WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 676: A Tower Without a Ceiling and Intermingling Humans - Finale

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I thought Holy Maidens didn't harm one another! Is that what she called not harming her? If Shei had been an ordinary, fragile Holy Maiden, she'd already be dead!

Maybe Shei was the one being ostracized. While I seriously worried about that, Lankart calmly observed the phenomenon.

"Hui. That's the materialization of light. It's a power only the White Tower Master with innate arcane can wield, and the reason she rose to that position. Materializing light was the White Tower's long-held dream. Fortunately, materialized light isn't as fast as real light, and like any other substance, it has various limitations. It should be easy enough to deal with."

"How am I supposed to deal with that? You have innate arcane, so maybe you can deal with it!"

"Stop exaggerating. You can do it without innate arcane too, can't you? Do tha... Huh?"

Before Lankart could even finish speaking, a pillar of light fell.

Fortunately, it was aimed at Lankart instead of me. The pure-white pillar of light that descended from Genesis's magic circle and crushed Lankart whole looked so unreal that it resembled a gleaming structure. Light had mass. How much had it been amplified? There wouldn't even be a corpse left.

There was no time to mourn. Before the pillar of light could target me as well, I left Lankart behind and ran.

"Urgh! It feels like I'm swimming through light...!"

I was moving, but my feet felt heavy. The amplified light from the artificial sun pouring down from above seemed to press my body down with gravity magic. I could somehow endure this much with my strengthened body, but the problem was that this wasn't even an attack. All she had done was amplify the light, yet I was already floundering in it.

Then I read a foreboding thought.

The seven crystals Ruel had created. The prisms that gathered the light of Genesis's magic circle all turned toward me at once. Seven condensed beams of light became spears and swept toward me.

"Light-Bending Mirror."

It was a mirror that gathered and bent light. Now that light had been materialized, taking a hit from that would kill me. My body would be pierced by light, just as Kuram's had been.

Then I had to dodge before all seven converged.

I moved one step faster, lowered my stance, twisted my shoulders, and slipped through the gaps between the beams. Four remained. No matter what I did, I was bound to take at least one hit, so I covered my face with both arms and leaped through the light.

Burning pain washed over me. Long cuts and tears opened across the parts of my body grazed by the beams. Blood streamed down the bright-red wounds, and my regeneration was slower than usual.

Light was a vampire's natural enemy. I had become the Demon God, but light's properties of transmutation and purification interfered with regeneration. Soaking the ground in my blood, I approached Ruel.

Still, I could take one hit! The problem was!

"...Was that not enough? Then how about seven times as many?"

More than seven times!

Seven more prisms appeared beyond each of the original seven. Forty-nine in total. Taking them one at a time might have been manageable, but if even one overlapped with another, it wouldn't end with cuts and tears. They'd look at my corpse, sliced to death by light, and wonder what to write as the cause of death.

Forty-nine beams crossed one another. Could I really take each one without taking overlapping hits? Tch. I wasn't confident about that.

But I wasn't alone.

"Hey, White Tower Master. You're underestimating me too much. You think mere light can beat my world?"

The pillar of light exploded, and Lankart emerged from within, wrapped in dirt and dust.

Piles of sand and gravel, large and small, orbited Lankart. Lightning and electromagnetic storms flashed within the cloud of dust that had shattered and ground the light to pieces. Lankart's hair stood out in every direction as he glared at Ruel with genuine irritation.

"You gave me an aurora over my head!"

How did you even get an aurora over your head? And was your hair standing up really the problem when you had an aurora over your head?

It seemed to be a serious problem for Lankart. Lankart began to wield his power in earnest. Within the Right-Handed World, dust orbited Lankart while spinning on its own axis. It rotated chaotically, gathered and collided, then gradually reached equilibrium. Lankart crumpled the world between both hands and declared,

"Lankart System. World Creation."

Within the Right-Handed World, Lankart was the sun. Everything revolved around him. A stellar system was born from one simple principle.

At the center of the spinning dirt and dust, electromagnetic storms, and lightning recreating a cosmic wonder, Lankart stood with the aloofness of a god and pointed at me.

"Dark Star Ring."

Part of the dust filled with electromagnetic storms began to circle around me. The barrier of dirt and dust blocked and scattered the light pouring in from every direction. Trusting Lankart's power, I ran without hesitation. The beams of light Ruel condensed poured down over me.

The rays flashed as they tore through the swirling electromagnetic storm. Every time Ruel fired a beam, the pitch-black darkness within the dust briefly shone bright. The light, bearing physical force, was powerful enough to pierce even rock, but the swirling dust caught and crushed it even as it shattered and was pushed back. The electromagnetic storm devoured the light and shot lightning in every direction.

The fifty beams seeking my life collided one after another with the ring protecting me. Pressed by the force of light, the ring stretched into a long ellipse. Then, with a snap, the ring broke, and the storm lost its power.

Still, Lankart remained behind me.

"Don't act like you're the sun just because you can control light. I'm the center of the world."

Lankart threw a pebble held in his hand. The small stone, mercilessly cast away, gradually accelerated as it moved farther from Lankart.

"Deposed King Star."

The star bearing the name of a king left Lankart System, small and alone. Just before escaping, at the end of its trajectory, the little pebble Lankart had thrown had accelerated to a cosmic speed. Despite its terrifying velocity, it made no sound. It was silent. A cosmic catapult could not be compared to some stone thrown from the ground.

The half-open halo above Ruel's head trembled. The halo that illuminated everything around her detected the object approaching at high speed.

It was a detection system using reflected light. So that halo hadn't been decoration. Having detected Deposed King Star, Ruel reached out a hand without even looking.

"Spectrum."

The light passing between her spread fingers split into hundreds of strands. The strands split into thousands upon thousands of kinds of nonvisible light and entered the pebble. The light destroyed Deposed King Star from within and turned it to dust.

At the same time, those hundreds of strands of light passed through Lankart as well. Preparing the next attack, Lankart staggered with dizziness.

"Ugh. I'm tired."

The Right-Handed World was powerful against physical force, but weak to attacks like that. Lankart had been taken out, but thanks to him, an opening had appeared.

Holding my skewer, I ran. Using up the rest of the Dark Star Ring Lankart had placed on me, I advanced against the light toward Ruel.

Ruel's halo reacted again. At the same time, someone who noticed my approach shouted.

"Holy Maiden! Behind you!"

A holy knight rushed in to stop me. Sensing divine power from them, Ruel let down her guard for the briefest moment. Then, as she grabbed a beam of light to stop me.

'Wait. A holy knight? In this light?'

The halo flickered ominously. Ruel fired light at the suspicious holy knight. It was quick for an unexpected ambush, but slow considering she had already been wary of Hilde.

'White-Faced One!'

Ruel's beam of light collided with Hilde's holy sword. Light flashed like a match struck in the dark of night. Hilde briefly showed her true face to the Holy Maiden and smiled apologetically.

"Hehe. I'm sorry, Holy Maiden. But I'd rather place my hopes in Father than in faith with no promise of fulfillment. Both Yuel and I do. I don't want today to keep repeating like yesterday."

The faith was over.

The holy sword pointed at the Holy Maiden soon lost its light. The remaining beam plunged into Hilde's empty embrace. Hilde couldn't even scream and collapsed limply, with a sense of relief.

Ruel's halo was still trembling. That was probably because I remained.

I scattered cards before my eyes, hoping the metal cards would block even one beam of light.

And beneath them, I hid a transparent skewer made of ice.

Innate arcane, Crystal Theory.

Borrowing the Cyan Tower Master's innate arcane for a moment, I forged a skewer from ice in an instant. Perfectly crystallized ice was transparent and invisible to the eye. Even the light Ruel hastily drew out wouldn't be able to stop it.

One instant. If I could just drive this in.

It was useless.

Light was instantaneous. Ruel grabbed the halo above her head and pulled it off. So it was detachable. As I realized that, the halo aimed at me emitted a dangerously bright light.

"Sacred Radiance."

An incomparably intense light engulfed my entire body.

She'd been carrying light around all this time. Tch. Every Holy Maiden was absurdly overpowered. I couldn't even get close.

"Haa, is this as far as I go?"

In the end, I couldn't overcome it. The world really was too solid.

As long as the Holy Maiden guarded a today identical to yesterday, discarded people like me could never expect a changed tomorrow.

'It's over, King of Humanity. Tomorrow will still come.'

Again, in that brief instant, the Holy Maiden let down her guard.

I didn't stop.

The light couldn't push me away. No, it was pushing me away, but not as powerfully as Ruel wanted.

Just before it touched my body, the light.

Bent slightly to the right.

It didn't strike me directly. It angled to the right, grazing past my clothes and skin. My clothes tore and blood sprayed, but that was all. The grazing light burned the drops of blood, producing red smoke.

The Right-Handed World.

'This is the Right-Handed World...? The King of Humanity has that?'

The innate arcane I had borrowed from Lankart for a moment. The Right-Handed World. Light bent too, though not as readily as other matter. That was probably because Lankart's innate arcane was spatial in nature as well. It was far weaker than Lankart's, but I could still affect light.

At the brink, one step.

With the card I'd saved until the end, I overcame my opponent's final move. A today identical to yesterday could not come. Because I had gained one more new card today.

My skewer touched her neck.

I won, White Tower Master.

Well, I had only beaten Ruel as the White Tower Master. I hadn't beaten Ruel as the Holy Maiden of Light.

Blink.

And time stopped.

Footnotes:

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