Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 203

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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 203.
Choose the Dawn (15)
“You ask questions without waiting for answers, so I’ll answer without waiting for questions. There’s no point in the Blacksmith explaining in tedious detail how to sharpen a sword. If it was made, it was because there was no better way. In other words, that sword’s existence is both my sin and my achievement. You wish to know how to preserve that sword in your world, I presume. Let me tell you: the white armor is not the Winterer’s true counterpart, nor is it my creation. The white armor, forged in some world where the Winterer once dwelled, was never meant to amplify the sword’s power—it was meant to diminish it. By being paired with the armor, the Winterer fell silent for ages. But now that white armor of snow-bright sheen has exhausted its strength as a lock and can no longer serve as a bridle for the Winterer. You have come before me bearing the sword, but I need not repeat that your only choice, for your own sake, is the simple one: abandon the sword.”
A torrent of astonishing revelations poured forth all at once. It was difficult even to accept them one by one.
In particular, the revelation that Snowguard was not originally the Winterer’s true counterpart but rather a “lock” created later to control the Winterer’s power dealt Boris a considerable shock.
If that were true, then by separating the two objects, I had committed the most foolish act in the world. As a result, I had been forced to bear the sword’s tremendous power alone all this time.
Then was there truly no way but to abandon the sword and flee?
“Is that truly all? How pathetically meager a result for coming all this way. Yet since you dwell here and seem to know well what has befallen me, I must ask you this: is there a way to grant my brother—who has become neither living nor dead because of the white armor—eternal rest?”
“When you stand before me, everything the sword has endured becomes transparent to my sight. Those trapped within the sword, all their mistakes and corruptions and temptations they could not refuse—I see it all. But that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. I am merely an old Blacksmith, spending endless years frozen in thick ice at the world’s boundary. Your brother? He is not bound by sword or armor. He is bound only to you. So the easiest way would be for you to die and cease to exist. Kehehehe…”
“Is that truly the only way?”
Boris asked without laughing. The Blacksmith, who had been speaking so harshly, fell silent for a moment before asking.
“Hmph, do you truly have the resolve for that? Can you cast away your own life to grant your brother rest?”
In that moment, it would have been a lie to say my heart was not shaken by the countless events that flowed before my eyes. Nauplion, Isolet, and so many others, joyful moments, moments of anger, precious memories—all of it.
But whose life had Boris’s four years of survival been exchanged for?
If Yefnen had fled alone at Emera Lake as Boris had, then surely Yefnen would have been the one to survive.
But Yefnen had not. Until the very last moment, he was an Elder Brother who cast away his own possibilities cleanly, seeking to leave a future for his younger brother.
Moreover, I would never see Nauplion or Isolet again. As that fact came to mind, the answer emerged far more easily than expected.
“If that is all, then I will do it.”
Suddenly the ice chamber rang out as though struck by a great hammer.
Boris covered his ears but it was useless. As the resonance echoed around the ice walls several times, the ice on the side where the Blacksmith stood cracked sharply. Fragments shattered and scattered like scales across the floor. Deeper, ever deeper, the wall crumbled and a passage opened. The passage was more than twice Boris’s height and stretched roughly twenty paces in depth.
“You’re a fool. That statement means you have no lingering attachment to this world, yet in all my years I’ve never seen anyone who speaks such words while still alive and truly means them. It’s nothing but momentary impulse or bluster. So you must prove that what you said is true.”
As the passage opened, the resonance in the voice faded. From within the broken ice came the damp smell of earth just beginning to thaw in early spring.
The smell drew gradually closer. Something was walking out from within the ice.
It soon stood before me. Boris beheld an old man with such strange skin that he might have been a sculpture carved from ice and mud.
Unlike the shadow that had dimly shown through the ice, the old man was a giant. It wasn’t merely his height—every part of his body was twice as large.
“Let me see your face clearly.”
The old man’s face was frozen with a bluish tinge, yet its fine features were no different from those of an ordinary human. Yet his expression was far from merciful.
Eyes devoid of all compassion, piercingly cold; eyebrows grown long enough to extend past his temples; frost settled white upon his features—all of it suggested he might devour a man without hesitation. His teeth, jagged and uneven, were visible each time he opened his mouth.
Shortly after, the old man let out a voice like thunder.
“Just an ignorant child! A mere fifteen years of life, and you claim you’ll cast away your life for another? It’s like a three-year-old boasting he’ll catch a lion! Among all those who’ve spouted such words before me, not one has ever been true to their word. Do you think I’ll excuse you for being young and foolish? Look well! Do you know where you are?! Do you know who I am?!”
The same deafening sound that had accompanied the cracking ice filled the chamber again. Boris moved to cover his ears once more, then suddenly felt it. This sound—wasn’t it like a hammer striking an anvil in a blacksmith’s shop?
This old man who called himself the Blacksmith claimed he had forged the Winterer. With what fire and what metal? Where were the mighty hammer and anvil that had created it?
“The one who brought you here is among the most powerful demigods in his world. Yet even he cannot suppress you as you come to me, nor can he seize the Winterer. My Ice Cavern belongs to no world, submits to no power. The lives of those who enter here are mine. I can kill them, save them, or leave them neither dead nor alive. I have done so countless times already.”
Beyond the content of his words, the old man’s voice was so terrifying, like that of a malevolent spirit, that an ordinary person would have lost consciousness merely from hearing it.
Boris’s body trembled at that voice, which pierced his mind like a spike. Boris did not know it, but had there been even a hint of falsehood in what he had said moments before, the magical power contained in the old man’s voice would have crushed him to the ground.
Though he did not fall, still he could not retreat or turn away. His feet were rooted to the ground as though fused with it. Boris endured his fear and looked up into the old man’s enormous eyes.
Even his irises were the color of ice, a pale gray. Boris’s eyes, gazing back at him, were also gray.
“By your earlier words, even if I were to die here… my brother would still be freed from his agonizing bondage, would he not? Then I beg you—spare me from becoming neither dead nor alive. If your words are true, then I… must surely die here.”
At that moment, the Winterer’s presence suddenly surged into Boris’s consciousness.
Though I stood motionless, the sword that appeared in my mind blazed with intense light and seized control of my thoughts. No other thought could shake free from it.
My eyelids trembled. I could see nothing. The whispers grew louder, inch by inch.
‘Do you believe your life belongs to you?’
‘Your life has been reserved as mine.’
Boris’s eyes snapped open. It was a voice I had heard before—the one that had persistently tempted me just before encountering the monster in the ruined Upper Village.
‘If you mean it, take up a blade and pierce your own throat.’
‘I doubt you ever will.’
It was like a gesture of madness. Without thinking, I reached out and grasped the Winterer, then drew it. But why?
Was it because I had resolved to die, or was I trying to prove my will to that voice?
In that moment, a sentence I had once heard echoed clearly in my ears.
‘You whom I have chosen cannot die.’
‘Cannot die.’
‘Cannot die.’
‘Kiss my blood and… live eternally.’
‘Live eternally.’
‘Live eternally.’
‘The baptized are free from all sin.’
‘Free from all sin.’
‘Free from all sin.’
The Winterer in my grip trembled violently. It was not I who was shaking. I forced my eyes open and looked ahead. Yet all I could see was the blade—a single white sword that gleamed not at all, emanating no particular aura.
I could not release it from my hand. Just as when I had awakened after collapsing in the Old Assembly Hall through Hector’s scheme long ago, I found myself unable to let go of this blade I had grasped without knowing.
But soon after, Boris bit his lip and shook his head.
“I will not become your slave…”
I gripped it with the blade pointing downward, toward my body. The final image of Yefnen came to mind. Finding it difficult to pierce himself with a long sword, my Elder Brother had chosen to plant the blade in the ground and throw himself upon it. But now the Winterer, wrapped in cloth without a proper hilt, allowed me to grip it somewhat shorter, relying on the fabric.
As the blade drew near, something rose choking in my throat. Now my arms and shoulders trembled as well. I could not distinguish whether it was the Winterer’s suggestion or my own fear.
Memory and judgment were erased one by one from my mind. What remained at the end was consciousness upon a blank page—with only a few drops of ink worth of memory.
Yet by my own will, Boris nearly pierced himself.
Clang! Clang! Clang…!
The deafening crash of metal upon metal erupted, swallowing all sound. A hammer like wildfire struck and shattered my consciousness.
As if the earth became an anvil and thunder became a hammer, metal heated in hellfire by a tempest-fed furnace descended again and again, shattering chaos and breaking fate.
Before Boris’s eyes appeared a forge burning within ice. It began as a hazy illusion, then became so vivid it seemed to sear the skin. Upon the anvil lay a strange lump of metal. Was it truly iron?
With each hammer blow, flames leaped up, yet it endured unmoved, holding its form—a remarkably pure white… substance.
“That is the blade you grip, the blade that tempted you. In many worlds it has been called the ‘Evil White Serpent’ or the ‘Beast of Blood.’ When it was once defeated and weakened, I barely managed to gather it and heated and hammered it for a hundred years. Only then did I barely forge it into a fixed form resembling a blade.”
If hammered by that mallet for a hundred years, even the highest mountain would become a handful of sand. Yet the Winterer, through all that time, was merely refined into the shape of a sword.
“At that time, the blade’s power was sealed, leaving only one-tenth. But you know this as well, do you not? Even the sealed Winter Blade is a terrifying existence that no world can accept. That is your blade.”
Boris watched as the white mass upon the anvil instantaneously crossed the ages and transformed into a blade. I saw the familiar edge and hilt I knew, and the white scabbard that suited it.
Could something that had transformed into a blade of such noble bearing truly have been a calamity’s sovereign in its original form?
“As for the true nature of the ‘White Serpent,’ even the sages who govern countless worlds, the transcendent ones, and I myself do not know. How could this not be astonishing? It may well be the adversary of some unknown Creator, or perhaps his son.”
Boris, barely recovering his senses, asked.
“You say it is such an evil existence, yet the Creator’s son? What do you mean by that?”

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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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