Starting as a Magical Girl, I Alone Shall Rule for Eternity

Chapter 179: Eternal Emperor

"Miss Lily, when will Kaka and the others return?"

"They should be back soon. Have faith in Kaka and the others."

"But, Miss Lily, our time is running out..."

"Have faith. Kaka will surely bring us a new world, just like she did back then."

In the prayer hall, Lily comforted the people who kept asking, then raised her voice again, "Don't you trust Kaka?"

When Kaka's name was mentioned, the guards standing around and the people all raised their hands and shouted in unison.

"Loyalty!"

The solemn, unified shout finally calmed the restlessness in the prayer hall.

Watching everyone continue to kneel quietly on the ground in prayer, Lily maintained her gentle smile.

However, the moment she turned away, her expression darkened.The more the Death Note was used, the more the people of the Curse Realm would also be backlashed by the curse. The situation was becoming increasingly critical.

As the administrator of the Curse Realm, before Kaka returned, she had to prevent these people from rioting.

Just as Kaka had once overthrown the Emperor's rule, if they lost the support of these people and their Death Note lost users, they too could be overthrown.

Hateful Magical Girls...

Lily hated Magical Girls.

The more powerful the Magical Girl, the more she hated them.

In the Curse Realm, where Magical Girls could not be born, every encounter with a Magical Girl meant disaster.

If not for Magical Girls, the Curse Realm would have long found a foothold and wouldn't still be suffering here.

What kind of kind girls who summon miracles are they?

They are nothing but a group of selfish monsters.

Miracles that cannot even dispel curses, kindness that never cared about their lives or deaths,

This is the so-called Magical Girl.

These naive little girls living in a gentle, strong embrace have no idea what the world's true cruelty looks like.

Why do they get to live in such a safe world?

While we who struggle so hard must fight for survival in such a cruel world?

No matter how hard we try, only despair and death await us?

Especially that Mùjǐn.

Lily still couldn't forget. Though she was young then, she was already struggling for survival on the brink of death with Kaka.

She witnessed with her own eyes her fellow countrymen kneeling before Mùjǐn, begging her to give them a way out.

The Curse Realm was no longer habitable;

they needed a new world.

Even the Mirror Kingdom would do.

Yet that Magical Girl only pretended to be sad, saying that if they lived, they would spread the curse, only passing disaster to other places.

Then she killed all their compatriots in the new world.

Thinking of Mùjǐn's sad, self-blaming expression.

Lily couldn't suppress the nausea, and resentment and hatred festered, deepening the curse on her body once again.

These curses would deepen whenever negative emotions arose.

The Curse Realm did not give birth to Disaster Beasts;

these negative emotions would only deepen the curse until it killed the person.

Pain and the fear of death spread. Lily closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm down.

Then she prayed fervently:

You must succeed, Kaka.

Even if we have to spread the curse to other worlds, we must survive!

We shouldn't be the only ones suffering like this!

As she was praying, the entire hall suddenly shook violently!

Lily, unsteady on her feet, grabbed onto a nearby pillar.

The previously quite stable hall now had rubble constantly falling from above.

Even the pillars began to tremble.

Thick gray fog slowly churned, surging toward the hall!

"Seal the gates!"

The guards outside shouted, but they were too slow. The gray fog had already flooded into the hall. The few Curse Realm members at the front, though fully clad in protective suits, were still corroded by the gray fog.

Horrifying red curse patterns began to appear on their faces and in their eyes, and they collapsed to the ground, convulsing!

Lily quickly stepped forward, holding a pitch-black Grief Seed in her hand. Polluted Magic spread from her palm, suppressing the gray fog that wanted to spread. "Quarantine the cursed personnel! Everyone else, enter the safe room!"

The guards standing around picked up harpoons, impaled the two convulsing members, and dragged them toward the passage on the left.

The others were about to riot, but when the guards each pulled out pistols and aimed,

They all became obedient and were pushed by the guards toward the safe room at the back.

Lily had no time to comfort the people now. She just took out a communicator that looked like a phone and made a call outside the hall. "Why has the curse gray fog entered the hall! What about our seal!"

However, no guards outside the hall responded.

Through the communicator came only miserable, agonized screams.

Lily took a deep breath, her hand trembling slightly.

If the seal was broken, it meant the prayer hall was no longer safe either.

If things continued like this, where in the Curse Realm would there be any place left to live...

"Kaka..."

Her despair gradually turned into madness. She made a call to Kaka outside the Curse Realm and screamed hysterically, "Kaka, what are you doing!"

"Kill them all! Everyone in that world, kill them all quickly, let us out!"

Yet there was no response either.

Another violent tremor, the load-bearing pillars around began to crack and break, rubble continuously falling from the ceiling of the prayer hall.

Until the entire hall collapsed, and the gray fog surged in!

The guards around shouted, some were buried, some escaped,

The sounds grew distant until everything fell silent.

The safe room was underground, so it should be safe,

But probably, there wouldn't be enough survivors again...

She hoped more people would survive. Otherwise, Kaka's Death Note couldn't be used.

The Death Note could only be used by people of the Curse Realm, trading the lives of those bearing the curse for the lives of any living being.

"Kaka..."

Lily called her friend's name, struggling to grip the Grief Seed. As she squeezed out more power, the Polluted Magic nourished the curse, eroding her consciousness.

Struggling to crawl out from the rubble pile, Lily finally saw the sky.

Gray, hazy sky, always shrouded by something.

It had been a long time since she had seen the sky.

Since they were children, the condition of this world had been terrible. The sky was always covered by the curse's gray fog.

But the situation deteriorated drastically, actually starting after the Emperor's death.

Ever since they killed the Emperor, the curse on each person worsened day by day. The habitable areas in the Curse Realm kept shrinking until only this prayer hall remained.

They couldn't even go outside. Leaving the prayer hall meant death by curse.

Only Kaka and her few companions could leave the prayer hall and go outside.

If they didn't return and lived outside, only they would die...

Kaka, have you abandoned us?

Unease began to fester in her heart.

The blurring of her consciousness made waves of regret surge within her.

Regretting why they had rebelled against the Emperor back then.

At that time, they thought all misfortune stemmed solely from that tyrannical ruler.

Because everyone said the curse came from the Emperor's greed and malice.

In the entire world, only the Emperor was not cursed.

Even the Emperor herself proclaimed this, at the cost of the whole world being cursed.

Letting her obtain eternal life and power.

Only her palace was free from the spreading curse;

only she could move freely within the curse's gray fog.

Constantly sending people to the outside world to search for a new world, yet coldly watching these people die.

Never caring about others' lives.

So Kaka and she, using a stolen Death Note, led those dissatisfied with the Emperor's rule and worked together to overthrow the Emperor.

They thought such a grand change would surely bring new life to the Curse Realm.

That was probably the easiest time for them.

Because they had a clear goal and enemy. It seemed as long as they overthrew the Emperor, everything would usher in light.

Until they stood before the Emperor did they realize it wasn't like that.

"Congratulations on your victory. But what a pity, everyone, the prize is only this already hopeless world."

The isolated, helpless Emperor faced them without any fear.

Just indifferently and mockingly told them, "Unable to give birth to Magical Girls named Hope, cursed from birth, from the very beginning, this world's will abandoned the future. We are all just the world's stillborn children."

"I've lost interest in this world. From now on, you struggle on, in despair and pain, struggle to the very end. Even if ugly, even if you bring disaster to others... desperately survive, use your desires to devour all worlds."

Back then, they didn't understand the Emperor's meaning, only realizing it later.

Even if they found a new world, they would still bear the curse, no one living past thirty.

Even if the curse became slightly active, they could die suddenly at any time.

From the beginning, it was just searching for despair within despair.

The Emperor was merely using high-pressure rule to conceal the cruel truth.

There was only one reason she wasn't cursed.

The Emperor had written herself into the Death Note from the start.

The highest-grade curse caused all other curses to become ineffective;

Death would not allow her to die by other curses.

The moment the Emperor left the throne, her magnificent golden garments dissipated, her dazzling golden hair returned to a dull black-red, only those golden-red scorpion-like eyes remained unchanged.

Only then did they realize, the Emperor off the throne looked like just an ordinary girl you could find anywhere.

The girl who gave up resistance was immediately killed in an accident, her head smashed by a stone in the hall.

After the Emperor's death, the ultimate curse began to spread.

Because after writing herself into the Death Note, the Emperor had absorbed most of the world's curses into herself.

This gray fog that filled heaven and earth had once been condensed on the Emperor alone.

She bore the world's curse, yet suppressed it with the Death Note's rules.

Fighting Death's pursuit day and night.

After her death, no one could sit on that throne again, no one could absorb that many curses, and no one could survive under the Death Note's rules.

The Curse Realm completely welcomed destruction.

To prove they weren't wrong, they buried the throne underground. The power of the Emperor's legacy could delay the arrival of the curse's death. Relying on this power, Kaka constantly went out, seeking a place to survive in a new world.

But the harder they tried, the more they realized the Emperor was right.

The extended time instead became the curse the Emperor left them,

As if wanting to see how the insects could still move.

They struggled ugly, doing whatever it took to survive.

Yet it was utterly meaningless.

Thinking somewhat hazily, she felt only sadness and powerless exhaustion in her heart.

Clutching the Grief Seed she had since childhood, her body began to mutate, scales seeping out from her skin.

The final form of the curse: losing oneself, dying completely in spirit, becoming a monster...

Yet when a purple light descended, the mutation actually stopped.

Lily looked up with difficulty. Cracks spread across the gloomy sky.

Violent tremors caused cracks to continuously crawl across the sky above.

Faintly, Lily heard ancient, melodious bell tones reverberating from the heavens.

And an indifferent voice:

"Heaven and Earth are not humane."

"Treating all things as straw dogs."

Boom!

Cracks instantly spread across the entire sky!

And the colors overflowing from the cracks were lights she had never seen before.

Beautiful, brilliant, vivid.

Colors the Curse Realm never had.

Perhaps they existed before, but when the curse spread across the world, only gray fog remained here.

The dazzling light was so warm that Lily couldn't help but reach out, wanting to catch that light.

Bathed in the gentle light, Lily suddenly remembered.

People who had gone outside before had told her.

There was actually a warm, big fireball in the sky called the sun.

She had never seen the sun and could never imagine it.

Always curious and puzzled, wondering what the sun was really like.

And now, holding that warm purple radiance, she suddenly understood.

So this is the sun they talked about!

So the outside world has such beautiful things.

Until the cracks in the sky suddenly widened.

First, a beautiful purple boot stepped out from a crack, then a petite figure walked out.

The dispersing purple sunlight couldn't stop Lily from clearly seeing the other's appearance.

As if satisfied, she reached out, as if wanting to hold that small figure, thinking in her heart:

So the sun is this beautiful, and this small.

The scattered gray fog began to churn again, converging toward the sun in the sky. The purple radiance began to be obscured.

The sky returned to gray darkness.

Losing the purple light, the ground was once again covered in the curse's shadow.

Yet the gray fog still continuously surged, as if wanting to completely bury that purple sun.

Lily struggled to climb toward the other.

Then she heard that purple sun utter a low murmur:

"Why aren't the lights on?"

Her brain froze for a moment. She didn't know what "lights on" meant.

In this vast world, where were there any lights?

Then she saw the girl extend a finger, her pale pink fingernail touching the gray fog in the sky.

"Let there be light."

She said so.

Purple flames instantly devoured the sky!

The fiercely burning flames made the entire sky boil, the ground reflecting a purple hue!

The churning gray fog gradually evaporated within these flames. When the purple fire slowly died down,

A clear sky appeared before Lily's eyes.

She looked at the sky, azure and clear as if washed, something she had never seen before, and was momentarily entranced.

Then tears began to flow uncontrollably.

So this is the real sky. So we actually live under such a beautiful sky.

Seeing the purple figure begin to leave, Lily wailed loudly. She immediately got up, stumbling as she ran toward that purple sun!

Chasing the miracle they prayed for!

"Save us! Save us! Sun..."

Sure enough, the purple figure stopped and looked back at her.

When their eyes met, she could feel it even more.

That sun was breathtakingly beautiful!

"I am..."

She shouted, wanting to say her name.

But she saw the girl casually take out a purple javelin and aim it at her.

"Li..."

The javelin thrown with a boom exploded into a magnificent mushroom cloud on the ground!

Her words were cut off abruptly.