NOVEL NEXT Chapter 204
Episode 12: Final Episode / Chapter 204: That Day (7)
TL: emptycube / ED: Obelisk
Sponsor: Teisen
The sight inside the monster lump was completely unexpected. It wasn’t made of flesh or blood inside.
It was completely filled with a silver fog. Rather than a monster queen’s dwelling, it was like a beautiful and shiny fairy queen’s abode.
Although the moisture in the air was fresh and pleasant when inhaled, after a little bit of time, they became dizzy and felt yucky in their stomachs.
Silver cocoons rested in every place that shined beautifully, but inside of each were ferocious monsters.
“This is…”
Baek Seoin said in a trembling voice.
Far into the fog, he saw a shining lake. A coiled body, with skin shining with a white, gentle glow, floated in the center of the lake. Every time this lifeform, whose body stood out as it ignored concepts of space and depth, took a breath deep enough for its soft fur to sway, ripples would spread out on the lake and shake the silver fog. The silver cocoons, which likely contained monsters, also exhaled at the same time.
Choi Hyuk came out from under Baek Seoin’s arm and stood holding his sword.
Although it was his first time seeing her, he was certain that this lifeform with surprisingly soft fur was the monster queen. He was emotionless even at the prospect of killing something so beautiful.
“Please wait.”
Baek Seoin grabbed Choi Hyuk’s shoulder as he prepared to launch forward. Cold sweat dripped from his chin. Baek Seoin’s Intuition, which could detect danger to his life, activated. Ignoring his body which screamed not to walk forward, he took the lead.
“It’s still far away. I’ll escort you to a distance where you can kill her for sure.”
The shining lake was shockingly cold. Baek Seoin lightly soaked his hand in the water before saying that there weren’t any problems. Then he began walking on it. Ripples spread out from Baek Seoin’s steps. Bae Jinman supported Choi Hyuk as he had lost control of his karma and couldn’t even walk on water.
Splash. Splash. Ripple.
The sounds of their splashing footsteps and rippling water shook the silver fog.
Bae Jinman seemed to have felt something strange.
“I feel like we’ve become adventurers in an unknown world.”
The monster queen lit the world with a faint light like the moon, and those ferocious monsters were asleep in their soft cocoons. Though it was a new world, the fog possessed an air of malice and as they walked through it, their bodies tensed as though they were looking for a treasure or hunting a dragon. Bae Jinman thought about Indiana Jones and War of the Ring{1} he had read in his youth. An adventure filled with danger and excitement.
The shining lake was quite suspicious, but nothing happened. Was the monster queen truly asleep? Bae Jinman spread his karma out to carefully read his surroundings. As a support type, he had obtained various skills when he reached the transcendent level. Before, he could connect to his allies’ minds and use skills like ‘Get up!’ to imbue them with courage. Now, he could examine the monster queen’s thoughts and read fragments of her memories.
Like Gandolf who told stories of the past, he told Choi Hyuk, who was leaning against his shoulder, the fragments of memories he saw. Choi Hyuk wasn’t particularly interested in it, but he closed his eyes and let him be as he was already having a hard time controlling his rampaging karma.
“The queen of the monsters… was a magical beast of demise. She was born as a tool when a world’s fate reached its end and was faced with demise. She deceived the world with her divine beauty and led everyone to their demise at the decisive moment.”
Splash, splash. After taking a few steps, he continued,
“Since she had fulfilled her mission, she would have died and disappeared, but she awakened a desire for life. A type of mutation. In order to survive, she looked for and brought demise to other worlds and extracted their fates. She also brainwashed still arriving fates of demise and used them as dimension attacking weapons. Those were the demise-ranked monsters we encountered.”
Ah, so that was how it was. Thinking about it while leaning on Bae Jinman’s shoulder, Choi Hyuk found this story interesting.
Splash!
Baek Seoin, who was leading in front, seemed to have taken a wrong step as his foot submerged into the water. Ripples spread out. He stood still. It wasn’t because of Bae Jinman’s story.
Baek Seoin’s back was drenched in cold sweat. As if sighing, he said,
“Ahh, is it here?”
He didn’t have the capacity to listen to Bae Jinman’s story. Warnings squeezed his head without rest. Although he had stepped on the boundaries of life and death a few times, he had never felt such a powerful warning before. Its meaning was clear.
‘I’ll definitely die if I take another step.’
From the pain that gnawed on his entire body, he wanted to throw it all away and run. Baek Seoin glanced at the monster queen still quite a distance away before glancing at Choi Hyuk who was leaning against Bae Jinman. Choi Hyuk, who was taller than Bae Jinman, was being dragged along with his feet submerged in the water.
He felt conflicted.
Was the danger he felt coming from the monster queen herself? Or was there something else? If the monster queen was personally going to move, then Baek Seoin didn’t have to fight, but if there was something else, then Choi Hyuk could not be allowed to fight.
He was sweating cold sweat even now.
Standing still, Baek Seoin thought about it before shaking his head in the end.
‘What are you thinking about? At times like this, you have to act with the assumption that there’s something else. The final trap activates the moment you are about to get your hands on the treasure.’
He turned around and said,
“Guardian, I’ll leave the leader in your care. Also, leader, I pray for your good fortune.”
Smiling, he took a step forward. Without even seeing what happened, he scattered his karma in all directions.
**
To Bae Jinman, Baek Seoin’s back suddenly seemed as large as a giant’s.
The karma released by a warrior determined to die covered Choi Hyuk and Bae Jinman in a sphere.
Ting, ting, ting! Pscht! Thud! Crrrrk!
Reflecting sounds, sounds of something piercing and breaking. It was terrifying.
The fog seemed to shake as black objects shot up from around them. The peacefully swaying cocoons they had passed and had yet to pass all ripped apart and monsters burst out of them. As larvae, they were used as one-use ranged weapons.
Choi Hyuk shut his already closed his eyes tighter. He knew that this wasn’t the attack of the monster queen herself. That was why he had to endure it.
Sounds of something breaking and ripping continued like a rain shower before suddenly stopping.
“Cough…”
Baek Seoin spat blood.
Choi Hyuk barely managed to open his eyes as he saw Baek Seoin’s arm covering his right. Though the attacks were shot at a transcendental speed, the Sword of Conclusion ‘Baek Seoin’s Stronghold’ predicted and reflected all of them away from Choi Hyuk and Bae Jinman as it now lay broken and Baek Seoin’s arm was twisted at a strange angle. Three peculiar spears made of crushed monsters were embedded in his elbow. No, his entire body was covered in countless monster-forged spears, making it difficult to tell if it was Baek Seoin or a new type of monster.
Splash!
Baek Seoin lay on top of the lake. With his stomach bleeding his severed insides, he laughed hollowly as he floated on the water face up.
“Is this how I go…?”
It seemed he could no longer see as his eyes couldn’t focus.
He opened his dry lips and said with a cough,
“Go. (Cough) Go. Leader… There… isn’t anything dangerous left… (Cough)”
However, as if nailed in place, Choi Hyuk couldn’t take a step forward.
The lake shined in a red light, dyed with Baek Seoin’s blood. Choi Hyuk’s eyes wavered.
He was okay when Alexei died and considered Zero’s death within circumstances.
Would Baek Seoin be different? But he was. When he saw Baek Seoin dying in front of him, Choi Hyuk could no longer maintain calm. He was someone who had aided him throughout his long, difficult journey. If it wasn’t for him, nothing would have been possible.
Though he had to move, though he needed move and though he would move, he couldn’t move his feet right now.
“Why… are you looking at me like that? It doesn’t suit you.”
Would a flame blazing for the last time before it died out be like him? Baek Seoin’s face looked peaceful for some reason. His voice was calm as well.
“I’m fine. You’re the one who saved my life anyways… I’m repaying that favor. Ah… Right… Lee Jinhee. I still owe a lot to her… The day we first met her, she saved my life… Once this was over, I wanted to give the rest of my life to her… Like how I followed you without question all this time… I wanted to do… whatever it took for her dream… Ah, that… That’s… a shame. A shame… a shame… truly….”
His calm voice quickly began to die out. Baek Seoin’s speech became gradually became slower like someone on anesthetics and his eyes closed.
In his final moment, Baek Seoin suddenly opened his eyes and glared at Choi Hyuk.
“Go, Choi Hyuk.”
He said in an impolite speech.
“You know, right? I did as much as I could for you…”
Then he closed his eyes.
…
After a moment of silence, Bae Jinman’s exhausted voice spoke.
“He fell asleep.”
“… So… In the end, his fate… What?”
Bae Jinman shrugged his shoulders while supporting Choi Hyuk. Thanks to that, Choi Hyuk’s body moved up and down. It felt like drowsiness was escaping him.
“He fell asleep. As a healer at the transcendent level, he won’t be able to die easily in front of me. Though it will take a while for him to recover completely.”
Choi Hyuk gave Baek Seoin a sharp gaze. Looking at it now, he saw a golden light lingering inside Baek Seoin’s ripped stomach.
“Then… The reason why Baek hyung’s face became calm was the ‘light before the sunset’{2}…”
“Yes, it was because I began my healing. After that, it was because he was sleepy.”
Haa.
Choi Hyuk’s shoulders drooped as he got off Bae Jinman’s shoulders.
His submerged feet stood firmly on top of the water.
He looked at Bae Jinman.
“Guardian, thank you until the very end.”
“I truly thank you as well.”
After looking at each other for a while, Choi Hyuk took a step forward.
Thuddd!
Even though it was a light step, the lake split and created a path. As soon as his suppressed karma began to release, he couldn’t stop it.
Choi Hyuk gazed at the monster queen floating in front of him.
She was awake from the start.
Her fur was a soft as a fox’s. A fine crack ran up her gently curved back, and then she opened her red eyes. Eyes possessing an unmatched wickedness opened on the peacefully sleeping divine’s back.
Her vigor was overwhelming. Since she was a ‘phenomenon’, no, the universe itself since long ago. Yesterday, he would have thought, ‘How could I defeat something like her?’ and groaned, but it was currently wary of Choi Hyuk’s power.
Choi Hyuk’s lips hung crookedly.
“Apparently, you’re a mutation that desires for life?”
Grrrk.
He tightly held his sword handle like it was almost about to break. The monsters’ universe was clutched in his grasp as it shrieked. The silver fog became dyed black.
“That desire, I’ll deny it.”
Choi Hyuk shot forward.
‘Choi Hyuk’s Denial’ devoured the monster queen.
The world became dark and peaceful.
**
“Woooaaah!”
Slicing the tentacles crowding and chasing her until the end, Lee Jinhee suddenly lost her balance and faltered when the universe suddenly rocked.
‘Euah, I’m going to die. I’ll die.’
She quickly raised her head in case she would be hit by a new tentacle while she lost her balance. She saw the enormous cocoon burst and run amok.
“Wh-what?”
While she was taken aback, the world rocked once more.
“Retreat! Retreat! We need to leave! We’ll return to our own universe!”
Flame-Rain shouted at the top of her lungs. The monsters that had crazily chased after her stronghold suddenly became more frenzied as they started killing each other and committing suicide.
That wasn’t all. The entire universe shook. It squirmed like a stomach ready to vomit.
Sensing an ominous vibe, she ordered her warriors to retreat to the stronghold.
“The process to open the gate has begun! It’ll take an estimated one hour!”
“That’s too slow!”
She screamed.
The squirming universe seemed like it would crush them at any moment.
“… Did he win?”
A warrior who followed Choi Hyuk but fell behind and fought on his own mumbled as he saw the monsters become frenzied.
The world shook like it would collapse, but he didn’t care. He had already joined this fight, determined to throw his life away.
“Still… He saved us.”
The war that had begun even before his grandfather’s grandfather was born had finally ended.
“This damn world will face its demise.”
The warrior mumbled, full of emotion, as he saw the collapsing universe. A faint smile hung on his lips.
Just then, the universe covered them. Accompanied by an unpleasant squirming sensation, they couldn’t see anything.
When they opened their eyes again, they had returned to their own universe.
{1} From what I can tell, the author is referring to an early translation of the Lord of the Rings
{2} It’s referring to how the sky suddenly brightens before it sets.