Chapter 42
Chapter 42
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: Reunion
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In later years, the ballad passed down by bards to commemorate this great massacre went like this.
「Lahen Lahav
Thus, children
Antun Gibbor Charam Al
With your great devotion
Eloah Chefetz Halak
If you follow the holy will
Antun Tamim Shafakh Damad Yeshua
You shall receive recompense for this land's sacred blood
Lahen Erel
Thus, children
Eloah Chayil Eyalt Pa'al Mofet
You shall receive recompense for the hidden sacred blood
Al Lahav Tsofer
Neither sword nor horn
Elyon Damad Yerutsa
Inheritance of noble blood
Ze Eretz Shafakh Damad
Shed blood of this land
Shafakh Damad
Spilled blood
Ze Go'el Zakar
Behold this blasphemy
El Al Nefesh Harag
Slay those who are not gods
Parash Shabbat Matza
When Parash's head falls
Ze Go'el Zakar
Behold this blasphemy
Nakam Halak Nefesh Harag
Slay those who follow vengeance
Al Mavet Shabbat Matza
When the immortal's head falls
Mar Chidah Tamim Lo
Torments of riddles are not complete
Olam Shoresh Mavet Marar Nefesh Adar
Destroy the world's veins, forsake wretched life
Lahen Lahav
Thus, children
Karath Choshekh
Sever the sorrow
Mavet Yerutsa
Shatter the inheritance
Lahen Erel
Thus, children
Elyon Damad Zakar
Remember the sacred blood
Henah Kavod Berakhah
Their vain deaths
Yeshua
Fate」
"Hold the flanks! Fire the great cannons! Ngh!"
The ramparts reaching the heavens, crumbling the world.
Boom!
Even amid the overwhelming horde of demons crashing like a black wave, Graveheim's tearful efforts kept flashing signs of the sword, barely preventing any demons from reaching the Princess. But even that was only a matter of time.
With every death, the enemy grew.
Whether it was those he had slain himself or comrades fighting beside him, he couldn't stop it. The immortals wouldn't die. So all he could do was hope he wouldn't become such a wretched thing himself as he collapsed, spilling his own blood, and close his eyes.
"What in the world did we do wrong?"
The wounded had already lost their will to fight, and Nia, tending to them, was on the verge of collapse herself.
"Hero... what are we even fighting?"
A knight whose name he didn't know asked as his friend, now a burning immortal, tore into his throat. He couldn't bring himself to strike down his friend. Soon, he too would tear into another friend.
It was all Bulki could do to kill him first, preventing him from becoming an immortal and continuing the tragedy. Ashes and blood continued to rain over the Empire. And death followed.
Everything in sight was burning. The rotting, festering corpses wrapped themselves in the flames of war, spewing pus to kill even more.
What in the world was happening?
Was there no hope left in this land?
Where was the Captain?
"Bulki! Dodge! It's the Mountain Giant King!"
Saint Holden's shout allowed Bulki to barely evade the attack, but...
Boom!
Those on the front lines suffered far worse from the swing of that brutish corpse-mountain's arm-it was a chain of death. The merest twitch from the revived Nephil sent dozens of knights flying.
No, exploding to their deaths.
And rising again.
"Kill them!"
The Great Demon King cackled at the sight. As if wishing this tragedy to drag on longer, he slowly directed the Nephil with a flick of his finger.
He didn't want to miss a single moment of the overwhelming despair and terror he had prepared for so long.
"Is support from the other races still not here?!"
[Judgment of Glory].
Boom!
Bulki, astride his Mir, was granting eternal death to the immortals, but they multiplied faster than he could fell them. Their bones twisted, yet they moved; blood fountained, yet they killed. This land was now filled only with red and black.
The only splash of other color was the Hero.
"Don't break!"
Fist of the Storm.
"I know!"
Formation - Sacred Citadel.
Saint Holden, drenched in blood and black ichor, had closed in unnoticed to keep Bulki from sinking into the abyss. Bulki and Saint Holden attacked foes with newer signs and blocked their assaults. Together, they barely held back the red and black from devouring everything else.
"Lord Graveheim! All the aerial lifts to the Sun Forest have been destroyed!"
"Protect the Princess! Make a new escape route!"
Ramparts touching the earth, guarding the world.
Graveheim erected a massive cage-like barrier not only against aerial assaults but also ground-bound immortals approaching the Princess. Any immortals touching it had their bones twist and slam into the dirt. Before the natural force of gravity, even the demons' momentum faltered.
But.
"Irritating pests."
The Great Demon King could no longer tolerate those disrupting his feast.
As his horns blazed once more with pitch-black karmic fire, the knight-turned-immortals gathered from all sides into a single grotesque mass of flesh.
The reddest and darkest ones.
A higher pus blob, shrieking as it extended hundreds of hands.
Grrraaaahhh.
"N-No! Spare me!"
The knights were literally devoured by their loathsome forms and foul toxins. Anyone grasped by the higher pus blob's hands was dragged into the flesh, bulking it even larger. Beyond mere killing, these things devoured death itself, erasing the colors the Hero fought to protect.
[Judgment of Glory].
Boom!
A landscape like hell itself. Bulki prioritized these tragic immortals.
"Did you not foresee this?"
The Great Demon King's smile spread once more. The higher pus blob burst under Bulki's attack, only to rebirth as another pus blob.
And then.
"My puppet, kill."
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Higher pus blobs exploded everywhere, unleashing blasts of toxin.
The toxins spread, and the earth quaked.
Dust settled as if everything had burned away; looking around, fewer than five hundred knights remained. But something even more horrific happened.
"The wounded here-huh? This arm...?"
Boom!
"Nia!"
One arm from an immortal that had failed to breach Graveheim's cage but broken off had crossed the boundary into the wounded area amid the chaos. It exploded too, instantly killing over a hundred wounded on the spot.
And Nia was nowhere to be seen.
"Ahh."
Watching it all, Bulki nearly buckled to his knees. The Princess seemed unharmed by the blast, but the breached wall exposed her clearly. Unaware, she screamed at the Great Demon King.
"Receive this curse, Great Demon King! Demons cannot kill me!"
Of course, it wouldn't reach him, but the Great Demon King addressed her through all the demons, gazing her way.
"I know. That's the power of that repulsive Miflas, after all. That's why I've waited so very long."
The Great Demon King enjoyed this ravaging too, but to see that repulsive face of the Princess melt away and toast with Miflas's tears, he finally drew his prepared 'sword' onto this battlefield. Seeing the sword-purple demons fly behind him, Bulki shouted.
"No! Protect the Princess!"
Thus, the Demon King who soared through the air and landed before the Princess finally appeared.
Iven van Ivelhac.
"We all follow Neshef's dawn. But the one before you now does not follow Neshef. He is the Demon King who believed in Miflas, my contradictory horn, the sword I honed for you. Your death approaches."
The Great Demon King's scheme was finally revealed.
Iven was the Demon King he had personally cultivated and raised, visiting every myth of this world to exploit its twisted contradictions, ultimately reviving him once more.
"Wh-what? What did that repulsive thing just say?!"
The Princess flew into rage again. Lucifer sneered at her. He had known for ages he couldn't kill the Saintess.
It was the power decreed by Neshef and the other gods; as long as it existed, demons following Neshef couldn't even approach her, the Saintess of Miflas.
"Yes, die in such ugliness, Saintess of Miflas."
Thus, he had sent Hyeon, who could pretend to follow Miflas while hiding his demon mark, and waited many long years.
And as the tale unfolded, Iven was chosen by Iveldra, birthing the contradiction of this story: a Demon King who once was a knight order's sword, unbound by Neshef.
"I'll stop you."
Bulki ultimately stood to block that Iven.
"Pathetic."
What a laughable tale.
In this situation, the Hero blocking the Demon King to protect the Princess.
The Hero blocking what might be his own friend, unknowing. As if it were everyone's fate-but this too was Iven's plan to kill the Princess.
Wasn't this story not one where the Hero defeats the Demon King and saves the Princess, but where the Demon King defeats the Princess and saves the Hero?
"You can't stop me."
Demon King Iven raised his sword.
Hero Bulki raised his sword as well.
The Great Demon King, drunk on madness, gazed at the scene completing this tale at last and praised his own horns.
"Go! My strongest horn! The Hero doesn't matter. Kill the Saintess! End this twisted age of myth now! My Iven van Ivelhac!"
And at that moment, as Bulki clashed swords with the Demon King, he heard the Great Demon King's words crystal clear-the name he called this corpse-feeder, this most wretched horn before his eyes.
"Iven?"
"Yes, Bulki."
Familiar eyes. Bulki dropped his sword and fell to his knees.
Helred's hope sank into the abyss at last.
And Iven passed him, slowly approaching the Princess.
"Hero... sir."
Right then, the twist to overturn this clichéd, boring tale.
Far off, Nia-half-burned and melted-painlessly raised her frail, trembling hand to turn the final page of her book.