Apocalyptic Forecast - Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Crow and Stigmata
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“Ah… These days are hopeless…”
Huai Shi sat in the garden, his clothes messy and his face pale. When he thought of what he had experienced over the past two days, he wanted to howl at the sky and let tears drown his face.
This was not something as simple as being flat broke anymore. Not only was he discovered auditioning to be a gigolo and his reputation destroyed, he even randomly stumbled across a corpse. After that, he was held at all sorts of guns-point and led into some mysterious organization, where they did a heavy number of his heart…
From inside out, from his mind to his wallet, none of it could take any more from this cruel, cruel world.
The recent updates in the book were especially bad. Every time he read it, he wanted to die, but he was so poor that he could not even afford a piece of rope, and the gas supply to his house had been cut for half a year now.
He could not live, but he could not die either.
“It’s a dead ball, huh? Gah, whatever!”
He tossed his notebook to the side and threw a needless tantrum, tears flowing down his face like the panda crying meme. After he vented enough and cried his eyes dry, though, he obediently picked the notebook up again and wiped the dirt off the cover. Finally, he sighed and continued to stare blankly at the bald garden.
It will pass, Huai Shi, all of this will pass… For all he knew, there would soon come a time when he would forget all about this period in his life.
He prayed to himself inwardly, and then he went back to scratching his head over where he should go to earn his living fees.
“If you really believe that, that’s a good thing. However, it’s a matter of time before those guys come after you now…”
He heard an unfamiliar voice beside him. It sounded like a woman, her voice hoarse and seductive, with a hint of indescribable teasing. She said, “You’re gonna die, kid.”
“No, you’re gonna die!”
Huai Shi glared in that direction angrily, but then he froze.
There was no one at all next to him.
This was the backyard in his house, so no one really dropped by anyway, much less talked to him.
Who was the one who spoke, then?
He saw a crow preening its feathers lazily on the fence.
“Don’t stare stupidly like that. That’s right, it’s me.”
Looking at his stunned face, the crow said calmly, “Yes, there’s a crow talking to you. And no, this isn’t a nightmare.”
She even seemed to burp after saying that.
“You can talk?”
Huai Shi blinked, but he immediately came to his senses. “No, wait, what kind of a monstrosity are you?!”
The crow chuckled softly, her voice turning hurt yet mischievous. “Ahh, when you stare at me without blinking every day, you treated me like your treasure. And now you’re calling me a monstrosity?”
“Y-Y-You’re… that old book?”
Huai Shi finally reacted, flipping open the cover of the notebook. On the pages… that silhouette of a crow was gone, as though it had really come alive and flown out of the paper.
“I guess you could say that.”
The crow sighed and looked at the notebook in his hands. “Although we’re both remnants, right now I’m nothing more than a recording that was plastered on top.
“Still, it’d be absurd if you mistake me for Heaven.”
Huai Shi did not understand a thing she said, but then she changed the topic and turned her scarlet eyes on Huai Shi. “Nevertheless, that has nothing to do with who I really am. The problem here is—
“—Did you really think I was trying to trick you just now?”
She asked softly, “Didn’t you personally experience the records of those people’s last moments?”
Huai Shi remembered the endless stream of nightmares from last night, and he instinctively shuddered, his throat turning dry. “Did all those guys really… die?”
“Oh, of course.”
The crow nodded. “Aside from you, everyone else who had seen that box is now dead.
“There really was some good stuff in there. I’ve been sleeping for so many years, but it really isn’t every day I can get so much elementium at once. Although it’s a little impure, there should still be eight to nine hundred people’s worth in there, right?”
She smacked her lips as though she had not eaten her fill yet, looking at Huai Shi rather happily. “Since you gave me such a nice introductory gift, I don’t mind helping you out. Do you need my help, young man?”
…
“40 grams of copper, 57 grams of silver, and 12 grams of tin, ground into powder… A crucible and a Bunsen burner, and some lead pieces the shop owner threw in for free…”
That evening, Huai Shi finally returned home after running around the entire city. He tossed the plastic bag he was holding onto the table and picked up the mineral water he had not finished drinking the day before yesterday. It may not be good for his health, but he chugged it down anyway without a care.
“My Alipay credit is all used up now, and I’m neck-deep in debt. What’s the point of buying all this stuff?”
“So you can perform alchemy, of course.”
The crow preened its feathers and said calmly, “It’s not at all easy to make a stigma that normal people like you can use, you know.”
“A stigma?” Huai Shi laughed. “Do you want me to become a dust cleaner that draws large X’s through the sky?” (TN: apparently a reference to Honkai Impact 3rd.)
“What’s that? A modern joke?”
“No, it’s just a money-making scheme from a trashy game.”
When he remembered how those whales in his class easily sunk astronomical funds into the game, all Huai Shi felt was… deep envy.
“It’s not the same, nuh-uh. They might share the same name, Huai Shi, but the stigma I’m talking about isn’t anything so ridiculous.”
The crow explained calmly, “If the Ascenders’ soul essence is a prototype of divine authority, then a stigma is what happens after you analyze the relics left here by the gods.
“By reversing the clock on the remnants of miracles, we can trace the path to the heavens and mimic the gods. When we investigate the gods’ authority and the traces they left behind, that research led us to discover the existence of stigmata. They’re small miracles formed in a secret union of metal and incense that can mimic the large-scale miracles.
“That’s what a stigma really is.”
“…Gods?”
Huai Shi was stunned. “Do gods really exist?”
“They did, in the past.”
The crow was silent for a moment. “But they all died. The things abandoned by the tides of time pose no threat to the world today, so I’m afraid that soon, these things won’t even be worth remembering anymore.”
The crow was not willing to elaborate on that. She just hastened Huai Shi, making him set up the crucible quickly so they could complete this melding ASAP.
“Is this stuff enough?”
Once the fire reached a high enough temperature, Huai Shi obeyed the crow’s instructions and put on a mask, grinding the lead blocks into powder. After that, he added some of his own blood into it and carefully wrote symbols he could not read at all on the metal that had been pressed paper-thin. The symbols had very simple structures, but there was no room for any error whatsoever.
The crow’s eyes were terrifyingly sharp, and if he made even the slightest mistake, she would make him rub it off and start over. After he wasted countless cc’s of blood, he finally completed this simple task.
“These are just supplements. Even the simplest stigma is not something that can be made with mortal flames and mortal metals. This is just a rudimentary emergency item. When you make higher-level stigmata in the future, you might even need the blood of a magical beast and extensive sacrifices, or even…”
She paused and stopped there, changing the subject to say mildly, “Rest for ten minutes, and we’ll start at fifteen minutes past eleven. Remember, you only have one chance. If you mess it up, I don’t think you have enough money to try again, do you?”
When she mentioned money, Huai Shi immediately became even more nervous. He picked up the notebook and repeatedly confirmed the order of the crow’s spoken instructions, simulating the process in his mind.
On the other hand, the crow stood next to the crucible and stared at the flames.
In an instant, the red flame turned pure white, and finally, countless sparkles appeared inside it, making for a dazzlingly beautiful sight.
However, the crow’s figure began to thin out.
“What’s that?”
“Elementium. Ignited elementium.” The crow looked at him and explained before he even asked, “Elementium is the substance that forms your soul, the essence that hides among the material… You can think of it as a piece of the soul.
“Your materials aren’t up to par, so we have to make up the difference with the flames. Right now, you’re burning one person’s soul every second. Ah, but don’t worry about the source. These are all bits saved up in that box.”
Huai Shi gulped, at a loss for words.
Even more terrifying than the fact that he was burning up a person every second was the idea that the crow said there was almost a thousand people’s worth in that box…
What the heck was this?
“Don’t ponder over so much nonsense and get it started, Huai Shi.”
The crow gave Huai Shi a final glance. The liquid lead in the crucible was completely boiling now, but there was no trace of a sharp stench or other odors. Instead, the liquid was starting to gleam with a hint of gold as it burned over the pure white flames.
It was as though there was gold powder mixed into grey dust.
Huai Shi did not have so much time to think. He grabbed the items that had been arranged in order next to him, putting them into the crucible one after the other. First up was the tin, then the copper, then the silver…
Every time he poured something in, the liquid metal in the crucible did not ripple at all. It merely melted down the new addition in an instant.
The pure white flames suddenly rose up high, and all the sparkling light was sucked into the crucible greedily. The blinding light was enough to hurt Huai Shi’s eyes.
At the very last second, Huai Shi heard the crow sigh.
“I hope we bet on the right horse this time, Huai Shi.”
With that soft murmur, the crow had become as translucent as an illusion. She abruptly stretched her wings and took flight, diving into the crucible.
Boom!
After a low boom, the fire went out, and the liquid in the crucible soared into the sky, drawing an intricate outline in the air before finally falling apart from the inside.
Under Huai Shi’s stunned gaze, it slowly solidified and floated down from the sky.
It was a feather.
A feather made of metal.
The feather looked like it was made of pure silver, with every split slender, perfect, and utterly flawless. Light flowed across the mirror-like surface, and it looked like it could reflect the entire world. All sorts of strange images kept flashing across it.
The feather landed in Huai Shi’s hand.
“This is now my real body, a type-less special stigma— Deceptive Split.”
The crow’s voice spoke into his ear wearily, “With the notebook and Deceptive Split in hand, you’re perfectly capable of becoming a clerk-in-training now, even in the days before the chaos.”
Huai Shi looked at the thick notebook in his hand. It was flipping through the pages non-stop, even though there was no wind around. He felt his head spin; although there were countless words moving across the pages, it looked like all he could see was another version of himself.
His self that only existed in the textual records.
“What on earth… is this thing?”
“Hm, if I must explain… Consider it the last shadow Heaven left on Earth.” The crow sighed softly. “You can call it the Book of Destiny.”
Just then, the countless moving words suddenly pulled in closer, and as the crow on the pages vanished without a trace, some new lines appeared in their place.
Huai Shi (Developing Stage)
Title: None
Stigmata: None
Divine seal: None
Special skills: Knowledge LV3, Art/Music/Cello LV6, Premonition of Death LV0.
…
“Look, it’s recognized you as its owner now.” The crow said tiredly, “Try to figure out how to use it on your own. I’m gonna sleep for a bit…”
“Wait up, what ‘premonition of death’? Why is it so blurry?”
Huai Shi plastered his face against the page before he could finally read that almost illegibly light line of words.
“It’s your premonition of death, duh. It doesn’t matter what you are; after you experienced several dozen deaths, it makes you think a little differently, right? The words are blurry because you’re only a novice now, but you’re not at all skilled at this yet. I just didn’t think you knew how to play the cello at LV6. Hmm, you might be a genius yet, kid…”
The voice began to fade until finally only silence remained.
It might have really gone to sleep.
Only Huai Shi was left, standing stunned with a quill and his book. He had no idea what they were for.
As he held the feather quill known as Deceptive Split in one hand, the instruction manual naturally appeared in his mind. Aside from some of its functions targeting book-type items, the quill’s most important skill was the ability to write in the air and change the color of the ink at will…
“Whatever. At least I can just make up some ads as I go and save on the printing fee…”
Huai Shi looked at the pen with a wry smile before turning his eyes to the book he was holding. After he read through everything carefully, he realized it had barely changed at all. The only difference was that some of the extra files at the back were shining faintly now.
Huai Shi hesitated for a long while before raising his quill and tapping on these files.
All of a sudden, light erupted from the page.
The light engulfed him completely.