WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 494: Interlude, One Step Forward (2)

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A soot-stained book.

The book where the story of Morgan le Fay began, the starting point of a life so terribly long it was almost unbearable to imagine. The writing was obscured by soot, impossible to read, but she could still retrace her memories. Running her fingers over the book, Morgan remembered.

The beginning of her story.

「In the beginning.」

The first spark that had kindled this enormous blaze.

「In the beginning, the sky was void.」

That was how the first sentence began.

* * *

In the beginning, the sky was void.

There was nothing. It was empty.

A blank white canvas, untouched by any color or image. The sky had been that way since the distant past, and perhaps it would have remained that way forever.

"There is a throne above that sky."

If no one had looked up at the sky.

"The one who sits on that throne will become king. They will become an absolute ruler, with every living thing on this land beneath their feet."

If no one had realized what lay above the sky, perhaps it could have stayed that way.

"I saw it. I saw the future where an unmatched tyrant sits upon the throne, the future where that tyrant turns the whole world into a sea of fire. This is a future that will surely come to pass."

Curiosity was the shortest road to ruin. Things kept hidden had a reason to remain hidden. Yet the fool, unaware of that truth, insisted on lifting the barrier.

"Calamity. Ruin. The end will come!"

The old man, a prophet in the age of beginnings, had a tongue as crooked as his bent back, and he never missed a chance to let it wag. He went around telling everyone of the future he had seen. He shouted until the world itself seemed to shake, claiming they had to stop the ruin that would soon arrive.

The old man never realized that his words were the beginning of all ruin.

「They say there is a throne above the sky.」

The prophet's words began in the low places.

「Did you hear? There is a throne in the sky, and whoever sits on it becomes an absolute being. Shouldn't our king be the one to sit there?」

「That does sound true.」

「We cannot let barbarians who dare call themselves kings sit there. His Majesty alone is worthy of that place.」

Eventually, they flowed all the way to the highest places.

「......」

Apart from his loose tongue, the old man was an excellent prophet, and many rulers believed his words. Before long, the tale that there was a throne above the sky lingered in the rulers' ears. Some remained silent, but that did not mean they were uninterested.

「The Sky Throne.」

「An absolute king.」

No ruler could casually dismiss those two words. It was not an age in which someone like that could become a ruler.

It was the Era of Many States, an era of Shattered States where countless nations had been torn apart. A chaotic age. An age of violence where only the blind, consumed by power, survived and climbed to the top. The powerful figures who reached that summit tended to think alike.

That they should be the ones to sit there.

At the very least, that no one else could be allowed to sit there.

「A tyrant will burn the world!」

The prophet spread his prophecy to prevent ruin, but the fate of the world was not something those in power particularly cared about. To the rulers, the destruction the prophet spoke of was nothing more than a convenient justification.

「Can it be helped? We must stop the birth of a tyrant. I shall ascend to the sky. I cannot watch my people burn, so I have no choice but to challenge the sky.」

「We cannot allow a barbarian who calls themself king to ascend to the sky. The world will burn. Everything will return to barbarism.」

「We must stop the world from becoming a sea of fire, mustn't we?」

Each of them spoke lofty justifications.

They gathered people. Some raised armies outright, and once one side began conscripting soldiers, the other nations had no choice but to prepare for war as well. Once things had gone that far, what followed was inevitable.

War broke out.

The age of chaos arrived.

That was true not only of rulers powerful enough to challenge the sky, but also of the rulers of weaker states. If they could not ascend, they had to at least stop someone else from doing so.

The Ascension War.

The war given that name continued without end. Throughout that long conflict, rulers struggled to find the answer to one question: how could one ascend to the sky? Countless peoples offered answers of their own.

「Don't we need to climb up to the sky?」

One people tried to reach the sky by crudely piling up stairs. That was how the Spiral Tower was built, but their attempt ended in failure. That method could not reach the sky. They might obtain a body capable of reaching it, but a god made of nothing but a body had no value.

Next.

In some age, a certain people amassed knowledge. They built a library that preserved all knowledge existing in the world and tried to reach the sky through wisdom. That too failed. Wisdom alone could not reach the sky.

Next.

A renowned warrior from one age declared that the defeated sank while the victors soared, that this was the rule of the world.

"I will transcend by killing countless people."

With that cry, the warrior who became king started a war and piled up mountains of corpses. The man called the War King challenged the sky with a tower of corpses, but he too failed.

Next.

A priestess from some remote land spoke. Why had so many kings failed? Because they stood alone. How could one ascend to the sky with a single body? To ascend, she cried, one had to contain countless people within oneself.

"Offer everything."

And so the priestess became one with countless humans. Carrying tens of thousands of lives within her body, she challenged the sky, but she too failed. Her body was too heavy for her to ascend.

Next, and next...

Countless peoples, countless sages, and countless kings challenged the sky in their own ways. In the process, countless people died. Some lands became ruins, while others were polluted until no one could live there.

Next, next, next...

Just as human will passed on to the next generation, human greed did as well. If a person could become endlessly beautiful, then they could also become endlessly ugly.

「It exists! The throne exists!」

「I saw it but could not reach it. Still, it was certainly there. The throne is there.」

「Challenge it.」

「The prophet's words were not wrong.」

They died, killed, burned, and set others ablaze.

「Do not let them reach it.」

「Do not let them ascend to the sky.」

「That person is the tyrant from the prophecy!」

「The tyrant named in the prophecy is that madman! We must join forces and stop that lunatic. Unite! Rise up, all people!」

They obstructed and were obstructed, plotted and were plotted against.

「......」

One day, the whole world had become a sea of fire, not because of a tyrant seated upon the Sky Throne, but because of kings whose feet remained planted on the ground.

"The way to ascend has already been revealed. Yet no one has managed to ascend because the world is torn apart. They are divided and fight one another. They see only the trees and cannot see the forest. To ascend to the sky, they must see the forest."

A woman walked across a land of ashes.

"None of those methods were wrong."

With the vast wilderness, where countless kings had challenged ascension, behind her, she spread both arms wide. Smiling at someone, she called out.

"They are all correct."

She pointed to the collapsed Spiral Tower, the priestess's sacrificial tower, the tower of corpses built from human bodies, the ivory tower built from wisdom, and the remains of countless other towers.

"We only need to gather everything that came before."

Nothing new was necessary. Gather everything that had existed, and it became the answer. If the failures of countless people became stepping stones, then at last one could ascend to the sky.

"From now on, I will gather everything into one. I will combine everything that existed before and create a result unlike anything that came before. Then..."

She smiled beautifully.

She smiled with pure innocence.

"We can put an end to this endless competition. No one will need to burn one another anymore. A world will come where you no longer have to weep in sorrow. At last, it will be the end point. The ideal paradise (Avalon) we searched for so desperately will arrive."

And so, she said.

"When that day comes, will you forgive me, Morgan?"

2.

They walked and walked.

Even darkness that seemed endless had an end. After walking for a long time, Najin and Merlin emerged from the darkness. Beyond that long stretch of darkness, the Land of the Abyss awaited them.

"......"

Yet it was different from the Abyss Najin knew. He looked at Merlin, but she shook her head as well. It meant this was her first time seeing it too.

"What is this place..."

Najin trailed off.

How could he describe the sight before him? Countless words came to mind, but none of them fit. He silently looked ahead.

It was a vast land.

Perhaps it had once been wilderness, but it could no longer remain wilderness. The land that should have been empty was filled with traces left behind by humanity. The first thing Najin saw was a Spiral Tower rising high enough to touch the sky.

"A tower."

Countless towers stood lined up around the Spiral Tower. Their structures, designs, and architectural styles all differed, but the direction they faced was the same. A tower always stretched toward the sky.

They differed in size and shape, yet they all had forms that could still be called towers. Such structures stretched on without end.

Tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands...

Najin gave up counting. He could not even take them all in at a glance. Nor did there seem to be any point in counting them separately.

'They are bound together.'

The towers planted firmly into the ground had become the roots of a great tree. Centered around the Spiral Tower coiling toward the sky, countless towers intertwined to form the trunk of that great tree. The completed great tree had finally reached the sky.

Its branches could not be seen from here. The upper part of the great tree had been swallowed by the sky. Its crown was submerged in a blackened, rippling sky.

"......"

What were these towers for?

What was this great tree for?

"Merlin."

"Yes, I'm listening."

"People in the past often compared Witches to gods, didn't they? The gods spoken of in the earliest religions were Witches, after all."

"They did. It was the same in my time."

Merlin was looking at the towers as well.

"Then those..."

"They must be traces of humanity challenging the sky. Or perhaps they are towers the Witch used to reach the sky. I don't know why such structures have suddenly appeared, though."

Merlin's eyes narrowed.

For a thousand years, she had held on to the Binding Seal Arthur left behind. That meant she understood how the Land of the Abyss was formed and what lay where. Even for Merlin, the towers before them were something she had never seen.

"Did Arthur's memories contain anything like these towers?"

"No. They did not."

Najin, who had glimpsed Arthur's memories of fighting the Witch, had never seen this landscape either. The place where Arthur fought the Witch had been a wilderness covered in darkness.

"I don't know why it is showing us this sight."

Najin let out a long breath.

"But one thing is clear."

He looked toward the crown of the great tree formed by the intertwined towers. It was submerged in a sky churning with pitch-black darkness, but dark red veins pulsed where it touched the sky. Looking closely, the great tree almost resembled a hand gripping the sky.

"At the top of the tower, in the sky, is the Witch."

That alone was enough.

He knew where he needed to go.

"Then..."

Najin stepped forward. The instant he took one step toward the great tree in the distance, he saw it.

'Statues?'

Countless statues stood in rows. They were statues, yet they felt far too lifelike to be called statues. Each held a different pose, but one thing was the same.

Every statue had its hands joined.

Some pressed their palms together and raised all five fingers. Some clasped their hands and bowed their heads. Others laid one hand over the other. Najin knew what those gestures meant.

'Prayer.'

Gestures used to pray to a god.

The moment Najin understood that, the statues' mouths opened wide.

『We pray.』

Their appearances and poses differed, but they all spoke the same words.

『The end. An end to everything.』

Their voices overlapped. They resonated. The sound covered the wilderness, traveled through the roots, and reached the sky. It was a kind of prayer. And prayer was ultimately communion, a question humanity cast toward a god.

Then the god answered that question.

Splash.

The sound of water rippling came from somewhere. It was exactly like the sound Merlin made when casting magic, so Najin looked at her, but Merlin was not using magic. She only stood with her head raised, looking at the sky. Her eyes trembled as she stared upward.

Najin raised his head and looked at the sky too.

"Ah."

Then he let out a hollow laugh.

"This is insane. Seriously."

Why were they called Witches?

Because they were a race beloved by magic.

The Witch of the Abyss was no different.

Before she was a god, she was a mage. The oldest being in the world, one who remembered and recorded more magic than anyone else, a living history of magic. The first page of that history book had opened.

In the most terrible way possible.

Author's Note

I'll get back to working hard!

Next Chapter

Footnotes:

“Many States” and “Shattered States” are homophonous Korean terms written with different characters, framing the era as both politically plural and divided.

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