Chapter 52: The Heaven-Splitting Giant Was Split in Two.
The heaven-splitting giant was bisected. The dark clouds behind it parted as well. Bright light poured down from the split clouds, shining upon the earth.
Marhal let out a long breath and handed the sword back to Strekl.
“You okay?”
“Not really. Honestly, it’s not a technique meant for humans.”
He had inherited the technique and history, but Marhal lacked what the Hero possessed: a body that could endure it.
That monster of a man didn’t even train, though.
He did train, but compared to what other knights called training, it was more like a warm-up.
Marhal had seen countless talents, accumulated his own formidable history, yet he couldn’t help envying the Hero’s gifts.
It’s been almost five years, hasn’t it?
The first time he’d cleaved the sky was when he’d first learned the sword from the Hero. His body ached terribly. He wanted to pass out right then and there.
But there was still work to be done.
Click.
Something metaphysical locked into place within him. It was the sound of the unleashed history in the Hero-inherited sword finding its proper seat.
The weather was clearing. Starting from the point Marhal had sliced, the clouds dissipated, and the sky opened up.
Bathed in the light descending from the heavens, Ellis stared up at the sky.
Marhal approached her.
Ellis’s eyes were lifeless. Her body lived, but her mind was dead.
What had enveloped her was the malice of the demon race itself—a calamity even the Hero, mage, and saint had tried and failed to accept. Exposure to it inevitably led to this state.
Marhal placed his hand on Ellis’s head. The wind blew.
Just a little—he borrowed the power of the paulownia crown. The emperor’s wind brushed over Ellis’s body.
Light returned to her pupils.
“Ah… aaah… aaaah!”
Ellis broke into sobs. She curled up, weeping without even wiping the tears and snot streaming down her face.
“Why… why did this have to happen? Why did Lady Soila have to suffer like that?!”
“What did you see?”
Ellis looked up. Her eyes were devoid of vitality. Marhal had seen that look many times before. None of them lasted even a month before dying—by suicide or something close to it.
“Everything. Her memories. What happened in the West. The demons’ memories. Resentments. Curses.”
“Did you realize what you were about to do?”
“……”
She had. That was why she couldn’t answer. What was I about to do?
Her curiosity had nearly erased millions of lives. Erasure might have been merciful. Becoming a demon wasn’t something you could describe mildly.
Her silence was answer enough.
Marhal had restored her mind solely for this purpose. He wanted her to know the weight of her sins.
“Any last words before you die?”
“If I beg to be spared, will you let me live?”
“If you sincerely beg forgiveness.”
Ellis let out a hollow laugh. According to the knowledge force-fed into her mind, this man might actually spare her. But that wasn’t what she wanted.
“No need. Just one question instead. Did Lady Soila… go peacefully at the end?”
“No.”
“I see. Can’t be helped. It’s not something you can be forgiven for just by saying you didn’t know.”
“Looks like you didn’t see that far. Seems like you’re deluded by some half-baked memory, but she didn’t go.”
“What?”
“Why kill someone who’s perfectly fine?”
“She’s alive? Lady Soila?”
“Not Soila, but the woman once called that—you know her. She’s alive and well. Married, with a kid even.”
Life returned to Ellis’s eyes. Soila was alive. That was enough for her to live on. No—she had to live.
There was something she needed to hear from Soila herself.
“You said you’d spare me if I begged sincerely? Please, spare me. I was wrong. Everything was wrong, so please. I have to live! I have something I must do!”
“Do you even know how shameless that request is?”
“I do. I know it burns. When I meet Lady Soila and hear her answer that day, I’ll kill myself. So please…!”
“Fine. I forgive you. But even if I do, will you have a tomorrow?”
The wind stopped. The gentle breeze that had been blowing vanished.
Ellis’s mind grew faint. The countless demons’ malice and curses gnawed at her spirit. Marhal’s intervention had only temporarily driven them back, not cured the root.
“No, no! Please! Spare me! I have things to do! Words I must hear!”
Ellis clung to Marhal’s leg. He pushed her away gently and squatted down, meeting her eyes.
“Why?”
The simple question stole her breath. Why?
She had reasons to be healed. Marhal had none to heal her.
Her breathing grew ragged. Her mind blurred. The light faded from Ellis’s eyes.
Her body slumped sideways.
Marhal looked up. A short distance away stood the mage, staring only at Ellis’s fallen body.
Marhal extended his hand, and the quill pen on the ground flew into his grasp.
The pen, dropped amid the storm, was caked in mud.
It can be cleaned, but… it’s still my father’s keepsake.
A bitter taste filled his mouth. Marhal aimed the quill at the mage.
The mage froze.
Marhal approached Night Dew.
“Any last words?”
“It was you. The reason the future changed.”
No matter how much history Night Dew accumulated, it was only that of his sect—barely over a century from dozens of people.
Before Marhal’s history, his own—his magic—was less than a child’s play.
“Did you have to kill her? She was the reason I lived.”
“You heard our talk. Let me turn it around: any reason to spare you?”
“None.”
The reasons to kill Ellis applied to him too. And he knew too many things he shouldn’t.
No reason to let him live. Even Night Dew—witnesses died.
The bindings around Night Dew’s body released. His strength failed, and he pitched forward.
He looked up at Marhal in bewilderment.
“I’ll spare you anyway.”
“Why?”
“My whim. Should I kill you instead?”
Night Dew fell silent. He couldn’t ask death from the man offering life. It was instinct.
“Strekl, let’s go.”
“You’re really leaving him like this? No silencing?”
“You only silence those who need it. He doesn’t.”
“To me, he looks like he needs it more than anyone.”
A proper mage from the Mystery Trackers. With reason to resent Marhal. Letting him go made no sense.
“Think about who’s at fault, and you’ll have your answer. In the end, everyone here’s a victim, right? The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“…I see.”
Marhal killed Ellis, but the Empire stood behind it. The Empire stopped her time. Someone in the imperial family.
“Killing a fine ally would be a waste, no?”
The last words were for Night Dew.
Marhal and Strekl departed.
Left alone, Night Dew struggled to his feet. He approached the fallen Ellis.
Her body lived, but her mind was gone.
Changes began in Ellis’s body. Her halted time resumed.
Her early-twenties appearance wrinkled, skin roughening. With her past unspooled, her time flowed again.
Her twenties beauty faded, but she remained beautiful.
Night Dew stroked her hair.
“What I loved was your time.”
Night Dew saw the future. From some point, he handled every incident without panic.
Tension vanished from his life. Young and famed among Mystery Trackers, he lost interest in living.
Chasing mysteries was his only fun.
Then he met Ellis. A woman whose time stopped due to the past. Body in the present, soul trapped in history.
Ellis lived the present more than anyone he knew. She burned it for the past.
To Night Dew, it dazzled.
“You and I both knew deep down. Our end wouldn’t be good.”
Her goals needed his future-sight. But she pushed him away repeatedly, and he wouldn’t leave.
The catastrophe came, different in form from what they imagined.
With Ellis dead, Night Dew’s life returned to that tensionless existence. Mysteries amused, but he wasn’t obsessed.
“Should I die?”
No reason to live. So die.
Night Dew summoned lightning. A direct strike to the brain would be painless.
The flashing bolt reacted with puddles everywhere, sparking brightly.
Night Dew’s eyes widened. Something impossible gleamed in the puddle.
“Why?”
He saw futures only through dew from his homeland. That’s why his name.
This was an ordinary puddle, yet he saw the future in it.
Magic conditions didn’t change easily. If they did, mages’ eccentricities would halve.
To change magic required cataclysm.
“Ah.”
He’d had one. He’d seen the world-ending giant, watched it bisected, seen the inhuman sword cleave the sky.
Even as Night Dew pondered, time flowed in the puddle.
A woman appeared—the princess who called Soila sister. Bloodied, fleeing through woods. Vague shadowy figures pursued.
Her wounds were fatal at a glance. Without shaking pursuers and priestly healing, no future.
The vision ended there. Did she die? Live? An event yet to occur.
Asking outcomes was paradox.
Night Dew rose. The lightning he’d made seeped quietly into Ellis’s head.
“Ellis, following you will have to wait.”
Soila was forgotten even in the palace. But someone besides Ellis remembered and sought her.
He couldn’t let the will to find the forgotten fade.
As Night Dew laid Ellis down and stood, wind tickled his forehead.
Wind carved letters on the ground before him. Ancient imperial tongue.
Revenge is always open.
So brazen from the aggrieved, it killed the urge for revenge. Better to resent madly, but Night Dew was too rational.
Their actions were unforgivable to Westerners; using them as bait to destroy the West was Yurel’s doing.
If he had to curse someone, it was the imperial family that killed Soila. Yurel, who tried the same on Ellis.
“Ah.”
Night Dew realized his fatal mistake.
The man said Soila lived. Having seen the law-defying giant, he could guess the method.
If right, blindly searching would be unwise.
“If fate exists, we’ll meet someday.”
Night Dew draped a rag nearby over himself. Tormenting the Empire alone was hard.
Building from scratch took too long. He needed patronage.
Conveniently, he knew one Western powerbroker: Azenman Riantl. Underworld boss even the imperial family feared.
Night Dew walked. The sucking mud mirrored his lot. His footprints led east.