The Life of a Wise Cult Leader - Chapter 170

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 170

 

Her expressionless red lips were sealed shut in an eerily rigid manner. Unable to withstand that silent pressure, Kalebrin quietly turned toward the altar.

 

Crumbled fingertips. Disheveled hair.

 

The greatest advantage of sorcery is that it can be wielded without the cost of mana.

 

If it had been other mages or those who handled divine power, they would have collapsed long ago.

 

Yelena dragged him, who was melting away like a snowman, all the way to the altar.

 

“Hahaha! Hahahaha… Do you even know what you’re doing right now?”

 

The demon bound to the altar with threads thrashed about.

 

“You’re going to mix a demon’s soul into God’s body? Pour the most blasphemous filth into the most sacred vessel? You crazy bitches! That’s not creating a god, that’s creating a monster!”

 

Kalebrin didn’t answer. Rather, it was Yelena, who had kept her mouth shut all along, who responded.

 

“Yeah, we’re crazy bitches. I’ve already seen thousands of things that babble on about dying soon.”

 

She was struggling to hold up the collapsing Ascetic.

 

“Monster or evil god, I don’t care. As long as I can save the Ascetic. So Kalebrin, hurry up.”

 

She looked down at the demon with bloodshot eyes. The demon’s face with its hollow, pierced holes changed to the ‘Ascetic’s’ face.

 

“Yes! Hurry up and try it! Go ahead and ruin your savior with your own hands!”

 

“….”

 

As the demon screamed loudly, Kalebrin’s hands began to tremble. The widow firmly grasped those hands.

 

She pushed the black veil back behind her head and stared blankly at Kalebrin with an expressionless face.

 

“If you don’t do it, the Ascetic will die.”

 

Kalebrin bit her lips. The demon shouted.

 

“It’s better to die nobly than to be ruined!”

 

The widow began to speak calmly.

 

“Lumensia isn’t dead yet. In the second air raid, everyone will die. The only way to counter that is to save the Ascetic now.”

 

“….”

 

“The Ascetic who wants to protect you all would want that even more, wouldn’t he?”

 

The widow’s cold voice drove the final nail. Instead of answering, Kalebrin chewed on her lips.

 

Kalebrin took out a pouch from her bosom. She squeezed the white bone powder mixed with sand from the pouch tightly, and blood seeped out from her still-trembling fingers.

 

She grabbed a handful of the blood-soaked sand and roughly scattered it at the feet of the melting Savior.

 

Swish, scrape.

 

Her bloodied knuckles scraped against the ground.

 

It wasn’t a simple drawing. Using her life force as ink, she began drawing a ritual circle that was forbidden even in their tribe.

 

The circular formation drawn around the Savior began to flicker ominously in blood-red light.

 

“Are you really going to ruin it? Your idol! With your own hands!”

 

A metallic-tinged incantation flowed from Kalebrin’s mouth.

 

“O most evil flesh in the world, most base blood, and mass of unforgivable sins…”

 

“Stop it!”

 

The demon who had lived for thousands of years trembled in fear at the act of tearing apart the essence of existence and using it as fuel for another being.

 

“I shall burn your evil deeds to erect a spine, and boil your curses to fill a heart. With the mud of the abyss, I shall mold a heavenly vessel. Bone to bone. Flesh to flesh. Blood to holy blood. With the most filthy, I shall complete the most noble.”

 

As the demon screamed and writhed, his face changed once again to that of the Ascetic. The demon with the Ascetic’s face gazed at Kalebrin with the saddest and most benevolent eyes.

 

“Kalebrin… Please don’t defile me. Please…”

 

Flames spontaneously sparked in the hearth near the altar.

 

She didn’t even give him a glance, and instead recited the incantation again in a louder voice.

 

“Impurity shall be cleansed by fire, and your sins shall become bone to atone forever…!”

 

As soon as her judgment fell.

 

Crackle!

 

Black flames erupted from the demon’s heart area.

 

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

 

The demon’s face, which had been wearing the Ascetic’s mask, crumbled like candle wax. But even the scream didn’t last long. A massive pillar of fire engulfed the demon’s entire body.

 

The demon became black ash in an instant without even letting out a proper scream and scattered into the void.

 

All that remained on the empty dais was a black scorch mark in the shape of the demon, as if to show what had last been there.

 

“Is it done?”

 

The Ascetic’s body, which had been melting like candle wax, stopped collapsing.

 

But that was all. There were no words, and his burning eyes weren’t the same as before. His radiance was emitting only faint starlight rather than brilliant light, and his halo wasn’t spinning either.

 

“Ascetic…”

 

“The, the sorcery… worked, properly.”

 

Kalebrin gasped roughly as she confirmed it.

 

“Then why isn’t he getting up…?”

 

“Wh, when we’re badly hurt… there are times when we can’t get up… It’s like that… The, the sanctuary is also fine… so, yeah, it’s okay.”

 

Kalebrin clumsily patted Kalebrin’s back with her burned and ruined hands. It was behavior she had learned from Yelena.

 

“Don’t your hands hurt…?”

 

“Mmm, I don’t know. My senses… seem to have dulled.”

 

“What should we do. What if you can’t use your hands…”

 

Yelena couldn’t even touch those terrible hands and just clenched her fists. Meanwhile, the widow calmly checked the Ascetic’s condition.

 

“Do they really not hurt?”

 

“…Actually, they hurt a little.”

 

Kalebrin mischievously laughed “hehe” and added.

 

“No, a lot.”

 

That’s when it happened. Warm warmth descended upon Kalebrin’s ruined hands.

 

Shiiine…

 

Sacred golden particles wrapped around the wounds.

 

New flesh miraculously sprouted on fingers that had been burned black with visible bone, severed nerves reconnected, and they began returning to their original white hands.

 

“Huh?”

 

Someone’s large hand gently embraced her hand where new flesh had grown.

 

*

 

Who am I?

 

Why did I come to this world?

 

I couldn’t leisurely think such thoughts. Because Lumensia’s hand was trying to crush everyone.

 

‘My divine power is…’

 

Fairness.

 

For ‘Cel’ who was alienated from society and ‘Hanbul Park’ who was cast out…

 

Using the divine power of fairness, I was able to judge Lumensia.

 

It was something I could do by borrowing the divine power of the Forgotten Gods and the power of the God of Darkness.

 

I realized that I had reached my limit.

 

If I continued like this, I would disappear before long.

 

If I was going to disappear anyway, I would do everything I could before leaving.

 

{You will be freed from all oppression and shackles, and the dead will finally obtain peaceful rest.}

 

An imperfect body and a disconnected soul. Overflowing divine power and strength.

 

Like precarious dominoes.

 

Like a poorly stacked stone tower in a precarious state.

 

In an environment that could collapse at any moment, my breath was getting choked up.

 

‘Is this the limit.’

 

The time had come for the body to return to earth and the soul to return to cosmic dust.

 

*

 

When I sensed annihilation.

 

Something strange melted in.

 

Something sly and cunning. Something filled with original sin…

 

Sweet deception filled with possibilities.

 

-I’m going to kill you! I, the Lord of Deception!

 

The deceiver’s voice rang loudly in my head.

 

*

 

“Does it really not hurt?”

 

“…Actually, it hurt a little. Hehe.”

 

“No, a lot.”

 

What I could see through the hazy memories was their completely disheveled state.

 

That was… something ‘I’ didn’t seem to want to see very much.

 

I approached the two humans clinging together and placed my hands on them.

 

And, as if I had done it many times before.

 

I skillfully manipulated ether to heal their wounds.

 

*

 

The faintly glowing eyes seemed to fold inward like subtly smiling eyes.

 

“Ascetic…?”

 

When the long, large hand covered Kalebrin’s hand and healed all her wounds, her eyes widened in surprise.

 

“Cel…!”

 

God looked puzzledly at the one she called ‘Cel.’

 

[…?]

 

What had been spoken with joy became mixed with bewilderment, unease, and confusion.

 

“Cel…?”

 

Kalebrin’s unblemished, wound-free hand was placed over the large hand. It would take five of Kalebrin’s hands to fully cover that hand.

 

The Savior silently felt the small warmth that had settled on his hand.

 

Kalebrin’s eyes welled up with tears.

 

“Cel…. Are you, are you okay…? Did I, did I break something again, something…. Did I break you? I’m wo, worried that….”

 

From her eyes flowed not tears of blood, but clear, transparent tears.

 

The Widow covered her face with the veil again and tapped Kalebrin’s shoulder with one hand before walking away.

 

“Stop it, Kalebrin. Do you think someone who has become a different existence could understand such words?”

 

“Different…. But the, the Ascetic is…. He’s he, here.”

 

He, who seemed to lack self-awareness, still let his hand be held as Kalebrin grasped it.

 

“Yes. Because Cel was used as the base, it would appear to your eyes as if Cel is inside there.”

 

The Widow calmly examined the God before her. God received the Widow’s touch with a subtly awkward demeanor.

 

“Can we say a caterpillar and butterfly are the same thing?”

 

The Widow spoke gently, like a teacher instructing an ignorant student.

 

It was different from earlier when she had scolded like disciplining a disobedient student.

 

“Just because it became a butterfly doesn’t mean it would remember the leaves it gnawed on as a caterpillar. That’s how providence works.”

 

There wasn’t a trace of emotion in the Widow’s voice.

 

Kalebrin’s face turned pale upon hearing those words. The tip of the giant finger she was holding trembled slightly.

 

‘Really, are you not the person I knew? Are you just a God with only an empty shell remaining?’

 

She tried to lift the veil to look, and also tried touching the radiance.

 

Normally, he would have quickly avoided her touch or wouldn’t have let her get close enough to fidget with him.

 

He was definitely different from before.

 

‘No, of course he’d be different from before…. But still….’

 

The Widow, having apparently figured him out completely, withdrew her hand. Kalebrin continued holding onto the large finger. As if he might float away somewhere if she let go.

 

She didn’t want to lose her newly found family.

 

While Kalebrin was shedding tears profusely to the Ascetic who seemed to feel nothing.

 

Celestia, who had fainted and awakened again, dragged her battered body up onto the podium.

 

“…Ascetic…?”

 

Limping, she crawled toward him even as she stumbled and fell. The Ascetic placed his hand on Celestia’s blonde head with slow movements.

 

A familiar feeling.

 

But different.

 

The Archmage quickly realized this.

 

“Why is the Ascetic like this?”

 

Yelena helped Celestia to her feet.

 

“It’s because he became a God. The time when he was human… he’s probably forgotten it all.”

 

Even though I proved my usefulness, even though I worked hard to polish myself so you wouldn’t abandon me, why won’t you look at me….

 

“Ascetic…. Ascetic, you said we’d see each other again. I, I…. This is a lie, if I had known it would be like this. If I had known, I just, I wouldn’t have done this.”

 

Celestia’s voice became wet with tears.

 

“Why did you forget, why did you forget that… Are you really an idiot? Are you stupid? Why did you forget it all…!”

 

She cried, tears streaming down profusely. God seemed subtly troubled.

 

The 3-meter giant before Celestia’s eyes. The one draped in white veils down to his feet with radiance.

 

That existence certainly bore traces of the ‘Ascetic’ she had known, but was simultaneously far too unfamiliar.

 

A God who lost his memories. A Transcendent who forgot his time as a human.

 

Is this the ending of the family you spoke of?

 

Have we, whom you wanted so desperately to protect, now become strangers with no meaning to you?

 

Though her body was restored to perfect health by his healing, her heart felt torn to shreds.

 

Celestia thought of Cel, who had been a death row prisoner in prison.

 

Cel, who had probably sensed his end and bid her farewell.

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