh—which had just severed smoldering wings and risen in fury.
「No……?!」
Absolute power refracted; immortality disrupted.
The absolute one knew terror.
Time and space unwarped, inexorable chains constricted flesh then soul profound, one by one incinerating the causal rings binding soul to this dimension—terror of that absolute force.
「This, this can’t…… Kerhas, such causality in His train, such a thiiiiing────!」
Dazzle too fierce for eyes, genesis light, genesis blaze. No retina-searing flash, but dawn-like grandeur and nobility.
In that light’s eruption, genesis flames wholly consumed the youthful shell, annihilated the death-fearing ability.
Then, through terror’s cleft where old soul permeated flesh, banished it beyond genesis in fire’s roaring surge.
「────Argne, Argne, Gaplaten, AnRidal, Queen of time, eternal Queen…… this isn’t, His, His fated causality, Nuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa────!」
The flames eradicated all impurities blanketing the mountains, rocketing to heaven’s rim.
As if to fill the void where a cosmic entity had palpably dwelt in this dimension, a bone-chilling gale scoured the peaks.
Even therein blazed the flames’ torrent dazzlingly—then scattered as myriad fire-snowflakes, settling warm upon the mountains.
That snow tenderly restored genesis providence the abyss had ravaged.
Flowers bloomed from putrid blackened soil; fresh shoots budded from dying trees.
Sacred stillness blanketed the mountains.
And four moons hooked on western crests wept pillar-lights through parting thunderheads, softly illuminating heaven and earth.
“Lin, Lin, Lin.”
Transcending mortal bounds, backlash from genesis power buckled the old boy’s knees—then Pipi alighted on his shoulder.
“Not Lin.”
Cheek to Pipi’s head, beholding mind’s power disperse into countless fireflies, the red youth sadly smiled and shook his head.
“Lin’s gone. Died right here.”
Had he perished that day, there—Kies would’ve stifled sobs. Fride would’ve clapped his shoulder, pipe clenched.
Tureina might’ve clutched my corpse weeping; Rista would’ve soothed her through her own tears. But the tale would’ve ended clean.
Lin should’ve died then, unclingingly, amid all their tears.
He was truly splendid. Taught magic freely when I had naught…… like I do for you now.
An impossible voice resounded.
Not abyss-fallen Tureina of weary longing—but she who tear-buried Lin that day, rose great shrine maiden, sage, archsage, guiding legions to truth’s vista.
Hallucination impossible, dream unattainable…… yet dreaming it sapped strength wholly with sad smile, toppling him.
‘Tureina…….’
Play’s curtain fell; dark pall shrouded sight and sense black.
Ere consciousness snapped, final memory glimpsed: far summer day, trifling giggles with Tureina……
And delusion of body slurped into squelching mire, all…… into dark……
‘With this…… farewell…….’