WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 566

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

Just before Nevida dispelled Maiél's phantom, the regressor shot out from directly behind her while she was completely off her guard.

'An opening...!'

Thwuck. Skywarbler bit into Nevida's back. It tore through silk and carved a handspan-deep scar into that bark-like back. A successful ambush, landed in the single moment Nevida had let her guard down completely. The regressor immediately twisted the blade and angled to take Nevida's head off.

But far too many trees had grown by then. Nevida was already this forest, and to be inside the forest was no different from being in the palm of her hand.

A branch shooting out from the miniature World Tree swallowed the regressor whole. Wooden tendrils coiled around her arms, her legs, her wrists. The branches grew and tangled in an interlocking web, pinning her in place.

The regressor was a powerful master of the energy-sensing ability in her own right. She could have shaken off mere vines by brute force, but doing so meant losing momentum, and that was unavoidable. Against someone as powerful as Nevida, even that small gap was far too wide.

Nevida's palm strike drove into the exposed stomach. The regressor never even saw her move, and with hands and feet lashed to the undergrowth, the Heavenly Mirror couldn't react in time. All the regressor could do was wrap her whole body in energy and brace.

"Urgh!"

A single blow folded her at the waist, and the shockwave carried straight through to her back. The regressor was half-driven into the ground and vomited blood.

[Shei... you should have run even if you had to go alone. You could have gotten away alone.]

"If you wanted to help that badly, you should have come yourself. At least you're better than her in one way, you had the courage to stab me in the back directly."

Nevida sneered at Maiél and invaded her existence. Maiél's form grew hazy, like fireflies greeting the morning light. Nevida's forest relentlessly shut out the light and called the darkness in.

"Begone, specter of a wanton woman. When you come next time, come in your true form. Come with the will to stake your life."

This was Maiél's angel, nothing more. It meant she was watching over the future of this place.

What Nevida had faced was nothing but a single dream that Maiél was dreaming, far away in the inner sanctum of the Sanctum.

Petals bloomed and scattered as Maiél's form vanished like a midsummer night's dream. Nevida did not let herself be drunk on victory. She knew perfectly well that the victory she had just won was nothing more than a momentary illusion.

Instead, Nevida moved immediately. She kicked out the back of the regressor's knees and smothered Jizan with the miniature World Tree as it angled in from the side. Arms and legs, all sealed. The regressor wrung out her last strength and threw Skywarbler. An invisible blade surged up and scraped across Nevida's skin.

Even her hidden trump card was spent trying to kill the enemy. It was the first time Nevida looked at the regressor and allowed a small smile.

"Impressive."

Without anyone noticing, tree bark had begun to spread across Nevida's skin. Bark skin. A primitive hex devised by humans who had no armor and envied even the bark of trees, but when used by Nevida, the living incarnation of wood, it was harder than any armor. The regressor's final move had fallen short.

"But it ends here. A shame. If you had not been that wanton woman's thrall, I could have let you live."

"...Shut up! This isn't over yet!"

"It is. The wanton woman who would help you is not here, nor is there any reason to spare you. Your time ends here."

Nevida aimed at the regressor's exposed stomach and raised her hand. That ancient-tree arm drank in spiritual essence and transformed into something belonging to a beast, tipped with sharp claws. An arm large enough to tear through a human body without effort, and Nevida swung it without a moment's hesitation.

Even staring death in the face, the regressor's eyes stayed wide open.

'Still haven't reached her...! But there's still a chance! This cycle already gave me a plentiful enough harvest!'

The Heavenly Mirror, sensing the threat, worked frantically to move her body. But arms and legs lashed by wooden tendrils refused to obey. Her energy, schooled through countless deaths, and her body, which had yet to experience death in this cycle, both screamed a warning.

A flood of life-flashing-before-one's-eyes visions swept through the regressor's mind. She burned this moment of death deep into her memory.

'See you next cycle! Now that I know Hughes is the King of Humanity, I won't be going the long way around!'

So that when the next cycle came, she could be even a little more useful.

Wait, hold on.

That meant the regressor couldn't die yet, could she?

"Stop!"

I threw myself at Nevida with everything I had. Stopping Nevida with my own meager strength was impossible, but stopping her with Nevida's own power was another matter entirely!

"Root Tree!"

Through the Demon God, I connected to Nevida's Demon God and moved the root governing this green barrier. I couldn't seize the whole space the way Nevida could, but the area around Nevida and the regressor I could shift a little!

The wooden tendrils that had been binding the regressor changed direction in an instant and intercepted Nevida's incoming arm. The beast's foreleg slammed down into the thick overgrowth. A blow that would have pierced through space itself, far too heavy and fierce for a few vines to hold.

But a Demon God was a Demon God. It was more than enough to open up a single instant. Even in those brief moments when her hands and feet were freed, the Heavenly Mirror was already moving to protect the regressor's body.

"Ngh...!"

Without managing even a real scream, the regressor was crushed and vomited blood. Both arms that had blocked the strike snapped limply, and the impact was nearly enough to knock her consciousness out entirely, but even after taking that killing blow, the regressor was still alive.

I sprinted over before Nevida could finish the job.

"Just a moment. Nevida-ssi! Stop! You can't kill her!"

"My lord. I shall see to it that not even a corpse remains."

"No, I'm serious, you can't!"

The world resets, do you understand! She regresses! The regressor will go back to the past without any problem and open her eyes there, and past-me will encounter the disaster that is the regressor without knowing a single thing! The situation slips right out of my hands!

My will was not something Nevida normally paid much attention to, but the desperate urgency I had just shown was unexpected enough that she halted her attack and asked quietly, "My lord would not say such things without cause. What reason is there that this thrall of the wanton woman must not be killed?"

Because she regresses!

I couldn't say that. It was the regressor's secret that nobody knew, and the very fact that I knew it was far too valuable a weapon. Letting it slip carelessly would mean throwing away one of my advantages.

On top of that, Nevida had just used that strange technique of turning people into trees by putting them through endless repeated deaths. If she learned about the regression and used that attack with it in mind... what might happen was beyond my imagination.

So what was I supposed to say? That she was connected to the Holy Maiden but was a good person so please spare her? That was no concern of Nevida's. That she might turn her back on the Holy Maiden and side with us? Nevida was not stupid enough to play a game of wits against a Holy Maiden who could see the future.

Ugh. No helping it. When you have no argument to make, you appeal to feelings. I cried out with something close to genuine sincerity.

"Because I'm attached to her!"

Apparently an appeal to affection was not an answer she had considered, because even Nevida tilted her head briefly. The deliberation didn't last long.

"The wanton woman's thrall harbors dark intentions and follows the wanton woman's will over her own. Keeping her alive only puts my lord in danger. Let go of this passing attachment."

"No, no. How do you just let go of attachment? It's easy to say, but it's not something you can simply decide."

"Then I shall cut it for you directly."

"No, no, no. I said hold on! Who do you think you are, deciding to cut things off with Shei-ssi yourself?"

This wasn't going anywhere. I hadn't wanted to say this much, but I turned on Nevida.

"When I was trapped in the Abyss with one foot in the grave, it was Shei-ssi who rescued me! Because of that Lords of All Creation nonsense you created, I nearly died, and it was Shei-ssi who held them off and kept me alive! Shei-ssi was also the one who helped me escape! And throughout our travels here, she saved my life over and over!"

Though honestly, the very first time we met, I nearly had my right arm cut off. There were times I almost died because of the regressor, and every time the Holy Maiden kept interfering, my movements got exposed and put me in danger.

Ah, hearing myself say all of that is suddenly making me feel resentful. Given everything I've been through, do I really need to be defending the regressor? I was sinking into mild self-reproach when Nevida's voice cut through.

"My lord. I speak at the risk of your displeasure, but do you truly not know the wanton woman's schemes?"

"Schemes?"

"The wanton woman twists causality to move people. She rescues them from desperate crises and demands repayment, yet conceals the fact that it was she who engineered those very crises in the first place. The attachment my lord feels, the gratitude, if the wanton woman had a hand in any of it, it all loses its meaning and is fouled."

Nevida said it neither with conviction nor with doubt. She spoke of it the way you would explain rain or clouds, simply as a fact of the world.

That's what she's getting at. I know. Like how Hilde couldn't bring herself to abandon the Sanctum that had saved her, and how the Thunder Lord, tormented by anguish, ultimately chose faith. The Sanctum plants seeds of faith even in the midst of a crisis.

"Those crises my lord faced were also pits dug by that dusk-like wanton woman. My lord need not trouble yourself over it, simply watch this one's actions."

"Come to think of it, there were crises I ended up in because of Shei-ssi. Hmm. You're not wrong, Nevida-ssi."

I know. I know that. But the reason I'm trying to keep the regressor alive isn't just out of affection.

She regresses when she dies!

"Still, there's the bad kind of attachment too. It's sad to watch someone you know die right in front of you."

"I shall handle it where my lord cannot see."

She plans to ignore me entirely! Damn it, what do I do? Let her die? But if a regression happens?

No. The regressor can't die! Not until I've got my strength back, at least!

"That's an order!"

At my sudden outburst, Nevida stopped before she even had time to think. She had been about to tear the regressor apart, but she withdrew her hand and stared at me quietly, still as a startled deer.

"You are the King of Humanity's warrior, which means you can grant me one request. Leave Shei-ssi alive."

"...An order, you say. Does my lord remember what that means?"

In the far distant past, the savage age when humans were still beasts. The King of Humanity merely reigned and did not rule. The King of Humanity, nothing more than a Beast King among humans, gave no orders to others and made no one attend on him. His followers simply paid him reverence and honored him as king of their own free will.

But even followers need a token of loyalty. If the king demanded nothing, their loyalty was nothing but unrequited devotion.

And so the king's warriors made a request of the King of Humanity.

Just once, give us the chance to prove our loyalty.

It didn't matter how important the request was or how trivial. The simple fact that the King of Humanity had made a "request" would remain and make them the king's warriors. Because they had received an answer to their devotion.

And Nevida had never yet received a royal command. To receive the king's command once more, that was Nevida's unfulfilled wish, the driving force that had sustained her through ages without end.

Of course, hearing it from a half-king like me was not what she would have wanted.

"My lord has not yet seated himself on the throne, and this is nothing but a desperate measure to escape the present situation. I cannot obey that order."

Nevida did not entrust her wish to me. She already had the power to fulfill her desire on her own. She stepped toward the regressor, collapsed in the middle of the undergrowth.

"But, in accordance with my lord's will rather than any command, I shall at least leave this one's life intact."

"Oh. Thank you. I'll repay you greatly later."

Wait, leave her life intact? That phrasing was a little frightening.

Nevida set her foot on the regressor's chest and pressed down. The gap in power was immense. What remained to the regressor was one thing only: the chance to begin the next cycle. That was genuinely enormous, but still.

Even gasping through the pain, the regressor didn't lose her defiant air. She looked up at Nevida with unbowed eyes.

"...Just kill me. You'll regret it if you don't."

"It is by my lord's will. Be grateful to my lord."

"Hmph. Like I'd be grateful..."

Instead of answering, Nevida reached down and gripped the regressor's shoulder. It was far too fierce to call simply resting a hand on someone. The hand gripping the shoulder shifted into something belonging to a beast.

A bad feeling settled in. Without being a prophet, the image of what was about to happen drew itself before my eyes. I desperately hoped it wasn't that, but a bad feeling never takes a detour.

Nevida said nothing. She twisted the regressor's right arm and tore it free in a single motion. Like snapping a branch from a tree.

The forest shook with the force of it. Hot blood scattered on the cold wind threading between the trees. The regressor let out a horrific scream.

Nevida held up the regressor's right arm without a change in expression, carelessly, like a discarded toy, then reached toward the other shoulder. The regressor trembled violently and shook her head with frantic urgency. Even the regressor, who feared no death, felt fear watching Nevida work, savagery itself made manifest.

But the opponent was the human closest to a beast. A catastrophe of civilization who had preserved the savage age within herself. The fact that she had just torn a person's arm off stirred no feeling in her, no hesitation. Nevida tightened her grip and murmured.

"Then curse my lord for it."

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