WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 186: Me Too
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The moment Kyle stepped down from the Iron Dragon, the stench from the revolting scene before him hit him full force.
The battlefields he had wandered in his past life had always been littered with corpses, but nowhere had smelled as abhorrent as this place.
Countless bones lay scattered around. There was also the bone dust of the dragons and Eastern dragons Velatus had vomited out. Their blood, flesh, and organs had rotted away long ago, but the mana in the very air had stagnated in decay, turning into poisonous miasma.
Flap, flap...
The sound of wings beating came from above the Ash Cradle.
The countless followers buried in the cradle rolled their single eyes toward Kyle, their bodies trembling.
“You have finally come.”
A voice came from within the cradle.
Velatus's voice had been beautiful before, but the voice Kyle heard now was so cracked and hoarse it was unpleasant to hear.
Woooo...!
Mana churned with her voice. The vibrations of the stagnant, rotten mana sounded like ghosts screaming.
“Come inside. I will not permit any other humans to enter. You who are Ruin's arrangement, you alone are permitted an audience with me.”
“So she says.”
Kyle stroked Fenris's hilt as he spoke.
He did not ask why Velatus insisted on meeting him alone, but he could vaguely understand.
She was a being overflowing with pride in her own greatness and nobility. Such a being would never want many people to see her aged and wretched appearance as she defied death.
Kyle strode forward and sent Katarina a voice transmission.
[Please take care of everything afterward, if it comes to that.]
[Are you really planning to fight alone?]
[This happened because of me, and it is a decision I made. So I should bear it alone.]
[This is not yours alone. It is Alastor's matter.]
[Before that, it is mine as well. I have a duty to take responsibility.]
Once he spoke of duty, Katarina could say no more.
She swallowed a sigh and clenched her fist.
[Do not let Alastor avenge you.]
Kyle grinned at those words and walked toward the cradle's entrance.
Flap!
As Kyle approached, the winged eyeballs embedded in the cradle's roof rose into the sky all at once. Gray ash poured down like rain from within the entrance, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, of winged eyeballs covered the sky.
Kyle gave the horrifying sight a brief glance before entering the cradle.
Squelch.
It felt like stepping in mud.
In truth, the cradle's floor had become a swamp where gray ash and bright-red blood had congealed together. Kyle roughly shook the sticky, bloody mud from his soles and headed farther inside.
Kyle's eyes should have been able to pierce darkness like this with ease, yet the inside of the cradle was so utterly black that he could barely see ahead.
Velatus had cast magic to conceal the interior.
Kyle continued forward and spoke.
“I came because I was invited, but it's hard to see the host's face.”
“Come... closer to me.”
Her hoarse voice echoed loudly.
The entire cradle shook, and ash began falling like rain again. Kyle brushed the ash piling up on his head and shoulders, then grumbled.
“I understand that you don't want to show yourself because you look ugly. But how long are you planning to hide?”
“My appearance is not ugly...!”
Anger entered her voice.
Whoosh!
Wind blew from afar, sending Kyle's hair fluttering behind him. It was hot and carried a rotten stench.
Kyle snickered and shook his head.
“Your breath reeks too.”
Boom!
A tremendous vibration came with an overwhelming presence.
It was a terrifying presence, strong enough to make every sense in his body prickle and stand on end. Unlike when he had seen her at the Spirit Tree, Kyle was certain that a monster capable of invoking death through its presence alone stood before him now.
“Do not insult me.”
“If you force yourself to live long past your Lifespan, of course you'll look ugly and stink.”
An invisible force slowly began to bind Kyle's body.
He did not resist. He merely continued speaking.
“Even you, who are said to be the noblest among the great dragons, must admit that. You struggled not to die, even as you became so ugly.”
“...”
“Isn't that why you called me here? Because you want to stop struggling now? Let's stop looking away from it.”
The force binding his body came to an abrupt halt.
The hot, foul breath that had grown ragged with rage and humiliation gradually settled.
“Yes. That is right.”
A calm voice followed.
“As you say, my struggle will soon end. This nauseating appearance will soon meet its death as well, so there is no need to hide it from you.”
The darkness blocking his view began to clear.
“Since I was placed in this cradle, you are the only one to see me alive. But human, do not consider it an honor that you have seen my appearance.”
Velatus revealed herself alongside that self-loathing warning.
At first, Kyle could not believe it was Velatus.
He thought it was part of the cradle's inner wall.
As the darkness cleared, a massive heap occupying half the ash-gray hollow was revealed. It looked like the remains of a landslide, or the wreckage of an abandoned ship left to rot for ages.
Kyle realized it was alive because it was breathing.
The entire pile swelled with every inhale and deflated with every exhale. Ash dust flowed from its surface with each breath. The sound resembled a broken bellows, air leaking from lungs that no longer functioned properly.
Kyle took in the enormous heap's form as a whole.
A dragon.
Something that had once been a dragon.
Most of the scales that must once have densely covered its body had fallen away. The fallen scales were scattered around its body, half-buried in ash. Dull dark-red fragments that looked like broken roof tiles.
It was impossible to imagine that they had once shone like jewels.
The flesh beneath the missing scales had rotted black. Bloody pus seeped from every crack in the decayed skin, running down its body and mixing with the mire below. Ash had stuck to its rotting flesh and hardened like scabs, while the lower half of its body was entirely buried in mud.
It was buried far too deeply.
Its lower legs, tail, and nearly half its body were buried.
No, they had fused together.
The bloody pus that flowed down had tangled with ash. More ash had piled atop it, hardened, and repeated that process over a long span of time until its body and the cradle had become one.
Velatus had become part of the cradle made from the bone dust of the kin she had devoured.
Only the shell of her wings remained.
The framework of massive wing bones folded over her back remained intact, but the membranes between them had decayed. They were perforated, torn, and hanging in tatters. Those wings must once have covered the sky, but now they looked as miserable as old flags.
Her neck, curled against her body, moved with a creak.
Caked ash crumbled off with the movement. Her flesh split open, and foul, rotten blood gushed out in thick spurts. It seemed that moving alone tore apart her body.
Yet her neck moved.
To face Kyle.
Her head was so gaunt that the outline of her enormous skull showed clearly beneath the skin. All her horns had broken, leaving only their bases. The flesh beneath her jaw hung loose and rotten, while black smoke leaked from her nostrils whenever they flared.
Of that horrific appearance, only her eyes seemed remotely alive.
Remotely.
Massive eyes of dim gray light stared at Kyle. Those eyes were the only part of that immense body that had not rotted. The eyes of a being who had lived for five thousand years. Eyes swollen with longing, holding every moment she had spent refusing death.
“...”
Kyle said nothing.
The tongue that had mocked her breath did not move. He felt neither ridicule nor pity.
He only looked at the sight before him as it was.
This was the price of refusing the death, the inevitability, that should come to every being.
She had devoured every Eastern dragon in the East, all the dragons that had crossed over with her, used an entire continent as a scapegoat, captured every Spirit, turned humans into livestock, and unleashed loyal monsters in order to prolong her life.
This was the end of that dragon.
The only thing she could do with the life she had stretched to its limit was rot away, mixed with the bone dust she had vomited out.
“Have you... seen it all?”
Velatus spoke.
Her cracked voice rang low through the cradle. Her gray eyes searched Kyle's face insistently, as though waiting for the expression that would appear there.
“If you wish to laugh at me, laugh now. If you wish to say I am ugly, say it now.”
Her words were barbed, but Kyle could sense the emotion beneath them.
That arrogant monster was afraid.
Afraid of what the first person to see her entire appearance would feel and say.
“I have no intention of laughing.”
Kyle answered calmly.
“Now that we've faced each other, let's discuss why I came. You said you would give me your heart. How do you intend to give it to me?”
Velatus's eyes widened.
The Kyle she had seen until now had been unbearably arrogant and rude, so it was unexpected that he now showed no trace of mockery.
Velatus stared at him for a moment before speaking.
“You do not entirely lack respect.”
As she muttered that, the cradle shook.
Rumble...!
The vibration did not come from the cradle walls, but from deep beneath his feet. The bloody mire surged violently. The entire swamp-like floor began to swell.
Something enormous was rising from beneath the cradle.
Kyle quickly stepped back.
Thump.
He heard a sound.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
An earthquake began.
The sound and vibration shook the ground itself. Each beat sent ash pouring from the cradle ceiling like a waterfall, while concentric ripples spread across the mire below.
Kyle felt the pulse through the soles of his feet, his chest, his mana, and his intent.
It was a sickening resonance, as though the blood in his body were being dragged along with that pulse.
At last, the mire split apart and something rose.
A massive heart emerged from the bloody swamp.
It was neither rotten, gray, nor black. It was vivid, glossy scarlet, like freshly spilled blood. Thick blood vessels bulged across its surface like worms, writhing as the whole heart contracted and expanded powerfully with every beat.
In a cradle that was a pile of decay, that heart alone was alive.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tentacles were connected to the base of the heart.
Dark-red strands resembling both blood vessels and roots burrowed beneath the mire. The thick ones were as large as great trees, while the thin ones were like threads. Those countless tentacles pierced the cradle's floor, passed beneath the Sand Sea, and extended into unseen, distant places.
Kyle followed their ends with his aura sense.
A chill ran over his skin.
The strands stretched beyond the Sand Sea and across all of the East. Like veins of water.
No, they truly were veins of water.
A network of blood vessels spread like a spiderweb beneath the eastern continent. Even at this moment, those vessels were working. They poured black, dead blood and mana into the land while sucking up fresh blood and mana.
Inhaling and exhaling.
Relaxing and contracting.
Supply and discharge.
Every flow of exploitation Kyle had witnessed in the East gathered here.
That heart had sunk its straws into the entire continent.
“It is my heart.”
Pride filled Velatus's cracked voice.
“It holds five thousand years. The essence of every Eastern dragon and dragon I devoured is also within it. Look, human. My body has rotted, but my heart has not. Far from rotting, it is stronger than ever.”
Her gray eyes turned toward the heart.
Attachment filled those ruined eyes. The being who had despised the decay of her body regained her pride only before her heart.
“It is a heart I preserved for myself and for Ruin. Come, human. You who are Ruin's arrangement, who remain as his lingering attachment. Go near it.”
Velatus whispered.
“Go near it, reach out your hand, and accept the heart's power.”
Thump.
The heart beat loudly. The blood vessels across its surface wriggled and subtly swelled toward where Kyle stood.
“Come to think of it.”
Kyle spoke.
“I never heard a proper reason. Why is accepting the power of that heart for Ruin's sake?”
“You ask for the reason only now?”
Irritation entered Velatus's voice.
“Though Ruin left behind an attachment and arranged for reincarnation, your power is utterly insignificant compared to his. Even if you wield a sword your entire life, can you reach Ruin?”
“I'll find out if I try.”
“Human, that is your stubbornness. Think of Ruin, who was burdened by duty his entire life and went beyond the sky even after death to fulfill his duty. He changed the Law of the weak human species at its root. Yet he did not consider that enough. He refused rest, swung his sword at the end of the sky, and left his descendants with the mission of protecting the boundary of the world. Is such a being not pitiful? A being who was human, yet as great as a dragon, more radiant and beautiful than any jewel. To ease that long loneliness even one day sooner and stand beside him is the duty granted to you, who have reincarnated.”
Velatus's voice grew heated.
Kyle turned around just in case.
“This conversation can't be heard outside, right?”
“You care about such trivial things...! I permitted only you to enter here and receive an audience. Do you think I would speak of Ruin as though I were chatting with insignificant things that know nothing of the matter?”
Velatus shouted.
The heart's beating grew stronger, and ash fell from the ceiling once more.
Kyle shielded his head with one hand as he spoke.
“So if I accept the power of that heart, I can reach Ruin faster?”
“Of course. It contains the essence of every power I protected even while refusing death! All you must do is touch it and accept its power and blood. If you do, you will become a new, great, and unique being beyond humanity.”
Velatus's voice began trembling with excitement.
“My great blood will change you anew. It will turn your weak imperfection into greatness. That is my wish. Once you become one with my heart and blood, you will quickly reach the distant sky where Ruin has gone. And Ruin will turn back toward me, who has become one with you.”
“Become one?”
“Tremble with glory.”
Velatus whispered.
“And rejoice, human. You were weak. Even five hundred years ago, you were insignificant compared to Ruin. If Ruin had not remembered you, I would not even have known of your existence. Why Ruin left such an insignificant being as an attachment and remembered you, I cannot understand... but it is undoubtedly true that you moved Ruin more deeply than Demon King Astaros or I did.”
Rumble...!
Velatus moved her head.
Her neck, dripping bloody pus, stretched long as her rotting head and gray eyes came closer to Kyle.
“So I will respect Ruin's will and give you my heart. Though Ruin rewrote the human Law, your species remains unbearably weak. You are still an insignificant being in my eyes. But by accepting my heart, you will become new, great, and unique.”
“...”
“Take my heart. If five thousand years of essence become yours, you will reach that path far faster than you do now. Ruin's side. Ruin's unfulfilled wish. This is why I endured these humiliating years for Ruin.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The heart beat rapidly, as though urging him on.
“What reason is there to hesitate? Every imperfect being desires greatness, and every weak being desires power. You, human. You who were called the Sword Demon. You were the one who took up a sword again after reincarnating, bound by lingering attachment. You were the one who craved power by adapting to the Laws of a changed world. Before you lies the power you could never obtain, no matter how much you struggled for your entire life.”
“So it seems.”
Kyle slowly nodded and walked toward the heart.
At the sight, Velatus whispered in delight.
“Ahhh...! Yes, that is what you must do. If you accept that power, I will no longer need to sustain this body. Every root spread through this land will wither, and everything that received my blood will dissolve into blood. Everything in this land you called hell will vanish. Just as you want.”
Kyle listened as he stopped before the heart.
He glanced up at Velatus's head.
Her eyes trembled with delight, as though she had finally reached the ending she had long awaited.
“Velatus.”
Kyle reached his hand toward the heart.
“You know neither me nor Ruin.”
Baal appeared in his previously empty hand.
“Ruin would not want this.”
The Sword of Annihilation stabbed into the heart.
“Me too.”
Footnotes:
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