Carpediem (5)
The Empire's blade cut down the Empire's traitor.
A knight's sword cut down a demon contractor.
Najin's sword swung twice, and twice it cleaved through the Third Pillar's heart. Blood fountained from the ruptured organ as Akut failed to hide his bewilderment.
How?
He could not comprehend that a Transcendent's heart had been split by the sword of a mere ordinary man. Nor could he understand why the power granted by his master, the Revelry Emperor, had failed against the boy standing before him.
The paint burned away. Pure starlight consumed Akut's flesh. The moment he donned the mask he had borrowed the Revelry Emperor's power, and the Revelry Emperor's essence was that of a demon. Najin's sword aura was the absolute antithesis of everything demonic.
The soul of a Transcendent who had borrowed a demon's power burst into flame.
Agony of a burning soul wrenched a scream from Akut. He dropped to his knees and clawed at his own body with his nails. A Transcendent's shriek rang out sharp and clear—yet even that scream did not last long.
"Ah…"
Still kneeling, Akut lifted his head. There stood the boy looking down at him. With cold, settled eyes and a face close to expressionless, Najin regarded the Third Pillar.
Akut, once praised from the highest seats of the Empire, was forced in his final moment to look up at an ordinary man who had not even reached Transcendence.
That was Akut's end.
His body collapsed. The soul that had borrowed a demon's power burned. He met death without even becoming a Fallen Star.
A flash.
Six stars fell from the sky. The falling stars shattered into fragments and scattered. Death is always quiet; even the death of a Transcendent made no great noise.
"Haa…"
Najin let out a long breath and sank to the ground where he stood. Exhaustion crashed over him. The price of abusing his body, perhaps. His heart hammered wildly; his eyelids fluttered.
If things had gone as they should have…
Najin thought while gasping for air.
If things had gone as they should have, this was a fight he could not have won.
He had won only because of the Sword Saint's aid, and only because of the extreme elemental mismatch against Akut. Had Akut not relied on the Revelry Emperor's power at the last moment, the battle would have been far harder.
"Still."
Merlin perched beside him and smiled.
"You confirmed that your sword can reach a Transcendent, didn't you?"
Najin huffed a short laugh.
Yes—Merlin was right. Even without mimicking Transcendence, his sword had touched a Transcendent. Turning that fact over in his mind, Najin exhaled slowly.
He had killed one court jester.
Here inside Carpediem's domain he could not see the changes in the night sky, but much must already have shifted.
It will have changed, but…
It was still too early to breathe a sigh of relief.
"…"
Najin looked toward the center of the stage. A place veiled in pitch-black curtains. There the battle still raged at full force.
The Demon King of Grief, Carpediem.
Because the master of this stage had not yet fallen.
2.
The Demon King of Grief, Carpediem.
A Transcendent who held eight stars.
She had existed as a Demon King for at least five hundred years, and she was also an infamous demon who had left a thick, dark trail across human history.
A demon who had risen to Transcendence by deceiving tens of thousands of devotees.
How many humans had she broken, how many cities had she burned, how many nations had she destroyed? Carpediem, who drew power from the screams, sighs, and grief of humans, had swollen her bulk over centuries.
A Demon King who had swallowed humans, cities, and even entire nations.
Her strength came from screams, and her stage was always filled with them. Humans hanging upside-down from inverted crosses and moaning were the very source of Carpediem's power.
Scream. Lament. Despair.
Carpediem loved the screams humans let out when they submitted. She found the moans they uttered in despair adorable. Every time she heard a scream she felt herself truly alive.
"How amusing."
Resting her chin on one hand upon her throne, Carpediem smiled.
"You thought a mere four constellations could face me? Regrettably one of them is already dead, and another was your enemy. Adding two new stars will hardly change the situation, will it?"
She gestured.
Thunder crashed!
Every time she moved her hand, lightning fell from the sky. Carpediem was a Demon King who had parasitized religion, and she delighted in torturing her own devotees. Because those devotees regarded her as a god, her torture was not torture but divine punishment.
"Not at all. Not in the least."
On this stage Carpediem was as good as a god.
Black lightning continuously struck the stage studded with inverted crosses. Every time lightning hit a cross the screams grew fiercer, and the lightning itself grew thicker.
"Ah, this is driving me insane."
Seongyuksin was fully occupied dodging the bolts; Yuel was little better. They had leapt onto the stage to support Gerd, yet the two figures belonging to the churches were a poor match for this place.
A demon who had parasitized religion, ruined religion, and been worshipped by humans as a god.
Carpediem, who possessed stars related to all of that, was a natural predator to the two constellations of the churches. Yuel was less affected, but for Seongyuksin the place was nothing short of hell.
"Tsk."
Seongyuksin frowned. She had expected a bad matchup, but not this bad. The exhaustion that followed immediately after using Aurora only made her sigh harder.
An absolute counter.
An opponent with no chance of victory by normal means.
Yet Seongyuksin had still thrown herself onto this stage. She was no suicide seeker. She did not possess some grand sense of duty that would send her into a hopeless fight. She had intervened because she had sensed a path to victory.
"…"
Seongyuksin's gaze turned toward Gerd.
Unlike herself, busy kicking off the ground, dodging, and deflecting lightning, Gerd's movements were quiet. Whether lightning struck or not, he simply walked forward.
Thunder crashed!
A sword swung faster than the falling bolt and cut the lightning. Severed bundles of lightning hammered Gerd's body, yet not a flicker of change crossed his face.
What a monster of an old man.
Even though he was an ally, Seongyuksin wore a look of pure intimidation.
Gerd—an eccentric even among Transcendents.
In Seongyuksin's opinion, among all the Transcendents of the Continent he was the one she least wanted to face. This was a matter that came before any discussion of strength or weakness.
"Sir Gerd."
Seongyuksin gave him a look. Gerd answered with a light chin-tilt. Message received; Yuel and Seongyuksin immediately split left and right and raced away.
Lightning still falling all around them.
Gerd approached Carpediem at a pace neither slow nor fast. Whatever blocked his path, Gerd did not stop. Whether a cross stood in the way, a hill, or falling lightning, he cut it all down and stepped forward.
Thunder crashed!
Lightning flashed in rapid succession. He swung his sword and broke the bolts, yet that did not mean Gerd took no damage. Still his expression remained blank, and still he never halted his steps.
"What a boring human."
Watching Gerd draw near, Carpediem rested her chin on her hand and frowned. She raised her hand.
Her stars shone above the sky.
There was a reason she had never been subjugated despite reigning as a Demon King for more than five hundred years, a reason she still stood intact despite trampling human domains beyond counting.
"You are an individual."
Carpediem pointed at Gerd.
"But I am not. I am a symbol!"
The Star of Worship blazed. Carpediem, worshipped by tens of thousands of devotees, was a being akin to a god, a being who served as the very symbol of a vast church.
"Child, how many years have you lived? A hundred? A hundred and fifty? You dare challenge me with so paltry a span of time?"
The Star of Reign blazed. For more than five hundred years she had reigned as Demon King, as a sovereign.
"Do you know how many humans I have killed in five hundred years, how many cities I have trampled, how many nations I have crushed?"
The Star of Massacre blazed. The screams of the humans she had crushed for five centuries echoed.
"Do you not know how many humans have knelt before me, how many cities have surrendered to me, how an entire nation was reduced to ashes?"
The Star of Submission blazed. Immense pressure crushed down on Gerd—as if ordering him to kneel, as if commanding him to bow his head before a king.
"The screams echoing here are the proof."
The Star of Grief blazed. Lightning even fiercer than before crashed down upon Gerd in succession. Kneel, bow your head, admit defeat, scream. The stage demanded it of him.
"Every human has knelt before me. Do you think you will be any different?"
It demanded—
"You too are no different—"
"Noisy."
Gerd did not kneel.
"No matter how many humans you have killed."
The old man still walked forward, expressionless.
"No matter how many cities you have trampled or how many nations you have overturned—what does that have to do with me?"
"…What?"
"The humans you speak of do not include me. Among the cities you speak of there is no city of the Empire, and among the nations you speak of there is no Empire."
The First Pillar of the Empire spoke.
"The Empire has never knelt before you. Why, then, should I kneel to you?"
Gerd swung his sword.
Lightning split in silence.
"You said you reigned as a king for five hundred years."
Gerd swung his sword again.
The pressure surrounding him tore to shreds.
"A thousand years."
As if snorting, as if sneering, Gerd spoke.
"The Empire has reigned at the apex of the Continent for a thousand years."
Holding up five hundred years against a thousand years of history only invited laughter. Toward the Demon King who had called herself a symbol, Gerd raised his sword high. Stars shone from the blade lifted toward the heavens.
"I am the First Pillar of the Empire."
The Star of the Single Pillar blazed.
The Star of the First blazed.
With a heavy thud Gerd took one powerful step forward.
The stance of the First Pillar.
The air trembled. Space vibrated; the entire stage shook. Eyes wide, Carpediem swept her hand. Dozens of lightning strands braided together and crashed down upon Gerd.
Thunder crashed!
The whole area turned pitch black. Lightning enough to erase the surroundings without a trace—yet even as it fell, Gerd did not so much as flinch. He simply took the lightning with his body.
Though his entire frame was pierced, scorched, and burned by the lightning strands, Gerd's stance never changed. Expressionless, he brought the raised sword down.
"I am the Empire itself."
First Pillar—Triumphant Return.
3.
The instant Gerd brought his sword down, the change was visible even outside the curtains surrounding the stage.
A flash.
Sword aura that split the sky shattered the curtains. It swept away every cross planted on the stage. It snapped every black lightning bolt called divine punishment, and it smashed Carpediem's Mindscape into pieces.
Carpediem's stars, her Mindscape, flared in resistance against Gerd's sword aura. They struggled desperately to break the sword aura that carried Gerd's Mindscape.
They failed.
Because Gerd's Mindscape was more solid than Carpediem's.
Gerd regarded himself as the Empire.
He believed that he himself was the Empire, and that so long as he did not fall the Empire would not fall. This was different from mere belief. To Gerd it was a fact as natural as the sun rising and setting.
That was what it meant to be a hero of the Empire, to be its first pillar—or so he thought.
That enormous self was Gerd's strength.
A human ego that regarded itself as a nation with a thousand years of history could never be overcome by a religion with a mere five hundred years of history.
Crack!
Carpediem's Mindscape split. As the Mindscape fractured, her true face was revealed. The beautiful woman had been nothing more than the form her devotees had imagined when they worshipped her as a god.
"How dare you, how dare—!"
What the collapsing stage exposed was an ugly visage—something closer to a monster than to either human or beast. The beautiful voice was gone as well. In a cracked, broken voice Carpediem howled.
Just as she raised her hand to tear apart Gerd, who had dared shatter her stage, there was something her excitement had made her overlook.
Her stage had been torn.
Her Mindscape had been smashed.
In other words, the matchup had reversed.
"Aurora."
As if she had been waiting for this very moment, a pure-white pillar of light came crashing down. A sword-cry that resembled a scream swallowed Carpediem's voice. Seongyuksin's pillar of light and Yuel's sword aura carved Carpediem to pieces.
Yet even that Carpediem endured.
She was a demon. A Demon King. Fundamentally immortal, she would not die from the attacks of Transcendents. If she dragged this into a long war of attrition she could kill them all—Carpediem was certain of it. Even if she herself died, she believed she could drag them down with her.
Drawing on the Revelry Emperor's starlight, Carpediem struggled desperately.
But the enemies kept increasing.
The stars gathered to kill her were not three. They were five. She discovered the remaining two only belatedly. Even after discovering them she still thought it would be fine.
What can one injured, exhausted star and a brat who has not even reached Transcendence possibly do?
The judgment was not wrong.
To be precise, it remained correct until the moment she saw the sword aura surging from that brat's blade.
A flash.
Sword aura of pure white with a golden star shining upon it. The well-known sword aura of Najin. Yet that had been only a deliberate separation he had maintained. There was no longer any need to keep them apart.
The demons had already branded him.
There was no longer any need to hide.
Najin revealed the sword aura he truly possessed.
White and gold mingled. The sword aura that had merely resembled starlight now became the complete sword aura of starlight itself. Platinum-gold radiance entered Carpediem's vision.
In that instant.
Carpediem's body went rigid as stone.
It could not help but freeze.
Platinum-gold sword aura—the blade engraved upon the very souls of demons. The sword aura once wielded by the slaughterer who had achieved the contradiction of killing unkillable demons, who had erased more than nine-tenths of the demons that once walked this land.
The sword aura that made the demon of fear tremble in terror.
That made the demon of death die.
That made the demon of domination submit.
The moment that absolute natural enemy of demons was revealed, Carpediem's soul shuddered. Even after achieving Transcendence and becoming a Demon King, her essence remained that of a demon. And demons could never forget that name.
Arthur.
The Demon Slayer, Arthur.
Before that starlight sword aura once held by Arthur, the Demon King of Grief was reduced to nothing more than a common demon. The demon of screams, Carpediem, screamed in absolute terror.