novelraw Chapter 144 : Chapter 144
Chapter 144 : Chapter 144
Chapter 144: Buried in the Black Sea, Countless Questions (1)
──CLANG!
A metallic shriek tore through the air.
Abel blocked Nodens’s strike. The blade of Abel’s beloved sword trembled as it met the saw-like edge, and Nodens’s silhouette was reflected in Abel’s dark blue eyes. The layered eyes were stained red.
“……The progenitor.”
Nodens repeated Abel’s words.
His toes dug into the current as he stirred. Beneath the transparent, wavering seawater, countless gazes were fixed upon Nodens. If one were to count the eyes alone, there might have been hundreds. If one added arms and legs, there would have been even more.
“The progenitor, you say?”
“That is right.”
Abel saw it differently.
Beneath the darkened surface of the sea, afterimages of innumerable tentacles flickered. That was why the waves did not align with the wind. A gigantic monster of unknown nature. It was disturbing even the direction of the currents.
“A monster that once threatened Portsmouth, and before long came to be worshiped by its residents…….”
Abel spoke, staring straight at Nodens’s compound eyes.
“That thing is alive beneath the sea. Am I wrong?”
“You are mistaken.”
Different, different, different.
As their weapons clashed, silent sword strikes began to etch themselves into the air. Nodens’s surroundings were riddled with pale white fissures, while Abel’s were covered in pitch-black ones.
Aura Blade. Glancing up at the split sky, Abel thought. The overcast heavens had divided into black and white. They were all Aura Blades shaped without exception. Nodens was a monster that had grasped the meaning of conviction, and—
“What lies sunken in my sea is──.”
If there existed a being who could respond to a monster’s conviction and weave it into Aura—
“……the world.”
Not a Main God, but a Demon King.
Just as the Main Gods might focus upon a single creation and bestow authority upon it, the Demon King must have been watching Nodens.
“Within this sea…….”
Crackle.
A faint ringing sound welled up.
Like scratches spreading across a mirror, space split apart—
“──my world exists!”
CRUNCH──!
The scenery seemed to shatter and scatter.
Dodging was impossible. Retreating swiftly, Abel thought. A surge of water rose and blocked his view. Nodens’s Aura Blade had carved the sea itself apart. Countless severed droplets struck Abel’s face, flowing down to stain it with dark marks, and in that instant—
‘The Demon King is observing everything through Nodens.’
Shing.
Abel sheathed his beloved sword.
‘All of this.’
Abel closed his eyes gently.
He grasped the scabbard with his left hand and the hilt with his right. The speed of the Aura Blade was too fast to track with his eyes. Then there was only one way—grasp it with his mind. Entrusting himself to instinct, Abel gauged the direction of the strike.
‘I must end this quickly.’
Abel Argento–style Iaijutsu, “Killing the Empty Air.”
He intended to strike down the onrushing Aura Blade with his own slash. To that end, he carved a boundary into the air. The instant the sword path he envisioned took form through Aura—
‘Before the Demon King moves.’
Tap.
A step forward.
Creak.
The beloved sword shot forth from its scabbard.
──SHRAAK!
Sword strikes slashed in unison.
Abel widened his eyes and sprinted. The Aura Blades surging from the air weakened into motes of light and scattered. Banshee corpses floating on the sea surface swayed with the waves, and Abel trampled through them as he charged straight ahead.
‘……But.’
Why, Abel thought, his expression stiffening.
‘Why does this feel so…….’
Why did such an unpleasant premonition grip him?
‘If he meant to finish this in a single exchange, it would have ended long ago.’
Nodens was not yet proficient.
Even if he could wield Aura, his limits were obvious. He lacked experience. At best, he was only marginally more adept than Monika. He was nowhere near Abel’s level.
‘However…….’
By instinct alone, Abel sensed it.
That this battle with Nodens would not end simply.
There was no clear basis, yet an inexpressible foreboding spread through Abel’s mind.
‘Preposterous.’
Abel Argento–style Shattering Technique, “Chasing Butterflies.”
Abel cast aside his stray thoughts. He concentrated the Aura within his body at the tip of his blade. Drawing his arm far back, preparing to thrust, he set himself to advance, turning even his body into part of the strike.
Only three steps.
The distance needed to reach Nodens.
That was enough. As Abel traced a straight sword path—
‘That is…….’
Nodens’s compound eyes flashed.
Beyond the wildly surging waves that had lost all direction, Abel’s silhouette entered his vision. Nodens moved swiftly. There should have been enough distance to spare. In the crystal layers stacked within his eyes, Abel rushed closer. Nodens’s outer shell, stained by Abel’s Aura Blade, was already crumbling, and the saw blade forming his right arm was on the verge of breaking, yet—
‘Surely──.’
One step.
Abel’s presence vanished without a sound.
‘──I could have blocked it.’
Two steps.
The distance between them collapsed along with space itself.
‘No!’
Three steps.
Only then did Nodens comprehend.
He had cut sound and torn space itself as he approached. Facing Abel, who arrived in an instant, Nodens realized blocking was impossible. All the compound eyes forming Nodens’s face turned crimson at once. At the center of his reddened vision was the blade’s tip. The point of the beloved sword aimed at Nodens’s chest looked like a full stop.
‘No, no, no!’
──THUD!
The stench of metal pierced into his chest.
The wet blade skewered Nodens’s body.
“Not…… yet.”
Nodens reached out.
With trembling movements, he struggled to push Abel away. His core had been pierced. He could sense that much instinctively. His limbs were growing heavier. Fragments of his shattered shell scattered across the sea surface, and the compound eyes formed of countless lenses began to darken.
“……Not yet.”
Nodens’s head tilted toward Abel.
His ominously echoing voice etched itself into Abel’s ears.
Abel watched Nodens in silence. Facing the compound eyes whose light was fading, he slowly lowered his gaze to Nodens’s feet. The seawater beneath Nodens seemed to stir faintly. From the pitch-black depths, a lurking shadow was drawing closer.
“No matter what power you wield…….”
A single bubble.
A bubble rose beneath Nodens’s feet.
“I will never…….”
The bubble became a current, soon swelling into a surging wave.
“──never die!”
SPLASH──!
Abel retreated at once.
It felt as though he had been swept into a storm. A towering wave crashed down as if to devour him, yet Abel endured the current, standing firm.
The Black Sea surged skyward and fell like rain. Had there been a ship nearby, it would have been crushed. The emergence of an overwhelmingly massive presence had paralyzed the surrounding currents entirely.
‘As expected…….’
Abel’s lips twitched.
It was the weight of disappointment pressing at their corners.
‘My premonition was not wrong.’
Nodens was nowhere to be seen.
He must have been dragged under by the current.
“You are…….”
Abel did not dwell on it.
This was no time to. A monster too vast to take in at a glance was writhing at the center of the Black Sea. Even compared to an iceberg, it was lacking nothing in scale.
“No…… you are…….”
Yet Abel hesitated.
Could it truly be called a monster?
At the beginning, it must have been a monster. A single being.
But now it was different. It had to be regarded as different. Forming the body of the blackened monster were countless eyes, noses, and mouths. Limbs melted together. Countless humans had fused with the monster. Without exception, they were boys and girls.
“……They were alive.”
Abel bit down on his lower lip.
The sigh mixed into his breath was unmistakable.
His previously steadfast, impassive gaze finally trembled.
“All of you…….”
Children offered as sacrifices.
All of them—
“You alone…….”
Merged with the monster, unable even to be digested by it—
“──you were the ones who survived.”
For so long.
In such utterly despairing forms.
***
Transparent.
Too transparent.
Sinking endlessly, Nodens thought.
He could not move his body as it sank into the depths. From the core pierced by Abel’s strike, streams of red blood spilled forth. His lightless compound eyes gradually lost the ability to take in their surroundings.
‘Beautiful.’
That was Nodens’s impression.
The banshee larvae that formed the sea.
To those who were not monsters, they would appear grotesque. To Nodens, they looked delicate and pure.
Then what of it?
The faces of the boys and girls lurking at the center of the sea.
They too were incomparably lovely. To those who were not monsters, they would appear horrific, yet to Nodens, they looked like a group of boys and girls flailing beneath the water, holding hands.
‘This sea was perfect.’
It was paradise.
So long as humans did not intrude, this sea would likely have remained peaceful forever.
Nodens knew where the boys and girls had come from. They were children swept down from the land. Once human, but no longer. Had they remained human, they could not have been so beautiful. The children had gathered to give birth to the banshees, and to Nodens himself. And thus this sea lived.
‘You are my parents and my children…….’
The world.
Those children were the world itself.
Nodens believed that without the slightest doubt.
Meanwhile, a voice etched itself into Nodens’s ears.
A voice laced with amusement reached him.
Nodens formed the words, but they scattered without becoming sound.
Voices were meaningless beneath the sea, drowned out by the water.
Yet even the laws of nature were irrelevant.
Nodens and the Demon King were not conversing through sound. Their existences were touching through the core. Every monster’s core was formed from a drop of the Demon King’s blood. It would not be an exaggeration to say they had once been a single body.
I am the Demon King.
If malice must exist in this world,
then I am the being that must reign above all malice.
The Demon King whispered so.
“……Am I”
Am I dying?
Nodens asked.
The Demon King laughed languidly.
That is only natural, the Demon King declared.
It always seeks to move, always seeks to assert its will.
Perhaps it is, in fact……
So I will ask you.
As the Demon King, I will ask.
Look.
Look around you.
Does the seawater still seem transparent to you?
The boys and girls you called the world—
In truth, the sea is endlessly black, and the boys and girls have already become grotesque beings.
Do you truly see that as the world?