The Second Sin (5)
[……Huh?]
Nothing happened.
Nothing at all—so thoroughly nothing that everyone present could feel how wrong it was.
Blake shouted again.
[Superb! Kill them! Kill them all!]
Still nothing.
[Wh-what in the—?]
The heart dripping with blood had no eyes, yet the panic was plain.
[Superb!]
Bishop Blake screamed as if denying reality itself.
[Hurry—hurry and kill every last one of them!]
“…….”
He had given the command to Superb.
The binding laid upon her from the moment of her birth. He had used fate itself. So long as she did not escape that fate, the shackles could never be broken—an intervention possible only because she was the vessel the god himself desired.
And yet Superb did not so much as twitch.
As if she had already stepped free of fate.
[Th-this can’t be…….]
Something had gone terribly wrong. Bishop Blake felt it in his bones.
It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect!
A masterpiece built atop countless failures, corpses, and sacrifices. He would never create another like her.
Flaws? Of course there were some. Those without the proper qualifications could not even remember her existence. But that was trivial.
With Superb alone, the heretics’ god could have been restored as a god of the light once more.
And that chance had just slipped away into nothing—taking with it the very integrity that had been completed by the promise of control.
[How dare you…… how dare you……!! What have you done?!]
Bishop Blake poured out his rage.
The target of that fury was the black-haired boy with golden eyes—who, even in a place like this, maintained a composure no child his age should possess.
No. Composure was the wrong word.
Coldness.
Yes. That was it. A gaze that watched as if everything before it were worthless, empty of any emotion at all.
The sight only stoked Blake’s fury higher.
[An unbeliever dares to shatter our perfection?!]
“……I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
[Feign ignorance all you like. The god has already seen your sin!]
If everything was ruined, then he would simply slaughter them all here!
The final thrashing of a bishop reduced to nothing but a heart.
The instant he tried to unleash his power—
“Foolish.”
Arthur’s voice came from beside him.
“Have you forgotten who summoned me?”
[……!]
“You are already nothing more than a toy caught in the young master’s hand.”
Shhhrrring—!
Silver aura began to burn away the crimson blood surrounding the heart.
Arthur’s unique attribute: the power to burn holy force itself.
The most terrible pain a human can feel—searing agony.
[Gyaaaaaaah!]
Bishop Blake’s scream filled the cavern.
And Arthur was not alone.
“That’s right.”
A white-haired girl—who had somehow produced a carrot no one had seen her take out—crunched into it with a crisp snap.
Lapis’s eyes blazed red as she unleashed her threads.
Wrath.
Don’t tell me this little one also carries the fate of a Sin……!
How in the world had two Sins appeared at once?
“Stop insulting my savior and just die already.”
“Quietly accept your fate.”
The Knight of the Full Moon and the Sin of Wrath.
A pair that should have been enemies, never allies.
For the first time, they joined forces.
For one person alone.
For Evan.
“…….”
Superb looked down at her own hands.
The command had been given. Yet her body had not moved in the slightest—as if that voice were no longer a command at all.
How?
Superb had always known she was not ordinary. Remade from the fetal stage, born stronger than any normal human—an artificial lifeform. A living weapon of the heretics, a vessel meant to hold a god.
She had understood that truth from birth, and she had sensed another fate waiting for her as well.
A fate either to destroy this world or to bend it to her will.
Superb was the latter.
One of the Five Great Sins: Pride.
Destined to seize the world in her grasp.
She had never wanted it, yet she could not refuse. Acceptance was the only answer. Resistance only tightened the leash around her throat.
Even if Bishop Blake were the last person alive who still knew of Superb, so long as he remained, this nightmare would never end.
Better, then, to accept her fate and find whatever small pleasure she could in it.
That was the life Superb had lived—until change arrived.
It began with Arthur’s raid.
—Run! Protect this child no matter what—gahk!
Bishop Blake fell into critical condition. Superb hid herself and followed the bishop’s son out of the place.
There was no real reason. She could have simply died. It would have been her chance to escape this wretched existence.
Yet she fled to survive, because instinct whispered that she must.
Afterward she was captured by Drake, who mistook her for a sacrifice—and then she was saved.
By another Sin, of all things.
At first she had been glad. Then she had been bewildered.
They were the same kind of being. Lapis was Wrath, the one who would burn the entire continent—yet Lapis showed no wrath at all.
……Yes. Everything started from that moment.
Evan Alcarte.
From the instant she met him, everything changed.
The endless whispers inside her head. The crushing pressure of fate that weighed on her every time she tried to sleep.
All of it vanished, and everything began to flow as naturally as water—right up to this very moment.
It had all looked like coincidence, until she arrived here and finally understood.
Every step had been calculated.
He knew. He planned every single thing for this exact moment.
Just as the entire chain of events had begun with Arthur’s attack, everything had been arranged so that they would reach this place.
A design so vast that even Superb, the Sin of Pride, had never imagined it.
Perhaps fate truly could be rewritten.
But……
Doubt still lingered.
Pride was excessive confidence, yet it also sprang from a lack of self-worth. Endless self-distrust and suspicion, the constant need to tear others down in order to soothe it—that was what had bound Superb.
Can I really trust him?
Her pupils trembled faintly.
As long as she stayed at Evan’s side, she was fine. But if they were ever separated? If she were abandoned?
I would have to live as Superb—as Pride—for the rest of my life.
In this hell, forever.
[Superb!!!]
Sensing her waver by pure instinct, Bishop Blake screamed in desperation.
[Do not defy fate!! Follow your fate! Aaaaaaaagh!]
“Superb.”
Then it came.
A dry voice, empty of every emotion—and therefore a voice that brought calm.
“Are you all right?”
Evan stepped to Superb’s side and asked.
Superb covered her face with her hands, unable to know what expression she wore.
“I…… that is…….”
Her voice broke into unstable fragments.
Anyone else might have grown irritated or puzzled. Evan simply watched her with those emotionless eyes, as if he understood everything, and spoke.
“Come to think of it—was there something you wanted?”
“Something…… I wanted?”
“You said earlier that you wanted something, yet you never actually received anything. Are you satisfied simply because your siblings have all been recovered?”
Something she wanted.
It had never changed.
Freedom.
The freedom of having completely cast off these chains, and proof of that freedom—proof that she could stand even without Evan.
But what could she possibly ask for? She could hardly demand a piece of Evan’s body.
“Lapis wanted a name. She said she didn’t like the one she had.”
……A name.
Yes.
That’s it.
The idea struck her like a bolt. A name might give Superb freedom as well.
Superb nodded.
“A name. Give me a name.”
“……A name.”
Evan considered for a moment, looked at Superb’s blue hair, and let a single word fall.
“Frey.”
The name of a god from the myths of the Earth Evan had once lived on—a name whose sound also resembled “Pride,” another word for arrogance.
Not bad at all, he thought.
“From this moment on, your name is Frey.”
A new name.
The instant she shed the name Superb, Frey felt her mind clear.
—Evan is my savior. And he is our savior as well.
The words Lapis had whispered every night like a mantra finally made sense.
He truly was—
A savior.
Salvation.
To those bound to fate for life, he had granted freedom under the name of salvation.
“…….”
Meanwhile, behind his expressionless face, Evan was thinking:
Whew. I nearly had a heart attack thinking she was about to go berserk.
The ticking time bomb that had been Superb—now Frey—seemed to have accepted it. He felt relief.
So it works. It worked on Lapis, so I figured I’d try it.
Stopping a Sin’s rampage just by changing a name?
Now that was a real man.
Evan congratulated himself inwardly.
Everything was racing toward its end.
For Evan, this week had been exhausting. Attending a ball only to get tangled up with heretics, arriving at an ancient dungeon only to have a heart leap out at him—any one of those would have been enough to make his heart pound, and on top of it all he had spent the final stretch tense with the fear that Superb might turn on them.
But it was almost over.
The root of every problem: that heart, Bishop Blake.
Once he was dealt with, it would be finished.
Killing a person still makes me a tiny bit hesitant……
But Arthur and Lapis would probably take care of that for him, right?
The only real worry was—
If we kill him here, things will diverge too far from the original story.
Truthfully, he had already accepted that the original plot was changing. If he had cared that much, he never should have met his allies in the first place. There had never been any guarantee the game would proceed as written from the moment he possessed this body.
In that case, better to act aggressively.
I’ll just scoop up every reward I can.
Arthur’s reward was the healing of his wounds—already handled.
Next?
The Saintess of the Sun, wasn’t it?
The Saintess had also gained something through the heretics. Evan couldn’t remember exactly what, but if he tossed the heart her way she would know what to do with it.
Besides, she hadn’t sent any letters lately.
Not a bad idea.
As expected of me, Evan praised himself.
“Ahem. Ahem.”
First, calm them down.
Evan cleared his throat.
Lapis and Arthur’s heads snapped toward him as if they had been waiting for the sound.
“What is it?”
“What is it?”
Ugh, holy crap!
Blood from Bishop Blake must have splattered them. Both faces were covered in it—straight out of a horror movie.
Evan took a small step back and asked in the driest voice he could manage.
“Do you intend to kill the bishop?”
“……He touched Evan. Leaving him alive is dangerous.”
“As you wish. However, I do not recommend sparing him. This one is dangerous.”
“I don’t particularly want to keep him alive either. I simply wish to deliver him to someone who holds a personal grudge.”
“…….”
Lapis thought for a moment, then trotted over and took Evan’s hand.
“……If Evan likes it, then I like it.”
“I shall follow the young master’s will as well.”
“Superb. What about you?”
Evan asked Superb.
She flinched, her shoulders giving a tiny start, then lifted her head. After a brief hesitation she nodded.
“……I’ll follow your will too, Evan.”
“Lapis. Restrain him, please.”
“Okay!”
“I can do it.”
Superb walked to a corner of the cavern and returned with a set of iron chains.
“What are those?”
“Materials for making a Life Vessel. They slowly drain life from anything they touch.”
[H-how dare you use the sacred materials of our order……!]
“Search the underground as well. There should be useful documents.”
“Are they all related to biological experiments?”
“……Yeah. Probably.”
“Then we have no need of them.”
Evan abandoned the idea without a second thought.
Arthur fell into brief confusion.
Hadn’t they come here precisely to obtain research materials?
Ah—perhaps he intends to use that heart itself as a research specimen?
That would make sense. Materials of that caliber were rare indeed.
Clank, clatter.
[……I cannot understand this.]
The chains wound around his body. A cold that seeped all the way into the soul made Bishop Blake shudder.
An instinctive revulsion—and it was not only the sensation of the chains.
[How can a human plan so meticulously…….]
Too precise to be coincidence; it had to be a plan.
Evan Alcarte.
[Do you…… understand what you have done?]
A voice thick with terror.
Within the heretic order, Bishop Blake had been the sole person who truly knew Superb—what fate she carried, what kind of monster she was. He also knew how far that monster could grow now that she was beyond all control.
And this boy had claimed her.
What design he was drawing was completely beyond prediction.
“No.”
Frey shook her head.
“When humans face the unknown, they choose one of two paths, don’t they? Endless fear……”
Or.
Frey smiled faintly.
“Or reverence.”
[……You…….]
“I finally understand what I need to do.”
She wanted to keep watching—how far this design would reach.
And she wanted to follow.
She wanted to believe in and follow Evan, the one who had given her freedom, for the rest of her life.
[You would revere a human?]
“Yes.”
Frey smiled as she clenched the heart tightly in her hand.
“The only thing I was ever taught was faith, after all.”
[You…….]
The heretics were no longer themselves.
Right before their eyes, in real time, a new one was being born.
“All of this,”
Frey whispered softly to the heart,
“is for Evan.”
A Sin born to destroy humanity had just become the second devotee who worshipped a single human.