Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 2: The Nameless God
Not long ago.
At the sound of knocking, It mercifully shifted Its position and stopped pressing down on Salaar. It had no interest in dealing with other humans and preferred to leave the trouble to the great hero.
Salaar finally stirred.
Ever since It had called him by name, the man had gone completely rigid. For a moment It had hopefully believed he was dead.
“…You have intelligence?” Salaar slowly sat up, his voice hoarse.
Wow, what a thing to say.
In truth, It did not know how to define “intelligence”. For example, It was quite sure that at first It didn’t care about Salaar, the way mountains didn’t care about a flying bird.
But that foolish bird pecked at the rock day after day until It was thoroughly annoyed, and thoughts began to multiply.
In other words, It originally had no need to do the troublesome work called “thinking”; Its “intelligence” was cultivated by this human’s constant harassment. Now the culprit was the one surprised. It snorted in disdain and didn’t answer.
“I didn’t know,” Salaar said in an odd tone. “I thought you…”
He didn’t finish. The sentence ended in a cough.
Perhaps it was an illusion, but for the first time It heard unease in Salaar’s words.
Did this man think It was brainless, and that was why he had sung and danced like a lunatic inside the seal? How embarrassing.
Salaar stopped talking. He stood up unsteadily and soon felt his way to the exit.
The secret chamber was crudely designed, separated from the bedroom by only an oil painting. Once he left the chamber, he opened the bedroom door at once.
“Lord Karns?!” Old Aiken’s eyes went wide.
The young lord wore ritual robes and was covered in blood and grime. His collar had been yanked open, revealing bite marks on his neck and collarbone, and there were several scratch marks on his shoulder.
Lord Karns was very skilled at controlling offerings and never did anything unnecessary. He had never been injured before.
But given the remarkable looks of the new sacrifice… Old Aiken gave his young master a meaningful once over and waited for him to speak.
“Lord Karns”—no, Salaar—paused for a moment, then showed a thoroughly dark expression. “I succeeded.”
“You what?”
“I succeeded in summoning the demon, fool. It’s willing to help me restore my magic.”
Salaar’s made a long face, like he was possessed by Lord Karns. “Don’t order the next batch of slaves. Use the money to buy the finest ham and bread. I need high quality offerings.”
Old Aiken froze on the spot.
Everyone knew that “summoning a demon” was a pipe dream with no basis in magic. What the young lord had just said wasn’t much different from “I have successfully summoned a rainbow candy unicorn.”
“May I meet the honored demon?” he asked cautiously.
Salaar rolled his eyes at him.
Under that look Old Aiken’s scalp prickled. He hunched his neck. “Y-Yes. I will go buy offerings right away.”
Salaar picked up the supper tray without expression and slammed the door. The panel nearly smacked Old Aiken on the nose.
Damn it, Old Aiken spat at the door.
Whatever, buying food cost less than buying living people. Who cares what kind of fit the brat was throwing now.
On the other side of the door.
Salaar set the tray down and rubbed his face vigorously. Then he saw the Archdemon slip out of the secret chamber using both hands and feet, on four limbs—no, three—crawling all over the bedroom and smearing blood everywhere.
The demon’s joints bent at unnatural angles, and the deformed right leg dragged on the floor like a strange tail. Aside from that, His movements were uncannily smooth, as if humans were born to move that way.
It was, frankly, a terrifying sight that made his skin crawl.
When the Archdemon climbed to the ceiling like a spider, the eeriness intensified. Salaar sighed. “Hey, let’s talk.”
The other party didn’t even look at him.
Salaar fixed his gaze on It. “Do you not have anything you want to ask me, such as about this strange situation?”
“Would asking you help?” the Archdemon said with mockery.
They both knew that if all this were Salaar’s plot, he would be delivering a victory speech now rather than asking to talk.
Salaar scratched his head and flinched at the feel of his filthy hair. “Fine, I will make it clear.”
“We have almost no power. For some reason we cannot kill each other. We both know nothing about the situation. How about a temporary truce?”
“No,” the demon said. “Just wait. I will find a way to kill you.”
“Are you sure?”
Salaar answered mildly. “Magic is a very unreasonable thing. Look, it sent the two of us over at the same time. What if going back also requires both of us to be present… Just a thought. In any case I do not want to go back.”
The demon fell silent.
Damn it. Since It had no grasp of the situation at all, It couldn’t deny Salaar’s speculation.
“True,” It said unhurriedly a few seconds later. “Magic is indeed unreasonable. It is also possible that if this body dies, my consciousness will return to its place by itself.”
Of course, It didn’t plan to test that with His life for now.
This time Salaar was the one who went silent.
Not long ago the two of them had been hot blooded and intent on killing each other. Who had the energy for such consideration.
In the awkward air, the two finally reached a consensus: Before they figured out the cause of it all, they had to ensure the other stayed alive and stayed within sight. The matter was too serious for either of them to take risks.
“What’s your name?” After a while Salaar spoke first. “I cannot keep calling you ‘Hey’.”
“I have no name, and neither did this slave,” It said. “Let me think…”
The moment It tried to think, It faltered.
With annoyance It discovered that the slave’s vocabulary was pitiful. Most of it was names of objects and a few common commands, such as “Stop”, “Do not move”, or “Shut up”. There was nothing good to pick.
But the name Chaos Archdemon was far too stupid; It would rather call Itself “Stop”.
They faced each other in silence for a full ten minutes.
“Shall I give you one?”
Salaar tried the question gently. He suspected that if he didn’t interrupt, this guy could think in place for ten hours.
Those red eyes turned over with sharp wariness.
“I wouldn’t disgust you with something like this,” Salaar said. “Honestly, I already gave you a name in my heart. Are you not curious?”
“…”
It narrowed Its eyes and permitted him to continue.
“Myss.”
Salaar spoke softly. “In my homeland it means an ‘unsolved mystery’.”
It rummaged through Its barren store of words and confirmed that it wasn’t an insult.
Besides, it was short and easy to pronounce. At worst He could change it later.
“All right,” It said. “Then call me Myss.”
The corner of Salaar’s lips curled upwards. Those blue eyes turned over again, and the look in them was even clearer.
……
After that, they had a rare stretch of peace.
Right before Myss, Salaar pulled off a dramatic transformation.
Washed by the gold light of magic, his body recovered quickly. The dark circles and stubbles vanished on the spot, leaving smooth skin. His sunken cheeks filled out, and the gaunt frame grew tall and muscular.
Seen now, Salaar’s new face was quite handsome, yet it was a haunted kind of beauty, shaded with a gloom that bordered on wickedness. If he stepped on stage as an actor, the audience would guess at a glance who the villain was.
Salaar gasped at his reflection, then slowly let out a sigh.
“Good thing it’s not Old Aiken’s body,” he consoled himself.
“That butler is more than two hundred years younger than you,” Myss pointed out mercilessly. “Before this you looked like a rotten plank and couldn’t even straighten your back.”
“You were watching me pretty closely,” Salaar exclaimed in surprise.
“If a cockroach was crawling around on your bed, you too, would watch very closely.”
“So I troubled you that much. I’m quite honored,” Salaar said with genuine satisfaction.
What are you so pleased about, kid? And how do you switch moods that fast?
He snorted and imitated the “treatment” on his right leg. A streak of black light went down, and his entire right leg was gone, leaving behind only a terrifying blackness that was as dark as tar.
“Nice technique,” Salaar praised.
Myss: “…”
A human body was truly fragile. Luckily his destructive force was great enough that the wound brought no pain, only a blanket of numbness.
Stepping around the one legged Myss, Salaar set the tray on the desk. “Wash yourself before dinner. The room smells too strong.”
“Use magic to clean.”
Myss didn’t want to touch water. It—now that he had a human name, perhaps “he” was the right word—refused to imagine himself soaking in anything. The thought was a little nauseating.
But he didn’t dare use magic on himself either, for fear he would accidentally clean himself off the face of the world.
Salaar grabbed his arm. “My magic hasn’t recovered. I have to conserve it.”
“Then you go wash yourself.”
“If you agree to wash yourself, I will heal your leg,” Salaar whispered. “You can also choose to keep limping and let me control your wheelchair. I recall there is a cesspit on the south side of town…”
What’s so “Saintly” about this guy? He’s a damned scoundrel.
Myss wilted and let a certain someone drag him into the bathroom and press him into the tub.
The water was cool, cold and slick. Myss hugged his knees and curled up tight, as if that could keep the surface from swallowing him.
Salaar sat on the rim of the tub and helped wash his long hair matted with blood.
Those hands pressed along his back and felt especially warm against the cold water. Given that the same pair of hands had attacked him for more than three hundred years, Myss kept his spine taut.
“Do you know the Night Scourge?” Salaar asked suddenly, very softly.
Myss thought back for a moment. “I do.”
Legends weren’t all nonsense. For example, the Night Scourge really had been triggered by him, and Myss didn’t intend to deny it.
“Many people died in the Night Scourge,” Salaar said, as if making small talk. It was hard to know whether he meant to provoke him or something else.
Myss tilted his head back, his face blank. “The Night Scourge is my ‘breath’. As long as I live, it will not disappear.”
“So what, for the comfort of humankind I should obediently die? Forgive me for being blunt, when I began to breathe, humans didn’t even exist yet.”
“Well, that was not what I meant.”
Salaar’s hands paused. His fingertips brushed the wet gray hair. The gray was reminiscent of an approaching storm.
“It’s just… I had always taken you for an unconscious natural disaster, since you never attacked me first.”
“Because there was no need. Human lives are short,” Myss said stiffly.
No, back then he had very much wanted to crush Salaar to death.
In terms of raw power, Salaar was no match for him. Yet the man’s power was strange and could leave marks on him. If Salaar were pushed into an outburst, his precious body might be damaged.
No one likes getting hurt. When a mad dog blocks the road, even if it is a Chihuahua, people usually do not provoke it. They wait for the dog to leave.
Myss adopted a similar strategy and waited for Salaar to die of old age. A few hundred years under the seal was like holding his breath; he could just endure it, and it would pass.
If he had known it would come to this, he should have eaten Salaar alive back then. Myss sulked and curled up even tighter.
If Salaar dared preach to him about mercy and virtue, eating him alive right now wouldn’t be out of the question.
“I see,” Salaar mused. “So in the end it’s not much different from animals competing for territory.”
Myss turned his head. “?”
“Everyone is trying to survive. There is no right or wrong to it.”
Salaar gave a chuckle. “So you do not have to feel guilty, and I will not feel apologetic.”
Which meant they could openly dislike each other. For once Myss agreed with him.
Once the back and hair were clean, Salaar unfolded the tightly curled Myss. Brilliant gold magic wrapped his chest and the missing right leg.
Myss looked down. The stab wound at his heart closed swiftly. The healing felt like a warm breeze with no discomfort at all.
Then came the vanished right leg. The bones appeared from nothing, wrapped by muscle and skin. His new right leg was long and straight, a perfect match for the left, without the slightest deformity.
When the treatment ended, Myss was very satisfied. Given their “friendly” relationship, he had half expected Salaar to return the deformity or give him a leg even more cumbersome.
In a good mood, he stretched and stopped resisting the flow of water.
“Back to the point, what exactly are you?” Salaar picked the moment to ask, his tone lighter still.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know…?”
“If you were the only one in the world, would you be born knowing you are ‘human’?” Myss scoffed.
Even “thoughts” had only appeared for him within the last three hundred years. Myss remembered only that he had lived for more than ten thousand years, along with some vague things tied to instinct.
For instance, he rested in a boundless darkness and had to leave every so often to get some air. For instance, he was in a critical growth period and shouldn’t let his precious body be injured, or else… or else something terrible would happen. That was how instinct warned him.
As for his species, the nature of his power, or any deeper knowledge, Myss truly didn’t know and didn’t care, and he certainly didn’t want to explore it together with an enemy.
“Maybe I am not a Chaos Archdemon. Maybe I am a true God about to be born,” Myss said sternly. “And you, you self-righteous prick, are destroying the future of the world…”
“Yes, yes.” Salaar raised both hands and stepped out of the tub. “All right. Wash your lower half yourself.”
“Why?”
Myss balked. This guy had dragged him here by force, so how could he leave halfway through.
“Because your hands aren’t disabled, and this counts as human etiquette, for now” Salaar said, folding his arms.
Ah, the etiquette of touch. That was in the slave’s memories.
The slave trader strictly forbade slaves from touching women, not even a strand of hair, unless they were given explicit permission. There was no such taboo for men. The trader even hinted they should “take the initiative and cozy up to others so they could find a good buyer.”
The slave hadn’t understood the hint then. The Myss of now understood everything.
“We are both men, so etiquette doesn’t matter,” Myss concluded with confidence.
Salaar was standing close, so Myss reached out and gave a hard squeeze, confirming he hadn’t mistaken the enemy’s sex.
The corner of Salaar’s mouth twitched twice.
“Wash your lower half yourself,” he repeated through gritted teeth and walked away with steps that didn’t quite coordinate.
……
Far away in the royal capital, the city of Sepanti.
Night had fallen over the Karns estate. Among countless windows, one shone especially bright.
“Kendrick Karns is still carrying out live sacrifices, and the frequency is rising. In the past six months he has killed twenty eight slaves.”
In the glaring light, the adjutant delivered his report with diligence.
“I gave him a chance. I gave him a full four years,” said a weary male voice.
“You mean…”
“Dispose of him. He cannot be allowed to go on defiling the honor of Saint Salaar.”
“Understood, sir.”
The author has something to say:
Our honored Archdemon now has a name.
In English it is spelled Myss, derived from “Mystery”, which sounds similar to “Myth”. This can be seen as a blend of the two.
On reflection, these two may be the fastest meeting in history. By the end of chapter one they have already been in each other’s presence for more than three hundred years (though they never spoke).
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