Subject: An important matter
Sender: Wiseman
Message:
I was able to hear a story from Tartarga that sounds serious.
He seems to have had a conversation with a person who seems to be Harold.
ΔDelta Server Endless Purgatory’s Altar
He said he talked to a person named Harold in this area.
Tartarga’s memory is not the best since he’s old,
but there was no mistake in the area word.
I will share this information with all of you.
The email from Wiseman arrived on the last day of school.
The 24th. Just before the start of winter vacation. Christmas Eve. But of course I couldn’t relax.
The whereabouts of the final wave remained unknown.
The information I received from Wiseman was surprising, but I wanted to cling to any clue that would allow break through the current situation.
I invited BlackRose and Balmung to the area that Wiseman told me about.
At the deepest part, it led to a strange space.
I remembered having seen a similar space before.
It was an area that was told to me by Linda, an information dealer.
It was a completely white space. An empty place that was so spacious you could see the horizon.
But this time it was something like a small room. There was only a ruin, like the base of a building or a skeleton.
There was a stone monument in the center. No, it was more like a gravestone than a stone monument.
“Who is there?” the voice suddenly echoed.
BlackRose and I, who were looking into the back of the stone monument, stood there in a daze.
But there was no one around other than us.
“It’s a stone,” Balmung said calmly.
“I heard a voice from the stone.”
Was the stone talking?
No way, this was…
“My name is Harold,” the stone said in a heavy voice.
BlackRose lashed out.
“Isn’t the Cursed Wave your work? Set it back to the way it was!”
“No. The flow of time is irreversible. Birth, death. Now there is only one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Strangers, heed my words. It is darkest before the dawn.”
Suddenly my right arm began to shine. The bracelet was shining.
Then, a figure appeared on the stone monument, illuminated by the light.
“Aura!” I yelled.
Aura looked down at us with melancholy eyes.
“Cubia is the shadow,” Aura said.
“When the darkness is lit up, a shadow is created. When the bracelet appeared in this world, Cubia was also born.”
I heard Aura’s voice face to face for the first time.
Aura, who couldn’t speak until now, was speaking.
“What?” BlackRose whispered.
“Shhh.”
I listened to Aura’s words.
“The bracelet and Cubia are two sides of the same coin,” Aura continued.
“So… if you defeat Cubia, you’ll lose your bracelet.”
“What…”
BlackRose roared.
“What do you mean? Huh? So, that means we can’t beat Cubia?”
Aura looked up at the sky as though shocked.
It suddenly echoed.
It stopped quickly, but the impact began to shake the foundations of the room.
“Hmph…”
Balmung quickly pulled out his sword and stood at the ready.
The ground shook again. It lasted longer than last time. The shaking was stronger this time as well.
“Cubia… is here.”
Having said that, Aura faded and disappeared.
BlackRose and I also held out our weapons.
The roar, which I had become accustomed to, echoed from the other side of the area.
The stone monument shattered, and the next moment, a giant Cubia appeared as if towering over us.
Cubia’s horrid face, which I couldn’t get used to no matter how many times I saw it, moved and looked at us. I felt Cubia’s eyes meet ours. What was there was pure hostility.
It was the will to crush things that get in the way and to completely erase them.
Cubia had finally taken on the final battle.
Cubia had taken the tactic of spawning a myriad of small monsters-named “Cubia Gomora” which stalled us.
Cubia Gomora had the ability to negate normal attacks.
In addition, the lightning strike skill used by Cubia had tremendous power, and if we were not careful, we could be nearly defeated in a single blow.
Still, in the end we won. We shaved off Cubia’s HP little by little.
BlackRose and Balmung’s slashes landed at the same time and Cubia began to sink into the ground.
Perhaps I’ll run away again – that idea ran through my head. But I wasn’t ready to do it.
It was then that something unexpected happened.
I thought my bracelet was shining brightly and the screen shook violently and Cubia started to get up again.
He started summoning Cubia Gomora again, as if he had taken no damage from the fierce battle we had just finished.
“What’s going on? Are you recovering? Why?”
It suddenly clicked for me. Aura’s earlier words flashed across my mind.
“BlackRose, strike my bracelet!”
“Huh? What are you saying!”
Cubia appeared with the single goal of preventing us from meeting Aura.
I hadn’t wanted to know this fact.
In other words… how could we defeat Cubia? If I were to lose the bracelet, we could defeat Cubia.
“If Cubia and the bracelet are two sides of the same coin, that will settle the matter!”
“The bracelet… if the bracelet is gone… if you…”
A flash of light streaked across the sky. Cubia intended to use the lightning strike skill. We were already exhausted. We wouldn’t be able to stand being hit.
“We are more dangerous now than the bracelet!” I yelled.
With those words, BlackRose put on a determined face.
“I understand! I’ll do it!”
We faced each other.
“But can I break it?”
“It’s okay, don’t hesitate.”
I extended my right arm.
Actually, I myself was at a loss.
Would it be okay to break the bracelet?
Could it be broken in the first place?
Would Cubia really be defeated if the bracelet could be destroyed safely?
What would we do next if the bracelet is destroyed?
A number of questions passed through my mind.
But I stifled the thoughts.
If we couldn’t move forward without destroying the bracelet, we’d have to do it. We had no choice but to destroy it.
BlackRose ran towards me and made a big swing with her sword and hit my bracelet dead-on.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of something shattering.
The shock came suddenly. A severe pain shot across my nerves towards the place where the bracelet was.
I inadvertently crouched on the spot.
In the meantime, the bracelet shattered and fell to the ground in pieces. It diffused and scattered like petals that had fallen on the surface of a lake.
Although I was stunned by the severe pain, I raised my head.
Beyond Balmung fighting the Cubia Gomorra, the huge face of Cubia himself could be seen in the sky.
His strange face was staring at me as it had when the battle began.
The next moment, Cubia’s body fell apart as a sequence of data.
At the same time, the bracelet began to disappear.
Cubia and the bracelet. The anti-existence and the things incompatible with it returned to the sea of data together.
When I could no longer see Cubia, I passed out.
.hack//Translate 