Must Kill
Crimson light poured wildly from Alice's eyes.
Dark-red heat rose from her entire body, and the essence embedded in her greatsword flickered with unstable light.
Her slash carved through the Ekriki's hide as if it were tofu. The raw force that tore through leather and severed flesh was closer to a monster's than a human's.
"Aaaah—!"
A beastlike figure. Alice roared as she swung.
Crash—!
Somehow, it sounded almost like a mournful wail.
And just like that, the Ekriki was torn apart by a mad beast without mercy, dead in an instant.
It never even had a chance to use its power. It simply stopped breathing.
A wretched end, unworthy of its former majesty.
Pina rose from where she had fallen, staring at the collapsed beast.
Alice had been right.
Galori, Kakari, Ekriki — in the end, none of them were different.
They were all just monsters.
Before death, every living thing was fragile. Look at the Ekriki, fallen without even closing its eyes. Those slack pupils held none of the savagery from before.
Pina clutched her twin shields to her chest and ran.
"Alice-nim! I knew you were—"
Crunch—.
Alice did not respond.
She stood over the Ekriki's corpse and moved her greatsword.
"…Huh?"
Something was wrong.
Pina stared at what Alice was doing, baffled.
The Ekriki was dead.
So why was Alice bringing her greatsword down on its body?
Was there something about the Ekriki that she didn't know?
"A-Alice-nim…?"
The greatsword did not stop.
Once, twice, three times…. With each successive blow, the Ekriki's corpse began to lose its shape. At this rate, there would be nothing left to skin.
Alice never did anything meaningless. So why?
A sudden fear crept over Pina.
"A-Alice…-nim…."
No matter how many times she called the name, Alice never once looked back.
Fragments flew from the Ekriki's body. Blood soaked the ground in every direction, and shattered bone scattered across the surroundings.
Pina could not bring herself to approach.
The Alice standing there no longer seemed like the Alice she knew.
Whatever Alice was doing, leaving her like this felt wrong.
Pina swallowed hard. Fear made her feet hesitate.
It felt like facing an unknown monster.
I'm scared. I'm scared, but I have to go.
Pina stepped forward.
She thought of the Alice who had always spoken kindly for her sake. She couldn't abandon that Alice just because she was afraid.
Her steps quickened. With every stride, the fear clinging to her peeled away a little more.
By the time she reached Alice from behind, the only thought left in her mind was that she had to stop her. Pina threw her arms around Alice and pulled her back.
"I have to kill it. I must."
But Alice did not budge, as if Pina's strength meant nothing at all.
Instead, the Ekriki's head exploded into pieces.
It was too horrific to look at. Horrific — but she couldn't give up.
Pina kept pulling with everything she had.
Until Alice came back to her senses.
I drifted through a boundless ocean.
There was no light. I simply rode the current, moving endlessly forward.
I had no idea where I had come from or where I was going. At some point, I had simply been here.
…I was pretty sure I'd just used Berserk.
What happened to the Ekriki?
I still hadn't finished things with that thing. I looked around. In this place with no ground to stand on, I was the only thing moving.
No — what even was I right now?
I didn't know what state I was in.
Then light poured down.
I raised an arm to shield my eyes. The entire world turned white.
And then, somehow, I was standing in the middle of a desert without a single tree.
A white-haired woman was there.
A complete novice, only just become a hunter.
She wasn't alone. Many companions stood with her.
Her face was one I knew.
Inside her chest, there was a light.
It was small and insignificant.
She took commissions with her companions and walked the desert, fought, wandered dark mountains for exploration, fought, pioneered lands where lava boiled, fought….
Wherever she went, she repeated the same cycle of battling colossal monsters.
The companions at her side changed every time, but she never lost her smile. She grinned so brightly it almost seemed unlike her. With that cheerful face, she walked the world alongside her friends.
At some point, the light in her chest grew larger and larger, until it shone more brilliantly than any other hunter's.
Master.
A hunter who ruled an era.
She truly brought down so many monsters.
Even the highest-grade beasts that threatened humanity by their mere presence fell one by one to her hand.
The beast that summoned nightmares — Mac Tapiras.
The fire-eating serpent — Flame Serpent Gangcheol.
The dragon that called rain and lightning — Yinglong Amazara….
There had been despairing enemies and hard times in her hunter's life, but… she had always been someone full of laughter.
So she could smile like that.
Every face of hers I had ever seen had been nothing but gloomy.
It was a radiant smile, worthy of her radiant path.
But noise began to creep into the world.
At the end of that noise, everything vanished.
Faded glory. A ruined city.
Time twisted, and the place was neither day nor night.
This was the end of time.
Everything had vanished from the timeline without a trace.
The reason hunters did not freely hunt monsters.
People said it was for the balance of nature… but the real reason was something else.
The ancestors had been afraid of this appearing.
A crystalline carapace of unknowable make.
Wings formed from needle-sharp spines like the hands of a clock.
The air around it rippled with some unfathomable power.
Within its blood-red eyes burned a light both beautiful and intoxicating.
Its true identity was the Crossing Dragon — the Time Dragon, Miteraos.
Across all of time, she met the one and only apex of the world.
"Give them back. Give them back. My companions, my friends…."
"We only fought to survive."
That face, always so bright, twisted in utter devastation.
A sinner?
…Sinner, my ass.
I killed monsters that threatened our survival so we could live.
You kill other monsters too. It's the same thing.
And through that process, I became a Master Hunter.
I can't die like this.
For the people — I will slay the enemy before me.
That thing has to die.
I gripped my greatsword and poured strength into it.
A hunter never gives up, not even at the end.
I clashed with Miteraos.
The Master who had slain countless monsters adapted faster and faster to Miteraos's attacks, and the light in her chest blazed bright once more.
Humanity's final light shone so brilliantly that even Miteraos was thrown off.
Just before the blade could touch its body—
Something unknowable seized me.
My limbs were bound and I floated into the air. My body would not move an inch. Even if I wanted to speak, my mouth would not open.
This was no ordinary power. Time itself had hold of me.
It meant to send me into the past.
My consciousness grew distant.
The aftershock of crossing time was tearing my entire body apart.
I sank deep into the currents of time.
Against the flow of time moving forward, I drifted farther and farther away.
You made a mistake just now.
No matter what it takes, I will find you.
But I won't be able to win alone.
I'll need the greatest hunter there is.
If somewhere in this world there is a hunter stronger than me….
And so I — Alice — lost consciousness.
The essence in the greatsword she had gripped until the very end shone brightly — then shattered.
My eyes snapped open.
I was back in the flooded forest.
I — right now, I was Alice.
"Hah… hah…."
My head was spinning.
My breath came in short, ragged gasps.
My hand still gripped a greatsword stained red with something's blood.
My whole body was red.
"P-please stop, please…."
Pina was behind me, holding me tight and crying.
Cradled in her arms, I blinked.
What? What the hell happened?
In front of me lay a pulverized something, collapsed on the ground.
Completely destroyed, smashed to pieces — nothing of its original form remained.
The only part that still held any shape was the lower half. Scaled, furred legs. White powdery residue clinging to them — so it was the Ekriki.
The flesh and fragments stuck to my greatsword made it clear that even this mess had once been the Ekriki.
And this mess was my handiwork.
Nausea surged up.
My head reeled, and a headache drove into me hard.
At the last moment, I had become one with Aliche.
The desperate emotions she had felt were powerful enough to swallow my mind whole.
"Ugh—!"
I couldn't hold it back. I bent forward.
I drove the greatsword into the ground, leaned on it, and threw up.
I hadn't eaten much, so it was endlessly thin and watery.
My stomach burned.
But what burned worse was my heart.
A story I had never known. I had never known the plot in this much detail.
It had been a desperate fight. A hunter who had always fought alongside others, who in the end met a hollow death alone — and the rage that came with it.
I exhaled hard and drew breath in, over and over.
"…Pina. Let go."
"Hic… a-are you… are you back?"
Pina gently released me.
I didn't answer. I turned and looked at her.
Those eyes that were always so downcast were gone — seeing how red and wet her eyelids had become made my chest ache. I hadn't wanted to see a face like this. I'd just hoped that after killing the Ekriki, she'd look at me and overcome a little of her fear.
What the hell had I done while I was out of it?
I started to reach for Pina's eyes, then saw the blood caked thick on my hand and stopped.
I quietly hid my hand behind my back and shook my head instead.
"Sorry. I just… lost it for a bit."
I managed to mumble it out, barely above a whisper.