WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 146: A Flame Born from Ashes (1)

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Night passed, and dawn broke.

Kyle and Elysia left Marent behind and rode in silence.

Eastward. As far as possible. Beneath the rising dawn, two horses raced across the snowy plains. Their shadows stretched long beneath their pounding hooves.

His breathing had grown ragged before he knew it. Perhaps because of the cold, his hands could barely move on the reins. His eyelids kept drooping from lack of sleep. The horses were no different.

Still, Kyle could not bring himself to rest. He could not stop now. The wyverns would not pursue them immediately because of their poor stamina, but once they began moving in earnest, they would catch up in no time. There had been so many people leaving through the eastern gate that finding them would not be easy, but Kyle could not ignore even the slightest possibility.

The worst situations always came without warning, in forms no one expected.

Am I running away again?

On the swaying saddle, memories of his tainted past surfaced without warning.

It was the same back then. In an uncertain future, he had run desperately just to survive.

Rowen had said retreat was not always a bad thing. Sometimes, one had to know how to give up what was most precious. Young Kyle had believed those words without question. To Kyle, who had fallen into this world alone, Rowen had been both the most dependable older brother and a father figure.

It had been the same when Rowen fell into an inescapable trap and gave his life to save everyone else. It had been the same when Baldheim, Hailen's capital, fell and Kyle escaped pursuit in despair. Clinging to unseen hope, he had thrown away everything he possessed through pain.

Tearing away his own flesh, enduring pain, struggling like an insect.

But how long?

How long did he have to keep running?

His past and present overlapped in his mind. Looking back, his life had always been like this. The precious things he wanted to protect always crumbled like mirages at the very end.

When Hailen fell. When he fled south, let himself grow numb, and wasted more than three years before meeting Elysia. When he escaped the wyvern knights' pursuit. When the Imperial Army invaded just as he finally relaxed after arriving in the Federation.

It was all because of his weakness. Because he kept rationalizing his choices.

What am I doing right now?

Where am I standing?

One day passed. Then two.

Morning came on the third day.

Until then, Kyle and Elysia had not stopped running. They had taken only the minimum sleep and rest they needed as they traveled east like mad. Even Kyle did not know exactly where they were going. He only knew that he needed to flee beyond Cassius Mortein's reach, then return to Rier once the Imperial Army's advance stopped.

The unexpected happened around noon.

"Ugh...!"

Elysia, who had barely managed to match Kyle's pace, collapsed onto the ground. A horse and a woman tumbled across the pure white snow. Kyle had been staring blankly ahead, but he came to his senses too late and turned his horse around.

"Elysia!"

He hurriedly dismounted and ran to her. Elysia lay on the snow, unable to rise. Kyle supported her unsteady body. Her limbs were cold and limp, completely without strength.

"Elysia."

"Ah..."

"Are you conscious?"

"I'm sorry. It's so cold... I can't move properly..."

Elysia could barely speak. Her lips had turned blue between the broken fragments of her voice.

"I tried to endure somehow, but..."

She lowered her head deeply. The Magic Tool for warmth slipped from her clothes and rolled across the ground. Its faded color showed that the Magic Stone's mana had already been completely exhausted. The brown fur she had wrapped around herself against the cold had apparently come off when she fell with her horse, and now lay not far away.

As though it represented their own plight.

"Hold on a little longer. We're almost there."

"..."

"Just one more day..."

Kyle was about to rise as he spoke a lie, though he did not know who it was meant for.

"Kyle..."

Elysia did not get up. Even when Kyle urged her, she remained limp as though her legs had been nailed to the ground.

"Do we really have to keep running like this forever, without knowing when it will end?"

"What?"

"Let's stop. We've done enough. Duke Mortein taking the field himself was not exactly unexpected. Even if we keep going east like this... if they have a way to pursue us, they'll catch us soon enough. Like they did in the Ligrid Mountains."

"What are you..."

Elysia turned to the side with resigned eyes. Kyle's gaze followed hers.

"Ah..."

Her horse lay there foaming at the mouth. It had endured days of an impossible forced march without even getting a proper mouthful of grass. When he turned his head again, another sight entered his view.

His own horse had also collapsed on the ground, just like Elysia's.

Come to think of it, it was already January.

"Kyle..."

Elysia forced her stiff lips to move, squeezing out her voice.

"You don't need to throw away your life because of me."

"..."

"They're after me, not you. Of course, it would be different if they learned who you really are... but unlike me, you could make it to the end. So this is enough."

Elysia slowly closed her eyes. White breath faintly escaped through her blue lips before vanishing.

"And?"

Kyle spat the word at her.

"You're giving up like this?"

What would happen if Elysia was taken back to the Empire?

Nothing good could come of it. Even if she survived by some stroke of luck, she would spend the rest of her life imprisoned and watched. In the worst case, she could become a sacrifice for Izra's Thorn, just as her mother had.

It was a punishment worse than death itself.

Knowing that, she was giving up this easily?

"Get up."

He did not like it. Kyle forcibly pulled Elysia's frozen body upright.

"At least struggle until the end before you die."

"Kyle..."

"Or did you come all this way only to feel some pathetic guilt? Because you think you used the people of Marent as bait? Because Matis and Noel might be dead? At Duke Mortein's hands, no less?"

"I..."

Elysia lowered her eyes reflexively. Kyle wrapped the brown fur lying nearby around her body, then carried her on his back.

"If you're truly exhausted, then stay still. Our contract isn't over yet."

Kyle glanced at the two fallen horses, gritted his teeth, and forced his stopped legs to move again. A pair of footprints stretched long across the deep snow. The difference from before was that there was no longer any sound of hooves.

He felt Elysia's chilled body against his back and the faint breath tickling the back of his neck.

"...I'm sorry."

A murmur suddenly reached his ears. Just one trembling phrase.

Instead of answering, Kyle furrowed his brow. He silently kept walking.

An endless snowfield.

A freezing wind that seemed to cut into his skin.

A future he could not see even an inch ahead.

There were no horses left to ride. There was no time to rest. His body, worn down by days of forced travel, kept threatening to give out. Perhaps from exhaustion, his judgment had slowed.

The sword at his waist felt unbearably cumbersome. Even though it was no different from another half of himself.

Yet Kyle moved his feet like a machine. Every so often, Elysia's breath would brush against him, and he would use it as a lifeline to clear his mind. If he passed out here, he would freeze to death before he could even be swallowed by a wyvern's breath attack.

I'm cold. I'm hungry. I'm tired.

Wouldn't it be better to rest now?

By the time such thoughts filled his mind, the sun that had reached the center of the sky began to sink. Elysia, carried on Kyle's back, had not spoken for some time.

No, perhaps it had been much longer than that.

Kyle forced his heavy eyelids to blink. His blurry vision sharpened in an instant. He looked around once with his dazed mind.

At the same time, the fog in his head cleared.

No way.

"Elysia."

"..."

"Elysia. Wake up. This isn't the time to sleep."

"Kyle...?"

"Doesn't this place... look familiar to you?"

A sense of déjà vu raced through his body. Hearing the excitement in Kyle's voice, Elysia barely opened her eyes and looked around.

"This is..."

"..."

"The snowfield from the past...?"

"Yes. It looks that way to me too."

The vegetation was different, and the frozen river lay elsewhere. Yet the ridgeline in the distance was exactly as he remembered it.

Thinking about it, it was only natural. Even if more than three thousand years had passed, this was still Velia, still land belonging to the Federation. The locations of trees, forests, and rivers might change, but the mountain range itself would not.

As that realization struck him anew, Kyle felt an indescribable pull.

Prisia can see the future.

Elysia and I were probably swallowed by the rift because Prisia arranged it.

Alfred had refused Kyle's offer to leave for the future with them.

But if he left something behind...

Perhaps.

"...Let's go."

"Where?"

"To that house."

The moment he finished speaking, Kyle slightly changed direction. The forest and river were different, but by following the shape of the mountains, he could recall the path Alfred had taken at the front.

Around then, the sun hanging in the sky began to descend toward the west. Red spread through the brilliant blue sky as though paint had been layered over it. The bottom of the snowfield was dyed reddish. Snow-covered conifers scattered across the land rustled whenever the wind blew.

Just as they had back then.

The same scenery they had watched in a daze as they followed Alfred after becoming lost.

"Follow me. It seems we have much to discuss. And from the look of it, you have nowhere to sleep. You cannot spend the night outside in weather like this, can you?"

Alfred's voice suddenly echoed in Kyle's mind. It was what Alfred had said when he showed them kindness after they first fell into the past.

"I will help you return."

Even after learning Kyle and Elysia had come from the future. Even after realizing Kyle was the final Commander of the Knights of Ash and Elysia was his descendant, Alfred had smiled easily and answered that way.

"Please take good care of that child."

After they killed the Dragon, he had looked up at the night sky with Kyle and spoken of his concern for Elysia.

"Was this also the future Prisia saw?"

Just before they parted, he had worn a smile that held both regret and relief.

"I hope you achieve what you desire."

Because he knew his role ended there. Because he knew that was all the time he had been granted.

The scenery changed as they continued onward. At the end of the plain stood the entrance to a snow-covered mountain.

There were towering conifers there, each at least several dozen meters tall. Kyle passed between them without hesitation, tracing his memories one by one. With every step, it felt as though the sensations of the past came vividly back to life.

So did the indescribable, immense current that seemed to envelop his whole body.

"I found it."

After traveling without rest, Kyle stopped before one especially massive tree. The conifer before him looked exactly as it had in his memories, more than a hundred meters tall with a trunk that seemed at least ten meters wide.

The only difference was that the wooden door in its middle was gone.

"The old man's house..."

Elysia murmured with a wistful look in her eyes.

"But this is strange. Is it still alive after thousands of years? It hasn't grown or shrunk since then."

"A barrier spell has been placed on it. He must have used some kind of method. He was skilled enough for it."

Alfred had once been renowned as the Empire's greatest archmage. It was not especially strange for him to keep a tree from rotting or growing.

"Wait here."

After setting Elysia down, Kyle approached the tree. When he raised his hand toward its trunk, he felt something like an invisible membrane just before touching it.

Kyle closed his eyes and stirred the mana within his ring. Ignoring his exhausted body and forcing his concentration higher, the barrier's structure became clear in his mind.

Here. You can do it, can't you?

It felt as though Alfred's voice, which he would never hear again, echoed beside his ear. Without the slightest hesitation, Kyle dragged the fingers touching the barrier straight downward.

Something shattered, and a small door appeared at the base of the tree. Elysia let out a quiet gasp.

"I can't believe the old man's house still remains..."

"Let's go inside. The sun will set soon anyway."

Kyle briefly met Elysia's eyes, then grasped and turned the handle of the tree door, which felt both like a distant memory and recent past. When he pushed it inward, a familiar scene entered his view.

"It's the same. Nothing has changed since then. The table, the bookshelves, even the light from the fruit hanging on that branch."

"But... there really isn't anyone here, is there?"

The two stepped inside and looked around as though they had returned to their childhood home. Naturally, Alfred was not there.

He had been an old man with little life left to begin with. More than three thousand years had passed, so there was no way he could still be alive.

Yet perhaps because the tree house had been preserved so well, it still carried the traces of life as though someone had been there only yesterday. The fruit growing from the bare branches stretching down from the ceiling gave off the same soft yellow glow as before.

"Kyle, over here."

"What is it?"

"There's something unusual..."

Had Alfred left something behind for them?

Kyle had been carefully searching the house for anything that had changed when Elysia beckoned him over.

"This is?"

"A book. It isn't an ordinary one. It seems he left it himself."

"Does it have the same magic as the barrier that surrounded the house?"

A book with a completely white cover and no markings was tucked into the corner of a bookshelf. They carefully took it out and carried it to the table in the center of the house.

Then, as he had when dismantling the tree house's barrier, Kyle placed a hand on the book and drew up mana from his ring. Before long, something cracked, and the cover changed from white to a refined red.

"He was thorough. He placed two layers of magic on it."

"..."

"Did the old man know we would come here?"

Elysia turned to Kyle. He gave a slight nod.

"Perhaps he did."

"Then..."

"Let's open it."

Kyle spoke. Elysia took a small breath.

He waited for her briefly, then opened the cover of the refined book dyed red. The first thing he saw was a line written at the top in elegant handwriting.

[It has been a long time. If you are reading this, then it must be the future after my death, correct?]

Footnotes:

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