Chapter 158
『Translator: RainTL』
༺ Remains of the Past (2) ༻
An enormous eyeball was hanging in the air.
The eye was so huge, that large rakes were being used to pull the skin surrounding the eyeball to force it open. That was how enormous and heavy the eye was.
The pupil looked extremely profound; in fact, the cross-shaped pupil appeared so deep and profound that it seemed like it could see through everything it laid its gaze upon. Anyone alive would feel their heart skip a beat.
“Calm down. As you can see… it’s already dead.”
Master’s words called for a deeper inspection. When we looked closely at the thing that was the size of the giants we saw on the floating island… if not bigger… we realized the obvious.
There was no way that one eye could move by itself.
“Korin… This is… very different from the giants we saw on the floating island. This eye is already as big as one of those giants.”
“It’s in a whole different league, right? That’s the original.”
Giants were actually the descendants of the Sky Titans, the Titans of the past.
After being defeated by the gods, they were forced to conceal themselves in tiny places and banish themselves from the world, which resulted in their gradual decline. Unlike the time when they had control over everything and didn’t have to worry about food, they had trouble scavenging for food so their race was forced to decrease their size, and the elders died before they could pass down their wisdom and knowledge of magic.
There were less than ten titans left by now, including Searbhan the Sky Titan we saw in the east, and the Frost Titan of the Northern Kingdom, Utgard.
They were as rare as dragons.
And that was exactly why the Tower of Mages’ plan of reviving the Titans was dangerous.
“This eye… I have seen it before.”
Master said while looking at the leftover trace of the titan to reminisce about the past. She was one of the few survivors that actually lived through the era of Titans.
“Did you also fight against the Titans?”
“Of course not.”
Erin pinched my cheeks and said while giving me a death stare.
“Does your master look that old?”
“Nuooo… Not at all…”
Actually… it seemed that it all finished before she was even born.
“The war between the Titans and the ancestors started after the Sky Titans went recluse. After two big fights at Mag Tuired, the King of Titans fell, thus ending the war.”
“King of Titans…”
“Right. King Balor. Or Balor of the Evil Eye. He was a strong demon who killed the King of Gods, Nuada, and eventually lost to the Danann of Light, Lugh.”
The one who killed Ard Ri, Nuada the Danann of the Sun, huh… I did remember seeing that in the records.
It was quite ironic, actually.
The reason why the Tower of Mages could even attempt to revive the Titans was because of the long preparations made beforehand by Tates Valtazar.
Valtazar, the one who was continuing the legacy of Lugh who killed the King of Titans, was now trying to revive that very king.
“Korin… I know the Tower is trying to revive the past Titans but how are they doing that? They died a long time ago, right?”
“It is possible. As long as they have Undry, the cauldron of abundance and life… which the New Faith calls the Holy Grail, along with ‘divine blood’.”
However, it won’t be a full resurrection. It was hard to find an intact corpse anywhere apart from the Steel Archipelago and the Northern Kingdom, and even those would have half-rotted away already.
“But those bodies would be missing a few parts, so they need other things that can make up for the joints and the flesh.”
“So that’s where the Gold Cult’s golems come in.”
Changing the attributes of a material and mixing them together was right up the alley of the Gold Cult and their alchemic pursuit. If you add to that the Green Cult… which would have learned the secret skills of the druids thanks to Valtazar, the result would be the resurrection of Titans that could be controlled by the mages of the Tower.
I had done something before, which was why I knew about it.
“Master.”
“You want to destroy it, right? But no. We cannot.”
“What if we ignite runes at the same time, right as we are about to run away?”
“Impossible. Rune Resonant Activation is what Tates and I used to often use when attacking the Tower of Mages. Just like teleportation, it cannot be used here.”
“What about physical flames? If we pour bucket loads of oil, that could work, right?”
“Most problems would be dealt with immediately in a laboratory of this level. This place is overflowing with mages, after all.”
Two of my proposals were turned down and that was when Marie raised one of her own.
“What if I take Doggo out from my shadow, let him destroy everything, and retrieve him back?”
“I would refrain from that unless you were willing to sacrifice Doggo for it. Capturing familiars and forcibly getting rid of the connection between them is pretty easy for someone at the level of an elder.”
“I can make Chunsik do it then!”
Flinch! For some reason, it felt like I saw her shadow flinch a little.
“If you give the power back to the ghoul, it would be able to use most of its previous potential. It will probably be at the level of a professor, but if you want to scorch the eyeball of the King of Titans, you will need 4 or 5 professors.”
Marie pondered after hearing that the ghoul also had to survive the attacks from countless mages that would come here to defend the eyeball while destroying it. She seemed to be finding it wasteful to throw a mage of that level away as a one-off use.
“The salt pond has seen an increased efficiency thanks to Chunsik’s flame magic. I don’t think it’s worth throwing him away for something uncertain.”
Using an elder mage to boil salt water, huh…
-Creak!
That was when someone walked in through the doors that we had used ourselves.
“Korin. Hide…!”
Master hurriedly pulled my hand to conceal us inside a mountain of experiment materials. Marie also looked around for a bit in a hurry before crawling underneath a nearby desk.
“Hihi. So just a little bit more and it’s done?”
“Exactly. But Mr. Scaith. The damage done to the body is too big. For the other Titans, it’s okay, but this is the only part of the King of Titans that we…”
“Ahh ahh~. That’s why I’m lending you this, right??”
Dun Scaith said while taking out a large cauldron from his body.
“That’s…”
“Undry.”
Master and I immediately noticed what that was.
The treasure of the King of Gods, Dagda. One of the 4 treasures of the Danann and the pot of infinite life.
“Absorb a little bit more of the divine blood, and I can fill the rest with my flesh. Kihihik!”
His unique laughter which sounded like that of a lunatic faintly left his lips. As always, he was a disgusting guy.
“I see… something like that was born from Undry.”
Master lamented at the sight of her ancestor’s treasure being misused. We were so close that our shoulders were touching, so I felt her breath as she sighed.
“Oops, sorry.”
“Don’t worry. It’s a bit cramped in here.”
“I’m fine. More importantly…”
“Shh…!”
The guy started to move so I quickly covered her mouth with my hand, so that we wouldn’t let out a single sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“Shh… Wait a second.”
Warp warp! I could hear the change going on in his body. It seemed that he had changed into a demonic cow or a dragon.
“Are there some rats in here… or maybe not?”
The splashing sound of his footsteps slowly drew near.
Starting a fight here… would make things quite tedious. Unless the seeds were starting to sprout, fighting against them with only the three of us was no different from an act of suicide.
Please don’t find us.
“Is there someone here? Or no?”
His mouth was right in front of the mountain of materials we were hiding in, evident from the disgusting odor being given off by his breath. Right as his eyes were about to find us through the gap…
-Squeak!
“Got ya!”
Scaith let out a breath at where the sound came from as the scent of something being reduced to ashes reached our noses.
-Squeak! Squeak squeak!
A group of rats started running across the room.
“Ehng? It was actually rats?”
“They’re our experimental rats. They must have escaped their cage because someone didn’t do their job properly.”
“Okkay~?”
Dun Scaith turned around from where we were hiding. That was a close call… Glancing at where Marie was hiding herself, I saw that Doggo was crawling back into her shadow.
It must have been Doggo that brought those rats from somewhere.
‘Great job Doggo!’
-Clomp clomp!
Soon, his footsteps returned to that of a human as the two of them opened the door of the laboratory to go outside.
However, it was too early to be relieved, because there was a chance that they were faking it.
“Let’s stay like this for a bit more.”
“...”
“Master?”
She wasn’t saying anything. When I turned my eyes towards her… I realized that for some reason, her eyes were nervously rolling around as her face started to turn red.
“What’s wrong?”
“H… huh? No… I… was just thinking about how big your hands were…”
“Your face is just too small, Master.”
Even though my hands weren’t massive like the lid of a cauldron, they were slightly bigger than the hands of an average male. And Master was on the petite side in terms of both her head and her body compared to an average girl so that was probably why.
“It’s incredible, actually.”
“Hmm? W, what do you mean?”
“The fact that you can do such things with a spear with such a small body… I really respect you a lot, Master.”
“Ughh…”
She twisted her body from embarrassment.
Umm, if you twist your body when we are this close, that’s not so good to your disciple!
“Korin… 10,000 more swings when we go back.”
“Wait… why? I can, but can I ask why?”
“I… will be guiding you one-on-one, so… look forward to it.”
Master? Wouldn’t ‘Prepare yourself,’ make more sense in this context?
***
At last, we arrived at the 8th floor and were forced to make a decision.
“T, there are a total of 19 laboratories. They are not personal laboratories and all have different equipment installed, so it is hard to say which rooms would be occupied and stuff…”
Hearing the words of Elder Admelech, who was now Chunsik, the ace of the Dunareff family’s salt pond business, we felt the need to separate ourselves.
“What do you think? Staying in a group of 3 would definitely be safer.”
“No. It’s not a good idea to stall a secret mission for too long. It would probably be a better idea to separate and create a commotion if things go south, before grouping back together.”
“I agree with the chairman. Doggo and I can also separate and search for the saintess.”
Like that, we all split up to search through the vast 8th floor of the Tower of Mages. As for how to go all the way underground from the 7th floor, we already had a plan in mind.
“Hmm…”
The 8th floor only consisted of the laboratories of the Tower Lord and elders, so there were a lot less people walking around than on the other floors.
Even so, I kept my footsteps as silent as possible as I walked across the laboratories of the elders, which were therefore enormous and full of all sorts of strange experiments.
‘Estelle… Big sis Estelle. Where are you?’
She probably wasn’t being mistreated except for being forced to provide some blood, but she was someone I had forged a good relationship with alongside Miru in the previous iteration, so I couldn’t help but feel concerned about her well-being.
I was slowly advancing forward and at one point when I entered another laboratory… I noticed that the air felt rather different.
It felt like a ranch… a chicken coop.
The defecations were clearly overstaying their welcome. They gave off a disgusting odor and I could hear the faint growl of creatures.
At first, I was surprised that they could survive in an environment like this, but unknowingly frowned after seeing what they were.
Small creatures that were still connected by umbilical cords… blended mixtures that looked way too eccentric to be called an organism were crawling across the floor.
“Chimeras…”
They were a commonly used familiar of the mages in the Tower, who actively undertook such experiments for their benefit.
Ever since the Witch Revolution, the Tower of Mages had been regularly getting inspected by the Guardian Alliance, Academy, and the Royal Court.
Inhumane experiments and unauthorized tests were prohibited, and that was why the mages of the Tower had secret labs outside.
However, chimeras were different.
Despite being a horrible blasphemy to life, this act of combining organisms went unrestricted. The common consensus was that it was fine as long as it didn’t concern or involve humans.
“Purruru…”
I looked at the poor animal that had its neck and body restricted by the planks of the cage, that was only allowed to eat and give birth.
It was a unicorn.
A fairy pony with a horn.
Rather than a demon, it was closer to being a spiritual beast.
Even this existence that had a mysterious and holy presence was nothing but a viviparous organism that could give birth to chimeras in the hands of the Tower of Mages.
“...”
It looked at me with a clear gaze. The unicorn gave off a pure and innocent aura despite being forced into this disgusting cage. It conveyed to me with its gaze its pure will, and its hope of death.
“Personally, I’m the type of person who thinks everyone should strive to live no matter the circumstances.”
Pururuk. The unicorn somehow shook its head despite the restrictions on its neck, after seemingly understanding what I said.
“Krrrng…!”
It pleaded while looking at the spear in my hands. When it looked back into my eyes with a resolute gaze, I realized that there was no other option.
I lifted my spear as it lowered its forehead in response, allowing for an easy stab to its brain.
-Stab!
Honestly, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The warmth of life seeped out of its body. The head of the unicorn dropped low, matching my line of sight with the horn on its forehead.
Horn of a unicorn.
It was a legendary material that could be used when crafting high-end equipment that could cleanse every poison but…
“I hope you have a better life next time.”
I didn’t feel like damaging the corpse of the unicorn who had already had a hard life. It might be hypocritical but that was what I felt.
***
Right when I turned my back to the unicorn that entered an eternal slumber, white light enveloped my surroundings for a bit before quickly going away.
Drop!
Hearing something drop, I turned to the ground and found that the horn of the unicorn was right next to my feet after being cut off clean.
“...”
Was this some kind of revelation? Or perhaps the will of the unicorn?
“I’ll gratefully accept it.”
Taking the horn, I left the laboratory, enveloped by a myriad of emotions.
………
……
…
I came across an elder once after that, but I managed to stay hidden thanks to my amazing stealth skills.
And I found Princess Estelle when looking through the third laboratory.
“Well, I knew you weren’t being mistreated but…”
“Uuun?”
Prison bars were the only thing here that resembled anything from a prison. Sitting down on an elegant mattress of fine silk… the pink-haired saintess had a glass of wine in her hands while enjoying the ocean view.
Seeing her enjoy a luxurious life by herself while others suffered made me feel a little frustrated, despite knowing well that it wasn’t her fault.
“Wah! Junior! You’re here to save me!”
Her eyes and face turned bright the moment she saw me.
But seriously, how unfortunate and hard was the life of a saintess?
“Quick! Get me out of this place!”
“Your Highness.”
“Yes?”
“May I get a kiss on my cheeks if I save you?”
It’s every man’s dream to get a kiss from an actual princess, right?
“I will give you one on your lips if you save me. That will be my first kiss by the way.”
“...I’m on it.”