CHAPTER 109: STOPPING THE GATE

0% “Wake up. There’s something you must do.”

The girl’s eyes snapped open against her will at the voice emerging from the darkness. In her vertically slit pupils, the reflection of Archbishop Armata took shape.

The holy power imprint controlled her body, forcing her unwilling eyes to obey. A sharp ache pulsed through her skull, and she clutched her head with both hands.

The Hillai Church wasn’t foolish enough to create an ultimate chimera without a means of control. The goddess herself had branded the girl with stigmata, allowing those imbued with divine power to command her through the sacred scars. But that was the least of her worries.

Far worse than the pain of disobedience was the ceaseless, insidious whispering that returned when her eyes opened. Silence existed only when they were shut.

Yanid. Poor child. Pitiful thing. Abandoned by your parents, discarded by the very church that preaches mercy. No one wants you. No one cares. Why bother living?

Shut up.

Voices from the outside could be muffled by covering her ears. But the ones inside her mind never stopped until she genuinely ceased to exist.

[Kill him. Kill him. He’s just soft flesh and brittle bones. One twist of his neck, and it’s over. Afraid of pain? Being trapped like this is worse.]

Why do you resist?

Why shake your head? Accept me. Acknowledge me. Your body is already breaking down. Whether you surrender now or later makes no difference.

She just wanted it all to stop.

Yanid clenched her skull between trembling hands and slammed her forehead against the glass wall.

Seeing this, Archbishop Armata assumed it was merely the pain from resisting control.

“It’s useless. Struggling will only make it worse.”

“...The voices...”

“Voices?”

“Please. Make them stop. Then... I’ll listen. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Archbishop Armata sighed. Yet another flaw in the ultimate chimera,her mental stability was, to put it lightly, questionable. To be blunt, she was utterly a crazy bitch.

This was a serious defect in the project, yet no one had pointed it out.

The temple assumed that all beings created under the goddess’s will would naturally align with it. No one had considered this process perfect for turning a normal girl into a raving lunatic.

It would be far stranger if a child abandoned by her parents, dragged to a lab, and subjected to live experiments managed to retain her sanity. That would be beyond unnatural. It would be terrifying.

If only we could just erase her mind.

Armata let out another heavy sigh but shook his head. He kept that thought to himself. If they did that, she’d be no different from the corpse soldiers once mass-produced by the Flesh Underground Castle.

The human mind is complex. Strip it away entirely, and efficiency plummeted.

The Underground Castle’s corpse soldiers had been utterly useless in battle,mindless walkers, incapable of anything beyond shuffling forward and tripping over their own feet.

That might work when relying on sheer numbers, but the ultimate chimera was meant to be a singular force of destruction. She would be no better than a malfunctioning weapon if she were reduced to an empty shell, incapable of understanding simple commands.

No, the Hillai Church hadn’t preserved the girl’s mind out of mercy. They had simply deemed it valid.

“I’ll give you an order. First, disable the transfer gate and make it inoperable.”

Yanid glanced at the photo of the gate connecting Vales City to Grandera.

Magic was created by dragons, for dragons. Right now, she was the closest thing to a dragon. At a glance, she might even be mistaken for an anti-dragon.

True anti-dragons were something else entirely,beings that looked human but wielded transcendent magic with just a glance or a gesture. They could stop or restart a gate with the mere brush of a hand. Even gates built by humans were fundamentally based on draconic magical theory.

Yanid wasn’t on that level.

But stopping something was always easier than setting it in motion. Shutting down the gate wouldn’t be difficult. A mere touch of her fingertips would be enough.

Armata gave his next order.

“And disable the imperial palace’s protective magic array. You can do that, right?”

The imperial palace’s protective magic array, woven by generations of mages layering spells upon spells, stood as the empire’s most excellent defense,a vast, intricate barrier shielding the imperial family.

But in the end, it was still just magic. Humans create magic.

And no magic could ever oppose its progenitors.

Dragons were immune to magic,not just resistant, but fundamentally beyond its reach. All spells, all magical barriers, were powerless before them. Against Yanid, the palace’s vaunted protection would tear like parchment.

“I can do it.”

How could she be so sure without even trying?

Because the voices whispered it to her, Maddening, ceaseless, insufferable,yet they never lied.

“Good.”

Archbishop Armata’s response was indifferent as if assigning an ordinary task. He moved on to the following command.

“And kill Ardein von Illumina. Use any means necessary. It doesn’t matter if your existence is exposed. It won’t be easy, she’s a Master, but you should be able to do it. The imperial palace sits atop a dragon vein, after all.”

The mana coursing through dragon veins was infused with draconic properties, making it antagonistic to most beings. Like how the blood spaces created by Duchess Shmira or Kamira favored vampires but worked against others, dragon veins were naturally selective.

Only those trained in ancient techniques and carrying the imperial family’s dragon-tainted blood could wield their power.

But now, Yanid had joined that select few.

What were dragon veins, after all? Constructs meant for dragons,made by dragons, for dragons.

With the true dragons long gone, the imperial family had claimed their remnants for themselves. But now, a dragon chimera had emerged, if not an actual dragon.

She had more than enough right to seize dominion over the veins.

The more Armata considered it, the more regret gnawed at him. If only she could be stabilized, properly controlled...

Her potential was limitless. If she could serve for years instead of mere days, the resources poured into her creation would feel insignificant in comparison.

But in the end, all that effort, cost, and sacrifice had only bought them three days.

Three days to wield her before she was lost. Yet even so, she would prove worth every coin spent in those fleeting moments.

The day of the uprising was almost upon them. Having the dragon chimera at such a pivotal moment was a reassurance that set Archbishop Armata’s mind at ease.

“Emperor, you foolish puppet.”

Watching Yanid spread her wings and take flight, the archbishop let out a quiet snicker.

“Your carelessness will be your undoing.”

Some things simply couldn’t be concealed. By now, even the Trinity Church had caught on that the emperor was, to some extent, allowing this coup to happen.

Yet the rebels pressed forward regardless: the Hillai Church had assured them they could breach the imperial palace’s protective magic array.

The emperor indeed had his countermeasures in place. But none of them would matter. Not when faced with this.

The ultimate chimera would crush every plan, every safeguard.

The Hillai Church’s secret weapon had finally been unleashed.

Archbishop Armata threw his head back and laughed. At least at this moment, he had nothing to fear.

**********

“What? The gate just stopped working?”

Murmurs rippled through the gathered crowd. The Apprentice was so stunned that his speech lapsed into an almost dialect-like rhythm.

“What in the... Don’t tell me they destroyed the gate on the other side?!”

“Ah, no, that’s not it. Um... well... The gate just stopped for reasons we can’t explain.”

“Look here, mage, what nonsense are you spouting? Did you run out of magic stones?”

A mage from the Cidatel’s Magic Bureau scratched his head as he replied.

“It’s not that either. We’re not low on mana, and the gate on the other side hasn’t been blocked or destroyed. But the magic array forming the gate has frozen in place. The energy isn’t flowing through the pattern, so the gate has stopped functioning.”

“Then hurry up and fix it.”

“Listen, Apprentice. Just give up. We’re doomed.”

Though his voice remained steady, the meaning behind his words was anything but.

“We don’t know what went wrong, so we can’t fix it. Ah... to put it simply, something terrible has happened. If we tinker with it carelessly and accidentally cause the gate to explode,... that would be real trouble.”

“You’ve all lost your minds.”

The Apprentice clutched his head in frustration while the Pope sighed deeply.

Still, no one indeed despaired. How many people could have escaped it if the gate had remained open? A handful? Two at most?

In the end, nothing had changed. The battle looming ahead would decide everything.

Even those initially shaken by the gate’s failure quickly grasped the bigger picture and steeled themselves. For now, this was nothing more than an inconvenience.

“...Feels like our last lifeline just got cut,” the Apprentice muttered.

“It feels like we’re completely cut off from the world. That is not a good sign. Let’s keep moving for now. Since this wasn’t intentional but an accident, there’s no one to blame.”

“Mage, are you certain this wasn’t done deliberately?” the Pope asked.

The mage nodded firmly.

“Destroying a spatial gate is easy. But freezing it completely? That would take an unimaginable level of magical power. Freezing an entire spatial magic array,not just any ordinary one is something only dragons, the progenitors of magic, could achieve.”

“Is that so?”

“More likely, this was a flaw from the start. This gate wasn’t originally designed for large-scale, long-term transport. Given that, this outcome isn’t all that surprising.”

“My, we’ll just have to consider this an ill-fated omen. A sacrifice to ward off worse luck.”

Almost as one, we turned to look at the blazing mountain range. No one spoke but sighs rippled through the group. I let out one, too.

“This won’t be easy.”

If someone saw what we were about to do, they’d probably think of a herd of lemmings hurling themselves off a cliff.