Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 198

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 198.
Choose the Dawn (10)
The slaughter continued. Had I been human, I would have rushed to stop it, condemned it, or at least suffered in anguish. But what emotion should I feel?
From the puppet’s body flowed a crimson liquid identical to human blood. Hadn’t they said these beings possessed no life? Then why, of all things, red blood?
Until moments ago, Boris had tried to convince himself that they merely resembled humans but were nothing more than puppets. Yet that sight now filled him with unbearable revulsion.
“What kind of twisted taste is this? If puppets aren’t alive, why force them to bleed red? Unless everyone in Ganapoli has lost their minds—why would they…!”
“Because it’s most fitting. There’s no other reason.”
“Fitting? Then the creator must feel like a murderer when destroying puppets? I would never let a single drop of blood spill! And I certainly wouldn’t make them resemble humans so closely!”
Epibiono, who had been watching the puppets, turned his head and fixed Boris with a piercing gaze. A cold sneer flickered in his jade-green eyes.
“For the puppets’ sake? Or for humanity’s? Do you wish to judge the affairs of a thousand years past by your own standards? You seem to prefer puppets made of cotton or plaster—is it because destroying such things wouldn’t burden your conscience?”
Epibiono turned back to observe the puppets, then blinked rapidly. His brow furrowed with tension.
“Have you ever considered how to treat beings that resemble humans yet are not human? Living in a world of only humans, you’ve never contemplated such a thing. But this much is certain—the fact that puppets lack life does not make them beings you can treat carelessly or kill on a whim! I’ve witnessed countless times how people like you easily destroy puppets you’ve created, then create them anew!”
Boris responded with equal coldness.
“You understand well. I’m not concerned about the puppets themselves. What horrifies me is that destroying puppets resembling humans makes one feel like a murderer, and this causes people to regard humans as insignificant as puppets. What difference is there between them? Humans bleed when cut by a blade, spurt blood when pierced!”
Epibiono’s eyebrows shot upward. He had thought himself too old to feel anger, yet his lips trembled like those of a youth barely past twenty.
“So you’re just a human from this world who’s never lived alongside puppets… Puppets may lack life, but the Mages of Ganapoli, myself included, have always regarded them as younger siblings—incomplete, ailing in body. Who creates and destroys puppets so easily? Of course, irresponsible people exist. But if only plaster dust scattered when puppets shattered, they would create and destroy them ten times more carelessly!”
Epibiono gazed down at his own palm. He clenched it, then opened it again, as if recalling something that had once rested there.
“When a puppet first opens its eyes, we spend months teaching it speech and behavior. When something happens to a puppet, do you think you understand the hearts of those who abandon everything to rush to its aid? When I destroyed Nieniz with my own hands… the feelings I carried when journeying to the Mages of the Dawn Tower for Arcadia’s final hour… how could you possibly comprehend them!”
“I don’t. You do, it seems? Then why don’t you go save them right now?”
At that moment, the puppets finished their slaughter of their companions. Having cast aside the tattered remains, they turned their attention back toward the group.
A girl with her hair arranged like a noble’s daughter wiped the blood from her hands onto her skirt as naturally as breathing. A young man dressed as a swordsman rested his blade on the ground, regarding them as if contemplating how to prepare them.
Their thoughts seemed unreflected in their expressions—their faces remained fixed in gentle smiles.
Deliberation was brief. The puppets, arranged in a circle, began hurling themselves against the protective barrier in unison.
One impact after another, relentless and unceasing, until the barrier itself trembled visibly.
Epibiono, unaccustomed to the violent emotions that had seized him after so long, exhaled roughly before suddenly raising his hand.
The barrier dissipated with his gesture. The puppets, caught by the sudden impact, were thrown several paces backward. Epibiono’s voice rang out.
“Kill a puppet once. Then you’ll understand how puppets are the same as humans, and how they differ. Slay a puppet resembling humanity, and test for yourself whether your thoughts of humans change.”
“What?”
The Epibiono who had been so kind until now turned away and walked upward through empty air as if invisible stairs existed there. He then sat, dangling his legs over something unseen, and spoke.
“You understand that if you don’t kill them, you’ll be killed?”
There was no time for objection. The puppets surged forward. All of them utterly human-like, resembling people, even smiling as they rushed in without weapons.
While Boris hesitated momentarily, Nayatrey’s decision came swiftly.
She thrust her left hand toward the white forehead of the female puppet charging directly at her, and something pierced deep. As blood flowed like water, her right hand swept across, severing the throat.
What Nayatrey gripped in her right hand was a narrow-bladed dagger. Three small blades were fitted over the fingertips of her left hand. Ordinarily, such daggers could not sever a human throat. But a puppet’s body was not the same as a human’s.
The beautiful puppet, having lost half its throat, remained standing while swaying. Soon it extended trembling hands. So painfully, as if begging to be held….
Yet even such an action was nothing but an attack, and the fearless girl beside Boris responded identically. Her daggers flew, severing both wrists.
“Does their resemblance to humans mean nothing to you?”
Nayatrey’s answer was simple.
“Even if they were human, I would kill them if they were enemies. Since they’re not even human, I don’t understand your hesitation.”
Before Boris stood a short-haired blond boy. His hand seized Boris’s left arm. In that instant, an impossibly powerful grip descended. It was a threat to his life.
I reflexively drew my sword and struck at the opponent’s arm. Even in that moment, I thought I’d angled the blow to avoid severing it cleanly, yet I watched the Young Boy’s elbow twist at an unnatural angle and snap.
Perhaps startled by the sudden turn of events, I hadn’t anticipated that even with a broken arm, the puppet would strike back with the same inhuman force.
Crack!
Whether from the unexpectedness of the blow or because the puppet’s strength was monstrously overwhelming, I staggered backward and realized my left elbow—the one the puppet had struck—no longer obeyed my commands.
I raised my sword defensively with only my right hand. The odds were brutally against me. There were dozens of them, and only two of us. I understood that my choices had already been made for me.
There was no other path.
With my resolve hardened, I finally extended my blade. When the first puppet’s throat was pierced and blood spilled forth, my eyes narrowed for just an instant.
Yet I had no choice but to continue. After parrying the relentless grasping hands and cleaving away half a skull, only then did silence come.
Though the next puppet must have witnessed everything, it threw itself forward without hesitation or fear.
This was not murder. Yet it was undeniably slaughter. To “destroy” puppets, as they’d said? Yes, I was destroying them. Necks severed from bodies, limbs twisted backward at the joints, skin sliced like paper.
But they could not be killed easily. Just as life cannot be extinguished without resistance, neither could these pale imitations of it. With their fragile forms, they continued to move until the very last moment, obeying commands given a thousand years ago, moving and moving still.
My blade hesitated, then extended, cutting and slashing through countless puppets. The heap of corpses exceeded any natural mountain of the dead. Even as they fell, they continued their movements to the bitter end.
I pierced hearts and severed necks, yet they would not die. Broken arms still writhed, headless bodies still lunged, and bisected forms each moved independently.
Something grasped at my ankle; looking down, it was invariably a severed hand clinging there. When I stepped on it, it was crushed.
The attacks from bodies carved into countless pieces were no longer a physical threat, yet the psychological resistance made it all the more agonizing.
After cutting through dozens of puppets, the short-haired girl who had been the first now stood before me.
Her right eye was already gone—Nayatrey’s dagger had passed through it—and her eyelid hung closed. With both arms spread wide and standing motionless, she gazed at me with her vanished eye.
The blood that wept from the torn eyelid resembled tears of blood. Her short hair, swaying in the breeze, was like black silk, and her pallid face was as beautiful as enchanted white stone.
I recalled the murky dark green of absinthe that had dwelt within those closed eyes. Then the girl opened her left eye, the one that remained uncut.
With her eyelid continuously soaked by blood, the girl parted her lips and spoke in a language I could not comprehend.
What had she said?
Whether a final word or a curse, I understood nothing. A barrier of a thousand years stood between us—far greater than the distance between human and puppet—rendering even my attempt at communication utterly meaningless.
Words fainter than the wind scattered and dispersed; feelings that could not be conveyed sank deep into the depths of my heart.
I heard Nayatrey’s voice.
“With your greatsword, you can cleave her in two. It will end more simply that way.”
Without answering, I raised my blade high. I saw the girl’s rose-colored fingers reaching toward me. I brought it down. I’d sharpened it well enough. Please, let it end in one stroke.
Tens of thousands of drops of blood scattered into the air.
Drenched in half that blood, I stood in silence. When the arc of my blade came to rest at my feet, I only raised my left hand to wipe the blood from my eyes.
The puppet’s blood lacked the viscosity of human blood; it didn’t coagulate but simply dripped away. A handful of severed hair lay in the pooled blood, drawing black patterns as it fell.
My heart convulsed weakly as I gazed down at it.
What I had destroyed was unbearably beautiful, and I could not shake the feeling that I had become the evil.
Beautiful things should not break so easily.
One should not create beauty in something destined to shatter so easily.
Soon afternoon arrived, when dozens of puppet corpses would join the Ruins in their long sleep.
As I and Nayatrey lowered our blades and gazed upon the puppets, now forever ruined, Epibiono descended from where he had left us to face this tragedy alone.
When our eyes met, I could not bring myself to blame him. Epibiono swallowed his words several times before finally speaking.
“Yes, I… have long wished that someone would kill these puppets for me. I found solace in watching them, yet all the while I knew that day would have to come.”
With Epibiono’s power, slaughtering dozens of puppets in a single breath would have been nothing. Yet he was a Mage of Ganapoli who had loved the puppets as though they were his own blood.
As he said, he found solace in them—seeing the shadows of people long past in their forms, forgetting his own circumstances for a time.
Yet he also knew that it was all meaningless, that the puppets’ existence was hollow and futile.
And paradoxically, only after slaying the puppets did Boris come to understand Epibiono’s heart. With his head bowed, Boris spoke tersely.
“I’m relieved it turned out that way.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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