WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 245

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Several days had already passed since Isabella confessed her past, and I could not help but spend that time turning it over in my mind.

In the end, I found one answer that could resolve our current situation. Looking into Isabella’s trembling eyes, I quietly spoke.

“Ms. Isabella, I think you will have to die again.”

[So in the end, I really do have to die.]

Isabella gave me a sad smile. With one hand over her chest, she bowed her head toward me.

[If that is what you wish, Master, then right now...]

As Isabella wrote, magical power gathered in her hand. It soon became a bolt of lightning that flickered sharply.

I hurriedly waved my hands.

“Please hear me out. What I want is something a little different. If you are going to die anyway, let’s make it a glorious death. We can get revenge on Domitian too.”

Isabella looked puzzled at my words. I gave a faint smile and recalled the past few days.

After hearing Isabella’s story, I felt enormous anger well up inside me. But that anger was not directed only at Domitian.

Of course, Domitian could be called its starting point. But the one at the end of that anger was not him. It was me.

Domitian was stronger than I was in every way. He had noticed the contract and intended to use Isabella as a tool because of it.

In that situation, it was difficult for me to defy him. If I carelessly opposed him, I could end up just like Isabella.

Yes, Isabella. I quietly looked over Isabella, who was meeting my eyes.

When she was alive, Isabella possessed such exceptional talent that even a hundred people like me could not match her. Her current state proved as much.

If Isabella had possessed only middling talent, all her reason would have burned away while her soul was being incinerated.

But Isabella’s tree had protected her by sacrificing itself. That was why she could retain her memories and will like this.

Perhaps Isabella’s talent surpassed even Cassian’s, the person with the greatest talent I had seen so far.

Yet even Isabella had been bound by Domitian. Before she could spread her wings, she was tied down and made to crawl across the ground. In the end, she died.

No matter how Isabella twisted her wish and gained her death, it could not be said that she defeated Domitian. She had merely escaped his grasp.

And the reins Isabella had thought she had cast off were still binding her. They had taken the clear form of a contract.

Domitian surely knew that as well, which was why he intended to use Isabella as a tool once again.

What should I do in this situation?

I quietly closed my eyes and rubbed my wrist. I could feel the trace of the contract I had made over the mirror bug.

I had entered that contract to survive. And as I sold puppets, I came to clearly realize just how much had been taken from me.

If I could have sold mirror bugs instead of puppets and used them to gather information, I could have grown far more efficiently than I had.

But that path had been blocked by the contract, under the restraint of people who wished only to protect their own interests.

If not for Professor Irian, I might have lived while suffering treatment even worse than Isabella’s.

For some reason, the current situation felt similar to that time. If so, the solution was simple. I just had to act as I had before.

Until now, I had one clear strategy for survival. Avoid major fights and cling to the strong. It was a basic rule for wanderers.

Wanderers wanted only one thing. To survive until the very end. That had been my mindset while living as a wanderer and when I entered the university.

Professor Irian had said it herself. My talent shone brightest when I was attached to someone else’s side.

Following that advice and my own survival strategy, I had gradually grown. And that had brought me here.

Compared to when I had wandered through the slums before entering the university, the difference was like heaven and earth.

If I carefully maintained my old attitude, I could probably complete the basic curriculum without trouble someday. Yes, I surely could.

From that perspective, the attitude I should take this time was obvious. I simply needed to back down and give Domitian what he wanted.

If I abandoned the puppet workshop I had built, Isabella at its center, and all the relationships I had established, then fled, Domitian would probably pay me no further attention.

He wanted Isabella because she was an effective blade that could ruin Ailey.

Domitian did not want me in the first place. He wanted Ailey. If I left Isabella behind and ran, I surely would not suffer such a great loss.

Isabella knew that too, which was why she had revealed her past and knelt before me. She had told me to kill her and escape this trap.

It was the only path that would at least keep me safe.

And I was tempted by it.

I slowly opened my eyes and faced Isabella.

To be honest, I had said I wanted revenge on Domitian, but I did not feel much anger toward him.

That was because I knew he was merely a single phenomenon.

Isabella must know it well. This world was full of brutality. Her talent had been shattered amid that brutality.

Domitian was only doing his best to survive in such a brutal world. We merely happened to stand before someone striving so hard to live.

Domitian was only one of the many mages filling this world. So he would devour us and continue down his own path.

That was how mages thought, and it was the law of this world. That was why I had not questioned how this situation came to be.

If I wanted to keep moving forward and grow, countless people would surely rise to block my path, just as Domitian had.

And in that process, the weak were eaten while the strong did the eating. Was that not the way of this world?

That was why I could not help but be angry. Angry that I had listened to Isabella’s proposal, and that I still wanted to surrender to such brutality.

Isabella had said that I was her light. Since I had brought her back into this world, she said she would make me her dream.

Yet I had considered giving her up, even for a moment. It was pathetic. I bit my lip hard, filled with a little self-reproach.

Isabella said that people needed to carry a dream within them. If so, what was my dream?

What I had wanted before was to graduate from this university. Beyond that, I wanted to establish my own puppet workshop in the Empire’s capital.

That could be called a dream too. Though it was something I could achieve simply by keeping my head down and living quietly as I had been.

It was already a foregone conclusion that I would complete the basic curriculum. I had confidence in the talent I possessed.

I knew it instinctively. The more puppets I made, the more I would grow, and at the end of that growth, the next realm would naturally come to me.

So if all I wanted was to graduate from the university, I only needed to keep Professor Irian behind me and continue developing the tower.

But I had not been satisfied with that. I went to Stalactite City. Then I expanded my territory even further, all the way to Icewall City.

There had been much friction along the way. I had even accumulated grudges and debts that my former self would have avoided.

I kept moving forward because I had begun to dream a greater dream than before.

I placed a hand over my chest. Then I felt the countless fragments of souls flowing within me.

A reincarnator was someone whose soul had fallen here from another world. In that sense, I was a vast collection of souls that had fallen from some unknown world.

Even I did not know how many souls there were. No matter how often I checked, fearing they might run out, they only continued to fill without end.

No, the more I used them, the more soul fragments awakened and filled my tree. There were surely hundreds of thousands of soul fragments flowing inside me now.

Even after so many had awakened, many things still slept at the bottom of my soul.

I lightly touched one small soul fragment. A piece of memory then passed through my mind.

It was the sight of a massive ball of fire blooming on the ground. I still did not know what it was. The memory was only a fragment.

But I knew very well how dangerous it was. I had seen that ball of fire in many of the memories I had examined.

By looking through the memories held by those soul fragments, I was able to glimpse the world from which my soul had fallen.

It was a hellscape even more vicious than this world. Everyone fought, and everyone was dying. Perhaps an entire world had been swept into war.

That was probably why so many fragments within me carried memories of war, and why I had encountered soldiers in a dream before.

It was surely also why I had no talent for attack magic. The soul fragments were remnants that had fallen into ruin amid endless war.

Perhaps because of that, these soul fragments instinctively guarded against this world’s brutality and opposed what my former self had taken for granted.

The will within the flow of those souls reached me as I came to understand what form my own soul took.

That was why I set one goal for myself. In Isabella’s words, it could be called a dream.

I decided to strip away the brutality that was rampant throughout this university.

There was no particularly grand reason for that dream. My soul desired it, and I had suffered from it myself. Perhaps it was simply a natural outcome.

I touched my wrist again. The memory of having my mirror bug taken from me was still vivid. And I had to repay that grudge tenfold.

Broadly speaking, the ones who took my mirror bug were the Arcana General Trading Company and the Abyss Secret Association. Then how could I effectively take revenge on them?

I knew well what displeased them. It was this university world slipping beyond their control.

Isabella showed exactly why they wanted to control the university. They wanted to devour people with outstanding talent like hers.

That was surely why they had moved so quickly to block my mirror bugs. So if I wanted revenge greater than what I had suffered, I needed to prevent what they wanted.

It was not something I could change simply by confronting the Trading Company or the Secret Association. I had to go deeper and remove the brutality rampant throughout this university.

That was the revenge I wanted, and my dream. That was why I had taken the risk of coming all the way to this city.

And yet, I had entertained the thought of running away simply because Domitian stood in my path. What a pathetic mindset.

It meant that the defeatism of the wanderer still engraved within me had not been completely erased. Feeling my anger toward myself burn fiercely, I opened my mouth.

“For now, I intend to do as Domitian wants. That way, they will let their guard down. They will trust the contract absolutely, so they will trust us as well.”

Isabella quietly looked up at me. I met her trembling eyes and continued.

“And when that trust reaches its peak, I intend to betray them. That is how we can devour Domitian in one bite.”

To erase the sense of defeat still carved deep within my consciousness, I needed a perfect victory. And Domitian was a fitting offering for that victory.

[But how do you intend to do it? The contract binds me like this.]

Isabella held out her wrist. Faint letters stretched from it toward her chest like chains.

As Isabella said, the contract bound her. I quietly rubbed my chin.

Contracts truly were threatening. Had I not experienced that myself?

I looked at the contract texts engraved on my wrist. I had spent some time researching ways to escape my own contract.

I had discarded my body and moved into a new one. I had even tried removing some of my soul fragments in the hope of casting off the contract along with them.

But all those attempts taught me was how tightly the contract bound me.

Simply abandoning my body could not overcome the contract. It was only natural. The contract was engraved on the soul.

So I considered the matter from the opposite direction. If changing bodies could not free someone from a contract, then did I not simply need to fulfill the contract?

“Ms. Isabella, please trust me. I will definitely make your dream come true.”

Isabella looked at me quietly, then nodded. Her eyes were full of trust in me.

“Then could you call Domitian to the workshop first? We need to earn his trust.”

[Yes. I will leave him a message right away.]

Isabella slowly stepped back. Watching her, I quietly crossed my arms.

There was only one condition needed to complete the contract between Isabella and Domitian. As Isabella said, she had to die.

So I needed to guide Isabella toward her death as well. It was the only path open to us.

But that did not mean Isabella had to sacrifice herself. After she died, I would bring her back to life again and free her from the contract.

That was the answer I had reached after agonizing over it for the past several days.

Of course, it was also half impossible. Isabella’s contract proved that.

With Isabella’s death, her contract had vanished. But when Isabella became my puppet and gained even a little life, that contract bound her once more.

In this situation, as long as Isabella’s soul remained intact, she could not escape the contract.

There were three elements that sustained life: mind, soul, and body. Every one of them was important, but the soul was the most important of all.

That was why a puppet could never truly be called a living being. So I decided to think differently.

If the presence of a soul kept her from escaping the contract, then would changing the soul not solve the problem?

Among the many rumors, there was one about a bird that gained new life after death and lived forever.

Isabella would bloom again in the same way. That was the method I had conceived to free her from the shackles of this contract.

So I needed to move quickly.

I watched Isabella walk away. She had been bound by a contract and dragged into the mud. If so, I needed to bind Domitian with a contract as well.

That would be revenge for Isabella. Domitian needed to suffer in the same way he had made her suffer before he could understand how it felt.

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