Truth and Lies
Truth and lies.
She had believed, from the moment she was born, that her life was a lie.
Abandoned by her birth mother, shuffled through the sewers of a city, sold off to a couple who farmed narcotics—not for a moment did she believe that any of this was the truly real world.
In moments of mortal danger, she had often experienced out-of-body flight. The instant she cast off her heavy flesh and soared upward to look down on the village, to gaze upon mountains and sea, and finally became one with the clouds in the sky—
When winged angels blew their trumpets to delight her—
Only then did she believe that this was the true world.
Food crawling with maggots, brutal labor and abuse, the stench of open sewers—there was no way such things could be her world. Again and again she drifted out of her body, drifting more and more frequently, denying everything that surrounded her.
But in the end, the journey always ended in reality.
No matter how joyous, how rapturous the hours she spent aloft, she always returned to her shabby reality in the end.
She thought of herself as a child of heaven. Around her, children her own age collapsed where they stood, worked to death in the drug fields, and amid them she would stare at the sky and endure, praying that one day the angels would carry her back to the world where she belonged.
—Ever. Heaven must be so happy that lots of people want to go there. That's why it takes time.
That was what her one and only friend had said.
—Hold on. Keep living here, keep piling up your misery, and all that misery will stack up and stack up until it becomes your ticket to heaven.
—Survive, Ever.
The very next day, her one and only friend collapsed in the drug field, white foam at her mouth, and was discarded as waste.
Ever Kire clung to life in this fake world with the tenacity of a leech, exactly as her friend had asked her to.
Because she was certain that soon, the shining reality would come—the moment she would rise past the sky and into heaven.
But the end never came, and her life proved stubbornly, infuriatingly durable.
'......'
Exhausted, she made a wish.
If you refuse to sever my life no matter what—
Then at least show me a glimpse of the heaven I'll someday reach.
—My daughter.
And then, a voice answered.
Ever Kire knew with absolute certainty that it was the voice of a goddess.
That voice gave her a mission, and afterward, she gained the power to create heaven.
—Hahahahaha! Hahahahahahahaha!
She turned the drug fields into a field of dandelions, the flower she loved. The adults who raged and thrashed, the friends who had tormented her—she turned them all into trees and burned them together with the dandelion field.
Her very own heaven.
In a life that had held nothing but fakes, a small heaven that belonged to her alone had finally blossomed.
'I'll make a one-way ticket to heaven. A ticket with no return.'
To reach the true heaven.
She had decided to build her own heaven out of this counterfeit world.
Hwaaaaaaak—!
A blinding radiance spread outward from where Ever Kire stood. She had draped the Holy Saintly Robe over her body, and at her abdomen, the arm of the true Saintess of Harvest—the Saintess whose Essence she had stolen—hung limp and swaying.
In that vicious, grotesque form, Ever Kire set her bare feet upon the ground.
Ssaaaaaaa—
Wheat rose higher and higher across the entire arena, swaying in the wind. Before anyone noticed, the whole stadium had transformed into a golden wheatfield steeped in sunset.
"Very good."
Ever Kire swept her gaze over the wheatfield, plainly satisfied with her newly acquired power.
"You......!"
Lethe ground her teeth. "How can you wield a senior's power? No—before that, how are you even on Roke Island?"
Ever Kire rocked with laughter.
"I was on Roke Island from the very beginning."
Ever Kire's objective had always been the destruction of Kizen, the very heart of the necromancers.
She had manipulated the Valkeje clan. She had manipulated reality itself. Keeping the Balkeje Arena—which should have been sent back—anchored on Roke Island as its sixteenth stadium: her plan had clicked forward step by step, one piece at a time.
Everything had gone smoothly. But the appearance of one unforeseen figure had brought it all to the brink of collapse.
The Saintess of Harvest.
Using her saintly authority, the woman could pinpoint the location of any user of divinity. The single stroke of luck from Ever Kire's perspective was that the first to be detected wasn't herself, but one of her prepared 'dummies.'
The dummy alerted Ever Kire to the discovery, and she traced the flow of divinity backward until she found the Saintess of Harvest.
It had been no easy fight—but she ambushed the woman while her saintly power was sealed away, and finally succeeded in cutting her down with her special ability.
Afterward, she read the Saintess of Harvest's mind.
She learned that Israfil of the Holy Federation was cooperating with the Dark Alliance to prevent a war.
And she learned something else, too—if the Saintess of Harvest fell like this, the next one they sent would wield detection powers far more formidable still.
The next Saintess would be the Saintess of the Stars, Shardena.
Armed with that information, Ever Kire changed her plan. She devoured the Saintess of Harvest, absorbed a portion of her power, reshaped her own form into the Saintess's exact likeness, and played the victim. Distorting reality to make wheat sprout all around her had been no trouble at all.
Then she ordered her second dummy to slip off the island.
Kizen's agents assumed the Saintess of Harvest had fallen to Ever Kire and moved "her" to a safe cave. Their attention was consumed with hunting the dummy that had fled the island.
In that window, the Saintess of Stars had slipped in. But the preparations were already complete. Even sweeping the entire island for divinity, they would detect nothing but the divinity of the Saintess of Harvest.
"Then......!"
Simon bit his lip. "You were in the cave the whole time!"
"That's right. It was me."
Ever Kire smiled, her mouth splitting wide.
"When I decide a thing shall be, it becomes so. When I will it, every human being must bend to it. Not a single soul on this continent can stand against this 'power of God'!"
Ssaaaaaaa—
The wheat began rising higher, thicker, towering toward the sky.
"But before I fight the Witch of Death, I see no need to squander the power of God on tidying up the likes of you."
She extended her fingertip.
"Let's put my new saintly power to the test, shall we?"
Pat!
In that instant, Simon—eyes rimmed red—was already charging, wild and reckless.
"Simon! Calm down!"
Lethe shouted. Simon tore through the wheatfield as he charged, and at the same time tore open a subspace.
Shararararara!
Pier's bones flew out of the subspace and wrapped Simon's body. The moment he extended his right hand, sheathed in Pier's arm bones, the great white greatsword came spinning in and was caught—chk!—in his grip.
In the space of a breath, Simon—clad in Pier and become a skeletal knight—spun his whole body around, and the formless mantle draped over his back flapped and whirled along with him.
"Haaaaaah!"
Kaaaang!
The white blade, swung along a ferocious arc, struck against something.
'The Greatsword of Ruin......!'
It had been stopped dead. Before her stood a barrier, spread out like a protective wall.
This was no special ability of Ever Kire's. It was a barrier of divinity—of saintly authority.
'The power of the Saintess of Harvest!'
Ever Kire smirked. Simon immediately kicked off the ground and fell back, wrenching open a colossal subspace.
"Mages! Fire!"
Dark Blaze
Black flames spat by skeleton mages hammered the barrier again and again.
Blind
Paralyze
Simon fired a chain of curses from his empty left arm—but even the curses failed to breach the wall.
Physical force, Jet-Black elemental magic, curses. Nothing worked.
Simon fell back, jaw clenched tight.
"Kizen really was hiding something extraordinary."
Ever Kire smirked.
"A mere student who turns out to be a Legion Commander. How very amusing."
She swept her arm through the air, and from a magic circle of light that bloomed in the empty space faster than an eye could blink, a cascade of lances of light came pouring down.
"Ugh!"
Simon wheeled the greatsword in a brutal arc, batting the attacks aside. But one lance slipped past the blade in a treacherous curve, bending around it, homing straight for his shoulder.
Pwang!
That was the moment Lethe appeared, hair like a flurry of snow whipping around her, kicking the white magic out of the air with a single blow of her leg.
"Lethe!"
"Don't be reckless and charge in."
Lethe touched down on the ground. "The Saintess of Harvest boasts the strongest defense of any Saintess, ya know. Long as she's got her feet planted on the ground, punching through that barrier just isn't happening. Not realistically."
Simon's eyes sharpened. "So the condition is her feet on the ground?"
"Right. We've got to take her off her feet, and that won't be—"
"Then we make it happen."
Chk!
Simon raised the Greatsword of Ruin high. Azure Jet-Black flooded the blade.
Lethe too leaned her back toward Simon's and released the seal on her choke necklace entirely. Starlight erupted, and a vast tide of divinity gushed forth.
"Never thought I'd get to see a sight like this."
Ever Kire laughed. A boy and a girl, each pouring out a black power and a white one, radiating a ferocious hostility aimed straight at her.
"A Legion Commander and a Saintess, joining forces. My, my."
"Let's go, Lethe!"
"Yes!"
The two of them charged, each treading on Jet-Black and divinity in turn—and Ever Kire swept her hand upward, from below to above.
"!!"
Before the two charging figures could tear through the wheatfield, the enormous head of a beast burst up out of the ground. Simon hastily thrust the Greatsword of Ruin forward.
Kagak!
The beast's fangs met the greatsword—but the difference in raw strength was overwhelming, and Simon was shoved backward. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lethe being driven back as well.
'What the—!'
A lion of light the size of a house was growling atop the wheatfield.
Its mane was white, its teeth made of pure divinity. And its paws never touched the ground—the beast seemed to float above the wheat itself.
'A Holy Beast? No—this is......!'
It was one of the creatures forged by a Saintess's authority.
Shwaaaaaaa—
Shwaaaaa—
The lions of light began to move. They didn't run with their feet—they rode the surrounding wheatfield like a wave, carving a great circle before hurtling inward at blistering speed.
From where Simon stood, it simply looked as though a wall of light came rushing at him out of nowhere.
Reflexively he leveled the greatsword before him, and with a bang like a carriage slamming into him, his whole body was launched into the air.
'!'
The lion of light, riding the wheatfield around behind him, arrived faster than Simon could land.
'I don't even have a spare glance for Ever Kire!'
By a hair's breadth, he swung the greatsword behind his back and deflected the lion's strike.
Ssaaaaa—!
Then the whole arena's dense wheat swayed and rustled. Soon grains of wheat gleaming with divinity began to rain down, and the grains sank into the ground as though the earth itself were drinking them.
Wuuuung!
Ever Kire curled her lips and closed her eyes. The barrier shielding her swelled larger than ever, the lions of light grew with it, and dazzling flashes of brilliance shimmered along their manes.
"It got stronger?"
"That's exactly why the Saintess of Harvest is such a nightmare."
Lethe was grappling with one of the lions even as she closed in beside Simon.
"Every single stalk of that wheat is like a priest. It sucks mana out of the air and the soil, swaps it for divine grains of wheat, and every last drop of that power flows into the Saintess of Harvest and the creatures she commands."
Krrrrrr!
A third lion had already appeared.
The longer they stalled against the Authority of Harvest, the worse their position became.
"Honestly, even I was surprised. She only just stole my senior's power, and just from reading her memories she's wielding the Authority that smoothly."
"So what do we do?"
"We dump everything on her at once and push her to the wall. Leave it to me."
In that instant—
Behind Lethe's back, two lions came bounding in over the wheat. Simon's eyes flared wide.
"Le—!"
And then—
Two stars were falling, right behind the charging lions.
Tukwaaaaaaaang!
The two stars wrapped around the lions, tore through the wheatfield, and detonated in a colossal blast. Lethe followed through, stirring the air with her fingertips, her expression perfectly calm.
Whioooooo!
Stars came dropping in from every direction, one after another, and began tearing the wheatfield apart. In the blink of an eye the field was scorched flat, the barrier wrapped around Ever Kire weakened—and the lions shrank with it.
She said, with the world's most unbothered face,
"I'm a Saintess too, you know. At least for now."
Simon flashed a grin and sent the greatsword sweeping back. This time, it was his turn.
'The space itself——!'
The Greatsword of Ruin thrummed and trembled. Loading it with Pier's power and Jet-Black, he brought it down against the ground and swept it across.
'The sensation of cutting through!'
Kwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwa!
A mountainous slash carved across the ground and marched forward. Countless stalks of wheat split in two down the middle, and out of the parted field a black cleaving edge surged upward, striking Ever Kire's barrier head-on in a single stroke.
"Useless."
Ever Kire said.
"Nope."
And then—out of nowhere—
Lethe came sprinting in from behind, dropped flat, and pressed her palm to the ground.
"Spending the earth's divinity down to nothing in one flash was plenty."
Wuung!
In that instant, Lethe's vast divinity seeped into the very earth Ever Kire claimed as her own.
"What are you planning?"
"For just a little while, I'm turning this patch of the planet into my 'star,' see."
She pointed her fingertip skyward. "What d'you think you need to drop a star?"
The true Authority of the Saintess of the Stars.
It was this.
Gravity Field
Gravity.
Ever Kire's body drifted upward, weightless, her feet peeling away from the ground and soaring into the air. The instant her feet left the earth, the barrier vanished entirely.
And—
Tat!
Simon, lifted skyward with her, was already closing in, greatsword raised high overhead.
"Power you stole for a second—"
'Ah!'
Simon's greatsword came down.
"won't beat the two of us!"
Jjeeeeeeeeeeok!
The Greatsword of Ruin carved straight down through Ever Kire's skull.