The Princess of the Fallen Kingdom (4)
The moment I saw the Saint, I lunged straight at her.
Even after watching her cut down undead in a single stroke.
Hatred and resentment made it possible.
But before my hands could reach her, the tendons in my arms and legs were severed first.
I crumpled pitifully to the floor. Even so, I thrashed, desperate to move somehow.
“Why did you destroy our kingdom?! Why!! Just why!!!!”
I spat out my resentment. I poured every aimless scrap of hatred and bitterness onto the person standing before me.
“If only you people hadn’t existed, Father never would have joined hands with a black mage!! If only you hadn’t existed, everyone in the capital never would have become undead!! If only it hadn’t been for you, I never would have ended up like this!!!! It’s all your fault. All of it!!!!!!!!”
I couldn’t hold myself together any other way. I felt like I would go mad if I didn’t.
I knew. The real culprit was the black mage. I knew that, and still I couldn’t control my feelings.
“…Give it back. Give me my everyday life back. The days I spent with Father. The days I spent with the people I cherished. Please…….”
“……I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”
The Saint listened quietly to my resentment. When I finished, she said those words and then moved away from me.
“I’ll come again tomorrow.”
That was all she left behind.
And the next day.
“You actually came.”
“I said I would.”
The Saint truly had come looking for me.
I had spent the day sorting through my emotions as best I could. I had clung to my sanity by whatever means I could find.
Perhaps that was why, unlike yesterday, I managed to keep my composure today.
Of course, I still carried a full measure of hatred and resentment.
After all, the Church really had played its part in the fall of our kingdom.
“So why the hell did you come here? Did you want to see the ruined kingdom with your own eyes?”
My tone sharpened on its own. I knew full well that the Saint standing in front of me could carve me into dozens of pieces with a single stroke, and still I spoke that way.
Yet the Saint seemed not to mind my sharp words at all. She simply smiled faintly and answered in a calm voice.
“I came because I detected a powerful black magic formula activating in the capital of the Kleinrapis Kingdom. I came to investigate.”
Then she took my hand and held it firmly. It happened so suddenly that I couldn’t even pull away.
“Would you tell me what happened? If it’s too hard to talk about, you don’t have to.”
The Saint’s hands were warm. Unlike mine, which were no longer human.
I stared at her two hands clasped around mine for a moment in silence, then let out a sigh and opened my mouth.
“…Father joined hands with a black mage. To try to stop the Empire’s invasion. The core of the plan was to use the kingdom’s national treasure.”
“The national treasure of the Kleinrapis Kingdom… could it be the [Miracle]?”
“So you know of it. The divine artifact from the founding myth of the Kleinrapis Kingdom—the one that turned barren land into fertile soil where people could live. But they say it used up all its power creating that fertile land and was left as nothing but an empty shell.”
After that, countless attempts were made to refill the contents of the [Miracle]. Every single one of them failed.
I had thought the [Miracle] would remain a useless treasure forever.
But.
“They tried to fill the empty [Miracle] with black magic, then.”
“Well, this is how it turned out in the end. That’s enough, right? …Now get lost.”
I snapped the words at her like a whip.
Hearing them, the Saint nodded and rose to her feet. The sight of her standing made my chest stir without my meaning it to.
Why. Before I could find an answer to the question I had asked myself, the Saint spoke without losing her smile.
“All right. I’ll be a little busy tomorrow, so I’ll come again the day after?”
“…What?”
The sheer absurdity of it made me forget the question I had just asked myself.
And the day after that. Without fail, the Saint arrived wearing that same bright, cheerful smile.
This time she was loaded down with bags.
“…What’s all that?”
“It felt wrong to show up empty-handed at someone else’s home, so I brought a few gifts. Here!”
With that, the Saint began unpacking everything she had brought.
All of it was food.
“Who the hell would eat th—???”
The sentence never finished. The Saint had already shoved food into my mouth before I could get the words out.
While she busily pushed more food past my lips, she spoke as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
“Here, start with this! How is it? Delicious, right?”
She was still smiling, but her eyes carried the unspoken will that if I didn’t eat it, she would cut me down.
Overwhelmed by that gaze, I bit into it without thinking.
“…It’s good.”
Food after so long tasted astonishingly good.
Good enough that tears threatened to spill on their own. Hating the idea of looking weak in front of the Saint, I hurriedly wiped them away.
Watching me, the Saint said,
“There’s plenty, so eat as much as you like.”
I didn’t want to eat. Not food given by the enemy of my kingdom.
And yet I ate the food she had brought without a word.
I felt utterly wretched for it.
“It seems you’ve become a Lich, Your Highness.”
“A Lich?”
“Yes. The existence black mages desperately want to become. An immortal being. The black mage who betrayed you probably intended to use the power of the [Miracle] to turn himself into a Lich.”
But the black mage had died at Father’s hands in the final moment, and the [Miracle] that should have fulfilled the black mage’s desire had instead lodged itself in my heart and made me a Lich.
That was the story.
I listened to the Saint in silence. Without even pausing for breath, she continued.
“You said you can’t leave the capital, didn’t you? That’s probably because you became a Lich. Immortality is one of the acts the Goddess strictly forbids. It’s also a violation of the world’s laws.
And to break the world’s laws requires power beyond imagination. That’s why black magic formulas always come with restrictions. They impose all sorts of demerits and, in exchange, amplify power enough to twist the laws of the world.”
And the fact that I couldn’t leave the capital was a demerit born of those restrictions. Even though I had never wanted any of it.
I let out a long sigh. Lately it felt like I was sighing far too often.
“I understand what you’re saying. I get it, but why do you know all this so well?”
“Black mages have been the Church’s long-standing targets for extermination. It wouldn’t do to be ignorant of our targets.”
Targets for extermination. The moment I heard those words, a thought rose in my mind.
I spoke it aloud at once.
“Then I’m a target for extermination too. An immortal existence created by a black mage.”
Why had I thrown those words at her? What answer had I been hoping for?
And why had she said nothing at all, only smiled that distant, wistful smile?
In the end, I never received an answer to that question.
As the days passed, I gradually grew accustomed to the power I now possessed.
I learned to command the undead, and I learned to shape the dark, murky energy as I pleased.
The Saint called that murky energy the aura of death—death qi.
The Saint kept coming to see me.
Not every single day, of course. But she always came at least once a week.
I wondered why she kept coming back.
But I never asked. It was an unspoken rule between us.
If I asked, I felt the relationship we had now would collapse.
Little by little I grew used to her visits.
Before I knew it, I was waiting for the days she would come.
She is the enemy of my kingdom. I must not grow close to her. My reason shouted those words.
But loneliness blocked my reason’s path.
I no longer wanted to be alone.
And when I was with the Saint, it felt as though I could taste, just a little, the ordinary everyday life I could never have again.
Maybe a life like this wouldn’t be so bad. I began to think that way.
Time passed like that.
How I ended up falling asleep, I don’t remember.
I think I had grown so bored waiting for the Saint that I decided to pass the time by sleeping.
I shouldn’t have. I did something I never should have done.
I dreamed. More precisely, I had a nightmare.
Everyone in the capital was dying. They twisted and transformed into undead.
And the undead began to resent me.
Why did only you survive? Why are only you happy?
It’s unfair. You should be miserable too. They kept shouting those words without rest.
I wanted to deny it. But I couldn’t.
“…Are you all right!?”
When I finally clawed my way out of the nightmare, the Saint was standing right in front of me.
Her eyes were filled with worry for me.
……Why.
“Why.”
My mind was not whole. The sanity I thought I had somehow pieced back together was, in truth, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
And the nightmare had struck that teetering mental state hard.
So in the end I couldn’t hold back, and I asked.
“…What?”
“Why do you keep coming to see me like this? Is it pity? You drove our kingdom to ruin for the sake of the many, and now you feel pity looking at what I’ve become? Is that why you come here!?!!”
I shouted. I hurled my raw, sharpened emotions straight at the Saint.
And the Saint, hearing my words, said nothing at all.
That silence made me even more frantic.
“Answer me right now. Answer me!!”
Responding to my emotions, demonic energy erupted. The erupting energy swept through the surroundings.
Undead caught in the demonic energy were torn to shreds.
Even so, the Saint stood there unharmed.
And then she spoke.
“…Yes. It is pity. Because you are the result of the sin I committed.
I have sinned.
In the name of humanity, I created countless tragedies.
I know I must not regret it.
The moment I regret my choices, I would be denying everything I have accomplished.
And still I regret. Every day I wonder if there might have been a better choice.
I’m sorry. Even so, to save more lives, I had to cut you people away.
Because I believed humanity needed to stand united as one.
I will not ask for forgiveness. Instead I will answer with results.
With the result of a humanity that stood tall and defeated the unprecedented threat of the Demon King and his demonkin.”
After hearing every word, I laughed.
So that was what you were all along.
I laughed because I found myself so ridiculous for never having realized it.
And then I cried.
I cried because I hated myself for feeling even a little ready to accept her words.
I cried because my situation felt so wretched and small.
“…Just get lost.”
“…I understand. This, too, is my sin. Then I’ll be going.”
With those words, the Saint turned her back on me.
And she said something a little different from usual.
“I intend to go to the battlefield. To buy time for humanity’s chaos to settle and for the Empire to establish itself.
So it seems we won’t be able to meet for a while.
Still, I hope a day will come when we can meet again and talk.
Princess of the fallen kingdom.”
Having said that, the Saint left.
I did not stop her.
Even then, I think I still believed she would come back again the way she always had.
Because she always had. No matter how harshly I spoke, she had always come back in the end.
After we parted, a month passed.
The Saint did not come looking for me.
She had said she probably wouldn’t be able to visit for a while. That was possible.
Two months passed.
If I had known we would be apart this long, I wouldn’t have spoken so harshly at the end.
A little regret began to form.
Three months came.
From then on, every day that passed I started scratching a mark on the wall. A small restlessness began to grow.
Was I going to be alone again? Would that tiny everyday life that had fallen into my hands disappear? Those worries rose up.
And even after months, even after years, the Saint never came looking for me.
When the wall was carved with more slash marks than I could count, only then did I have to admit it.
That the Saint would never come here again.
When I realized that truth, I desperately regretted the last words I had spoken to her.
I cried. A great deal. A very great deal.
And I, who had watched that entire scene, covered my face with both hands.
The Bombardment Fairy is sniffling and crying.
“…This is driving me crazy.”