Chapter 1121 – #266_Ancient Stories(2) – DeepL

#1115

1.
Kether had given up some of her exalted hierarchy to reach a higher level, leaving only the order within her.

Erelim watched her for a long time, and a thought occurred to her.

Perhaps chaos was part of the completion of order?
Maybe all Kether had left was an imperfect order?

It was a long thought that she could never find an answer to.

2.
Time is relative, as a prominent physicist later discovered.

But for everyone living on this small blue star, time was absolute.
Things that seemed unchangeable changed, and moments that seemed to last forever were fleeting.

This was true even for the transcendent witches who had broken free of their bonds.

The comrades who had built Gehenna together were no longer the close friends they had once been.

Perhaps it was meant to be.
The single goal of creating a city for witches had temporarily become a buffer zone for their own interests, ideologies, and ideas.

“I don’t want to antagonize Blanche, but this is an unacceptable proposal.”

Count Cagliostro, once the youngest of his peers, was now the dean of a large pension society called the Emerald Tablet.

“This may sound crude, but for old times’ sake… we’ve become too different, haven’t we? Duke Erelim.”

She smiled wryly at Erelim, reminding him of the illusion.

Erelim recognized the validity of her words, but was still somewhat shocked.

It was funny how she’d had such a naïve optimism that once a bond was made, it would stand the test of time.

“Take care, everyone. I’m grateful that this is the last time we’ll see each other. Take care, my dear Eloa, for you still have much to learn.”

Tiferet gave my apprentice witch the name Tiferet.

She was not the only one.

Yesod, Zemernai, Kohav, Adonai, Ophiriel, and many others.
One by one, they left behind their heirs with a look of satisfaction on their faces that said, “I’ve done it all.

I understood.
This is the nature and destiny of witches.

The pilgrim’s journey to the highest levels of witchcraft is completed in death.

To prey on my master, to give the promised despair to a disciple who is like a child to me.

It is only the awareness of the seeker and the witch’s pride in continuing the work of the Witch of Creation that distracts me from the cruelty.

What a costly pride.
At times, Erelim harbored mockery, as if she were an uninvolved bystander to the events.

So Erelim herself hasn’t changed, and neither has he.

“The general meeting of the Qin Lie Academy is now called to order.”

Erelim was the head of Gehenna’s largest academic organization, the Society of Truth and Truthfulness.

She wasn’t particularly impressed by her position, even though she was revered by all.

She knew that beyond a certain point, talent ceased to be a mere attribute, and instead shaped the future of those who possessed it.

The years flew by.
Erelim’s life has been written down in the pages of history.

Much has happened during this time.

The number of witches that Kether had put to death had reached triple digits.
Half of Gehenna’s citizens were exiled.

Kater, once simply the architect and duke of the city, had become the queen of the witches, ruling with an iron hand.

Initial complaints and rebellions were worn away by the tides of time, and most of the world’s witches accepted her rule as a matter of course.

By then, Kether was a different person, with little left of her former self.

Kether no longer smiled at Erelim.

She did not grieve, nor did she rejoice.
The golden eyes that had once shone like stars now reflected only emotionless disillusionment and weariness, like tarnished gold coins.

Erelim didn’t bother to ask why.
Nor did she go to Kether with a drink to comfort him.

For once the news of Kether’s murder of Nukelavi had spread, the two who had once been master and pupil, mother and daughter, sister and sister, had come to regard each other as nothing.

This was not a sign of hostility toward Kether.
Rather, it was Erelim’s own compromise.

Erelim could not accept Kether’s order, but he was willing to respect it.

She believed that despite their differences in values and methodology, they were ultimately aligned in their goal of creating a world for witches.

It was the most Erelim could concede to Kether, to keep her at arm’s length, to be an innocent bystander.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in her quarters.”
“…As usual, you speak in a bizarre manner, Kether.”

It was only a few years after Clippert’s massive invasion of Gehenna that Erelim visited Kether.

As I said, Erelim’s life has been one of history.

Indeed, she had watched the world change over the years, and time and time again she wondered if she had been wrong.

“Kether, I believe your intentions are right, but your methods are wrong.”

Therefore, these words, uttered with no pretense of ‘how have you been’, were the result of a very long time of deliberation.

“Humans are dangerous. I don’t mean that witches should dominate and conquer them, but I don’t think they should be protected by killing and casting out their own kind.”

This was the height of imperialism.

It was a time of great powers stealing colonies and justifying their actions with the rhetoric that “we, as noble intellects, have a duty to spread civilization to savages.

I saw a time of slaughter, theft, and war.
Each and every one of them stained with blood so filthy that she was reluctant to speak of it.

In those bloodstains, Erelim saw human greed, lust, foolishness, and cruelty.

She saw the direction in which humans moved when they had power.

Kether listened to Erelim’s mantra in silence, her demeanor stoic.
She did not show the slightest change of expression from the beginning to the end of the conversation.

“Kether, we were talking about creating a world for witches, weren’t we?”

Erelim said desperately, even though she knew what the end of the conversation would look like at that point.
Her tone was more of a plea.

Perhaps she was hoping that Kether, who had only responded with silence, would convince her with some eloquence.

But Kether did not.

“…When you have finished, step aside. I will reconsider.”
“Not like that….”

Erelim could no longer suppress the long-standing anger and frustration bubbling up from deep within her chest.

“No, I will not back down. I deserve a better answer from you.”
“…….”

“I’ve done what you’ve told me to do, because I respected you more than anyone, because I knew you’d always do the right thing, even if the way you did it was different! Even the night you killed Nukelabi, I was in my office writing up the damn city code!”
“…….”

The resentment, so old it had turned to mush and raw, poured out sharply at Kether.

“Psyche wanders the earth with the stigma of her accomplishments, and Nukelabi died at your hands. What was this city for? What was this rule for? An order built on killing your friends, killing your own kind, and protecting the wrong people? If this is the order you wanted… I…!”

Erelim tried to form words like ‘I will gladly be your public enemy’, ‘I will be your enemy’, ‘I will deny this city’.

These were half-hearted words, but they were never the path Erelim would choose.

It was a kind of desperation to wring the truth from Kether’s lips, or at least to cause a momentary flicker of embarrassment to cross her expressionless face as she stared at Erelim.

It was a desperate cry for someone to look at me, like a neglected child going on a rampage.

“…Ha.”

But Erelim closed her mouth in mockery.

She knew that no matter what she said, Kether would not be swayed.
Kether could only stare at Erelim unmoved, like a tired ancient dragon.

“You are not the Kether I knew,” he said, “you are a machine, a machine that only exists to rule over an order of its own making.”

Erelim turned away.
Any further conversation was worthless.

She felt a line had been drawn that could never be sewn back together.
Or perhaps she was just discovering a line that had been drawn long ago.

“If I became a public figure and went on a rampage, you’d kill me with that bored look, wouldn’t you?”

Erelim turned to leave, not expecting an answer, but the words slammed into her back.

“No, Blanche. I would be very, very sad.”

Erelim bit her lower lip tightly and stalked out of Kether’s bedroom, trying not to look back.

3.
Kether fell ill.

Erelim didn’t know what caused it.
She was never told what it was, and few knew that she was sick in the first place.

Kether no longer ruled the city properly.
He rarely showed his face in public.
He kept a plaque in his ivory tower, withdrew from all public affairs, and, of course, never ordered a purge himself.

What’s truly ridiculous is that since Kether’s disappearance, Erelim has quietly maintained her order.

She looked on in horror at the frightening advances humans had made, but she didn’t care.
Any witch who meddled too much in the here and now was exterminated by orchestrating Witchpoint and Psyche from beneath the water.

Kether had told me about this earlier.

Kether had been told earlier that her body had been rendered incapable of normal inheritance by the removal of her past releases.
That Kether’s inheritance, which had reached the 30th rank, would eventually be given to someone other than the Apprentice Witch.

But Erelim’s actions were not the result of coveting Kether’s inheritance.
Of that, we can be certain.

As such, even Erelim himself could not understand why he was continuing Kether’s unreasonable behavior.
It was the height of foolishness.

It was not until many years later that Erelim realized the cause of his unreasonable behavior.

“No, Blanche. I would be very, very sad.’

It must have been the echoes of her last conversation with Ketter reverberating in her head.