5. The Last Descendant of the God of Destruction
5. The Last Descendant of the God of Destruction
The God of Destruction, Angolmoa.
It is unlikely anyone left in this world still knows the truth of him.
What little endures is a faded legend: long ago, he descended upon this land to destroy the world. For reasons unknown, he halted that destruction, bound himself to a single human, fathered a child—and then departed from this realm.
But the Haven clan believed with utter certainty that this being's blood ran in their veins.
For every last one of their bloodline was born with the power to read the movement of the stars, and through it they awakened the preposterous ability to glimpse a single moment of the future.
So long as they possessed that power, the Haven clan believed they could remain beyond the reach of any peril...
"Airi, our clan will soon face annihilation."
For Airi, who had always held that conviction,
those words from her father, the clan head, were utterly devastating.
"Annihilation? What do you mean? Why would you say such a thing so suddenly?"
"You will understand once you read this record."
Airi's father pressed an aged tome into her hands as he spoke.
The author was none other than their founding ancestor, Haven himself.
[To my descendants. My love for you, who have inherited the blood of my great mother, is true. Yet the future penned in this book cannot be defied, even with the powers bestowed upon you by birth.]
[For my mother, called the God of Destruction, did not leave this land because she had failed her mission, but because she read a future in which this world marches inexorably toward annihilation.]
It was both a letter to his descendants and, by every measure, a prophecy.
Ancient though the record was, there was no question of dismissing its contents.
The very power to read the future—the clan's pride and joy—had originated from him. How could she possibly dismiss his words merely because they were penned in the distant past?
"...This world is soon to be destroyed?"
"So states the Ancestor's prophecy. On the eve of destruction, beings from other worlds will invade this land. The dead shall rise and walk again. Beasts will stand on two legs and speak the tongues of men. Even the night—when all things ought to find rest—will offer no freedom."
Demons and undead. Beastmen and vampires.
The entities now laying waste to the world—their emergence had been foreordained thousands of years before the prophecy was ever set down.
The chaos they would unleash would, in the end, bring about the world's annihilation. And so the God of Destruction, who had come to fulfill that very end, relinquished even his purpose and departed from this realm...
"At present, the Empire seeks to summon beings from other worlds in an effort to restore order to this chaotic age. But the ruling powers who have latched onto those summoned chase only the profit before their eyes, rotting away the very roots of the civilization humanity has built."
If even humanity—who ought to be the last hope—cared for nothing but petty greed, blind to what lay ahead, then what hope could ever be found in this world?
That, too, was written in the prophecy. And because of it, not a single member of the clan—Airi's father included—denied the prophecy's words.
Nor did they deny the future recorded at the prophecy's end: "The clan bearing the blood of the God of Destruction shall vanish from this world."
"...In the end, must we simply wait for such a future?"
But to stand by and watch that future unfold in a daze... was that truly all that remained to them?
If there was no way to alter the future they had read, then their only recourse was to prepare their hearts to accept it...
"Must I truly stand here and watch our clan be wiped from the earth?"
In answer to the grieving Airi, her father spoke—his voice resolute—a decision he had reached after long and agonizing deliberation.
"No. That annihilation will come by our own hands."
Haven—the demigod born with the power to read the future as a descendant of the God of Destruction.
The clan who inherited his blood would end their line by no hand but their own, in a form of mass suicide.
"What do you mean..."
"Airi, from this moment on, we will transfer every last trace of the power our clan was born with into you."
They had not surrendered to the future.
They meant to stake everything on a final, desperate gamble: manifesting the power of the prophecy's original author upon this land once more by concentrating it all within a single vessel.
"If we gather our powers—powers that have thinned across the generations as our blood divided—into one place, that potential will surely approach the level of our founding Ancestor."
"B-But if we do that, everyone but me will lose the ability to read the future. Everyone but me will be defenseless against the dangers ahead."
"On the contrary. You, wielding the strongest power among us, will be able to read events even we cannot now perceive. It may be insufficient on its own, but what is now absolute zero will become a possibility—however slight—that we can at last nurture."
If annihilation was predestined, then a final gamble was not a luxury; it was a necessity.
Airi understood that logic. But she could not stop herself from being crushed beneath the sheer weight of that responsibility.
"...Why me? Why must it be me?"
"The reason is simple. Now that the prophesied age is upon us, you are the youngest among us all."
A person's fate, after all, extends only as far as their lifespan allows.
Therefore, if they were to gamble, it was wisest to wager everything on the youngest of those born with the astrologer's gift.
"We are fully aware of the immense burden we are placing upon you. That is precisely why we will not compel you with cruel demands. If you take this power and still find no hope, you may give up. You do not need to save everyone. Simply strive to achieve the best possible outcome within your reach."
"...Father."
"Remember this, Airi. At any moment, you are responsible only for as much of the future as your heart can bear."
It was a desperate plea, issued by an entire clan bound by the same blood, heads bowed as one in supplication.
In the end, Airi had no choice but to accept, however reluctantly. And from the day that ceremony was performed, every member of the clan lost their power.
Now they could no longer read the flow of the stars. They had been reduced to ordinary people, blind to the approaching dangers of the future.
But Airi's own power grew exponentially. And with this heightened sight, her understanding of the "fate" that her now-feeble clan could no longer grasp deepened considerably.
'Fate... It refers to the countless branching paths generated when everything in this world moves, collides, and sets off chain reactions in accordance with its own will...'
Those paths are as vast and complex as the branches of an infinite tree. The "present" moment is determined by whichever path is thickest—where the greatest number of branches intertwine and give direction.
The future that astrology had deduced until now had been nothing more than the identification of the most likely outcome among those branches.
One could certainly try to read the future and then attempt to change it. But the moment you reject the most readily foreseen future, the path you must then walk is one shrouded in impenetrable "mystery," where no sight can reach.
'But now, having inherited the clan's power, I can just faintly peer into that mystery.'
Yes. She could see it.
If, among those infinitely forking branches, there existed even the slenderest, thread-like possibility...
She could also find the path that led toward "the future she desperately longed for."
'Oh, stars. I beseech you. Please show me what I must do to follow the path that aligns with my desire.'
For the first time, Airi—who had only just set foot upon the astrologer's path—offered up a prayer.
She prayed to the heavens, refusing a life spent merely conforming to a destiny written in advance.
If there truly existed a possibility of realizing her wish...
If there existed a way not only to avert the world's destruction but also to revive her clan, who had now lost their power... she begged for an answer.
[Go to the Empire.]
To that question, the crystal ball that unveiled the future gave its answer.
It was a distant event, one that had not yet come to pass. The reply was little more than a short, abstract phrase, as if to signify that the possibility itself was exceedingly faint.
But even so, the possibility was not zero. The flow of the stars was clearly granting her the answer she had longed for.
[There, read the fates of others and find the one who holds a possibility that aligns with your ideals. Offer him your counsel regarding his future. Should you be bound to him, the path to reviving your clan shall also open before you...]
If you cannot accomplish it with your own power, find one who holds the potential to save the world and stand at his side as his aid.
That was all she could deduce from those words.
Beyond that—perhaps because her power was still insufficient, or perhaps because the future was still too distant—no matter how deeply she analyzed it, no clear image would form...
"...Very well. Only as much as I can bear."
She did not know how much of this cryptic message she would be able to follow. But if she dismissed it as absurd nonsense, the world would surely march down the most probable path and end in annihilation.
In the end, the only one who could introduce a variable into that future was the one who could read it.
And so, Airi—sole inheritor of that power upon this land—carried a profound and unrelenting sense of duty.
'I will do it. I absolutely will. For the sake of the best possible outcome I desire...'
Everything was for the sake of escaping the fatal future that would descend upon this world as foretold.
And more than that—to restore the clan that had entrusted everything to her.
****
Yes. She had walked the streets of this Empire with precisely those sentiments, reading the destinies of the people she passed.
—Come on, then. Out with it. What are you?
—Y-Yessir. I-I am U-hyo-seong's doggie~
—Fufu, if you're a dog, then you ought to bark like one, shouldn't you?
—Arf~ Arf~♥
"Eeuu... Aaah...!"
A vulgar spectacle far too agonizing to keep watching.
Unable to accept that this vision of one man's future could possibly be her own, Airi's face flushed crimson as she began to tremble, her hands shaking violently while she channeled power into the crystal ball.
"This... this is absurd. The future must be wrong! Y-Yes, clearly..."
Wrong?
No. There was no way that could be true.
From the outset, fate is merely a matter of high or low probability.
She wanted to deny it because the shock was too much to bear. But an "incorrect" future simply did not exist.
In other words, what the crystal ball had shown was unquestionably one of the "futures that held the potential to be realized."
And when the viewer harbored even the slightest personal expectation for a given outcome, the crystal ball actively showed that very future.
'Th-Then... does that mean that man views me as... an object of that sort?'
Because he had expected a future in which they would be bound together, the crystal ball had reacted to her power and produced this result.
What was more, unlike the time she had sought her own wish—which had returned nothing but a vague string of words—this vision was startlingly vivid.
The clearer the vision, the higher the probability of its realization, and the sooner it would come to pass.
In other words, before long, she would be toyed with by that man and reduced to a vulgar, panting beast, exactly as the crystal ball had shown...
"G-Get a hold of yourself!"
—Smack!
She slapped her own cheek, driving the thought from her mind.
Reeling from the shock, Airi exhaled deeply and struggled to regain her composure.
"...Airi, calm down. This is not the time to be consumed by something like this."
The scene she had witnessed was merely one of many possibilities.
Whether that possibility would be realized or not depended entirely on the efforts of the one who had seen the future.
Even if U-hyo-seong expected such a future, there would surely be a way to avoid it—depending on how she conducted herself from this moment forward.
No. If she truly despised it that much, she could simply keep her distance from him in the first place.
'But... what if this man is the one who can alter the world's fate?'
Yes, that was the crux of it. She still had not found the figure who matched her ideals.
For Airi, who bore the responsibility to locate that person, aid them, and even bind herself to them in order to revive her clan, the appearance of a future linking her to someone—whether she wished for it or not—was a fact she could not afford to ignore.
What if she recklessly rejected this future, and the one slender possibility she had finally found simply slipped away into nothingness?
"...Th-That's right. He is still a weak Otherworlder for now, but... his potential isn't zero."
Gulp. Swallowing hard, Airi fixed her tense eyes on the scene unfolding within the crystal ball before her.
Upon the potential future that might one day come to pass.
She needed to sear into her mind the image of herself: lying on a bed like a dog, tongue hanging out, pleading for the affections of the man looming over her.
"Wah, wah-wah...!"
Watching the vision, Airi's face burned a deep red. Yet, slowly, she began to part the fingers she had clamped over her eyes.
****
The day after I received that utterly baffling fortune-telling.
As usual, I headed to the Labor Union—the main workplace for us Foreign Workers. And there, after hearing what the Guild Master had to say, I could only stand frozen with a dumbfounded look on my face.
"Hey. You aware you've been put on the blacklist among the Heroes?"
"...Excuse me?"
Me—a guy who's basically a corpse if you take away my diligence and adaptability—got blacklisted in this world? What the hell for?