Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 113: The Exchange Ends

Blood ran down Kendrick’s face, drop by drop gathering on the marble floor. In the reflection of the blood pool, Kendrick saw “his own” face… Peyton’s face.

Kendrick subconsciously tugged at the corners of his mouth, revealing a gentle smile no different from Peyton’s. That smile made him dazed for a moment. What followed was pain that seemed as if it would freeze his brain.

For the first time, Kendrick discovered that if he wanted to wear a mask, he could do so convincingly. Previously, he had exposed his true nature without restraint only because Peyton was still beside him.

…Now he couldn’t find Peyton.

He didn’t know how long V.O.R would monitor him, nor did he know whether his methods could fool that unknown existence. He only knew that once the mask was put on, it could no longer be taken off at will.

One day later, the gossip from the End-of-Winter Feast spread through Serpentis’s noble circles.

People all said that Kendrick Karns had ultimately refused to change his ways. At the banquet, he attacked the young daughter of the Nebra family, and while mad from severe injury, stabbed Peyton Karns, blinding his right eye.

People all said that Kendrick had always been jealous of Peyton Karns, firmly believing that the genius Peyton had stolen his talents. That gentle genius had finally lost all hope in him and gone to the monastery in melancholy.

Perhaps because of the influence of the curse magic device, Kendrick’s behavior became even more extreme and dull than before, with not a trace of remorse. In a fit of anger, the head of the Karns family sent him off to the remote Ring Town.

During the same period, Kendrick imitated Peyton’s handwriting and wrote V.O.R a letter.

In the letter, he expressed that he had already lost all hope in Kendrick and no longer wished to be bound by this mad blood relative. He had failed to make proper use of this miraculous divine power, wasting this powerful being’s kindness.

Throughout the entire letter, his wording was gentle and refined. His conduct was exactly the same as the vanished Peyton’s, and even his handwriting showed no difference whatsoever.

V.O.R didn’t reply to him again. It was hard to say whether he… or it had failed to notice, or simply had no intention of pursuing this tiny failed case.

Kendrick sneered inwardly. His investigation and research didn’t stop and instead grew even more fanatical.

From afar, he controlled his original body, making it stay shut inside Ring Town and conduct all kinds of experiments.

At first, Kendrick still held a thread of hope.

His own body hadn’t truly died. Perhaps Peyton still existed inside that mass of broken brain matter.

He made it drink all sorts of alchemical potions that acted on the brain, forcing it to barely function. Unfortunately, it was like an abandoned house full of dust and leaks from every side. The trace of a resident had long since vanished.

Then he thought, Peyton had exchanged too hastily. That strange power hadn’t yet fully merged. Perhaps Peyton was still sleeping inside his body.

He worked hard to train the divine power he had obtained and transferred himself back into his own body. But the moment he left, Peyton’s body immediately became an empty shell, unable to even continue breathing.

Peyton was gone. No matter what he did, he couldn’t find his brother.

The pathetic thing was, in this world, only Kendrick Karns alone knew this. Those stupid strangers only knew to smile foolishly at him and praise Peyton Karns’s goodness and kindness.

Kendrick hated this from the bottom of his heart yet couldn’t help chasing after it. Because when people spoke to him warmly, he always had a strange illusion, believing that Peyton Karns was still in the world.

No, Peyton was definitely still in the world.

Because Peyton’s Magibase was still there, and a Magibase was the symbol of the spirit. He simply hadn’t found the correct path. Everything wasn’t over yet.

After that, Kendrick’s life was split into two parts.

“Peyton” set out on the road of ascetic practice, either living alone in the monastery or wandering to remote places. Carrying his brother’s body, he secretly investigated the unknown existence named V.O.R.

“Kendrick,” meanwhile, was trapped in Ring Town, focusing on researching human sacrifices.

On one hand, he had to maintain his cold-blooded image. If V.O.R was interested in his madness, that would be an unexpected delight. On the other hand, Kendrick refused to admit the fleeting nature of Peyton’s death.

His brother was a softhearted person. Kendrick didn’t care about the deaths of others, but Peyton definitely cared.

Perhaps his act of using slaves as living sacrifices could make his brother return in anger and punch him again.

However, Kendrick’s double life was broken by a human sacrifice that succeeded unexpectedly.

Myss suddenly understood why Kendrick was filled with hostility toward them.

In Kendrick’s eyes, they were indeed thieves who had appeared out of nowhere and stolen the bodies. Not only had Salaar taken away the body that might contain Peyton’s consciousness, the two of them had also charged through Divine Realms all along the way and become entangled with V.O.R.

In Kendrick’s conception, this wasn’t a power humans could possess. The two of them were simply too much like V.O.R’s claws and teeth.

So that was how it was.

There was a faster way to stabilize Kendrick than breaking his magic. All he needed to do was shout that sentence.

Myss decisively cut off the memory probe and took a deep breath. “We…”

[We’re also V.O.R’s enemies.]

The instant he shouted the first word, a subtle sense of disharmony seized Myss. For some reason, he felt that Kendrick wouldn’t stop because of those words.

Kendrick wasn’t opposing V.O.R for grand reasons like “justice” or “the fate of humanity.” Like Myss himself, that guy didn’t care about whether other humans lived or died.

Myss asked himself, if someone rushed up and shouted, “I’m also an enemy of Hero Salaar,” he wouldn’t have even half a copper tooth’s worth of goodwill toward that person. He would even think they were in the way.

“…we can help you save Peyton!” Myss’s tongue made an emergency turn, and he changed his line.

This shout was crisp and decisive. Compared to calling for a ceasefire, its momentum was more like a declaration of war.

Kendrick’s attack came to an abrupt halt.

That strange humanoid hovered in midair, examining Myss with nonexistent eyes.

Now.

Myss stretched out a hand, and brilliant golden magical sparks ignited in his palm. He used all his strength to make that golden light dazzling and eye-catching. Like holding up a star in a lightless abyss, healing power flowed endlessly beneath that radiance.

At this distance, Kendrick could definitely sense it. Myss hurled that conspicuous light toward Kendrick. In the shadows, he gave Salaar a look.

Kendrick’s mutated face chased after that ball of light.

And in that one second of distraction, Salaar, using the cover of shadow, lightly lifted his fingers.

The ancient puppet that had been lying low in the darkness suddenly squeezed through those Divine Realm bubbles. It abandoned all defensive movements and turned into a deathly pale bolt of lightning, shooting at Kendrick from behind.

Kendrick had no time to react before it tightly wrapped him with its body blocks. In an instant, accompanied by tooth-aching cracking sounds, the puppet’s entire body ignited with pitch-black flames. Dense cracks appeared across those deathly pale body blocks, as if they would explode in the next second.

Within the black light, Kendrick struggled desperately. The pale-blue magic around him surged endlessly, yet couldn’t withstand that spreading pitch-blackness.

Myss didn’t need sharp perception to recognize that power. That was the power of Divine Blood, his annihilation magic, which had originally belonged to him.

“What’s going on? This thing is really about to explode!”

Tass hadn’t yet figured out the confused mess between Kendrick and Peyton, but he could identify a thousand signs of an explosion in half a second.

Myss pulled back the tip of his foot, made a beautiful retreat, and moved to Salaar’s side.

“Principle?” Salaar didn’t move. His voice carried a smile that made one want to hit him, as well as an urgency that was hard to describe.

“The power connection between bodies.”

Myss spoke extremely quickly, as if several scalding beans had been stuffed onto his tongue. “Leave him alive.”

“All right.”

In only a few seconds, black light suddenly flared.

The puppet split off a limb burning with black fire and quickly cleaved through the space between Myss and Salaar.

Myss’s consciousness grew dizzy again. He instinctively knew that his consciousness was about to return to its proper place. In this infinitely emotional instant, he couldn’t help stretching out a hand, and then—

Boom!

The puppet exploded while holding Kendrick. The fragments that splashed in all directions struck a brilliant golden protective shield. The shield wrapped around them in a perfect sphere, neatly placing Kendrick at the center.

Outside the protective shield, everything remained silent.

Myss and Salaar stood in their original positions, their postures frozen in an awkward state. They maintained the movements from the final instant before they had switched back. Salaar’s hands were firmly, well, stopped at his chest. Myss’s index finger, meanwhile, was pressed to his lips, the fingertip slightly reaching into his mouth.

The two looked at each other wordlessly. “…”

Then they pretended nothing had happened and moved their gazes away, looking at the protective barrier together.

Inside the protective barrier, the smoke and dust cleared, revealing the badly wounded Kendrick. That pale-blue flesh was covered in wounds, though none of them were deep. It was unclear whether this was because Salaar had held back, or because the humanoid Divine Realm’s defense was too astonishing.

In this form, no one could see his expression. But Myss could sense that sticky malice. Kendrick was clearly extremely dissatisfied with the current situation.

“We should hurry and run.” The Dragon Fae hadn’t changed back yet, but his legs were already hopping with eagerness. “I’ll save asking how you summoned those puppets for later. That thing was single-use. What if he swaps you again?”

The priest nodded vigorously and had already begun choosing a wall convenient for smashing.

“He can’t do it.”

Salaar slowly lowered his hands from his chest and deepened his voice.

Then he glanced at Myss, sighed softly, and blew a long whistle.

Unlike last time, this whistle faintly carried flecks of brilliant golden magic. They spread with the whistle, drifting into the curtain-like darkness.

In an instant, more scraping sounds of sharp claws appeared above everyone’s heads.

More than a dozen ancient puppets leapt down one after another from the hole in the ceiling. They turned their deformed heads, circling Salaar and Myss like giant dogs, lacking only a dozen wagging tails.

The next moment, those twisted human heads neatly turned toward Kendrick inside the protective shield.

“…I awakened them,” Salaar said. “Unfortunately, as long as they wake up, they can move by their own power. Are you sure you want to try again?”

“Rather than continuing to waste time like this, we should talk first. Myss told me to leave you alive. In other words, you’re not one of V.O.R’s people.”

Hearing V.O.R’s name, Kendrick abruptly raised his head.

There came a sound of flesh stirring. His “insides” turned back in again, and those bubbles burst out of thin air.

The well-dressed Peyton, or rather, Kendrick Karns, sat down inside the protective barrier. One of his arms rested casually on his knee, and his movement didn’t resemble Peyton at all.

“What a coincidence. I also have a question I truly cannot keep from asking.”

He spoke softly, his voice carrying a definite chill.

“You occupied my body, brought along a lover whose power is even stronger than Divine Blood, and can even command the Celestial Canopy’s puppets. They aren’t imitations like the Divine Blood Puppets. They only obey specific masters.”

“Just who are you?”

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