WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 98

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Death Comes Walking

People often describe death as having no feet. No matter where someone hides, no matter how far they run, it comes right up behind them, and even those who constantly watch for death fail to notice before it strikes.

But Lieutenant Colonel Callis's death clearly walked on two legs.

A boy pretty enough to be mistaken for a girl approached her with unmistakable killing intent, and the power to carry it out. Step by step, each time she moved closer, she moved closer to death.

Her survival instinct screamed a warning.

"Wh- what are you doing? As an instructor of this Tantalus, I am dealing with trainees who refuse orders..."

Even knowing it would not work, the officer stammered excuses at the approaching regressor.

Of course, it did not work.

"Honestly, you don't even have to let go. You're going to die anyway."

If she still refused to release it after hearing that, she would only trap herself.

The officer threw away the chain and staggered back. The chain hit the floor with a metallic clang, and Azzy opened her eyes slightly. The chain was still around her neck, but she barely cared. Being pulled by a chain was nowhere near enough to hurt her anyway.

She only watched the humans fighting each other with a trace of sadness.

Sensing the coming smell of blood, Azzy turned her head toward the darkness.

By contrast, the immortal, who did not fear death, faced the approaching death head-on.

"Hey. Aren't you that boy with grotesque taste in men? Too bad for you, but the lieutenant colonel is a woman! Guess her stiff attitude confused you!"

It was a pointless joke, and it did nothing to the regressor in her current state. Once the switch had flipped, only blade-sharp killing intent remained in her heart.

That intent could not be satisfied with death in this life alone.

It was the will to erase someone from every future possibility, a more fundamental urge to annihilate from a transcendent point of view.

"...Must it really be this way, boy?"

Even the immortal, who did not truly experience death, could not smile in the face of pressure beyond mere bloodlust. He kept his body taut, ready to spring at any moment, and watched the regressor.

By then, they were twenty paces apart. The regressor spoke to him, standing in his path, as though he were nothing but a nuisance.

"You were better when your limbs were torn off. At least then, you weren't in the way."

"Boy, you were better when you panicked and flailed. Back then you were quite human, but now you are truly... like an asura."

The immortal let out a hollow laugh. It did not come from composure, but from realizing the gap between them.

Even at this distance, the regressor did not slow down.

She could have launched blades of wind. At this range, she could have unleashed one deadly attack after another. Even so, she did not slow her steps, as if an immortal was not even enough to count as an obstacle.

One step, then another. Neither slow nor fast, just steady. Like an appointed hour drawing near moment by moment, at a constant pace.

If she reached the officer, frozen and trembling under killing intent like this...

The immortal muttered,

"Callis. Run."

This was the Abyss. The ultimate dead end, with nowhere to run in any direction.

He knew that, and still he had no choice but to say it.

"Anywhere, hurry!"

The officer snapped back to her senses, nodded, and ran at once. Her frantic footsteps echoed.

Watching her back, the regressor muttered,

"As expected, you really shouldn't exist."

She pulled back her arm. That was all, yet all the wind filling the corridor was dragged into one point.

The immortal dropped even the faint trace of a smile and shouted in pure urgency.

"Run, now-!"

A moment later, the regressor aimed for the middle of the officer's back and thrust Skywarbler.

Celestial Sword Qi, Shoot the Sun.

A single strand of wind blew. Compared to that terrifying buildup, the result seemed laughably small. A soft whuff, like someone lightly blowing through their lips, drifted along the corridor.

But its force was far too fierce to dismiss.

"Hah!"

The immortal moved instantly and blocked the tip of the regressor's sword. As expected, the invisible sword qi pierced his body, through crossed forearms, muscle, bone, lungs full of wind, and straight out through the skin of his back.

A troubled look crossed the immortal's face. The penetration far exceeded what he had expected. Crossing his arms and throwing himself in front of it was not enough to stop that overwhelming force.

"Duck!"

Shouting that, the immortal twisted his body.

The sword wind pierced through him and flew on, grazing the officer's cap. The service cap, symbol of the military state's authority, spun through the air. Staggering from the impact, the officer barely recovered her balance and fled up the stairs.

The regressor clicked her tongue.

"Tch. You twisted your body in the middle of that?"

"Ha ha. It was almost a stunt. Still, it worked, didn't it?"

As the sword wind pierced him, the immortal tensed his whole body and twisted. Because he did it while the strike was passing through him, it was effectively the same as grabbing it with his entire body. Because of that, even sword qi said to shoot down the sun went off line and passed over the officer's shoulder instead of cutting her neck.

She had failed to kill her, but the regressor felt little regret.

"It'll only delay things. This is the Abyss. No one escapes from here. The lieutenant colonel will die."

"Ha ha. Take it easy, boy. She was just cornered for a moment."

"Being cornered brought out her true nature."

"True nature is not just one thing, boy. Everyone has good and bad sides at once, like front and back. In this land cursed by Mother Earth, this dark and pitch-black ground, only her bad side stood out!"

"Sure. I understand."

The regressor gave a small nod and added,

"So I'll kill the bad side. You handle the good side yourself... if she's still alive."

No one looked capable of persuading the regressor. It did not even seem possible to stop her. Her rage even had valid reasons, so she herself had no intention of stopping.

Feeling at a loss, the immortal spoke.

"Must there be blood, boy?"

Seeing the regressor's face turn colder, the immortal quickly added,

"Ah, don't misunderstand! I mean my blood, of course!"

"You first. Do you really have a reason to protect the lieutenant colonel if it means spilling your own blood?"

"Of course I do. She's my friend, isn't she!"

He said it proudly, without the slightest hesitation. The regressor brushed her hair back in annoyance and said,

"I wasn't going to say this because it'd sound like bragging, but this is getting annoying, so listen. The one who brought you back wasn't the lieutenant colonel. It was me. Your right arm was rotting under a curse, so I threw it into a healing potion made with a World Tree leaf and regenerated it. The fact that it looked like she saved you was pure coincidence..."

"Ha ha! I know! my right arm told me! Truly, thank you for that, boy!"

"...Then why?"

The immortal answered clearly.

"Still, she came intending to help me, and she had the ability to do it! Even if my right arm hadn't arrived in time, the lieutenant colonel would have helped me! So what else does that make her, if not my friend?"

"Ha... fine. Got it."

Letting out a deep sigh, the regressor lifted Skywarbler and resumed the steps she had paused. The immortal stretched his right leg far back and shouted boldly.

"Of course, I consider you a benefactor too, boy! I have no intention of opposing you! Ah! I'm not saying that in advance because I think I'll lose!"

"Tch, of all things you're an immortal, so I can't even kill you... better to blow you away and move on. Hoo."

"I may not stop you, but I won't let you pass easily!"

Seeing the regressor raise her hand, the immortal let out a roar and rushed straight at her.

Not to attack. He only wanted to reduce the time the blades could tear through his body. The farther he fell back, the longer he would be shredded. It resembled light infantry charging head-on into heavy cavalry.

In any case, the immortal ended up in much the same state as them. Violent wind brushed past, and his sturdy body came apart in an instant.

In the literal sense.

*****

'I need to escape. I need to escape.'

The Progenitor was indifferent to humans, the dangerous individual was currently getting along with the laborer without issue, the immortal had his limbs torn apart, and the target, the King of Dogs, was friendly toward humans.

That was why Lieutenant Colonel Callis had judged this mission would be easier than expected. She only had to enter the Abyss, where everyone was detached from humans, and secure the King of Dogs. Unless something dramatic happened, Callis herself should have been safe.

The laborer surviving shamelessly all this time was proof of that, she had thought. It was the most horrible mistake she could have made.

'No. The moment I touched the King of Dogs, all of them reacted.'

The laborer interfered the instant Callis approached the King of Dogs.

The Progenitor protected him with all her strength and was even willing to oppose the nation for his sake.

When she approached the King of Dogs in secret and put the chain around her neck, the dangerous individual lost his mind and came charging to kill her in person.

'Everyone here is an enemy.'

For Lords of All Creation, that was catastrophic news. The operation had been drafted with the mindset of picking up a lost item with no owner, but the real difficulty was closer to walking into hell and stealing treasure from the king of the underworld.

'Did they grow attached? Or did they realize who we are and move to obstruct us? Either way, I have to report this. The operation must be canceled. And...'

Since the situation had gone bad, she would escape to survive.

Abandoning a mission midway was forbidden, but surely even they did not expect Callis to pull this off in a crack of hell like this. Better to plan for another day than throw away her life.

Callis reached the fourth floor. Her breathing was ragged. A military state soldier should not be winded from running stairs, but a body that had just indirectly experienced death was desperately demanding proof of life through heavy breaths.

Red hair clung to her face. Only then did Callis realize her cap, the one that always pressed her hair down, was gone. It made her uneasy for no reason, but she should at least be grateful her neck was still attached.

Callis opened a hidden section of her belt and pulled out a bundle.

'For communication.'

The military state's sync-type arcane golems were an invention of the century, but without a special unique arcane, one could not resonate with them. For ordinary people, delivering news meant using communication facilities or returning to a more primitive method.

Like the brooch in Callis's hand now, set with four gems.

'Break one, safe. Break two, caution. Three means danger... and if all four are shattered, it means everyone present is a perfectly hostile entity.'

Twin gems made through special alchemy were linked so that when one side broke, its counterpart broke too.

It had the flaw of being one-use and useless unless signals were set in advance, but the secret society Lords of All Creation often made full use of that trait.

'We have to assume even the Progenitor is hostile to us. Four gems must be broken.'

Callis pulled the pin hanging from the brooch. Instead of a sharp tip, the end had an unusually heavy iron bead attached. She drew it back and let go, and the iron bead snapped forward and smashed the red gem.

The sharp sound of shattering crystal rang through the corridor.

'Before escaping, I was told to break the gems no matter what. They said only then could the upper side prepare an escape route.'

One, two, three, four. The sound of gems breaking rang out in sequence.

After finishing the signal by breaking every gem, Callis took out the last escape bundle. The escape bundle was sealed tighter than the others. Tense, with her hands slipping again and again, Callis scraped at the knots with her nails repeatedly.

Then it happened.

『Loyalty. Lieutenant Colonel Callis. This is Captain AB, communications officer.』

A small golem walked out of the dining hall. It was the communications officer's sync-type arcane golem.

Callis jumped at the unfamiliar voice, then recognized who it was, and her face brightened at once.

"Captain!"

To hide what she had done as part of Lords of All Creation, she had needed to stay away from the communications officer. She had even been instructed to do so.

But from the standpoint of someone trying to escape, even the communications officer was a precious ally. The only ally who could relay outside conditions.

"You came at the right time. I am withdrawing from inside Tantalus. The trainees here are still far too violent for resocialization. So, Captain, help me..."

But the golem's words cut hers off.

『...The military authorities have approved a temporary suspension of Lieutenant Colonel Callis's authority.』

"What?"

She was so shocked that her hands stopped untying the escape bundle, her lifeline, for a moment. In contrast, the communications officer's voice stayed flat and dry.

『It is said that you entered Tantalus due to an error, but that too is a fault. The military authorities have decided to impose disciplinary action for that fault.』

That word, disciplinary action, struck Callis with a different kind of shock even in the middle of a life-or-death crisis.

The military state's screening process was strict. To become Level 4, one could not have a single disqualifying flaw. Having no mistakes was even more important than earning merit.

And yet, discipline. Callis protested.

"What, what are you saying? Didn't you say there was a problem with the order document! The order I received said I was to oversee the supply process!"

『Even so, the Abyss is a Level 5 security facility. Even if you followed orders, we cannot help but question your entry into Tantalus without any verification.』

"I can explain. I can explain that part."

Callis spoke in a rush, but the answer from the golem remained cold and rigid.

『I only convey the contents and have no influence over the decision process. I recommend that you present your explanation to the investigation team that will arrive later. That is all.』

As if it had nothing more to say, the golem gave a brief salute and returned to the dining hall. Strength drained from Callis's body.

How, why, she had risked her life to come this far. The dream that had led her here was about to vanish as nothing but a dream.

'No. I just need to escape.'

Lords of All Creation had spread through every part of the military state. From the military to the administration, they had put down roots everywhere, so if she could just return, they would resolve this problem. She only had to escape.

Callis gritted her teeth and forced open the tightly tied knot.

At last, the knot that had been tormenting her came undone. Callis hurriedly opened the bundle and looked inside.

On top of a square, rigid body sat a packet marked with geometric shapes.

'An equipment packet!'

An alchemical weapon, an equipment packet, could produce simple gear such as daggers and shields.

This packet had to be the means of escape. Callis immediately opened her biometric terminal and inserted the packet. The packet flowed through the Archi Avatar wrapped around her whole body and began taking shape near her shoulder.

'How do I use this? Is there no other message?'

Callis was peering deeper into the bundle for another clue.

The back of a blade brushed her neck.

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