I Will Protect My Brother - Chapter 50

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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 50
“Ahem, I have no recollection of saying such a thing! If there’s been a misunderstanding, my apologies!”
“As I thought.”
Railo quickly backed down. Seizing the moment, Chronos Yeljewa slipped in like a cunning serpent.
“That charlatan Dorian was always a fraud. But it’s been ages, Rosien Wynyak. You have no idea how much I’ve suffered wanting to acknowledge you.”
Beneath Yeljewa’s wrinkled eyelids, which spoke with such familiarity, lay a desperate hunger.
He too was desperate for the Crystal of Resurrection. Had he contracted some terminal illness?
‘Now that I think about it, it’s been quite some time since Yeljewa issued a prophecy. Could something have happened to his foresight?’
Yeljewa’s Guardian Castle, the “Eye That Foretells,” was a star that recorded the past of the cosmos, observed the present, and gazed upon the future.
Yeljewa’s ability was far more than simple future divination.
Their eyes perceive only futures that ‘must inevitably occur’ according to causality. This is precisely why they reign at the apex among the Transcendent Families.
‘If Yeljewa’s eyes truly have been compromised… and if the culprit is indeed that red-eyed monstrosity…’
I studied Chronos Yeljewa intently.
Once I restore him, might clues about the Broken Chaos and the red-eyed creature emerge?
It would be valuable to know when it might appear again…
‘Giving blood feels wasteful. Would eyebrow hairs or fingernails work instead? Though offering fingernails to eat seems rather crude…’
“Um, Rosien Wynyak…”
Just then, Alpien called to me in a trembling voice.
“Master has awakened. She asks that you come in.”
The door to Master’s bedroom had already swung wide open.
* * *
Master was not hovering between life and death as she had been days ago.
Wrapped in bandages from head to toe, with a thin silk robe draped over them, Regina lay reclined upon the bed.
Her eyes trembled upon discovering me.
“Rosien… Wynyak.”
“How is your body, Master?”
The fact that she had regained consciousness in mere days suggested that Railo’s healing power had proven effective.
Yet she still appeared unable to move about freely.
“…So you visited this place. I saw your traces left in the Planetarium.”
“How could I remain idle when my celestial Master had been attacked? Even the most unfilial of disciples has limits.”
I answered obediently and rolled up my sleeves. The blade of my dagger gleamed with renewed sharpness.
Blood dripped from my fingertips onto the bandages wrapped around Master’s body, seeping into the cloth. Once the bandages were sufficiently soaked, I withdrew my hand.
The grotesque wounds upon Regina’s body began to heal. The speed was miraculous.
“Rosien Wynyak, what is this…?”
“It is my gratitude for guiding me to Kirges, Master. For fourteen years in my previous life, you were my mother.”
“Rosien Wynyak, I… I…”
Tears welled in Master’s eyes. She reached out her hand toward me.
“I am truly sorry. But my love for you was genuine.”
“I love you too. You have always been my place to return to.”
I gladly took Master’s hand. In childhood, whenever she reached out like this, I would kiss the back of her hand.
Instead of coyly kissing my withered Master’s hand, I cradled it carefully in both of mine.
“…But.”
My grip tightened.
I slowly lifted my eyes to meet hers directly.
“Was I really so despicable to you, Master?”
“Ro, Rosien?”
“I was your successor.”
Master’s lips pressed firmly shut. It was strange to see her avert my gaze in bewilderment, her eyes dropping away.
I recalled the words she had once spoken to me, her eyes warm with affection and encouragement.
“You are my pride and my joy. I have always believed in you, Rosien.”
“When you said you believed in me, did you mean you believed I would never dare surpass you?”
“Rosien.”
“Did that broken faith kill me?”
Now I understood what it meant for one’s eyes to turn red with fury. I seized Master’s hand as though I would shatter it, leaning toward her with unbridled rage.
“Was that truly the only reason? Because I was superior to you?”
“Rosien, you misunderstand.”
“Of course you’d say that. There must have been another reason. The Master I loved was never so emotional.”
Regina Kirges is a rational being. Or at least, she is capable of rational judgment.
Surely she had arrived at the conclusion that I must die based on some logical foundation.
Light suddenly erupted across my fully opened Planetarium. The mana radiating from the Great Annihilation hanging at my waist grew violently turbulent.
I pressed my blade beneath her chin.
“I saw it in your Planetarium. Alpien was merely a tool, wasn’t he? Besides, you’re the only Transcendent in Kirges capable of threatening me. Why did I assume it was Alpien?”
“…!”
“Your body has recovered, and you’ve escaped death’s grasp. Now you must pay the price for sending your disciple to Gol, Master.”
Fear flashed across Regina’s face. In her wide, trembling eyes, my reflection looked like death itself, risen from Hell.
“Of course, before that, you’ll confess everything.”
The Sacred Relic drank in my fury completely. Lightning crackled through the room.
As mana spiraled wildly, everything in the bedroom began to shake violently.
The power of a Sacred Relic wielded by a Transcendent approaches divine punishment.
What would it feel like to be decomposed at the particle level by the Great Annihilation?
Master must have reached the same conclusion. She finally squeezed her eyes shut and cried out.
“Yes, a prophecy…!”
The raging lightning ceased abruptly.
A prophecy.
I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head slightly.
“Continue. What prophecy are you talking about?”
“…There is a prophecy passed down through generations among the Family Heads of Kirges. A future seen by the Yeljewa of that era, centuries ago.”
“What prophecy?”
“It concerns the Princess of Abuye, who was executed at the Continental Conference during that time.”
The executed Princess of Abuye?
It was an absurd story. Was he just spouting whatever came to mind to escape the situation?
“Continue your explanation.”
I pressed the blade of my sword, glowing with a pale blue luminescence, closer against her neck.
“Are you saying the Continental Conference has executed ordinary people?”
“Not merely ordinary people. They were known to be the primary culprits who sabotaged an experiment the Transcendent Families were secretly conducting at the time.”
“Exactly when was this, and what kind of experiment?”
“…The Age of the Blind Star. It was an experiment to create a protective barrier to shield this world, Rahnar, and the guardian who would maintain it.”
It was history I knew well.
The “Age of the Blind Star” referred to seventeen years, approximately five hundred years ago, when every star in the cosmos closed its eyes.
It spanned from year 943 to 960 of the world calendar, and is called the first age of darkness that descended upon Rahnar.
The distinction between day and night vanished, and meteorites fell from the sky almost daily. The earth burned continuously under waves of flame, or so it is said.
During this time, nearly all of Rahnar’s minor kingdoms perished. In merely seventeen years, hundreds of nations were destroyed, and only the Delpiam Empire, the Abuye Kingdom, the Nemada Kingdom, and the Hailon Kingdom—those possessing Transcendent Families—barely maintained their existence.
During that period, no matter how desperately the Transcendents called out, the stars never answered. Even the protection of the Guardian Star that dwelt within the families wavered greatly—it was a time of absolute crisis and darkness.
“However, I’ve never heard that the Transcendents conducted any experiments during that time.”
“Of course not. It’s classified information passed down only to those who succeeded as Family Head. Moreover, that ‘prophecy’ was transmitted by Chronos Yeljewa to Kirges alone—an absolute secret.”
“What exactly was the experiment?”
“…To protect Rahnar from an unstable cosmos, all the Transcendent Family Heads gathered and decided to construct a protective barrier for the world. Kirges would erect the barrier, and Wynyak would guard it.”
The Wynyak of that era?
“For the Family Head of Wynyak, who took on the role of guardian, all the remaining power of the Transcendent Families was concentrated into him.”
“But the Age of Darkness lasted only seventeen years. I understand the stars returned again in year 961.”
“Yes, after the Guardian Stars began listening to the Transcendents of Rahnar once more, that experiment was abandoned.”
“Then the Family Head of Wynyak who received all that concentrated power….”
“Through an International Court ruling, the other four families, excluding Wynyak, agreed to sever his limbs and confine him to the International Detention Facility.”
What? I couldn’t help but be shocked at that point.
“They severed his limbs and imprisoned him in a detention facility? Why?”
Why? If he had been selected as Rahnar’s guardian, he must have been a Transcendent stronger than anyone else.
And they said everyone had agreed to concentrate their power into him?
Yet Regina seemed to find my question itself strange.
“Because an age of peace had returned, and there was no longer any need for a Transcendent possessing such immense power.”
“….”
“It was a judgment rendered according to the Formula of Balance.”
Ah, now I understood.
The element most valued by Rahnar’s Transcendents was “balance.” The total amount of power must always remain constant—that is the Formula of Balance. It was an unwritten law established by the Transcendent Families to check and restrain one another.
According to that formula, when everyone’s power weakened, they concentrated power into one person to maintain the total amount.
But once the Guardian Stars returned and everyone regained their strength, the total amount became excessively bloated because of that one person who had received the concentrated power.
So they excised that bloated portion.
This too, without any guilt or sense of responsibility—merely following the formula.
‘How utterly sickening these Transcendents are.’
Even as I ground my teeth, Regina’s story continued.
“It was the Princess of Abuye at that time who released him from the International Detention Facility. For that crime, she was brought before the International Court and sentenced to death.”

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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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