Chapter 73 - EPISODE 73 – ROTTEN WATER (2) (1/2)
A brilliant golden light filled their sights.
The moment she pulled out the Spear of Corruption, the power of the dragon vein surged and covered the whole area.
“Gaaah!”
“My eyes! My eyes!”
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe, who were already corrupted by the power of Belial, were tormented by the sacred power that had been unleashed from the dragon vein.
Jude turned to Cordelia, and she nodded.
They freed the power of the dragon vein by pulling out the Spear of Corruption, but they did not intend to stop there.
Cordelia looked back at where the Spear of Corruption had been thrust.
She chanted the spell as she faced the pulsating golden stream under the cracked ground that looked like it was ripped apart.
Then she completed it.
Thus, she made it explode!
“F*ck bang!”
The Spear of Calamity struck the dragon vein. It then exploded and completely made the dragon vein runaway, which had already gone out of control by half.
Baaaaaaaaang-!
There was a roar. The earth shook one after another, and what Cordelia had hoped for began to happen.
“Earthquake! It’s an earthquake!”
The warriors of the Angry Bull tribe screamed, and the ground that was really shaking began to crack altogether.
Jude and Cordelia tried to destroy the main camp itself by making the dragon vein run out of control.
“Yahoo!”
In the midst of the earthquake which cracked the ground and the runaway dragon vein soaring into the sky, Cordelia raised both of her arms up high and brightly laughed, and Jude sighed as he thought that this was his fault.
Because the moment he saw her, he imagined that she would look like a perfect gwang-nyeon-i if she put a flower in her hair, and that he thought she was pretty despite that.
T/N: Koreans have this superstition/presumption that if a woman puts a flower in her hair, it signifies that she is crazy, as in, mentally crazy, psychotic or a mentally disabled woman. They call these women ‘gwang-nyeon-i’, which means ‘crazy b*tch.’ How this originated is a mystery, but it still persists up to this day.
“Madam!”
“Dolswe!”
Despite the shaking of the earth, Jude could still use the Twenty-Four Gale Steps.
Jude used the gale to run at once towards Cordelia, and Cordelia leapt towards Jude.
“Merge!”
She wasn’t really serious.
As soon as he heard Cordelia’s shout, Jude turned his back, and Cordelia clung on Jude’s back and then slapped it.
T/N: ‘Merge’ used here can also be combine, unite, transform, fusion, etc. This word is commonly used in mecha/robot series, where multiple parts merge/combine into one giant robot. An example would be the series ‘Voltes V’, where the team shouts ‘let’s volt in!’ to merge into one big robot.
“Let’s run!”
Cordelia hugged Jude’s neck with one hand and shouted cheerfully, and Jude fixed Cordelia’s position before he started running again.
“Hold on tight!”
“I’m already holding on tightly!”
Baang!
Jude kicked the ground. Using the whirlwinds, he spurred on the cracked and shaking ground to escape from the Angry Bull tribe’s main camp.
There were various loud sounds heard everywhere, such as shattering, breaking, and collapsing, as well as the cries of the warriors of the Angry Bull tribe, but Cordelia, who was the main culprit of everything, merrily laughed.
“Yay, so exciting!”
They were then finally outside the impact zone of the earthquake.
From above a barren hill, they saw the main camp itself being destroyed and scattered in all directions.
“Mission clear.”
“Good job.”
At Jude’s praise, Cordelia cleared her throat and said as she stared at the Spear of Corruption in her right hand.
“Jude, Gentle Snow Breeze will regain her power now, right?”
“She’ll regain it. Or rather, I think her power’s restored now.”
With Cordelia on his back, Jude turned his gaze towards the direction of the basin of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe.
And Cordelia saw it too.
A sacred blue light soared up high from that distant place.
***
Madgar saw it too.
And she realized.
The enemies had pulled out the Spear of Corruption that was blocking the power of the dragon vein.
They ignored the Essence of the Blue Moon and attacked the main camp instead.
What they needed was not the Essence of the Blue Moon, but the means to restore the power of Gentle Snow Breeze.
She confounded the means with the end. And as a result, Gentle Snow Breeze regained her power.
“…It can’t be.”
She thought on what the series of events mean.
Failure.
It was a disastrous and big failure.
Madgar herself failed.
She screwed up her mission.
“No.”
Madgar’s breathing became rough.
He eyes turned bloodshot.
Madgar hugged her own shoulders as she muttered in a small voice.
“I can’t fail.”
She couldn’t fail.
Master Haraken would abandon me too.
He’ll abandon me like my master…no, that son of a b*tch that calls himself master.
I can’t fail.
I mustn’t fail.
She was as Jude and Cordelia had analyzed.
Madgar was success-oriented and had an arrogant personality.
And the root of that personality was the pain of her past from being abandoned by her master.
She couldn’t fail, so she had to succeed in everything.
So that she wouldn’t become someone that would be abandoned.
So that she would be in a position where she wouldn’t be abandoned.
She armed herself with arrogance.
She sought perfection by doing everything in person.
“Failure.”
Madgar had a strong obsession with success.
So this much failure was unacceptable. She would do anything to prevent failure.
“Master Madgar?”
Her aide looked at Madgar with a worried look, and Madgar looked up and saw her aide.
Her words poured out.
“Sacrifice yourself for the great cause.”
“Master…Madgar?”
That was it.
Madgar’s hand touched her aide’s forehead. Before he could respond, Madgar chanted the spell to activate the technique she had prepared in advance.
“Ah? Aaah?!”
A dark red magic circle was drawn on the whole body of the aide with its center on the forehead.
And it wasn’t just the aide.
All the twenty or so warriors that Madgar had brought also screamed painfully.
“Master Madgar!”
“Wh-why!”
Madgar did not answer. She recited the spell and clenched her fists, and at that moment, her aide and other subordinates became pools of blood. They became sacrifices to the magic circle, to be offered to Belial’s altar.
Human offering.
It was the fastest and surest way to borrow the power of the demon.
Madgar closed her eyes. Dark red energy gathered in the place where her aide and subordinates stood, and the energy rushed forward towards Madgar.
“I can’t fail.”
I must succeed.
Although the dragon vein was liberated, it was only for now.
The time when Gentle Snow Breeze’s power was blocked was long. Belial’s power had harmed her little by little.
So Madgar still had an opportunity now.
She could still do it.
Madgar opened her eyes.
Her eyes shone red, as it changed into compound eyes like that of an insect. Large moth wings sprouted from her back.
Madgar flew.
She headed towards the basin of the Gentle Snow Breeze tribe.
***
Gentle Snow Breeze flew up into the sky. As she widely stretched out her snow-white wings that was like an angel’s wings, she released her power, and the demonic power that threatened the basin was cleansed in one fell swoop.
“Go forth, my children! My power shall be with you!”
Gentle Snow Breeze’s power permeated into her tribal warriors.
A blue wind wrapped around them, and each of them took their weapons and charged.
The Clear Snow and Fine Snow brothers helped the warriors by summoning gusts of wind.