WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 710: Tales from Afar. Sky and Opportunity

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The Demon God is called a god because it grants strength to those who believe in it.

The unique magic engraved upon the world grants power to those whose beliefs and realizations resemble its own. Earth arts, Druidism, alchemy, bloodcraft, and more. Those who understand the Demon God's principles through long training and deep reflection can borrow that power.

For example, Jiseon. Jiseon was an immortal of Mother Earth, so despite mastering energy arts, she could also wield powerful earth arts. The leader of the Lesser States combined their unique magic with alchemy to produce explosive power. The Elders were vampire retainers of the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka, manifesting their individual abilities through bloodcraft.

It is called a Demon God because its power is gained through belief and devotion.

The Celestial God is no different.

The White Tower Master materialized light while using the Celestial God's precognition to perform the miracle of moving through a stopped world. Her faith resembled the Celestial God itself, so it would not have been wrong to say that the Celestial God resided within her.

And Shei was a Holy Maiden, though she was unaware of it. She neither believed in the Celestial God nor armed herself with faith, yet she was connected to it.

"Seven-Colored Eyes, open simultaneously. Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel."

Shei lay alone atop a meteorite, staring up at the sky.

'The Celestial God's power is seeing. Light, and information.'

Her eyes shimmered in seven colors. Even in the dark of night, her eyes alone glowed like a rainbow. That seven-colored sight, which saw the unseen, now observed even things that no longer existed.

'I experienced regression. And I remember it.'

Everything reset whenever Shei regressed. Vitality, magic power, treasures and wealth she had gathered, even personal relationships. Only memories carried over. Thanks to the peerless energy art called the Heaven-Reversing Boundary, memories alone were enough to make her a formidable powerhouse, though.

'And that power probably comes from... the Celestial God.'

The White Tower Master, Ruel, moved through stopped time. Strictly speaking, that was Ruel's own ability. She materialized her entire body with magic and maintained her form through unique magic that converted light into power.

The power of sight she received from the Celestial God only allowed her to continue thinking in a stopped world.

Shei was the same. The power she received from the Celestial God was only the ability to see a past that had now vanished.

'The Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel is a Fate Eye. It was a treasure of the Church of Light, which became the foundation of the Celestial God... In the past, people believed the sky governed gods and fate. It's an artificial eye made to observe the lofty heavens. Even in the Sanctum, only a Holy Maiden bearing the fate of her era could possess one. With this, I can see the Celestial God's essence.'

An eye that grasped what it saw. A Fate Eye. The eye once possessed by Maiél, the Holy Maiden of Heaven. After obtaining it, Shei had grown tremendously stronger...

Suddenly, Shei tilted her head.

'...Wait. When did I obtain the Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel?'

"Shei."

"Maiél."

A faint shadow rippled beside her. Maiél had sensed Shei's attempt to observe the Celestial God through the Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel and come in person. If Shei had that eye, there was no need to visit a church to greet a Holy Maiden. Back then, Hughes had been beside her, so it couldn't be helped...

'Huh? Why was Hughes there?'

Where did that memory come from?

Sometimes, memories with no known origin surfaced without warning. Shei forgot things all the time after regressing too often, so she did not pay it much mind. Yet at times like this, she wanted to trace the source of those memories with the Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel.

Shei looked back over her past regressions.

Her first iteration. When she knew nothing, when she was endlessly weak and young, when she was filled with resentment and hatred toward the world. Back then, she had ultimately died without meaning.

Her second iteration. When she first returned through regression, the unexpected return left her confused. She struggled only to survive, stood out too much, and died.

Her third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. As she died running or resisting, the military state became the target of her hatred. She came to hate the military state itself and regarded it as her enemy. She gained power to avenge a grudge that no longer existed.

As the iterations continued, though, the military state became nothing more than scenery she passed through. She still hated it, of course, but her reason for going there changed to stopping Demon Gods or calamities.

Perhaps it was because Shei's knowledge, strength, and perspective had changed. The more she knew, the more her hatred faded. Emotions were not eternal. Impressions might be, but emotions were not.

Yet nowhere could she find the Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel. She must have received it. Along with Skywarbler and Jizan, she must have used the eye called the Seven-Colored Eyes. There was not even a trace of it here.

Then had it come after that?

Shei looked through the regressions that lay ahead. That should have been impossible. She had regressed thirteen times, and nothing beyond this point had happened yet.

It should have been impossible.

'Uh...?'

There was more.

Not on the side she had viewed through the Heavenly Eye of the Turning Wheel, but on the opposite side. When she turned around, there was far more than what had already passed. It was too distant, too unfathomably deep. Countless things stretched out without end, enough to make all her regressions until now seem laughable.

Memories? Experiences? History?

No. They were things that had become nothing but traces. Like layers of sediment or crystals in a glacier, they retained only the marks of that time.

Still, Shei was here.

That was because the beginning of those countless new regressions originated here, with Shei in the fourteenth iteration.

'What is this?'

"Shei. I commend your efforts. Because you acted, the King of Humanity has split into two. Your actions lie beyond even my foreordained harmony, making it difficult to summon me... Still, the First Holy Maiden who chose us must have had deep reasons."

Shei could not understand what Maiél was saying. Yet her lips moved on their own.

"Maiél. I'm serious."

Maiél answered with a vague expression.

"You were. If your will had matched mine, I would have already seen this future in the past."

Maiél sat beside Shei. In this iteration, the time they had spent together was no more than an instant, yet they seemed familiar with one another, like friends who had shared decades together.

"At this point, there are two Kings of Humanity. The King of Humanity whose victories made humanity the dominant species on earth. And the King of Humanity who appeared only two thousand years after the First Holy Maiden defeated her. The two were separated, but most of the primordial power went to her."

It was an unfamiliar story to Shei in her fourteenth iteration. Yet it felt strangely familiar now.

"The King of Humanity is a conceptual being. She can use all the strength possessed by the human race. In contrast, he can only possess what he has learned and acquired, like any other ordinary human."

"The one you chose was her, right?"

"It wasn't a choice. There was no other option. The King of Humanity born after Year One is weak."

Shei could not understand what Maiél meant. Yet somehow, she felt as though she did.

No, she already knew.

"That's a relief. There'll be one less rival. Maiél is pretty and devoted, so I was worried even Maiél might fall for Hughes!"

"..."

"I don't know about the other women, but I still can't be sure I'd win against Maiél. If Maiél gives him her all, even Hughes might waver. He's weak around people who are desperate and fleeting."

What was this joy and happiness swelling in Shei's heart? She did not know.

Yet she already knew.

Emotions were not eternal. She felt that.

But if the same emotions were painted over anew at every moment, if she kept feeling those same emotions through endless repetition, then they would no longer be emotions. They would be closer to a law of the world.

"I still envy you. Those who see the future grow numb to emotion. Newness and a racing heart are feelings prophets cannot possess."

"Yeah. I still think it's better if you don't meet Hughes."

"Still, Shei. You saw it too, didn't you? The future where the world perishes."

That was not true only for Shei in the fourteenth iteration. It also applied to every Shei who would continue beyond her.

The world still perished.

Even Shei, having gained far greater knowledge and power, had been unable to overcome that.

"Humanity has already grown too strong, stronger than the human race can bear. If sin is allowed, this world will perish laughably easily."

"Yeah. It did."

"That is why we must defeat the King of Sin. All humanity must fight against sin, win, and reflect on that sin. Only then can we endure. Only then will a today like yesterday arrive again tomorrow."

The King of Sin was the King of Humanity. Humans were the only ones in this world who used the concept of sin.

Yet it had to be the King of Sin. Only then could the concept of humanity be preserved, because the King of Sin would bear every sin and die.

Shei asked, "It has to be Hughes, doesn't it?"

"There must be a future where humanity wins."

"Couldn't she do it?"

"No. The future with her as the King of Sin is still dark. So dark that I can see nothing."

Maiél extended a finger toward the sky.

The distant, pitch-black night sky. A realm humans dared not reach. Yet an awe-inspiring force of nature scattered grace and punishment across the land in turn.

Humans called it god.

Heaven. God. The Parent Celestial God. The names differed, but people feared and revered it all the same. Even now that the Floating Castle had reached the sky, that fear remained. What humans feared was fear itself.

"Something becomes sin because it can be defeated. If it cannot be defeated, it is called a calamity, a disaster, providence, fate, and so on. Human strength has already exceeded human durability. She, with all that power in her hands, is already no different from it."

It could not be defeated.

Then people only needed to seek its embrace.

Just as the First Holy Maiden gathered Demon Gods and made the Celestial God. Just as she made floods and storms into the Celestial God's punishment, while rain and wind became its grace. Just as she assigned meaning to disasters that simply occurred and moved people.

Humans altered and used nature as they pleased. The King of Humanity was also part of nature. Humans would repeat the same thing with their king.

"That is why we must make her defeat the King of Sin. We must make her the King of Divinity."

"By sacrificing Hughes?"

"He's a savage. He symbolizes how, even after humanity has flourished for two thousand years within civilization, humanity still has not escaped its bestial nature. He acts from selfishness and deceives others to fill his own stomach."

"Yeah. Maybe I can't deny that."

Hughes would accept hardship, but he would never sacrifice himself. He did not pursue ideals beyond his abilities. If anything, he mocked them.

But Shei knew.

He was not savage or violent.

He was simply human.

"But that isn't wrong. We're still beasts. Without selfishness, there are no wishes, no wind. Without wind, the world doesn't move."

Wind might make the world unstable. Even so, it had to blow. To carry warmth and cold to one another, to carry pollen nurtured throughout spring.

Hughes stirred up the wind in people's hearts. He pursued the wind itself, flowing and mingling.

Perhaps that was because he was human.

"Hughes believes in humans. He believes that rather than confining and suppressing that wind, it should be released freely."

"Even if the world perishes?"

"Preventing its destruction will also be wind. Just as when he granted the Cyan Tower Master's wish here."

It was not that he affirmed destruction. He affirmed all of it.

If there were as many wishes, as many winds, in the world as there were people, their total would flow in the direction it needed to flow. Just as he was now granting every wish of the Arcane Federation while preserving peace.

Of course, that argument became distorted the moment one saw the future and witnessed the world's destruction.

Who would not want to do the same? But prophets had a duty. They were bound to struggle against the future of destruction.

Maiél lowered her eyes and asked Shei, "What about you?"

"I believe in Hughes."

Even so, Shei believed in Hughes.

As long as Shei allowed the opportunity, Maiél's future would not change. Maiél rose to her feet, clasped her hands behind her back, and said,

"I'll clear the way to the Celestial God. But Shei, he has already accumulated enough karma. Giving him more power won't make things better."

"I know. But it won't make things worse, either. If that's the case, all we can do is hope this change will be good for everyone."

"There isn't much time left in this future to hope."

That Maiél seemed to be from a time even further in the past than this one. How far back was she? How many futures had she seen? Shei suddenly wondered.

But the question quickly faded. Experience held little meaning for those who saw the future. Shei did not even know which iteration she was currently in, or how many futures she had seen.

What mattered was not the past.

It was the future that would soon arrive.

"Shei. At this point, 'she' has moved. The Lilac Duchy belongs to 'her.'"

Just as Maiél had warned.

Footnotes:

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