Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: For Evolution
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「Me'od Atik
Very ancient
Atik Mazor
A moldy conspiracy
Parach
Blooms
Hu Ai Chazak
It harbors a desperate intensity
Shav Mazor
The devil's scheme
Elyon Chet Gich Mechir
The price born from sin's backlash
Aven Cohen, Erel
King and Queen
Ve Shav Kanai
And thou, disciple of the devil
Shav Nefesh Makar Godel
Godel, who sold his soul to the devil
Gaon
Gaon
Elyon Chet Davar
The cause of sin
Chemah Lahat
Wrath will blaze
Agagthur Pe Echad Tus
Agagthur's maw will devour
Barach
Flee
Barach
Flee
Od Elyon Chet Shoresh Naga Efes Makom El
Farther still, to where the tower's roots cannot touch
Ala Regel Pa'am
Foe of the pilgrims
Elyon Chet Sharai
Seed of sin
Od Zara Lifnei
Before it spreads further」
Later known as Godel's hymn, these lyrics passed down to an unnamed bard were sung right then by Godel's refugees.
Godel's humans clutched stones with tiny flickering flames, following the knight while quietly singing the words they felt in their hearts and swallowing them down.
They couldn't dare voice the contract they'd hidden with the devil.
"Everyone, this way!"
Bison barely lifted his broken, dangling arm to guide Godel's humans. Each time he pointed the direction, he felt the snapped bones clashing inside with dull cracks.
But he didn't give such things a thought. He stared straight ahead at the path he had to take.
Fortunately, unlike the edge entrance he and Gil had broken through, this other entrance-known as the spot where the queen had coiled up and fallen asleep, sealed away-was empty of even a single hunter, thanks to Gaon.
"Send the children and women first and keep heading up!"
And in that desperate shout, someone grabbed Bison's broken arm. He spoke in Godel's tongue, words even the beastman Bison couldn't understand.
"I don't know that language! Hurry and go! There's no time!"
Bison pointed desperately toward the exit.
But this old man among Godel's humans clung more desperately to Bison's broken arm, refusing to let go. It didn't hurt. He'd long since gone numb to pain.
But what was with these desperate eyes?
"You want me to come with you? Ah, there might be bugs outside..."
Bison glanced toward Gaon and the queen, flustered and unsure, when the old man seemed to guess his meaning and spoke haltingly, mixing in imperial words.
"Kin of sin... we... the children... are innocent."
"What?"
In the midst of this frantic escape, the old man was weeping. He was sincerely repenting something. Recalling the day he'd contracted with the devil and sacrificed the children, he pulled a seed from his pocket and swallowed it.
"What are you doing!"
Bison unwittingly swung his broken arm, knocking the old man down. Amid the hurried footsteps departing, the old man lifted his head again. His pupils ground away as fur sprouted across his face.
"No way."
What in the world was happening?
What effect was this, what twisted cause and causality? Amid everything spinning chaotically, countless lives fleeing, faces blurring into oblivion, Bison stared clearly only at this old man's.
He reverted to his true form. Astonishingly, he wasn't a demon but a beastman. Whether he'd originally been human was unknown, but now even his beastman species was unrecognizable as he spoke.
"Agagthur, evolve."
The fallen old man reached out a trembling hand, and Bison recoiled in shock and fear from this powerless, pathetic truth before his eyes, fleeing.
He hurried ahead of the other refugees. These people weren't saved by him. They were fleeing to evade the Empire's knights.
These were the true kin of sin.
"What the hell is going on?"
Bison hurried his steps, unsure how to even explain what he'd seen.
***
"Mother, what exactly happened?"
The Ashen Queen now leaned against the tower, barely able to lift her head. Gaon perched on her skull, gazing at the gentle face from his human days as he aimed his bladeless sword.
"Do you remember the day Father was poisoned?"
Gaon wiped the dark red blood coating him, recalling his father's even thicker blood. Godel's previous king had died of illness. But even young Gaon back then had sensed something suspicious about the king's death.
Those who knew the queen, the seed cultivator, and the previous king's brother-the current sovereign-had gathered the night before were the woman attending the king, the knight who loved her, and Gaon.
"What did you do that day?"
The fugitive prince questioned her soul, more hideously stained than her grotesque exterior.
"I could ask what deal you made with the devil to end up like this, but now I know everything. That day, you tried to save me. Father too. I learned it from the information gathered until the attendant's daughter and the guard knight became Empire knight captains."
Gaon recalled the past as his long-laid plans finally came to fruition at this beginning.
Three fugitive children. But the ones who died that day were the king, his guard knight, and his maid. How could the king's guard and maid join the plan on the day the king died?
"The king knew his death was coming. And he passed it on. For evolution."
The Empire's ancient texts spoke of the kin of sin and its seed. But they offered no help. What truly explained that day's tragedy was the Empire's discrimination against beastmen and how Agagthur-the dormant Glory Mir bound to Godel-symbolized evolution.
"Father was stubborn. He must have guarded Agagthur to the end. He knew he'd be assassinated by his brother and wife but didn't follow their plan to exploit it. Yet since it was all for evolution, he had no choice. So he chose death and evacuated me. No, made me flee. You overlooked it and joined this grand experiment. For the evolution of the race. And the evolution you achieved is this monstrosity."
Godel's fugitive prince hid his identity, became a knight, and relentlessly uncovered the truth. They had dealt with the devil. He learned that ugly truth and agonized over it.
"I pity you sincerely, Ashen Queen. So I'll raise my sword against my mother."
Even if they'd fallen for the devil's temptation, if their goal was noble, was killing the sovereign now justice? Should he return? Who was he?
"Yerutsa Rahav. I'm no longer a prince but a single knight."
As he lifted his invisible sword to end this pitiful life, the Ashen Queen's face opened its eyes. And its mouth. Gaon, aiming between her brows, saw her tongue lash from the mouth behind him.
Red and hideously split, unrecognizable, yet it clearly bore hands and a face.
That was the price of the devil's deal.
"Your face looks so worn... my son."
Godel was a vast laboratory.
The grand beginning of evolution through the kin of sin.
"Love..."
They experimented to turn beastmen into humans. To shatter racial boundaries. Thus, turning beastmen human, crossbreeding, forcing fusions and rending them apart, even aspiring to the greatness of Mir like Agagthur-all were trials. That was the seed's true nature.
"Yes, all for the children left behind. Like me."
Their goal was noble. That's why the Empire abandoned them as heretics. They dealt with the devil and had no choice but to kill the unyielding previous king. They dominated the citizens' minds with sorcery, even twisting themselves into ugliness. But they couldn't stop.
For the children who would remain after they all perished.
The wandering knight pressed his invisible sword to his left ring finger. Then drew it. A slender red blade like blood from a finger.
"So it ends with me."
He raised the sword and slashed.
'Left ring finger'.
Shk.
The tongue, the queen, the scales, and the massive white orbs around the tower-all severed clean.
Boom!
The Ashen Queen's corpse crashed to the ground, shaking the sovereign's tower. But without a tremor, Gil aimed his sword at the Mir's proxy now before him and asked again.
"Are you alive?"
According to Gaon, he'd died evacuating him. With no new proxy, this bizarre figure moving before Gil's eyes was surely an undead knight. He strained to hold the collapse, twisting the roots encroaching from the bound seed, opening the eye on the remaining original human face to gaze at Gil.
"Ahead lies where Godel's sin began. The price of the devil's deal."
He slowly rose. Trees sprouted wildly from his body like a mane, his lower half clearly equine with four legs, while human feet and unrecognizable beastman limbs clung like insects all over.
Especially the root-attached face resembled a snake or massive crocodile, mismatched in balance and size to the human face, making even turning his head seem difficult.
"And we all bore it. For evolution."
Yet the sword tip from the half-beast knight didn't waver. Agagthur's proxy and Godel's greatest warrior clashed his justice against Gil's.
"I protect it."
Boom!
Gil withstood his ferocious assault swinging Agagthur's scales and felt this pitiful undying warrior's conviction. Thus, he swung his sword harder, shouting louder.
"Fine then! From now on, Gil, Senior Knight of the Sonain Empire's 2nd Knight Order, will shatter what you protect!"