Chapter 2: The Four Seasons (2)
TL: Jonny16
One month later, at the Laterano Holy See,.
The capital, Henerali-fe, was filled with flowers and joy.
“Long live the hero!”
Boom!
Petals of magic scattered ceaselessly, and the streets were crowded with people who had come to see the wedding of the century.
“Thank you for making the world worth living in!”
It was a thank-you cry intended for Abel, the slayer of the Demon King.
“For Peace!”
The news that such a hero was marrying the Iron-Blooded Princess, who had restored the Kreuz Empire, was the talk of the town.
“Here he is!”
Someone shouted.
Crack, creak.
The gigantic city gates opened.
And, through the opening, a stunning carriage driven by eight white horses emerged, oozing grandeur.
Clop, clop.
The wedding parade started.
Abel stood in the front, and others who had been waiting began to pray.
“Hero, please heal my mother.”
“Thank you for slaying the Demon King.”
Reaching out to the hero.
May Abel alleviate their despair.
Abel, wearing a golden crown and a flowing white robe, waved to everyone.
But if everyone was praying to Abel, who exactly was he praying to?
‘The princess is in the back, so it doesn’t matter.’
Cain opened his eyes, which he had kept closed.
Abel’s hands likewise resembled those of someone praying earnestly.
Following much deliberation,
After much contemplation,.
Only he could take Abel’s praying hands.
It would be an unexpected conclusion.
Boom!
He ran.
He stepped on people’s shoulders and flew like a bird, and his figure was soon exposed.
In a second, his gaze met Abel’s.
━You must kill me on the wedding day. Only then will I be allowed to die.
Abel’s words from the cliff echoed in his ears.
Cain gritted his teeth.
━Since receiving this ‘blessing’, my memories have been fragmented. It was as if someone else was living my life for me.
Abel wanted to live as ‘Abel Ethelred’ until the very end.
If this blessing overtook his body, it would be too late.
That’s why he wanted to die as the whole ‘Abel Ethelred’ before being entirely taken over.
━It became worse after I killed the Demon King. The memories that used to vanish briefly, now disappeared for days at a time.
That was sufficient for Cain to lift his sword.
“A—bel!”
He had a massive white greatsword in his hands. It was ‘Winter’, the demon sword, that paired with the holy sword.
Crackle and crackle.
White lightning struck.
Cain charging forward looked like a white storm.
Clang!
The hundreds of knights protecting Abel were uprooted like weeds by his power and sent flying.
He cleared the riffraff in an instant, leaving only four remaining.
They were his allies, and they had killed the Demon King alongside the hero, Abel.
━Whenever I lost a memory, I questioned my comrades. How was I yesterday? But the answer was always the same.
“Stop him━!”
“How dare this madman ruin the hero’s wedding?”
Cain did not blink an eye, despite the obscenities flung at him.
They were no longer Abel’s companions.
—’The same’. I was clearly a different person, although everyone claimed I was the same. Did they genuinely not know, or were they fooling me? ……Everybody is suspicious.
Cain had questioned if he could use his 【Status】 to see through their true intentions, now that he suspected something.
Abel had shook his head, looking bitter.
—Suddenly, I could not see anything at that moment. It was the first time the power had shown me something false.
Abel has lost everything.
He had grown to distrust his allies, and he had learned that the hero’s power was lying to him.
At the point when everything turned suspect.
━My brother sprang to mind.
Cain, whom he had parted ways with before becoming a hero, would be different.
He’d recognize his true self.
Abel, who had gone to find Cain with an almost self-abandoning resignation, clenched his fists and barely repressed a cheer.
That was because ‘Winter’, which he had assumed he would never find, was on Cain’s back.
Abel believed it was fate and began to devise a plan.
━So, please, brother.
Thump, thud.
Cain fell to the ground.
With his heels at the core, the ground of Henerali-fe cracked like a spider’s web.
Swish!
He kicked himself off the ground.
The global landscape became twisted.
Even the time called an instant was too long to describe Cain’s dash.
Even the four who had fought the Demon King were caught off guard.
Only one.
Abel glanced straight forward.
Swish.
He subtly tilted the holy sword.
Cain, who had appeared in front of Abel in an instant, snatched the hilt of the holy sword in that gap.
In that moment, the two brothers saw each other’s faces reflected in their eyes.
“Do you regret entrusting things to someone like me?”
Cain’s lament and
“On the contrary, I’m glad.”
Abel’s happy smile crossed paths.
Stab.
He immediately drew the holy sword and plunged it into Abel’s chest.
Cain’s hand felt the tearing flesh and smashing bones.
Thud—thud.
Abel’s decreasing heartbeat was conveyed through the holy sword.
“Kill him!”
“Stop him!”
“You must save the hero!”
His eardrums felt like they were about to burst.
Tens of thousands of people were running towards the two of them, and their yells pierced his ears.
However, they were too slow to reach the two brothers, who had arranged everything like arrows flying through water.
Whoosh.
Cain didn’t stop.
He also plunged the ‘Winter’ into Abel’s chest, where the hero’s power was already working to cure his wound.
Push-push-push-push!
He stabbed it all the way.
The wound expanded.
Red blood poured forth like a fountain.
In an instant, Abel’s face lost its color.
In contrast, red blood dripped from Cain’s face.
“Don’t…… be so sad.”
Abel was as pallid as a snowfield.
His dying eyes.
Despite his cloudy vision, Abel managed to focus and raise his quivering hand to wipe away Cain’s tears.
“Everything is going according to plan…….”
The silver something pierced by the two sacred treasures began to thrash wildly.
Whir━━.
The holy sword ‘Summer’, which was embedded in Abel’s chest, began to wail. At the same time, the demonic sword ‘Winter’ next to it started trembling.
“As expected, the ‘blessing’ subsides when the sacred treasures are directly embedded.”
Abel talked about his own business as if it were someone else’s.
Cain felt horrible for him, as he had planned all of this.
His marriage to the princess was not based on love, after all. Of course, he did not wish to be emperor.
The golden crown resting on Abel’s head.
The ‘Autumn’ is the holy crown passed down through the Holy See.
He had agreed to the marriage because this level of incident was necessary for Abel to use the holy crown.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“Abel, where’s ‘Spring’? I don’t see it anywhere. In this manner, it’s simply a dog’s death!”
The final sacred treasure is ‘Spring’.
It was the final sacred treasure that was absolutely required for their strategy.
However, whereas the others were recognized as the holy sword and the demonic sword, ‘Spring’ was so uncommon that even records of it were few, as if it had been destroyed.
When Cain inquired how he was meant to find the ‘Spring’, Abel expressed confidence.
“I can see Spring.”
Just like now.
He raised his bloodied index finger and tapped Cain’s chest.
[‘Spring’ begins from ‘Cain Ethelred’]
[The 〈Sacred Treasures of the Four Seasons〉 have been gathered.]
[The 『Four Seasons』 blooms.]
Boom, boom, boom.
The world started to shake.
The tremor was sensed by the soul rather than the body.
Cain experienced an unusual sensation, as if something warm was streaming inside him.
“‘Spring’ is in me…… ?”
At the same time, he was stunned.
He didn’t comprehend how Abel knew something he didn’t know.
“’Spring’ is that kind of thing. It exists for everybody and no one.’
“Despite knowing the outcome, you appear to be having fun.”
Abel smiled.
It wasn’t a hero’s smile, but that of a boy staring at his brother when they were younger.
Crash!
Then, with his last ounce of power, he seized Cain’s coat collar.
Abel’s brown eyes matched Cain’s lonely gaze.
“No matter how hard and painful the life you restart is…….”
[The 『Four Seasons』 hears the ‘hero’s’ wish]
“Please live a new life, brother.”
Thud.
At that point, Abel’s hand lost its strength.
What fell powerlessly was no longer Abel, but simply a corpse.
“You are a fool!”
Cain’s heart hammered like it was about to burst. His entire body felt feverish, and his eyes appeared to be burning.
Wooooooosh.
A distant sound that could not be distinguished as a scream or a cheer sounded forth.
Cain raised his head and yelled amid it.
“I’ll never forget you, hero Abel Ethelred!”
Woooooooooo— Woooooooooooo.
The people who had been running to apprehend Cain vanished.
The sky’s blue went as well.
The redness of the blood also vanished.
Even the sword’s silver is gone.
All colors were sucked into Cain, leaving only black and white.
And even that boundary blurred, merging into gray, becoming a world of emptiness with no stars or moon.
[Regression starts.]
Cain blinks in the world where everything has disappeared.
Then a massive, blood-stained iron frame materialized in front of him.
It showed Cain stabbing Abel to death with the holy and demonic swords just now.
“Abel, is this the miracle you longed for? Miracles are horrible things.”
The picture in the frame rotated like a revolving lantern, revealing Cain’s past.
+
One month ago, on the Ethelred seaside cliffs.
Abel was wrapping up his long story.
“It is said that if you gather all of the 〈Sacred Treasures of the Four Seasons〉, your wish will be granted. And I will wish to turn back time.”
+
But Abel could not return.
He claimed it was due to the silvery ‘blessing’ that had consumed his body and mind.
Cain kept looking at the photo, and the frame began to reveal the regrets he had passed over one by one.
+
When I saw soldiers on the front lines take their own lives because they couldn’t adapt to peace.
I had to pick up my master’s demonic sword, ‘Winter’.
As a mercenary, I traveled across the continent.
I was chased out of the Ethelred Count.
Despite my efforts, Arna, my little mother, still suffers in pain.
When I held the hand of my elderly knight, who had returned from battling at sea as a corpse, I held back my tears.
+
“My life was quite an idiot’s life.”
Nothing had gone as planned, and none of it had been Cain’s.
If anything, it was the sword that killed his opponent.
Again, the picture began to alter.
This time, it was a lavish noble’s room.
Cain, with black hair and purple eyes, sat in the enormous chair in the center of the room.
His eyes trembled, indicating nervousness.
A forgotten memory.
Cain scowled as he gazed at his younger self.
+
the elderly knight held my hand gently and spoke.
“Are you afraid of your duel with Young Master Abel?”
“…….”
I couldn’t say anything about his unusual words or my trembling heart, and the elderly knight clasped my palm as if he felt sorry for me.
“In my hometown, there is a saying that ‘it is not the sea that sways, but the heart’. I, Vanderbilt, will always be here to help you.”
+
Cain turned his head away.
People only realized certain things after they had lost them.
Most of the time, such things were referred to as regret, and that regret was known as Vanderbilt.
“If only I hadn’t given up━!”
He understood the future after that.
He loses miserably in a duel against Abel in the training ground.
The count’s enemies utilized the fact that Cain, the successor, had lost to his half-brother, Abel, to shake up the family.
Arna died in agony.
The count, with no count to return to, eventually fell, and Abel was taken to the Holy See, where he would live the life of a hero, wielding the holy sword.
But the ending was betrayal and death.
Finally, Cain was able to reflect on the past.
He clinched his fists firmly.
A life with no future.
Looking at the beginning of it all, he couldn’t suppress the rage that welled up inside him.
At that moment.
[Branch point confirmed.]
A golden straight line divided the world, which contained only Cain and the frame.
Rumble-rumble-rumble
White lightning raged.
The colors of the four seasons that had disappeared returned to their rightful places.
At the same time, Cain’s body started to shrink.
“Ugh!”
Cain gritted his teeth in misery that pervaded his entire being.
Every nerve was scorching.
His bones were disintegrating.
His muscles were shriveling up.
All the misery in the world was attacking him.
[The regression is complete.]
Thus, Cain’s world changed.