Chapter 941: Fallen
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Grant’s trembling lips moved.
He had been too heavily injured. Under such circumstances, no one even knew whether he was able to speak at all. In fact, Kubei had only asked the question because he had felt like he needed to say something. He had not really intended for Grant to answer.
An ice needle appeared in his hand. He was ready to give Grant a clean death.
However, it was at this moment that Grant’s body, full of blood, began to tremble violently. He widened his eyes and stared stubbornly at Kubei like a terminally ill patient. His eyes were filled with a thirst for life, as well as struggle. Opening his mouth, he spoke in pain. "Don’t... Don’t kill me."
Hearing that, Kubei shrugged. "In such a position, you should just accept your fate."
"Do you really think... that by killing me, everything will end?" Grant suddenly calmed down, however, and spoke in a stammering voice. "You... You don’t know how the Church has come to where it is today, you don’t know those secrets... Perhaps you could temporarily eliminate us, but one day, eventually... we will still return."
"So what? If something new emerges, we’ll get rid of it again." Kubei narrowed his eyes and gave a cold snort, answering thus.
"No... You don’t understand, the true Church is still hiding upon this great land, secretly observing everything..." Grant did not give up, however. "You guys... Do you guys think that after we die, the good days of the mages would come? I’m telling you, when magic reaches the level that has been prohibited, they will appear..."
Hearing this, Kubei frowned and thought for a moment, before saying, "Are you referring to The Mages Inheritance Union?"
Grant had originally wanted to say more, but he was immediately stunned.
"I’m sorry, I’ve already met with them a long time ago." Seeing that, Kubei put his hands up and continued speaking. "I know they originate from the ancient Church, and I also know that they’ve always been in the dark, recording everything, but... Save it, they won’t run out to revive the Church. In fact, the old madam of the Lithur family is also a member of The Mages Inheritance Union. She won’t seek revenge for your sakes."
A look of disbelief appeared once more on Grant’s face.
"It’s... grandmother?"
"Yes, she’s a mage, and she’s living rather well now." Kubei nodded. "Very awkward, huh? But be rest assured, she has temporarily lost all memories, so she feels nothing about the sins you’ve committed. By the time she regains her memory, your body would’ve cooled off already, so you wouldn’t need to face her."
"...The sins I’ve committed?"
Kubei sighed again, and said, "You probably don’t wish to talk about this. It’s alright, I’ll end your suffering immediately."
Saying thus, he controlled the ice needle and directed it at Grant’s heart.
"What right do you have to criticize me? You..." However, Grant suddenly became agitated at the moment. He roared in agony, "The disaster’s all your fault! What can I do? Claude... He only had himself to blame! He had never considered me as his son. He was just... a coward."
If Benjamin had been the one to hear those words, he might have been so livid that he would land a punch on him. Nevertheless, as Kubei was the one listening... Eventually, he shook his head.
"To be able to say such things, I’ve overestimated your conscience."
"You have no right to criticize me. Grant shook his head, however. His eyes were full of fury and hatred. "You are his son, even if you’d been weaker in the past, or even if you’d gotten into bigger trouble... As for me? No matter how well I did, no matter how much talent I had, how dutiful I had been usually, he had never treated me with respect or dignity... I was merely his tool for competition before the Church."
"Forget it." Kubei was somewhat unable to continue listening. "You’ve not been treated well enough when you were a kid? Stop being so hypocritical and unreasonable here."
Grant was still shaking his head. "You ask why? Because I was the one who fought for that treatment! Before I was born, the Lithur family was on the verge of bankruptcy, so they were forced to adapt by selling their fief and moving out of the kingdom... How do you think he crawled to the position of a duke? How do you think, with that personality of his, he mixed and mingled his way up in the society of nobles? I’ve brought everything to this family! But no matter what I did, it was always your name that he kept on talking about. Benjamin did that yesterday, Benjamin was so and so today..."
Having spoken until here, his nose wrinkled up as his tears, mixed with blood, fell. "He saw you as a son, but viewed me... as a monster."
Kubei frowned.
"...Wasn’t he always mentioning me because I was always getting into trouble, so I had to be paid close attention to?"
"Then what about me?" Grant closed his eyes. "No matter how well I did, I’d never been able to get the slightest bit of attention from him, and if I’d made just a small mistake, he’d look at me with that sort of expression, from the corners of his eyes. Is this fair? A good person has to be good all the time, and mustn’t have any faults at all. Everyone takes that as a matter of fact. But it doesn’t matter when it comes to a weak person; as long as he suddenly achieves some small thing, everyone would look at him in a different light."
Hearing that, Kubei shook his head and said, "That’s because he had higher expectations for you."
"His expectations for me were to obediently gain the favor of the priests and bishops in the Church!" Grant became hysterical once more. "Because... he knew, and he could feel it deep in his heart, that I’m different from normal people. I’ll never be able to fulfil the expectations he had of a son, so he merely treated me like a tool, a tool that shamed him but he was forced to rely on!"
For a moment, the atmosphere became rather stiff.
"So... this is the reason why you murdered your birth father?"
"Because I’m tired." Hearing that, Grant lowered his head. The expression on his face was one of utmost obstinacy. "He didn’t treat me as a son, so why should I treat him as a father? I got fed up of having to be a good person so carefully, sacrificing so much for the Lithur family. Every day in the school at the Church was like a year, having to tolerate those temperamental bishops, tolerate the obscenity of the teachers, and yet I even had to think of ways to gain their favor. Then, coming home, I had to continue being that perfect and flawless, genius noble. Including you. I had to be the one cleaning up after you, no matter what trouble you got into outside, but in the end I never got even a word of thanks... I’m tired, I’m really tired."
"..."
Kubei did not say anything.
Objectively speaking, he was not Benjamin, so it was unnecessary for him to be talking about this with Grant here. The enemy was still the enemy; even if both parties ever had that bit of brotherly bond, that bond belonged only to the Lithur brothers, whereas his family name was Ku.
Only... Not only was he living in Benjamin’s body, he was living his life as well. Therefore, there were some things that were difficult to clarify.
The ice needle was still hovering, half a meter away from Grant’s heart; its launch was being delayed. Meanwhile, Grant was looking even weaker due to his loss of blood. Kubei’s eyebrows furrowed tightly. It was very difficult for him to imagine how tangled up this scene would be if Benjamin had not died, and had gone according to Cain and Abel’s script, up until this stage of confrontation with Grant.
"Do you know? I hate this so-called title of a genius." In the silence, Grant took a deep breath and spoke once more.
Kubei still did not say a word.
Thus, Grant continued speaking. "Since I was little, everyone around me had considered me to be of a different kind. It’s not that they looked down on me, but they’d still isolated me from that world. I tried my best to fit in, I learnt how to chat and speak like the other nobles’ children, and did the same stupid things they did, but it was no use. No matter how much effort I put in, I was forever an arrogant, supercilious genius in the eyes of other people."
"As for me..." Having spoken until here, he closed his eyes and let out a choking sob. "I just want to be like a commoner."
"The life of a commoner might not be as good as you think it is." Kubei let out a cold snort and said. "At least, I don’t know how many commoners have died throughout this long war."
"So... We could end all this." Hearing that, Grant opened his eyes and looked at him straight. "After today, the Church no longer exists, and I will no longer oppose the mages. If you’re still worried, you could destroy my spiritual energy, or destroy the rune that has been inscribed into my consciousness so that I would never be able to cast any Divine Charm. Whatever it is... I no longer wish to be the Pope, please... Let me live."
"Destroy your spiritual energy? You’ll become an idiot."
"It’d still be better than the life I had previously."
Saying thus, Grant closed his eyes, as though he was waiting for Kubei’s decision. The remaining bit of Holy Light around his body had already dissipated. His entire person had completely zoned out; the blood-stained face looked exceptionally pale.
Looking at the face that was rather similar to his, Kubei’s expression eventually changed as well.
After a drawn-out silence, he let out a long sigh.
The ice needle flashed past and pierced through Grant’s heart. In the next second, Grant opened his eyes in disbelief and looked at Kubei. The emotion that filled his eyes was not shock, but resentment.
"Be a commoner in the next life, then... If there really is a next life."
Kubei opened his mouth, saying those words as he dispersed the Ice Prison Spell.
The phantom chains turned into dots of blue light that spread across the sky, scattering like fireflies, and along with that, the floating energy of the magic disappeared. He watched as Grant fell, and watched as his left fist loosened, revealing a Divine Charm rune that had just been formed, hidden in the palm that had been dyed red with blood.
Having lost its owner, the rune began to dissipate the moment it had formed, as thought there was still some unwillingness to go. Like dots of starlight, it slowly flowed through the gaps in Grant’s palm and vanished.
The corpse fell straight down, from a hundred meters’ height in the air.
At that moment, the square below fell into an uproar.
"Has it ended?"
The local villagers closed their eyes; even some from amongst the soldiers of the two armies averted their gaze. All of the believers knelt on the ground at the same time, burying their heads extremely low as their wailing noises sounded out vaguely. They had hurried over from all over the kingdom, only to witness the death throes of the Church. Yet, no one had dared to open their eyes and observe the actual process.
After that...
Pow!
With a muffled thud, some sticky solids and liquid flew all over the place.
The square descended into a deathly silence.
Meanwhile, in the sky, Kubei’s eyes did not follow Grant all the way. The moment the body landed on the ground, he suddenly turned his head and looked into the distance. The sunlight pierced through the layers of cloud, shining down on the mountain path with thinly scattered rays. Noisy flocks of birds rose up from the midst of the forest and flew against the light, disappearing in a hurry from the limits of his sight.
The great land of the kingdom was vast, and quiet like an old man on his deathbed. Quiet like a newborn child.