Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 61 Behind the curtains(1)

Translator: BaeBae Editor: BaeBae

The emperor’s flame was burning brighter than ever.

Knowing that time wasn’t on his side, he was planning to do the most harm he could.

Ethan’s body expanded, as if the flame was engulfing his body.

It looked as if Ethan was now controlling fire instead of a sword. By now, the emperor’s flame was torching half his head.

His hair had long gone due to the heat.

Lars was certain Ethan would soon turn into a pile of dust.

The flames crackled and brushed against his darkness.

At that precise moment, Lars felt a strange presence. Before he could notice who it was, the darkness surrounding him expanded. He was shocked.

‘Nigrato!’

The emperor’s flame was further harming the seal that Lars made to contain Nigrato.

Nigrato’s power that was released immediately engulfed Lars. Lars couldn’t help but use every bit of power within him to stop Nigrato.

From outside, Lars only briefly stumbled. But for someone like Ethan, he didn’t miss the opportunity.

“Lars Raude!”

Ethan’s sword that had been molted in the boiling heat, did not show any mercy. His sword expertly pierced through Lars’s central body. A breaking sound broke out, and the indeterminate polyhydron shattered into pieces.

Anya screamed.

“Noooo!”

The flames overwhelmed the darkness and burned brightly.

*****

“Lars Raude!”

Lars turned his head. He was standing on the hillside of a dried white mountain. An old white haired man stood in front, looking at him with hatred and disgust.

Noticing the hostility towards him by the man, Lars readied his sword to protect himself. The hand used to lift the sword was full of skin and flesh.

‘? Ah. From back then.’

He remembered. It was the first day when the Hugin knights had been ambushed by the White crow knights.

In retreat, Lars divided his knights into two groups. Ten lifelong friends of his that had been appointed as knights personally by the emperor alongside him, died that day.

Their sacrifices allowed the rest of the Hugin knights to run away intact.

During the escape, there was one knight that chased him, right till the end.

It was the founding commander of the White crow knights.

He had been a member of the emperor’s royal guard.

After the emperor’s assasination, the royal guard was humiliated to the point of misery.

The commander of the royal guards was executed for conspiring with the assasination and except for a few, the rest of the royal guard members dispersed into the outer lands.

The ones that survived chose every means possible to get their traitorous names lifted from dishonorment. They desperately searched for the remaining few like Hugin knights that were branded as traitors.

Lars was their main target. They’d turned deaf ears at Lars’s attempt to explain, which Lars didn’t blame.

He’d already forgotten their names. They were long dead.

On that day, Lars killed him and avenged his friends. Even in his last moments, he stabbed a sword through Lars’s chest and smiled till his final breath.

Lars couldn’t forget the white smile.

“Lars Raude!”

He turned his head. A blade was fast approaching him. Lars just managed to deflect it away.

His hand that held his sword was made of bones.

The female knight stabbed him repeatedly.

Lars could remember when this scene had happened. The injury that the founding commander of the White crow knights made, was eating away at his body.

Right now, the Hugin knights were weaker than ever. For all his fellow dead knights that, Lars couldn’t give up now.

He absorbed the essence of Nigrato. A god of death that was basically his oldest enemy.

And so, he became its embodiment.

“Did you finally give up on being human, Lars!”

The female knight ferociously stabbed her spear at him. Lars dodges it with a hair’s breadth.

He soon remembered who his opponent was. A female knight that had been appointed about the same time he did.

Lars attended classes with her, and received training together. He’d been on the battlefield with their backs to each other as well.

Her flaming red hair was replaced with hair ever so white.

Seeing the faces of his old comrades, seeing her expression filled with hatred and betrayal, Lars thought that he’d grown too old.

He felt as if he’d aged a 100 years.

He couldn’t remember her name. She was already dead.

Lars beheaded the White crow knights second ever commander. Though her head was cut off, she was still glaring at Lars. Lars didn’t avoid her gaze. Even if he’d hated it, he watched her gaping mouth open and close till the end.

Traitor.

Her last word festered deep in his heart. It was more deadly than any other blade that had been swung at him.

“Lars Raude!”

The third shout.

Seeing the flaming sword wretched deep in him, he wondered from when this scene had occurred.

Anya’s screeching scream and Dilmond’s groan.

He realised that he’d returned to the present.

“Get that bastard off!”

While spewing blood, Dilmond shouted but there was no one that could get close to Lars or Ethan.

The moment Lars’s chest was stabbed with Ethan’s sword, a tremendous gust of wind was blowing. It was hard to even keep one’s eyes open.

It felt as if everyone’s bodies were being cut from the knife like sharp wind. Ethan, being the closest from the source, was being cut up from the wind.

“Laaarrrs!”

Ethan didn’t let go of his sword and inserted it more deeper into Lars’s chest. Lars looked down at Ethan. Though a commander, he was a child in his eyes.

This young knight hadn’t even seen the emperor. Never received an order, nor fought alongside him. However, he didn’t think that his belief and loyalty was in any way lesser than his.

‘………’

When did it start to go so wrong.

Who was truly crazy in this world.

His mind and his physical body had been broken for a long time.

Before he would finally break, he gave it his last attempt at assassinating Vares Valte but had failed to do even that.

Since then, Lars did nothing but manage to keep his sanity.

‘So. This is far as I go.’

Lars felt an aura of death rising from inside him.

He could feel Nigrato’s madness and his laugh. It was now impossible to suppress him any longer. The emperor’s flame spread onto Lars’s body.

But then, a darkness more greater than the flame enveloped him.

Ethan opened his eyes wide at seeing a darkness engulf the area around him. It was the last thing he saw.

In an instant, Nigrato’s aura took control over Lars’s body.

Lars recalled the previous commanders of the White crow knights that he’d slain. It happened a long time ago but for some reason, it didn’t feel like so.

This was the present linked into one.

The third hammer strike to break Lars for good.

*****

Suddenly, from the middle of the battle, darkness soared.

The cloud of darkness that appeared instantly, blackened the sky, devouring any sunlight.

Juan stood still and watched.

The darkness grew like an endless tree. Crows began to caw and dance in circles.

Many crows gathered as if they sensed an oncoming battle.

But it wasn’t just crows that had sensed it. All of Hiveden could feel it. Feel death encroaching ever closer.

Juan could smell the desert inside the gust of wind blowing.

Smell of death.

Smell of wasteland where nothing would grow.

He knew what this meant. Tears trickled down his cheeks.

‘Lars.’

*****

How long had it been since these lands last saw a god.

Even if everyone in Hiveden was accounted for, there would only be a handful that would have been alive to have seen a god.

Long before the emperor had died, gods had been chased out of the empire, and the emperor had fought against the ones beyond the border.

Even Dilmond, who had experience fighting against an army sent by gods, could help but be surprised at seeing something in front of his eyes for the first time.

A black darkness enveloped them.

Amidst the darkness, they were able to sense that something was wrong due to the sense of smell. Hugin knights and Paladins could all smell a barren wasteland.

“Annabelle!”

Dilmond desperately called out to Anya.

Anya’s voice couldn’t be heard.

Having seen Lars fall, likely she was shocked and unable to move.

Dilmond decided to weigh up his options. He also was in shock but as one of the leaders of the Hugin knights, he had prepared for this moment.

“Dilmond nim!”

One knight that heard him call out, approached him.

Among the wind and darkness, the best they could do is confirm each other’s identities. The knight expression was of relief on seeing Dilmond’s face.

“Here you are! What’s the situation like sir? What happened to Lars nim?”

“Lars nim…….”

Dilmond found it difficult to say the next words.

But seeing the situation unfold, he knew one thing. Nigrato, the God of death that had been sealed inside Lars’s innerself, had been released.

As Dilmond hesitated to answer, the knight looked somewhere else. Where he looked, an undead knight was calmly standing still.

“Dilmond nim, I can see our sunbae nim. I think it’s Karl sunbae, we should regroup with him…….”

Before Dilmond could reply, the knight approached the undead knight.

The undead knight turned its head at him. Thud. A heavy step echoed.

Dilmond recalled a memory from long ago.

It was when he’d been appointed as a knight and was sent south to fight against necromancers.

“No!”

Dilmond realised the danger and quickly shouted. But, before he’d even stopped shouting, the Hugin knight’s skull was broken in two from the undead knight’s strike.

His face cut in half contained an expression of disbelief. The undead knight was no longer emitting blue flames in its skull.

Only endless darkness was coming out of its skull and bones.

Beyond the darkness, the sound of screams were heard. It was unclear whether the screams belonged to allies or enemies.

Ruthless and solitude deaths were reaching everyone. The only thing that helped in this situation was the sound of voices.

“Everyone, find a human! I don’t care if you’ve just been fighting them. Find those that are still alive!”

The undead knights calmly looked towards the voice then walked off. Where it was going, what it was thinking, none of it was of concern for now.

Dilmond could only think of trying to save as many human lives as possible.

“Don’t attack any Paladins! The undead aren’t friendly anymore! Staying alive is the number one priority now!”

It would have been easy to ask Ethan for help if he’d been alive. But, along with Lars, Ethan had perished into the darkness. Dilmond judged that he wouldn’t have survived.

Then, the knight that had his skull split in two moved. Dilmond wasn’t so daft to cling to hope that maybe he’d survived.

The knight stood up, spilling his brains through the gap in his skull and growling an unrecognizable sound.

Dilmond raised his shield and hammer. It was heavy. He’d lost too much blood.

‘I wonder how long we can hold for….’

Dilmond bitterly smiled. Hold? What was the point?

He was against a resurrected god.

Before the emperor, all races were but insects to the gods.

Now, the emperor was dead and his descendants scattered across the empire.

Would anyone survive. In this burnt black shithole.