WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 563

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The Ash-Covered Sin and the Skin-Stitched God - 3

Rashy landed as though crashing into the ground and gaped at the patron deity, wreathed in fire.

"Hup! I had no intention of burning the patron deity. Teacher, aren't you overdoing it a bit?"

"That wasn't my magic. I'd love nothing more than to burn him like that myself, but sadly I don't have anywhere near that much magical energy."

"Huh? If it's not your magic, then..."

"Rashy!"

Callis appeared from the direction the flames had come from. She must have run the whole way, cinders swirled around her red hair as she pointed at the patron deity.

"Rashy, what is that thing?"

"What do you mean, thing? That's the patron deity!"

"I had no idea the patron deity was a monster sewn together from corpses! I knew it was some kind of folk religion, but to think it was a monster...!"

"I-I find that rather hard to hear, being the child of one! The patron deity is a benevolent being! What he said just now was a little extreme, that's all!"

"I watched you punch him a moment ago."

"That's a child's duty! I threw punches and I still respect him!"

If Rashy had come out, Callis would too. I had expected reinforcements, but I never imagined it would be Callis of all people.

She's the last person who should be getting involved in this fight.

"Wait, Callis! Don't come any closer!"

Rashy was an immortal, and his power came from the patron deity. Naturally, the patron deity had an immortal body as well. If Rashy wouldn't die from a little scorching, there was no chance the patron deity would.

[Impressive, King of Humanity. With that scrap of power, you managed to kill this body once.]

The patron deity rose again from within the flames. Cards driven into various points across his body seared his flesh, and the burning tendrils charred him all over, yet he seemed entirely unbothered by it.

He turned his blazing eyes on me.

[As I thought, I need to eat you now.]

"Now, patron deity. Can't you find something else to eat?"

[Silence, Right-Arm. Shall I eat your woman instead?]

Rashy's eyes went wide and he shoved Callis away in a hurry. The patron deity, still engulfed in flames like some incarnation of hellfire, fixed Rashy with a warning.

[Right-Arm has its own significance to this body. I have been keeping you alive out of my own grace, but... I will forgive no more. If you plan to resist, I will start by devouring your family one by one.]

At that chilling threat, the smile drained slowly from Rashy's face. He swallowed and curled his hand into a fist. He looked up at the patron deity with a set expression.

"Patron deity, do not test my reverence."

[What was that?]

"The patron deity gave me power, and I in turn offered my body to serve him. The patron deity, as an incarnation of the Earth Mother, is a merciful god who has dissolved into this land. I served with all my heart and sang of the patron deity's virtue."

Immortals were, at their core, gentle by nature. Nothing could kill or wound them. But when someone insulted them and threatened something other than their bodies, even an immortal could turn savage.

"And yet, you threaten to kill my family? That is not something a god should do. Not even something a human should do. Why would someone like the patron deity make a filthy threat fit only for a beast?"

Rashy asked the patron deity with a hostility entirely unlike anything before, his expression one wrong word away from throwing a punch.

[A threat...?]

The patron deity grew displeased at the defiance of his thrall.

[You think what this body does is a threat? This is mercy. Mercy shown to you. If I had truly meant to threaten you, I would have started by putting your woman in my belly.]

The age the patron deity had lived through was a savage era with neither law nor rule. Whole families, entire tribes, had been wiped out without a second thought. The mercy he showed was the same as caring for his own body.

And the fury he showed was the same betrayal a person feels when their own body turns against their will.

[This body treasured you, and gave you the chance to leave this land and return with greater power. And you not only defiled this body's arm, you betrayed this body's very will!]

I did make very good use of Rashy's arm in the Abyss, I suppose. When we cleansed and purified Tyr's blood energy, the patron deity's authority became corrupted in the process.

The patron deity shook off the flames and swung his arm. It lashed out like a whip and drove Rashy into the ground.

[You are no longer needed!]

"...I agree."

Rashy, half-buried in the dirt, slowly pushed himself up. The patron deity's arm was still pressing down on him, but Rashy was fighting against it with everything he had.

"I don't need a pathetic god like you either!"

He wrenched himself upright and threw a punch in return. The blow didn't bring the patron deity down, but it staggered him for a moment.

[You wretch!]

"Patron deity!"

Eyes blazing, the two immortals hurled punches at each other with abandon.

It was a brawl. Every hit shattered bone, tore skin, and crushed muscle. They broke each other apart and regenerated, over and over. A torrent of force raged between them.

What had started as something close to even gradually tilted toward the patron deity. He had the overwhelming advantage in both raw strength and regeneration. Rashy had rallied on momentum, but everything except his right arm was getting pulverized and broken faster than it could heal.

[Did you think a mere Right-Arm's defiance could defeat this body!]

A crash. Rashy's head was half-buried in the ground. As he desperately tried to pull himself free, the patron deity's right foot came down and drove Rashy's body in like a stake.

[I'll swallow you wh...]

Just as the patron deity reached down to wrench Rashy free of the dirt, great flames wrapped around him again. Callis, who had been building up her magical energy, unleashed a tactical-grade spell. Fire rose from the ground itself, clinging to his skin and burning.

[Ha!]

But only for a moment. Not wanting to drag things out, the patron deity burned through another life. Energy surged beneath him, flooding over his body, and he shed the flames like old skin. He moved to deal with Callis first.

"You're not going anywhere!"

Rashy coiled around the patron deity's right leg and locked in a technique. He twisted the ankle and kicked the back of the knee, snapping the patron deity's leg backward in an instant.

It would have worked if the patron deity hadn't been able to pop his joints out and put them back. Thrown off for just a beat, the patron deity swung a hard kick at Rashy.

Something grabbed his foot. The patron deity flinched at the sight of vines and clumps of earth clutching at his ankle.

[Urgh...! Petty tricks!]

"When you lose your power, petty tricks are all you have left."

I drove a skewer into his heel and twisted. I poured lightning into him, and his foot kicked out in a direction it had no business going. I had sent that lightning hoping to burn him from the inside, but to the patron deity it was barely more than a massage.

[You...!]

"Over here too!"

A brief opening was all we needed. Rashy shot up from the ground and slammed his right arm into the patron deity's jaw. A couple of teeth flew loose and the patron deity's neck vertebrae briefly popped and dangled. They regenerated immediately, but by then I had already clawed through skin and muscle and pulled free.

'Of all the times, when Right-Arm has turned against me! It was a mistake to give Right-Arm to the strongest warrior, thinking him the most powerful!'

The patron deity, who had died once before, had taken root across this entire land. Scattered flesh had mixed with soil and trees and grown, been eaten by beasts, gathered again at the end of all that to form a body.

To make himself stronger, he needed to receive the offering of strong bodies. That was why he had given the most precious right arm to Rashy, the strongest of all. Right now, Rashy and the patron deity shared the greatest part of their power between them.

That was why, despite his overwhelming advantage in raw strength, he and Rashy could still trade blows on something close to even ground. A flicker of dread crept into the patron deity's mind. The memory of a loser who might still lose even with all this power stirred and coiled around him.

'The King of Humanity is still human, so he'll tire out eventually! When he does, I'll eat him!'

"Ah, by the way, you saw it just now, right? I've got something like an immortal's endurance too. I could keep fighting like this all day."

Impossible, given my spiritual energy rather than my stamina, but he didn't need to know that.

I had gotten inside his head. Made anxious by my words, the patron deity burned through ten lives at once. His body recovered at a visible pace, and in one burst he unleashed enough brute force to overturn the earth and trees all around him. Both Rashy and I were caught in the blast and sent flying.

[I'm through going easy on you! I'll devour every last one of you!]

Well, I really could keep fighting all day. But it won't come to that.

Our real reinforcements were about to arrive.

***

[Shei should have abandoned him. But he made sure you would never let him go. Who am I supposed to blame for that.]

Shei had been about to fly toward the patron deity when the voice made her stop. The afterimage of Maiél, the Holy Maiden of Heaven, hovered in the sky, watching the far side of the jungle as dawn began to break.

[A today no different from yesterday is a promise that tomorrow will keep coming the same way.]

Maiél pressed her hand to her chest as the rising sunlight fell over her. Shei didn't pay it much mind. She had heard those same prayers countless times back in the Sanctum.

[But Shei. The tomorrow promised to me is you. If you go astray, I have no choice but to close my eyes and dream of a different tomorrow.]

That line, though, even Shei couldn't help flinching at it.

Those were words she had only ever heard as a desperate appeal, in that last fight, at the moment just before she was about to die.

[I tried my best to save you. But please don't blame me if I can't. I cannot paint over the future you have drawn.]

***

A crash. Something vast stamped the patron deity flat. He didn't get out a scream, not so much as a single sound, and was neatly pressed into the dirt. That powerful physical body crumbled to something barely different from sand, blood mixing into the earth and scattering.

Rashy, Callis, and I had all been bracing for the fight to continue. The sudden absence of an opponent threw all three of us off. We stood there for a long moment, unable to place the identity of the stranger who had appeared before us.

I was the first to recognize the uninvited guest. Before I even read her thoughts, I saw the antlers rising from her head.

"...Nevida?"

"My lord. I trust you have been keeping well."

The androgynous face was exactly as I remembered from the last time I had seen her. Hair flowing all the way to the ground, with scattered leaves growing from it. A silk robe hung from her like something draped over a branch.

The primordial druid. Nature's representative, the most beautiful beast.

The living Demon God who had revived the World Tree, burned and felled when the Kingdom of Ten Thousand fell.

She had no business being anywhere but the Tree of Corruption, and yet here she was before my eyes, dropping quietly to one knee.

"My lord. I am sorry to have come so late. I had not yet finished the preparations to receive you, and so I briefly departed your side."

"What? What?"

"But please, do not worry. All preparations are complete."

No, hold on. This isn't the reinforcement I had in mind at all.

The regressor, Azzy! Where are you two, what are you doing? Something strange just showed up! Even if this is the old land of the Kingdom of Ten Thousand, the territory of the ancient World Tree, it's still a vast distance to cover! How does something like this just appear? How did she even know!

[Wh-what are you now...!]

A wet crunch. Nevida's hand transformed into a bear's paw and ground the patron deity's rising body into nothing. The horrible sound of flesh and bone being reduced to a single handful ended in silence, and Nevida rose like something without a soul.

"I am honored that you came all this way yourself, my lord. This one shall attend to you now, so please take care of your body."

"No, how did you know to come here?"

"Wherever my lord is, that is where this one must be."

This person has no intention of giving a straight answer. Everything out of her mouth is empty ceremony. Is this any way to treat a king?

[Graaaaaah!!]

At that moment, the patron deity burned through fifty lives at once and hauled himself back upright. The surge that came from burning so many lives in a single instant was formidable enough to push even Nevida back by sheer force.

[You, beast-priests! How dare you, wretches who grovel before mere beasts, do this to this body!]

Nevida dug her leopard's claws into the ground and stopped herself. Even though she had just been insulted out of nowhere, she looked more curious than displeased.

"Beast-priests? I have not heard that in a long time. Could it be you originate from the Age of Purity?"

[That's right! This body will eat the King of Humanity and become whole! This body will now accomplish what Ankra could not in life!]

"...Ankra?"

The patron deity should have watched his words. Assuming a powerful stranger would be friendly was far too optimistic.

Even I, whom Nevida calls lord and addresses with reverence, am not her ally.

"Ah. I remember now. One of the insolent ones who dared to raise a hand against the King. One of that treacherous lot who dared to betray my lord, to eat him, to violate him, to subjugate him, to make a plaything of him. No matter how deeply you were deceived by that shameless woman, your sin does not disappear."

A killing intent rose unlike anything I had felt before. It was as if the forests and the grasses themselves had grown furious and stirred to life. Nevida, who had shown the expressionless stillness of a tree until now, let a small fire of anger burn beneath that composed face.

At the anger of the primordial druid, at the emotion of a Demon God, the very ground and trees shuddered. Nevida grew a branch from her fingertip and gave it a small shake.

"The King of Humanity should have put them all to death. I do not know how you are still alive."

The earth trembled and roots erupted from the ground. In an instant they coiled around the patron deity's feet and climbed to his shoulders. Caught off guard, the patron deity tore at the roots binding his whole body and cried out.

[Hmph! Did you think something like this could stop this body!]

"If you believe immortality to be indestructibility, that is a most profound ignorance."

Nevida closed her fist, and the roots tightened, crushing the patron deity's body until it burst. They constricted like a snake, ground him apart, tore him into smaller and smaller pieces until he was dust, and swallowed him. The physical body broke down and dissolved without leaving so much as a shape.

"No flower blooms red for ten days, and even the tree that has stood for a thousand years lays itself down in the earth at last."

[...This body is the patron deity! We are nothing like you lot who bow to mere beasts...!]

Even so, the patron deity did not die. He burned lives to reconstruct his body and tore the roots away with brute strength. But two hands could not hold back thousands of roots, and sooner or later he was buried again and crushed.

"New trees grow from rotted leaves and branches and fill the land where the great tree fell. Grass and soil cycle on and on forever, filling this earth."

Nevida's quiet singing echoed through the forest.

Flesh dissolved. Essence was drawn away somewhere. It became the wood of a tree, became the body of a fruit, fell as a leaf. The patron deity met death in short, rapid cycles, one after another.

Yet even that was the patron deity's nature. Dissolved into this earth, he was undying so long as his center remained. He could just resurrect by reconstructing his body. Lives were only ever for maintaining the body. Just as he had done even after death, the patron deity gathered the energy of himself scattered through soil and trees.

The patron deity was undying. As long as he was alive. As long as he survived.

Survive. Survive. Survive. Somehow, as long as he was still alive.

Wretched as it might be, if life alone remained.

"Within the endless Cycle."

Just live. Just live. Just live. Live, no matter what.

"Fall."

And the patron deity's thoughts went still.

What stood before my eyes was a single tree that strangely resembled a person. The twisted branches looked like human joints, and the leaves that had grown from them looked like hair. One branch stretched desperately to one side as though reaching for something, it looked like the outstretched hand of someone drowning.

At the very end of that branch, a small cluster of blood-red fruit had formed.

Driven by nothing but the instinct to live, clinging to life alone through everything, the patron deity had ultimately survived. Wanting only life, having forgotten everything else.

Root Regression.

The Demon God's infinite Cycle that kills what cannot die.

Nevida, who had snuffed out the god of a single tribe without ceremony, turned away without a trace of feeling.

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