The First Light (3)
The first light spilled forth in waves.
Having pinpointed Yuna's presence, holy power swirled and condensed violently around Cult.
"Shall we see what you're capable of, then?"
With a sharp kick off the floor, Cult surged toward her.
When it came to combat, Cult was practically a novice, woefully lacking in actual field experience. Yet his overwhelming output and the terrifying versatility of his divine authority were more than enough to render such trivial shortcomings irrelevant.
Clang!
Yuna hurled a throwing dagger straight at Cult's charging figure, but before the blade could even graze him, it struck his protective barrier and ricocheted off into the dark. Possessing absolute confidence in his defense, Cult didn't so much as flinch as he closed the distance.
"Tch."
The matchup was disastrous. Cult's defensive prowess and sheer staying power were leagues beyond anything an assassin could crack; unless she could exploit a vital opening to take him down in a single stroke, Yuna had zero chance of victory. To make matters worse, every single blow Cult dealt carried lethal weight.
"Whoops!"
For now, Yuna managed to slip past his ferocious lunges with reasonable poise. Yet her counterattacks were utterly repelled, while his weapon was a divine relic capable of gouging out chunks of flesh with the barest brush against skin.
Clang!
Unloading flurry after flurry while frantically evading his onslaught served no real purpose. It was an infuriatingly one-sided stalemate, for even a strike packed with every ounce of her strength failed to put a single scratch on Cult's barrier.
"Mm. It seems close-quarters combat truly isn't my calling," Cult murmured.
Lowering the tip of his spear toward the floor, Cult raised his empty hand. Spheres of pure radiance began to coalesce above his palm. The orbs resonated and interlinked, discharging intense pulses that washed across every corner of the chamber until the entire room was drowned in an ethereal glow.
"Let us bring this to an end."
It was a blinding spectacle. The moment Cult clenched his outstretched hand into a fist—
"Ngh!"
"Damn it...!"
As though buried deep beneath the earth, both Yuna and I froze in place, our limbs locked stiff. Cult had harnessed the scattered light to anchor our bodies directly into the fabric of space itself.
Neither of us could budge an inch as Cult strode leisurely toward me, spear in hand, and rested the gleaming tip against my throat. Feeling the cold chill prickling against my skin, I screwed my eyes shut and groaned.
"We yield, Cult."
"I wasn't particularly inclined to accept a surrender, though?"
"Just spare my life. Please."
"How is it that every single word out of your mouth sounds like a line from a third-rate villain...?" Cult sighed.
"Wouldn't it be far weirder if I seemed like anything more than that?"
Cult scrutinized me. It wasn't an act; I was genuinely begging for my pathetic life.
Should I kill him?
The knowledge Yohan possessed was dangerous. Even setting that aside, there was no denying the man was exceedingly cunning.
"Killing me will only draw suspicion," I offered.
"It was already too late for that the second you showed up here."
Slice.
The edge of light bit into my flesh. Blood welled up, trickling down along the shaft of the spear. When the warm drops reached his palm, Cult felt an unpleasant prickle of hesitation.
"Still, trying to put an end to you right here might prove troublesome in its own right."
Rip!
Cult whipped the spear downward. The blade tore through my coat, and something heavy tumbled out from the inner pocket, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
The Grimoire of Demons—the Lemegeton.
"Driven to the brink, a coward like you would undoubtedly form a pact with a demon."
Cult already had an inkling of what my hidden trump card might be, having deduced it from my past skirmish with the Judge. He hadn't been certain, but now the smoking gun lay bare on the floor. If pushed to the edge of death, the probability that Yohan would sell his soul to an archdemon was distressingly high.
"You truly are... oddly popular with the strangest entities," Cult remarked dryly.
"It's not like I asked for it," I grumbled.
"Haha."
The demonic aura faintly emanating from the tome was potent enough that even Cult couldn't dismiss it lightly. It was unmistakably the authority of a Great Demon.
"Then again, now that you are incapacitated, there is no pressing need to kill you."
Cult finally released his grip on the holy spear. The luminous weapon dissolved naturally back into the surrounding halo of radiance, as if it had never existed at all.
"Killing you is a hassle, yet leaving you free is uncomfortable. I will simply confine you here. You may serve as bait, after all."
"A wise and judicious decision, sir."
"Truly, every single gesture of yours reeks of servility."
"Isn't that the essence of survival? The more shameless you are, the more effective it is."
"Is that so?"
Cult opened his palm once more, summoning a brilliance incomparable to before. As a blinding sensation washed over my eyes, the pressure weighing down on my entire body solidified tenfold. I couldn't muster an ounce of strength; even my mana refused to budge. The divine authority of Wholeness had essentially embalmed my current state in place.
"Pray remain properly terrified, as you are now."
With those parting words, Cult quietly slipped out of the chamber.
Whether by pure coincidence or Cult's deliberate design, Yuna and I remained frozen directly facing each other.
"Yuna... is he gone?"
"Yeah. Pretty sure he left."
Cult was far more cautious, radical, and overwhelmingly powerful than I had anticipated. Honestly, I'd factored in the possibility that he might try to kill me on the spot, and I had already suspected Yuna's ambush might fail. But realizing that Cult had detected Yuna's presence from the very beginning had sent a genuine chill down my spine.
"Yohan, did you know this was going to happen?"
"Aside from you getting made right off the bat? The outcome didn't stray far from my predictions. The process was just a lot more pathetic, that's all."
"It wasn't that pathetic," she protested.
You couldn't do a single thing, though.
Trying to salvage her pride here was pointless. A beatdown was a beatdown. Besides, getting squashed by a Final Boss candidate was hardly something to be ashamed of.
"Well, I'm glad you foresaw the outcome at least. But was it really necessary to take such an uncharacteristic risk?"
"I was confident Cult wouldn't bother double-tapping us."
Cult was what one would call a top brass who only issued orders from above—the type who understood frontline operations purely in theory. He could extinguish hundreds of lives with a flick of his finger, but the number of times he had personally taken a life with his own hands was minimal. He had certainly never hacked a corpse to pieces just to ensure a kill. He took no pleasure in battle, nor did he relish bloodshed.
No matter how much of a deranged criminal bastard he was, his ultimate goal was rooted in twisted goodwill.
Of course, if backed into a corner where killing was an absolute necessity, he wouldn't hesitate. Under normal circumstances, I would have been slaughtered right there; objectively speaking, finishing me off was the safest route.
Which was why I went out of my way to construct a scenario where killing me wasn't necessary. We had walked straight into the net he cast of our own accord. Why waste effort stabbing a fish that was already safely trapped in the keepnet? So long as he harbored a lingering aversion to taking lives, he would steer clear of needless slaughter.
Thanks to that, we were alive—and completely removed from the stage.
"With this, we've successfully slipped outside Cult's awareness."
Falling off Cult's radar was the first critical step of the plan. When facing a monster who could peer into the future, there was no other choice. Only by making him dismiss my existence could I manufacture an unforeseen variable.
"Okay, but what now? Do you have a way to bust us out?"
"That paranoid bastard wouldn't just leave us unattended. There's no way ordinary methods will break this bind."
If anyone tried to rescue us, the trap would likely snag them in the light as well.
"We're bait, and this room is both a prison and a snare."
Anyone foolish enough to blindly barge in here to save us would be instantly immobilized right beside us.
"Though, unless someone's an absolute idiot, no one would recklessly step into a place like—"
"So? How are we getting out?"
"By borrowing a very special power."
Crack!
At that precise moment, a hairline fracture appeared in the air before us. Spreading like spiderwebs across a shattered windowpane, the fissure expanded outward.
Crash!
With the ringing sound of shattering glass, the hooded figure of the Oracle materialized before our eyes.
In the past, the Oracle had appeared before Lobelia and me to issue an ominous warning. When Lobelia tried to apprehend her, the Oracle had slipped away effortlessly, as though standing in an entirely separate dimension.
An uncanny spatial manipulation. That was the Oracle's innate specialty.
Having cracked open the void to make her grand entrance, the Oracle stepped forward with solemn purpose.
"I have come to save—huh? Why can't I move my... uggh?!"
And instantly froze stiff.
Spatial movement be damned; stepping into this space meant the game was over.
"Yohan? Just asking to be sure, but... that 'special power' you mentioned wasn't referring to that idiot woman, right?"
"I only just learned she was quite that dense, but rest assured, Yuna. It definitely isn't her."
"Phew. What a relief."
Why on earth did she bother showing up just to humiliate herself? It was a miracle she had even survived this long against Cult.
"Isn't that a bit harsh to say to someone who came to rescue you?" the Oracle snapped, unable to move a muscle. "More to the point, I cannot fathom why you harbor so much hostility toward me alone!"
"When someone greets me for the first time by hurling cards meant to cave my skull in, holding a grudge is only natural."
"I had no intention of actually hitting you."
"Oh, sure you didn't."
Even setting that aside, there were other reasons, but it served as a convenient enough pretext. I didn't even want to contemplate the fact that she resembled Alice. I was perfectly content hating her on principle.
"In the first place, you're captured yourself, so who are you calling an idiot?" she retorted.
"We got captured intentionally. You just waltzed in and stepped on a rake. Let's make sure we draw that line clearly, shall we?"
"Ha! Then I presume you know how to escape this predicament? I had no idea you were so capable!"
While we were busy trading petty, pointless barbs with the Oracle—
Crack!
Another fissure splintered open nearby.
It was a tear in the void similar to the one the Oracle had forged, but this time, the force carving through space was unmistakably visible.
"Don't tell me...!" the Oracle gasped.
"This is the solution I had in mind," I said.
A sword's tip pierced straight through the dense light. And when that blade swept cleanly from high to low, he stepped through.
"..."
The Sword Saint, Dietrich.
A prismatic spray of radiance trailed along the arc of his swing. Like blooming ink devouring clear water, the Sword Aura swallowed Cult's halos of light, devouring every last trace of the binding radiance in the room.
"Whew... Thanks, you saved us."
Dietrich's innate ability was Trace.
It left behind a lingering phenomenon along the trajectories of his blade. In the game, it merely inflicted bleed and unhealable debuffs, but as a character intrinsically designed to be Cult's natural counter, it appeared capable of decisively unraveling holy power.
"Dietrich, I imagine you must be wondering what on earth is going on—"
Swish.
Dietrich's blade shifted, leveling its tip squarely at my throat. Like two peas in a pod, he was pulling the exact same stunt his dear friend Cult had just pulled.
"It has been a while, Senior."
"Uh, y-yeah. Yuna, stay still. He's not the same as before."
Seeing the sword pointed at my neck, Yuna moved to intervene, but I stopped her before disaster struck.
Things were different now.
The current Dietrich was a monster so formidable that even Yuna couldn't guarantee a victory against him. The only character in the entire game bestowed with the revered title of 'Sword Saint.' And the sole adversary capable of slaying the final boss, Cult Hereticus.
It wasn't merely that his swordsmanship had improved by leaps and bounds in such a short span, or that his awakened ability was extraordinary. To reach this height, Dietrich must have trudged down a grueling, agonizing path.
"Senior, I have been thinking constantly," Dietrich said steadily. "I began by reexamining the past, turning over every memory one by one."
"I see."
Dietrich was no longer the simpleminded, naive fool he used to be. Once he realized just how ignorant he had been of the world, he must have started dissecting his past mistakes. In doing so, he caught onto the suspicious inconsistencies surrounding his childhood friend Cult; and though he desperately wanted to deny the horrific truth, he refused to turn a blind eye.
The fruit of that painful reckoning was the man standing before me today.
"I have a few questions for you. Will you answer them honestly?"
"Of course."
However, if he had truly reexamined his past... that meant he had also reexamined everything that had transpired between him and me.