The S-Classes That I Raised – Chapter 852

Chapter 852: Crescent Moon

The sky shimmered silver.

The instant I stepped into that place, which was neither day nor night, goose bumps rose across my entire body.

This realm lay wholly beneath the Crescent Moon’s dominion. Everything here rejected the intruder in its midst. The slender threads of light, the air drifting between them, even every microscopic particle suspended within that air—all of it was screaming for me to leave.

It felt different from the Gardener’s garden.

Perhaps the difference was that back then, I had been helpless beneath the Gardener’s power. Now, I had the strength to resist.

Leave!

The command came from every direction.

I drew a deep breath and spread my wings even wider.

I had come here to—

“I’ve come to save you, Princess!”

I shouted at the top of my lungs, driving back against the pressure crushing in from all sides.

The memory of that ridiculous scene from long ago came vividly back to me. Even in a situation like this, a laugh slipped out.

There he was below me.

The man I had come to find.

He was hardly in one piece, but his face was bright. He was smiling, as though he had never been happier.

Shrrr—

The moonlight trembled.

Jingle, jingle.

Bells chimed through the air.

The spear in my hand transformed into a sword. Black branches coiled around a blade of flawless white.

I swung it into the cascading moonlight.

KRA–KA–KLANG—!

The light and silver chains were severed in a single stroke.

I beat my wings hard and plunged downward.

I had both teleportation and spatial movement, but instinct warned me that using either inside a realm controlled by the Crescent Moon would be dangerous.

“Seong Hyunjae!”

I cut through every ray of moonlight blocking my path.

Before I even reached the ground, the overpowering stench of blood rushed up to meet me.

My jaw clenched.

There was no one in this place except Seong Hyunjae and the Crescent Moon.

Which meant that all the blood flooding this vast expanse of earth belonged to—

“…You held on.”

A cold fury settled in my stomach, but I said nothing more.

I landed in front of Seong Hyunjae, placing myself between him and the Crescent Moon.

The Crescent Moon’s eyes shifted toward us.

She gazed down as though observing something curious.

The moonlight filling the sky continued to ripple, but it no longer attacked. This was only the stillness before the storm.

“Han Yujin.”

Seong Hyunjae called my name.

There was something awkward about his voice. As though speaking itself had become unfamiliar to him.

She must have been erasing him.

Every fragment that made up the person called Seong Hyunjae.

Without lowering my guard against the Crescent Moon, I turned to look at him.

There was something almost startlingly guileless about his smiling face. Not in its coloring, but in what lay behind it. His memories as Seong Hyunjae had not yet fully returned.

“What happened to you?”

He was torn to pieces inside and out, and his clothes were barely hanging together.

I pulled Silekia’s wings from my inventory and draped the coat over his shoulders. He fingered the fabric, then smiled.

“Silekia. Yes. I gave this to you, didn’t I?”

“It’s still mine. I’m only lending it to you.”

As “Seong Hyunjae” rapidly reassembled himself, even his way of speaking returned to normal.

I wanted to smack him across the back and demand to know why he had left if he was only going to come back to himself like this. I held back. It was hardly the time, and in my current state, I couldn’t hit him with all my strength anyway.

That was one advantage of me being an F Rank while Seong Hyunjae was an S Rank. I could throw myself at him without worrying about hurting him.

“This time, don’t go anywhere. Stay right here and wait quietly.”

“I will.”

I turned back to the Crescent Moon.

Her light was soft.

But the sheer amount of it filling the sky made my eyes ache. It was nothing like the moonlight people ordinarily imagined.

–How fascinating.

The Crescent Moon’s voice flowed over us.

Despite her words, there was no emotion in it.

–A Transcendent who possesses a world of his own, yet has not lost the world that was already his.

“Devouring everything isn’t the only way to gain a world.”

I pointed my sword at the Crescent Moon.

I recalled the sensation Young Chaos had passed on to me.

Every being was made from the union of immeasurably small things. And because those pieces were joined together, natural gaps existed between them.

…

Was he expecting me to see through an enemy at the atomic level?

Sir, that is still a little too difficult for me to understand intellectually.

I gave up on understanding it and simply followed the movement my body remembered.

Even that was far from easy.

–Han Yujin, you could bring the new Origin to a far more perfect completion.

The Crescent Moon spoke from within the trembling light.

–An Origin that has not devoured the countless lives that desperately wish to survive.

“No matter what you say, my answer will be the same.”

The Origin devoured worlds.

Even now, at this very moment, people were being swallowed.

The Crescent Moon’s voice was trying to smother me beneath the weight of their deaths.

Would I ignore all those dying strangers and protect only the people around me?

From someone else’s perspective, that would undoubtedly seem selfish.

I was an ordinary person.

Of course I hesitated.

“I don’t believe I’m necessarily in the right.”

This was not a problem where one side could easily be declared right and the other wrong.

“If our positions were reversed—if sacrificing one stranger whose name I didn’t even know was the only way to protect my family—then I might be standing where you are now.”

If the people precious to me were dying before my eyes, I could not promise that I would remain calm and insist there had to be a better way.

“We’re both only trying to survive. That’s exactly why I have even less reason to listen to you, Crescent Moon.”

I tightened my grip on the sword.

“You’re nothing but an outsider looking down on us from above!”

I slashed with the tip of my blade.

The moonlight filling the sky bent sharply.

A deafening metallic shriek rang out, and the light snapped apart in showers all the way to the Crescent Moon.

I glared at her utterly unmoving face.

She did not stand on the same ground as us.

What right did she have to judge us?

If people from other worlds on the brink of destruction had stormed in and demanded that we hand Seong Hyunjae over as a sacrifice, I could at least have understood them.

But not the Crescent Moon.

I had no obligation to understand her words.

No reason to accept them.

“We’re going home. Then we’re going to keep living in our world.”

Jingle, jingle.

Countless chimes echoed outward.

The light sharpened.

I thought it was about to rain down upon us again.

Then a terrible premonition struck me.

Light.

Light was—

“Seong Hyunjae!”

I threw an arm toward him.

Light existed everywhere.

It was not only in the sky.

It shone upon the ground.

It was already touching my body.

It gleamed upon the face looking back at me.

Inside her own realm, the Crescent Moon had no need to transform the moonlight in the sky into chains and bring them crashing down.

Her enemies were already drenched in her light.

I spread my wings to their fullest and wrapped them around Seong Hyunjae as completely as I could.

There was no time to use a Mini Cookie.

I regretted not feeding him one in advance, but the thought came far too late.

I activated a defensive barrier, summoned flames around us, and wrapped the shadow of Plunder around our vital points.

Almost simultaneously—

KRAAAAANG—!

Every trace of light became a blade.

There was nowhere to run.

My flames were crushed.

The defensive barrier shattered.

“Urgh!”

Razor sharp light carved into every inch of my body.

Only Lunar Eclipse’s shadow managed to hold it back at all.

Golden feathers scattered in every direction, and the heavy scent of fresh blood flooded the air.

Seong Hyunjae had not escaped unscathed either.

I poured healing skills into both of us and tried to find a way out.

But where could we possibly go?

There was nowhere the light could not reach.

Flat earth stretched in every direction.

If I ran blindly, I would only be throwing my body headfirst into the blades.

I was like a land animal cast into the depths of the ocean.

Like a fish dragged to the peak of a mountain.

Everywhere I turned, the water rejected me.

The air rejected me.

–Peep.

A tiny birdcall reached my ears.

“Grace, you can’t!”

Even Grace’s power could not stop the Crescent Moon.

I had been told that she could nullify even the power of a Transcendent, but only for a moment. And the Crescent Moon was hardly an ordinary Transcendent.

Even so, the blue bird flew upward.

At the same time, a familiar energy began to flow from the bracelet.

‘…The path of dreams.’

The dream Byeol had led me into.

The dream where everyone became what they wanted to be.

Come to think of it—

‘Grace was a child too.’

She was still a young bird, born only a short time ago.

Myungwoo had even said that she would grow far more.

And yet Grace had not changed at all beneath the power of the dream.

Could it be that instead of using that power at the time—

‘The Fountain of Young Mana.’

She had stored it.

Back then, she had not needed to protect me.

–Peeeeep!

The tiny blue bird, small enough to fit in my palm, expanded in an instant.

Her blue wings unfurled to an immense length, and her power of damage nullification surged with them.

An ability that had already been overwhelmingly powerful reached its fully matured state.

The moonlight retreated.

“Grace!”

A blue dragon gazed down at me, her body covered in beautiful, glasslike patterns of silver.

That was right.

I had been told she was originally a dragon.

The form from her past life, when a tiny bird had grown and risen into the highest reaches of the sky, had appeared once again.

This would not be exactly the same as her former self.

The blue bird was envisioning a mighty future all her own.

–I was created from the wish to protect you.

Grace spoke.

From what Myungwoo had wished for.

From what he had wanted to do.

Beneath Grace’s light, I rose again.

I looked up at the Crescent Moon and adjusted my grip on the sword.

–I grant you the blessing of perfect protection.

My ragged wings healed without a trace.

I left Seong Hyunjae in Grace’s care, stepped upon Blue Willow Leaves, and shot into the sky.

Moonlight filled the air, but it could no longer touch me.

My sword carved through the light.

BOOOONG, BOOONG—

The silver sky trembled as though an enormous bell had been struck.

Layer upon layer of light barred my way.

My entire field of vision turned white.

I slashed horizontally, brought the blade down, and slashed again, but there was only more moonlight.

The world was so completely filled with light that I could no longer see anything resembling a gap.

Even when I summoned the sensation Young Chaos had given me, all I could do was cut away the light immediately surrounding me.

The tip of my sword could not even reach the Crescent Moon.

Grace could not protect me forever.

The power stored inside the Fountain of Young Mana had limits.

“Crescent Moon!”

The moon was somewhere beyond that light.

I could faintly sense her.

I needed enough power to tear the light away.

A fire capable of sweeping everything aside in a single instant.

Grace’s protection was still wrapped securely around me.

A perfect blue flame would burn through even that protection.

But an imperfect one might not.

And I had—

‘Yuhyun.’

I looked at the black plum branch coiled around the snow white blade.

At the red blossom blooming from its tip.

The twenty six year old Yuhyun had never possessed a blue flame.

He had suppressed himself until his fire had become nothing but blackness.

But he was still Han Yuhyun.

My younger brother, who had returned to me.

Who had finally stopped holding himself back and given me everything he wanted to give.

Fwoooosh—

Black flames surged up the sword.

Blue light bled into them.

Bluer.

Brighter.

Clearer—

Until they almost resembled a perfect blue flame.

But the fire still held blackness at its heart.

Heat flooded my entire body.

The hand gripping the sword felt as though it might melt at any second.

When Yuhyun wielded this fire, it had only ever wrapped itself gently around me.

But without its master, it was a wild beast on the verge of breaking free.

The sword was the only bridle barely holding it in check.

I let it go.

WHOOOOOOOSH—!

Blue flames veined with black roared outward.

They devoured the light and spread toward the Crescent Moon.

I gazed down the broad path the fire had opened for me.

He had cut down everything that stood in my way.

“So will I.”

I remembered the arm that had always reached out in front of me.

The reassuring weight at my back.

The sound of his breathing.

The flow of his mana.

The movement of the sword that guided it all.

I cut.

There was no sound.

The world simply split.

The blade sank into the Crescent Moon’s realm itself.

Because this was her own domain, there was nowhere for her to escape.

A heartbeat too late—

KRAAAAANG—!

The light shattered.

The deafening crash came from every direction at once.

Shhhhhhhhh—

Moonlight poured down like a sudden rainstorm.

Between the falling remnants, darkness reclaimed the place that had always belonged to it.

And within that darkness, stars appeared.

An ordinary night sky.

I stared up at it blankly, dragging in one ragged breath after another.

Then I abruptly turned around.

“Seong Hyunjae, are you all right?”

The oppressive force of the Crescent Moon’s domain was gone, so I immediately used spatial movement.

Grace had returned to the form of a small blue bird. With exhausted beats of her wings, she dissolved into the jewel set within the bracelet.

“Han Yujin.”

“You’re safe, right? What about the contract? Did it break properly?”

Usually, a contract was automatically dissolved when the one who had made it disappeared.

But there were exceptions.

Some contracts included backlash or curses intended to protect the contractor even after death.

Seong Hyunjae looked directly at me.

“The instant you cut through the Crescent Moon, the contract was severed as well.”

Relief washed over me, and a smile escaped before I could stop it.

It was over.

This time, it was truly—

“However, I don’t believe I’ll be able to leave with you.”

“…What?”

“Regrettably.”

Wait.

What was he talking about?

Why now?

“The contract is gone, so why not? All we have to do is go home!”

“It was not entirely unexpected.”

Seong Hyunjae spoke calmly.

He lowered his gaze to his hand.

For an instant, part of that hand faded into emptiness.

“The layers of contracts were also protecting me.”

“…Protecting you?”

No.

My heart plummeted.

At the same moment, a voice colder than before reached us.

–That child cannot contain his own existence without help.

“Crescent Moon…?!”

I whirled around.

The Crescent Moon’s figure reappeared amid the softly glowing moonlight.

Her presence had weakened considerably, but there was no mistaking her.

–I do not disappear.

“…You’re immortal?”

–As long as even one person exists who looks upon the moon and offers it a wish.

“…What does that mean?”

–Precisely what I said. I am the moon. I am the moonlight of prayer, shining equally upon every existence. I am that concept itself.

The ends of the Crescent Moon’s long hair dissolved into the moonlight.

There was no hostility left in her presence.

She only released a gentle glow.

Just like the moon.

–As a Transcendent, the Crescent Moon tried to help more people through the system…

As a Transcendent.

Then what was she now?

–To listen more closely to their voices, the Crescent Moon gradually became the moon itself. She sought to contain every wish of those she loved.

Faint whispers began to emerge from within the moonlight.

Countless voices flowed along its silver currents.

–And among them, the fiercest, most desperate, most frantic voices of all.

[Save me!]

“Ugh!”

The piercing scream struck my ears.

[I don’t want to die!]

[Please save me.]

[Please, at least let this child survive…!]

[Please save us.]

[I’m scared.]

[I don’t want to die.]

[Save me.]

[I don’t want to die.]

[Save me.]

–The desire to live.

Endless voices.

Voices upon voices upon voices.

I clapped my hands over my ears without thinking.

Had the Crescent Moon been listening to all of them?

Every one of these cries?

For all those immeasurably long years?

–The wish that every beloved soul offers with the greatest desperation. And the greatest threat to that prayer is the Origin, which swallows worlds without any wish or desire of its own.

The Crescent Moon continued in a tender voice.

–The system alone was not enough. And so, the moon resolved to erase the Origin…

The Crescent Moon had not tried to destroy the Origin because she wanted to protect the worlds.

She had done it to grant the wishes that flowed into her.

I took a long breath.

I remembered the Crescent Moon I had encountered in the distant past.

Then I considered everything she had just said.

“The person you are now… Are you the Crescent Moon?”

Her silver eyes held mine in silence.

Then she opened her mouth.

–I am the Crescent Moon. But I can no longer be the individual called the Crescent Moon. I am every moon that exists in every world…

The Crescent Moon standing before me was still the Crescent Moon.

But the Crescent Moon I had known was gone.

–TL Notes–
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