Chapter 548: Years 2
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The Black Swamp Palace was no longer as heavily guarded as before, there was a notice plastered on the wall beside the door announcing the recruitment of students this year, as well as the steps and places to register. There was even a red feedback box nailed beside it.
The university students in the prime of their lives were leaving and entering the school gates, in groups of twos and threes, the sounds of their laughing, talking, and playing permeating everywhere.
Just above the palace gates, on a huge semicircular sign, the words 'Black Swamp University' were clearly carved.
Garen was dressed fully in a black, looking clean and neat, and added with his natural aura of nobility, the guard assumed that he was one of the school's students, just raising his head for one glance before continuing to read his novel.
Walking through the palace door, there was an extra glass cabinet on the left wall, with the school's name list pasted up inside.
Of these, his portrait was the very first one.
'Garen Trejons: The Black Swamp Palace's first founding principal and Palace Master.
Sun calendar 3550 -- 3592.The great founder of the Black Water True Technique Secret Technique, one of the first members of Parliament, the country's honorary Military Commander-in-Chief, and the winner of Kovitan's first Highest Contribution Award. He was the only person to win the 3958 World War and Peace Award. Ranked number thirteen among the World's Historic Figures.
With the light from the streetlamps, he looked at his own portrait, and could not help the urge to both laugh and cry. He was standing right here, alive and kicking, looking at the results of his life as written by others. Even his general time of death had been set down.
The young man in the portrait was handsome and stern, with an aura like a lion or eagle in his eyes, his golden hair falling over his shoulders, his gaze sharp as a blade, giving the impression of a hero of an era. This was probably what the artist thought of him.
Garen guessed inwardly.
Going past his pane, the second place was the second row of Historic Figures.
Demon Phoenix Trejons, had become a voyager, traveling all over the world, in the end she was caught in a storm on the left of the two continents, in the West Pole Ocean, her ship overturned and no trace found of her. By then totem power had already disappeared for more than ten years. After that, people found her and her friends' corpses, burying them on a nameless island on the West Pole Ocean, and that island was also named after her, becoming the Demon Phoenix Island.
"To think she actually took my last name…" Garen did not know how, but he still had the mood to smile.
He continued reading.
Ivycius and Skyharp had gone to the West Continent for an exchange, the two of them had many children and grandchildren, and had already become the highest tier family of the entire Kovitan. They were equal to the Trejons family. Recently, medical checks had found that the two of them had illnesses. In order to investigate and overcome his disease, Ivycius performed some of his own studies and research, actually becoming a famous medical expert worldwide, specializing in lymph tumors.
His trip to the West Continent this time was to make a medical report on that matter.
That Master Calingan from back then, and the three Master-level disciples he had chosen himself, all of them had left a deep impact on the history of the university.
As he continued reading to the end, Garen's heart began to grow hollow before he knew it.
Walking past the list of Historic Figures, he walked slowly inside the school, what was once a palace had now become several different teaching and experiment blocks. He could occasionally see some foreign exchange students with different-colored skin walking around, speaking some awkward Kovitan as they tried to chat with the local students with difficulty.
Taking a leisurely stroll around the school, Garen did not meet unexpectedly any old faces, all the people, all the faces, he did not know any single one of them.
Walking in the Black Swamp Palace that used to be so familiar to him, was like walking into someone else's house.
He had also found the Black Swamp Guards modified by the Green Vine Sphere, but these Guards were no longer as powerful as they used to be, and were just a lot stronger than normal people in terms of vitality and aura, without that unnatural power they used to have in the beginning.
Evidently the Green Vine Sphere's modification had also been affected by the disappearance of totem power, and had utterly become a normal process.
The main palace hall that he himself used to live, half of it had been sealed away as a historic site, and the other half had actually become a popular rendezvous spot among the students due to the dim lighting there.
After Garen bumped into several little couples, he was no longer in the mood to survey his old home.
If he was willing, the whole Kingdom would still return to his grasp in a very short time, but what was the point of that?
When Garen walked out of the university, he turned around to look at the words above the palace gates, his feelings unnaturally complicated.
His coming to this world, had been an accident after all.
The only person he felt guilty towards in the Kingdom, perhaps in the whole Kingdom, was his cousin Hathaway, after waiting so hard for more than fifty years, the final result was that neither of them knew how to face the other, with such a great difference in their appearances.
Or perhaps she had really taken him for his own grandson…
Garen thought somewhat self-deprecatingly.
With the disappearance of totem power, practically all the unnatural power had completely disappeared. As such, the totem users who relied on that reproduction ability to lengthen their lifespans had also naturally lost their longevity, falling one after the other.
The world had become a world of normal people.
The ones who were Luminarists had become knowledgeable scholars, the ones who were forgers had become scientists using the power of science to solve all. The ones who were totem users, only the very peak-level ones, could become famous martial artists.
Before leaving the Kingdom, Garen went to visit his teacher Emin's grave. The Tasura Academy was a clan renowned through the whole Kovitan, so Emin's grave was covered with all sorts of fresh flowers, evidently there were disciples and students coming here to clean his grave often.
All of the people he had once been familiar with had left forever, and this world that he had grown familiar with had once more slowly fallen into estrangement.
Garen left the Kingdom soundlessly.
Before leaving, he checked Hathaway's body for illnesses, using the power of his Living Secret Techniques to freeze and clear away the roots of her diseases, allowing her to live for at least more than ten more years.
This was the only thing he could do for her. Similarly, there were his friends from back then, Prynne and the others, Garen also made the same final arrangements for all of them.
The secret technique he was practicing did not have the ability to increase their lifespans, and may even have other harmful side-effects to normal people. But if he controlled it carefully, he could precisely kill the diseases within a body, attaining the complete eradication of diseases.
*******************
The country of Black Field, Meteor Town.
In a white graveyard outside the city limits.
Garen sat in front of a black tombstone, holding a black beer bottle in his hand, and chugging from it every now and then.
There was no alcohol in it, only coffee.
Under the setting sun, the black tombstones reflected a red glow, the black tombstone with a bit of white had the following words carved clearly onto it: the Combined Graves of Goth and Jessica.
The carvings were extremely simple, other than the row of simple names, there weren't any other words. No summary of their lives, no singing his praises as the Black Field Master, bot even their birth and death dates.
Just the two names.
Perhaps this was Goth's atonement for himself.
After coming to the Black Field Country for the past these days, Garen had more or less found out how Goth died.
After the Battle of Heaven, Goth's previously strong body began to deteriorate rapidly, and in the end he died suddenly of myocardial infarction and a stroke.
Be it Jessica's betrayal and death, or Garen's eventual disappearance, both had sunk the once-powerful Black Palace Master into the depths of guilt and despair.
For some reason, as Garen sat here before Goth's grave, he just reminisced like that with unnatural calm, his heart unexpectedly peaceful.
He could understand Goth's final feelings, that man looked strong on the outside, but in actuality, his heart was still as fragile as a child's. Jessica's betrayal was a serious blow to him, like a hard stab in the heart, hurting him so much he could barely breathe.
With a life like that, perhaps just living in this world was a sort of agony, so he might as well die and call it quits.
The Cthulhu King's base was near Black Field, and he went there to look around too, but there was not a single Cthulhu there, all of them had died back when the totem power scattered.
The Cthulhu headquarters had become an utter wasteland, and the Cthulhu King was nowhere to be found. Some people said he had left and headed for the mysterious South Pole, some said he headed underground, but more people believed that perhaps he had already died, died in an unknown corner of the world, without any of his past glory, only a body's worth of injuries after the disappearance of totem power.
"Why does it feel like the sky without totems is a lot cleaner?" Garen threw his head up and drank a mouthful of coffee, as though talking to Goth, or perhaps talking to himself.
All of Goth's achievements had practically been buried away, only some very few of the older generation still remembered the Grand Duke who was once the Black Field Master. That was why a stranger like Garen could sit in front of Goth's grave like that, and nobody would bother.
Some of the men and women coming here to pray in the evening glanced at him from afar, seeing Garen sit in front of the grave, they might have thought that it was just a drunk relative here to visit, so they left quickly out of understanding.
Garen did not really care, after the initial melancholy, now his emotions had utterly gone calm.
"These days, I suddenly have a feeling." He said softly, "As though I have become the only, lonely person in this world. You've gone, Teacher's gone, Ivy and the rest are all old now, and perhaps soon, they will leave for sure as well."
He paused.
"All of a sudden, I don't know what to do."
"Everything I know is leaving me." He raised his head to look at the slowly setting twilight sun, the bright red light dying his face completely red.
"A person's life is just like this sun, rising and setting, no matter who it is, they won't be able to escape this natural cycle. I'm just a few steps slower than you guys."
Standing up, Garen just left the beer bottle in front of the tombstone.
"After leaving this time, maybe I really won't come back here anymore." He paused. "When I have time, I will think of you." And then he turned around, walking towards the distance, leaving.
Without turning back, it was just like having a cup to drink with an old friend, and then going back to their respective homes, calmly.
There was still the last stop…
Garen's heart welled with an unprecedented loneliness, this sense of loneliness had only grown stronger since it emerged in Kovitan. Like rounds and rounds of dark-colored vines, tightly, they wrapped him up in layers, at first mildly, but towards the end, they grew tighter and tighter, until he was finding it harder and harder to breathe.
He could not help but remember Hellgate's last moments.
That stubborn man, had he been just like Garen was now? Having experienced the times when his friends and family left him, over and over again, that bone-deep loneliness, that obstinance that no one else could understand, perhaps that was the true source of his motivation to purely chase his ideals.
Everything in the world would pass with time, only the everlasting principle, the ever-unchanging Door to Heaven, was always and ever standing right there.
Garen desperately wanted to find that last person, the one who was most likely to be like him. Even if it was just a tiny comfort...