Chapter 90

The Fourth Secret of Shion Pollinglight.

‘He contains.’

They’re circling. They circle.

These things circle endlessly.

And they scream.

‘Come back.’

‘Please come back, our lives.’

‘Our lives, which we can no longer even remember, please come back.’

Who are you?

Who are you that I have already forgotten?

Are you in tears or anger, what on earth are you?

Perhaps they are all of those things. It’s more agonizing because I can’t explain it clearly with anything.

It’s clear that I swallowed something, but I have forgotten what I swallowed.

Ah, when will it ever come, our peace.

Will it ever come?

It has to.

All waiting must have an end.

But, this waiting, until when?

It’s painful and agonizing.

Will anyone ever understand?

Breathing hurts.

My blood feels like lava and my flesh feels like it’s being cooked.

It tears sharply from the inside, as if I have swallowed a thousand blades.

Even if I want to muster the will to stand, that will fade away in vain.

It just hurts.

It’s just agonizing, and agonizing again.

How many thousands of days has this been?

How many hundreds of millions of times has this moment occurred?

I want to spit it out.

Please, let me spit it out.

Get out, you damned things-!!!

“No.”

I gritted my teeth.

“NO-!!!”

I wanted to vomit, but I swallowed it instead.

I pressed it down and down, making it into a lump.

“I will not spit you out, yet!”

My chest was heavy with my breath.

But what did that even matter?

Compared to the time I had seen, this was a trifle.

It was embarrassingly light compared to the tears I couldn’t bear to carry!

“Listen, my secrets! You must remain secrets!”

I suppressed myself.

I broke the rafters of my heart and shattered the foundation stone.

That’s how I protected the secret.

I put the secret where my heart should have been.

‘He dreams a vain dream.’

‘He does not trust.’

‘He does not give up.’

That’s right, I will not give up.

I will not give up!

No matter what kind of cripple I become.

No matter what kind of bizarre state I end up in.

No matter what, what kind of… agony… there is, even if…

I won’t lose this heart.

I won’t forget this hatred.

And so, in the end…

“…I will bring down that thousand-year Empire!!!”

A soul distorted by deep-seated resentment.

The most powerful and most ferocious.

The most heartbreaking Fourth Ars.

‘The Screaming Hunchback.’

***

The Breath of Light was coming.

With its citadel-like body, it made the ground rumble while endlessly shooting radiant arrows.

Enveloped in all sorts of light, it was the form of a dazzling god.

A threat so massive it couldn’t be compared to anything else.

An Ancient God was such an existence.

It wielded immense power according to its will, making even a disaster seem shabby.

When it shot a radiant arrow, it left a deep gouge in the earth.

When it exhaled a gust of hot air, the atmosphere was set ablaze.

I stood before it.

Under the radiance, the Reclusive Prince was also beautiful.

Amethus got goosebumps.

His jade eyes trembled.

Something was crawling out of my throat.

No, he realized that something deeper than my throat, lower than my heart, trapped at the bottom of my soul, was crawling up, reeking of a foul odor.

“…It feels uncomfortably full.”

I laughed hollowly.

It hurt.

It hurt immensely.

It was as if thousands of blades were stirring inside my belly, as if lava was flowing instead of blood, as if lightning was tearing my nerves.

Such pain surged from the bottom of my soul and blocked my throat.

“This is why I hate the Fourth Ars.”

My breath was constricted.

It was agonizing and painful.

The Fourth Ars was truly difficult.

I had to take out what was filling up my throat.

With my own hands, directly.

“…….”

I opened my mouth.

I was screaming, but there was no sound.

The ‘Fantasy Finger’ gathered.

Invisible hands grabbed me.

They prevented me from struggling.

Then, they grabbed my opened mouth.

The ‘Fantasy Finger’ tore my mouth open.

It ripped it all the way down to my navel, exposing my throat and intestines.

I tore my own mouth and my eyes became bloodshot from the insane pain.

But there was no scream.

Instead of a scream, there was something else that was welling up.

My bloodshot eyes were wide open.

The ‘Fantasy Finger’ continued to tear me apart.

It tore my body here and there.

Blood flowed and then pooled, and my skin was stripped off.

Chunks of flesh fell off. Yet, it was still writhing.

That’s how the lump in my chest was revealed.

The welling Fourth Ars was writhing blackly.

“…What kind of Ars is this…”

Amethus groaned.

Even the Breath of Light stood blankly and looked down at me, as if bewildered.

What kind of Ars was this?

An Ars that you had to tear your own mouth open and expose your throat to take out.

What on earth was the state of his soul?

The revealed Fourth Ars squeezed between my intestines and popped out.

It was a human-like form.

It was pitch-black and emaciated.

It had no eyes and no mouth.

It popped out of my chest, but it was several times bigger than me.

It was three times the size of an average person.

No, that thing was me.

Even though it was so burnt and emaciated that it looked like it would break at any moment, that thing, which was pulling out its true power and emitting heat, was the form of my soul.

As proof, look. The skin I had spat out had lost its vitality.

The Fourth Ars, my soul, was in a terrible state.

It writhed here and there as if even the sunlight was painful, and then it began to hunch over the pool of blood that my skin had spat out.

Unable to control its long arms and legs, it crouched deeply in a bizarre shape.

“…….”

The soul of a bizarre form crouched and gasped for breath.

It was pitch-black and emaciated, but its size was quite large.

It seemed to have no more strength to move.

It seemed unable to do anything now.

Then, my torn skin opened its mouth.

“Get up.”

I shouted.

The skin of the Reclusive Prince urged my soul.

“Get up!”

The black soul tried to stand.

It trembled but tried to do it.

But it couldn’t.

It was already burnt to a crisp like charcoal.

It couldn’t do anything.

In the end, it just crouched and gasped for breath.

Even trembling was too much effort.

Then, another shout erupted.

“Get up, you, Shion Pollinglight-!”

A long line shot out from my skin.

The Third Ars, ‘The Heated Iron Bloodline’.

The iron bloodline wrapped tightly around my soul’s neck.

It wasn’t just one line.

Iron bloodlines endlessly burst out from my skin and wrapped around my emaciated soul.

My soul struggled.

It begged to be allowed to just crouch, to remain on its knees, to rest because it was tired, to just put an end to this persistent, dreadful pain.

It writhed and begged as if in a frenzy.

But the Third Secret, ‘He does not give up’.

The iron bloodline became a yoke.

My skin endlessly threatened and the iron bloodline choked my soul into submission.

It made it so that I could not give up.

I swallowed my blood and flesh again to inflate my body.

The iron bloodline wrapped and wrapped around the soul.

It endlessly wrapped around it and the soul just grew larger.

The soul, which was about three times the size of a person, swelled up and soon surpassed the Breath of Light.

It became larger than the Breath of Light, which was bigger than a citadel.

It was so huge that the tall trees only reached its waist.

The Breath of Light looked up at the Fourth Ars, which was twice its size, a monster that had wrapped its body in dreadfully hot and heavy ropes to inflate its size.

Wrapped in the iron bloodline, it took on the form of a black hunchback.

Even with its back bent, it was twice the size of the Breath of Light.

Its arms were bizarrely long and its hands were bizarrely large.

Its upper body was massive and its lower body was weak.

It looked like it would fall at any moment, but it didn’t.

My soul was crying.

It just streamed with tears of blood from its eyeless face.

It was so sad that its eye sockets melted and flowed down.

The tears of blood, as expected, had a fishy smell.

The ‘Fantasy Finger’ gathered.

Dozens of them gathered at the hunchback’s tightly sealed mouth and tore it open once more.

The hunchback’s mouth ripped, all the way down to its chest.

Now, only a gaping maw with a forcibly broken jaw was visible.

“Ah.”

This was the Fourth Ars of Septem Arcana.

‘The Screaming Hunchback.’

“Ah, woo, ah—.”

Only then did the scream erupt.

It was a chilling scream filled with millions of resentments.

“Ugh-aahhhh—!!!!”

***

The hunchback looked up at the sky and screamed.

Its mouth was so wide open that its lower jaw hit its chest, breaking its collarbone.

Its head was thrown back and had stuck to its shoulders and torso.

It even looked like its head had burrowed into its torso.

“—Aahhhh—!!”

The tears of blood and the screams didn’t stop.

It was scratching at its own soul, causing heat to rise from its entire body in a haze.

What the ‘Hunchback’ was wrapped in was the ‘Iron Bloodline’.

It was dreadfully hot and dreadfully heavy.

Its hill-like body emitted a sticky heat.

Since its body was made of interwoven iron bloodlines, it looked tough enough that not a single blade could pierce it.

“A-woo, ah, woo-aahhh–!!”

The entire island trembled.

The flocks of birds and deer, as well as the Breath of Light and the diviner Amethus, cringed and froze.

The island of Arete, which had been cozy and beautiful with the warm sunlight, changed into the backdrop of a nightmare the moment the ‘Hunchback’ appeared.

What should I call that momentum?

To call it a majestic appearance would be too chilling.

To say it has authority would be too pathetic.

What on earth should I call that scream that melts reality into a foul-smelling nightmare?

“Ugh-woo-ughhhhh-!”

The hunchback lowered its gaze.

Since its jaw, neck, shoulders, head, and torso were stuck together in one lump, it couldn’t see what was in front of it without bending at the waist.

Tears of blood flowed.

Its black, glossy eyes looked forward.

I, with what little sanity I had left, turned my gaze and then I saw the Breath of Light.

I saw its chest.

“-Co—.”

On the chest of the Breath of Light, a brand placed by humans.

A lion and an eagle and a dragon and a human.

The unforgettable symbol of the thousand-year Empire.

The hunchback’s face contorted into a grotesque and terrifying shape.

Millions of resentments howled at once.

“Cordis—!!!”

The hunchback charged.

Scattering tears of blood, it threw its hill-like body and covered the Breath of Light.

That Empire, the detestable Cordis!

Millions of resentments screamed.

Tear it, tear it to shreds!

Grind down the symbol of the Empire and drink it!

The Breath of Light fell on its backside, and the hunchback climbed on top of it.

[—!]

The Breath of Light thrashed around underneath.

It shot out radiance, but the hunchback didn’t care and tightly clenched its bizarrely large hands into fists and then it began to wildly pummel the Breath of Light.

“-Cordis, Cor-dis—!!”

It screamed and threw punches.

It punched the Breath of Light, even though it knew the anger was misplaced.

Even though it knew that the Breath of Light was also a victim of the Empire, it punched it with all its might because of the uncontrollable resentment.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh, ughhhhh—!!!”

Anger is inherently easy to misplace.

There was nothing to be done once it was in sight.

There was nothing to be done once it was hated.

My heart was torn to pieces and twisted, but the resentment was too deep to do anything about it.

“-Ugh!”

Every time my fist hit the light orb I was wearing instead of a head, it was so painful that it felt like it would turn to ashes, but I didn’t care.

Instead, I became even more enraged and moved my hands.

“-Cordisssssss–!!!”

***

“…My goodness….”

Amethus groaned as he watched the hunchback unilaterally beat the Breath of Light.

The Breath of Light, which had shown such overwhelming power against me and Amethus, was instantly pinned down and just taking a beating.

One was an Ancient God.

One was a lump of resentment.

Mythology and a nightmare were so intertwined that it didn’t seem real at all.

Every time the hunchback punched, the entire island trembled, making him sigh.

“…I honestly couldn’t believe you when you said you would bring down the Empire.”

He had thought it was an exaggeration.

Or he had heard it as a story of a very distant future.

Amethus wanted to avenge his ancestors’ grudge, but he never thought that he could actually bring down the thousand-year-old Empire.

“That’s because, isn’t it Cordis?”

Isn’t it the Empire that has held the heart of the continent ever since Hotus?

So, how could he believe it?

But, that chilling majesty… Amethus swallowed.

“…But Your Highness, it may not be a vain dream after all.”

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