Was I Wrong?
She may have been a little too stubborn. She may have been a little foolish. She may have been a little too ruled by her heart. She may, at times, have been a burden to her comrades.
Olivia understood all of that. But she had done more than enough to make up for it—and she had trusted them more than enough to match.
Yes, she had caused them trouble. She had also helped them. Yes, she had grown irritated when their shortcomings led to disaster. She had never, for that, demanded they bear some crushing share of the blame.
Wasn't that what comrades were?
You caused trouble, and you gave help. You received trouble, and you received help. To be a burden and a joy at once—that, Olivia had believed, was the meaning of comradeship. And so she had trusted them. She had even intended to keep hidden the fact that they had played no real part in slaying the Demon King.
In truth, they had supported her well enough. After the Demon King fell, they had seen to her wounds and to every practical need.
Charging to the front and cutting the enemy down was not the only form of battle. She knew that. That was why she had trusted them. Not once had she considered treating them unkindly.
And yet.
And yet!
And yet—
"Kh—hah...!"
Olivia ran, blood spilling from her lips. All she held was a tree branch. She forced what little mana would still move through it, batting aside the attacks that came for her, one after another.
She did not know why. Her mana would not properly awaken. She could only guess that the poison—the God of Death Poison—was the cause. Beyond that, there was nothing she could do.
"Hah—hah..."
Why?
What had gone wrong?
She had made mistakes. Olivia, regrettably, had never been a perfect Hero. But she had saved enough lives to cover those mistakes, and by striking down the Demon King she had restored peace to the world.
And still they would do this to her—because she was "strong"? Did the bonds they had built mean nothing at all?
How could they aim for killing blows? How could they attack her with the intent to end her life?
The sky was darkening. As if it had taken it upon itself to wear her heart for her, the high blue expanse had been swallowed by stormclouds and turned a dull, ashen gray.
A cliff.
She had run without thinking, and now she stood at the edge of one. It was terribly high. Megurt Cliff ranked among the tallest in the human realm; to fall from it was, by all accounts, to die.
Had it been the ordinary Olivia—mana alive in her veins—the drop would have meant little. The Olivia of this moment was another matter. A fall now would leave her maimed beyond recovery. An Olivia with one arm severed, poison in her blood, and no mana to call upon had no chance at all.
A whoosh of air. She caught the incoming arrow on her branch and knocked it aside.
A sharp crack split the wood.
No matter how she strained, it was still a tree branch, and her mana would not properly answer. She understood, then, that her limit was nearly upon her.
"You truly are a monster."
"......!"
"You've lost an arm. The God of Death Poison is running through your entire body. And yet you still use mana—still deflect the Elven princess's arrows. You're even running."
"What is it you want to say?"
"That you are, in the end, a being that must be erased."
"Why...? I never... had any intention of turning against the kingdom."
A wet cough tore through her, and blood spilled from her mouth. She could no longer staunch the flow from her severed arm, and the mana she had been clinging to was growing faint.
No. It was not only her mana. Her consciousness itself was slipping. Something close to instinct warned her: if she blacked out now, her life would leave her body in a matter of moments.
"And how much sincerity, I wonder, lies in those words—that you have no wish to make an enemy of us? More to the point, an existence such as yours—one that exceeds every measure—is a threat merely by drawing breath. How are we to know when you might judge our kingdom the enemy?"
"......"
"You uphold only your own justice. You have no interest in why people commit wrongs—the sort of wrongs that arise, inevitably, so long as nations exist. You are prone to extremes. How are we to know you will not look upon a kingdom stained with its share of corruption and decide it must be burned to the ground?"
She couldn't breathe.
"If we could have bound you to the kingdom, that would have sufficed. But you are intractable. Persuasion does not reach you. The Hero's duty is to slay the Demon King. At that moment, your role was finished."
"Heh... heh-heh..."
"What is amusing?"
Clutching the stump of her arm, Olivia spoke.
"Pathetic. Truly."
"......"
"In the end, this is just you whining, 'I've done so many terrible things, I'm afraid of being punished.' I was the extremist? And this—what you're doing right now—this isn't extreme?"
"......"
Silence. That, for Olivia, was answer enough.
"Say it! Go on!! So I was like that!! Maybe I acted a little like a fool!! Maybe I let my feelings run away with me!! But was that a crime so great you had to feed me God of Death Poison, get the king's blessing to steal my Holy Sword, and throw me away here the moment I was no longer useful?! ...Cough! Ghk—if you've got a mouth, then speak!!"
Olivia had always put human lives first. There had been times she had demolished buildings more thoroughly than necessary, times she had saved people without a thought for their pride or their feelings. And because she had delivered such uncompromising judgment upon the wicked, she had understood that anyone watching from the side, ignorant of the circumstances, might have felt fear.
But those things had been necessary. She had believed they were what a Hero ought to do.
It was not as though she had done nothing worthy of blame.
For an instant, Lois's face crossed her mind.
The man she had cast out for being a commoner had done nothing wrong. She had known it was not right to call a person's birth a fault. She had banished him out of her own stubbornness, her own foolish dream. That the rest of the party had agreed had been nothing more than a convenient excuse.
"Alex! Velita! Rayna!!"
"A person is born with a vessel. Know your place. Know yourself. That is what you always said, is it not?"
"......!"
Alex smiled. Those had been Olivia's words. She had spoken them as if to justify throwing Lois away.
"That is you, in this moment. A Hero who does not know her place. A Hero who refused to serve the kingdom."
"You're a bastard."
"If protecting the nation is evil, then I shall be a villain. Don't worry. We will treat it as though you died in battle. Thanks to that haste of yours, you did not stop at a single village on the way here. Meaning that among the people, not a soul has seen the Hero since the Demon King was slain."
"Al...ex...!"
Rayna drew her bowstring taut.
"You were the perfect Hero—the one who fell as one with the Demon King. ...Your wish has been granted, Hero."
"......!! You son of a bitch!!"
A heavy pressure slammed into her. Olivia's body went suddenly leaden. She understood at once: it was Velita's holy power, bearing down on her like a physical weight.
She could not run. She would not sink to her knees—pride alone kept her standing. And so she looked at them. At Alex, at Velita, at Rayna.
The people who had been her comrades.
"Fire."
"......!"
Rayna bit her lower lip. Only for a moment. Then she loosed her arrow at Olivia.
"Kh—!"
Even then, Olivia swung the branch.
It shattered.
Of the arrows that came, one drove into her as if to pierce her heart. Another, which should have punched through her skull, was knocked off course by her last defiance and tore through the left side of her head instead.
It was still her head. A third of it had been ripped open by the shaft.
Her consciousness guttered. She was thrown backward. Behind her lay the cliff, and as she fell, Olivia looked up at the faces of the people who had been her comrades.
To that extent.
Olivia reached out her hand.
Knowing it would not reach. Knowing there was no longer any hand waiting that held goodwill, or affection, or anything of the kind.
Was I... in the wrong.
She did not know.
The things she had done wrong rose in her mind. The things she had done right rose too.
It was only this: the shock of being betrayed by people she had believed were her comrades.
It simply hurt.
Rain fell.
Olivia had gone over that towering cliff and into the river below. From such a height, water was no kinder than stone. Her body was so ruined that the very fact of her survival invited disbelief—and with the God of Death Poison in her veins, she could no longer generate even a wisp of mana.
Had she not, by sheer chance, caught against a rock, there was no telling how far the current would have carried her. In the worst case, she would have drowned where she was.
The worst case...?
Perhaps dying would have been better.
She had wanted to live as a perfect Hero. She had believed that falling together with the Demon King would have been the most perfect ending a Hero could have. Unfortunately, the Demon King had not been strong enough to be worth her life.
Alex's words had struck the very center of her.
She wanted to live as a Hero.
No. She wanted to die as a Hero.
It had been a curse around her throat for as long as she could remember, and it was for that reason she had banished Lois for the crime of being born a commoner. She had known how absurd the justification was—that no commoner had ever stood in a Hero's party. She had said something strange for no good reason at all.
Why... did I.
Had she committed a wrong this great?
She had discriminated against a man for a station he was born to and could not change. Was it only fair, then, that she be discriminated against for a power she possessed and could not change? That she had fought as a tool to kill the Demon King—and that a tool whose work was done could be broken without consequence?
Her strength gave out. She collapsed forward. In the rain that poured over her, Olivia could feel herself dying, little by little.
A third of her head gone. Her heart pierced. One arm lost. On top of that, she had been poisoned with that unidentifiable toxin called the God of Death Poison, and her contract with the Holy Sword had been forcibly severed.
Even she did not know how she was still alive. No—perhaps Olivia had already died in the battle against the Demon King, and what lay here now was only an illusion.
Die? Like this? This... absurdly?
She could feel it in her bones: the thing called life was leaving her body. Or perhaps it was her soul. Either way, it ended here.
At the very least, the world would remember that Olivia had slain the Demon King and fallen gloriously in battle. Beyond that, nothing remained in her mind.
Even the will to live was fading. In that moment, as she died in the truest sense of the word—
"Hey! Stay with me! No—what in the world...!"
This voice.
A voice she had heard before. Her consciousness, sinking into the deep, opened its eyes at the sound, and Olivia looked at the face of the one who had called her.
It was too blurred to see clearly. But that distinctive black hair was not a common sight, and she knew at once who he was.
The man she had cast out for something innate—something that could not be changed.
"Lo...is..."
When she spoke the name, Lois smiled, a little awkwardly.
"I'm honored you'd remember my name. ...Though I suppose this is hardly the time for that."
Lois did not hesitate. He lifted her into his arms.
Stop. I can't be saved. Not anymore.
More than anything, she knew the poison was circulating through her entire body. Olivia was certain of her death.
But the certainty lasted only a moment. In her fading mind, a single question rose and drowned out every other thought.
Why... me.
Why was he trying to save her?
Watching Lois run, carrying her with everything he had, Olivia lost consciousness completely.