wavenovel Chapter 234: Open World (4)
Chapter 234: Open World (4)
Translator: Dreamscribe
Luzen was a harmonious and beautiful world.
Within the embrace of Great Nature, everything was abundant and happy.
There were disputes, but they were resolved peacefully under the wisdom of wise leaders. Above all, the emphasis on harmony among all things ensured that balance was never broken.
To live in harmony within Great Nature and build a great civilization.
That belief had long remained as a source of pride in their hearts, and over their long history, it had become truth.
Until the invasion began, that is.
Nature burned, and countless lives were lost. The invaders showed no mercy and were overwhelmingly powerful.
A final stand was being made in the last remaining city, but holding out was the best they could manage.
"O Great Nature, protect us. Save us from suffering and despair...."
"Grant us the strength to defeat our enemies."
"Please...."
They hoped for an answer from Great Nature, but as always, only silence greeted them. Instead of an answer, all that came were the sounds of the city crumbling and burning, and screams.
Luzen's last remaining priestess took in her hands the Forbidden Book kept deep within the city's underground sanctum. It was sealed with specially forged chains that only a priestess could undo.
According to the records, the first Great Priestess had stolen a glimpse beyond the heavens with her eye of enlightenment. She had left behind a record as she withered and died, and the Forbidden Book in the priestess's hands was that very record.
"Priestess, that is...."
"It is the book in which the first Great Priestess recorded what she learned of the eternally Hungry One, after peering beyond the heavens."
"Are you saying it truly existed? It wasn't just a legend...."
According to legend, the Great Priestess had wielded a tremendous power until she withered away and died. It was a horrific power that corrupted all things in creation.
The land tainted by the Great Priestess's Corruption still remained, designated as a forbidden zone. A full half of Luzen had been rendered that way.
If this power could defeat the cruel invaders, the priestess would gladly offer her body and soul. Even if she were cast into an eternally burning hell, if it meant saving her people, she would do so willingly.
That was the burden a priestess had to bear.
"Never open this. If you use this power, the Hungry One will devour you, and you will be tortured for eternity."
The warning, carved into the Forbidden Book by the Great Priestess using her own bones, bore those words. The guards, sensing the priestess's iron resolve, could not bring themselves to stop her. They could only shed tears of grief and ask to join her.
"I will offer my humble soul as well."
"...Yes, let us fall into hell together."
She carried the Forbidden Book up to the surface.
An explosion shook the city. The sky was stained red from the burning earth below.
The invaders who had breached the city were treating people like objects, herding them into one place. They were gathering them for a clean, efficient mass execution.
They handled the people as though they were garbage about to be discarded.
"N-no!"
"Aaaaah!"
"Gaaaakh!"
Executed on the spot, or dragged away and dumped alongside other corpses.
It was one or the other.
The soldiers' weapons could not pierce that armor. Even the sacred weapons that had long protected Luzen could do no more than leave scratches.
The priestess, her body trembling with rage she could not contain, glared at the approaching invaders.
Her father, who had gone to the invaders seeking peace, had been skinned alive. Her mother had been burned alive. Her younger sibling had been tormented and then beheaded. All of it had been done to draw her out, the heart of Luzen, so they could kill her.
Because that would make the massacre all the easier.
CLANK!
She broke the seal on the Forbidden Book. Immediately, the aura of Corruption flowed out and her skin began to distort.
The priestess revealed herself before the guards and the invaders.
The invaders approached her, then flinched and stopped. They had noticed that the ashen current flowing from the Forbidden Book in her hands was no trivial thing.
"O eternally Hungry One! I offer you my soul! Grant me power!"
Her vision was dyed in ash gray.
As though her consciousness had lifted free, it traveled beyond the sky into a world of starlight. Through the Forbidden Book, her consciousness had connected to the Hungry One.
[Please, please stop..., AAAAAGH! I'll do anything. Just let me rest a little. Please!]
Contrary to what the priestess had expected, all she heard were utterly wretched screams. Connected through the Forbidden Book, she could read the Hungry One's will. It was shrieking and desperately pleading. The Hungry One, whose mere touch of power had corrupted half of Luzen, was desperately begging for mercy.
"Wh-why...."
Just encountering a fragment of the terrible energy contained in the Forbidden Book felt as though it would shatter her soul.
Why had such a being been reduced to that state?
What kind of existence could have done that to such a terrifying entity...?
Her thoughts could not continue.
FWOOSH!
Her vision returned to normal, and the Forbidden Book burst into flames and vanished, just like that. All strength drained from her body, and she collapsed to the ground.
The invaders sneered at her.
Clearly, the lowly monkeys had tried to perform a trick and failed.
The invaders began approaching at a leisurely pace.
Behind the priestess, countless lives trembled in fear.
She was powerless.
So utterly powerless.
Even the power she had tried to obtain by offering her soul had been denied. Her head felt like it would burst from resentment and fury, but all she could do was sit there and weep.
The priestess stared blankly up at the sky.
The blue sky was being fouled, swallowed by rising black smoke.
"Please...."
The light in her eyes was dying.
She didn't care what was done to her.
She could accept dying a wretched death, falling into hell and suffering for eternity.
Even if she were hurled into an abyss beyond despair, she had but one single wish she desperately clung to.
So....
"Please..., please...!"
If someone could hear this voice, if someone took pity on them.
"Then drag them into hell along with me."
Drip! Drip!
Tears of blood streamed from her eyes.
Her bloody tears fell to the ground and seeped into the earth. That would be her hollow final words.
The Luzenians who had been so brutally massacred until now had hurled curses at the invaders, but none of it had worked. It only drew more mockery.
The invaders closed in right before her.
"A lowly monkey that gave us trouble for so long."
"We're only taking this one. Apparently, she's getting a special taxidermy treatment."
The light in the priestess's eyes died completely.
She regretted having learned their language in an attempt to negotiate. Just as the invaders raised their weapons to massacre the survivors,
RRRUMMMBLE!
Was it thunder?
No, it was nothing so mundane as thunder. It was the kind of sound that seemed as though the sky itself was collapsing.
The invaders flinched, startled by the sudden noise, and looked upward.
WHOOSH!
Was that the wind?
Something thick and viscous licked across the priestess's entire body as it passed. That dense flow spread across the entire city and extinguished the flames that had been raging as if to burn the world, snuffing them out in an instant.
"Ah, ah...."
The priestess felt a chill crawl through her.
The back of her neck prickled and goosebumps erupted across her body. A horrific sensation engulfed her, as though even her fingernails and toenails were rising from their beds.
Something, something was coming.
An incomprehensible being that crushed despair itself, something beyond horror, was approaching.
The Hungry One?
This was an overwhelmingly superior existence, the kind that would dismiss the Hungry One as nothing more than an insect. The invaders, too, seemed to sense the foreboding, tensing up as they watched the sky with guarded eyes.
The surroundings grew dark.
The sky grew dark.
The world was dyed in darkness.
Luzen had fallen into an abyss.
Even though the sun was shining, the light swerved away from the sky as though submitting in obedience.
HSSSSSS!
Space rippled and a black dot appeared.
Every cloud in the sky was sucked into the black dot, and the atmosphere convulsed violently. The black dot grew and grew until it seemed it would swallow the entire sky.
It became a black sphere, wreathed in the fires of hell, gazing down upon all things with lofty indifference.
That alone was enough to overwhelm the invaders, and their weapons clattered to the ground.
The priestess, the guards, and the survivors lost their senses, their eyes glazing over.
"It, it comes...."
She uttered those words without thinking.
That black sphere, incomprehensible to a mortal mind, was merely a door. From beyond the sky and the far reaches of the cosmos, a supreme being was descending upon Luzen.
Something long emerged from the black sphere.
It seized the fabric of space, tearing fissures across the sky. From those cracks, blue ichor dripped down as if the sky were bleeding.
What had emerged from the black sphere were tentacles.
FLASH!
Just looking at the tentacles was enough to feel as though one's eyes would be seared away.
Unfamiliar characters, wills, and images surged chaotically, flooding the priestess's mind with chaos.
One, two, three, four....
The tentacles, whose forms mortal eyes could not even properly perceive, kept multiplying. With each one, the fissures in Luzen's sky grew more numerous.
A being from a distant place.
A great existence that had devoured suffering, greed, and despair.
A god who reigned over madness, joy, and darkness, scattering light that seeped into all things.
At last, from within the black sphere, that being fully revealed itself.
"Ah, AAAAAGH!"
"GAAAAAAAH!"
The invaders clutched their heads in agony. They screamed and slammed their heads against the ground. They shrieked as if the world were ending and thrashed as though insects were gnawing their bodies apart.
Its mere existence was enough to cause that.
It was a being so immense it could easily cover the sky. Draped in what appeared to be a nebula through which starlight flowed, it gazed down upon Luzen with hollow, empty eyes.
"Ah...."
What could one even call that being?
An Outer God, come from beyond the edge of the world.
"An Evil God...."
It was undoubtedly an Evil God.
It crept into her mind.
It approached as if seeping in.
A torrent of information flooded her mind, leaving her dizzy.
The priestess could not look directly at the Evil God.
"Ngh, ugh! Urk!"
The priestess's guards suffered too, though not as badly as the invaders.
Then, a voice echoed in everyone's minds.
[Fear not.]
It was a will that seemed to engrave itself directly upon the soul.
[Supreme beings have crossed the Abyss’s mire and descended upon thee. Open thy minds and offer thy knowledge.]
At the same time, the invaders began frantically striking their own helmets with their weapons. They were literally trying to open their heads. Fortunately, the people of Luzen were not affected.
"E-everyone, look down!"
At her command, everyone cast their gazes downward.
She recalled the words of the Great Priestess.
"Make your wishes carefully, child."
"Huh? Why?"
"Do you think a great being capable of granting our wishes would understand us in the way we intend?"
Wishes could come true.
But they would be granted in ways that mortals could not comprehend.
The priestess finally understood what the Great Priestess had meant.
* * *
"Hmm."
Jinwoo looked at the situation outside and found himself at a loss.
It seemed that the translation had been calibrated to match the abilities gained from absorbing the whale. A minor mishap and misunderstanding that arose during interpretation, so to speak.
[GAAAAAAAH!]
[Ngh, ugh, UUUUURGH!]
[Hee, HEEEEK! HEEK!]
The armored ones were convulsing.
It seemed like the Dimensional Transit Ship was the cause, but he couldn't pinpoint the exact reason. Was it because the ship's appearance was so horrific that it shook their very souls?
Tiris had abandoned aesthetics and gone all-in on performance, and the results were truly remarkable!
"Still, that can't be the only reason."
The most likely cause was, of course, the whale.
The whale had been a transcendent being that served as a sun, and they had absorbed that transcendent being to upgrade the ship. The Dimensional Transit Ship itself now contained far too much information.
The crew members blinked, then looked at each other.
"...Well, the invasion stopped, so it should be fine, right?"
"W-we protected world peace again this time."
"Hah, Arsilan for the win!"
"Wooow...."
"Th-this..., this is what it means to be a Hero!"
The crew was forcing their enthusiasm.
We were beings from Arsilan who spread light and hope. Just as Arsilan had once been invaded, we were surveying dimensions to rescue those under invasion and eliminate Erosion.
In any case, looking at the bottom line, they had stopped a massacre and kept the peace.
[O-open your heads....]
[Open your heads....]
[You must split your souls and offer them!]
The Dimensional Transit Ship translated and relayed the invaders' words.
THUD! THUD!
The invaders convulsed and began bashing their own heads wildly. However, they did not remove their helmets. It was as though the armor was fused with their bodies.
It was a somewhat bizarre sight.
On the bright side, at least the indigenous people of this dimension were not affected to that degree.
"They seem like bad guys, so it should be fine, right?"
"They look like the invaders who killed that whale...."
The crew member was right.
Black spheres emerged from the surface of the Dimensional Transit Ship and spread outward. Upon contact with the local atmosphere, the spheres rippled and warped.
They seemed to be reacting to the rich energy mixed into the atmosphere.
The indigenous people screamed at the sight and fell to their knees.
[491,216 dimensional inhabitants detected.]
The information display showed nearly 500,000 inhabitants gathered in one place. They were in a wide-open area, and it appeared the invaders had set up some kind of device, apparently intending to eliminate them all at once.
Had they been about to hold some kind of mass execution?
A figure who appeared to be of high rank sat in a chair, trembling violently as he stared up at the sky. He was having a seizure at the sight of the Dimensional Transit Ship that had appeared overhead.
He stood out conspicuously in elaborate full-body armor studded densely with gem-like stones.
His chest was covered in medals.
Whatever their internal politics were, it didn't matter.
If they could be saved, they would be saved. Simple as that.
"Free everyone first. Then bring those guys in."
There was far too little information.
Upon receiving Jinwoo's order, the Dimensional Transit Ship relayed commands to the spheres. The spheres sliced through the air at tremendous speed and arrived at the location.
Chains extended from the spheres and made contact with the commander and invaders on the scene.
FLASH!
The invaders vanished from the spot, spatially transported to a holding area within the Dimensional Transit Ship.
The many inhabitants who had been trembling in fear watched the scene with dazed expressions.
"Tell them we'll protect them and to go somewhere safe. And..., try to convey my intent as accurately as possible."
The Dimensional Transit Ship immediately transmitted its will to the freed inhabitants.
[The great will shall embrace you; return to where you belong.]
The inhabitants dropped to their knees and bowed their heads deeply.
They reached both hands toward the sky and shouted something.
Without translation, it was impossible to understand, but they appeared to be celebrating.
Jinwoo and the crew wore satisfied expressions.
Ignis smiled warmly and nodded.
"The light of Arsilan has reached them as well. Perhaps now they'll hold on to hope, just like the people of Arsilan?"
The crew nodded at Ignis's words.
"Now that's what being a Reincarnated Hero is all about!"
"Heh! This is why you reincarnate!"
"It's nice seeing how happy they are."
Just as the heartwarming atmosphere had everyone smiling,
[Language data acquired. Translating.]
What were they saying as they celebrated?
Words of gratitude always felt good to hear, no matter when.
The crew members, reminded of when they had saved Levannas, waited for the translation with eager anticipation.
[O Evil God!]
[O great evil!]
[We worship you!]
"Huh?"
"Um?"
Evil God?
Why?
We just saved them, so why were they calling us an Evil God?
Was it a translation error?
The crew looked at Jinwoo. Jinwoo checked the Dimensional Transit Ship for errors, but the system was 100% functional. The cheering gradually began to take on a more frenzied tone. Words of worship to the Evil God and curses directed at the invaders poured out.
The inhabitants began to sing.
[Across the ocean of the sky, a great evil shall come.]
[It shall embrace both light and darkness....]
[And with its madness, all things in the world shall burn.]
The song was eerie, heavy with fury, sorrow, and resentment.
The crew all looked at Jinwoo.
"......"
"......"
Their eyes asked if this was really okay.
Jinwoo was, for once, flustered.
"W-well, anyway...."
Jinwoo avoided the crew's gazes.
What was done was done.
"Um, well..., let's think of it as new content."
It was very fresh(?) content, the kind that didn't exist in Arsilan.
He had no idea if the Heroes would enjoy it, but at the very least, it was fresh!
"O-of course!"
"All hail the Creator God."
"Wooow...."
The crew was kind.
There was a slight delay, but they rallied behind him as quickly as they could.
The crew gained a small but real understanding of how Jinwoo had been running Arsilan Saga all this time.