Chapter 86
Chapter 86
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 86
Chapter Title: Nakam Elis
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The first time Iveldra heard the devil's words and sought out the kin of sin that would awaken if the Demon King failed to overcome his backlash, there was one particularly hard to find.
That small, red lump lay sprawled like the sun's blood spilled upon frozen earth. Iveldra embraced the kin of sin, which must have been shivering in the black cold.
As she recalled, it was the kin symbolizing wrath and vengeance, bearing the name Nakam, though it had been burned away by Agagtur's flames.
"Are you cold?"
It writhed and trembled. If anything alive besides Iveldra had seen it, it would have appeared as their most horrifying enemy from memory.
After all, vengeance was like that by nature.
"I'll take you to your friend."
Following the devil's words, Iveldra moved vengeance to sit beside madness. Then, she infused it with the will of a knight that Hyeon-once king of devils and dream demons-had discovered while trying to extract the things absorbed into him on the Demon King's orders.
The will seeped into the kin of sin and took shape as if familiar with it. Iveldra simply thought it must have been close to the Demon King while inside him.
"Now, rise, Elis Hope."
Unable to comprehend it, she merely thought that. Since Iveldra herself had no will of her own, she simply carried out the method to revive the Demon King, paying no mind to what the devil and witch prepared separately in this tale.
Following the devil's plan once more, she stood beside madness, which the pilgrims had carried to awaken this world's truth. Now, all she had to do was awaken Elis and have her transfer the madness here. If she did that, Elis would ultimately side with the Demon King.
"I... surely died."
Iveldra saw Elis rise and asked the sin's kin, her essence.
"Are you feeling better?"
***
Descending from the pilgrims' altar carrying madness, she covered her mouth to block death and reentered the fog to prevent it. On the way to the ice waterfall, she maintained her weapons and calculated other threats.
"I..."
But as she calculated the threat of repeatedly dying by her own hand, she sensed something had changed in the one fated to kill her.
Why did she keep linking deaths like repeating questions about who she was? Or, as her other self had said, had she obsessed over death so long that an attachment to life had formed?
In the end, realizing her identity at the end of all those questions brought change to her body. Vengeance flowed through Elis's blood.
"What the hell is this?"
She hadn't yet realized how to control vengeance. But she would soon.
"An immortal Join, huh."
As Elis passed the shattered ice waterfall, another immortal Join appeared before her eyes. That pitiful lost death no longer frightened Elis. Power overflowed. Her body had grown exponentially stronger, burning hot in preparation to wield vengeance.
"Let's see..."
She set down her sword and shield, gripped her spear, and hurled it with all her might. In that instant, her whole body felt like boiling blood, and a thread-like rippling red light connected from her fingertips as the spear flew.
Boom!
The spear pierced straight through the immortal Join's chest and returned at her will. This was clearly more than mere strength.
The thought that she could kill anything swirled within her, but more prominently rose the true nature of this vengeful power-like manifesting a sword in the knight order. This power undoubtedly grew stronger the more she was hurt. It was surely that kind of force, and she could test it if she met herself again.
She gathered her weapons and moved on. Meeting herself and dying, reclaiming her sword and memories-that was her only goal.
"It doesn't matter what becoming a kin of sin means."
It didn't matter what her identity was. What her enemy's identity was, who killed and revived her-none of it mattered now. She thought only of reclaiming her sword.
"Has a lot of time passed?"
Reaching the lowest alley descending the ridge into the canyon, a cave-like passage, Elis asked the knight guarding it. The knight rose from Elis's corpse, sword in hand.
"You're... different from before."
The knight instinctively sensed something had changed in Elis's eyes. And why not? Wasn't his own appearance and heart the same? The other was just a will, but thinking he must have the same gaze, the knight gave a weary smile.
"Just as you've regained your memories, I've regained a bit of mine."
"What memories make you challenge me again? We are knights of the great Empire..."
"No."
Interrupting the knight, Elis hesitated. Should she tell him the truth she'd learned?
That she and the knight were mere wills possessed by some kin of sin?
That repeating death from the start made no sense, and now held no meaning?
That they were mere byproducts lingering in the story, craving only vengeance?
No, she couldn't do that.
"You'll die here as a knight."
The Elis Hope before her eyes now had to remain a knight. That was the best she could do for herself in this cruel tale. Elis raised her sword and shield.
"Fine, then you'll die here as a kin of sin."
Knight Elis Hope and sin's kin Elis Hope would both die here. The victor would reclaim the sword, merging wills into a greater one-the true Elis Hope revived. Thus, death would repeat. Life would begin. She could choose the path forward with the true 'her' will.
"Good."
Sprung from the same existence, the knight and kin of sin raised swords as utmost courtesy to each other. Amid countless Elis deaths, Elis shouted at Elis.
"Come at me! Mirror knight!"
At those words, the mirror knight extended his sword into lance form and charged. Elis now felt certain she could dodge the knight's sword. But she didn't evade the blade aimed at her head. Like before, she twisted into its path to activate vengeance.
'If there's a target, always aim the sword's tip there, Rahav.'
Squelch!
'That will be your unbreakable conviction and sword.'
"Gaaahhh!"
She nearly dropped her sword from the wind piercing her right shoulder, but that didn't matter. Blood boiled again, reddening the rims of Elis's eyes, and she smashed down with the shield in her left arm on the mirror knight's arm.
In that moment, sticky thread-like red, horrific light flowed from Elis's body, along the shield to the knight. And that red, horrific light-vengeance.
Boom!
Exploded in an instant.
"Kugh!"
The knight's right shoulder, holding the spear, blew off in a flash, severing his arm. But even in his half-lost consciousness from pain, the knight raised his left arm and gripped his sword embedded in Elis.
Like thrusting a rapier, he pulled his arm back toward his chest, then extended his left arm, stabbing the sword deep into Elis's body. Creating distance was the priority.
'Knight's Spear Piercing the Heavens'.
"What?"
Vrrr!
In an instant, the knight's sword began spinning on its own. The heated metal seared flesh from Elis's shoulder, scraping bone and clinging. Flesh or Iveldra's wing or both-it didn't matter. Black smoke billowed from her shoulder, spreading the gruesome stench of burning corpse.
"Gaaahhh!"
Skin bulging with straining tendons, Elis screamed as she tore away the flesh and bone stuck to the sword. Then she leaped back, and the two Elis briefly widened the gap.
"Hah, hngh! Hah."
Groan-like screams spilled involuntarily from both Elis's mouths. Elis used anger's power again, threading near-fatal pain with string-like light to stitch her body.
"I'll kill you!"
But it wasn't over. Red, impure energy rose from her entire body, filling the cave.
"Here it comes."
And the knight had no intention of taking it lying down; he prepared to fire his omen right away. Her omen always had a long charge time.
The spinning sword coiled and sucked in the cave's filling rage in a spiral.
The instant he fired that, everything in its path-this cave included-would surely explode. It was his sword, after all. But Elis knew.
"You can't fire that."
Not with his right hand severed, barely gripping with his left in a destabilized stance.
"My sword's name is [Rachab]! A sword that pierces dark clouds, as the name says!"
The knight thrust his sword.
Boom!
Rahav-the sword's tip-shook.
"Damn it!"
Thus, the knight's final strike missed Elis entirely, blasting a huge hole in the cave wall and vanishing. Strange light-dust or rage or fog like the death outside-covered the cave.
Now her final technique would come. Her rage would engulf him. But he couldn't die so easily. At least, he had to erase the Rahav in her eyes...
"Ah."
But as his omen ended, the knight could say nothing at the sight.
Dust settled again, and her vengeance rose. All the damage he'd inflicted-all the dead Elis in this cave-strung on red threads.
Eyes gouged, arms torn, frozen, rotting-things that should never exist on this land-rose slowly, relentlessly, dyed red as if seized by madness.
It wasn't vengeance to repay. It was contagious madness.
In wielding vengeance, Elis had unwittingly spread it to madness. The ominous power born of two kin of sin resembled the Demon King's eerily.
Elis looked at the knight and whispered to them.
"Go... kill."