The End
As the sun rose once more to light a world that had drowned in darkness, that world — which had come so close to vanishing into shadow — slowly surfaced from the depths. And at the very heart of it, in the center of a plain carpeted in countless scraps of blood and flesh, I stood with a fist still filthy with gore.
The woman lying fallen before me, smiling even as she lay there, was none other than the Demon God — this world's god of evil, its deity of darkness. Even after our fierce battle had finally crushed her heart itself, even as she slowly died, she was laughing.
"What's so funny? You're about to die."
Just as I'd said, there was not a single part of her body my fists had left unbroken. By all rights she should have been writhing and howling in agony. Instead she was looking up at me and cackling as if she were having the time of her life, and that soured my mood enough that I slowly glared down at her and asked.
"It's just... so enjoyable. The fact that someone this strong managed to drive me into a corner like this."
"...You take a hit that knocks you flat in one blow and you're happy about it? Are you a masochist who gets off not just on fighting, but on pain itself?"
Demonkin, as a rule, were a race that submitted to the strong and hungered endlessly for battle — a species quite literally insane for combat. And she, as their leader, was that to an even greater degree. Which was why, even in the moment she stood closest to death, she was rejoicing. Unlike me.
"You've taken an attack charged with my clan's ability... so you, and I, will both be swallowed by the shock and die soon enough... haah."
A Species Ability was something like the superpowers you'd find in any common fantasy novel — a special power that existed only in this world. It was the strongly crystallized essence of certain animals' traits. And the one I had obtained was known as the Honeybee Clan Ability... a power that worked on much the same principle as a honeybee's sting.
Unlike a real honeybee, however, an attack of mine could drop any opponent in a single blow, no matter how strong they were...
"...Fuck, that really hurts."
...and the user suffered the exact same damage they inflicted. Which meant that I, who had just brought down a being called a god, was certain to die as well.
I clutched my head and bowed it, and even as I forgot to writhe in the pain, I poured every last scrap of strength I had into forcing my mouth open.
"...Any last words?"
Even as I groaned under the pain eating my own body alive, I spoke to the dying Demon God, wanting to confirm her end until the very last.
"...What's your name?"
"Dullahan... I threw away the family name a long time ago."
She simply stared at me after I said that. There was no anger in those eyes, no sorrow, no despair. It was a gaze that held something I had discarded long ago — and so had hungered for all the more. A gaze that held purity.
With those words she closed her eyes, her expression peaceful. She should have been in agony from my ability, and yet...
"She takes a hit like that and still dies spouting comfortable nonsense... what a complete lunatic."
And with that, I too collapsed, unable to endure the pain of my own clan's ability.
"...So this is the end."
Of my second life as well — a life that had amounted to nothing.
As death crept steadily closer, I found myself turning over the horrors of my past, one by one.
To me, this world had been... far too cruel.
It had given me a genius's talent for the sword — and then, as if to mock that gift, it had saddled me with a cursed ability. It had lowered a faint thread of light to a man slowly sinking into the deep, only to drop him into an eternal darkness that swallowed even that.
The people who had stood with me had met the same tragedy and vanished. My family had abandoned me. Everyone around me had walked away.
The ones who had trampled me were still laughing, no doubt — dreaming of their own happy futures, having long since forgotten the name of the ant they crushed.
"So this is really the end."
Dullahan Franz would no longer exist in this world.
It was the end of this world's weakest man — someone who had known its ugly truths and still been able to do nothing. It was the end of a despicable coward who had failed to protect the people he cherished until the last, and fled alone. It was the end of a single foolish human who, even now, had never managed to escape the memories of his past.
And so, as my eyes fell shut and the pain faded with them, I sank into an eternal sleep from which I would never rise.
...That, at least, was how it should have gone.
"...What the hell is this."
The me who had died opened his eyes again — and found himself looking out from the body of his past self, from twenty years ago.
"Hello, Master?"
The only difference being that the Demon God who'd died fighting me last life was standing in my house wearing a maid uniform.
"The fuck are you?"
"What do you mean, what am I? I am Pelican — Lord Dullahan's eternal slave and most faithful servant."
And so I began my third life, together with a deranged Demon God. Having returned to the days when I had only just enrolled in the Academy.
The final battle I had fought for nothing but a death I could call meaningful was now veering into a future I had never imagined.