The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 220 – Pain

Pain gives one a feeling of forgiveness.

Dismas, who often acted out arbitrarily, was frequently scolded by the emperor. But even such a trait of his was defended by others, since he was well known for his good nature and not being able to hurt people easily.

To Dismas, battle was nothing more than a fun game and it was very rare to see his battles getting bloody. It was even rarer to see someone dying. Even if any of the enemies lost their lives under his command, he treated them as honorable warriors and held a polite funeral for them.

There were mixed evaluations about Dismas—some said that he was not suitable to be the ruler in charge of one of the corners of the empire, while some said that they wanted to be ruled by such a generous leader.

Yet none of that really mattered to Dismas. The only person he admired and looked up to with a simple and upright mind was the emperor.

But then, Dismas lost the only person who could scold him. It was even when he was wrestling with the Giant King Helgrim for fun and had gotten drunk after the battle. Dismas had never once imagined the emperor could be defeated or killed by someone.

Dismas suffered greatly from guilt and regret, but there was no one left to forgive him now. Pain made him feel like he was being forgiven. It didn't take long before he constantly started inflicting self-harm. The most basic ability of the essence given by the emperor was the ability to regenerate one’s body, and this ability caused Dismas to go through strange hallucinations.

In that instant, his upright mind became bent.

And that was the moment when the Pope came to visit him with a magician that gave off a strange atmosphere. Until then, Dismas didn’t attach much value to the Pope. Although he had heard that Gerard had been showing interest in the Pope, Dismas had been busy respecting and admiring the emperor.

But the story told by the young child that the Pope had brought along with him was something that Dismas could not listen to in a calm manner. The young child told him that there was a way to revive the emperor and it required Dismas to suffer from pain.

Fortunately for Dismas, pain was something that gave him a feeling of forgiveness.

***

“-----!!”

There was no meaning in Dismas’ unintelligible cry and wailing that could be heard from a distance. However, Sina felt like she was about to shed tears upon hearing his desperate screams. No one could tell just how many gods’ spirits had descended into Dismas’ body, but even all those gods were vomiting from pain and sadness in a single voice. It was a long wail that contained all the pain and despair in the world.

Sina stumbled and tightly clutched her sword. She felt a strong urge to stop Dismas’ cries right away; she had a feeling that her heart would also sink to the bottom if she kept listening.

“Dismas Dilver!”

At the same time as Sina let out that scream, she summoned the biggest ice spear she could and threw it toward Dismas. An ice spear the size of a huge battering ram soared from the ground and penetrated Dismas’ abdomen. Then, Dismas’ body that had swollen to a huge size rose into the air with Sina’s attack.

“Stop this right now! This is not what His Majesty wants!”

But Dismas did not stop. He was recklessly using Spirit Calling and summoning the powers of gods way beyond the limit of his capabilities. His physical body was already collapsing, unable to maintain its original form due to the overflowing divinity that was encroaching upon him. He was slowly transforming into something that should not exist in the world.

Dismas was suffering from terrible pain, but he did not stop. Before resurrecting the emperor, the young magician had warned him to never use Spirit Calling after the emperor had been resurrected. This was because the power of Spirit Calling that was granted to Dismas’ used his flesh for the process, and so the resurrection of the emperor would stop completely if the gods were to descend into Dismas’ body through Spirit Calling.

What Dismas was doing right now was basically giving up the ability that has been supporting him throughout his life—there was no hesitation in his actions. He had never really liked Spirit Calling anyway. He had always preferred to train his pure physical strength.

When Dismas had begun to insult the gods by creating Cainheryars, he noticed that the process of reviving them was very similar to the process of reviving the emperor. However, Dismas deceived himself. He told himself that the Cainheryars and the emperor were different, since the emperor was not resurrected in a vile and disgusting environment like the Cainheryars.

Nevertheless, he already knew that all the Cainheryar would collapse if he used Spirit Calling. Dismas could sense that all the Cainheryars that he and Imil had scattered throughout the empire had been destroyed as soon as he used Spirit Calling.

But none of that mattered to Dismas anymore.

The resentment of being used, the revenge on the Pope, as well as his anger, all of that meant nothing to him now. All that remained was a desire to punish himself. He thought that being killed by his father, who he had believed to be the fake emperor until now, would be the only way to be forgiven.

“----!” Dismas continued to roar in an inaudible cry.

“Dismas!” Sina shouted desperately.

She repeatedly summoned more ice spears to throw at Dismas, but his grotesque transformation did not seem to subside no matter what she did.

Dismas was now crawling through the city of Cabragh as a huge unidentified mass, with only his barely recognizable face left. Meanwhile, the Western soldiers hastily attacked the monster with shocked expressions when they saw it appearing out of nowhere.

However, such crude and weak attacks could not attract Dismas’ attention at all. Sina was the only one who was barely able to cause some damage to him, but Dismas wanted to die at Juan’s hands, not Sina.

“Damn it!”

Sina let out a curse and pushed Dismas with all her might. Her heart was filled with desperation—she could not let Juan see what Dismas had turned into. She suddenly felt like all this was her own fault.

Sina grit her teeth and directly stabbed her sword into Dismas’ abdomen. At the same time, she made a huge flower of ice blossom around her sword. The blades of ice that blossomed in an instant caused Dismas’ organs to burst. Then, the blades stretched out while scattering Dismas’ body fluids everywhere.

Meanwhile, Dismas roared and struggled, almost as if he could actually feel an intense pain from this attack unlike all the previous ones.

Meanwhile, a hammer that was glowing a burning red struck down toward Sina. While she was able to barely dodge it, she backed away while freaking out when she saw the lava soaring from the spot where she had been standing.

‘Is this one of the powers of the gods that Dismas has drawn into his body?’

At that moment, Dismas had stopped advancing forward and began to attack Sina. He was still letting out unintelligible words, but Sina could somewhat understand what he wanted to say.

Dismas was looking for Juan. Sina was no longer meaningful to him and was nothing more than a distraction.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go,” Sina said as she bit her lips.

She would have no chance of winning if Dismas started to attack her using the various gods’ powers. Thus, she had to do her best to fight with all her might to stop him while Dismas was ignoring her and considered to be just a distraction.

Sina ran ahead of the path that Dismas was crawling on and stood in front of him to block his way. She looked like a tiny bug in front of Dismas who had swollen up and become as huge as a building.

At that moment, Sina’s eyes flashed as she took a step forward. Sina began to move her sword in the air as she continued to walk forward. The trajectory of the tip of the sword produced a strange distortion, produced by an unknown sword dance.

Sina recalled all the movements and sword dances she had seen from the moment she first met Juan in Tantil, all the way to the most recent battles without even realizing it. She didn’t know how, but all of the images of Juan’s steps and his sword penetrating the enemy came into her mind.

The sword dance that was used by Sina with extreme concentration began to emit a strange heat. Sina’s image became blurry for a short moment, and then she instantly jumped toward Dismas—it was like her body was made of fog.

Sina recalled the fog she saw on the day long ago when the Order of the Blue Rose was annihilated. In this terrible battle against Dismas, Sina had turned into fog itself.

Meanwhile, Dismas was not aware of the tangled fog, but a huge afterimage suddenly bloomed across the middle of his path.

It was the fourth stage of the Baltic Sword: Fog Dispel.

Even before a stream of blood burst out of Dismas, Sina had closed her eyes to focus and stretch out her sword, preparing for the next movement. Sina remembered witnessing the clash that no one else could see on the day Nienna and Juan fought at the Fortress of Beldeve. Every second was split apart and divided indefinitely, stretching it.

Sina, who had become transparent like fog, felt the sharp pain of her own body evaporating in an instant.

But she wasn’t the only one suffering from pain.

Starting with the first afterimage, hundreds of stab wounds appeared throughout Dismas’ body, almost as if flowers made of blood were in full bloom.

This was the use of Fleeting Moment, the fifth stage of the Baltic Sword.

But Sina still felt like it was still insufficient. While she had managed to make Dismas suffer from terrible pain, it was not enough to kill him.

‘I need to be faster.’

Her attacks had to be faster, more detailed, more sophisticated, and performed in movements even smaller than now.

On the day of the showdown between Juan and Barth Baltic, all their attacks went against the laws of physics. Such attacks were more of a display of laws of physics being broken than a fight.

At that moment, Sina felt a familiar heat over her face. Flames flared over the letters engraved on her left eye. Her tattoo began to burn and crack in flames, and then, Sina’s eyelids slowly opened.

Finally, scarlet eyes that seem to contain a small sun within them were revealed.

All of Dismas’ vital organs that Sina had failed to cut were now being split apart and burst according to her will. If she wanted to cut something, it was already cut, and whatever she thought about doing was already done—it was like magic.

Sina was starting to use Causality Denial, the sixth stage of the Baltic Sword.

Dismas belatedly let out a scream upon noticing the unexpected change in Sina. However, he was still alive and breathing.

‘Please… Just a little more.’

But Sina was already at her limit. She felt like she could collapse at any moment and that her organs were already ruined. Her muscles were ripped and her nerves had burned up.

Nevertheless, Sina clenched her teeth and pumped strength into her body.

The fire in her eyes was burning more fiercely than ever, and her fluttering blonde hair rose like flames. She threw herself into the air for the final blow at the risk of her life.

However, at that moment, her attack was blocked by a sword that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“...What?”

Sina couldn’t understand the current situation, since her vision had only been focused on Dismas until now.

The sword that blocked her was scattered like glass as soon as it met Sina’s sword. Then, the sharp fragments of shattered blade penetrated Sina all over, and her blood vessels that had already been heated to the limit began to madly pour out blood from the wounds.

Amidst the soaring bloodstreams, Sina stood there with an unbelievable look on her face when she saw the person who was blocking her way.

“...But why?”

The person who had blocked Sina was Lenly Loen, the Captain of the Imperial Guards.

Lenly Loen, who was not supposed to be here, was standing in Sina’s way. Sina blankly stared at him for a while and stretched out her trembling hand. Then, she removed the hood that had been covering Lenly‘s eyes until now as if scratching him. Lenly did not shake off her hand.

His two eyes that were revealed under the hood were clearly shining. He seemed to be clenching his teeth and in pain—but Sina couldn’t tell if this was due to the pain of blocking Sina’s sword or something else.

At that moment, she remembered Lenly saying that he was keeping his eyes covered for training purposes, despite having recovered his eyesight a long time ago.

Only then did she realize that Lenly’s words had been a lie.

Lenly Loen’s eyes were shining with an amber light.

‘The swordsman with amber eyes…’

He was the swordsman who fought Sina on the day when Dane tried to assassinate Juan in the Magic Tower.

‘He is a member of Aruntal.’

There were no other witnesses and all Sina could remember about him were his amber eyes. Although she had thought that he must be hiding within the Imperial Army, she didn’t think he was someone who had volunteered to become the Captain of the Imperial Guards.

‘No, perhaps he took advantage of his position as the Captain of the Imperial Guards from the beginning, since that would allow him to come into contact with the emperor’s body everyday.’

Sina, who had been pushing herself to the limit, began to slowly collapse. Her life was already in jeopardy because of pushing herself past her limits. The moment her attack was forced to come to a stop by Lenly, the aftermath of pushing herself started tearing her apart.

Meanwhile, Lenly backed away with a painful look as he listened to Sina’s scream.

“I’m sorry, Dame Sina,” Lenly gasped for air as he whispered.

His hand that was holding the broken sword was trembling.

“I had no choice but to do this for everyone.”

Lenly turned his head and looked back at Dismas. Upon coming to the conclusion that he didn’t have to be the one to finish Dismas off, Lenly strode forward and disappeared.

After Lenly left, Sina finally collapsed completely. She looked forward with a weak breath. All she could see was the crumbling city, a pale sky, and the corpses scattered everywhere. There was nothing she had to be ashamed of, since she was dying as a knight on the battlefield, but the fact that she couldn’t end Dismas’ life lingered in her mind and held her back.

“Juan,” Sina muttered with her last breath.

She tried to say a few more words, but she couldn’t make a voice no matter how hard she tried.

‘Live for yourself. I root for all the paths you will walk.’

Dismas' distorted body slowly went over Sina, who had fallen to the ground. The sound of flesh being torn apart rang out.

Finally, Sina no longer felt any pain.