Why Didn't You Appear?
To think a talent of the Death God Cult would be here.
Getting angry at a brat who wasn't even an adult yet was a little shameful for a grown man, but I couldn't hold it in.
What made me angriest of all wasn't that this bastard was the top prospect rated higher than Laward.
As I'd been saying this whole time—I didn't know this guy called Hakan.
Not even in my previous life. I'd never heard the name.
If he was that strong. If he was that much of a genius.
Why didn't you appear?
While the kingdom's elites were being slaughtered and my brother knights were dying one after another, where the hell were you, and what were you doing?
"Sir Daywin, I believe you're laboring under some kind of misunderstanding. I didn't run away. Ha-ha, ha—run away? And snakes, foxes—I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about…"
"You're running even from my words right now."
"W-well. More importantly, Sir—about that spar I mentioned earlier. I requested one of you at the royal palace, but you still haven't given me an answer. No, not even a reply, let alone an answer! Ha!"
"I probably didn't answer because it wasn't worth answering."
"Now, now, don't be like that. Once we cross blades, you'll change your mind."
"The Dowon Festival is coming up soon enough, isn't it? You'll get to run wild there. Just hold out a little longer."
"Ha—the Dowon Festival? That thing is nothing but child's play!"
"Child's play?"
"I already conquered that stage last year. Cleaned it up completely as a second-year. I've only grown stronger since then—what interest could I possibly have left?"
"Is that so."
"Yes, of course it is."
"You talk as if you've already tasted a level that isn't play."
"……"
"Then I'll see you at the Dowon Festival."
"W-wait, wait? This Hakan's words aren't finished yet…"
When I turned around, Veronica was standing not far away. She seemed to have recognized me too, and hurried over with short, quick steps.
"Huh? You still haven't left?"
"I could ask you the same. Still got work left?"
"Nah, I just finished."
Veronica's face looked oddly light, as if a weight had been lifted.
"You?"
"I'm done too."
"Yeah? Then let's go together. You're heading back to the marquisate anyway, right?"
"Done? This Hakan still has—"
Hakan broke off mid-sentence and stared fixedly at Veronica's face.
"…My lady."
Then, dropping his voice with every ounce of theatrical power he possessed, he approached her.
"My lady, a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You don't appear to be a cadet—what brings you here…?"
Hakan suddenly launched into an affected, atmosphere-setting tone. It wasn't just the speech. He even held out his hand as if inviting her to dance.
"If it please you, might this Hakan have the honor of escorting the lady?"
Veronica stared at him for a long moment, then finally spat out a single line.
"What the hell is this piece-of-shit bastard."
She fixed him with a dead-serious look, the kind of face you'd make after digging through a trash can.
I'd at least expected her to ask whether he was an acquaintance of mine, but she went straight for the insults.
There were times when Veronica's incomplete social training actually came in handy.
"No, that's…"
Apparently he'd never met someone from the slums before. Hakan's face went pale.
"It's nothing… nothing at all…"
His shoulders sagged, and he turned and walked away just like that.
Once he'd shrunk to the size of a dot in the distance—
"Someone you know?"
"Too late. Why are you only asking that now?"
"That shiny blond hair got on my nerves. I couldn't hold back."
"He's not someone I know."
"Then we're good."
Around then, one crucial fact finally clicked into place.
"……"
Just now.
Watching Hakan's attitude had made me realize.
The way he flipped his entire demeanor the second he laid eyes on a beauty like Veronica and started clinging.
That bastard, too, was definitely…
Definitely because of women…
The reason his name never rang out in my previous life.
Just like Laward—it was women, without a doubt.
A once-in-a-generation genius like Laward.
A bizarre genius like Hakan.
All of them had been too busy fooling around with women to spare a thought for the apocalypse.
The reason I fought myself to death.
The reason I was still fighting without casting aside my purity.
It was all because you self-proclaimed geniuses never fought.
"You… fucking bastards for real…"
I clenched my fist so hard it trembled.
"W-why are you suddenly getting mad? I wasn't even talking to you!"
"Hey."
On the train ride back, Veronica suddenly spoke up.
"I thought I told you we were going to travel quietly."
"It's a serious topic. Hear me out. You'll be interested too."
At that, I had no choice but to fold the newspaper I'd been reading. It had been getting good—stories of Kairon performing as me were all over it. I made a silent vow that if her story turned out less interesting than Kairon's exploits, I wouldn't let it slide.
"I told you I had business to take care of, right? While I was at it, I overheard something."
"I'd prefer you start with the point."
"……"
Veronica stared at me with a sulky face for a long while, then finally flopped back against the seatback as if collapsing into it.
"Is there going to be a war? Like a hundred years ago?"
"Is that what you're afraid of?"
"It's not that I'm scared so much as I just don't understand."
"Humans have always feared what they cannot understand. Mankind learned the emotion of terror so that we would never approach—or even feel curiosity toward—unknown spaces or beings. Because we came to feel fear toward the incomprehensible, humanity was able to avoid predators and survive."
"What are you even talking about all of a sudden?"
"I'm saying that you are afraid."
"……"
She looked at me with that sulky face again.
"Aren't you scared?"
"No matter how sudden the jump scare, you don't fall for it twice."
"You've been talking nothing but nonsense for a while now."
Silence again.
She caught a passing attendant in the aisle and ordered a drink. Orange juice. Only after it arrived did she pick up the conversation once more.
"Haa… when I get back I have to work again… I hate it, I really do…"
"You could've at least done some sightseeing while you were out on delivery. It was a business trip and you got travel expenses—you could've made up some excuse about the military academy contact and snuck a day of tourism. The paper said there's a big, pretty lake nearby."
"Wow… look at the way you think… no wonder people call you a gang boss…"
You're surprisingly diligent, aren't you?
"Forget it. What's the point of playing around? Gotta make money."
"You sure love money."
"I hate it. Really."
At my teasing remark, Veronica's face went dead serious.
"Ow…"
Then, as if her head suddenly hurt, she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead.
"Anyway. Even so, tuition alone isn't enough if I want to study and live at university. I have to earn as much as I can while I still can."
She quickly fixed her expression and started complaining.
"At university I have to focus on my grades."
"I didn't take you for the type who cares about grades."
"I'm going to start caring now. I want to show them."
"Show them what?"
"You don't need to know. Aah—still, I really don't want to go straight back to work. I just want one single day off. I wish there was someone who could work in my place."
"That's a dangerous thing to say these days."
"How is this dangerous? Isn't that just a normal thing for anyone who lives on a salary to say?"
"That's the reason the Necromancer started the war."
"Huh…?"
Veronica made a blank face.
"Why so surprised? Did you just think she was a warmonger?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, for crying out loud."
"That's what I thought. Villains are usually like that, right? Apocalypse, conquest, destruction—stuff like that."
"It's the opposite."
"The opposite?"
"The Necromancer's goal was to create a paradise."
Paradise.
The same word as the title of Ending Number 30.
The ending that Laward of my previous life had wanted, and had finally achieved.
But a hundred years ago, it had been the ending the Necromancer longed for.
The happy ending she had desired.
"A paradise where no one would have to work."
"…Eh."
"She ultimately failed, of course."
"That person… maybe she was actually a good person…? Hey, is there any chance the war heroes were the bad ones…?"
"Dangerous talk nonstop with you…"
At my words, Veronica glanced around at the surrounding seats.
It was a night train; everyone except us seemed to have fallen asleep.
"It could be possible, right? I mean, nothing's a hundred percent."
Especially for a mage.
"To think a talent of the Death God Cult would be right here. If you're planning to join them, tell me in advance. I'll cut your throat on the spot."
"Ah…! So those fanatics wanted that too…!"
"Quiet."
"They wanted that……!"
Veronica cried out in a small voice. Instead of raising her volume, she flailed both hands wildly.
"I get it now…! It all makes sense! I never understood why fanatics like that flocked to her. If the Necromancer's goal was paradise, then her followers still want that too…!"
"Well, something like that. Though everything I just said is content you would have learned in Academy history class."
"I'm a woman who only looks forward and charges ahead. I don't look back at the past."
She said something incredibly stupid with an incredibly cool expression.
It was a talent cool enough to put under "specialty/aptitude."
"Have you turned into a train just because you're riding one?"
"…Then most of the Death God Cult must have been laborers?"
"More precisely, they were slaves. A hundred years ago this land was still an empire, and slavery was legal."
"So she wanted to free the slaves?"
"That's right."
"But they branded her the Death God and killed her…? That's just too… pitiful."
"Ah, is it now? Shall I cut your throat right this moment?"
"No, just listen to me."
Veronica wrapped one hand around her own neck and waved the other.
"She tried to free the slaves and free people from labor. From any angle, that doesn't look bad."
"More importantly, you don't seem afraid anymore."
The emotion farthest from understanding.
Not only admiration—fear worked the same way.
"Yeah… I guess so."
"To think you'd come to understand the Death God Cult just because you don't want to work… honestly…"
"What would you know? Ordering your underlings around with a single gesture—do you even understand a laborer's feelings?"
"It's true the Necromancer tried to free humanity from slavery and labor. Only she alone could create a being to replace the laborers. She believed that once everyone gained freedom, discrimination and conflict would vanish."
In modern terms, the Necromancer was something like a person who tried to start an AI revolution.
A substitute that would think and work in humanity's place.
But this world had neither the science nor the technology to create AI, of course.
Instead—
"…Undead, huh."
Correct.
"Yes. It was recycling humans."
"Is 'recycling' really the right word for that?"
"Rather than bury them in the ground, dig them up and use them again—that was the idea. If the dead could free the living."
If they still had value even after death.
"That humans are far more valuable beings than we know."
"…But undead don't have emotions and just move according to orders, right? Like machines? If that frees the humans, isn't that enough? Did there really have to be a war…?"
"Yes. Beings that move according to orders and free humans in their place."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Don't we call that something else—slaves?"
"Huh…?"
"The Necromancer created yet another kind of slave in order to eliminate slavery."
"Isn't it different? They're already dead people."
"Can you watch your beloved family, your lover, continue working for others even after death?"
"……"
"If the lack of emotion means you can do as you please, then is it fine to trample flowers to death?"
"……Mm."
"They're different from machines."
"Ah, I don't know."
Veronica raked her fingers through her hair, mussing it up.
"Both the Necromancer and that statue at the military academy—they both said they lived as slaves. Even though they were the same slaves, their positions were different. It wasn't such a simple fight."
"Yeah. And on top of that, she's come back to try another complicated fight like that…"
"Haha."
"Why are you suddenly laughing?"
"If that's the case, there's no need to worry."
I spoke to Veronica, who was only rolling her eyes with a blank expression.
"I told you, didn't I? That was just something from a hundred years ago. To a woman who only looks forward, it might not matter much. Yes, you're right. For a villain, that much is enough."
"You mean it's different now?"
"The slave system is gone and the empire has fallen. Most decisively, the Necromancer was defeated. That's why the Death God Cult are a bunch of idiotic fanatics. Whether she was right or wrong—to still think she holds onto ideology of all things."
"Then what the hell is their goal?"
I cast my gaze out the window.
Into the endless darkness stretching on and on.
"Revenge."
The time to understand and the chance to persuade had already grown distant.
A hundred years distant.
All that remained now was coercion.
"It's simple, so isn't that nice?"