WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
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◈ The Regressor and the Blind Saintess ◈
Chapter 98: Anilis
──────
The sight of pure white light descending upon the earth drew everyone’s eyes to the sky.
A miracle.
That was the only fitting word for that radiant glow.
Rohan’s eyes widened as the light poured over him. It could not have been otherwise. No one knew better than he did what this light was.
‘The divine power of the divine realm.’
This was the light of the greatest creators. A power from a higher dimension that even he could only draw forth in part. That power was descending upon this land.
Rohan recalled what he had just seen.
‘The Saintess...’
Rene had done it. She had torn apart the passage he had opened to draw in the divine power of the divine realm with her sword, bringing the divine realm down upon this land.
There was no question of how.
Her Authority made anything inevitable as long as its possibility was not zero. With such an Authority, it was entirely possible for a passage to the divine realm to catch on the tip of Rene’s sword and be torn apart.
But doing something like this must put an immense burden on her...
The moment that thought crossed his mind:
“Cough!”
Rene’s cough rang out. Rohan quickly rushed to her and caught her as she collapsed.
“Saintess!”
“I’m all right... I’m all right.”
Rene barely managed to answer, feeling as though her airway had suddenly closed up. Her mind was hazy. Her entire body felt as if it were floating. Amid it all, she felt as though someone were squeezing her heart.
Rene somehow endured it all and stretched a trembling hand toward the sky. Pure white divinity rose from her.
She could not collapse here. There was still something she had to do, something she had to do with everything she had in order to stand as a light.
A magic formation formed at Rene’s fingertips. Pure white lines made a circle. They drew a regular pentagon around its edge. The pentagon multiplied into five overlapping pentagons, becoming a cube.
Rene lifted the cube into the sky and detonated it.
Fwoooosh!
Area-wide Regeneration Spell Formula [Cradle].
The Spell Formula seeped into the pure white light descending from the sky.
‘It’s complete.’
She could not see it, but she was certain. The Spell Formula had been properly inscribed. A faint smile formed on Rene’s lips as she lost consciousness.
“Saintess!”
Rohan’s cry echoed in her ears like a lullaby.
* * *
Vera’s eyes widened as he looked at the white sky that had suddenly appeared and felt the light envelop his body.
‘Saintess!’
Only Rene could do something like this. And he knew that even she would have to push herself beyond her limits to accomplish it.
He had to capture the Mage Tower Master quickly and get to Rene. As Vera turned his head with that thought in mind, he saw the Mage Tower Master fleeing at full speed.
Grit.
Vera clenched his teeth.
He could not let her get away.
With that thought, Vera tensed every muscle in his body and shot forward.
The Mage Tower Master was fleeing toward the Gutter.
And Vera pursued her in the same direction.
* * *
At the deepest part of Oriac.
The moment the white sky appeared, Anilis, the Mage Tower Master, headed straight there and opened a drawer in her office. She took out a small glass vial.
Inside was clear, sloshing blood.
A refined serum.
“Fuck!”
Bang!
A loud crash rang out as Anilis slammed her hand on the desk.
‘I was almost there!’
The plan had been simple. Capture the Crown Prince, plunge the capital into chaos, then slip away at leisure.
An Apostle? She had not cared. One had indeed followed her, but had she not held the advantage? The difference between defending and attacking in the streets was obvious.
She should not have had to flee so pathetically and resort to the serum.
Clench.
Anilis’s hand gripped the serum tightly. Her already fierce expression had become even more vicious, making her look like a demon.
‘That fucking bitch.’
She meant Rene.
Anilis was the Mage Tower Master. She stood at the very peak of the field that dealt with the mystery known as magic. Naturally, she recognized the light at once.
It was a storm of divine power. Had she been within it, she could never have won.
No, it was no different now. The sky that that half-witted girl had opened was even hanging over Oriac.
Was there truly no way out?
That was not the case.
Anilis stared at the serum with trembling eyes.
She only had to drink this. Then she could defeat that cockroach of an Apostle and escape.
Yet one concern still lingered in her mind.
‘What happens after that?’
The serum was complete. It would have been stranger if it were not, considering how many people she had ground up to make it.
She had reduced the side effects as much as possible. She had eliminated all organ rejection.
However, there was still one thing she could not guarantee.
Whether she would be able to retain her sanity after consuming it.
It was that dangerous, which was why she hesitated even in this desperate moment.
Boooom!
A sudden explosive boom filled Oriac. The violent tremor sent every object in the office crashing to the floor.
At the sight, Anilis summoned an Observer, grinding her teeth so hard that they creaked.
‘The Apostle...!’
It was the Apostle of the Covenant. He had climbed onto Oriac.
‘That crazy bastard.’
Anilis trembled with rage.
Oriac floated in the air. Vera did not have one of the magitech propulsion engines the Crown Prince had been making mounted on his back. That meant he had climbed all the way up here with nothing but his own body.
He had leapt up this height just to capture her.
Ferocious gray eyes showed between black strands of hair as they turned toward the Observer.
Grin.
The Apostle smiled.
Anilis immediately understood that the smile was a provocation aimed at her.
‘Fucking bastard.’
A brat not even thirty years old, a creature that had not lived even a quarter as long as she had, was daring to laugh at her.
He laughed without even understanding the great work he was destroying.
Anilis’s whole body trembled. Then she suddenly went limp and began to laugh harshly.
“You fucking bastard.”
A worm. Filthy trash. Someone she wanted to tear apart and feed to dogs.
Every sort of curse spilled from her mouth.
And she laughed as she said them.
Click.
The serum’s cap came off. Anilis stared at the Observer with bloodshot eyes, at the Apostle beyond it, and drank.
She was consuming it rather than administering it, but that made no difference. It was enough to imprint it upon her body.
Crack.
Anilis’s skeleton slowly began to twist.
* * *
Vera clung to Oriac’s outer wall and struck it with the Holy Sword, brimming with divinity.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Cracks spread across the wall. The cracks widened and became fractures.
Then Vera drove the Holy Sword, filled with even greater divinity than before, into one of those fractures.
Boooom!
The outer wall collapsed.
“Phew...”
Vera forced his way through the ruined wall and looked inside.
‘A garden?’
It appeared to be one. Perhaps a spatial expansion spell had been cast within, for an indoor garden far larger than he had expected lay before him.
‘There’s no presence.’
He had stormed in expecting to face every mage in the Mage Tower, yet he could not sense a single one.
Tension filled him.
Had the mages of this tower also become corpses?
He sharpened every sense when:
Click.
“There’s no one here.”
The sound of heels accompanied the words.
Vera swiftly turned toward the voice.
At its source stood Anilis, the Mage Tower Master.
Vera saw Anilis and drew in a sharp breath.
‘Her hair...’
Pink color was spreading from the ends of Anilis’s hair. Her features were no longer as fierce as before, instead settling into a gentler shape.
Crack.
Her facial bones twisted with the sound.
“I sent everyone outside the moment the festival began.”
“So you were all in league together after all?”
“Of course not. Our children do not know. I simply did not want such precious minds to disappear.”
Creak. Creak.
Anilis’s lips curled sharply upward.
Rather than attacking recklessly, Vera traded words with Anilis as he observed her condition.
Divinity continued to descend from the pure white sky, replenishing him. There was no reason to rush.
“Little boy, do you know how foolish what you’re doing is?”
“Well, is it worse than trying to assassinate the Crown Prince?”
“The Crown Prince?”
Heh.
Anilis laughed.
“Do you think a pathetic bastard like that should be a ruler?”
Vera did not answer.
It was not silent agreement. He simply felt a deep, lingering rage in the way Anilis spoke.
“Isn’t it ridiculous? That piece of trash strutted around as a ruler, so I had to hide and could not freely pursue research like this.”
“Research...”
“Research to advance the species to its next stage. Research that could lead us to a new species that has cast aside hunger, cold, and every other kind of suffering.”
Vera tightened his grip on his sword.
‘She’s insane.’
He did not want to listen any longer, but there was still something he needed to confirm.
“So your answer was human experimentation. And you boast about it with a serum someone else provided? Does the Mage Tower Master have no pride?”
“You do not understand.”
Pink light swirled in Anilis’s eyes.
“You do not understand how mysterious and magnificent the primordial species are. What it means to have survived from creation to the present. You know nothing. Not just you. Every idiot on this continent knows nothing.”
“Bullshit...”
“You know nothing!”
Fwoooosh!
A blast of heat surged forth.
Vera wrapped divinity around himself and erased the heat.
“You know nothing! You are nothing but dogs and pigs who live because you happen to be alive! Livestock! You have no desire to explore! No desire to pursue Providence! Why this world came into being! How it is sustained! You turn away from all of it!”
It was a scream that was almost a shriek of desperation.
With a face that could no longer be called Anilis’s, the Mage Tower Master stretched out her hand.
Spears of red flame began to fill the space.
Vera saw it and invoked his Authority.
“I declare.”
Gray divinity began to cover the space.
“From this moment onward, all magical and spellcraft practices within this space are prohibit...”
“They are not.”
Crack!
The gray space split apart. Cracks formed, then exploded into fragments.
Shock crossed Vera’s face.
Anilis saw it, and a long smile stretched across her lips as though they might tear.
“Why? Surprised? You thought Authority could solve anything, but now that it cannot, do you feel like pissing yourself?”
‘How...?’
Authority was the grace of the gods. It was power from a higher dimension.
How could she interfere with it?
As Vera stood shaken by the thought, Anilis cackled and continued.
“Foolish little boy. Divinity is mutated mana. Authority is also merely one phenomenon given form. Did you know that? Every phenomenon in this world has a principle behind it. And once you uncover that principle, there is nothing to fear.”
Anilis raised her hand. The spears of flame all turned toward Vera.
Still wearing that unnaturally long smile, Anilis suddenly wiped the expression from her face. With a deep sigh, she spoke.
“...Yes, what am I even saying? It is meaningless to ignoramuses like you, who have given up thinking.”
There was a trace of emptiness in her voice.
Then, at Anilis’s gesture, the spears of flame all shot forward.
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