Chapter 73
Chapter 73
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 73
Chapter Title: The Revealed Truth
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What is life?
"[Exploding Justice]."
Boom!
What is evolution?
"I protect."
Boom!
Then what, truly, is the truth?
Without knowing any of it, life fades away, reaches the future, and ultimately evolves. Yet no one knows that process. Where humans came from, where the Demon King's lineage began. It's merely passed down mysteriously as myth. Daring to imagine the era of the three gods created by the great El and the Mirs.
But in Godel, that Mir had been asleep since the beginning of the myth. What, then, did the sealed Agagthur whisper to Godel?
"I'merely uphold justice!"
Gil shouted amid splashing blades and shields, rising flames.
Agagthur's former proxy swiftly retreated, regrouped, and charged forward, igniting flames fueled by Agagthur's scales that would burn justice itself. Gil barely dodged, but in the proxy's wake, even denser, redder flames rose faintly, devouring Gil's own fire.
"Who can judge us?"
Agagthur's proxy turned, gazing at the incarnation of justice before him, and said. Justice? Mere justice dares to judge our noble sacrifice? The lives of those who gave everything for evolution, branded as sinners and heretics by the Empire's mongrel dogs.
"We exist below, yet above justice."
Once more, he summoned flames from Agagthur hot enough to consume even himself. In the massive lord's tower, it was as if a shrouded sun had appeared-rocks melted, ashes flew.
"Urgh!"
Gil barely glimpsed with wide eyes the beast blazing behind Agagthur's scales.
On its forehead gleamed the mark of the demons Gil had seen until now, clear as day. The one bearing the burning mark spat fire at this justice, mere infantile whining, and spoke.
"Tehom's seers obtained seeds like ours through the kin of sin there. But they do not seek evolution as we do; they hide, ascetic in freeing forgotten sinners from divine bondage. We were different. We had Agagthur. We knew this myth's truth: the great sin, the millennium-old pact broken, the price of Nesheph's death."
Gil somewhat understood the words of Agagthur's proxy, who spewed flames his own justice could never ignite.
He too, through the sun fairy and the giant dwarf king, knew the millennium pact all races had made was somehow broken, and through the Empire's myths he knew that creating the great sin caused beastkin and other animals to die far too quickly.
But Nesheph's death?
Was that the secret Agagthur whispered, the reason for pacting with demons? The reason for their outward and inward corruption, experimenting on beastkin children?
"No. Whatever truth Godel hides, it cannot shake my justice."
The Hero saves. But he can't save everyone. That's why knights stand by his side. To save as many as possible, over and over.
But Gil thought the reason he wielded his sword was different.
Now, Gil entrusted the sword he raised to save to the Hero, and took up the sword for those who suffered harm. So that all the wounded would spill no more blood. For their revenge.
Gil's blade began to glow red.
"Come!"
"[Justice Burning One]."
Boom!
Agagthur's proxy charged madly, burning and melting the tower wall, and Gil swept his sword from below upward in an instant, blocking it-no, launching it skyward.
Boom!
The proxy's attack struck the ceiling and exploded. The lord's tower ceiling on the floor the proxy guarded collapsed, spilling the laboratory above.
The children too.
"This is..."
Corpses of burning, shattered children tumbled down. Adults too. But none could be called human, nor beastkin. Experimental subjects overtaken by the seeds rained down with a foul stench, crumbling to ash. From within, the proxy whispered.
"Nesheph lost, and the beastkin, descendants of Mir, were all cursed. Agagthur raged. He could not leave the goddess who allowed it be. So in this Godel, those following his will gathered. The lord's bloodline pretended to guard Agagthur's seal while carrying his will. To protect wounded beastkin, care for them. To evolve them even a little. They protected humans and beastkin who believed in Agagthur's evolution and fled the Empire."
The proxy glanced at the piling corpses around, continuing his explanation of the carnage.
"But that wasn't enough. Beastkin wouldn't evolve. They no longer needed it. So we decided to evolve humans into beastkin. Starting with children, we experimented to shatter species boundaries, creating beings neither human nor beastkin that could live far longer."
"That's... what the seeds are?"
"We traded with the cultivator. In exchange for growing the seeds, he aided our experiments. Some among us gained Mir's power, others beastkin forms. But beastkin children didn't have human lifespans. So we planned greater experiments, but the previous king stopped us. His own brother, with the queen, killed the king and became the new lord."
He let Agagthur's scale slip from his fingertips.
"Then the seed cultivator revealed his ambitions. He tried experimenting on the prince. We sent him away with my young daughter and one of Godel's orphans. I took a mortal wound and became the first subject of the more dangerous experiments. If only the children could live longer-we all joined as substitutes. The queen, the lord too. But the experiments failed."
In agony, he seized Agagthur's scale again and hacked wildly at his lower body-the horse-like part-burning himself viciously.
"The children kept dying. But we couldn't stop. We'd run too far for evolution to turn back. Godel's people believed in us!"
He severed his charred lower half and stood on two human legs.
"And all beastkin in the outside world believe too."
And once Godel's mightiest guardian.
"Mir, come."
"Mir Deployment, Agagthur."
Agagthur's incarnation-the one chosen by Mir-appeared, sword plunged into Agagthur's scale.
A blade like bloodied nails, armor wrapping his body like red scales. His footsteps melted rock into sticky lava, his gestures vaporized blood into haze.
Now it must be upheld. The reason the Empire never conquered Godel: the sword self-drawn through Mir from the deepest place.
"I protect."
The one called Godel's Hero.
***
"So that's how it was."
Byson finally heard the full reason Godel itself had no choice but to become a massive laboratory-after escaping it. They had participated in the experiments themselves. They had no choice but to live on as kin of sin. Human or beastkin, all for the children.
"But..."
Byson trailed off, gazing at the blackened desert, then at the procession of torches lit by Godel's crowds heading like constellations to nearby beastkin shelters.
The initial humans guarding Agagthur in Godel allied with Empire-exiled beastkin and others to form today's Godel. Southern beastkin pinned their hopes on them, aiding the experiments.
With hope of becoming human-or living as long as humans-the experiments continued, even transforming humans to beastkin and beastkin back to human to shatter species boundaries.
For some reason in this process, only children-not adults-were used. Likely because experiments on adults didn't pass genetically, so they shifted to children. Then the previous king was killed, and others continued.
"Some things still don't make sense."
What didn't make sense was why the experiment's results hadn't spread even to the Empire-no, even among beastkin, he, a craftsman of one tribe, hadn't heard. If he'd known, he'd have poured every guva he'd saved for his Empire education rights into supporting it...
"No."
Thinking that far, Byson shook his head again.
Those leaving Godel now fled believing the Empire judged them for experimenting on children's lives. That's why they headed there themselves. But he was beastkin before knight, so they'd shared all this info.
Well then, now that he knew everything.
"What should I do?"
Byson bowed his head. Stop them spreading seeds to southern beastkin refuges? No, he had no authority. Just as he'd saved guva by deceiving for his knight training rights, they'd done something for beastkin too.
But he couldn't abandon the laboratory either. Partly as an Empire knight, but he couldn't abandon the path to becoming human for those seeking humanity. So what should he do? No-who to ask for answers?
"Right, if it were Sir Knight."
Suddenly recalling Gil. Byson turned back to Godel's entrance. With hope that Gil, who had quelled his own rage, knowing all this would lead them rightly again.
Hoping his justice would blaze anew.