Chapter 39
After taking down Kalos, we started heading towards the exit of the Dream Pit, escorted by the adventurers that accompanied Hilde.
I also had some of them go to the boss room to notify the other adventurers that this clearing attempt was called off.
“You three….I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you my suspicions before this, but there was never a right time…”
“It’s perfectly understandable. If I were to have been told that Kalos was the traitor beforehand, I don’t know if I would’ve believed it,” Mabel came to my support.
“Just… leave me out of something like this in the future, okay? I was wracking my brain on when to act the whole time. Going up against a freakish Skill composition like that…I barely knew what the hell was happening at all.”
Celt let out a sigh.
If he had barely any idea what was going on, then it’s doubly impressive that he managed to do so well.
He managed to perfectly position himself to cover Luce with his own body and pinpointed the exact perfect time to shoot Kalos to cut off his [Invert Poison Damage].
If he had messed up the timing on that, Kalos would’ve either just simply dodged the shot or would’ve seen through our strategy, preventing us from being able to inflict heavy enough damage on him again.
It was exactly because Luce, who Kalos thought was the centerpoint of our strategy, was down at the time and he just completed his preparations for launching his [Hydra Break], that he was unable to evade and took even more time until he was able to act again.
“If he was warned of this beforehand, this guy might’ve been too scared to come at all.”
Mabel laughed as he needled Celt. Hearing her laugh, he scowled.
“Oi, ain’t that a bit too harsh?”
“L-let’s just be happy that we managed to pull off a huge victory without losing anyone! In terms of the Marquis’s request, this was a great success!”
Luce stepped between Celt and Mabel.
After that, Luce and Mabel started chatting. Celt sidled closer to me while keeping a side eye on the two of them and spoke to me quietly.
“Hey….how much of what happened on this Raid did you predict exactly? Did you know what Skill Trees Kalos had?”
“I was just prepared for the worst possibility and happened to get it right.”
“You really are an enigmatic guy….”
But….while we somehow managed to pull out a miracle this time, it’s not like this puts an end to the recent incidents.
The group Kalos mentioned, the [Vanguard of the God of Dreams]. They are clearly up to something in this country. Since Kalos chose to end his own life rather than give up any information, they are still wholly unknown to us.
“Hmpf, they are just delaying the inevitable. They are really underestimating me.”
I now understand what Marquis Harden said about Snow’s assassination attempt.
It seems he was completely sure that no one from the Howlod Family had a hand in the incident.
Kalos’s objective was to bring about the second evolution of a Dream Lord, a Zork in other words.
The second evolution of a Dream Lord needs a lot of high level adventurers to serve as sacrifices. The Raid was a tool to bring about that outcome.
However, thanks to us Kalo’s carefully planned out scheme with the Raid to the Graveyard of Sorrows went bust. At that point, it’s likely that he didn’t have any back up plans in case it failed.
After the Zork happened in the Graveyard, he might’ve even been fine with people finding out that he was the traitor.
That’s because no matter what he did to mitigate it, the Guild and the nobles would certainly suspect the high level adventurer that organized the Raid. The fact that he was the one who handed out the maps was another obvious sign.
It’s safe to assume that Kalos did not expect the possibility that the Raid would go awry.
Therefore, to avoid wasting his preparations, he needed to once again gather a large enough group of adventurers for a Raid and cause a Zork, before people’s suspicions caught up with him.
To that end, he continued to press his opinion that the people of the Howlod Family were suspicious, which was only reinforced by the failed assassination attempt on Snow. At that point, he needed to divert as much suspicion from himself as he could, even if only for a little longer.
That’s why Marquis Harden called it ‘delaying the inevitable’. He already pinpointed Kalos as the main suspect by then.
With this, the fact that there wasn’t any follow up outside the Phantasmal Beast Tower after the failed assassination attempt also makes sense. In truth, it was not an assassination attempt at all, but a means to insinuate the existence of a family feud. Kalos, who set the whole thing up, didn’t even care whether Snow survived the attempt or not.
“At any rate, everything went fine in the end! Though the Raid is not quite over yet, let’s go out and eat something nice after everything’s done,” Mabel said in a raised voice.
After seeing Kalos’s end, there was a certain uneasy atmosphere amongst us. She was likely attempting to ward it away as best as she could.
However, she ended up catching the gaze of Hilde, who turned back towards us due to Mabel’s loud proclamation.
“Ah, uhm, Hilde-san….”
“I haven’t processed everything just yet, but….I’m not stupid enough to hold an unjustified grudge either. Sorry about earlier,” Hilde said with an emotionless tone, then turned forward again.
Her usual vigor was conspicuously absent. The person she respected the most turned out to be a terrorist who took his own life before her eyes. It might be best to give her some space for now.
“….thank you for stopping him,” Hilde said in a soft voice without turning around.
Rather than genuine gratitude towards us, it sounded more like words meant to comfort herself and help her accept reality instead.
Still can’t get over this being called a Zork xD
You say 1-2 more chapters and 3-4 for tan epilogue, and on nivel updates the story is marked as completed
does all this mean that this is it? we are near the wnd of the story? that would be kinda disapointing
The Novel Updates marked it as completed because it looks like the author stopped updating his webnovels. He’s probably focusing on the light novel versions.
This translation is from the light novel I’ve bought, because I thought leaving the translation at that point of the story just because the WN stopped did not sound nice.
Thank you for translating it. Will you continue with the LNs after this volume too?
I will likely do it if there is no official translation by then.
I was wondering what was going on, since when I tryed to find the raws, I found out that you’re somehow ahead of the raws, and that the author barely updates, it good to know we got an dedicated translator, so does it mean the light novel also ends in 1-2 chapters?
Hey bro can I ask question?
So Heavy Knight author did the “Seirei Gensouki” move aka leaving the WN but moving forward with the LN?
It appears so. There was no indication that this LN volume would be the last, but the WN wasn’t updated for a long time now.
Poor Hilde. The world came crashing down around her.
Once again, thank you for making the purchase so that the translation didn’t get cut off mid-arc. We all can’t thank you enough.