Eden (6)
Not long after parting ways with Yohan, Dietrich returned to the Ereticus Marquis Estate.
He had a feeling Cult would be there.
It hadn't been a certainty, merely a gut intuition—and his intuition had proven correct.
"Cult."
"Ah... you came, Dietrich. Somehow, I thought you might. A vague intuition of my own, you could say."
Having spent so much of their lives together, each knew the other intimately.
Dietrich had believed he no longer understood Cult at all, but the truth was quite the opposite.
"What on earth are you thinking?!"
The moment he stood before Cult, Dietrich let out a furious roar.
Cult lowered his head, watching his friend tremble with visceral betrayal.
"Do you remember Charon and Asher?"
"What?"
"What about Risha, Roen, and Baron?"
"What are you talking about all of a sudden—"
"I remember them all. Yet in every single memory I have of them, their faces are twisted in agony."
"..."
"The warmth of the hands that held mine when I was blind, the gentle voices that guided my steps... all of it was buried under the sight of their final moments."
He remembered every detail.
The horrific ends had been burned into his soul just as deeply as the precious memories.
Killed simply because their presence caught a noble's eye.
Killed because a particularly brutal winter set in.
Killed because medicine was out of reach.
They perished for reasons so trivial.
Things that others took for granted were entirely denied to them—purely because of where they were born, purely because of someone else's greed. Cowardly, rapacious adults had stripped everything from children who possessed nothing in the world except their lives.
"I remember the moments those children spoke of their dreams. And I remember the moments those dreams were smashed to pieces."
"And so what?! You think they'd thank you for making your paradise?! Do you have any idea how many people you're—!"
Voices rose in anger.
With every exchange of words, the bond between Cult and Dietrich—childhood companions who had shared life and death—began to twist into something unrecognizable.
Dietrich understood Cult's heart. And Cult understood Dietrich's as well.
Yet a dialogue between Dietrich, who could never accept this, and Cult, who could never yield, was doomed to run in parallel lines that would never meet.
The emotional gulf deepened, frustration and desperate yearning etching themselves across both their faces.
And through every step of that confrontation...
He can't be persuaded.
Helena had been watching.
Cult was utterly alone—an ascetic trudging in silence along a path of penance he had chosen for himself.
Brother won't stop.
Even while drowning in grief and sorrow, Cult would never turn back. He had come far too far down this road. Unless he reached the very end, or fell dead, he would keep marching forward.
And Dietrich can't bring himself to kill him.
Both boys were straining with every fiber of their being to convince each other.
Persuasion, yes.
Neither wished for the other's death. They were old friends, after all.
And so, one pleaded for understanding, while the other pleaded for atonement.
Then this is the only way left to stop Brother.
Helena took hold of the sword Dietrich had laid down.
Engulfed in bitter accusations and arguments, neither of them had the presence of mind to notice her movements.
To convince him...
Dietrich's sword felt impossibly heavy in her hands.
Yet she sensed it intuitively: there was no other way.
Cult was dogmatic. He harbored an uncompromising ideal. To persuade someone like that, one could not simply oppose him blindly; one had to present a better alternative.
And to do that...
First, I must understand the ideal he dreams of.
Like it or not, Helena was fated to awaken as a Holy Relic. Her physical vessel was steadily morphing into an empty container, her soul growing dimmer by the day. Within this frail shell, her spirit was slowly perishing.
If so, this was undeniably the only path.
Before she faded away entirely, she had to shatter the vessel and preserve her soul.
Helena gripped the hilt tighter.
Please, let this not be a mistake.
Sword raised, Helena prayed that by offering her own life as kindling, she could bring an end to Cult's long, agonizing wandering.
Dietrich must have been thrown into utter chaos.
He had tried to talk Cult down because he believed Cult was in the wrong. But then Helena, the supposed victim, took her own life. To anyone watching, it could almost look as if she were endorsing Cult's ideal.
"Is it my turn to speak now? Honestly, whether Cult descends a god or not, I couldn't care less."
It wasn't something a guy like me had any right to judge.
How could an ordinary nobody pass judgment on a lunatic trying to save the world by summoning a deity?
That was why I went into this battle with only a single goal in mind. In a manner completely unlike myself, I had rolled through the mud again and again, determined to reap what I had sown.
"I just want to save Helena. You and I have come too far to dismiss this as someone else's problem."
"But Helena is already..."
"No, it's not too late."
"Senior... I felt it myself. Her heart stopped beating."
"Right, her heart. But what if there's something to replace it?"
"Senior! Please, come to your senses! How could something so convenient even exist—"
Dietrich cut himself off mid-sentence, his eyes going wide as he stared at me. Yes, he should know by now.
"Ex Machina...?"
On the day Under Chain launched their raid, the firearm hadn't been the only thing I revealed before him.
"We've already secured Helena, and the heart transplant is underway. But there's probably one piece missing."
"One piece...?"
Even with an Artificial Heart transplanted, it wouldn't be enough to bring Helena back. Not because it was impossible, as Cult claimed, but because the final piece of the puzzle hadn't been gathered yet.
"Helena's soul is inside Cult's Holy Relic. If we can just retrieve it, we can save her."
The moment Dietrich told me how everything went down, a forgotten memory had surfaced in my mind.
In Cult's Paradise, I had met Helena. And back then, she had explained why she was there.
"To do that, Cult has to be defeated. And unfortunately, I can't do it."
"Cult..."
"Yeah. Because taking Helena's soul back from the Holy Relic leaves us with no other choice."
And right now, Dietrich was the only one who could pull it off.
No one else could kill Cult in his current state.
Well, maybe one other person?
The Emperor, Abraham.
Perhaps he could have killed Cult as he was now. The Authority of Destruction that Abraham wielded with such mastery wouldn't fall behind Dietrich's Trace, after all.
"But... is that really what Helena wants?"
True enough. Helena had driven the blade into her own heart. Looking at that alone, one could argue it had been her own choice.
"Did Helena look like someone who wanted to die to you?"
"...No."
"Then there's no problem. I don't know what kind of plan she had in mind. But if death was a means rather than the end, there's nothing wrong with bringing her back to life."
Dietrich bowed his head at my words. It seemed his dilemma was still running deep.
Even without me spelling it out, Dietrich knew. Reclaiming the Holy Relic from Cult was tantamount to killing him.
"Dietrich, I'm not going to force you. In the end, it's your decision to make. I know full well that Cult is your friend."
Even setting aside my game knowledge, Dietrich's usual behavior made it abundantly clear. He genuinely considered Cult a precious friend.
"We're still young and immature. We don't need to shoulder the crushing weight of grand phrases like 'for the world' or 'for everyone.' At our age, that's only natural—and if people our age have to worry about that sort of thing, the world's already finished anyway."
So we didn't have to save the world.
"And nobody knows whether Cult's ideal is right or wrong."
Perhaps, as a literal paradise, it really was a utopia where everyone could be happy. Cult had committed countless sins, but that ideal of his had been rooted in genuine goodwill.
"There's no correct answer to this."
A person might be a sinner, but one cannot call their dream a sin.
At least, that was what I believed.
What we were shouldering this time wasn't something as grand as the fate of the world.
"Helena, or Cult. Who do you want to save?"
It was nothing more than a choice born of purely personal emotion.
Lobelia felt a creeping sense of helplessness.
Cult was far more powerful than she had anticipated.
It feels as though I'm facing His Majesty...
Not a single one of her attacks managed to land a decisive blow, yet Cult threatened her life with mere offhand swings of his limbs.
By walking that perilous tightrope, she managed to plant a strike into his body once in a blue moon.
Yet no wound remained.
Forget wounds—she couldn't even fray the hem of his clothes. Cult's Holy Power instantly reverted everything to perfection.
"Your mind is wandering."
Thump!
Cult slammed a pillar of light down upon Lobelia.
The light that suddenly bathed her like a spotlight solidified into a singular, unyielding form.
Wholeness through Holy Power—the authority that fixed phenomena to their present state.
"Let us end this."
Cult waved his hand once more. It was a light, effortless gesture, as though sweeping aside a sheer curtain.
Yet the consequence was anything but light.
A vortex of spears woven from Holy Power converged around Lobelia, menacing her from every direction.
"Kh...!"
Lobelia hurriedly pushed her innate ability to its absolute limit to respond.
Crimson lightning tore through the Wholeness enforced by Holy Power, intercepting the converging spears.
Crack!
However, the Authority of Destruction embedded within her Red Lightning could only level the playing field, negating compatibility advantages to force a direct contest of pure might.
And in that contest, she was overwhelmingly outmatched in raw output.
"Hah..."
What she lacked in power, she made up for with her body.
Relying on the martial arts she had honed through relentless discipline, Lobelia shattered and deflected the sacred spears, desperately resisting.
Even so, the spearheads grazed her skin, carving gouges of flesh from her body.
Boom!
Just as she thought she had somehow neutralized every spear, an immense weight bore down on her, forcing her to her knees and flattening her against the earth.
"This is the weight of the things taken for granted simply because they are always there."
The Holy Power hadn't even brushed against her.
Lobelia realized with a jolt that what was crushing her was light itself.
It wasn't merely the dazzling radiance that met the eye. Everything visible in this world existed because light touched it.
"What sort of madness...!"
Even if she pulverized that light, only darkness would remain. And even then, light would inexorably flood back in, driving the darkness away.
Still, Lobelia strained with every fiber of her being to force her body upright.
"Do you still intend to continue? Why not give up? Surely you understand by now. The chasm between us is far too vast."
From the very start, it hadn't even been a fight.
The only reason Lobelia had held out this long was that Cult hadn't yet grown accustomed to his newfound power.
"Well, it wasn't a waste, since it allowed me to grow used to this strength. Thanks to you, I can move the summoning ritual up a little."
With those words, Cult raised his hand and clenched it against the empty air.
"So let us bring this to an end, Lobelia Vicious van Miltonia."
Lobelia's eyes widened in horror.
The world around Cult's hand crumpled like a crushed painting. He had seized the very light that illuminated and refracted into the colors of reality, pinning it in his grasp.
Creeeeak!
Cult's hand shifted, millimeter by millimeter.
He was swinging that compressed mass of light directly toward Lobelia, who lay pinned against the ground.
It was a grotesque, unnatural spectacle.
The world itself seemed to warp and drag along with the movement of his hand.
In the void left behind where the world was ripped away, only pitch darkness lingered.
Lobelia felt true dread. It was a terror so vivid that even she, who had spent half her life on the battlefield, could feel it chill her to the bone.
Yet just before the light could swallow her whole—
"...!"
Slash!
A single brilliant flash cut across the world, ripping the light to shreds.
The cluster of radiance held in Cult's grasp dispersed, returning to its rightful place.
The pitch-black void was flooded once more with the vibrant colors of reality.
Swish—
Amidst hair as black as the night sky, a faint blue starlight gleamed.
In that instant, the memories of a boy's journey were carved across the world like an ancient scar.
"Dietrich... why have you returned now?"
"To save Helena."
The tip of his blade never wavered as it pointed at his oldest friend.
"I came to strike you down."
It was the moment the lost boy's long wandering finally came to an end.