Eden (3)
The moment the Ereticus Marquis Estate flashed through my mind, my feet were already moving.
“Aren't you waiting for your companions?” the Playwright asked, his voice chiming inside my head.
“The situation's changed.”
If Cult truly was holed up at the Ereticus estate, then we had far less time than I'd estimated. Scouting an alternate location would have forced him to balance covert movement with ritual preparations. But inside his own manor? He wouldn't need to move an inch, and every piece of the puzzle would already be waiting for him.
“Besides, Emily already knows my coordinates anyway.”
“And the pink-haired girl?”
“Her... I was kind of hoping you could fill me in, Mr. Playwright.”
“I do not know her whereabouts.”
“Can't you track her down in two seconds with your nanomachines?”
“You overestimate them. Nanomachines are hardly omnipotent. They excel at precision tasks, but a crude, brute-force operation like a manhunt consumes far too many resources.”
“Guess my only choice is to trust that she'll sniff me out on her own, then.”
“That girl? Aren't you expecting far too much?”
“Who knows? I actually rate Yuna pretty highly. She'll show up.”
It wasn't just that our thought processes aligned; Yuna understood how I operated on an uncanny level. I had every reason to trust her. The only problem was...
“I just hope she gets here before I end up six feet under.”
“Don't tell me you intend to buy time against a Prophet?”
“Well, he gouged out both of his eyes, so I figured he must be somewhat weakened.”
“Even factoring that in, you are far too weak.”
“I know. But if staying put changes nothing, isn't it better to try something? Who knows, maybe I'll stumble upon an unexpected breakthrough along the way.”
“A fair point.”
“You were the one who said inventions almost always begin with a happy accident, after all.”
Just as the Playwright had quoted my own words back at me earlier, I quoted his right back. It was my way of playing familiar. And naturally, I had a very calculated reason for cozying up to a lunatic terrorist.
“Amusing. Are you hoping I might lend you something?”
“Yeah. Cough it up.”
“Hahaha! Not even pretending to be polite, are you? Fine. I will craft something suitable for you.”
Even as I ran flat-out, a dark, sandstorm-like swirl began whipping up before my eyes. The dusky tempest condensed layer by layer, coalescing into an object. It was small, its purpose completely unrecognizable at a glance.
“Welcome to Ex Machina, Yohan Damus. Consider this an initiation gift.”
“What is it?”
“The most efficient weapon I can construct under the current conditions.”
“So what is it, exactly?”
“A bomb.”
“Ah. Got it.”
I thought it might be something extraordinary, but apparently not. Then again, the Playwright hadn't planned for combat in the first place; he'd basically tossed me a trinket to indulge my wheedling. The total pool of nanomachines scattered across the Empire was finite, and scraping together whatever lingered in the immediate vicinity had only yielded this much.
“To use it, simply infuse it with mana and hurl it with all your might.”
“Nice and simple. I like it.”
“True invention must ultimately serve convenience.”
Spoken like a true visionary.
Armed with the Playwright's gift, I arrived at the Ereticus Marquis Estate.
Tham!
I delivered a furious kick straight into the manor's front doors. Naturally, unlike in the movies, they didn't splinter into kindling.
“What are you doing?” the Playwright asked.
“Knocking.”
“I see...”
If I'd been alone, whatever, but knowing the Playwright was spectating made my face heat up for no reason. Still, hadn't I been training diligently? To think I couldn't even bust through an ordinary wooden door.
Shring.
“...”
Click.
I slid my sword an inch from its scabbard, then quietly clicked it back in place. If I slashed with all my might and the door still refused to budge, the sheer humiliation would kill me before Cult ever could. Let's not waste energy on risky displays. I had a foolproof method right here.
Bang!
Drawing the firearm from my coat, I fired straight into the latch mechanism. An ordinary wooden door could never withstand the kinetic punch of a bullet; the lock shattered instantly, and the double doors swung wide open.
“That is Emily's handiwork,” the Playwright noted. “Quite a few of the child's inventions have their merits.”
“You think so?”
“Indeed. Unlike the others, she understands the pursuit of practicality.”
“Ah, fair enough.”
I recalled the contraptions built by Koron Reckias. The intricate, building-crushing war engine and the colossal monstrosity capable of incinerating an entire mountain—every single one of them was monstrously massive and bafflingly complex. They were monument-sized testaments to the cumulative sum of an individual's knowledge. By contrast, Emily's creations were predominantly compact, elegant, and convenient.
“Anyway...”
Trading idle banter with the Playwright, I stepped inside and came to an abrupt halt. The estate was eerily, spine-chillingly silent. Where had the legion of servants and maids gone? Not a single soul was in sight.
“Do you have an idea where he is?” the voice asked. “Surely you don't intend to search this sprawling manor room by room?”
“Fortunately, yes.”
“Then that is well.”
I slipped into a silent tread. I had sprinted at full tilt until reaching the front gates, but I couldn't afford to be careless here. Head-on, I had zero chance against Cult; if I wanted even a prayer of catching him off guard, suppressing my presence was non-negotiable.
“Your footwork is rather—”
Static hissed through the voice that had been chattering in my ear. Just as the Playwright had warned, Holy Power seemed to be interfering with the signal. Come to think of it, would that bomb he gave me even detonate properly under these conditions?
“The bomb... not... nanomachines... assembled... local debris... no need... worry.”
He hadn't forged the bomb out of nanomachines themselves, but used them to harvest surrounding materials and assemble a conventional explosive. That seemed to be what he was trying to say. A surprisingly thoughtful gift, all things considered. In that case, I had nothing to hold back.
Using the Playwright's fading voice as my compass—noticing where the static grew thickest—I finally arrived at my destination.
“...”
It was Helena's bedroom. A faint, sacred aurora bled through the seam beneath the door.
Creak...
I pushed the door open in a daze. Any thought of an ambush had vanished from my mind seconds ago. Because holy light wasn't the only thing leaking through the gap. A suffocating stench of fresh blood stung the inside of my nose.
“You...”
The moment the hinges swung open, I saw a girl lying across the bed and a boy kneeling beside her. A white dress drenched in dark crimson. A boy, blinded by his own warped ideals, gripping her hand with desperate ferocity.
The scene looked like an agonizing portrait: Cult clinging desperately to the hand of Helena's cold, lifeless corpse. The instant my eyes took it in, my sword cleared its sheath of its own accord.
“You bastard...!”
Clang!
Yet my blade never reached him. The strike was stopped dead in its tracks, repelled by a translucent barrier deployed around Cult's perimeter.
“You actually did it. You really went through with it, Cult!”
“You are far too late, Mr. Yohan.”
Cult, who had been clutching Helena's hand, rose to his feet with eerie calm. Driven through both of his wrists were nails forged of pure light. From the punctures, fresh blood poured in unending rivulets.
That was the Holy Relic.
Helena's Sacred Spikes.
“It is already over.”
Cult lifted both arms as if putting them on display. The dripping blood looked uncannily like crimson shackles and chains.
“There is no need for such pointless struggle. Helena has already departed, and the fruition of my grand design is right before our eyes. Tell me, where is the person who can stop me now?” Cult extended his hand, lightly touching the surface of his barrier. Even then, my blade remained pinned against the immovable wall of divine light. “You are powerless. What could you possibly hope to achieve when you cannot even breach a single, simple barrier?”
“What can I achieve?”
I pulled my sword back for a heartbeat. An incomplete Sword Aura couldn't even leave a scratch on this barrier. Fine, then. If that was how it had to be, I just needed to forge a complete one.
Chzhk!
I struck a Magic Engineering Battery along the steel, coating the edge in artificial Sword Aura.
Chzhk! Chzhk!
I scraped every battery I had across the blade, stacking charge upon charge to bloat the aura. It was nothing more than an oversized, unruly surge of raw energy.
“Take a good, hard look at what I can do, you crazy psycho.”
I swung. It wasn't swordsmanship—it was pure, violent emotion unleashed in an unrefined strike, slamming every ounce of that artificial momentum directly into the ward.
Kzzzzzk!
Yet the outcome didn't budge. My Sword Aura, swollen into an unwieldy mass, made plenty of noise, but it couldn't leave so much as a hairline fracture on Cult's divine ward.
“Haah... Please, stop.”
Cult shook his head. He let out a weary sigh, as if pitying my pitiful display. That look on his face pissed me off more than anything.
“It is already over.”
“No.”
“...”
“Nothing's over yet! If anything, this is where it really begins!”
I roared with all the fury boiling inside my chest. But underneath that outward storm of rage, my mind was colder, clearer than it had ever been.
I couldn't defeat Cult. A straightforward duel was out of the question from the start. I had to catch him completely off guard. But every card in my hand had already been laid bare. To seize a single opening, I had to gamble everything.
Hup!
I decided to trigger the Playwright's bomb right here, right now. I brought the explosive down straight against the bloated Sword Aura burning with battery mana. Didn't he say to infuse it with mana and hurl it? Well, I had an absurd amount of mana ready right on this blade.
“Die.”
KBOOOOOOOM!!
A cataclysmic detonation ripped through the room. A blinding azure flash overwhelmed the golden holy light. Fed by an immense surge of mana, the blast tore through Cult's barrier, pulverized the bedroom walls, and launched my body violently backward through the air.
“Guh!”
The barrier shattered. But I was thoroughly battered and broken.
Pathetic, isn't it? A complete disgrace. That's just who I am. Even an all-or-nothing blow that risked my very life had barely managed to pierce the weakened barrier of a half-crippled Cult. But that was fine. That was more than enough.
“Because you...”
I dragged my trembling body back onto its feet. Spitting out a mouthful of warm blood, I rasped, “...I knew that's what you'd do.”
The explosion had left me half-dead, but Cult hadn't emerged unscathed just because his shield broke late. He was an amateur at combat with a frail constitution to begin with, so in some ways, the concussive shock had hit him even harder than it hit me. Yet despite all of that...
“Did you think you'd become something great? Did you convince yourself you'd turned into some cold-blooded monster? What a pity. You're still just a wavering, indecisive human being. Nothing more than a piece-of-shit mortal who committed an unforgivable sin.”
In the heart of that blast, Cult had shielded Helena's body before his own.
I remembered the scene when I first burst through that door: the way he had knelt, clutching Helena's hand in desperate prayer. Even after crossing the point of no return, he was still drowning in regret and lingering attachment. Things were definitely different now. He hadn't turned into the unfeeling monster from the original game. He was simply a frail, trembling human crushed beneath the unbearable weight of his own guilt.
“And so?” Cult, staggering under the aftershocks of the blast, brushed his disheveled hair back. Clear tears streamed from his empty, hollow sockets. “What does that change?”
A lance of divine radiance coalesced in his grasp. The lacerations carved across his flesh by the explosion were already vanishing beneath the tide of miraculous healing. Only the brutal wounds driven through his wrists and ankles by Helena's Sacred Spikes remained raw and open.
“Are you pleased that you managed to land a blow on me? If it brings you peace of mind, feel free to carve out my heart with that blade of yours, or with the venomous dagger hidden beneath your tongue. It does not matter to me.”
“Would you be satisfied if you were in my shoes?”
“Hardly. Yet because I understand your wrath, I am offering you the only thing I have left to give.”
“If that actually killed you, I'd give it serious consideration.”
“What do you think the answer is?”
The current Cult was unkillable. Even without the Prophet's active omnipotence, the Sacred Spikes embedded in his wrists and ankles would endlessly revert his body back to its baseline state. Pierce his heart, take his head, or sever the very limbs pinned by the nails—it wouldn't matter. What was visible on the outside was merely a physical manifestation; Helena's Holy Relic had already fused seamlessly with Cult's soul and flesh.
“I'm a cowardly, worthless guy. Nobody knows that better than me.”
“...”
“But I also know my place. I know exactly what I can do, and what I can't.”
“Then will you obediently give up now?”
“Nope.”
Told me to vent my anger, did he? To Cult's eyes, striking out in impotent rage must have seemed like the only card I had left to play.
“I'm just going to do the absolute best that I can do.”
Thud.
I dropped my sword. Killing Cult with my blade was impossible anyway. And besides, taking his life had never been my purpose here from the start. That was why I called out:
“Yuna, I cleared the path!”
“You've never looked cooler, Yohan!”
Concealed amidst the debris of the collapsed wall, Yuna shot forward like an arrow released at point-blank range. Spotting her, Cult calmly raised his hand. He was confident. He undoubtedly believed that not even Yuna could kill him now. But Cult wasn't our target.
“What?!”
Feinting as though she were charging straight for Cult, Yuna pivoted with blinding precision. I had blasted the path open. And through that breached opening, Yuna reached her true destination.
“Mr. Yohan! Miss Yuna! What on earth are you two thinking?!”
Just as Cult's objective was never the elimination of his foes, ours was never his execution. Powerless and frail as I was, I could never become a hero like Lobelia, cutting down every enemy in sight and saving the world. And that was precisely why...
“We're thinking about saving someone.”
To save Helena. That was the one and only reason I had run all the way here.