The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 17 – Rise from the Ashes (2)

“Juan... what in the world... just happened?” Sina asked Juan, staring blankly at him.

Juan smiled at Sina as her heart pounded heavily. Juan’s smile felt like it had touched something deep within her soul.

“Rebirth within flames. Isn’t there a legend about this?” Juan remarked.

Sina flinched at his question. There was a well-known legend where the emperor abandoned his old body and was reborn within flames. Sina muttered, “...That’s impossible.”

“Doubt is a proof of faith,” Juan remarked sarcastically. It was an attempt to taunt Sina, who aspired to become a templar, but Sina was not amused. She could no longer overlook Juan’s words.

“I know that you’re not an average person, but this is unacceptable,” Sina responded.

“What incredible faith you have,” Juan snorted. He had no intention of trying to convince her.

Meanwhile, Daeron crawled toward Juan and handed him the cloak he was wearing. Juan took the cloak and looked down at Daeron while saying, “I have no intentions of proving who I am to you, accepting your allegiance, or becoming your object of worship, but I am quite curious about how you’re so certain about who I am.”

Juan then looked right back at Sina, but saw no hesitance in her eyes. He imagined her answers would be ‘You’re not strong’?or ‘There’s not enough proof that you’re the emperor.’

But Sina’s answer surprised Juan.

“I believe that when His Majesty looks at his people, his eyes are filled with benevolence and love. That’s the kind of person our emperor is.”

Juan's eyebrows twitched at what Sina said.

Sina continued, “There’s only hatred and emptiness in your eyes. I can’t believe that you’re the emperor, no matter what kind of concrete evidence you present to me.”

Juan became silent for a while after hearing Sina’s answer, and grasped the broken heavy sword in his hand tightly. The atmosphere between the two of them became chilly. Juan stood in the deadly silence and then sighed. “It was all because of my eyes? How ridiculous.”

Juan fiddled with the sword in his hand and looked at Daeron who was prostrated in front of him. He asked, “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t kill him?”

“So that he could receive a fair trial? Because he’s your follower?” Sina answered.

“Wrong. I’ve already decided to kill this guy after Talter,” Juan replied.

Juan struck Daeron’s head with the broken heavy sword so quickly that Sina had no time to respond. Sina squealed as she saw Daeron’s head simply separated from his body and dropped onto the ground.

.

Juan then looked at the colosseum and mumbled, “No one will try to open the colosseum again, right?”

***

Ossrey saw the flames that surged out of the manager’s room—that was the direction that Sina had gone in, and it was a pretty huge fire. While he was worried for Sina, he couldn’t afford to check on her; he couldn’t even control the spectators who had fallen into panic due to the monsters that had flooded into the colosseum.

“The knight order is about to arrive! Hang in there for a while more!” Ossrey shouted.

“Ossrey!”

Ossrey didn’t have to wait for long before Sina called out to him.

“Dame Sina! Have you found a way to resolve this situation? What did Daeron say?” Ossrey asked.

“Daeron is dead,” Sina replied grudgingly, causing Ossrey to be shocked.

Sensing the shock in his eyes, Sina shook her head and explained, “I didn’t kill him. The culprit has run away. We need to chase after him now, so we need to gather the members of the knight order...”

Sina trailed off as she saw the current situation—it was a total mess, with rampaging monsters and spectators who ran everywhere. If she gathered the knights for a chase, then the damage would go out of control. Ossrey was also worried about that.

“We don’t have any knights to spare for that, and we also have the fire that broke out to deal with...” Ossrey remarked.

“...” Sina became silent, feeling conflicted. If they lost Juan now then there was no telling when she would find him again. But there were people dying in front of her eyes right now.

Sina didn’t need to think for very long before she replied, “Go tell the city security team to lock up the city. I’ll stay behind and protect the people.”

***

It was noisy and dark; every time the ground trembled, dust fell off the clumsily built walls. When Juan had disappeared from her sight, Sina assumed he had escaped this place, but it had actually been the opposite; Juan had gone underground, from where the monsters came out.

Kieeeek!

A desert troll screeched as it broke through the ground. The moment its rough hands tried to grab onto Juan’s leg, he easily avoided it by lifting his leg. The desert troll’s eyes widened; it had thought that it would definitely catch Juan’s leg. Meanwhile, Juan was already in the air.

Crack—?

The short sword pierced through the back of the desert troll’s head as Juan applied his body weight to it. The desert troll collapsed without even putting up a fight. Juan struggled as he tried to pull out the short sword; it took him more time to pull out the short sword than it had taken him to kill the troll. ‘While my body’s condition is better now,?I’m still too light.’

He didn’t know how much mana would be needed to restore his body. He already had way more mana than a normal full-grown man would have, but his physical age had stopped at around 13 years old and there wouldn’t be any huge difference if he didn’t exert strength or use mana. Juan touched his upper abdomen, where his mana heart was located. While he had absorbed Talter’s mana, it was still lacking incredibly when compared to the real gods. His condition was still almost as bad as when he had just been resurrected. When compared to the capacity of his mana heart, the mana he had at this point barely filled the bottom of it.

It was also hard to say that his physique had grown proportionately to his mana.

‘There’s still too much that I don’t know about,’ Juan thought;?things like why he had been revived, and on what principles his new body functioned. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had given up on life, but things were different now.

‘If I could control how I look, I would like to look rougher and sturdier.’

Unfortunately, it seemed Juan had no control over that. While the mana could heal his injuries, it didn’t play any part in forming Juan’s appearance. He would have to physically work out just to train his body like any normal human, or start taking in the relevant nutrients. Of course, doing so wouldn’t take him too much time to achieve his desired look.

As he wandered underground, he found the path that he had been looking for. Juan had mixed feelings as he saw the unsealed path ahead of him. It was a dungeon that Talter’s apostles had made—they used to bring monsters, slaves, or those they had kidnapped through this path.

The ground here always used to be red, because people who resisted were executed on the spot as an example for the rest. After Juan executed Talter in the past, he had ordered all the secret pathways to be sealed, but there was no trace of it being sealed right now. Daeron had probably opened up these pathways to use the dungeon as a place to keep the monsters.

Juan slowly walked further in. It was a good thing he didn’t have to open up the pathways himself. He was intending to use these secret pathways to get out of Tantil. Since people wouldn’t come in here, he didn’t have to worry about anyone getting in his way.

As Juan went further in, darkness swallowed his surroundings, but Juan continued on without any hesitations. Despite it having been decades since he had last been here, he still remembered what the path had been like. He walked in silence, staring into the dark and stopped when he heard sounds coming from the other side. It sounded like flesh being torn and bones being crushed, like something was eating a human. Juan stared into the empty darkness while holding still. Whatever was on the other side had stopped eating and growled upon noticing Juan.

Juan could smell the unique, bloody stench of monsters. Meanwhile, he took a step forward without grabbing his sword.

Roar!?

‘A demonic beast, huh?’

As Juan continued to walk forward without stopping, the demonic beast roared at Juan a few more times, but it didn’t charge at Juan. ‘Demonic beasts do have sharper instincts than monsters.’

There were monsters that were more sensitive, but they couldn’t be compared to demonic beasts. The only times a demonic beast would ignore its instincts, would be when it was driven into a corner or when its life was at stake.

Before Juan even took three steps, the demonic beast turned and ran away. Since it had eaten its fill, it wanted to avoid unnecessary fights.

There was an unfinished corpse left where the demon stood; it seemed to have been dragged from somewhere, as there was a long trail of blood. Juan followed the direction where the stench of blood was the strongest.

“...This place,” Juan muttered.

Juan discovered a door not far away with faint crimson light seeping out of it. He opened the door and looked inside to see a huge space in the shape of an inverted pyramid that was made out of red bricks. The scene in front of him made his gaze turn cold. The surrounding walls were studded with smaller stones dyed in blood. There was a hole in the ceiling that was also stained with blood, and directly beneath it was a mountain of deformed corpses of humans, demonic beasts, and monsters, along with a large pool of blood. The stench of rotting corpses and blood made Juan’s head throb in pain.

It seemed this was the place where the corpses from the fights were ‘taken care of.’?This place was a corpse disposal plant as well as a breeding farm.

‘Why did I think that sealing this place would have been enough? Why did I think that humans would stop doing foolish things if I took care of Talter? Why did I not smell the disgusting stench of this place back then?’

Every single thing about this place seemed to be criticizing and mocking Juan’s foolishness. Juan slowly walked down the stairs as the monsters and demonic beasts that were eating the corpses stopped and stared at Juan warily. They didn’t approach Juan, as they had lived a long time just eating corpses. As Juan went down the steps, he saw a wall decorated with the symbol of Talter, now badly damaged. The symbol of the emperor, a circle with a cross sticking out of the circle, was shoddily engraved on top of it along with some words.

Praise The Emperor!

That symbol seemed to be giving praise to the emperor on top of the piles of corpses. Juan stepped on the corpses, sinking down as the dried bones crunched. Eventually, another pool of blood was formed at his feet. Within the pool, there were numerous corpses, blood, and bones. In the midst of it all, Juan thought of two people; two people whose traces, names or how they were doing could not be known.

“Looks like I’ve made a mistake,” Juan admitted one of his regrets among the many regrets he had for the first time. Juan took out his rusty and chipped short sword—it seemed perfect for what he wanted to do. He placed the blade of the sword on his hand and slowly cut it, causing fresh blood to overflow from his hand. As soon as Juan imbued the blood with mana, the blood caught fire as if it were oil and started to burn the corpses. The demonic beasts that watched this started to growl loudly, but they started to run away after they saw the pool of blood catch fire. The fire started to burn wildly and spread everywhere in an instant upon coming into contact with the fat from the corpses. The fire then spread to the hundreds of those pathways within the sealed underground, while Juan mumbled as he spilled more blood and added to the fire.

“Let it all burn! It’d be better for there to be a new start out of the ashes.”

1. So far, the author uses both ?? and ??? in the raws, and thus we had it translated as demonic beasts and monsters. We’ll see if they’re actually any different down the road!