Chapter 351: The Tin Knight and the Land of Emerald
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 351: The Tin Knight and the Land of Emerald
Stare at the sun for long, and its afterimage will shimmer behind your closed eyelids.
It was the same with people.
To see, speak with, and live alongside someone so great and powerful was to have their mark etched upon your heart for the rest of your life.
The Witch of the East.
No, to the woman named Nesarose, the Queen of Ashes and the Knight were such beings.
She truly revered the Queen of Ashes, her teacher and master, and she respected the Knight, who had literally worn himself to the bone protecting the people.
That was why she defied even death to carry out the Queen's charge, and why, frustrated as she was with the Knight's stubbornness, she refused to step forward until he had withdrawn.
In other words,
now that she had completed both tasks, Nesarose had no reason left to desperately cling to this world.
If she had to find a reason, it would be her thirst for vengeance against the underground, but even that was no longer a viable excuse.
After all, whatever her excuse, she had let the enemy's second-in-command go with her own hands.
《Frankly, I'm surprised. I never imagined negotiating with you was even a possibility.》
“Do not wag your tongue so freely. An oath made with maggots is something I can break whenever the mood strikes.”
《If you had not released me, the path home for your pupil and her companions would have become far more treacherous. That, too, is a choice, of course. I would not have stopped you.》
“Tsk. Piss off. My mouth feels like it’s rotting just from speaking with you maggots.”
As if she didn't even want to exchange another word, Nesarose waved her hand dismissively.
The Chancellor spoke to her.
《…I have no desire to offer advice to you, the butcher of my people, but I will say this. The heavens will not remain idle. You should watch your back.》
Nesarose did not answer.
As if he hadn't expected an answer either, the Chancellor changed his form into a black snake and once again dove into the ground.
At a glance, it looked as if he were physically digging into the earth, but in reality, it was the act of opening a ‘gate’ to the underground.
This was the reason the Chancellor had to be sent back to the underground alive, not just because of the hostage exchange.
The path he widened as he passed would be of great help to Nesarose's pupil and her companions on their return.
But of course,
there was no way the heavens would simply stand by and watch.
The sky.
From the distant heavens, so high an ordinary person’s eyes could not even properly see, an emerald light fell.
CRASH!
CRASH!
CRASH!
CRASH!
Four giant slabs made of emerald.
From them, which had embedded themselves in the ground as if to surround Nesarose, countless soldiers were born and advanced toward her.
Hundreds, thousands, no, perhaps even tens of thousands of emerald soldiers.
The army, uniformly inorganic and devoid of any vitality, aimed their weapons with a calm demeanor, as if merely carrying out a task.
Even seeing this, Nesarose was indifferent.
She neither chanted any spell nor took out and brandished a staff.
She simply stood there.
And that was enough.
CRUNCH!
An emerald soldier approaching Nesarose was destroyed without any warning.
It was as if an unseen giant hand had crushed the soldier like a cracker.
This phenomenon occurred with every soldier that approached Nesarose.
CRUNCH! CRACK! SMASH!
As if an invisible circle were drawn around Nesarose, the soldiers who crossed its line were brutally shattered without ever swinging their weapons.
No blood flowed. The soldiers were not wearing armor made of emerald; they were made of emerald itself.
The sight of them silently approaching Nesarose without a hint of hesitation, even knowing they would be destroyed, was almost comical.
The battle was utterly one-sided.
However.
VMMMMMMMM—!
The holy power emanating from the emerald walls did not diminish in the slightest.
The walls continuously created new soldiers, and their momentum, far from waning, only grew with time.
Ever so slightly, the invisible circle around Nesarose shrank.
“……”
Nesarose did not retreat.
There was nowhere to retreat to, surrounded as she was on all sides, but more importantly, Nesarose was currently using her mana to hold the ‘path’ connecting the underground and the surface in place.
If Nesarose, who served as both exit and beacon, were to recklessly abandon her post, Dorothea and the Tin Knight's party, still in transit, could all become lost in the dimensional space.
THUD!
When Nesarose stomped her foot, the surrounding earth rang out thunderously, despite the light tap.
The very clumps of earth that made up the ground transformed into skeleton soldiers, and the vengeful spirits circling Nesarose, instead of directly casting curses on the enemy, entered these temporary bodies to protect their master.
Unlike Dorothea, Nesarose had no need to carry separate catalysts.
For on this land, countless lives had lived and died, their corpses becoming a part of the world itself.
To her, the earth itself was a catalyst.
The skeleton soldiers, wielding weapons made of bone, crushed the emerald soldiers one after another.
Their destructive power was less than when she had exerted her power directly, but the mana consumption was reduced accordingly.
A single witch, waging a war of attrition against the heavens and holding her own.
It was a great feat, a marvel truly befitting the name of the strongest Necromancer.
But even so, her power was gradually being whittled away.
She had to maintain the path connecting the surface and the underground, all while fighting without retreat against the endless forces of the heavens.
Had her opponents been human, or at least living creatures, she could have replenished her spent power by controlling their souls or absorbing mana from their corpses, but such things were impossible against the emerald soldiers, who were essentially masses of holy power.
It was then that Nesarose's presence, which had always seemed to overwhelm her surroundings simply by existing, weakened noticeably.
Thump.
Someone leaped down from atop the emerald barrier to the ground, landing lightly.
Nesarose turned her head in the direction of the presence.
And then, her eyes shook violently.
Some people can be like the sun to another.
Some moments can become a lifetime of memories.
How could she ever forget?
How could she not recognize him?
“…Torwin.”
The strongest knight, who had stood with the Queen of Ashes.
He looked at Nesarose with a blank, emotionless face.
And, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he drew his sword.
Severing Flash.
He simply raised his sword and swung it diagonally.
That was all, and it was enough.
The invincible undead that had been protecting Nesarose and holding back the emerald army were all slaughtered in that single blow.
Such a simple act, yet such an extreme result.
But that, too, was to be expected.
For the Knight was truly a hero who had represented an era.
Spssh. A spray of blood erupted from Nesarose's body.
Her body split in two and collapsed to the ground.
A clear, instant death.
“……So that's it. Those bastards from the heavens. I wondered why they were so strangely reluctant to engage with me. It was because they were afraid of revealing ‘this’.”
However, Nesarose was no ordinary person either.
Just as an undead, empowered by a necromancer's mana, can restore its body and revive time and again, she restored her own body, rewinding the fatal wound.
Because their master had not ordered them to give up, the undead also pieced their bodies back together and charged at the emerald soldiers and the Knight.
The soldiers and the Knight, as if calmly performing a task, crushed their desperate struggles.
Indeed.
It was a desperate struggle.
At this point, Nesarose had already realized that she could not win this fight, no matter what she did.
As an expert on souls, Nesarose could tell that what resided within the Knight was not his noble soul, but she also noticed that its skill was identical to the real Knight's.
The pinnacle of skill that had defined an era. A perfect, undamaged body. Immense holy power overflowing in place of mana.
Her opponent was a monster she could not guarantee victory against, even if she were in perfect condition and fought with everything she had.
At the same time, its very existence was an insult to Nesarose and all who had lived in that era.
Her head felt like it was boiling with rage.
The urge to destroy that fake right now, to storm the heavens and overturn everything, spurred her on.
If she stopped maintaining the link between the surface and the underground, she might at least be able to put up a proper fight.
Or at the very least, she could flee and buy time to recover her strength.
Knowing this, Nesarose silently continued the hopeless fight.
She was a figure of the past.
A lingering trace left behind by an age of glory.
And so,
she could not abandon her foolish pupil, who carried on the legacy of those who had once shone so brightly, and the successor the Knight had left behind.
Cut down, regenerate. Cut down, regenerate.
As this process repeated, the undead protecting her reached their limits one by one and could no longer revive.
The spirits that had seemed numerous enough to fill a nation also vanished without a trace, leaving only Nesarose herself.
Her soul, once thought immortal, was torn to shreds by the Knight's sword strikes, which cut not only the body but the very essence of its target.
The emerald soldiers struck Nesarose's regenerating body again and again, as if trying to make minced meat of her.
For the final moments of the strongest witch, it was a death too wretched.
Neither an honorable duel, nor a peaceful end in bed.
For it was a death of being murdered like a chore by those who lacked not only pride, but even self-awareness.
But it was also a fitting end for the villainess who, guided solely by her own emotions, had led a nation to ruin.
Yet, Nesarose did not regret her life.
Even if time were turned back, she would gladly become the Queen of Ashes' pupil.
She would rage furiously in place of the Knight who could not.
Again and again.
Even if it meant meeting a wretched end.
She would do it all the same.
“──Teacher!!!”
From afar, the desperate voice of her pupil rang out.
The sound of the emerald soldiers being crushed one by one by the party that had arrived on the surface also reached her.
She did not hear it with her ears.
Her physical body was already in no state to hear such things.
Her body had been thoroughly pulverized and crushed, looking as if it had been flattened by an immense weight.
With only a crumb of her soul remaining, Nesarose still smiled.
Because the fact that her pupil was here was proof of Nesarose's victory.
In her pupil's trembling grasp,
like the smoke from an extinguished candle, the Witch of the East faded away.