3 bar menu

Last Embryo Volume 2 Chapter 3 Part 2

Translator: DarkHeartedAlchemist

The only thing that the Minotaur managed to understand, the only word that stirred something deep inside of him, was the name that this Jin uttered just now.

「As… ter… ios?」

「That’s right. That is your name. The one you’ve been given before you were turned into a monster. Your true name.」

Jin said while showing him a friendly smile.

He didn’t know why, but for some reason that name made him feel like he was flooded with a warm, inexplicable feeling that wasn’t painful at all. Was that… nostalgia? He didn’t know, but in the next moment he could feel the muscles beneath his skin moving and shrinking again, this time, however, their movement wasn’t accompanied by a feeling of unbearable pain, but instead he felt like they were finally stabilizing. The pain of giant horns receded back into his forehead and disappeared under a cascade of white hair, and instead of hooves, he now had hands and feet with a set of soft five toes on each of them. He felt that he still had his inhuman strength, but other than that, it looked like his appearance was changing into that of a human.

Witnessing something like that for the first time in her life, all that pest could do was to stare at him, dumbfounded, but Jin Russel simply nodded confidently. A short while later, the bull monster was nowhere to be found. In its place, the one laying on the ground was a white-haired, dark-skinned boy.

「!!!!!!?」

Age and appearance-wise, he looked to be around his mid-teens. He slowly stood up, and cast a long, confounded gaze at his own hands, which here now indistinguishable from the normal human ones. Seeing them like that was greatly confusing for him, to the point where he didn’t even know what he was supposed to say.

However, as Asterios was recalling the details of his own legend, there was this uncomfortable feeling forming up inside of him, a feeling that he couldn’t quite describe with words.

「This legend… yes, it should be about me.」

「Should be? Why the hesitation?」

「Because… everything is telling me that all of the details are correct, at least as far as my own knowledge goes. But the thing is… I cannot recall a clear memory of any of those events, and… and I don’t feel any kind of emotional connection to them.」

He knew for a fact that he was the prince of Crete that the legend was talking about, and he could clearly recall the vastness of the blue sky and the sound of the roaring sea waves when he closed his eyes. Also, the halls of the palace made from stone and the sun that caressed him with its loving rays were firmly engraved upon his soul as well. But the most important ones, the memories of the days he spent on Crete were nowhere to be found even though he searched for them in the deepest reaches of his mind over and over and over again.

How exactly did he came to be did not matter, as long as he transformed from the human prince Asterios int a bull monster, Minotaur. But if he was able to revert the transformation, him having no recollection of his days a a normal human would mean that the story didn’t match up.

「So, this is how your real body looks, like, huh? I’ll understand if you’re going to feel a little confused due to all of the long-forgotten sensations coming back to you, but first of all, allow me to congratulate you on reclaiming your body and name, Asterios.」

Jin congratulated the boy on returning to his true for, and the took Asterios – a boy who up until now was known only under his monstrous name, Minotaur – to one of the ruined walls sheltered from the raging storm where all three of them could sit down without being bothered by the weather and the prying eyes alike, and also because he wanted him not to exert himself so much after he just transformed because he might not have been able to move too much just yet. Next, he took out a bunch of Water Tree leaves and placed them inside of a wooden cup, which was then filled with hot water in the next moment. Since Asterios was starved and thirsty beyond belief, he snatched the cup away from Jin and drank the contents in one gulp, feeling his entire body being filled with rejuvenating power as a result.

As for his sudden transformation from a monster back into a human, it was probably a self-defense mechanism which activated because his life was in extreme danger. If Jin and Pest were just a few moments late, then Asterios would have probably ended up as just another mindless monster, so they were lucky that they managed to get to him when they did.

「Alright, go ahead and drink to your heart’s content, but watch out so that you won’t choke on it, okay? We’ll talk after that, if its fine with you.」

Asterios nodded and greedily drank a few more cups of water, after which he exhaled loudly with unrestrained satisfaction.

「Had enough? Okay then, first thing’s first, allow me to ask: do you remember anything about the Gift Games of this world?」

Jin asked him gently, trying not to sound overly pushy. When Asterios quenched his thirst, he poured another cup of water over his hair and shook his head as he looked into the sky above him, thinking, recollecting the memories of the things he thought were long gone, and then he looked back at Jin.

「Gift Games… the competitions held between Gods and demons for their own amusement held exclusively within Little Garden, huh? Okay, most of my memory is still more than a bit foggy, but I can clearly remember that much.」

「Alrighty, that means we can skip that part in our explanations. But what you need to know is that you are a center figure of the legend of the 「Monster of the Labyrinth」, and now you are participating in the 2^nd War for the Sun’s Authority as one of its Hosts, right?」

Jin already knew an answer to that question, but he asked it anyway just to be sure. Asterios simply nodded in agreement, but Jin’s words made him think about his own origins.

「The Monster of the Labyrinth」 was born on an island of Crete, one of the many islands on the Mediterranean Sea on the territory of Greece. The monster depicted in the legend, Minotaur, was supposed to be the prince of that island, a child of king Minos and queen Pasiphaë. If the records are to be believed, the current ruler of Crete at that time, king Monos, received a gift form the God of the Seas, Poseidon, and that gift was a beautiful bull. However, the beauty of this animal was so great that king Minos grew increasingly more obsessed with it, which ultimately made him break the terms of his agreement with Poseidon when he decided that he was not going to return the bull to him like he initially promised, and intended to keep it for himself. Angered by this transgression, the God of the Seas placed a curse on king Minos’s wife, causing her to fall in love with the bull. In her curse-induced madness, the queen ordered a famous craftsman of that time, Dedalus, to create a disguise for her, one that would allow her to approach the beast and allow her to elevate her love for it to the next level, giving birth to a half-human, half-bull hybrid as a result. The child had been given a temporary name after one of Crete’s previous rulers, Asterios, but he was later given another name, Minotaur. When he grew so much that hiding him from the rest of the kingdom was no longer an option, the king commanded the very same artisan who designed a disguise for his wife to create an inescapable Labyrinth, at the center of which the child has been imprisoned. Ever since then, an offering of several young boys and girls was given to the beast every 9 years as a sacrifice meant to appease its anger, until one day a young hero named Theseus entered the Labyrinth and slew the beast with the help of his love, Ariadne, thus drawing the curtains on the legend of a pitiful creature  that didn’t do anything wrong, and was still shunned, isolated, and branded a monster by the very men who was the source of his lifetime of misery.

That was the story of the prince of Crete, Asterios, and how the one who was supposed to be 『A Child of Stars and Lightning』 became the Minotaur, 『A Bull of King Minos』.