WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 506: The End, an End to Everything (6)

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Once, Morgan le Fay believed.

"Humans and we are no different. We look alike, and we live alike. The only difference is that we can live inside dreams."

Humans and fairies were no different.

"Everything comes easily in dreams, but because it comes easily, it also disappears easily. No matter how beautiful a dream is, it's nothing more than a sweet illusion that lasts one night. Reality is different, though. Everything is difficult, but it doesn't disappear so easily either!"

So.

"Let's live like humans too. Dreams should be a place to end the day and rest, not a place to live. Let's leave our dreams and live in reality."

She believed they could live like humans too.

"Let's live like humans!"

Morgan had no doubt that she could mingle with humans and live each day to the fullest, just as they did. That was Morgan's dream. She wished for a dream that could not be achieved within a dream.

「Are you all right?」

When had that wish begun?

「You seem to be lost.」

「Come along. I'll show you the way.」

Perhaps it had begun then.

「It's easy to lose your way in the mountains once night falls. Wild animals are dangerous too. But if you have a lantern, you won't have to wander. Here, take it. It's a gift, child.」

「And if you're still afraid.」

「I'll tell you a story. A tale of a brave warrior, a hero who founded a nation, or perhaps a king who lived alongside fairies! Which story would you like?」

When she was young, Morgan had gotten lost in the forest. Chased by wild animals, she fell and hurt herself. Unable to find her way home, she hid inside a cave and wept.

The one who found her was not one of her kin.

Her kin had been so absorbed in their dreams that they did not even realize she had disappeared. Yet a human who patrolled the forest at night found the sobbing Morgan. The forest warden recognized her as a Night Fairy, but comforted her as though she were any ordinary child and showed her the way home.

「Once upon a time, there was a man famed for his courage. He was so brave that...」

On the way back, the forest warden told Morgan fairy tales. He told her epic tales and sang of humanity's beauty. Listening to those stories, Morgan's eyes shone, and she came to see humans as beautiful.

Unlike her kind, who lived in dreams.

Humans who cultivated reality and brought things to fruition.

Morgan admired such humans. She began dreaming of living such a life herself. A dream that could not be achieved in dreams, a dream a Night Fairy could not attain.

"Then let's leave, for reality instead of dreams."

Once she had grown up, she left her homeland to make that dream come true. Alongside fairies who had been moved by her, or who dreamed dreams much like hers, she headed for a human village. At first, it was not bad.

Fairies were beautiful and good by nature.

Humans took a liking to them and saw no reason to cast out fairies who treated them kindly. The fairies easily blended into every society. Everything went well. The life she had wished for had arrived.

By day, they helped humans with their work. At night, they used their abilities to give humans pleasant dreams.

Days like yesterday, and days like today.

Morgan found that daily life more fulfilling than anything. When she tilled the fields, crops grew. Even after sleeping and waking, the crops did not vanish. They remained there. She found simple happiness in the fact that something was steadily building.

She dreamed that such days would last for eternity.

But dreams are dreams because they break.

Blinking, Morgan closed her eyes and opened them again. The beautiful scenery vanished in an instant. When she opened her eyes, the reality before her was miserably wretched.

"......"

She saw the corpse of one of her kin, crawling with maggots. That fairy had once smiled as though they possessed the whole world after working hard in the fields and drinking a glass of cool water. Now, they had died without receiving even a sip. Their body was like a shriveled tree.

A wretched reality was what awaited when she opened her eyes.

Yet closing them changed nothing.

Morgan was a Night Fairy. Even among her kin, she was exceptional. She could dream countless dreams and enter the dreams of others whenever she wished. Morgan watched the dreams her kin wove.

「Hahahahahaha!」

Inside those dreams, humans laughed. They ate delicious food, surrounded by beautiful people, laughing with all their hearts. Yet her kin were not among them. They were weaving dreams with shriveled hands.

"Ah."

Morgan let out a sigh.

"Ah, ah, aaaaaah..."

Where had it all gone wrong?

It had been goodwill. Kindness. They had only meant to repay the kindness of the humans who had willingly accepted them. Then why had they arrived in hell? Why was their goodwill repaid with malice?

Humans had been beautiful beings.

They had been portrayed as beautiful in the fairy tales. So why?

"Why?"

No one answered Morgan's question.

"Why?"

Not a single person gave her an answer.

2.

The wretched life continued.

A life where even death was not allowed.

Morgan endured it. Her kin withered further with every passing day, but while her mind and spirit grew exhausted, her body did not deteriorate. It was both her misfortune and her good fortune.

Morgan could only watch.

She watched her kin being persecuted, treated worse than livestock, let alone fellow human beings. Watching was all she could do. She had talent, but it was talent that had not yet bloomed.

All she did was dream.

The ability to wield dreams had to be used for the king, so her dreams remained nothing more than fantasies. Still, Morgan found comfort in those fantasies.

「We were wrong.」

「It was our mistake, our failing, so we will bow our heads and apologize to you. We cannot undo what has already happened, but we promise to compensate you as fully as we can.」

She often imagined the humans who had persecuted them kneeling before her and apologizing. She imagined them accepting her people as members of society once more.

"......"

The longer that wretched life continued, the longer that harsh, painful time stretched on, the more Morgan's fantasies swelled. At first, an apology would have been enough. If they had compensated her people, she would have been satisfied with that.

But as time passed, her fantasies changed.

The place she had thought was the bottom had not been the bottom at all. Human malice was like the Bottomless Pit. Its end could not be seen.

"Why?"

As if testing just how cruel they could become, humans persecuted her kin. They even hunted down the kin who had not followed Morgan outside, who had hidden away in the forest, and dragged them into the open without hesitation.

"Why? Why would you?"

Because Morgan had come outside, because she had revealed their existence to humans, even the kin who had lived in dreams were being dragged out into the world. Now, Morgan had to hear the resentment of her own people too.

Her mother. Her sisters. Friends from her homeland.

As she watched them scream, wither, and finally die, Morgan's fantasies began reaching in another direction. The Morgan who had been born kind, who had treated humans with goodwill and kindness, who had thought, "If I receive a sincere apology, that will be enough," was no longer there.

Creak.

The fairy was tainted by human malice.

「Aaaaaaaaaah!」

Now she imagined inflicting on humans the same pain they had given her people. She imagined gouging out their eyes, strangling them, and withholding even a drop of water until they dried up and died. Again and again, she repeated those fantasies.

"......Ah."

Then one day, she realized something.

"Ah."

Those fantasies did not have to remain fantasies.

A fantasy was, by nature, like a dream.

A fairy who could no longer dream began dreaming with her eyes open. After doing so for a long time, she suddenly realized that she could tear down the boundary between reality and dreams. She gained the power to bring her fantasies into reality.

Thus, the First Magic was born.

At first, it was weak. But the more her hatred accumulated, the more she desired revenge, the stronger that power became. Morgan quietly sharpened her blade. Even as she sharpened it, she desperately wished.

'Apologize. Kneel before me. Kneel before my kin who died, and give them proper funerals. Bow your heads, apologize sincerely, and beg for forgiveness.'

'If you beg for forgiveness, if you stop here and now, if you compensate us, I can stop. It's not too late.'

But humans did not stop.

They crossed the line and ran onward without end.

Until they finally lost the place where they could stop.

3.

Time passed and passed.

Just before Morgan's blade was complete.

"Rebellion!"

The people, unable to endure tyranny and long years of war, rose up first. A general leading the rebel army launched a surprise attack on the capital and personally purged the greedy ministers who filled the royal palace.

"Y-you, how dare you!"

Without hesitation, the general cut down the king as he stumbled backward. Having stained the royal palace with blood, he turned his head.

"......"

"......"

Morgan met his eyes. The moment their gazes crossed, Morgan felt it. This general was like her as well. His eyes, made whole by hatred, were like blazing flames.

Step.

The general silently approached Morgan. He came toward her with a bloodstained sword in hand, and Morgan thought he meant to kill her. After all, everyone in the royal palace had died. Why would she be any different?

'It might not be so bad to die here.'

At the time, Morgan did not have the power to kill the general. She was not yet complete, while the general before her was a warrior who had reached completion. Morgan was not strong enough to kill the monster who had swept through the royal palace alone.

So, just as Morgan closed her eyes thinking she could finally be freed from all of this, thinking death might be better.

Clink.

Morgan opened her eyes at the sound by her feet. The general was no longer before her. Looking down, she found him there. He was kneeling on one knee, removing the shackles bound around Morgan's ankles.

"Why?"

"I understand that you are a Night Fairy."

The general addressed Morgan respectfully.

"I saw it. I saw what this country did to you and your kin. I saw it, yet I could not stop it or even speak against it..."

Click. The shackles came free.

"That makes me no different from them. But I can do what they could not."

After removing the shackles that had bound Morgan for so many years, after cutting apart every chain that held her, the general knelt before her. Then he bowed his head to Morgan. Without a shred of hesitation, he pressed the head he had never bowed even to the king against the ground.

"I'm sorry."

He apologized to Morgan sincerely.

"If there is anything you wish for, tell me. You have the right to demand it of me and of this country."

He said he would do anything he could.

Morgan was left speechless by the sight.

The scene she had imagined over and over was unfolding before her eyes. Yet Morgan could not welcome it. Her eyes trembled. Her lips quivered, and in a cracked voice, she spoke.

"Why?"

Why, Morgan said.

"Why now, of all times?"

Her voice was shaking.

"You're far too late. I can't forgive you. I could have forgiven you once, but I can't anymore. I want every one of you to die. I want you all to die painfully."

"…I am not asking for forgiveness."

"Why, why, why did you only come now? You should have stayed away. If only one more season, just one more season had passed, I could have killed every last one of you with my own hands. I didn't need your help. I didn't need your interference."

She knew it too. The man before her had done nothing wrong to her. Even so, Morgan could not bear to keep from saying it to someone. The emotions she had kept bottled up burst free. Morgan shouted in a broken voice.

"Why!"

At the general kneeling before her.

"Why do you make me waver now? Don't ask for forgiveness. Be cruel, as you always have been. That's what you are. You're filthy beings who can be cruel and vicious without end. So why..."

The general behaved like the heroes from the epic tales she had heard as a child, like the noble heroes from the stories the forest warden had told her. Morgan sobbed.

"Why are you trying to take even revenge away from me?"

Morgan despaired at the sight of the general acting as though humans were not vicious beings, at the sight of him truly trying to help and save her.

"......"

The general let out a long breath and looked at Morgan.

"This country will fall now. I do not have the qualities needed to rule. I am good at cutting down and killing others, but I cannot govern... Even if I become king, this country will collapse before long."

He continued.

"Greedy people will sit on the throne. They will whisper sweet words to you. They will declare that they are different. But they will not be different. Given time, they will commit acts much like the former king's. They will enslave the fairies once more. This country has rotted from its roots."

Then the general spoke again.

"Leave this place. I will help you."

"You will help me?"

"It may be the only atonement I can offer you. I hate everything about this country, yet I hesitated to act. If I had not hesitated that day, your kin would not have suffered."

The general smiled bitterly.

"It is atonement for my hesitation."

Only then did Morgan realize. Fairies had long lives, but human lives were short. The man kneeling before her was the young soldier who had stood beside the king on the day her people were dragged before him.

"Come. I will clear the way."

Footnotes:

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