The Life of a Wise Cult Leader - Chapter 201

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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 201

“Kuh, kuhuk…”

The Widow roughly pulled her hand out from his torso.

The heart she gripped with her sharp claws was still beating. Blood so dark it was almost black soaked her wrist and flowed down her forearm.

The moment his heart was torn out, Erendor swung his greatsword with superhuman willpower.

A single strike.

The Widow dodged the blow by turning into black smoke. She disappeared, leaving only black smoke behind.

Thud.

The heart, still warm, rolled across the floor with a dull sound.

“Damn it…!”

Alderion and Yelena swung their swords, chasing after the Widow’s smoke. The Widow looked at me and sneered.

“Watch closely with your own two eyes as the things you love crumble before you once again!”

I left the Widow’s mockery and sneering behind as I ran to the fallen Erendor.

Clang.

His greatsword rolled across the floor. He staggered, spewing blood, then finally collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.

Where his heart had been, an Ifrit transformed into a small flame was coiled up. It pulsed and glowed faintly as it burned, as if mimicking the beating of a heart.

I quickly approached him and placed my hand on his gaping chest.

‘Regeneration…’

The flesh would swell up only to crumble away, and blood vessels would writhe and stretch before snapping apart again.

It’s a curse.

Just like Lumensia’s spear…!

“…Stop it, friend.”

As I left the front lines, the remaining party members began to be pushed back by the Widow.

When I had Kalebrin check the curse, she shook her head with a despairing expression.

A lie.

She bit her lips and made a pained expression before eventually rushing back into the battlefield.

“…I said stop.”

Every time Erendor opened his mouth, fresh blood mixed with a metallic sound gushed out.

At this point, he should have crossed the Samdo River from excessive blood loss long ago.

But the reason he wasn’t dead yet was probably because of his spirit and my power.

He grabbed my wrist with his trembling hand.

“Don’t worry about me… Go help… the others.”

I can’t do that. Without Erendor, we lose fighting power.

“The noble fell down. You should go help him… You’re the Savior, aren’t you…?”

I won’t listen to his words. If he dies, then again, again…

“You’re not crying, are you? Friend…”

I fumbled around where my face should be with my blood-stained hand. The face inside the robe was surprisingly dry.

The flame was getting smaller, and the burden was gradually increasing.

The Ifrit groaned as it tried to replace his heart, but the contract seemed to be breaking as the flame flickered precariously like it was screaming.

His clouded eyes were fixed on the pitch-black sky. He didn’t seem to have much desire to live.

What use is there in clinging to the lifeline of someone who doesn’t want to live?

Like a sandcastle on a beach, like blue ocean trapped in a palm, his life slipped away helplessly.

“I… wanted power… Ever since I was pelted with stones for being called a half-breed bastard. My head was filled with nothing but that thought… To do whatever I wanted, to crush the heads of those who threw stones at me, I needed absolute power.”

He spoke while gasping for breath. I tried to create a heart for him, but only my divine power was being meaninglessly depleted.

“Haha… But to think what I spent my whole life searching for was just this piece of trash demon sword. That’s really funny, isn’t it.”

I wish he wouldn’t leave behind life stories like a last will. There are countless ways to live.

Don’t act like you’re dying right now…

“I thought if I found… the legendary sword Pieta, it would work, but as expected, maybe because it’s noble, it wouldn’t even look at a vagrant like me.”

Pieta is the sword of those who agonize.

It didn’t match Erendor from birth.

Because anguish was an element that didn’t suit him.

He slowly blinked his eyes. The Ifrit dropped tears of flame as it looked at me pitifully.

“I’m sorry, Ifrit… I made you suffer… because of my selfishness… Grand causes, beliefs… I didn’t have a single one of those fancy things… You were my only family…”

The focus disappeared from his eyes. Even the seventh heart I had created crumbled to dust and scattered.

“I just… chased power to live as I wanted…”

It was absurd. No matter how exhausted I was, I’m still a God. How could I not even manage to save a single human’s heart and let my friend die? Does this make any sense?

“I was just… an ordinary guy…”

He could no longer continue speaking and spewed out dark red clots of blood.

“…I’m, sorry.”

The strength drained from Erendor’s hand. The hand that had been gripping my wrist dropped to the floor with a thud and scraped the cold dirt ground.

His head tilted to the side with a thud.

The Ifrit that had held on until the end silently turned into a handful of smoke and disappeared the moment its contractor’s breath stopped.

“…Erendor?”

“…”

“…Erendor.”

“…”

Silence.

“You should answer… Where did you go, leaving your friend behind…?”

Stop talking nonsense and get up.

I put strength into the hand gripping his collar and shook him.

But all that returned was cold silence.

The brilliantly shining jeweled eyes were nowhere to be found, and only unfocused brown pupils stared into the void.

Cooling warmth and the fishy smell of blood.

Of all his traces that had been hotter than anyone else’s, that was all that remained in my hands.

I need to pull myself together. Even while I’m like this, my family is fighting a death battle with the Widow.

Get it together!

Otherwise, someone else will die again…

‘I need to heal the fallen Alderion and somehow buy time…’

I created a measuring reed from the void. Just as I was about to squeeze out my coldly settled divine power to raise my body, a strange phenomenon occurred.

The remnants of the Ifrit that had clearly become a handful of smoke and scattered in the void began to clump together again, drawn like magnets to my divine power that had condensed to create the reed.

‘…Savior.’

A tone mixing the compassion of a mature woman with the innocence of a young child rang directly in my head.

The scattered smoke was already forming the shape of a slender woman in the void. The elongated, reddish hands of the woman desperately grasped my hand.

‘I will offer everything I have, so please make a contract with me… Please, I beg you to reshape this person.’

It wasn’t a simple request, but a proposal throwing away her entire reason for existence. The moment the smoky palm touched my skin, Erendor’s life rushed into my soul like a burst dam.

*

Centa, the frontier of a village where elves lived.

In a world where cold snow fell to greet winter, a boy survived each day relying on a few scraps of cloth.

He wandered from village to village, but he couldn’t belong anywhere.

Young Erendor was treated like a ghost and despised by elf children, and was often pelted with stones by human children.

“Why does someone with dirty mixed blood keep staying here instead of getting out of our village?”

“A half-breed with half-ears, where do you get off pretending to be human!”

Red blood seeped from his ear, more pointed than a human’s, torn by the stones.

The boy, filled with spite, did not cry.

Instead, he clutched dirt and desperately charged at those bastards.

However, it was a matter of moments for seven children to beat a starving half-elf who couldn’t even get scraps into a pulp.

The boy sprawled on the cold floor swallowed the blood pooled in his mouth instead of wasting energy cursing the world.

What should he do? The answer was clear.

‘Power. If I just had power, I could crush all those bastards’ heads.’

And as if responding to that longing, a small spark rose from the snowdrift.

It was a nameless, weak lower-class fire spirit that seemed ready to flicker out at any moment.

“…Are you alone like me too? How pitiful.”

The boy grumbled but still tucked the small ember into his embrace.

Not even knowing his own body heat was being stolen, he layered his thin clothes to cover the freezing spirit.

“You need a name. From today on, you’re Ifrit. It’s the name of the strongest spirit in legend.”

The boy whispered to the tiny spark, breathing out trembling breaths from cold and pain.

“So don’t die… When I gain power later, I’ll make sure you live up to that name.”

*

Even as his sword tip trembled and his breath was failing, Erendor didn’t let go of Ifrit.

During lonely nights swinging his sword tens of thousands of times, at dawn when he collapsed bleeding on the cold stone floors of back alleys, she was never just a tool.

When the world threw stones at him, she was the only one who embraced him with warmth, his only family closer than blood.

‘Please give him, who started with an unfair beginning, a chance to start a fair life…’

It was the first and last prayer a spirit offered to God.

I accepted Ifrit’s will with trembling hands and formed the contract.

At that moment, the scattering smoke burst into flames and drew a massive goddess statue of fire in the air.

Though hotter than the sun, the energy surrounding Erendor was gentler than anything else in the world.

The goddess who had taken form gently pressed her forehead against the forehead of Erendor, who had become a corpse.

As if offering a farewell greeting, or as if pressing her remaining life firmly into his heart. The flames began to slowly transform into light and disappear from the lower body up, and eventually even the touching foreheads and heads scattered transparently.

Only pure white ash, the sole evidence of her existence, fluttered up to the sky like snowflakes and disappeared.

At the same time, Erendor’s unfocused pupils slowly blinked. His stopped heart began to throb again, and the spirit’s final warmth spread like wildfire through his cold veins.

“Ifrit…”

His lips trembled finely as they spoke that name. The gem-like light that sparkled with each blink repeatedly flickered back to brown like dying embers.

He had sent away with his own hands the spirit who was both family and his only warmth.

A silence more terrible than death settled over the man’s face.

I led my staggering body away from Erendor and approached the fallen Alderion.

The terrible wounds that Kalebrin had been holding back while shaving away her own life healed like magic as soon as my touch reached them.

“What about Eren, dor…?”

Alderion, who had barely regained consciousness, looked at me with unfocused eyes and asked. Instead of answering, I quietly shook my head.

That’s when it happened. The legendary sword Pieta, which had fallen to the ground and was rolling around like ownerless scrap metal, began to vibrate strangely.

Wooooong—.

A low, heavy resonance shook the atmosphere of the battlefield. We turned our heads as if entranced. The noble divine power that had turned away from the vagrant who only pursued strength was now crying out toward the man agonizing in the abyss of loss.

“…I think I finally understand a bit. Ifrit…”

He murmured as he grasped the sword hilt. There was no arrogance trying to subdue it with force like before. Only the sorrow of losing what was most precious and the enlightenment found at its end flowed through his fingertips.

Paaaa-

As he grasped and lifted the sword hilt, Pieta transformed into a great sword, the form most familiar to Erendor, and spewed forth pure white flames.

White divine power surged up as if to split the world where darkness had fallen.

Not crimson flames, but white flames that seemed to purify everything enveloped Erendor. The tears flowing down his cheeks instantly evaporated.

“It’s too late now…”

That voice held no cheerfulness, no thirst for power.

Only the cold regret gained from losing something precious.

I could instinctively understand. Why Erendor had been unable to become a Transcendent. And why it was only now being achieved.

Kwaaaaaaang-

When the pure white blade that seemed to split the world was swung once, cracks appeared in the barrier.

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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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