58. Live for Me, and...
58. Live for Me, and...
To a being that had lived for eons, it was merely a moment.
It was only in the final throes of the battle, when something that barely passed for composure had settled in me, that I learned my adopted daughter — now grown — hated the mother who had fled, unable to bear her own feelings.
"If I had this much power, I could have simply run away."
Yet the fight to the very end was mercilessly brutal.
"They are a race you had no need to protect! The fools who grew weary of living vanished from this world, and yet they believed themselves its masters — that foolish, arrogant race is what you tried to protect!"
At the end, the one called the hero lay dying, and I too had burned through my entire body, expending most of my innate power.
Of course, the strength I had left was more than enough to annihilate humanity.
Even if I could not kill every last one of them, once I destroyed the civilization they so boast of, those despair-stricken wretches would never rise again on their own.
"Do you think those you protected will feel gratitude toward you?"
I resented my daughter, who kept interfering with that.
The being who had stirred confusion in me, who now stood before me pointing a sword at my throat.
She had begun to look just as loathsome as the ones behind her — the ones she sought to protect.
"Those selfish bastards... who did nothing but give you the title of Hero and wait eagerly for you to kill me. Do you truly believe they are worth protecting to this extent?"
So I wished you would step back, even now.
To that cry — filled, for the first time in my life, with desperate emotion — the hero answered.
"I think they are. Because I, raised by a being like you, learned that I am the same as them."
Even though her body seemed ready to collapse at any moment, the gaze that met mine still held strength.
She felt not the slightest hesitation in asserting her conviction.
"I came to know that they, too, have personalities, beliefs, and lives. Though they sometimes fight because they think differently, I also learned that humans are a race capable of understanding such differences."
"To me, all of that is a meaningless concept."
"But I thought you were no different from them."
What halted my advance — which would have ignored such feeble claims — was not the sword burning with her final resolve, but the empathy she extended toward me.
"...What do you mean?"
"I felt love from you. Just like the people who later took me in and raised me..."
Because she had lived that hollow life herself, from the lips of the human I had raised came a desire to comprehend the clumsy whim I had indulged in at the end.
"...That time you ran away — it was simply because you were awkward and inexperienced. Even if you had lived for ten thousand years, raising a child would have been your first time."
The hatred toward the mother who abandoned her had been only the beginning. What remained in the space where the last flames of her life had blazed was understanding, and forgiveness, for me.
"I believe that I, as a human, understand you."
The Decayed Dragon merely listened to those words.
"So I think that even you — a dragon — will one day come to understand the humans you have trampled."
Even though her lifespan had already reached its limit, and she had nothing left to burn but the day's final flame...
I felt my mind bury itself in the words of the only human who could stand in my way, suppressing that impulse.
"Give me a chance... a chance to prove that the beings you have always regarded as insignificant are worth coexisting with in this world."
Perhaps those words were exactly the opening I needed to understand the source of my own confusion.
The attacks of humans I could have simply ignored and sidestepped felt irritating, and in the end I crushed their resistance relentlessly, advancing...
"...And if I give you a chance and it turns out the same, what then?"
What was this emotion I could not understand even in myself?
Perhaps before this life ends, I could find out.
"If you, who try to stop me with that broken body, come to accept yourself that humans aren worth protecting... then when I continue what I am doing now, will you quietly accept it?"
I waited for an answer, but no matter how much time passed, none came.
Because, after leaving that last request, the human who had burned everything away breathed her final breath.
No matter how much of the dragon's power she had wielded under my influence, it was fated that her innate limits would bring her to this end.
"If it were you..."
You, who tried so desperately to stop me.
A child who stood in my way for a reason I still could not understand.
"If it were you, you would have surely answered yes."
She would have certainly answered yes to that question.
And so the dragon, who had presumed the heart of the adopted daughter she had ultimately killed, chose to continue this life by binding herself to a contract built on that very assumption.
A heart that resolved to do so even though it did not have to.
Defining it, as always, as nothing more than a whim.
***
I have regretted that whim ever since — to this very moment.
Because afterward, to resist a calamity harsher and greater than myself, they bestowed the title of 'Hero' upon those summoned from other worlds and worshipped them as saviors.
The more I watched them defile that existence and everything it once stood for, the deeper my disillusionment with humanity grew...
But how could I prove that directly to the child who had become the subject of the contract?
The Hero Tachia was already dead, and her name had been utterly forgotten by the masses with the passage of time and the world's decline.
Even those who might have been called her successors were pushed aside by the mass-produced Heroes summoned from other worlds, so it could be said that no one remained in this world to give that answer in her stead.
Having realized that only after decades, I sought to extract what could be called a soul from her corpse and refine it into a weapon.
To wait for the weapon born from that process to awaken its ego, to gradually grow, and to come to possess the same disposition and values as that child.
So that, with its awakened ego, it could seek out for itself the potential in humanity that I had been made to hope for.
-Crash, bang!
But before such a time could come, the tool created for that purpose was rampaging beyond my control.
Without even a wielder, the weapon itself had gone berserk.
Unable to disperse or control that power, it simply grew drunk on instinct and tried to whittle away its own existence.
Left like this, that weapon would destroy itself.
"...Stop."
But how could I stop it?
The vessel containing the power was already pushed to a precarious level, and if I used my strength to suppress it now, the vessel might very well collapse.
"Please, listen to me. You..."
It was annoying. It was infuriating.
Everything that curdled my mood — ever since I forcibly prolonged this life — I felt them churning inside my chest.
"You are merely a tool created for the contract. Nothing more."
What on earth is it?
This foul sensation I have carried ever since that child died.
Even though I created a replica to understand what she saw.
Why does the mere wailing of a being like her make my chest ache so fiercely?
-Papa...
What is it about that man?
What is that power, which does nothing more than imprint a name, to make it rampage like that and give me such trouble?
-Daddy~~!!!
That sudden rampage eventually ceased, and in the blink of an eye it flew out of the ruined workshop and into an alleyway.
The moment I caught sight of someone approaching there...
"...Ah."
I felt my dulled heart begin to beat clearly, little by little.
'Found you.'
A replica of the hero, no less.
Because I realized that a being who could give the same answer as that child — a being who had chosen to follow me of their own volition — had appeared before me.
"T-Tachia-ssi, this situation is..."
"You. Form a contract with me."
I am tired of dragging this out.
Whatever the reason, it does not matter.
If I have chosen that man in place of a living corpse that can barely stand anymore, then from now on, simply watching will be enough.
"I will give you that weapon."
And moreover — is he not the man who quickly awakened a consciousness that had lain dormant all this time?
If wielded in that man's hands, its growth will accelerate further and eventually fulfill the conditions I desire.
"You wanted that weapon, did you not? I will give it to you. So just take it."
No longer would I torment myself at being swayed by a body I had to forcibly restore.
The moment to finally be liberated from this foul mood was fast approaching.
"...Yes. I will accept it."
To that hasty offer, the other party answered after a brief silence.
He accepted without even being told the conditions...
There must be a reason — but I did not care about that either.
Because that is what humans are like.
Not caring what value this weapon holds, or why it is being placed in his hands.
Even if the one who receives this weapon were to die and that spelled the extinction of humanity — so long as it is not an apocalypse they themselves must face, that is simply human nature. Not to care.
"Tachia-ssi, what do you want from me?"
To that question, chosen by the byproduct of the one who would protect even such creatures, the Decayed Dragon answered.
"There is nothing of the sort. Just take that weapon and do what you can with it."
"That is all...?"
"Yes. That is all."
That condition finally met. One more step forward.
The decayed being, realizing that only one step remained to achieve something even greater, poured out her earnest wish to him.
"Please. For my sake."
Please, for my sake.
"Live with that weapon."
Struggle like that, and then die.
"To the best of your ability. For as long as you can."
While you struggle as much as you can — soothe the heart of that replica.
"That is enough."
If that child were still alive, she would surely arrive at the same conclusion as that weapon.
If, through that desperate struggle and its end, you realize there is no hope — then I too will be able to rampage without suppressing this feeling any longer.
"Just do that much. And take that weapon."
Hiding such inner thoughts.
The being who had prolonged her life on a feeling she defined as a whim now poured out her desperation toward the hope that had arrived in this moment.
Whatever the reason. Whatever the goal.
Wishing that you struggle desperately to prove the worth you possess as a human — and then die at the end.
"...Yes."
And this man would surely never know those feelings.
Though that is certainly the truth.
"I will accept it. As you wish."
Yet on the face turned toward me, every feeling he had felt while facing me in this moment was laid bare.
Without knowing that the fate of humanity now rested in his hands at this very moment.
Merely showing goodwill toward me — even as I was savoring this moment of triumph.