Chapter 199
Chapter 199
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 199
Chapter Title: The Beast Slayer's End
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Before he gained power, though born human, he could not live as one.
As an orphan, just because he was strong and well-built, adults used him however they pleased.
Around the age of nine, Arthur Brius was falsely accused of murder and faced execution.
‘The moment I met him was right before the hanging.’
Like a beam of light piercing through the black prison, with a single slash, he severed the heads of fifty men and extended his hand to me.
—Your only sin is not knowing how to truly wield power. Follow me. I’ll teach you what power really is.
Master Rilkiur could truly split heaven and earth with a single sword, forcing even the seas to recede.
He carried a true holy sword from the ancient era and possessed the power to awaken it.
A swordsman who had reached the pinnacle of martial arts, yet he taught everything about that sword to Arthur, who had nothing.
—The weak are born with selfish hearts. That’s why I despise the weak.
—Why?
—Because the gods and dragons implanted this twisted belief that the strong must always sacrifice.
Rilkiur often said the world needed to bleed for a new, perfect order to be established. Arthur was merely a teenager then.
—Humans refuse to acknowledge the sacrifices upon which this world was built. They only preach mercy and compassion to the strong. Yet they trample the weak without mercy. I will cleave away this hollow world.
—How?
—Someday, when your sword reaches my level, I’ll tell you.
Then, around age seventeen, upon reaching the realm of the mind sword, Rilkiur told Arthur to head south.
—In the world of blades and blood, you too will gain the same enlightenment. Go south.
And he gave him the name Arthur Brius instead of Asra. Brius meant "sword bearer," he said.
—Seek out the strong on the battlefield. They will teach you how to wield power.
That’s when he met his comrades.
Those abandoned by the world, by family, by friends, by the gods—those with nowhere left to go.
The world that once looked down on and scorned us would soon gaze up at us in awe and fear.
—From this day, we are the Slayers.
I still haven’t earned his recognition.
Had I received it, he would have taught me its meaning.
In this second life, I must reach the same realm as him...
“Until then... I won’t lose to anyone...!”
He had promised to let those fools live in luxury, even if he had to turn this world upside down.
He had to keep that promise.
As he swallowed the dragon pearl, the transcendent mana crackling with lightning clashed against the power of the verse tablet, unleashing a shockwave that crushed the atmosphere.
‘Have I ever seen such a mad monster...?’
Cold sweat beaded on Rain’s forehead as he desperately gripped Arthur’s wrist holding the mind sword.
If anything, he was several times stronger than the incomplete Shar’kas or Nariaduk.
Was this the supreme being called humanity’s greatest swordsman? The despair felt like facing a dozen dragons at once...
“Stop, stop, stop.”
Its wings torn, beak shattered, the sun parrot—wandering on the brink after its duel with Pipi—swooped in to burn Rain’s wrist.
At that instant.
A blue flash flickered once more, and an arrow pierced the sun parrot’s body, sending it flying far away.
That was it.
The Beast Slayer’s form, rolling lifelessly across the ground after breathing its last.
“Visl...!”
It made Rain see an illusion for a moment where his and Arthur’s situations reversed.
His breath caught in his throat.
Arthur’s face overlapped with the vision of himself thrashing, bound by the chains of the verse tablet.
‘Our positions could have been completely swapped.’
Was it the light from the black goat ring that let him glimpse the final memory flashing through the beast’s dying mind?
‘If, during my orphan days, I’d met someone like Zernix instead of Aunt...’
He might not have walked the same path as Rista, Kies, and Fride, but a bond forged in blood, screams, and shouts.
—This isn’t where you belong, Lin.
Back then.
If you hadn’t reached out to me then.
—Come, follow me.
If you hadn’t extended your hand to me. Hadn’t taught me what power is, what the path to truth is.
—That’s not how you use power, Lin.
Every time I strayed, if you hadn’t wept so sadly, scolded me, and held me tight.
Link.
Nils.
Alakish.
Aki.
Thinking that the countless bonds formed on this path might have become enemies filled him with sorrowful breaths.
‘Tureina.’
I have to ensure she doesn’t end up like that.
I have to keep her from straying.
I should have guided her. Set an example. Scolded her.
—Aki is Aki!
So Aki...
Aki must...
Never be the first to leave her side. I must teach and guide her. So she can become a great dragon like Alakish.
I can’t die.
Not here.
“Uuuuuuaaaaaaaaah───!”
Amid desperate shouts crossing paths, no help came from anywhere.
“────Tsuuaaaaaaaaah!”
Bart crawled through his own pool of blood, and Pipi, that last flight having been her final strength, merely twitched on the ground.
“I’ll sever your neck...!”
Rem, her skin and clothes charred by lightning, was the same. After blocking the Beast Slayer at the end, she seemed to have collapsed unconscious.
“And those brothers you killed, Visl too—I’ll bring them all back to life──”
Just as the blade finally touched his carotid artery, at that exact moment, a blood-red blade pierced the Dragon Slayer’s neck from behind, protruding toward them.
“──No, it’s all over.”
This power... the Demon Slayer’s...
The Dragon Slayer spewed blood futilely as his vision flooded red.
Without even turning to see the assassin’s face, the mana forming his mind sword began scattering into countless light particles.
“Serves you right, you bastard.”
If his death had been delayed by just one second more, Rain’s head might have been severed.
“Miria.”
In the silence as tension released, Rain blankly called her name.
Had his soul finally faded, weakening the bond to the dragon pearl?
His body became covered in chains of letters, and as they intertwined into one, the flames of creation exploded blindingly.
And in the next moment, his body was nowhere to be found. Had the verse deemed the flesh itself invalid?
The dragon scale greaves slammed into the ground, sending heavy tremors.
In the vacuum left by the vanished flesh, beams of light flashed. That pure golden light surged in eleven strands before merging in the sky.
When the small flash from their union faded, the lifeform that emerged was...
‘...A hatchling?’
Had the eleven dragon pearls forged a new body?
Immature dragon scales formed the fluid essence of a golden dragon, purer and more elegant than any gold.
The curled-up sleeping hatchling, drawn by the black goat ring’s light, descended into Rain’s arms.
‘Was it Carenden’s will that guided this to me? Why?’
As he raised his head from the shock of Aki suddenly leaping onto it, Miria knelt by his side.
“You’re a total wreck.”
“Well... I barely survived.”
“Abaht, ababhat.”
Aki, rubbing her head wildly against Rain’s face, suddenly spotted the kin in his arms and her eyes sparkled.
“That smells yummy here.”
She snatched up the yellowish hatchling and abruptly chomped its head.
“Hey! That’s not food── Ugh.”
He reached to stop her, but with the tension that had kept even pain at bay gone, agony surged, draining strength from his body.
“That’s why I told you to leave before I got hurt.”
It sounded like a scolding, but tears streamed endlessly from Miria’s eyes.
—Become someone who can offer a hand to others without expecting anything, Miria.
She’d thought she was alone.
Until this path ended, until she finished it.
But to end up like this, drenched in blood, a total wreck.
—Someday, someone like that will appear in your life too.
The tears flowing were those buried deep in her heart from the day she swore to become a goblin slayer.
The resentment swelling into tears was eleven years of pain congealed to rot.
The white flash in her mind was the vow from that day: never to cry again.
“Miria.”
What to say in a moment like this.
The memory surfacing in Rain’s mind was from the day Aunt the headmaster took him in—what she’d said.
Those words, that smile, so dazzling and radiant, a voice he could never forget.
“You don’t have to cry anymore.”
The light you gave me that day.
I’ve shared it with someone else now.
Socrafres.
- You can inherit the progress of ‘Unique Magic’ research from the surrounding environment.
- Progress: 79.8% => 84.1%.
* * *
There was a pair of eyes that had watched the transcendent beings’ deadly dance from start to finish across the entire island.
‘Hmmm...’
Atop the golden pagoda, its outer surface cracked beyond repair.
Without that kid’s flames and the special forces mages’ combined barrier, it would have collapsed in that dance.
Even now, a mere touch of magic would bring it down.
‘Who knew that old hag’s favorite lackey had skills like that.’
If they’d clashed after he’d fully recovered, Zernix might have lost with high probability.
‘You should be grateful to me, Rain Ludwig.’
It was victory by a hair’s breadth, wasn’t it?
If I hadn’t secretly taken out your lackeys, you’d have lost for sure.
‘No, I should be the one thanking you.’
From the puppet’s back sprouted grotesque tentacles, clutching the fainted Priest Slayer and Engineer Slayer.
‘Heh heh heh heh, thanks to you, that old hag’s forces have been massively weakened overnight. I should send my thanks.’
These will come in handy for me. When that body finds my true form, they’ll be useful.
A sinister smile crept across the puppet’s lips.
Behind it, a dimensional rift opened, dark as the blackness of a new moon night.
As its body was slowly sucked in, it looked down at Rain one last time, greedily licking its upper lip.
‘The battles ahead will temper that flesh even more. I can’t wait for it to become my body soon.’
But something’s off. That blonde woman... doesn’t she look eerily like Elamas’s ‘doll’?
The face is similar, but her skills are pathetically lacking.
And a mage mimicking that kid Lin’s style, the successor to the white spear bow, a sun parrot from 300 years ago, and a woman resembling the hero.
‘This combination feels too suspicious to dismiss as mere coincidence...’