Chapter 236

Chapter 236: The Creator’s Error

The Creator’s Error
Chapter 236. The Creator’s Error
Ferdá thought upon hearing Ureas’s scream-like sound.
“Olivia, right?”
Ferdá had never thought of Olivia that way.
That was why he believed Olivia was the same.
Olivia, who received the favor of all men and, at the same time, the same amount of filthy gazes.
For Ferdá, the very idea of her loving someone was incomprehensible.
— Even that admired Archduke Golt! Alexander! And even me! That girl desires it so desperately, so why don’t you!
Ureas continued talking.
“…..”
— If you created desire, it is natural that it ends up in the hands of those who pursue it! How can the heavens be so indifferent!
His lament was brief, his eyes burning with hatred once again.
— I will kill you and Olivia will be mine. This castle will also be mine, and everything will be mine…!
Ferdá was certain.
“He has been exposed to Trauma.”
Trauma brainwashes by transforming human regret into joy, but Ferdá knew what Gokma had said.
He had said that the Trauma in the place Ferdá visited was special.
If that specialty maximizes these persecutory delusions in this manner, it makes sense.
Ferdá reached a conclusion.
Now that he has changed like this, he is no longer an element Olivia can control.
An uncontrollable tool has only one fate.
“Eliminate him.”
At the same time, a question arose.
Will I even be able to catch this bastard?
Seeing that black body, one might think he has turned into a demon, but that burning body was unusual.
He had never heard of such a demon.
Could it really be his true form, as he says?
If so, this is an entity unknown to Ferdá, and there is no certainty of winning against the unknown.
“In the worst case, I will simply use the last resort.”
Ferdá is a mage.
A mage always keeps a last resort that can change the tide of things close to his heart.
It was then that it happened.
From behind Ferdá, a cold air surged.
Yet since it was not directed at his body, he remained motionless.
What flew from behind his back was an arrow tinged with silver.
— Kuaaaak!!
He used a bow with so much draw weight that it drove back the body of the monster Ureas.
Ferdá turned his head to see where the arrow came from.
There were knights bearing the emblem of the Imperial Army, and in their center stood a tall, proud commander.
The man carrying a massive two-handed sword on his back was Oldin Rooster.
He approaches.
And, casting a glance at Ferdá, he passes by, offering Ureas a polite greeting.
— Greetings, Prince Ureas.
— Rooster… Bastard, you knew who I was and still attacked!
As Ureas vented his rage, the flames grew even fiercer.
He gave himself away, so he could not even excuse himself by saying he mistook him for a demon.
— Archduke Golt asked me to convey these words.
Count Rooster said, unsheathing his two-handed sword.
— No malice. Everything is for the Empire.
— Roooooster!!!
— Everyone, attack!
And so the all-out assault against Ureas began.
Ferdá, now out of the spotlight, retreated in silence.
“He planned it from the beginning.”
Attacking the Kingdom of Heinkel was a pretext to gather in a single place.
They intended to eliminate Ureas amid the chaos in the inner castle.
When it would be was something they would decide.
He had diverted Ureas’s attention, but for some reason, a chill ran down his spine.
Common enemy or not, is this man truly my ally?
Ferdá kept that in mind and supported Count Rooster.
Either way, Ureas had to be eliminated right here.
The audience chamber, in the deepest part of the inner castle.
— Everything is proceeding as planned.
The King of Heinkel spoke, observing the entire situation.
— Although King Hudret received Odograsado’s protection and escaped… Rather, it has turned out even better. My revenge can be realized.
— It is truly joyful that things have turned out as expected.
Gokma said, lightly patting the King of Heinkel’s shoulder.
— I have done this for you, so I will trust that you will do a job for me in return.
— Of course. Even if my revenge fails, I will sacrifice myself for you first.
— Pleasant words to hear.
Gokma tried to leave.
The King of Heinkel belatedly asked a question.
— May I ask one thing?
— Speak.
— Ureas… what is that man?
Ureas Arken.
The target of the King of Heinkel’s revenge; the man he wanted to kill second only to Hudret.
Unlike Hudret, Gokma did not leave him alone.
— You said it yourself. That Ureas is a good horse.
— That is correct.
— At first… I thought I would turn him into a demon and use him.
The figure of Ureas fighting against Count Rooster’s army vividly filled the King of Heinkel’s vision.
The more his rage grew, the more his form twisted.
The King of Heinkel knew the process of how Ureas changed like this.
When he entered the inner castle, he had only cast a light hallucination spell on him.
Ureas easily fell into the hallucination.
The induced location was Trauma.
Linne said it was a room waiting with an Enhanced Trauma on a completely different dimension from the others.
Ureas was exposed to the hypnosis of Trauma in that room.
That was all.
His form changed after that.
— Does that Trauma turn them into demons?
— I will ask you. Do you think what Ureas turned into is a demon?
The King of Heinkel remembered what he had felt and shook his head.
— It is not. It was of a different nature from the demons created here.
— Yes. As you guessed, it is not a demon.
— Then what on earth…?
Gokma spoke.
— The Arken Empire keeps a great secret. It is natural that such a large empire has many secrets. One of them is a secret pact with dragons.
— A secret pact… you say?
— All the monsters that attempted to attack this empire died. By the descendant of Silverwind and Storeus. You know that, right?
— Yes. It is a known story.
— Why would great dragons suddenly interfere in human affairs? Beings that rarely get involved. Making promises with humans, who are more sensitive to the flow of time than anyone, would be nothing more than a trivial amusement.
Thinking calmly, it was certainly strange.
The Silverwinds are a clan uninterested in anything other than the affairs of the Far North.
Storeus is capricious; him helping anyone is as rare as a lightning strike in a clear sky.
One thing is certain: hiring them as “fixers” for any amount of money is impossible.
— Because it is not a promise, but a chain.
— What kind of chain?
Gokma answered with a smile.
— One must call it the Creator’s error against his creation.
— So that is related to Ureas’s current appearance.
— Yes.
Just listening, he felt that something was very wrong.
The King of Heinkel focused on Ureas’s form.
I see. I understand.
Then he was able to comprehend what Gokma was saying.
At first he thought it was simply a father and son relationship, but the more the distortion continued, the more the words Creator and creation fit.
— Is not what is commonly used as propaganda for the Arken Empire called Golden Blood?
— That is correct.
Golden Blood.
Gokma, uttering that word again, let out a laugh of disbelief.
— Truly ironic. The most noble blood flows in those in the highest positions, yet they do not know that the lowliest and most despised blood flows alongside it.
The army led by Count Rooster unleashed attacks without hesitation to kill Ureas.
Ureas was unmistakably on the defensive.
Every time he tried to move, his movement was blocked, and his limbs were severed over and over by Count Rooster’s greatsword.
— Aaaak! Aaaaak!!
The screams of pain did not cease.
— I will kill you all! Down to the last one! I will kill you all!!
A curse spat out, unbroken by despair.
And astonishingly, the more he spat that curse, the more Count Rooster’s army retreated.
A heart stabbed more than a thousand times.
Limbs severed dozens of times.
Cut and slashed, regenerating repeatedly, his form gradually drifted away from the human, molding into a specific shape.
— What on earth is that…?
Archers and mages expressed their fear at the sight.
It was a completely understandable form.
Ferdá too, initially, only thought he had turned into one of the demons.
“A dragon…?”
The form, shifting as if shedding skin, resembled a dragon.
The remaining 1/4 of his face split open, turning into an elongated snout with lizard eyes.
Wings sprouted on his back, spilling bright red lava.
“No. It is not…”
It certainly looks like a dragon, but it is not a dragon.
Ureas’s form was crude, something dragons would consider an insult.
“Sacrilege.”
Ferdá latched onto that word.
Right, this is a form that sacrileges dragons.
Thinking that, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and Ferdá was able to identify it.
“Amon.”
Among the Seven Great Demons of Hell, the Demon of Fire and Destruction, Amon.
He despises the dragons that rule the land, and to sacrilege them, he transforms all his kin into dragon-like forms.
A demon unforgivable to dragons, whether they be Guardian Dragons or Evil Dragons, precisely because he sacrileges them.
“Strange.”
Ferdá wondered why he had not noticed it earlier.
He should have realized from that strange horn shape and when he spat lava.
Yet there was a reason he could not.
“No smell of sulfur.”
Someone who uses Hell’s magic would have been touched by a demon, and if touched by a demon, a faint smell of sulfur would linger.
However, Ureas had the form of Amon without that scent.
Like a freshly caught fish without a fishy smell, an odd feeling.
So that was it.
“But what is even stranger…”
It was Count Rooster.
Judging by his reaction, he seemed to have guessed that Ureas would turn out like this someday.
Ferdá himself did not know, so how did Count Rooster know?
“No, that bastard would not know either.”
The one who knows all the circumstances is definitely Archduke Golt.
If I am going to question this, I need to interrogate Archduke Golt.
— Do not stop! The Empire is behind you!
Those who thought Prince Ureas might still be somewhere inside no longer believed so.
They only hoped that damned demon would die quickly.
Ureas’s resistance grew fiercer.
After the sacred power corroded him repeatedly, a verdict was finally reached.
Count Rooster drove a sacred relic into Ureas’s chest, putting an end to him.
The burning flames gradually faded into embers, and his movements stiffened accordingly.
— Aah…
Ureas muttered as if heartbroken.
— Everything should have been in these hands… these hands… Why…
He raised both arms, bone and muscle exposed, toward the sky.
— Aah… Olivia…!
Those were Ureas’s last words.
Ureas’s body turned to stone, then into fragments, then into sand dust.
Just like the end of every demon.
Seeing Ureas vanish like a nightmare, everyone held their breath.
Ferdá tried to catch his breath along with the soldiers.
It was then that it happened.
Ferdá felt a chill instinctively.
Count Rooster, who had fought in the vanguard, turned his head slightly.
His eyes turned toward Ferdá.
No, not toward Ferdá, but toward the mage beside him.
— Bind!
At the command, the mage attempted to bind Ferdá’s body with binding magic without the slightest hesitation.
Yet that mana did not reach Ferdá.
Given that he never considered them allies to begin with, he broke free easily.
An allied mage attacked Regent Ferdá.
Without thinking, the soldiers immediately aimed their weapons at Ferdá.
Ferdá asked.
— What did Archduke Golt say to tell me?
— Unfortunately, he said nothing regarding Regent Ferdá. Our mission was to eliminate the calamity disturbing the Empire, and that target was Ureas alone.
— So you confessed to instigating a royal assassination. Do you think you can return to the Empire?
— By no means. We came here to bury our bones today. The Duke desired victory, and that victory will end with our deaths.
— Then why not just burn me? Why pick a fight with me?
— Is the reason not obvious?
Count Rooster rested the hilt of his greatsword on his shoulder and looked at Ferdá.
It was palpable.
He was professional when killing Ureas, but now he was emotional.
— Because you are the Duke’s enemy.
Malice had barely ended when a new malice confronted him.
— My final loyalty ends with ripping out your throat, Regent.
Ferdá calculated internally.
“How can I survive and return?”
Looking at those eyes, untiring even after a fierce battle with Ureas, taking some of them as companions to the afterlife seemed the only hope.
It was then.
Kururung—.
The entire ground shook violently.
This place was a space created by King Heinkel’s magic.
The sudden tremor meant that this space was collapsing, that someone had reached the source of the magic and eliminated it.
The space compressed.
Yet the anomaly was not only in the space.
Something began to squirm from within Ureas’s pile of ashes.
At the same time, a thick smell of sulfur began to drift.
— H-how?!
— He definitely turned to ashes…?
Only the color of the flame was not red, but a fluorescent green tone.
That ominous colored flame belonged to Gamigin.
A phrase crossed the minds of those standing there.
When humans are at their most desperate, demons appear.
It was precisely Ureas’s current situation.
Obsession with life and rage.
Even as his flesh crumbled, he refused to let go, transcending death to manifest once again.