Volume 6, Chapter 74 – The Passing of Two Gods

“Either way…… I’m dying soon……”

Polana’s body continued its slow dissolution into transparency. Fine ice crystals drifted away on the current. Her dark-purple curse power flickered like a candle in the wind, liable to go out at any moment.

Silence.

She let her gaze fall, and the confusion and fury that had filled her purple pupils were gone — replaced by a dead, flat stillness.

As her life energy ebbed lower and lower, Polana’s mind cleared to an unusual lucidity.

And in that clarity, she lost control of what surfaced — images from that crimson deep sea a thousand years ago came flooding in unbidden.

Shattered coral reefs. The severed limbs of her people, drifting in the water. Linore’s final gaze, overflowing with hatred. The blood-soaked scene of the shark Corrupted Beasts consuming her own kin. Each image was a blade at its sharpest, and they cut again and again into a soul already riddled with wounds beyond counting.

She could remember it with perfect clarity — standing in a pool of blood, watching her people slaughtered by the very Corrupted Beasts she herself had summoned, and being unable to do anything to stop it, every impulse overtaken by evil god instincts and an eerie whispering she could not resist.

And all the while, feeling an unmistakable, ecstatic pleasure at the sight of it.

Fury. Despair. And yet undeniable, wretched joy.

A sickly contradiction through and through.

Polana remembered it well.

The sea folk were different from the dragon race and the elves — they had always lived in the deep ocean. Even after the devastating blow the Shenluo Empire had dealt them, they could have retreated to regions far from the main continent, recovered their strength, and risen again.

But in the end, the sea folk had been annihilated completely — by their own Sea Priestess, guided by an evil god’s will.

The Shenluo Empire were monsters.

But she, Polana, was equally the sea folk’s unforgivable sinner.

For a thousand years, she had perhaps refused to face that truth — pinning the blame on humanity and other races rather than herself. A kind of running away, she supposed.

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“Heh heh……”

Polana laughed quietly, the sound full of self-mockery and sorrow.

“The sea folk…… I destroyed them myself…… heh heh, and I had wanted so much to protect them…… heh, heheh…… Death? …… That’s fine. It’s a release, after all……”

A thousand years of carrying the sin of annihilating her own kind. Controlled by hatred and power. Living like a soulless puppet——

Now that her consciousness had finally broken free of the curse power’s interference, Polana found she was thoroughly sick of that kind of existence.

“Haah.”

After one long exhale, the Abyssal Lord’s gaze drifted idly toward Ulutiel — lying not far away, equally in the process of coming apart. Polana’s brow instinctively creased, and she spoke with undisguised contempt:

“Rotten luck, isn’t it — having to walk the road to the underworld with you of all people? Just thinking about it is repulsive.”

Though her hatred of living beings came from evil god instinct, her disdain for Ulutiel specifically seemed to be one of the rare emotions that was entirely Polana’s own.

On the other side——

Ulutiel’s small body was disintegrating rapidly. The remnants of her dragon wings dissolved into ice crystals. The blood from her wounds had long since frozen over. She tilted her head slightly, a flicker of equal contempt crossing her pale-blue eyes, and she fired back without ceremony:

“Likewise — dissolving alongside a seafood bimbo with nothing but slush between her ears is the greatest misfortune of my entire existence.”

The disdain in her words was completely unmasked.

Perhaps it was simply that dragon and sea folk had always been at odds — even temporarily freed from the influence of curse power, Ulutiel’s contempt for Polana ran just as deep.

Yet even as the words left her mouth, the skin of Ulutiel’s face had already begun to come apart.

“Tch…… that quickly…… Haah, fine.”

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After a brief exhale, the Celestial Blight laboriously turned her neck. She stopped paying any attention to Polana — who was clearly still itching for a fight — and let her gaze settle on Bai Lianyue, sleeping within the ice lotus. For the first time, the sickly obsession and possessiveness drained out of those pale-blue eyes, leaving only a faint thread of quiet regret. Her voice came out barely louder than a breath:

“Only…… how unfortunate that I couldn’t leave this world together with Big Sister……”

Even freed from the influence of her evil god instincts——

When it came to Bai Lianyue, Ulutiel remained unwavering in her attachment.

Because a thousand years ago, after she had been betrayed by the human she had loved and trusted most in the world — it was Big Sister who had pulled her out of the hell she was being tormented in, and given her her power.

Ulutiel was well aware that Big Sister’s mind had perhaps been a little…… dim at the time.

But that didn’t change anything. It didn’t diminish in the slightest the deep longing that had taken root in her for Bai Lianyue.

And after she became an evil god, that longing simply grew more extreme and more warped than before.

So much so that what Ulutiel wanted, in the end, was to vanish from this world together with Bai Lianyue.

But it seemed that too would go unfulfilled.

After a stretch of quiet sighs and rueful smiles directed at no one, Ulutiel shifted her gaze to Ailiya, standing beside the elf girl.

……Hm.

The little girl who ten years ago had been hiding behind Big Sister’s back — and now she had reached this level of strength?

What a remarkable pace of growth.

Ulutiel felt something like genuine admiration stir inside her.

And then, following that admiration, the corner of her mouth curved into a faint, strange smile. Her tone carried a subtly coaxing quality, hard to pin down:

“Little one — you’re Ailiya, aren’t you. Since this is the end, let me offer you one piece of advice.”

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Advice?

Ailiya’s brow drew together the moment she heard it. Instinct told her no good thing would come from an evil god’s advice.

“What are you trying to say?”

“My suggestion is — you’d do best to kill Big Sister right now.”

Ailiya’s expression hardened. The hand gripping her sword tightened in an instant, and she fixed Ulutiel with a sharp, wary stare:

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing much.”

Ulutiel said it flatly, her body by now so transparent it was nearly invisible.

“I don’t know what exactly happened just now, but Big Sister…… may be far more dangerous than you imagine.”

The white-haired girl paused, her gaze settling on the lily-of-the-valley mark on Bai Lianyue’s forehead — the one that had almost completely faded. Something complicated moved through her eyes.

“As a Divine-Graced Maiden, surely you want this world to know peace. If Big Sister remains alive…… this crisis may not truly be over.”

As those words landed, Polana — who was never one to agree with anything Ulutiel said — spoke up, her tone surprisingly mild:

“That much, I’d say I actually agree with the little bitch on.”

She glanced over at Bai Lianyue’s face — that face she had always found herself both hating and helplessly drawn to — and let out a low breath.

“The old hag…… haah, Big Sister…… she’s dangerous.”

“Both of you, shut up!!”

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Cherry-colored Augury Force detonated outward. Ailiya refused without hesitation, her voice cold and utterly resolute. The force of her Divine Graced Realm aura bore down on both evil gods, leaving them without the strength to resist.

“I will not harm Lianyue. I trust that Lianyue would never do something like that.”

“Oh?”

Ulutiel looked at the certainty in Ailiya’s eyes, and gave a quiet, soft laugh. She didn’t press any further.

After all, the suggestion had been nothing more than a passing impulse.

Though——

No rebuttal……

It seemed the girl Big Sister had raised at her side still harbored quite a few secrets of her own.

“Fine, suit yourself……”

Ulutiel’s voice grew fainter and fainter. The last remnants of curse power within her were spent completely.

“Either way, I won’t be there to see that day. Do whatever you like.”

Before the words had fully faded, Ulutiel’s body dissolved entirely into a vast shower of white flame, drifting slowly apart in the gentle moonlit wind — until she had vanished without a trace.

At almost the same moment——

Polana closed her eyes, and her body completed its final dissolution. She stole one last look at Bai Lianyue sleeping within the ice lotus. There was no hatred in her gaze now — only a thread of complicated feeling, quiet and unreadable. Then she transformed completely into a scattering of dark-purple energy motes that drifted across the night air, leaving no trace of herself behind.

——”Farewell, Big Sister.”——

Translator Note

Farewell little sea urchin and little birdie