WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 665: A Tower Without a Ceiling and Intermingling Humans - 1

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A Cross Sword, with its broad blade and long guard, was a weapon made for defense. Its blade could block an opponent's strike, while its guard could catch it. It was both sword and shield. With combat foresight and qi arts specialized for defense, its wielder could withstand even the attacks of someone who had reached their principle.

...Or so I had believed. Until now.

"Heehee."

Poison Centipede casually swung her saber at the cross-shaped swords.

The Cross Swords, made solely for defense, were sturdy. Even after taking Poison Centipede's saber, they did no more than bend.

The crosses folded, broke, and crumpled, sending the Holy Paladins flying in every direction. Bones broke and flesh split. The Holy Paladins groaned and bled, but their groans became songs, while their flowing blood turned into fluttering butterflies.

"Kyahaha. Ah! The world is beautiful!"

Those who had reached their principle could not be measured by ordinary standards. The Holy Paladins gasped as they forced themselves back to their feet.

The difference in strength was obvious. There was only one reason fewer Holy Paladins had died than expected: Poison Centipede, lost in her hallucinations, was not actively finishing them off. The hallucinations that rendered combat foresight useless had ironically reduced her killing power.

Still, that did not matter. Poison Centipede's saber was sharp and precise, and even one cut left a person nearly crippled.

Her movements resembled a dance performed alone. Her saber flowed gently, then surged forward with abandon, crushing the Cross Swords. She attacked the swords even more openly than the Holy Paladins themselves.

"Butterflies! They're butterflies!"

Apparently, the crosses looked like butterflies in her hallucinations. The Holy Paladins could not abandon their crosses, so they were sent tumbling away with their Cross Swords clutched to their chests.

"Urk!"

"That heretic bitch is after the crosses!"

"Celestial God..."

Blood sprayed and limbs snapped. Those who had reached their principle could not be judged by common sense. The Holy Paladins wiped blood from their mouths and struggled back to their feet.

They rose again. The Holy Paladins who had been cut down stood as though nothing had happened.

Kuram watched them and muttered.

"As expected, they won't stay down."

A wall of Holy Paladins stood before Cardinal Elton. Behind them, priests stood with their hands clasped in prayer. Holy radiance shone behind their heads as they recited a prayer.

"O First Holy Maiden, who blessed us."

"You raised one of the fallen to their feet and bade them spread the word."

"A hundred sick and suffering souls came to receive your healing."

"You stopped their bleeding, healed their wounds, erased their scars, and restored their vitality."

"May that grace spread like waves and watch over all people."

The priests recited their prayer without pause, healing the Holy Paladins' wounds and restoring their strength. Endless vitality flowed through their bodies and raised them again.

This was the strength of an organized Holy Paladin Order. They preserved their lives with combat foresight, then restored their bodies through prayers of healing and purification. By devoting oneself to faith and becoming a Holy Paladin, even a qi practitioner who had mastered only the Heaven and Earth Qi Arts could contend on equal terms with a stronger practitioner. Overcoming ability through faith. That was the power of a Holy Paladin.

"Our will is firm."

"Not even death shall make us yield!"

The priests' prayers restored even the Cross Swords. The Holy Paladins gripped their swords once more and swung them.

Cardinal Elton saw the hallucinations invading reality, clapped both hands together, and shouted.

"All things beneath heaven and earth shall flow according to their natural order! Begone, wickedness!"

Holy light flashed, and the Li eroding reality vanished. The Holy Paladins' blood, which had become butterflies, returned to ordinary liquid. The divine power that restored magic to normal returned even the world twisted by Poison Centipede's principle to its original state.

Cardinal Elton was a monk. He was old now, but he had once set out alone and unarmed on a pilgrimage. To survive such a long journey meant he had possessed powerful, exceptional qi arts.

Time had weakened those qi arts, but faith had filled the void.

Having driven away some of the hallucinations, Cardinal Elton immediately targeted Kuram in the rear.

"This is a holy war!"

'Leave the woman who practices demonic energy arts to the Holy Paladins! That man is far more dangerous than the drugged woman!'

Cardinal Elton did not miss the quiet yet dreadful killing intent coming from Kuram. He charged at Kuram, who was preparing something. A massive fist thickly wrapped in divine power smashed into Kuram.

Kuram, who had been taking out poison, was struck in the face while defenseless. His neck spun one hundred and eighty degrees, bending backward and hanging limp. It was a strike that should have killed him instantly.

"Tsk."

Kuram had steeped his body in drugs and poison for so long that even his bones had changed. His neck returned to normal as though it had never turned.

"As expected, that isn't enough to kill you!"

"Unfortunately, death doesn't love me."

"Life and death are the will of the Celestial God! Today, you shall be judged in the name of light! Hundred Heavens Divine Fist!"

Cardinal Elton threw a punch wrapped in divine power. Without checking whether it had landed or been dodged, he pulled his fist back and struck again.

Divine power created dozens of afterimages. Fists of divine power battered Kuram's body one after another. Like a bare branch caught in a storm, Kuram's thin body shook violently with every blow.

Thud. After taking a hit to the abdomen, Kuram muttered.

"Fists won't do it. You can't kill me with that."

Kuram blocked Cardinal Elton's divine fist with a dry, skeletal arm. Compared to Cardinal Elton's powerful body, his arm looked as though it might snap at any moment.

The moment Kuram's arm met Cardinal Elton's, it bent strangely and absorbed the force.

Apothecary Kuram did not know pain. Drugs and poison worked far too well on him, so he had used that constitution to test poisons on himself. After repeatedly poisoning and detoxifying himself, his body had entered a bizarre realm.

An arm as flexible as a reed leaf endured the storm of fists. Kuram slipped diagonally inside Elton's punch, then used the elasticity of his long arm to fling the fist away.

"Your body! You've touched a forbidden art!"

Elton was also a monk. His skill in hand-to-hand combat was higher than Kuram's. Yet Elton's martial arts had only ever been meant to fight humans.

Kuram was far removed from human.

Kuram's bones stretched like a mollusk's body. Having absorbed most of the impact, his arm bent grotesquely and shot forward like a snake. His sharply grown nails tore a fistful of flesh from Elton's arm.

The cardinal stepped back. A wound like one made by a wild animal's bite appeared on his arm. Yet after he quietly recited a prayer, the wound vanished as though it had never existed.

"How dare you alter the body God gave you as you please! Aren't you afraid your soul will fall into hell?"

"Not particularly."

Having gained some distance, Kuram finished his preparations. He drew in a deep breath, then blew into the air.

"Hoo."

Kuram exhaled. Purple smoke that anyone could tell was mixed with poison spread in an instant. Poison mist covered Cardinal Elton's face.

A moment later, Cardinal Elton's eyes flashed, and the purple mist scattered at once as he shouted.

"Impossible! This body is watched over by the Celestial God. Wickedness can never harm it!"

Purification and recovery. Holy light immediately returned Cardinal Elton, who had swallowed poison and shed blood, to perfect condition.

Combat foresight. Healing. Purification. Protection.

The Holy Paladin Order was a combat force specialized in defense. It did not easily lose to anyone.

The problem was that it was difficult for them to win, too. Groups weaker than the Holy Paladin Order did not bother fighting them, and unless someone was an open heretic, the Holy Paladin Order did not use force either.

That was why the Holy Paladin Order always fought the strong, endured for a long time, and then lost. Despite its imposing might, the Holy Paladin Order had become a symbol of defeat for that reason.

Unless they used a trump card, Holy Paladins were bound to lose in the end.

Even knowing that, I had no room to join that fight.

Right after the battle began, while everyone was still confused by the sudden turn of events, the mages of the Lower Realm, who had silently finished preparing, cast their spells all at once.

"Low Fahrenheit, Thermal. Fire Storm!"

"Grand Pascal!"

Their targets were the mages of the floating castle. The Lower Realm mages, who saw them as rivals, used the moment when the Holy Paladins were under attack to break the peace and launch a surprise assault.

Avant-garde was no exception. The mage hurriedly cast a spell.

"Kyah! Crystal Block. Over the Wall!"

A hastily formed crystal barrier severed the space between them. Fire and wind magic collided with the crystal wall. The crystals heated until they glowed red, then shattered into pieces. Avant-garde screamed and covered her head.

The side that prepared first had the advantage in magic. The fact that Avant-garde had blocked the attack with a hastily constructed crystal wall showed the mage's level of skill.

Still, magic and combat ability were separate matters.

"W-why? Why are you attacking all of a sudden?"

Flustered, Avant-garde tried to talk. The opponents did not answer honestly.

"We weren't targeting you! We were after that mercenary!"

"R-really? But that trajectory was clearly aimed at me..."

"You believe that, idiot!"

They had distracted Avant-garde by talking, then released the mana they had gathered. It was a simple attack spell, but Avant-garde could not react to the surprise assault that preyed on the mage's state of mind.

"Uh, uhh?"

"Why are you just standing there?!"

Heavenly Sword Technique, Dragon-Slaying Slash.

Shei stretched Skywarbler long and severed the force behind the attack. A storm of slashes shielded Avant-garde from the barrage of magic.

'...Yeah. Shei. You're lacking in some ways, but you have a good heart. Thank you. Thanks to you, I can still hide my identity for now.'

The Cyan Tower Master stood behind Avant-garde, so the mage had not been in danger, but it still meant something. Shei glared at the Lower Realm mages and shouted.

"You suddenly attacked like you all agreed on it! What are you people?"

The Lower Realm mages instead lashed out at Shei as though she were in the wrong.

"Ghk. Why are you...!"

"Move! We don't want to attack you!"

"We're only getting rid of those people trying to take away this chance after they've already made it onto the floating castle!"

"Don't you think it's unfair too?"

"...W-what? Why are you asking me that?"

The moment they decided to challenge the Dragon Gate, the mages had accepted the risk of death. The Lower Realm mages had naturally accounted for battle when they entered this gateway.

They had been restrained by the Holy Paladin Order's deterrence, but they were rivals to one another. In particular, the mages who had already reached the floating castle were little more than obstacles.

Of course, they still retained their sense of reason.

'Those three. Hughes, Lankart, and Shei. We should avoid touching them.'

'Judging by how they've acted so far, they'll mediate, but they won't stop us through force.'

'It doesn't matter if Hughes ascends. He might share his knowledge with us.'

'To begin with, he and his companions are far too powerful and exceptional.'

Rather than recklessly attacking Shei, they appealed to her sense of justice with words. That was why Shei could not use excessive force either.

"How dare common rabble attack us...!"

"I'll show you magic you'll never be able to handle!"

As this went on, the floating castle mages who had been attacked prepared their counterattack. Moisture rose from the wet ground and turned into ice spears that targeted the Lower Realm mages. It was an advanced technique that conserved mana by making the most of the surroundings.

"Die!"

Scattered battles erupted everywhere. No one could respond properly to the sudden chaos. People shouted, collapsed while burning, sobbed, and died.

The peaceful, beautiful meadow was stained red with fire and blood. In the middle of the chaos, a voice reached my ear.

[So this is what it came to! Hmm. It was a thoroughly predictable outcome.]

Yes. I had expected it to some extent.

[This is what happens when different humans form a group! There are humans incapable of joining a group... No, humans who destroy the groups they join. Punishment, surveillance, restraint, education. If they belong to a group without receiving appropriate treatment, their true nature will reveal itself sooner or later!]

Kuram and Poison Centipede were those people here. Criminals once imprisoned in Tantalus, chaos that could go anywhere at any moment. They had only submitted to Lankart's greater strength, and they would have stabbed him the moment they saw an opening. Friction with the Holy Paladin Order, which revered order and goodness, had been inevitable.

[Even humans of the same kind cannot always coexist. When there is a clear difference in status, the inferior group feels an inferiority complex toward the superior group. In the end, unable to overcome that inferiority complex, they justify their actions as struggle and destroy order!]

The Lower Realm mages and the floating castle mages hurled magic at one another. Shei had now given up trying to stop them. She was not so meddlesome that she would stop a fight between those two groups as well.

Order was collapsing. Yet even then, they could not fully focus on the battle.

[But you saw it, didn't you? Even as they fight, they rely on you, Hughes.]

Subtle gazes turned toward me. Even while fighting, they were watching me, Lankart, and Shei. They hoped I would take their side and end this situation.

[Humans want someone to protect them. They want someone to care for them. They want someone to rule them. They want you, their leader, to take their side.]

I had maintained neutrality, taken on the role of mediator, and had the strength of Shei and Lankart at my side. No matter how one looked at it, I was the leader now.

Ruel, the Holy Maiden of Light, whispered to me through the light.

[Order is necessary. Because that is what humans want! That is the conclusion I reached!]

Footnotes:

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