Chapter 96
Chapter 96
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 96
Chapter Title: The Summit
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Who on earth could presume to define the cause and effect of this tale?
From the start, it made no sense to dissect origins and outcomes in a story where the Demon King defeats the princess and saves the Hero. But if we must trace her footsteps once more in words, it might go something like this.
The little girl, reborn with all her memories lost, descended this treacHerous mountain range in search of her sword. Bearing the madness of sins older than myth-the kin of sin-she died and awoke repeatedly, descending solely to find her blade, over and over. In the end, she accepted death, reclaimed every memory from her living days, only for the one who killed her to steal her sword. And then she regained her memories. But what returned wasn't just the recollections of life-it included those from when she lay dead within the Demon King. Learning of the princess's cruelty, the girl resolved to exact revenge. After all, she herself had been reborn as Nakam, the kin of sin embodying vengeance and fury.
Even after declaring herself the Demon King's knight for the Hero's sake, she no longer harbored any pure purpose or will of her own. Brushing it aside as irrelevant, she descended further, projecting her own plight onto Goiem and surrendering to madness. And so she reached Promnain, where all the truths lay hidden-why the demons hated humans, and the Empire. But the truth she uncovered was something else entirely: that she was fated to descend bearing madness and meet her end. Dismissing even that, she drew her sword against the mightiest foe blocking the final path. And she lost. Now stripped of her madness, death was inevitable. This pain was unbearable-better to end it. That was her final thought, her wish, her will.
Yet she awoke again. She should have fulfilled her role as the bearer of madness and vanished from this story. Was it some twisted will that bloomed within her? Had all the tangled causes and effects exploded? Or was it some god's mercy? Whatever it was, she awoke once more.
It belonged to no cause and effect.
So who could dare presume to guess at her heart? This chance-or pitiful hope-that had escaped the story's control and forged its own will. In the end, she would see it. Find it. The role only she could fulfill, the one everyone had to take up.
If the one who saved me is that god called fate, then for him, I...
"Nothing has changed."
She would endure anything if it meant reclaiming her sword and truth, letting her blade's tip reach her enemy in the final moment. Now she walked to uncover the true identity of that foe.
"I just can't die."
But that path was the pilgrim's road. She needed more preparation. The strongest enemy guarded the final pass. Whatever was needed from the summit and the valley, she had to claim it.
"To do that..."
Elis discovered her own corpse at the summit's frozen waterfall. Of course, the immortal Joins had torn it apart, killing and being killed until no form remained. Without madness now, she lacked the power to raise Goiem or corpses. But had she harbored it too long? She could feel it clearly.
"The madness inside there..."
Elis didn't know exactly what the kin of sin was. But if the essence of all living things was life, wasn't breathing just natural?
Her essence was the kin of sin, so sensing it, wielding it, and devouring it to hoard within herself was as natural as breathing. A dark blue glow lingered. Echoes of the madness remained.
If she could seize that madness through vengeance, just as when she first sought her sword-if she could make it explode alongside her own-then. Elis extended her hand, spraying threads of blood-red light. And within them, she found herself. The red threads touched the lingering scrap of madness, twisting into violet and seeping into the surrounding corpses.
"Rise."
Thus, she pierced death with vengeance and summoned the madness. Bones clacked and clashed, frozen flesh dangled limp, and something with violet-glowing eyes burst from the snow. It resembled a rotting Elis, reaching out to devour a nearby immortal Join.
Saaah-
Its entire body and face were pitch black, stained violet in the eyes, with three extra pairs of arms crudely fashioned from Join ribs-yet the joints fit seamlessly, without flaw. The devourer of death, born from Elis's kin of sin, had awakened.
"I don't know how many fragments of the madness I carried lie scattered on this summit..."
Elis beckoned the devourer of death to follow as she headed toward a frozen lump of pus.
"Now... I'm forming my own knight order, all by myself."
***
At the Night Goblins' lair, Chasap Hay rose from Neshef's altar in the center and headed back to the lab. While the queen held funeral rites for the Harpyai, he inspected the golems' circuits, purging impurities within. Mostly undead flesh and ice-crusted rocks, but as the queen ordered, he set aside the sticky red mucus separately.
"Is this the kin of sin... Nakam?"
He couldn't help marveling anew that this tough, mold-like mass clinging stubbornly to corpses-like fungus or mushrooms on decay-was the trace left by that kin of sin he'd encountered before. It defied his knowledge entirely.
No substance could exhibit such properties. Just as water was needed to form ice, the world's laws demanded precursors for vengeance to take shape. Yet this kin of sin emerged without cost, writhing all the more grotesquely for it. Utterly alien.
A power that materialized through will alone. Perhaps it could be applied to the circuits?
The young Night Goblin checked the map occupying one wall of the lab. He wanted to study the kin of sin, to aid the coming war even a little. The map was an imagined depiction of the heavenly realm.
"The vanished celestial race's world... The queen says we can't take golems to the inverted world. But maybe this bizarre stuff could help somehow."
This map was proof the Night Goblins were descendants of the celestials, passed down through ages since the myth when celestials vanished with Or. No one believed it, but this young Night Goblin boy hoped sincerely, as one demon, to contribute even a little.
"The Great Demon King ordered preparations for invading the inverted world where the remaining celestials lurk after his revival... Does it have kin of sin too?"
Chasap Hay had secretly glimpsed the queen's parchment on her research and progress, grasping the full scope of the revolution and war preparations unfolding in western Gehenna.
"First, awaken Lady Iveldra's power to stop the Hero. If that requires invading the inverted world, Night Goblins have no role. Until then, we block the undead surging from the frozen lands. The queen handled that via golems. Next, exploit Hatam Mountains' resources to prepare for the great war ahead-unify Gehenna continent into one nation first..."
Peeking into the queen's thoughts might be a sin, but her will flowed through the horns anyway, so it didn't matter. Better yet, for the coming war, the more talents like Chasap Hay understood and empathized with her vision, the better.
Having grasped how Red Blood Savages and Mountain Giants circulated food and resources across western Gehenna under demon oversight, two questions arose for Chasap Hay.
First: why mark the inverted world of celestials as having kin of sin?
"Three kin of sin in the eastern continent, three in the western... one in the sea leading to the celestials' inverted world. Demon and witch's tale? They say kin of sin defy understanding like laws of nature, so why revise the Great Demon King's plan over them?"
And rightly so-neither the madness he studied under her orders nor the incomprehensible vengeance made sense, though he grasped what was needed for the Demon King's revival. One scrap of madness should suffice.
It'seemed excessive unless some sinister will was gathering the kin of sin for the looming great war, mapping their numbers and locations.
"And the wolfkin..."
The other: using the scant wolfkin as elites made sense, but deploying them to the inverted world? No matter their strength, their numbers didn't match estimates of enemy forces there.
"And what's this next to it?"
The queen's plan listed only wolfkin and red dots as invasion forces for the celestials' inverted world.
Not demon markings or her playful doodles. Chasap Hay could only shake his head, unable to piece together the grand, tangled web of wills.
"Right, she must have her reasons. I'll do what I can from my station!"
As he redoubled efforts to collect the fibrous kin of sin from the circuits-
"Chasap Hay!"
Adult Night Goblin researchers burst into the lab.
"New undead are heading this way!"
"What?"
"A type we've never seen! They're breaking through the ceiling-we've all evacuated here to the golems. No choice. Hurry..."
"W-Wait! The ceiling?"
Chasap Hay rushed out and saw, in the black night, red light piercing the deep ice overhead. Not undead climbing from the valley.
From above-from the summit. Kin of sin descending.
"Lady Elis Hope!"
Realizing the red dot's meaning, Chasap Hay flew toward the ceiling with joy.