WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ SSS-Class Revival Hunter ◈
Chapter 355: The White Terminus (6)
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7.
After dealing with the aftermath concerning the mad warrior, I found myself with an empty stretch of time. I turned my gaze toward one corner of the world.
[You can declare a Stage Clear at any time.]
The words were floating there.
As I waved my hand, the letters dispersed like grains of sand. Standing in the middle of the land (since the world moves with me, I was always in the center), I was deep in thought.
Idiot 「What are you doing? Aren't you going back to the lobby?」
Me 「No. Suddenly, I thought that I might fail at the 99th floor too.」
Idiot 「......」
Me 「I think I've grown quite strong. Perhaps, as I am now, I could even cross swords with my master from before attaining enlightenment. Yet you are half a move stronger than both that master and me, Sword Emperor. Even someone like you died on the 99th floor.」
I couldn't even begin to imagine what awaited at the 99th floor that led to the Sword Emperor's death. It was beyond my comprehension. From that point, anxiety grew like a poisonous mushroom.
I looked straight at the Guardian Spirit.
Me 「What's on the 99th floor? Can't you tell me yet?」
Idiot 「.........」
Me 「If you tell me, I can prepare. I can devise a strategy, right?」
Idiot 「Hmm. Well, that's a valid point, but it's only a point.」
Me 「What do you mean?」
Idiot 「I just don't want to tell you about the 99th floor.」
Me 「Are you really a child?」
Idiot 「Enough. Let's take a walk.」
Me 「Walk? You're a spirit, you can't even walk....」
Then, for the first time since meeting the Guardian Spirit, I witnessed something. Depending on the perspective, it was a remarkable sight or merely an ordinary scene.
The Guardian Spirit, who almost always floated gently in the air, was now walking on the ground, step by step.
Idiot 「Aren't you coming?」
Me 「But... you don't have a body. How can you...」
To my eyes, the Guardian Spirit truly appeared to be walking.
Me 「Did you gain a body? As I climb the tower, do you gradually gain a physical form? Something like that...」
Idiot 「Idiot. I'm just pretending to walk.」
Me 「What?」
Idiot 「Tsk, no use explaining. Just follow me.」
The Guardian Spirit turned and walked away. I, as if possessed by a ghost, followed.
.,,.. ⊂;^;^;,つ
...''...'....
,,'.'.........,,
....''....... ...''...
,,..... ........... ...,,,
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Mountains stretched on and clouds drifted by. The world was as silent as the Guardian Spirit. I silently followed the silent man.
Idiot 「The Mad Warrior said the difference between you and me is only half a step.」
After a long walk, the Guardian Spirit finally spoke.
Idiot 「Zombie, what do you think that half step difference is?」
Me 「I think it is the Sword Heart.」
Idiot 「Right. The Sword Heart. I can use it, and your master attained it just before closing her eyes. So how does one awaken the Sword Heart and wield it freely?」
Me 「......」
I instinctively felt that this conversation was extremely important. Yes, the Guardian Spirit was trying to teach me something, just like when I first awakened my Aura.
Me 「The Sword Heart is a sword of the mind. Wouldn't it be enough to place your heart within the blade?」
Idiot 「You've already reached the pinnacle of the Divine Art of the Demonic Heaven. You've freely deciphered it and even devised formations. In the realm of imbuing the heart into the sword, there's hardly any meaningful difference between you and me.」
Me 「Then, is it a matter of the type of heart you imbue?」
Idiot 「Idiot. Dig deeper. Be more specific.」
Step by step. I realized something as I followed the Guardian Spirit. It felt distant. More distant than before. The Guardian Spirit's back was slightly further away.
Me 「......」
The stride hadn't changed. The way the Guardian Spirit walked remained the same. Yet, somehow, the pace, the speed at which the horizon was traversed, had changed.
I had to quicken my steps not to fall behind the Guardian Spirit.
Idiot 「Most martial artists train their entire lives without so much as glimpsing the Sword Heart. Most? More like 99.99 percent. But you were insanely lucky and witnessed the Sword Heart twice. You should have picked up a clue to enlightenment from that.」
Me 「Twice...」
Idiot 「Yeah. Set mine aside for now, since it was only a mental image. But what about your master? Did your master not show you the Sword Heart one last time before leaving this world?」
Step, step.
The Guardian Spirit's back grew even more distant. However, the Guardian Spirit was just walking at a regular pace.
I, too, had to increase my speed.
Idiot 「Let me ask you. Did your master have any inner energy left then?」
I recalled the last time I embraced my master's shoulders. The sensation of something that shouldn't die, dying in my arms. It was a painful memory, but remembering someone was always hard.
Me 「No.」
Idiot 「Your master shattered and spent her source qi. Did your master have any true qi left then?」
Me 「...No.」
Idiot 「Did your master have any physical strength left then?」
Me 「No. Master had absolutely no energy left.」
Idiot 「Right. No inner energy, no true qi, and no physical strength. So how did your master use the Sword Heart? Why did the snowy mountain split apart? Did Mount Tai, moved by the Lord of the Demonic Heaven, split itself apart?」
Me 「......」
I clenched my teeth.
Not because I was deep in thought, but because the Guardian Spirit had become so fast that I had to run at full speed or he would disappear from sight in an instant, forcing me to bite down and use light-foot techniques.
Step! Step!
Idiot 「There was nothing left in your master. So...」
Me 「My master must have drawn it from outside.」
The landscape flashed by at breakneck speed.
Me 「If there's no inner energy, then you must use external energy.」
Idiot 「Right. That’s the logical conclusion.」
Clouds swept past. Mountains and forests swept past. We passed countless villages.
When the two of us went by like the wind, villagers whose names I did not know stared in astonishment. Both the Guardian Spirit and I briefly slowed whenever we passed through a village, but only briefly. Once we cleared its outskirts, we accelerated again.
Idiot 「What is external energy?」
Me 「Nature... life force, something like that?」
Idiot 「Oh, impressive. You manage a passable imitation of Homo sapiens using abstract words like those.」
Me 「You stupid ghost....」
Idiot 「Inner energy, or ki, is, in other words, Aura. It's the realization of your will. It's no different from writing down the images in your mind and engraving them on paper. If the paper is the world, then the characters are Aura. Then, what is external energy?」
Step.
Idiot 「What in this world could be called the will of the world?」
At that moment, my tongue moved instinctively.
Me 「Constellations.」
Idiot 「.........」
Me 「It's the Constellations. Constellations define the laws of the world. Or rather, there are Constellations that define the laws of the world. They are the masters of the stage, and if a stage is a world, then they are the masters of a world. If they will something, it's as if the world itself wills it.」
I realized as I spoke. Not because I understood and then spoke, but because I understood as I spoke. What would have remained vague if I had only thought about it became clear as I put it into words.
Me 「Mere nature is not enough to let you use external energy. It has to be a place with a Constellation, a world ruled by one. Only in such a world can you draw upon external energy, and that external energy is the Constellation's own inner energy. The Sword Heart draws upon a Constellation's inner energy.」
Idiot 「Right! The Sword Heart can be used only after becoming one with the star that rules that world. A world without a Constellation has no will, and a world without will has no Sword Heart.」
The Guardian Spirit's laughter floated lightly.
Idiot 「In the world your master lived in, the Constellation 'The Golden Dragon of the Great Lake' reigned supreme. That Constellation, cursed to never die even with the sword of Constellation Killer embedded in its heart, defined the rules of that world with its resentment of 'not being able to die'. Thus, the humans living in that world became 'bodies that couldn't die', zombies, or gangshi.」
The villages gradually became scarcer across the land we traversed. We left the populous continent behind and moved farther and farther into a remote frontier where few people lived.
Idiot 「Winter is the same. Eternal winter is nothing more than the Constellation's mental image laid bare. A world buried in permafrost exists, but it permits no living vigor. It is a zombie. That was the world in which your master lived.」
We sped past the last village, and at last only mountains, forests, and clouds continued without end.
Idiot 「So how could one draw the inner energy of such a world's Constellation?」
Me 「...You have to become more of a Constellation than the Constellation itself.」
I felt like I knew the answer.
Me 「The Constellation suffered with Kim Yul's sword lodged in its heart, unable to die even after death. But... my master suffered more. In the torment of being unable to die even after death, my master unquestionably suffered more than that Constellation.」
In other words.
Me 「If you want to draw freely upon Mutia's power, you must cling to time more fiercely than Mutia does. If you desire regression more intensely than Mutia, you will be able to wield the Sword Heart freely in Mutia's world.」
Becoming even more like your opponent.
Me 「To use the power of Hisimet Cretsu as if it were your own, not by commanding it but to freely use it, you have to be more obsessed with people's secrets than Hisimet Cretsu.」
That was the principle behind the Sword Heart.
Me 「To kill winter, you have to become more like winter than winter itself.」
How far had we run?
⊂;^;^;,つ
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The mountains flattened to meet the horizon, and the forests dwindled to the ground. Only the sky managed to hold onto a few clouds. As the Guardian Spirit walked step by step, and I ran, the world gradually whitened.
Suddenly, I wondered if this world too had an end.
Me 「The Sword Heart is not a trump card that can be used at any time. Only when you understand that world, only when you feel it more keenly in your bones than the world itself does, can you barely wield it. But... if that is true.」
I stopped.
The Guardian Spirit also stopped and turned to look at me.
Me 「Then how were you able to use the Sword Heart in my master's world?」
There, at the end of the world, even the clouds had vanished.
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Only the horizon could be seen.
No mountains or trees.
Only the bottom edge of the world continued without end. One streak of black amid white in every direction. I amplified my senses with Aura and tried to survey as wide a field as possible. As the Aura strengthened, my field of vision expanded in great strides. I saw a world ten times, thirty times, one hundred and twenty times broader than usual.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Yet, the world remained white.
It was beautiful.
A pale, boundless sea lay there, still and utterly soundless. It was a boundary where even breathing seemed forbidden, no, a world of repose that seemed unwilling to permit it. Expression, voice, tone... everything... released its breath... and was bleached away.
I thought someone might consider this place heaven. And this place deserved to be someone's heaven.
There, the Guardian Spirit's eyes were looking back at me.
Sword Emperor 「Watch closely.」
The Guardian Spirit raised his arm.
Sword Emperor 「I'll show you for the third time.」
His arm moved slowly.
Sword Emperor 「The next time you see this, it will be when you and I fight.」
And then…
━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━
Something split silently.
━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━
I blinked. In the blink of an eye, while my eyelids closed and opened, the silently split crevice quietly widened. It seemed as if the more the crevice widened, the more it consumed the time of this world, erasing it.
━━━━ ━━━━
The white crevice expanded uncontrollably. It wasn't that the world was collapsing, nor was it being destroyed. It simply vanished. Erased.
It was being cut by a sword.
[The Faceless Conductor notices an anomaly in the stage.]
The master of the cut world spoke.
[The Faceless Conductor urgently requests your departure.]
[The request for departure has been forwarded to The Staff of Time Immemorial.]
[Approved.]
Finally, my entire field of vision turned white.
[You are forcibly transported to the 70th floor.]
My vision swirled chaotically.
Black diluted, white intensified, and various colors swirled together. My mind began to feel nauseous. My senses, perfectly adapted to the 2D world, were forcibly dragged back to the original world.
"Such outrageous behavior...!!"
For the first time in a very long while, another person's voice struck me across the mind. It was the Staff of Time Immemorial. The voice split through my head like thunder.
"Are you aware of what almost happened!? If you cleared the stage, you should've quietly returned. Moreover, my goodness. How dare a non-challenger, an outsider, presume...!"
I struggled to open my eyes.
The face of the mage, stained with dismay and anger, was before me.
"You, the unparalleled troublemakers of this world!!"
"......."
Despite the nausea, I managed to speak.
Even in difficult times, there are moments when one must speak.
“That is incorrect. Since there are two of us, rather than calling us two troublemakers without equal, it would be more accurate to call us the only two troublemakers...”
Kang!
The mage swung her staff and hit me on the head.
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