Ch.141Origin (5)

The enemy had fallen.

I was unharmed, and I had protected what needed to be protected.

Yet why did I feel so melancholic? Like I had lost something, like I had failed.

Clearly no one had died—just a few dozen machines were destroyed.

Why did I feel so sad? I couldn’t understand. What was even more perplexing was that whenever I thought about those dead machines, I automatically felt a sense of mourning.

It should be a power that emerges when humans mourn other humans. Yet absurdly…

I was mourning the golems. I was wishing they hadn’t died. If only…

No, that’s not right.

I should stop thinking like this. Dwelling on depressing thoughts only makes one truly depressed, so I composed myself as I walked.

The colossus was collapsing. Wild animals startled by the distant rumbling sounds fled hastily, but it wasn’t as chaotic as before.

Rather, it felt like they knew to avoid danger while understanding that “here” was safe now.

So I slowly walked back along the path I had run.

The trail left by the colossus was clearly visible.

Amidst the destruction everywhere—broken ground, cracks, and abundant death.

I returned with a bitter feeling.

How should I explain all this?

And that dog?

Bitterly, I couldn’t forget the golem’s final words.

‘Please take care of Huey.’

The dog’s name was Huey. And it was certainly a dog that followed people well.

Considering how it wagged its tail and greeted me despite my being far beyond human bloodlines, it was a dog that could get along anywhere.

The problem was that this world was Netel, and it was Grim Darker.

In a place where many would treat such an adaptable dog as merely a piece of meat, I felt responsible.

That was the only thing I could do for those golems.

At the very least, I should take good care of it. As I walked, feeling unwell, I bit my lip several times.

I sighed. I wondered if things could have been resolved better.

If I had more power.

No, even with more power, could I have done anything about that?

Wisdom?

I doubt there’s any life wisdom that would work against something like that.

Knowledge, then.

If I had the knowledge to solve that, to resolve it peacefully or with minimal effort.

That would have been really nice.

Though it’s too late for regrets, I walked while imagining such scenarios.

If I had resolved everything properly, like giving the golems suitable land.

Or giving them a place with Rte and making them his assistants.

Since they were all craftsmen, I thought they might have been helpful to Rte somehow.

Then Rte would surely…

It was while I was thinking that I instinctively looked up, feeling a chill.

“…Oh.”

I had arrived without realizing it.

Lorian lying collapsed on the ground, and beside him, Elimul unconscious, wrapped in something like a net.

And a woman descending gracefully at the heads of the two.

There was no sense of her presence until she appeared. Even to my dazed eyes, it felt like she descended as if in a dream.

But then came an instant surge of cool, sticky presence.

If ice had viscosity and was infinitely cold without breaking, would it feel like this?

I involuntarily shuddered at the coolness and coldness rising to the tip of my throat.

What is this? What on earth…

It felt suffocating. Even though I shouldn’t need to breathe, my lungs shrank, craving oxygen. My breath caught with a choke. I unconsciously clutched my throat.

An overwhelming presence. And what was strongly felt within that presence was…

A divinity far more concentrated and dense than the golem from earlier.

The woman stared at me blankly.

Her pupils were constantly changing and writhing even from behind the lifted veil.

In those eyes that shone vividly with all sorts of colors, there was no light to be felt. Not even a soul could be felt.

Only darkness and black malice, purely and solely.

As I was suffocating, buried in those eyes.

I heard barking.

Inappropriately trivial yet resonant, the distinctive barking of a dog with a volume large enough to draw attention.

Only then did I collapse to the ground, vomiting gastric fluid.

“…Hu, ey?”

The dog was barking. It barked incessantly, looking at the descended woman.

Its tail wagged low, perhaps out of fear, but the dog didn’t stop barking. Loyal and innocent.

As if unaware of what was about to happen.

The woman didn’t take her eyes off me. With those ever-changing pupils fixed on me, she subtly raised her hand.

The woman’s hand moved. It was a not-too-large, fine, snow-white hand.

A hand that unconsciously seemed cold. I stared blankly at that hand and reached out without thinking.

The north wind came into my palm. With a fluttering red wind, my body moved.

KWAAAAAAANG!

“Ugh…?!”

Pain awakens my brain. Coolness remains where mourning and pain have receded.

My forearm was severed and floated in the air.

I could see the roughly cut cross-section. The severed forearm looked as if it had been in a beast’s maw.

But that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that despite wearing the Black Knight’s armor, holding the north wind, and even using “Deflection,” it was helplessly cut off.

Shit, what the hell did she attack with?

Though confused, I realized I had barely blocked it and rolled on the ground.

The dog in my arms was docile, not struggling.

“Go!”

The released dog whimpered as it moved away, and I gripped my weapon in a direction to protect the retreating dog and Lorian.

Me, panting with bent knees, and the woman looking down at me blankly.

Only then was there something that stirred my memory.

The woman’s ever-changing eyes.

Sometimes becoming like those of a beast, sometimes radiating brilliant light in completely different colors, and sometimes tinged with dusky shadows—eyes of all natural colors.

And even the bangs that fell diagonally to cover one eye, just like Ortemilia.

Though I thought it couldn’t be, I opened my mouth.

“Empress.”

Then the woman smiled. Her smiling face was beautiful, and the smile she wore was very gentle, but…

Somehow it was a chilling face that sent shivers down my spine. It seemed inhuman, one might say.

It’s not because I know she’s not human. I still read her divinity with the divinity extending to my brain.

“You’re smiling.”

The Empress said. The fact that even her voice was pleasant was chilling.

After hearing her words, I touched my face with my regenerated right arm.

It’s true. I am smiling.

I wasn’t out of my mind. Rather, to put it in words…

“…I’m smiling because it’s absurd. Who would have thought the Empress would be a being with divinity.”

The leader of the Shapeshifters and one of the three clan heads.

Called the Empress.

She who made Lorian’s prosthetic hand and is Ortemilia’s mother…

Surprisingly and absurdly, she was a being with divinity.

And that wasn’t all.

“…Just how much of a monster are you?”

“That’s hurtful.”

Words recited without emotion. I unconsciously straightened my bent knees and aimed my hand axe.

While using divinity, my cognitive abilities had reached a higher level.

I could now estimate the level of considerable strength, so to speak.

From what I could sense, the Empress’s strength was beyond common sense.

She’s stronger than my sister. Stronger than the golem I just fought.

Stronger than anything I’ve seen or experienced. Goosebumps rise and my body trembles involuntarily.

A story I once heard comes to mind. When humans see predators like tigers, they become more foolish than they imagined.

The story that prey naturally freezes before a predator.

It was the same now. I realized that the Empress was a “born predator.”

If this were a game, what level would she be?

An impossible realm like level 30, or something?

Shit, how would I know? As my face contorted, the Empress smiled expressionlessly.

She was clearly smiling, but it didn’t feel like a smile. It felt more like a shell than a face, which made it worse.

“It’s okay to be afraid. It’s better than when you called me grandmother.”

“Is that, really bothering you that much?”

“Age is an important matter.”

Still a cool presence. I glanced at her hand.

It was clearly the hand that had severed my arm, but there was no such indication. How on earth did she do that?

I couldn’t tell. So I focus on what I can see. I deliberately infused divinity into my eyes and…

Puk!

“…Kuk.”

Soon after, I felt my eyes burst and blood flow down.

Even a brief look caused abnormalities in my eyes. The Empress’s body, which I glimpsed briefly, was close to incomprehensible.

Countless colors and chaos. A disorder reminiscent of entangled, writhing flames or turbid currents.

I regenerated my eyeballs and faced the Empress, who was still looking at me as if intrigued.

“What are you here for? Surely not just to kill a dog.”

“…Dog?”

The Empress’s head tilted curiously. As her gaze fell, whimpering sounds were heard from behind.

“Ah, I’m sorry. I did it unconsciously again.”

She smiles gently. She explained that she had no ill intent.

“When a bug flies around, you wave your hand. Is it like that?”

Why end with a question after saying it yourself?

But I couldn’t argue. The atmosphere didn’t allow it.

I faced the Empress while sweating coldly.

A completely different atmosphere and pressure from when I saw her through an image.

I don’t know if the fortress of the three clans is up there, but if so, it was an impressive ability.

To land without a sound despite descending from up there.

Even Valterok couldn’t do that.

As I pondered this, the Empress spoke to me.

“Are you curious about why I came?”

“…Yes, perhaps you came to retrieve Elimul—”

I stopped mid-sentence and thought.

Something was off. Intuition was whispering something to me.

That it wasn’t just that, that there was some other purpose.

Rather, to put it in words, Elimul and Elize were something the Empress didn’t care about at all.

I opened my mouth, guided by that cool intuition.

“You knew. What was here.”

The Empress’s eyes turn to me. I spoke while directly facing those eyes.

“You expected those two to die. It must be surprising to you that even one survived.”

The Empress offered to make me her adopted child and ordered those two to investigate.

After fighting, I understood. If they had any prior information, they would know, but those two were clearly underpowered to face the golem.

At first, I thought she didn’t know, but now I knew differently.

The Empress had divinity. I knew intuitively. This wasn’t a qualification obtained like a player reaching level 20 and gaining a unique skill.

Rather, it was the opposite.

It was an innate qualification.

Then some intuition swept through my mind.

Lorian had said that the clan heads, including the Empress, had never changed.

He said they had existed since the time when “Father” still existed.

…What if that wasn’t the case?

What if they were beings that had existed since the mythical age?

If so.

“You were testing me.”

Realization washes over me. The Empress knew I would fight something here.

Win or lose, it didn’t matter.

The reason she came here now was…

“You came to retrieve me.”

As I raised my head with certainty, the corners of the Empress’s mouth turned up.

And simultaneously, fear slowly invaded my mind.

I felt like I was looking at something wrong. A feeling and aversion that this shouldn’t be this way irritated my throat.

As I tried to hold back the scream that was about to escape my mouth…

The Empress smiled. The color of her right eye, hidden by her hair, became dull, and she smiled unpleasantly.

With such a smile, she said:

“You’re smart. I like that very much.”

I felt cold sweat running down my neck.

In the path where the cold sweat had passed, something behind me licked my neck.

The Empress’s shadow, swollen larger than herself, overlapped with my shadow.

I swallowed as I felt the breath on my neck.