Chapter 35
Chapter 35
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: Sorrow
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"Nia!"
Saint Holden spotted her and came charging over like a madman, barely managing to catch Nia as she fell.
"Nia! Pull yourself together!"
Nia's face was half-melted, her life hanging by a thread. Amid the chaos, Saint laid her down near the sturdy foundation of a building that hadn't collapsed yet and said,
"Ha... chant the spell first, Nia. You're gonna be okay. I'll protect you."
"Omer... no one... deep... forest's spring."
Gasping for breath, Nia barely managed to invoke her healing sign before closing her eyes, focusing on the treatment. Saint took stock of the situation with calm precision, but fury surged within him once more at the sight of her.
His gaze landed on the Night Hag Queen, who was firing off fireballs indiscriminately in every direction.
Whoosh! Boom!
"Die! Burn away and vanish, all of you! Sorrow is coming to this land now!"
The moment Girim Jay targeted the wall where Graveheim stood once again, Saint unleashed a gust of wind from a distance away from Nia, twisting the path of her flames.
"Oh? And what are you, little one?"
"I am Saint Holden, a knight of the Sonain Empire's 1st Knight Order."
"I didn't ask for your name!"
The Night Hag Queen unleashed fireballs from both hands, but Saint dodged them using the wind and closed the distance. He judged from the situation that Girim Jay wouldn't stand a chance in close combat.
"But whatever will you do about this?"
This time, just as Saint was about to kick Girim Jay's neck with a leg wrapped in frenzied wind, the Night Hag Queen-bearing the Demon King's horn-glowed with an ominous dark-red light and repelled him.
"What?"
In that instant, the wind Saint himself had summoned exploded right in front of his eyes.
Boom!
"The power of the horn I received is reflection. Well then, as one Demon King speaking to a knight, let me ask you this."
Before the wind could even clear, Saint's condition was utterly wretched.
In a split-second judgment, he'd raised both hands to block his own gale, leaving his left hand mangled beyond recognition. Blood seeped from between his tightly clenched teeth as he endured the agony.
"Why don't you run away?"
The overwhelming difference in power blossomed into despair, but this was not the sorrow the witch had foreseen.
On a battlefield where gravity twisted like an inverted world, with rocks floating in the air, the Mountain Giant's king, Nepil, finally reached the wall and shone his horn once more, slamming his body into it.
Boom!
"Please die! Fall! My enemy!"
Right then, with the crumbling wall between them, the Emperor charged his own colossus forward, blocking the Mountain Giant's king with his entire body.
As their forms shattered and mingled into dust, the Emperor couldn't help but flinch in shock. The Mountain Giant's king, Nepil, was unmistakably weeping.
What could drive such desperation? His body was rock-it wouldn't even float on the sea.
Even as he stifled his breath, feeling his life ebb away, what grudge had driven him across that distant ocean? Nepil wailed in sorrow, and the earth trembled with his cries.
"You can't die until you've brought me down either. This is your tragedy as well."
But that was the nature of an emperor.
"Yet I can die at any moment. 3rd Knight Order Captain! Gather at my center, quickly!"
Hearing the Emperor's command, Hyeon clung to his side, leading the Princess and Prince along.
"What do you plan to do!"
Ignoring the Prince's scream, the Emperor shone with the gaze of a great sovereign and poured all his power into his sword.
"Everything I have belongs to you-there's no lingering attachment to life left for me!"
Fury of the Colossus Soldier.
Boom!
The Emperor's colossus, the Mountain Giant's king Nepil, and the wall itself-all came crashing down amid a blue explosion that reached the heavens.
***
"Hero, dodge!"
Knight's Spear Piercing the Sky.
Screeeeech!
Bulki barely evaded the attack again, swept up in raw, wretched fury. No-he himself was vengeance incarnate, and he felt the abyss within him surging.
That abyss stemmed from the friends he'd lost to the demons.
"Do you want to kill me that badly?"
"How dare you! How dare you spout such nonsense! Shut up! Don't test me!"
"Why aren't you using the power of Mir?"
"Urk!"
The Demon King leisurely parried attack after attack before hurling Bulki far away. Bulki simultaneously recalled the last time he'd been pushed this hard-and the moment Eden Sonain had called for Mir before dying.
"You really don't know, do you? Not even acknowledged? You may know the truth of the myths, but you're still far too lacking. If things stay like this, you'll lose."
The Demon King kept swinging his broken straight sword through the empty air, and along its invisible trajectory, space tore and slashed, leaving only boiling distortions in the atmosphere.
"Looks like you can control that bizarre dagger's space-warping with it now. Hero, I didn't want to say this, but..."
Shainelius spoke through ragged breaths. In a mere instant, an overwhelming gap had opened between the Hero's party and the Demon King.
"Enough-don't give up. No. We can't!"
The thought of losing his friend again-no, losing all of them-struck Bulki with fear for the first time in his life. Shainelius glanced toward where Elis had been, then seemed to steel her resolve as she lowered her bowstring and continued.
"There's no hope in fighting that self-proclaimed Demon King any further."
"Stop!"
Shainelius met the now-desperate Hero's plea with eyes that knew no surrender.
"No, Hero-not that you've lost your fighting spirit. Think this through coldly. I know your strength well. But that one is stronger than all of us combined."
As if reaching some profound decision, Shainelius dropped to one knee-abandoning her usual bow-drawing stance-and raised her bow high as she shouted,
"We'll die to carve open a path! Head straight for Sonain!"
The arrow tore through the air with ferocious speed, this time shearing off the Demon King's entire wing.
"I won't let you."
The Demon King swung his sword anew, leaving the tattered wing behind. Shainelius swiftly read the trajectory and dodged. As the Demon King lunged at her again, Gil seemed to anticipate it perfectly, raising his sword at a diagonal to deflect the blow.
"Now!"
Gil swept flames across the Demon King, engulfing his surroundings entirely. Rondnel leaped into the blaze and seized the Demon King with both hands.
"No! I can't lose you like this again! Not ever!"
"This is the only way, Hero! Hurry back to Sonain and rally aid!"
Inhaling the acrid smoke of his own burning flesh, Rondnel gripped tight to keep the Demon King from raising his sword or hand.
"Go, Hero! Trust me and Gil-leave this to us!"
Shainelius circled the Demon King amid the inferno, embedding arrows into him one after another.
"Ride Mir and get out of here!"
Gil swung his sword without pause to aid Rondnel-like a ceaseless desert tempest-to inflict as much damage as possible on the Demon King.
"Think of what's truly important, Hero!"
Amid Shainelius's relentless arrows, Gil's sword-stirred blaze-storm, and Rondnel blocking the enemy at the cost of his own immolation, the Hero and Demon King locked eyes.
Familiar eyes-sad, desperate.
Just like the gazes of those two friends who had stood before the Holy Brazier, now crossing in perfect opposition of heart and position.
"Graaaah!"
The Demon King roared anew.
In an instant, Gil's flames vanished. He shook off Rondnel's hands, wrenched his left arm again, and forced him to his knees. Gil charged in and swung at the Demon King's neck, but he blocked with his right hand. Shainelius yanked the torn wing to pin him to the ground.
"What now, Hero? Will you run this time?"
Even as the entire Hero party sacrificed their lives to hold him back, the Demon King remained utterly at ease. Bulki felt his sword-gripping hand begin to tremble.
"I... I..."
Bulki gripped his sword even tighter.
Demon King Iven van Ivelhac smiled at the sight, but with no lips to show it, Hero Bulki Sonain never noticed.
***
"Please... don't get up. Mountain Giant's king, Nepil."
Sonain lay shrouded in white dust, as if the sky itself had collapsed. The massive explosion had brought the battle to a temporary lull, but death still hung thick in the air like the dust itself.
"Your Majesty!"
"Father!"
Yet the Emperor, propped up by others, seemed unlikely to rise again-and the same went for the Mountain Giant's king. His blue-green horn lay charred and snapped, like a tree struck by lightning.
"We won. First, secure a path for retreat..."
"Help support Father. I'll take point and clear the way out first with my sister."
The Prince hurried to prepare, reasoning that with the Mountain Giant's king down, staying amid these ruins served no purpose.
If they could escape this wreckage now and save the Emperor-if Graveheim, Riu, and the remaining knights could deal with the other Demon King-the third demon invasion would finally end.
But.
Stab.
"Wh-what is the meaning of this?"
The 3rd Knight Order Captain Hyeon had plunged his small purple sword into the Emperor's chest.
"It's your cue to exit His tragedy. Your role ends in death. Don't worry-I'll see the Prince safely inherits the throne."
The Emperor collapsed. At the same moment, the Princess struck without missing a beat, stabbing the arm of her brother, Prince Lui.
"S-Sister?"
And so sorrow descended upon the Empire and the eastern continent.
"This will be far more entertaining."
Thus began the tragedy of this world.