chapter 181

Her magic support had been severed. Anastasia realised that.

She could no longer feel the presence that had always been behind her up to that point.

‘What happened to Lukas?’

What happened?

She stared at Norn. She couldn’t afford to look away.

Doubts filled her head for a moment. She became nervous.

She wanted to look back, but she was in a situation where such an action was inadvisable.

Doing such a thing would be akin to suicide as the gap between the two sides was minuscule.

Even while she was contemplating deeply in her head, Norn was still attacking fiercely.

‘Dammit.’s

There was no finesse to her attacks. They were simple spear thrusts and swipes.

However, sheer strength did not need skill.

Even if it was a seemingly useless attack, it became a different story when the power behind it was enough to pierce a mountain. At that point, even a simple thrust became a lethal attack.

Dangerous attacks poured in like heavy rain from a passing cloud.

Anastasia was forced to defend.

‘So this is close combat.’

Anastasia laughed inwardly.

Lucid and Kasajin. The faces of these two men who stood on the frontlines flashed in her head.

They were also this fierce. Compared to them, her skills were mediocre.

Even with her double output, it was becoming difficult for her to hold on. Moreover, she didn’t have a lot of ME remaining.

Norn, on the other hand, was becoming faster and faster.

It was too bad.

If she’d gotten a little more used to her body, she would have been able to end this little game much earlier.

Almost as soon as she had that thought, she shook her head.

It was just an excuse.

Suddenly.

Norn pulled back her spear and stepped back.

Anastasia couldn’t help but panic a little. Naturally, she didn’t do anything.

Rather, it could be said that her situation was a bit dangerous. If that confrontation had lasted a bit longer, the momentum would have built up to her disadvantage.

She hid those thoughts deep within and glared at Norn.

“What’s the matter? Getting tired?”

“Huht.”

Norn snorted and gestured behind Anastasia with her chin.

Wasn’t it a trap?

It shouldn’t have been. Demigods wouldn’t use such low level tactics.

She could at least trust that point.

…But she was still nervous. The thought of not wanting to look back flashed in her mind, but she simply shook her head and looked back.

And she couldn’t help but tremble at the scene that unfolded before her eyes.

“…Lukas.”

Frey was down.

And an ugly-looking boy was standing in front of him.

“That’s…”

“It seems to be one of our kind. This is my first time seeing him….”

Sunsir’s existence had been completely hidden by Lord, so it was also Norn’s first time seeing him.

However, she could tell at a glance that they were of the same race. She could also tell that his appearance had turned around what was slowly becoming a losing battle.

Norn smiled, completely relaxed.

“Your foolish struggle has ended.”

She was smiling, but her voice was still filled with anger.

But Anastasia’s eyes were still locked onto Sunsir. She saw him walk towards Frey.

She couldn’t be certain, but his intent was obvious. He wanted to kill Frey.

They were thinking about killing Lukas Trowman once again.

“Hah. Goddammit.”

Anastasia unexpectedly swore.

“It seems he’ll be dying a second time.”

Ignoring Norn, she charged towards Sunsir. It was an incredibly impulsive act.

Norn seemed shocked by the sudden action, but she didn’t miss the flaw that appeared.

She could feel Norn lunge towards her like a snake striking its prey. But she didn’t react to it.

She ignored the attack and continued to move as fast as she could. She would endure the attack.

Kujik!

There was a terrible sound.

As she hadn’t taken any defensive manoeuvres, her right arm had been torn off by the blade of Norn’s spear.

But Anastasia didn’t even flinch. She got in front of Frey and turned to face Norn and Sunsir.

She had sacrificed her right arm for this purpose.

“It’s been ripped off, so you won’t be able to heal easily.”

Norn spoke in a cold voice.

To be precise, she couldn’t afford to regenerate it. She needed to use her ME to stall for time rather than to regenerate one arm.

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

“What is it?”

“Though faint, the odds of your survival were obvious. For example, if you had run away after losing your right arm, I might’ve lost you.”

“…”

“But now, it’s different. You can no longer escape. You’ll die here.”

Anastasia didn’t deny it.

This seemed to affirm what Norn said. Which caused her to not understand even more.

“Then do you have a way to cure that man?”

“No.”

In any case, even if she had the ability, they wouldn’t simply watch her do it.

“So the only reason you sacrificed your arm was to reach that position?”

“Right. You pointed it out perfectly.”

Anastasia smiled.

Norn looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“What do you mean?”

“As you said, my goal was to reach this position. To stand right here.”

Sunsir gave a sinister smile.

“You’re just one more obstacle. Or are you saying you’d like to die first?”

She threw away her arm just to die first?

It was a way of thinking that they couldn’t understand.

Norn was confused.

She couldn’t understand why someone struggling to live just a moment ago would suddenly make such a choice.

“Huhu…”

Anastasia chuckled because she quite liked those words.

Die first.

Right. This time, she would die first.

‘Are you watching, Lukas?’

Everything was different from 4,000 years ago.

Anastasia went into the stance for the Magic King Fist and said.

“This guy’s gonna get up soon.”

“That’s nonsense. He was poisoned with Ananta’s poison. It’s impossible to drive out his lethal poison with his human body.”

Ananta’s poison.

She knew full well how dangerous it was. It was a condensed poison that could make an entire forest rot with just one drop.

But Anastasia still grinned.

“You can only say that because you don’t know who my friend is.”

There used to be a saying that it was impossible to fight against the Demigods.

But Lukas didn’t accept it. He ignored it and kept moving forward. Then he made the impossible possible.

Thanks to him, she realised something. Things that were usually referred to as impossible weren’t really impossible.

So what if they said it was Ananta’s poison?

He wouldn’t have returned 4,000 years later if he was meant to die.

Anastasia could feel it.

Even at that moment, Frey’s heart was pumping vigorously. No, it wasn’t just that. Frey hadn’t lost consciousness either. His eyes were closed, but he was still awake.

Nevertheless, he still hadn’t moved yet. She didn’t know why, but she was certain there was a reason.

‘He might be preparing to do something big. Or he might be thinking of using the fact that he collapsed to strike the enemy.’

Anastasia’s role wasn’t large.

She just needed to buy him some time. The rest would be handled by her most trusted friend, as usual.

“You don’t know this man.”

‘Lukas is a hero.’

No matter how desperate the situation was, even if they didn’t know how to fight and defeat was imminent, he wouldn’t give up.

When surrounded by a forest fire, he would look for a way to extinguish the fire rather than look for a way to escape.

It had always been that way, and it would continue to be.

‘I have about 50,000 ME remaining.’

That was fortunate. She still had room to burn.

Anastasia called upon her mana.

* * *

“Is it a Golem?”

Sunsir smiled at Norn’s murmur.

“They were puppets the Dragons used to make. Somehow, these old weapons are still in use.”

“This one is far more annoying than most Golems. In the old days, even when the Dragons were still around, there were never any like this one.”

“This is just proof that the humans are becoming more and more troublesome. Lord’s judgement was correct.”

Norn nodded at Sunsir’s words. Then she couldn’t help but turn and glance at him.

“No matter how much I think about it, I can’t remember you. But I’m certain you’re one of my kind.”

“Just forget about me.”

“Is that Lord’s will?”

“Right.”

“…understood.”

If Lord was behind it, then there was no need to question it any further.

Norn raised her spear. Now, it was time to accomplish her goal.

“I’m going to kill that gray-haired Wizard. Stay out of my way.”

From her words, he was able to understand her feelings, so Sunsir nodded lightly and said.

“Then I’ll take care of this scrap.”

“…”

Anastasia opened her mouth, but her voice didn’t come out. She suddenly had the thought that making the solution in the Golem body red like blood was not a good idea.

It was too glaring.

Even now, she wasn’t badly injured, but the fluid from her body had already turned the sand around her red.

Paak.

She was kicked in the abdomen.

Her body flew a short distance away before landing on the sand and rolling a few times.

Anastasia couldn’t get up. Because all her limbs had been cut off.

“If it’s a Golem… right, I have to break the core.”

Everything was blurry. She couldn’t even hear what he was saying.

Her ME had already been depleted, so it wouldn’t have been strange if she lost consciousness.

Sunsir approached Anastasia.

His hand twisted strangely before changing shape. It took on the form of a sharp blade. It was the ideal shape to cut and tear through Anastasia’s skin, flesh, and muscles in order to dig out her core.

“Hoh.”

But Sunsir withdrew his hand and muttered with a surprised voice.

“I never thought he’d get up again.”

She heard that clearly.

Anastasia turned her head.

Through her blurry vision, she could see Frey standing there.

“It’s really a miracle, but it seems he used all of his energy to get rid of Ananta’s poison. I can’t feel any power from him.”

Sunsir’s voice was full of ridicule as he spoke.

“This should be fun. Take a good look, Golem. At how Norn kills him.”

However, the moment he saw the scene unfold before his eyes, the smile disappeared from Sunsir’s face.

* * *

Just as Anastasia thought, Frey’s mind had already returned to the real world. However, he couldn’t move immediately.

800 years of experience in the mental world caused a gap between his current body and the body he had then, so he needed time to adjust.

Moving his body could only happen after he’d familiarised himself.

‘I need more time.’

Frey thought.

But he felt Sunsir approaching him. It was an incredibly dangerous situation.

Sunsir wouldn’t hesitate to kill him. At this rate, he’d lose his life in vain.

As soon as he began to worry about whether he’d have to force his body to move or not, Anastasia made her move.

He had not said a single word since he’d come back. They hadn’t even made eye contact.

Nevertheless, Anastasia came to stall time as though she knew what he needed most at that moment.

‘Schweiser.’

Right.

This was only possible because it was Schweiser. Because it was his best friend.

Then, Frey felt it.

Anastasia’s fight with the two Demigods. No, it wasn’t a fight. It was a one-sided act of brutality.

She threw up blood, her skin cracked, her bones broke, and her limbs were torn off. Nevertheless, Anastasia didn’t even let out a single pained groan.

She knew Frey was awake. Although she didn’t know the details, she still noticed that he was doing something.

So she swallowed her groans. Because she didn’t want to break Frey’s concentration.

And in the end, she fulfilled her task. She did a great job.

She had become a wreck, but she had prevented them from touching Frey.

“…”

Frey got up.

He’d finished perfectly adjusting to his body.

He turned to see Norn slowly walking up to him, a cold smile on her lips.

“It seems you found the power to stand. Good. It would’ve been meaningless to kill an unconscious guy.”

Frey looked at Norn.

Norn, the true form of the Nornir sisters. Now, he knew exactly what her power was.

“The power to see the past, present, and future. That is your power.”

Norn seemed surprised by his words.

“…who did you hear that from?”

There was no way humans would know the powers of Urd, Verdandy, and Skuld.

In fact, it was something only a few Demigods knew.

Frey continued casually.

“It fits. If you can see the future, then you’d be able to tell the effects of spells you’ve never seen before.”

“You must have heard it from Riki. But knowing wouldn’t change anything. You will still die here.”

Frey lifted a finger and pointed towards Norn.

Norn curled her lips.

This was an action she’d seen many times already.

“This again? I’m sorry to tell you, but neither the power of Absolute nor Indra’s lightning would be able to touch me. As you said, I can see the future.”

“This time, it will be different.”

Lightning sparked on Frey’s hand.

“Because you can’t avoid it even if you know it’s coming.”

Norn tried to laugh, but in the next instant, her expression changed greatly. She hurriedly raised her spear, but something faster than that shot out of Frey’s hand.

She knew. She’d already ‘seen’ it. That a lightning bolt would come out of his hand.

The problem was that the speed of this attack far exceeded Norn’s expectations.

“Kuk…”

It was inevitable. She literally couldn’t avoid it. She couldn’t even try.

A spear of lightning pierced through Norn’s body. And the pain that came from this attack stomped through her body like an angry bull.

It felt as if the bolt of lightning had cooked her whole.

Norn habitually looked into the future. And soon after, she felt two unfamiliar feelings at the same time.

They were regret and despair.

(TL: As you should have been able to tell by now(and as I probably explained a few times already), I translate/cut the chapters into english chapters by scenes(seperated by * * *). As I’m translating directly from the novel, this was the best form of separation that I could think of(as well as the way I do it for my other translations that have long chapters). Basically, I keep adding scenes until the english chapter reaches a good length(roughly about 2100 words on average) but oftentimes the chapters are much longer than that, or sometimes shorter(as average works). The only reason a chapter is made shorter is if the next scene would push it to 3000+ words or if the following chapter would be very short as a result but sometimes I bite the bullet and just give you a really long chapter.

So as you can see in this chapter, the first scene was relatively long(almost half the chapter), which meant I couldn’t add it to the last chapter because then this chapter would have been about half the length of a regular chapter. And since this chapter is the last of the ‘choice and awakening’ chapter, I couldn’t add anything after it. Making this disclaimer so you guys don’t think I’m being lazy and skimping on chapters(though I’d love to *-*), so if you see a short(ish) chapter in the future, you know the reason.)