Chapter 204 : Chapter 204
Translator: AkazaTL
Pr/Ed: Sol IX
***
Chapter 204. A drift (1)
The war between the Machine Empire and the Iron Kingdom had come to an end.
The long, tangled history between the two nations finally reached its conclusion.
The Machine Empire Lafrien was occupied beneath the banner of the Iron Kingdom, and the Iron Kingdom reaped enormous gains by winning two consecutive wars of conquest.
The Iron Kingdom now held beneath its rule the Six Free Cities rich in resources, and the Machine Empire, which possessed magical engineering technology among the finest on the continent.
This was the most radiant achievement since the founding of Cherville, the Iron Kingdom, and the newly ascended monarch, Ian Cherville, had carved his name deeply into the memory of the entire continent.
Now everyone had no choice but to acknowledge it: the Iron Kingdom had officially joined the ranks of the great powers.
The Iron Kingdom had become the strongest nation in the Western Continent, and by occupying the territories of Lafrien, it was able to extend its influence directly into the Central Continent.
While the monarch—crowned with a diadem stained by his own father’s blood—spread his fearsome reputation, a growing atmosphere of war began to drift across the continent.
With just two wars, the Iron Kingdom had grown by leaps and bounds. To the nations that had opened trade under the Sky Empire’s order and had been conducting businesses in peace, the Iron Kingdom was an object of envy.
How could such a barbaric nation, which never followed proper diplomacy and relied only on war, grow so large? In the minds of countless rulers, the word “war” began to take root.
At the same time, everyone recalled a truth they had forgotten: War was the greatest business.
Cherville, the Iron Kingdom, reminded the continent of what it had forgotten since the old Age of War. And seeing the sweet fruits the Iron Kingdom harvested, none wished to look at the dark side.
The rulers looked only at what the Iron Kingdom gained. That was how humans were. Among the seven races, humans bore the strongest desires, and driven by that desire, they repeated the same mistakes again and again.
People recalled what rulers had once taken in the Age of War— Conquest, achievement, victory.
No one remembered defeat. No one remembered the horrors of war. No one examined the atrocities recorded in history. If humans had been so wise, the Age of War would never have existed. History, by nature, repeated like a turning wheel.
As rulers looked upon the sweet fruit the Iron Kingdom devoured, blood began to spill across the continent. Empires seized kingdoms, city-states battled each other, and even inside their own borders, nobles waged territorial wars in pursuit of greater glory.
Bards sang not of unjust deaths, but of the glory won by victorious rulers.
Nations praised heroes buried in women and gold, not the soldiers who rotted in the dirt.
Amid this chaos, the Sky Empire remained silent. Instead of resisting the trend, they sold off the weapons and food they had been producing all along, enjoying the profit of war without shedding a single drop of their own blood.
Swords and spears, flames and death— the Age of War returned.
While everyone sang of heroics, the youth—blinded by glittering visions—threw themselves willingly into armies. Countless met unjust deaths, and the few survivors cried out about the horrors of war, desperately clinging to the young to stop them. But no one listened.
Those seized by their own hot blood called the survivors losers and failures.
Countless sons and husbands and fathers died. Even so, everyone leapt into the tide of war, drunk on the songs sung by the surviving heroes.
The place where the biggest flames burned was the Southern Continent. What had once been called the Holy Land became a sea of fire not even three days after the Conquest Army of the Great Land landed. Demons running across the plains mercilessly trampled the greenhouse flowers.
There existed no army capable of stopping the Conquest Army, bolstered by remnants of the fallen Machine Empire.
The Sky Empire was strangely quiet.
The great empire that was supposed to maintain order merely sat and watched, as if saying this was not their time to intervene. Ultimately, the Southern Continent fell into the hands of the most brutal army that had unified the Eastern Continent.
The Holy Empire burned to ash, and the greatest Great Warrior, the Sun Warrior Buddha, went missing. Where peace once lived, barbaric banners adorned with severed human heads now fluttered.
While the Great Land ravaged the Southern Continent, the Descendant of Khan was moments away from becoming the great hero who united two continents.
Their march further ignited the hearts of rulers. Many kingdoms and empires seized city-states along their borders and planted their flags. If a nation or faction smaller than theirs stood nearby, they declared war without hesitation.
Still, the Sky Empire did not move. With the guardian of order silent, all assumed their silence was tacit approval.
The spark of war grew. While the storm that had begun in the Iron Kingdom spread across the entire continent, the other six races sensed the unsettling shift. No creature living on the continent could escape the tide. Everyone prepared for the coming age in their own way. And
“…Ah.”
While the world surged in turmoil, instead of being swept up in the continent’s storm, a man drifted across a vast sea.
To be precise—“Have a sip of water, Master.”
There was a youth and an old man.
***
Zeppelin Gold’s sailboat was terrible. When he said it was a boat he prepared purely for pleasure, he hadn’t been being humble—he’d been telling the truth. Since Zeppelin put care even into a temporary villa, I expected something from a rich man’s “sailboat.”
“If it rains, we’re dead.”
But it had no refinement whatsoever. The sailboat we found at the harbor was, literally, just a sailboat. Whether it had some magic device installed I didn’t know, but at least we didn’t have to row manually—that was its only advantage.
Its shabby exterior looked like it would flip the moment a single large wave hit, and just Tom and I boarding made it sway dangerously. A truly unreliable sailboat stood before us.
“Still, we made it out safely.”
Even in this situation Tom smiled positively.
The food stocked aboard Zeppelin’s sailboat was plenty, but Tom said he was most relieved that there was a lot of drinking water.
I hadn’t known this, but apparently the salty ocean water that overflowed everywhere was undrinkable. Tom explained that the more one drank seawater, the thirstier one became, and that one must never drink it. Strange indeed—how could water be the most precious thing in a sea overflowing with water?
“I took a huge warship when I came to the Southern Continent…”
I grumbled as I looked at the sun beyond the horizon. I would definitely ask Zeppelin later why he owned such a shabby boat. Was it because he was from the Black Archipelago, and people from there had particular tastes in boats? I’d heard that the more obsessed a person was with something, the more they fixated not on expensive or precious things, but on old, worn ones. Like Tom, who collected aged, storied blades rather than legendary masterpieces.
“It doesn’t matter what we ride.”
“You’re right.”
Smiling at Tom’s positivity, I grinned back.
Tom handed me a strip of dried jerky, then sat beside me, gazing out at the sea as he began to speak.
“The pleasure for this old man is simply to sail the wide sea with a friend. Riding a shabby sailboat with a companion who speaks well with me… it feels romantic.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It reminds me of when I was young and foolish—traveling across the Iron Kingdom with a friend on a single pony. Like me, he lived as a fighter in the Arena, but unlike me—who made quite a name for myself—he always lost duels, barely escaping with his life each time.”
It was no small fortune that I drifted across this vast sea not alone, but with Tom.
Tom never stopped talking—not for a single moment—and the fact that he still had more stories to tell after speaking so long was truly impressive. His pointless, leisurely tales allowed me to endure the monotonous horizon.
Sometimes Tom caught fish straight from the sea, and we ate them fresh. Seeing him laugh loudly because he’d caught a particularly large fish made it feel, if only for a moment, like I was truly on a pleasant journey.
It had already been over three days since we left the Southern Continent with nothing but a single sailboat.
‘He said to follow the brightest star.’
We sailed according to Zeppelin’s advice, but I simply couldn’t understand his words.
The night sky above the sea was filled with stars, countless, and distinguishing the brightest among them was impossible—especially for someone like me, who’d lived most of his life in the rural Karavan territory, a mountain village in all but name.
‘At this rate, who knows when I’ll reach “Ernest.”’
Zeppelin told me that I could survive if I reached Ernest. But he never gave the exact location. Between the Southern Continent and the Western Continent—how wide was that sea for him to say such a thing so vaguely? What Zeppelin told me amounted to a poetic line: “Follow the brightest star.”
‘…There’s too much I don’t know.’
On the first night of drifting, I asked Tom why Swordmaster Hugo Rhapsody had helped me. But Tom said he didn’t know the exact reason.
Hugo Rhapsody had suddenly visited Karavan territory, and he had brought the person who would be most helpful—Tom—to the Southern Continent.
There were no explanations. It was absurd, but Tom’s one sentence made me nod.
‘Swordmasters are like that, aren’t they?’
He was right. Especially Hugo Rhapsody—he was exactly that kind of person. In the end, I didn’t know why a Swordmaster helped me, why the Great Land—ruler of the Eastern Continent—landed in the Southern Continent, what would happen in Ernest, what kind of place Ernest even was, or when our drifting would finally lead us there.
‘Hard to stop doubting.’
In such a situation full of unanswered questions, my doubt rose further. And that doubt spared no one—not even my friend. Even as I listened to Tom’s pleasant stories, I kept my eye on the old caretaker.
I had not forgotten what I heard in the Southern Continent— the “purpose of the gods.”
The Seven Lords and the Nine Goddesses did not wish for the Karavan line to continue. And they could exert influence on all living beings in the middle realm.
Tom, long-time caretaker of the Hall of Honor in the Arena, was a devout follower of one of the Nine Goddesses—Goddess Refri.
Could Tom truly be trusted? I could not be sure.
‘Only those who swore themselves to the Land of Swords can be trusted completely. But it hasn’t been a month since I used Zeppelin…’
Tom might have helped me with pure intentions. But potential danger could not be dismissed. If he had meant to kill me, he could have done so at any moment—but even that didn’t fully reassure me.
My doubt was a kind of illness. A disease born from trauma—one I could not shake off.
Since the day drifting began, not once had I slept peacefully. I always slept with senses sharpened, ready to awaken at the slightest stimulus. Not drifting alone meant I wasn’t lonely. But because I wasn’t alone, I couldn’t relax.
In that tiredness, I wondered— perhaps as long as I couldn’t abandon doubt, I could never truly have friends. Perhaps from the moment I failed to shed doubt, I was destined to live alone. Like the name of my master’s blade— Like “Venom”— perhaps I too would walk a solitary fate. One who could not blend with others— perhaps that was the fate of the steel flowing within me.
The sea was endless. And those who drifted upon it harbored endless thoughts.
The old man and the sea. With them by my side, the fifth dawn rose.
And then.
“Master.”
An event occurred—one that wiped away all my pointless thoughts.
“Behind me.”
Thanks to Zeppelin, we’d escaped from the Great Land. But being on the sea didn’t mean all danger had vanished.
The Karavans always had many enemies. And after inheriting my master’s sword, I inherited his karma as well.
“Hurry.”
Liam had told me— that the presences lurking in the middle realm would sense his soul.
That the balance would break.
That the real monsters, those who had been hiding until now, would appear.
That beings beyond my imagination would target me.
That all entities who held grudges against Liam would come swarming.
That everything I’d experienced so far was nothing but a child’s game.
「You came sooner than I expected.」
But I hadn’t expected them to arrive so suddenly, just as we had barely escaped danger. Hearing Liam’s voice, I narrowed my eyes.
Zeppelin’s sailboat rocked violently—the peaceful sea of yesterday now thrashing wildly. Within that violently churning water, a vast shadow appeared. A huge, huge shadow.
「One of the Six Divine Beasts. In my era, scholars called that thing the Kraken.」
“Why would something so powerful appear here?”
「Because when I was alive, I enjoyed hunting Divine Beasts. I hunted each one the moment it was born. They’re like the gods’ Great Warriors—if you kill them, their power is inherited by your descendants.」
“Why… would you do something like that…?”
「Everyone did that in those days.」
The shadow approached our sailboat. Liam spoke of hunting Divine Beasts as casually as hunting deer. Perhaps to my esteemed master, the two truly weren’t much different. But to me, they absolutely were. Every instinct screamed at me— Run.
“How do I defeat it?”
「As you are now, you can’t. Not in the sea. Never.」
This damn—As frustration rose, Liam slowly turned his head. His gaze shifted from me— to Tom. Liam looked at the old caretaker, and then at the thin rapier hanging at his waist. A needle-like blade.
In other words,
「…Unless you consume a new sword.」
Tom’s sword.