In the current generation, there were only four descendants of the Mist—Karwenz, Glina, Reyne, and myself. What I originally expected was that I would be able to summon only Glina and Reyne.
However, when I decided to try my luck, I got an incredible result.
In a way, the summoned spirits of the Roland Sacred Sword could be said to be the exact copies of the person from when they were living, but Karwenz and I were obviously special cases. You could say that we technically weren’t descendants of the Mist anymore. At the very least, I’ve reincarnated several times, and Karwenz wasn’t even a human.
But the Roland Sacred Sword still managed to summon them, and the sight of those nostalgic figures caused me to catch my breath.
The blonde-haired, young Holy Knight bowed to me with a brilliant smile on his face, but I knew that deep inside he was secretly plotting in his heart. Karwenz had an expression filled with displeasure and his eyebrows were furrowed as if he was thinking about something important, but he most likely wasn’t thinking about anything more important than what to eat for lunch. Even though the two of them appeared identical, they radiated completely different auras.
It was quite obvious that the summoning of these twins must have been some type of bug caused by our special circumstances. Even though I had died in battle at fourteen years old that year, I’m still alive and kicking, which was why this Sacred Sword summoned the legendary Holy Knight Roland from the generation who had entered Armageddon together with Diffindor.
As for Karwenz, this land recorded his final moment when he had discarded his Mist Bloodline and turned into a demon. The current Karwenz in front of me was the youth from before he had abandoned his humanity.
"Roland, don’t be a burden for me. Just go ahead and hide behind my back and shiver." The arrogant and strong younger brother had sharp words as usual, but this was his way of caring for his older brother who wasn’t similarly skilled at fighting.
"Brat, I’m your older brother, so remember to be polite. Otherwise, the next time we have a group date, I’ll tell that bearlike girl from the Dino Family that you like her. You know how persistent she can be." The brilliantly smiling Holy Knight used a malicious threat, and as expected, his younger brother revealed a shred of fear underneath his icy gaze. That was Karwenz’s typical expression of surrender.
I felt like I was having a nostalgic dream as I watched the twins in front of me.
After passing through the long river of time, the twins have met once more. Their conversation made me feel as if I returned to those final days more than three hundred years ago; a difficult yet joyous period of both fortune and bitterness.
"Oh my, this guy seems quite difficult to deal with. Karwenz, it’s all up to you."
"Hmph, I knew you would say that. You always run away the moment you face a direct battle—I have no idea how you became a Sword Saint."
Back in the day, we also bantered in a similar manner as we confidently walked off to our own battles. It was regretful, however, that even though we always knew of each other’s existence and trusted that the other could change everything, we never met again until the final moment.
At this moment, though, the Northlands’ skies were just as blue as always, while the frigid, bitter winds pierced the bones. However, some things would never return to how they were. At the very least, it was impossible for the twins to have such a peaceful meeting for their next reunion.
The next time we meet, we’ll probably draw our swords upon each other…
"Roland, what are you daydreaming about? It’s coming!"
Adam’s angry roar snapped me back to my senses.
How foolish was I now? Becoming nostalgic on the battlefield was one of the best ways to a quick death.
Without any hesitation, Emordilorcan had begun to attack us with a furious barrage of rocks, while my two summoned spirits had already begun blocking the attack.
*Clang!*
Adam’s sword of light was knocked away and he kept spinning around from the impact, while the twins blocked off Emordilorcan.
Roland from that year had barely managed to reach the realm of Legends right before dying, while the Karwenz from before who had abandoned everything had also become a Legend. In human society, this was, perhaps, an astonishing achievement as their accomplishments for their ages meant that they were super geniuses. However, for the Earth Elemental God who had experienced countless eons and even participated in ancient battles where the Gods were no better than lapdogs, ordinary Legend-rank strength was nothing more than slightly stronger cannon fodder.
Yet some people were destined to be extraordinary…Roland and Karwenz were never ordinary Legends to begin with!
"Sacred Sword Blessing! Angel’s Descent!"
Holy Knight Roland casually tossed out several Divine Art support spells and pushed his younger brother to the front, while he unhesitatingly hid far behind the scene of the battle. It was obvious that he was refusing to engage in close combat.
"Haha! This is you from way back then? What a beautiful scene."
"Hmph, just how old do you think I was back then? For me, who was such a slacker with an unhealthy body, my title as a Sword Saint was partially nominal. Besides, I’m a commander, which means that hiding in the rear is the right thing to do. Physical fights are work for the barbaric."
"…You’re still supposed to be a Sword Saint; how shameless can you be?"
However, the following scene managed to shut Adam up.
Holy Knight Roland lifted his longsword as a blinding light gathered on its blade. The next moment, a miniature sun that was too bright to look at appeared in midair.
"Bullet of Light!"
Just as the teenager’s youthful voice sounded out, that sun-like ball of light finished its magical compression and crashed into Emordilorcan like a falling meteor. When the ball of light exploded, everyone was temporarily blinded, while the pitiful Earth Elemental God was forced to take several steps backward from the impact.
"This is Bullet of Light? The most basic spell that every single knight knows? Are you kidding me? Even Light’s Judgement isn’t this ridiculous."
"Heh heh, this is talent for you. How could I otherwise have become the Son of Light? My Light Magic has at least five times the power of normal Holy Knights, and with the Soul Imprint of Light further increasing my power, it’s at least ten times stronger than normal!"
"Then why don’t you just use a higher-rank magic? Bullet of Light’s basic power is too low, and even if you multiply it by ten times, it’s probably quite limited."
"…I didn’t know any other spells. Back then, I only knew the most basic divine spells, and Bullet of Light was the only one I could insta-cast."
"What? What are you talking about? Weren’t you a Legend-rank Holy Knight?"
"For someone who slacked off so much on practicing divine magic, how far do you think I could get? Relax, even though I only knew Bullet of Light back then, it’ll be enough!"
As I expected, the battle was now in utter chaos and the blinding light of miniature suns kept materializing in midair and rushing towards Emordilorcan.
"One, two, three… fifty! Hey, hey, isn’t this too much of an exaggeration?"
"Hmph, now you know about my power."
"…Indeed, but does this have any difference to your later ‘gather magic, compress, and shoot’ strategy? So, you were already acting as an artillery from way back then. You actually made zero progress in the past two, three hundred years."
"Nobody will think that you’re mute if you don’t talk." Fine, this was an eternal pain buried deep within my chest. After so many years, my only progress was probably that I was now throwing ice balls instead of bullets of light.
But currently, bullets of light were more useful than ice balls.
The original property of Holy Light was to "cleanse," and in that sense, Holy Light could be said to be the natural enemy of unnatural existences. It would deal additional damage to anything that twisted the natural order of things. Even if elemental creatures weren’t as countered completely by it compared to the undead or demons, Holy Light also had the ability to reverse the unnaturalness of those elements that came alive and return them to their natural state.
"Get the hell out, evil from a different dimension!"
The furiously roaring Holy Knight Roland tossed out stronger—fine, even more Bullets of Light, causing Emordilorcan to actually be temporarily suppressed.
Emordilorcan would surely be able to ignore an ordinary Holy Knight’s Bullets of Light, but this time, his enemy was incredibly difficult to deal with as the Holy Light was far too dense, and he now felt as if he was in an entirely different dimension filled with nothing but light!
"Impossible, this is almost at the level of the Light God’s purest light! Son of Light? An existence favored by the Holy Light? Damn it, how could there be a descendant of the Gods here! It’s not possible for you to be a descendant of the Gods!"
The earth clod’s angry shouting caused everyone to pause in surprise for a moment, but now wasn’t the time to be standing around—the large piece of dirt immediately came rushing at us while withstanding the endless number of light explosions.
And then it suddenly went flying sideways…
Karwenz proudly showed off to Holy Knight Roland after retracting his leg that had just performed a swift kick, only to see little Roland preparing his crystal sunglasses to prevent his own eyes from going blind. Fine, I understand him pretty well, and there was an eighty percent chance that he pretended not to see it.
"Did I see that correctly? He kicked away the Earth Elemental God with a single kick? Just how strong is that brat?"
Adam was the most shocked instead.
"At the very least, it’s more than thirty? If you can’t understand it in numbers, it’s probably one and a half times your strength, since he’s never lost in strength—not even to dragons. I’ve heard that he managed to defeat a behemoth as well as an Efreet Lord with one punch before."
"Is he really a human? Why are both of you so ridiculous?"
"…it should be like that, at least at that time. Oh right, since the me from that time was playing with such things, be careful… looks like I’m too late."
"Take this!"
Holy Knight Roland shouted fiercely as he lifted his longsword, and Holy Light that was dense to the point of materialization began gathering upon it—it was as if he was about to launch some sort of ultimate attack. After everyone’s attention was drawn to it…
*Flash*
An eye-blinding brilliance turned everything snow-white, and everyone watching it lost their sense of vision.
"Ahhh!" This actually wasn’t Emordilorcan shouting, although he probably wasn’t feeling too good right now either.
The most pitiful scream came from Adam, who was completely blinded since he had been watching the combat situation. He, too, had believed that Holy Knight Roland was about to begin some ultimate attack due to his fierce shout, but he was completely blindsided.
"Relax, the Sunlight Fist doesn’t last that long, nor was it a direct hit. It’ll probably be a maximum of thirty seconds before it wears off."
Yep, this was the combat technique that the me from so long ago invented based on the rather blinding quality of Holy Light. If there were servants present, I would have had them hold up some mirrors, making it even easier to blind all my enemies.
Well, when I noticed little Roland preparing his crystal sunglasses, I had already guessed that he was about to use this technique.
"Ultimate technique! Your dog’s eyes shall be blinded!" Little Roland finally said the technique’s name so casually, but judging by how slowly he said it, he was trying to torture everyone on purpose.
Karwenz’s shouting proved that this definitely wasn’t the first time.
"How many times have I said it! Before you use your ultimate attack, shout the name out first! Is it fun for you to accidentally injure your allies every time? If you’re a real man, then shout out your ultimate attack’s name, fair and square! Aren’t you just dragging everyone else down like this?"
The furious Karwenz suddenly punched out with his accumulated dark demonic energy and brute strength. The rock wall that he hit shattered into tiny pieces, and even the space behind the rock wall distorted. After witnessing the fearsome power of Karwenz’s punch, even the martial arts expert Emordilorcan resolved to himself that he definitely wouldn’t let this brat’s fists touch him.
"Demonic descendant? Are you two truly brothers?"
Emordilorcan who recovered first was wondering in doubt, but he was destined to never receive an answer. Since he exposed his location by asking that question, the raging Karwenz found a target to vent upon and gave a vicious sword slice in Emordilorcan’s direction.
Adam, who was also a victim of the flash to the extent where tears were pouring out of his eyes, nodded silently in agreement with Karwenz’s reaction. In my opinion, since they were both the hot-blooded idiotic type, they would definitely find many common topics to talk about—especially the part where both of them had suffered under a black-bellied older brother repeatedly.
"Oh, sorry, it wasn’t on purpose. It was all to give the enemy a sudden surprise."
It wasn’t on purpose? It was definitely on purpose. I inwardly thought the truth to myself.
Even if that Roland was smiling so humbly and sincerely, and he seemed like he was honestly apologizing from the bottom of his heart about accidentally injuring his allies, I knew that he was probably laughing inside, thinking to himself, "Wonderful, I pranked those hot-blooded idiots yet again."
"Sigh, it doesn’t seem like now’s the time to be watching a show."
I shook my head as I took my sword and prepared for battle. Even if it was rather confusing that the twins counted as a single summoning, I had already used the maximum number of summons for today. If we weren’t even able to at least make it an even match, this battle would be next to impossible.
But, before I personally took the field, there were some things I needed to try. If I were to be successful, our chances of victory would be greatly increased.
"Wind Elemental God Camdian, stop pretending that you’re dead! I know you’re right here! Do you really think that simply watching the show will give you an advantage? Foolish, still trying to play both sides at this time will only turn you into cannon fodder for both sides!"
My fierce shouting reverberated in the underground passageway, causing everyone to stop in stunned surprise. Emordilorcan reacted by breaking out into a fit of laughter.
"That cowardly worm, do you really believe that moron would still dare to appear before me? He has already escaped with his tail between his legs; that coward doesn’t deserve to have status equaling ours!"
Emordilorcan’s laughter echoed throughout the hollow labyrinth. His continuously reverberating laughter seemed to both prove the veracity of his words as well as mock the weakness and cowardice of the Wind Elemental God.
Even so, I didn’t stop my own mocking words.
"Camdian, as long as we manage to hold this guy here, our people will be able to destroy the Earth Elemental Door, and Emordilorcan will be greatly weakened. Perhaps you alone won’t be his match, but what if we’re included? If you miss this chance that only comes once in a thousand years, no, once in ten thousand years, do you still think you’ll ever truly be able to become the top of all elementals? If you still want to be a cowardly tortoise hiding inside its shell, we can just cancel our agreement right now. You know that I have this power. Are you certain that you want to face Ayer’s rage by yourself?"
"Are you losing your sanity? As I expected, mortal lives are so weak, in both body and mind—"
Emordilorcan’s taunts suddenly paused halfway through because a raspy voice suddenly spoke up from not far away.
"…How did you know I was here?"
I laughed aloud in delight at hearing that familiar sound.
"Perhaps wind elementals don’t have the attack power of fire elementals, nor do they have the astonishing defense power of earth elementals, but wind elementals are the quickest of them all. Their innate nature to go in every crack makes them the best spies, and as long as they change their form slightly, even becoming completely invisible shouldn’t be too difficult. As long as you weren’t willing to accept defeat, you’d definitely follow Emordilorcan."
"That’s not enough of a reason…"
"What’s more, I believe that the wise Wind Elemental God isn’t stupid enough to waste this excellent opportunity. Is that enough?"
A humanoid life form walked out from the shadow of a nearby corner. He didn’t appear physically strong, but the glowing thunder runes on his skin, the silver hair that was flowing even in the absence of any wind, and those eyes that seemed to emit lightning all made it impossible for anyone to ignore his presence.
"Yep. I love having intelligent allies. Then, let us forget about any past small grievances we may have had, and let’s work hard together to keep this foolish piece of rock here."
"Camdian!"
"Oh my, isn’t this our esteemed Earth Elemental God? Why are you blind in one eye? Would you like for me, as your junior, to send you on your way?"
Emordilorcan shouted out his old acquaintance’s name in surprise. Yep, this person right here was the Wind Elemental God that had tucked his tail and run away. But the current him seemed to be in top condition in both mental and physical states.
Judging by how Camdian currently seemed completely uninjured, it was quite obvious that Camdian didn’t use his full abilities earlier. It was even possible that it wasn’t Camdian himself that was battling earlier, but now wasn’t the time to care about that.
"Of course, some people always focus on the process, but isn’t a difficult process for the sake of allowing people to be satisfied with the results? In that case, only a satisfactory result is the most important thing, is it not?"
I smiled as I joyfully watched the person in front of me transform into the essence of wind itself once more. Camdian unhesitatingly faced straight off against his mortal enemy, giving us the best cannon fodder again.
I still pretended to act mysterious and composed on the surface, but I secretly heaved a sigh of relief inside.
Ha, how lucky. This guy really was around after all.
Yep, I was bluffing from the very start. I didn’t have the ability to detect the presence of the Wind Elemental God who would be the best at hiding his presence, nor did I have the ability to perceive if he had truly lost or had only faked losing. However, just a single bluff had brought him out again, so of course I was quite fortunate.
What? I bluffed more than once? Well, in order to fool such a sly old fox, one had to pull out all the stops or it would all be for naught.
"Foolish one, you could have lived a few more years if you escaped. But now, even if you’re added to the mix, none of you weaklings are even worth mentioning!"
The crazed rock unhesitatingly faced off against the Wind Elemental God’s sudden appearance. Under his thick stone plating, Emordilorcan’s single remaining eye was still filled with viciousness, and even though the numbers were overwhelmingly disadvantageous for him, he didn’t even hesitate to attack first.
*Boom!*
But when the two Elemental Gods began fighting, the chain explosions coming from beneath us caused Emordilorcan’s expression to change significantly, as he was no longer able to remain composed.
"Emordilorcan, today shall be the day of your death!"
ED Note:
Hello, everyone! I’m Pranav, and I’m the new editor for The Experimental Log of the Crazy Lich. (This is my first chapter!) I’m really excited to work on this novel with imperfectluck, but I’d like to tell all of you a few things so that everyone’s up to speed.
First, I know that there are a lot of inconsistencies throughout the chapters, especially with the number of translators we’ve had, from Starve to EndlessFantasy Translations to imperfectluck. It’s one of the most important things for me to fix—especially in a novel like ELCL—so from this chapter onwards, we have established a proper, overarching glossary (that’s ever-expanding), and we’ll be trying our utmost to remain consistent with Starve’s terminology—the terminology that we’re all used to and have come to love. However, you may see some terms that are different from the previous chapters, and those terms have been changed after deliberation with imperfectluck. But they will remain consistent in the future, and after I get back to the previous chapters, then in those as well. Most of these changes are also easily recognizable. We’re going to be using all the old names and terms for the most part, so nobody should worry.
Second, after building up a sufficient stockpile for the current chapters with imperfectluck, I’m going to go back to Chapter 1 and start re-editing all the chapters, fixing any inconsistent terms, tenses, and grammar that Starve may have missed in his otherwise excellent translations, especially in the beginning.
Third, I implore all of our readers to help me point out any mistakes you may catch. I’ll fix ‘em up as soon as I can, and I’d also like to say that I’m learning as well! Your suggestions, comments, and constructive criticism will all be heard and will help me grow! I, as well as imperfectluck, plan to keep in contact with everyone through here, the nifty little Translator’s Thoughts section, the comments section, as well as the Jianghu Forum, and we’ll definitely do our best to fix anything as soon as possible.
Well, I guess that’s all for now! I really hope that we can give this gem of a novel what it deserves, and with imperfectluck’s super-duper, top-notch translations, I’m confident that we truly do have a shot.
Thanks, and have a great day!