WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
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◈ The Regressor and the Blind Saintess ◈
Chapter 57: Rebirth
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The Sanctuary receded.
Vera took a deep breath and looked at Gilly, more than half of whose body had been blown apart.
Gilly lay sprawled on the ground, wriggling as their body regenerated. Judging by appearances alone, one might think they could rise again, but Vera was certain.
I won.
The sensation at his fingertips, and the withdrawn Sanctuary, told him so.
Gilly would not rise again. In fact, their body was breaking down faster than it could regenerate.
Vera staggered.
Gritting his teeth, he steadied himself, approached Gilly, seized Gilly by the hair, and spoke.
“That dagger. Where did you get it?”
He needed to question Gilly about the Demon King's power.
Gilly had been struggling through pain that tore Gilly's thoughts to shreds when the voice reached Gilly, and Gilly rolled their eyes.
The Apostle was glaring at Gilly.
It did not feel real. The question of why kept surfacing in their mind.
This could not be happening. Gilly could not be lying here like this. Gilly was supposed to tear that Apostle apart, seize the Saintess, and fulfill their long-held wish.
Their thoughts were in chaos. Pain tore through their entire body.
As Gilly opened and closed their mouth amid it all...
Smack!
Vera slammed Gilly's head against the ground.
“Ghk!”
“I asked where you got it.”
His voice had sunk even deeper.
Gilly stared at Vera, Gilly's face twisting. Then, suddenly, Gilly gave a faint scoff and answered.
“Who knows?”
Vera slammed Gilly's head against the ground again.
Smack!
Gilly felt their right eye burst from scraping against the ground. It was a situation in which Gilly should have screamed, but...
“Kihih...!”
What escaped Gilly was laughter.
Yes, Gilly found it amusing.
This situation, that Apostle, Gilly's own state.
Gilly found all of it far too amusing.
“What’s with that expression? You look like a dog that needs to take a shit.”
Smack!
Gilly's head was driven into the ground again.
Vera frowned deeply and glared at Gilly, who was still putting on airs.
He had to find out why someone with the Demon King's light had already appeared, and how Gilly had acquired that light.
He had to know for the sake of the future, but...
Damn it.
There was no other way.
If Gilly kept their mouth shut and died like this, everything would return to square one. He would have to wait for what was to come with only more questions than before.
This might have been his chance to uncover the origins of the Demon King, which had remained unknown until the end of his previous life. Yet Gilly, who held the key, was in this state, making any way of learning the truth seem distant.
“Kihih...!”
Gilly burst into crazed laughter.
Vera ground his teeth.
Just as he was about to smash Gilly's head into the ground once more...
Rustle.
Someone approached from behind him.
Vera turned his head.
The one approaching was...
“...Gilly.”
Freide.
* * *
Freide looked at Gilly with a drawn expression.
The sight of Gilly giggling with only the part above their chest remaining, and Vera gripping Gilly by the hair, clouded Freide's face.
The emotion that had churned within Freide all day, one Freide had only now come to understand, took the shape of bitter sorrow before this scene.
“Brother...”
Gilly spoke.
Freide looked at Gilly. Meeting Freide's gaze, Gilly continued with Gilly's battered face pressed against the ground.
“Help me.”
The words leaked out with their breath.
Freide's expression twisted as Freide answered.
“Don't say such things...”
“It is for our brothers. Think about it. Is this truly right?”
Freide froze.
“Why must we die? Why must it end this way? Can you accept that all our brothers must die because of Aidrin alone? I cannot. I cannot accept the history of the elves ending for such a reason.”
Even as Gilly died, the long stream of words trembled with resolve and yearning.
Watching Gilly, Freide thought that Gilly remained unchanged to the very end. Gilly was no different from when they had been united and communed through their Mother.
Freide knelt, brushed Gilly's cheek as they lay sprawled on the ground, and recalled the past.
The brother who had spent the longest years beside Freide. The brother who had held onto a yearning that had not faded in thousands of years.
Freide had thought Freide understood that yearning. Freide had thought Freide understood Gilly's fervor.
...I was wrong.
There was something Freide only realized now. Freide had not understood Gilly. No, Freide had not even tried to understand Gilly.
Freide had not sought understanding. Freide had only analyzed Gilly.
Gilly, with whom Freide could no longer become one, continued speaking.
“There are still young brothers. They...!”
Gilly's tone rose and fell. In that hideous state, vomiting blood, Gilly continued.
“...What sin have they committed?”
Gilly's voice was cloaked in resolve.
Facing all of it, Freide spoke.
“You are wrong.”
“...What?”
Freide looked around.
Brothers who had dried up and were turning to ash. Those who had followed Gilly lay scattered as corpses.
“Look at this. Look at what your conviction has done to our brothers.”
“For the greater cause...!”
“No.”
Freide looked into Gilly's eyes. Gilly's bloodshot eyes gleamed, streaming bloody tears, and were filled with rage.
Freide understood now. This was not a greater cause. The yearning that had always burned in Gilly's heart had never been for Gilly's brothers.
“This was for you.”
Gilly flinched. The tremor traveled up through Freide's hand.
“Did you not use your brothers for your own immortality?”
Freide could now understand that irrational yearning.
Freide also understood that a true cause for others could never be this.
Feeling Vera's presence, as well as Rene slowly approaching from afar, Freide spoke again.
“Do not use a greater cause as an excuse.”
A greater cause was never for oneself.
“Wha...”
Shhk!
Freide's wind swept across Gilly's neck. Gilly's head rolled across the ground, the rage Gilly felt at the moment of death frozen upon their face.
Vera stared blankly at the rolling head, then turned to Freide.
“What...?”
“I am sorry. I did not wish to see my brother in such a wretched state any longer.”
Freide's tone was filled with bitterness.
Freide clutched at the ache in Freide's chest and continued thinking.
What would have happened if Freide had not stood by like this? What if Freide had stopped Gilly, if Freide had not turned away from Gilly's yearning?
Those belated thoughts took the shape of regret.
This feeling, a mixture of bitterness and sorrow that gripped Freide's heart, could only be called regret.
Freide had believed Freide was the most rational. Freide had believed Freide always saw through to the heart of things.
Yet when faced with the truth, Freide realized they were a fool who could look directly at something and still fail to understand what they saw.
Freide's eyes reddened.
The rising heat burned Freide's eyes, and tears flowed out.
They were tears born of sorrow.
* * *
The Noier invasion had ended. There were no Noier left to invade, so it had come to a natural end.
Rene sat upon one of Aidrin's roots, thinking over what she had heard.
In the end...
One problem had been solved, but the important problem of Aidrin remained unchanged. The elves were still on the verge of extinction.
That reality made Rene feel as though her chest were being squeezed tight.
Something I can do...
She continued thinking. Her hand moved of its own accord, stroking Aidrin's root.
Her worries continued until she began to feel as though her thoughts were twisting apart.
“Ah!”
Rene cried out as an idea came to her.
“Vera!”
“Yes, Saintess.”
Vera, who had been at Rene's side, answered her sudden call and waited for her to continue.
“The dagger Gilly was carrying, where is it?”
“I have it.”
Vera answered carefully, suspicion rising at her sudden request for the dagger.
“But why do you need it...?”
“Could you lend it to me for a moment?”
Rene held out her hand.
“It is dangerous.”
“It will be fine.”
Pure white divine power rose above her palm.
“If I protect myself like this, it will be all right, won't it?”
She smiled as she spoke. Vera let out a low groan, then placed the dagger he had kept inside his clothes onto Rene's hand.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I think I can do it with this.”
As Rene gripped the dagger, she focused on the vicious energy she felt from it. According to what she had heard, it was a dagger that had drained the Noier of their life force.
Yes, life force.
What this dagger absorbed was life force. And what Aidrin needed was life force as well.
Rene explained her idea to Vera.
“If there is life force inside the dagger, couldn't we give the life force within it to Aidrin? It contains the life force of hundreds of elves who live for over a thousand years.”
“That...”
Vera's eyes widened slightly.
So that was what she had been worrying about.
He was moved by realizing Rene's thoughts, yet doubt followed close behind.
“...It will not be as easy as it sounds. The dagger may have the ability to drain life, but making it release that life is another matter.”
“I can do it.”
Rene answered Vera with excitement in her voice.
She was happy.
“My Authority is for things like this, isn't it?”
At last, she had found a use for her useless Authority.
* * *
Before Aidrin's thickest root, all the remaining elves, now numbering roughly fifty, had gathered and were watching Rene.
Rene held the dagger tightly and continued praying as she released divine power. Mari stood beside her, assisting.
Freide, looking haggard, stared blankly at the scene before asking Vera a question.
“Is it possible?”
They were asking Vera.
“It is.”
His words were full of certainty. He did not answer because he knew it was possible, but because he believed in Rene.
At that confidence, that unwavering trust, Freide gave a weak smile and looked forward again.
“Well, even if it fails, it does not matter. We would die either way. It is far better to gamble on something.”
“It will not fail.”
His tone was equally certain.
“...Of course you would say that.”
Freide gave a careless reply and looked at Rene once more.
Kneeling upon Aidrin's root, Rene prayed to her Authority.
May this life save Aidrin. May the vicious divine power within the dagger be warm to Aidrin.
Answering her wish, the pure white divine power began purifying the dagger's energy.
If the probability was not zero, if even a possibility as small as a grain of millet existed, the Authority of the High God would make it real.
Rene's judgment had been correct.
Rather than directly intervening with Aidrin, purifying the dagger's energy and giving it to Aidrin had a far greater chance of succeeding. It was something Rene's divine power could sufficiently handle.
The vicious energy subsided. Within it, the light of Authority was engraved.
Realizing the preparations were complete, Rene spoke to Mari.
“Mari, shall I begin?”
“Yes, I am ready too.”
Verdant divine power rose from Mari.
In preparation for any accident, Mari infused vitality into Aidrin's essence.
Feeling Mari's divine power beside her, Rene did not hesitate any longer and drove the dagger into the root.
Thud!
What followed was a wonder.
Creak!
Aidrin stretched.
The giant tree began growing in an instant, becoming more vigorous as it absorbed the life being transferred to it.
Exclamations escaped the elves. They were filled with a heat that could only be called joy.
There was something only elves could feel. Their Mother, who had remained silent all this time, gave a small laugh.
Standing among the elves, Freide's eyes widened, and Freide took on a dazed expression at the sight before them and the laughter they heard.
Rene, the focus of Freide's gaze, Freide's Mother restored to vitality, and fruit beginning to form on the thickest of Freide's Mother's branches.
All of it came together as one scene, and reverence rose within Freide.
Vera, who stood with Freide, felt the same reverence.
Only now did Vera begin to understand what had happened in the Great Forest in his previous life.
So this was how...
The elves had survived.
In his previous life, she must have remained until the end, stopped Gilly, taken that dagger, and given life to Aidrin.
That was how she must have saved the elves.
Vera's gaze followed Rene's back, her small figure wrapped in pure white divine power.
It was a miracle brought about by Rene's heart, which had never doubted and had not forsaken faith until the end. Unlike him, she had trust and compassion, and so she had achieved this miracle.
Rene's light, her faith, had brought forth a miracle.
What had made him think she was immature? How had he dared judge that light to be one that had not yet grown?
She was still young and had much left to learn, but the Rene before him was undoubtedly a Saintess.
She was a lamp that illuminated the world.
A smile suddenly formed on Vera's lips. His heart began to pound.
Thinking it was only natural reverence, Vera gazed endlessly at Rene.
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