BXBX NOVEL Chapter 111: Afterward
Chapter 111: Afterward
Translator: ShiroiKaze/Soyokaze Translations
Author’s Note: The last one. Bringing together the remaining material.
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Two years have passed since the World Tree was broken.
We once again regained peace, and our usual quiet days have—
“Owowowow! It hurts, it hurts, I’m dying! I’m seriously dying here, could you make it stop?!”
“Well of course it hurts, what do you expect? Come now, put some strength into it.”
Yeah—… Along with great acclaim, my life is in a huge crisis.
~*~
With my bulging belly squirming, I can tell the inside is riotous.
Yes, after successfully extracting the ovulation promoting agent from the orc fluid, I succeeded in becoming pregnant; I’ve been fighting through labor for the past few hours.
My water already broke, and all that’s left is to push the baby out, but… For me, that’s the biggest mountain of all.
“Golden Ratio” was sealed, and getting a pregnant form was fine. But it’s hard to call this complete physical disparity anything but problematic.
“Come on, push harder!”
“I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t! Right, this is when we use that, the Hayflit limit? No uhhh, Samaze, right, the Samaze technique!”
“Ain’t it the Lamaze technique?”
A room in the cottage was isolated for childbirth, and thoroughly sterilized.
Incidentally, since Marielle has experience in this, she came to be a midwife for me.
As a bonus, Miss Levy came along, which is… Well, it was within my expectations.
“I can’t relax or expand anything! I’m blaming you for thiiiiiis!”
“Honestly, very well. It certainly is a large burden with your body, so I will assist with some magic.”
Immediately after Marielle declared that, the strength left my body all over, and the pain vanished.
“I have used [Analgesia] and [Relaxation], plus [Numbness]. We are going to be brute forcing this even more now, so I hope you are ready.”
“Ye-ah-wha…?”
I don’t think there are many times in a human’s life when they get to experience a hand being driven inside their bellies.
~*~
“Is Yuuri going to be okay…? No, of course I’m worried about the child too!”
“Please calm down, Mister Haster. If you keep prowling around like a bear, then I won’t be able to calm down anymore.”
“I can’t help it, Marle.”
I can’t stop wandering around in front of the room.
No matter how much I’m told to calm down, it’s impossible. Yuuri’s body type clearly isn’t ready for giving birth after all.
We forced our way into the pregnancy knowing she’s “Immortal,” but I just can’t get rid of this seed of worry.
As it stands, Marle, enshrined solidly on the sofa, looks like the much more experienced one of us.
Well, when seeing her own slightly bulging stomach, of course that would be the case though.
It should only be about half a year until her delivery…
“But with all the noise going on in there, it’s making me anxious too.”
“Yuuri isn’t very good with pain, after all.”
“Adaptability” and “Golden Ratio”. Those two gifts give Yuuri her durability and regenerative abilities, but without both of them sealed, she couldn’t have conceived.
And without her resistance to pain from “Adaptability” right now, she really is feeling the pain of death—
“Aaah, we really should have at least had “Adaptability” unsealed!”
“If you did that, then the baby would die. Master, please get a hold of yourself.”
Next to Marle, with an arm around her shoulder, Alec had an easygoing expression.
Just you wait. It’ll be your turn half a year from now.
Wander, wander. Fidget, fidget—
Just when I’d lost count of how many times I passed the door, a voice resounded.
“Oaaaaaah! Uwaaaaah!”
“It’s born?!”
“Yuuri, breathe! Her heart?!”
“No good, it’s gone an’ stopped.”
“YUURIIIIIIII!!”
Unable to hold back, I pounced into the room.
~*~
When I woke up, I was in Haster’s room.
I immediately remembered what happened before I “died”—
“The baby?!”
“Right here.”
The rocking chair next to the window.
There Haster was sitting and holding the baby.
I felt relieved seeing him in his usual calm demeanor. I’m sure it will be that way from now until forever too.
“You worked hard… Thank you.”
“No… Umm, thank you too?”
The baby was gently sleeping in his arms.
“The baby’s name, have you decided Yuuri?”
“Have you decided, Haster?”
By the time of the child’s birth, we had all sorts of discussions about a name.
We brought up all sorts of possibilities… Too many possibilities; we couldn’t decide.
“In the first place I don’t even know if the baby is a boy or a girl?”
“Oh right… That’s true.”
Just like his calm demeanor, his propensity for forgetfulness will also probably never change.
“It’s a healthy baby boy. He downed a whole bottle as soon as he was born.”
“I hope that he ends up looking just like you, but without being a heavy drinker… Let’s see, how does the name “Asuto” sound to you?”
“Astro,” I believe it means a person who travels through space? I thought of it when looking out the window at the endless night sky.
And then, with a slight Japanese inflection mixed in… If I was to express it in Japanese, I would probably write it “Person of Tomorrow”.
With hopes he’ll be free enough to cross the skies, free enough to reach the future… Maybe even reach my home some day… Well, going that far would probably be impossible of course.
“Hum, not bad. Let’s go with that. From now on, you are Asuto.”
He looked down at Asuto. Perhaps he wasn’t happy about the chair shaking so much?
Asuto’s eyes opened, and he started getting a bit cranky.
“Haster, could you get some milk ready please?”
“Me? I don’t really want to let him go though…”
“I haven’t even had a chance to hold him yet! You could at least hand him over for a little bit!”
He seems to already have the air of a doting parent.
I have “Golden Ratio” and “Adaptability” back in effect now.
As a result, my body is back to how it was before pregnancy… So milk isn’t going to be coming out of me now. Well, not that there was much to suck on in the—Yeah, never mind.
And so Asuto will probably have to be raised on cow and goat milk.
After getting myself up, Asuto was given to me, and Haster left the bedroom.
Small hands, and a small face. He has silver hair and red eyes just like mine.
He doesn’t look much like Haster at all, huh?
“Well, as long as you grow into a beautiful young boy, Mom will be very happy with that, okay?”
“Didn’t know ya were into shotas Yuuri?”
Changing places with Haster, Miss Levy entered the room.
She must have come to bring some drinks; she was holding cups in both hands.
“I guess I’m going to be a doting parent too it seems.”
“I see, glad ya’ll are doin’ well.”
“What about Marle and Marielle?”
“Marle went on back to the village. Marielle was all tired and went to sleep.”
“… I’m sorry for being a difficult patient.”
“Ain’t no trouble. Ya’ll are our buddies.”
She handed one of the cups in her hands over to me.
Inside is fruit juice. There was even ice inside, probably produced by magic.
“Been a long time comin’, but… Thanks. For everythin’.”
“… I’d like you to show your gratitude in a different way.”
“What, ya have somethin’ ya want?”
“The truth.”
At my words, Miss Levy’s mouth stopped for a moment.
“Miss Levy… You’re a “reincarnator” aren’t you?”
“Why did ya think that?”
“Livyatan—Leviathan is a creature that exists over here too, but there exists no custom of pronouncing it that way in this world.”
From the very moment I heard it, I thought it was odd.
“That so? Could be the Matala Alliance or Raum’s dialect that it…”
“It’s not. I already finished investigating at Mister Foras’ place in Comb City.
A creature from Hebrew mythology. Child of Tiamat. Though it’s probably different from the snake god that Alec fought.
Plus, with the volume of information in that ancient book store, I’m certain that there’s no mistake.
The place even has connections to the thieves’ guild; I’m sure it’s one of the best places in the world to gather information.
“Was the whole phantom thief disturbance on purpose so you could pull my reclusive self out into the open?”
“Haaa… Well, yeah. Them Forest Bear folks came along too.”
“In a single year you moved from Belit to Cornus, caused the phantom thief disturbance, then headed back to Belit… There was too little wasted effort in there.”
“Ain’t somethin’ I had the time for.”
While still holding the cup, she skillfully shrugged her shoulders.
“So, what did God tell you when he sent you here?”
“Bufuh?!”
“The timing was too perfect. I teleported in, and Masayoshi appeared as if he was chasing after me. In the same period, you appeared to have me contend with Masayoshi. It’s harder to think that there wasn’t any intention behind this.”
“Yer one scary girl. Was that all?”
Of course it wasn’t.
Raising “Peerless” up in that way presumes she would be going up against a magic specialist. And it could also be used to deal with someone magic doesn’t work against.
Excluding “exceptions” like Haster, gifts are held from birth.
An irregular way of nurturing it like hers would normally be unbelievable.
In other words, she’s a reincarnator from the same time as us or later. And it means she was moving under the assumption she would be fighting us.
Someone who knows that there are multiple reincarnators like us here, and yet can move to stand against us.
—God’s intervention is the only thing it could be.
When I conveyed that to her, she opened her mouth in amazement.
“This world here ya see… Their faith in the World Tree is just too strong. Practically a singular dictatorship. Ya know how dangerous that is, don’t ya Yuuri?”
I guess it would be like trying to spread Buddhism in middle age Europe.
You would be suppressed by the masses, smothered, and then extinguished.
Probably just as how the current Water God and Sun God faiths may have been on the verge of extinction.
“But see, intervenin’ in other worlds is against the rules. Make it deviate too much, and ya chip away at its diversity. Besides…”
“Besides?”
“I ain’t exactly free of ambitions here.”
“You’re not planning a world war, I hope?”
She grinned broadly, and in response I felt a cold shiver.
“Ain’t plannin’ to do anything like that. Just so long as the concept of “God” weren’t limited to that giant tree right in front of their eyes, that’s all good. That way other new gods can be havin’ room to be born.”
“So then, who are you really? If you’re God’s subordinate, then you weren’t human, right?”
“Yer right about that, Yuuri. Special class god of destruction, and former angel trainee; the sea creature Leviathan.”
“Quite the big deal, huh. I see—hm? Trainee?”
If I remember right, the cause of my death was… Don’t tell me…?
“Yeah, ya weren’t really supposed to get caught up in that, Yuuri. But sometimes people with some particularly strong abilities to interfere in destiny get caught in that stuff. Ya were one such case… so I really felt bad ’bout gettin’ ya caught up in it and all. My apologies.”
“Masayoshi too then?”
“Yeah. So God just made some use of all that. Far as yer case was concerned, it couldn’t really be considered much more than emergency treatment, but after seein’ that personality… Well, all sorts o’ schemin’ was done.”
“Please let me beat God up a little bit.”
“Let’s stop that there, yeah?! Ah, I get how ya feel though. An’ so I was reincarnated here. If Masayoshi goes on a rampage, then so as to stop him. To go an’ destroy the World Tree. And to support yer happiness too. Was a little late on that, though.”
“But throwing away your position as a god and an angel to reincarnate…”
“With everythin’ else bein’ right, it was my mistake. Usin’ Masayoshi to correct the levels of faith caused a lot of trouble, but… Well, it was mostly reapin’ what we sowed.”
After doing all that as he pleased… Miss Alma and the rest, along with a whole bunch of other harm was done.
It really was reaping what they sowed. But using an idiot… Is just pitiable.
“If I were to go an’ die off, then well, I would just go back to where I was before, so that ain’t somethin’ to worry about. Plus I completed one other objective.”
“What other objective?”
“Ya know now, don’t ya? How ya can die.”
“—gh?!”
The way we killed Masayoshi is, in other words, something that would work for me too.
Meaning she’s…
“A way for my “Immortal” self to die when I want to. You’re here to teach me that?”
“Not that I was the one to really teach ya though. Well, just be thinkin’ of it as aftercare.”
Saying that, she fluttered her hand about while heading for the door.
“Well then, that should be everythin’, yeah? Then I’m gonna go get some sleep if ya don’t mind.”
“… Yeah, good night.”
Unable to come back to my senses from the shock, all I could do was see off her fleeting figure from behind.
~*~
“A way to die, huh…?”
If I seal my gifts, then even I can die.
But that’s something still far in the future.
“Not like I can die before this little boy gets bigger, after all.”
I looked at my child, quietly sleeping in my arms, then giggled and smiled.
Looks like Miss Levy’s concern isn’t necessary.
“Yuuri, I’ve brought the milk. Now let me hold Asuto too.”
The door opened, and Haster returned in haste.
“No. I am enjoying a “woman’s” happiness right now.”
I’m sure it’s going to be a long, long time before I think about dying.
Right now this “happiness” is enough to keep me full!
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Author’s Note: Hakai Me no Yuuri is now concluded. Thank you very much for joining me in this long journey.
I hope you’ll join me for my next work too.