A Farewell in White
Figaro's body peeled away, and the great tree that Sasha's power had conjured began to collapse as well.
Crack! Craaack!
The holy barrier, born of a Saintess's power, shattered into shards like breaking glass.
Simon hurried to Sasha's side before it was too late.
"Sasha! Can you hear me?"
She was still buried in the tree, only her face visible, and gave no response.
Simon drove his hands into the wood and wrenched it apart with a sharp crack!. The tree's structure had already weakened with its collapse, giving way beneath his strength.
The moment he slipped through the split wood and pulled Sasha into his arms—
'!'
The world turned blindingly white once more.
Time, space, everything had stopped. Simon turned his head, and there, in the bleached expanse, a girl sat upon a throne, chin resting in her hand, smiling at him.
She spoke with a soft smile.
"This was my first time dwelling in a boy's body, but you handled me better than I expected. No—come to think of it, not a single girl, either, has ever drawn out my power this quickly. Consider that a special compliment!"
Simon asked what he'd been wondering about.
"……So I really did become a Saintess back there, didn't I?"
"More or less. To be precise, you were a Saintess-who-wasn't-a-Saintess. A regular exception."
She gave a shrug of her shoulders.
"Honestly, it wasn't bad—but my taste still runs to girls~ So I'll be off to find a new girl who can accept me."
"Merging with you is off the table on my end, too."
Simon said with a sour expression.
"You put my mother through hell."
"Your mother? Ah—that woman. Anna, was it?"
Her eyes glittered as she clasped her hands together.
"Anna was absolutely divine! I only caught a passing glimpse of her as I drifted by, and I fell in love at first sight! And she was just a body another sister had briefly occupied, but I simply couldn't help myself—I barged right in, sloppy and starstruck as could be. And then I got in such enormous trouble fighting what remained of that sister!"
"……."
When Simon glared at her in silence, she snickered and waved her hands dismissively.
"Don't look at me like that. We simply follow our instincts, you know."
Feigning indifference, she flipped her hand back and forth a few times, then rested her palm on the throne. Simon asked again.
"What happens to Sasha now?"
"I did choose her as my Saintess for a moment, however brief, so I'll see that she's healed. After that, I'll go looking for a new girl."
Simon felt relief wash over him.
"You're definitely leaving her, then?"
"Yes. Even with me gone, her life isn't in danger—but the backlash from a drug-driven rampage of her body means she'll never wield divinity again. Whether that turns out to be a blessing or a curse for that child, I honestly can't say."
Just then, cracks began to spider through the white world.
"Ah, it's about time we parted ways."
The Essence of Purification's eyes curved like a fox's.
"Oh, and a little aside—I have absolutely, positively no intention of living inside a boy's body~ but if word of your ability ever reaches the right ears, some 'sisters' out there might just take a fancy to you."
"Not interested."
Simon's eyes hardened.
"Whoever you possess next—I'll be there to stop you, just like this time."
"Will you, now?"
The corners of her mouth curled upward.
"I'll look forward to it."
Fwoooosh!
The pure-white world shattered, and Simon returned to the world that was his own.
He felt some formless energy streaming out of his body. His eyes, his hair color, even its length snapped back to normal.
The energy leaving Simon's body coiled around Sasha's frame, burst into white flame, and vanished.
By the time it was gone, every trace on her body—the injection marks, the scars, the abnormal bulging veins and blood blots that had sprouted all over her skin—had been wiped away without a trace.
Simon lifted her carefully into his arms and leapt down from the collapsing tree.
Kuguuuuuugu!
Spinning through the air with his formless cloak billowing, Simon glanced back. Once Sasha was free of it, the tree collapsed into nothing, leaving not even a trace behind.
The war was over.
Several dozen kilometers from Kelso Village, where the Figaro incident had unfolded.
A fierce battle had raged here as well.
"Ugh……!"
Paladins dispatched from the Holy Federation lay sprawled across the ground, groaning. The carriages they had presumably traveled in were smashed to splinters.
And while everyone else rolled in agony across the ground, one figure stood there, tall and perfectly unharmed.
The black-robed woman—who, by all appearances, had felled every one of these paladins single-handedly—sat cross-legged in perfect comfort atop a hill of unconscious paladins.
"Wh-who in the world……!"
a bearded paladin gasped out.
"Whose orders are you acting on, woman?!"
Every paladin of the advance squad, sent to escort the Saintess back, had fallen victim to her ambush. Even the 'Coordinate Relic' required to teleport an elite paladin force in had been destroyed at her hands.
The only information anyone could glean about her was that she was a Priest, and that she wore a robe black as the night sky.
With a hood pulled low and a cat mask covering her face, not even her features were discernible.
When the woman offered no reply, the bearded paladin pressed on, wheezing for breath.
"You're a Priest of the Federation yourself, are you not? We came here to protect the newborn Saintess! We're on the same side—why would you do this?!"
The woman, who had been fidgeting idly, finally deigned to react.
Rising from her seat, she jammed both hands into her robe's pockets and sauntered toward the paladin with a languid stride.
"Why, you ask?"
Smack!
Then she kicked him square in the face and knocked him out.
"There ain't no such thing."
Having at last toppled every last paladin, she simply picked her way through them and walked away.
With the fallen paladins at her back, she pulled off the cat mask. White hair spilled down like something out of a dream, revealing the face of a young girl.
'Honestly, the things I end up doing.'
Lethe grumbled under her breath as she walked on.
The situation was cleaned up at remarkable speed.
Before the barrier fully shattered, Simon, Prince, and Pier had scrambled to leave as little trace of the Legion behind as possible.
They drew the skeletons and corpse spiders into the colossal subspace, and hauled away the wreckage of destroyed or damaged undead as well, so that nothing would give them away.
"I have to go in there too?"
Prince, who had pestered Simon into no fewer than three handshakes, wore an expression of pure grievance.
"……Of course you do."
"Subspace is stuffy! And here I thought I'd finally get to come out and play outside Deathland!"
"I'll set aside special time for you later, so get in for now. Someone's going to see you."
With the entire Legion withdrawn, Simon set the unconscious Sasha down at the village entrance so that anyone entering the barrier would find her immediately, then withdrew. He hid himself behind a thick stand of trees and waited.
Before long, the barrier broke apart completely, and Block, along with the other Vengeance necromancers, came stumbling in.
"Over here! There's a survivor here!"
The Vengeance agents spotted Sasha and came running. Simon, hidden behind the tree and watching to make sure she was carried off safely, felt his eyes go wide with shock.
And no wonder—among the people entering the barrier was a face he knew all too well.
"Sasha!!"
It was Camibarez. Behind her came Dick and Meilin.
Camibarez burst into tears as she sprinted forward and wrapped the unconscious Sasha in her arms.
'Wh-when did they get all the way out here?'
And at the very back of the group stood—Simon himself. Or rather, Erzsébet, transformed into Simon.
She shot a glance toward his hiding place, gave a small shake of her head, and lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug.
'……Haha. So Erze couldn't stop them either.'
Just as Simon had ridden Akalion out to save Sasha, the other three members of his group had refused to sit still after learning she'd been kidnapped, and set out on their own.
Dick had converted a cart from the Lumberjack Village, even rented a horse, and made the trip all the way to Kelso.
'……There's no reining any of them in.'
Still, Simon found himself liking his groupmates more and more, knowing they'd judged the situation exactly as he had.
At the same time, he counted himself lucky that they had somehow managed to bring Figaro down in time.
Had Figaro drained the villagers completely and then walked out through the barrier, the fight would have swept up the Vengeance agents—and his groupmates along with them.
Meanwhile, the Vengeance agents were bustling about, piecing together what had happened.
"Where is Figaro?"
"We're searching the remains now. Judging by the afterglow of divinity, it's in its death throes—the creature appears to be dead. We'll keep looking, sir."
"……The work of that necromancer who cut through the barrier, then."
While the agents managed the scene, Simon stayed put until he'd confirmed Sasha was safely handed over to the medical team.
'Time to head back.'
Just as Simon was about to slip out of the barrier—
"W-wait just a moment!"
Suddenly, a familiar voice called out from behind him.
It dawned on him, far too late, that one of the Fearless Four had gone missing, and his blood ran cold.
'Don't tell me.'
First things first—he calmly moved his hands to confirm that Pier's helmet was seated properly on his face, then rolled his eyes upward to stare behind him.
Meilin stood there behind Simon, out of breath.
"Pion! It's you, isn't it?"
This was bad. The warning lights in his head were flashing frantically.
"When I heard about a necromancer who cut through the barrier with a white sword, I knew it had to be you!"
Meilin clasped her hands together and took a step closer.
'Wh-what do I do?'
Cold sweat ran down his back.
Nothing could be worse than having Pion's identity exposed at this exact moment. The Vengeance necromancers were right there—and Magnus, hunting for clues, might well target his groupmates next.
"Who are you, really? Why do you always appear wherever we are? If you have something to say, then—!"
Simon simply ignited Jet-Black at his feet and fled into the air. Meilin gaped and gave chase, but he was already at the crown of the tree.
'No doubt about it.'
Something stirred in Meilin's eyes.
That Jet-Black flashing at his feet had been a deep blue-black, unmistakably. She'd seen it, felt it, again and again through their days together at Kizen.
Simon's Jet-Black was one of a kind—no one alive could imitate it.
Meilin's whole body shuddered.
'Could it really be Pion himself——!'
"Meilin?"
At the sudden voice beside her, she jumped and whipped her head around.
"You vanished out of nowhere—I was worried. What's going on?"
An earthquake ripped through Meilin's pupils.
Simon was standing right in front of her.
No sooner had Pion shot up into that tree than Simon appeared at her side.
If they were truly the same person, could that even be possible? Her head tilted back.
"!"
There—Pion, cloak swirling, was soaring through the sky and out of the city. And the moment she lowered her gaze, Simon was standing beside her, solid as stone.
'…….'
Definitely two people.
Meilin strode right up and grabbed Simon's hand without a shred of hesitation.
"Hey! Use your Jet-Black."
"My Jet-Black? Why all of a sudden?"
"Don't ask questions. Just do it, fast!"
Simon gave her a look that said what now, but obliged, letting Jet-Black rise from his open palm.
'Ah.'
Deep blue-black, just as before.
This was no fake, no illusion conjured by Seywir—this was Simon himself, beyond any doubt.
'R-right. There's no way those two could be the same person.'
She pressed a hand to her forehead.
It had been a momentary lapse, but to actually think Pion was Simon! The sheer stupidity of it, even in hindsight, pulled a sigh out of her.
"What's gotten into you?"
When Simon stepped in close, Meilin grew even more flustered, her face going red.
"N-nothing, it's nothing! Let's go home! Ahaha!"
She hurried ahead, leading the way.
And while she wasn't looking, Erzsébet, wearing Simon's face, quietly laid a hand over her chest and let out a long sigh of relief.