novelraw Chapter 8 : Chapter 8
Chapter 8 : Chapter 8
༺ 𓆩 Chapter 8 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
“Well, that should do.”
Watching Arditi Günther and Rier Yung get swept downriver, Ain Krieg sprang lightly up to the top of the cliff, his movement graceful, almost playful, as if gravity held no real claim on him.
He brushed the dust off his hands with a casual flick.
At that exact moment, a thick branch lashed toward his head like a whip, and he narrowly ducked out of its arc.
"That's dangerous, you know."
But this was no mere tree limb.
Not when it came from the monster that wore Sergeant Doggins’s skin like a burlap sack turned inside out.
Dual Number 98. The Reaper of Ash.
A creature with a recorded history of wiping out an entire baronial estate of the former Empire.
'Of course, that territory had no proper knights.'
Even so, it wasn’t an opponent to be taken lightly.
Had Ain Krieg been a standard Grade 3 Knight Officer, facing this thing would have been suicide.
'First, I need to get away from the cliff.'
Trying to knock the creature over the edge was a fool’s errand, it wouldn’t die from something so trivial, and more importantly, there was something Krieg needed to verify.
With a sharp push, he launched himself sideways, shifting toward the monster’s flank as clumps of snow and dirt burst up beneath his boots.
A mana-infused cigarette dangled from his lips, already burned to ash in a single drag, its remnants scattering like dust in the wind.
Bang—!!! Bang—!!!
Silver rounds fired from his revolver tore through the tendril-like limbs aiming for his head.
—Kreeeeeek!
Was it mocking the futility of a fragile human’s resistance?
Or merely savoring the last gasps of a doomed prey?
The creature, still clad in Doggins’s skin, lumbered after him, spewing foul ash as if to drown him in rot and death.
Whoosh—!!!
The ground where he had just stood tore open, deep ruts scored across the earth in chaotic patterns. As soon as he confirmed the cylinder of his revolver was empty, Krieg discarded the weapon without a second thought.
“Ten minutes, give or take.”
He didn’t have much mana left.
His final mission before leaving the Intelligence Bureau had pushed his reserves to their limits.
A shame, perhaps, but it was not hopeless.
Still, Ain Krieg couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh at his own circumstances.
“No matter how I look at it, this body’s fuel efficiency is absolute shit.”
He brushed his hair back, sweeping it clear of his eyes.
Then, placing a hand on the long black case he’d carried on his back all this time, he unlocked it.
Click—!!!
The latch slid free with a smooth metallic note, and the case, easily over a meter long, opened cleanly. From within, he drew a massive greatsword, its grip fitting into his palm like an old memory reborn.
—KIIIIIIIIEEEEEK!
Did it feel an instinctive unease?
The Reaper of Ash let out a shriek that sent pieces of Sergeant Doggins' flesh flying, pressing down with its massive body.
In that moment, a memory, distant and persistent, rose from the past.
A childhood thought.
A former life.
A question repeated in countless agonies…
'Could I be insane? Am I just suffering from delusions and escaping reality?'
It felt more believable than the idea of a knight from two hundred years ago dying, then being reborn with all his memories intact.
And yet, he couldn’t deny his past life.
For two simple reasons.
First, the tattoo, a snake devouring its own tail, etched into his right arm since birth.
And second, his own body.
Srring—!!!
He let the black case drop, its weight sinking into the soil, while the greatsword in his grip shifted to rest against his shoulder.
“All specialist officers suffer from the same incurable illness, petrification syndrome. Doesn’t matter what branch they’re in. It’s inevitable.”
Of course it was. Even if their land hadn’t been swallowed by ash, that didn’t mean the mana had been left untainted.
The soil, the water, even the air, everything was compromised.
With ninety percent of the continent buried beneath layers of soot and cinders, what hope was there that this one mountain range had been spared?
But none of those things, not even air turned to poison, compared to the true danger i.e., mana infected with the essence of ash.
Unlike passive exposure, the process of absorbing and burning that corrupted mana and then replenishing it again exposed the body to magnitudes more contamination.
“But me? I can’t even do that.”
His body rejected ash-tainted mana altogether.
Which left him no choice but to use the only pure source available, and that was the mana cigarettes; they were expensive and they were limited.
But what other option did he have?
“It’s the only clean mana left.”
One pack for one minute.
That was the price.
And that was all the time he had to wield his greatsword.
Even then, his ability was barely on par with a Grade 3 Knight Officer, pathetically short of what he’d once been in his past life.
But right now, it was enough.
—Screeeeeeech!
The creature couldn’t possibly understand him.
But something he said, or something in the air, must’ve pissed it off, because it let out a bone-splitting shriek and began to writhe.
Then, at last, it discarded what remained of Sergeant Doggins’s ruined flesh, peeling it away like a decaying robe, and revealed the full extent of its monstrous body.
BOOOOOOOOM—!!!
Dozens, no, hundreds, of tendrils exploded from its back, multiplying like whipcord vines; they branched out and branched again, twisting into a dense, tangled thicket, crashing down to engulf him.
‘Ten minutes.’
The sly mask he always wore disappeared, replaced by an utterly cold gaze.
Shlkkk—!!! Thunk—!!!
He sliced clean through the base of the nearest tendril.
Then, using the creature’s leg, fired like a spear at his knees, as a springboard, he vaulted upward into the air.
CRACKKKK—!!!
The ruined body of Sergeant Doggins was struck once more, his midsection collapsing under the monster’s bulk.
His decomposed entrails scattered through the air like wet refuse, and from above, the monster roared.
—GRAAAAAAAH!
A raw, pure hatred for humanity.
Ain Krieg had seen that look a thousand times.
And in that moment, without thinking, he asked:
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
Two hundred years.
Of nothing but screaming.
Nothing but killing.
And somehow, it never seemed to bore them.
Now, there was no one left who remembered the world before they came.
No one but him.
And even those memories were not his alone. They felt borrowed, shrouded in mist, distant and ghostly.
Could they even imagine what that kind of madness felt like?
He took a short breath, then chastised the pure mana coiled deep within him like a reluctant beast.
‘Time to earn your keep.’
Why had he rejected the tainted mana that filled the world?
Why had he spent obscene sums to light mana cigarettes, one after another?
The reason was simple.
For a knight, nothing mattered more than the purity of mana itself.
If survival were the only goal, he would’ve never picked up a sword again.
CRRRAAAAAK—!!!
He flowed around the creature’s attacks like water, like a marionette dancing to an unseen puppeteer’s will.
‘I will cut it down, in one strike.’
That was the only goal.
A voice from a dream whispered in his ear.
— The capital of the Millennium Empire. To the Saintess's Golden Throne in the Cathedral…
What in the world was there that warranted such madness?
BOOM—!!!
His mana depleted quickly. Shrapnel clipped his cheek when he failed to fully dodge, drawing a red line of blood.
But he didn’t stop.
He carved through the gnarled branches, severing them, pushing forward until he reached the beast itself.
‘Up, right, then left again.’
His reserves dwindled fast.
‘Was this hubris?'
Ten minutes of output dropped to seven… then five.
‘No. It can’t be.’
One mistake, and he’d follow Doggins into the grave, his hide becoming another grotesque patch on the scarecrow’s winter pelt.
‘Just a little more.’
Still, he calmed the urge to rush.
‘Now!’
The moment he glimpsed a path before him—
Tap—!!!
He pushed off lightly with his foot.
Gripping the greatsword with both hands, veins bulged along his forearms.
The snake tattoo on his right arm swelled, the ouroboros rearing its head.
And then—
From just beyond his line of sight, a cluster of jagged branches shot toward his heart, obscuring his vision.
‘Too slow.’
But he did not hesitate.
Confidence, no, it was arrogance, fueled him.
He knew he was faster.
He twisted his shoulders, curled inward; like a bullet tearing through space, the world around him stretched into hazy lines, trailing in his wake.
The blade in his hands, a knight’s sword, cleaved through the Reaper of Ash.
Unceremoniously, it passed through the creature and emerged from the other side.
‘I cut it.’
He turned his head.
Shlkk—!!! Thunk—!!!
The monster’s body gave out.
Collapsed.
At the same time, he dropped the sword and stared at his arms, now twitching violently from overuse.
A grimace tugged at his lips.
“Well… I’d say that went decently. Cough!”
Hey, at least he hadn’t passed out; though if he wanted to put that ridiculously heavy blade back into its case, he’d probably have to smoke five mana cigarettes right on the spot.
Would that thing have even known?
The amount of money he’d just burned through for that final attack…
Cost more than a sergeant’s entire monthly wage.
“Goddamn it. I’m gonna die.”
The backlash only grew increasingly severe.
His face had gone pale, and his messy black hair clung to his forehead in soaked, uneven clumps from the sweat pouring down.
But that was the least of it.
A crushing emptiness settled over him, an overwhelming hunger far beyond mere starvation.
He couldn’t even stand.
The moment Ain Krieg confirmed that the creature had split in two and collapsed, he staggered toward the nearest tree and leaned against it.
Hissss—!!! Ffff―!!!
He dropped to the ground, half-falling, and bit into another cigarette.
Mana-infused, of course.
‘Mana reserves nearly depleted… that was close.’
Only the faintest traces remained, so weak, they couldn’t even be measured in seconds. Had he dragged the fight out another thirty seconds, the one cleaved in half wouldn’t have been the monster, it would’ve been him.
Still, now that the battle was over, he couldn’t help but feel the sting of pragmatic regret.
“…Tch. And I’m already running low on money. Goddamn it.”
Mana cigarettes were expensive.
And not just costly to produce, they were luxury items.
And frankly, they were never meant to be used like this.
‘Even using mana control techniques from two hundred years ago, this is the best I could do. The modern stuff is all but worthless by comparison.’
Not only were the methods people learned nowadays completely ineffective, but his very physiology rejected them outright.
He’d never wanted to learn those techniques anyway.
If his body could just accept ash-tainted mana, none of this absurd ritual would have been necessary.
“If not for this goddamned constitution…”
It was a choice between two evils —
Become a proper knight but suffer petrification.
Or avoid the disease, only to end up as the knight with the worst mana efficiency imaginable.
A perfect example of a lose-lose scenario.
“…Haa.”
He exhaled a long breath.
After burning through four more sticks in quick succession, his condition finally stabilized enough for him to get to his feet.
He began walking toward the disintegrating remains of the monster, now reduced to drifting flecks of ash in the cold mountain breeze.
As if nothing had ever stood there.
As if no violence had ever occurred.
Ain Krieg licked his dry lips and took a swig of whiskey from the hip flask tucked inside his coat.
“Sergeant Doggins, was it?”
His eyes landed on what remained, a soldier’s body, denied even a peaceful death, mangled beyond recovery by a being of Ashes.
And beside the corpse lay a small ashen crystal.
“You know how it is. My body’s like this. I probably can’t take you back.”
There was nothing left to preserve.
No flesh. Nothing whole. Just a ruined smear of bone, ash, and meat.
So he offered a small kindness.
Fffsshh—!!!
He pulled out a regular cigarette, rare for him, and lit it with a flick of his lighter.
He didn’t usually smoke the cheap stuff. But for this?
He planted the cigarette upright in the ground, just in front of the largest piece of what used to be Doggins.
A final gesture.
Then, he reached out and collected the small ashen crystal and the battered dog tags lying beside it.
The tags would go to the next of kin.
But the real reason he had insisted on sending the others back to the fortress while he stayed behind, alone, was the ashen crystal.
“…Just as I thought.”
When a being of Ashes dies, it leaves behind nothing. No corpse, no remnants, just disintegrates into soot and ash.
Even the one that died back at the outpost, what remained had only been the mimicked remains of Sergeant Rokton.
Everything still intact among these ruins belonged solely to Sergeant Doggins.
That was why they were called beings of Ashes.
Which meant…
This crystal did not originate from the creature he’d just killed.
And yet, it was familiar.
It matched the traces left behind by certain beings he remembered far too well.
“…The Ashen Order.”
They had appeared again.
….just as they had two centuries ago.
And apparently, it seemed he wasn't the only one who hadn't died.
END σϝ CHAPTER