The Boy Who Beheaded a Living God
The boy had done it.
He had cut off the neck of a living god.
Faded, matted hair fluttered uselessly in the air, and a moment later an enormous mass plummeted into the sea.
Simon floated in the sky on the power of the Holy Saintly Robe, watching the scene with a calm, distant gaze.
All that remained now was the goddess's upper body, standing frozen in place with the raw, red cross-section of her severed neck on display.
[Ha...!]
Ever Kire seized the skin of her own face with both hands.
[Kikikikikikikik! Kikikik! Heugh, ha! Hahahahahahaha!]
She threw her head all the way back in raving, deranged laughter. She was, as ever, completely insane. Simon's voice turned razor-sharp.
"Your god is dead. You're all that's left."
[My god, dead?]
Ever Kire's neck creaked as she glared at Simon.
[Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible!]
She spread both arms wide.
[You should have realized it when you cut off my neck just now! A god is not a living thing! Do not presume to define a god by the common sense of mere mortals!]
Radiance erupted from Ever Kire's body once more. Blood streamed in rivulets from her eyes, her nose, her mouth.
[O my god!]
She was making a wish — trying to bring her god back to life.
He couldn't allow that. Simon dropped into a low stance, and the instant he was about to launch himself —
Swhaaaack!
Space warped, and a colossal goddess's hand came flying at him from an angle he couldn't see. Relying on animal instinct, he thrust the scythe in his grip forward to block the blow — but there was nothing he could do about the force pushing through it.
'Ghhk—!'
In that instant, Simon twisted his trajectory toward Roke Island.
Space seemed to stretch on endlessly — and only when both his feet finally touched the ground did he come to a stop.
Kugugugugugu!
His legs had carved a long scar into the earth.
The wheat around him rose up as if it were alive, bracing Simon's back.
'Kgh — just how far did I get flung?'
Simon wiped cold sweat and looked ahead.
Far in the distance, the headless goddess was swaying, lurching into motion. Her two arms moved slowly, and then she touched the place where her neck had been cut away.
Pap. Top.
The frantic movements of those hands were brimming with bewilderment — the disorientation of a thing that should be there, but wasn't. And then.
────────────!
The headless goddess wailed.
It was a bizarre timbre, as though air were blasting straight out of the stump of her neck without passing through vocal cords or mouth. White lightning crashed down, and waves churned violently.
[O grant me but a moment, I beg of you! O my goddess!]
Ever Kire descended and burrowed herself into the goddess's hollow, pierced neck.
[I, who were once a part of you, shall return now into your embrace!]
Simon bit his lip.
Every fiber of him wanted to fly straight back at the goddess — but.
'...This is bad.'
A searing, burning agony flooded through him. It felt as though every muscle in his body were twisting and tearing.
The Purification Essence still lingering in Simon's body was colliding with the power of the Essence of Harvest, and the backlash had begun.
"Kghk!"
Thin, watery blood trickled from his mouth. This was dangerous. At any moment it felt as though his divinity would go berserk and his body would burst apart.
"Simon!"
Lethe rushed over when she saw his condition.
"What's wrong with you!"
Simon shouted, sweat dripping off him in streams.
"Bring the Saintess of the Harvest here! Now!"
"What?"
"Hurry! Please!"
Lethe asked no further questions. She spread her authority, sensed for divinity, and had Ran bring the Saintess of the Harvest over. The woman was still unconscious.
"Are you all right? What's gotten into you all of a sudden!"
Lethe sat beside him in flustered alarm. Simon stared blankly, deep in thought.
'How do I send the Essence of Harvest back?'
There was no time to reproduce the Essence-removal surgery Anna had undergone — and he couldn't remember the details of it anyway.
But.
'If I could receive the Essence... then giving it back should be...!'
Simon slowly reached out and took the Saintess of the Harvest's hand.
And then.
'!'
The world bleached white.
He saw it — the Essence of Harvest he'd seen before, smiling at him.
[Oh, thank you! You kept your promise, didn't you?]
The pain and dizziness were draining away fast.
The deal with the Essence of Harvest: he would receive her power, fight the battle — and then return her to the Saintess of the Harvest. With the backlash raging, Simon couldn't have held onto the Essence's power any longer even if he'd wanted to, so there had been no reason to refuse.
Because if he'd kept the Essence, he would have died.
[Oh, and one more thing.]
She pointed behind him. Simon turned to look.
Two white thrones.
One was sculpted from flame; the other, from grass and trees.
[Now that I've come into your body, I know — the fact that you bear the qualification was no accident.]
"...Qualification."
[That's right. If you go on collecting the remaining seats, one by one. And if all seven thrones gather beneath your feet—]
His vision was growing dim, but he could still see the corners of her mouth curving upward.
[I can't wait to see what happens. O first — and only — Holy Son.]
"Hahk!"
Simon's eyes snapped open.
At some point, his white hair had returned to its normal blue, and his eyes were back to their original color as well.
He was stilling his chest, letting out rough breaths, when Lethe's face appeared right in front of him. She had flinched back in alarm, clutching his hand, shoulders hunched.
"You, you startled me half to death!"
"...?"
It wasn't like her to get so flustered — and his cheek stung. Simon touched his cheek, eyes narrowing.
"Did you hit me?"
Her face flared red.
"Wh-what was I supposed to do! You just lay there with your eyes closed and wouldn't wake up!"
So a Saintess's idea of treatment was to smack her patient around.
Simon let out a small laugh and pushed himself up. Whether it was the Essence of Harvest having left his body, he felt lighter all over.
"Where's Ever Kire?"
"Over there."
Lethe stretched out a hand and pointed at the sea. The beheaded goddess was raising divinity from every inch of her body.
"The fusion between Ever Kire and the goddess is almost complete. She'll attack soon."
Kugugugugugugugugu!
As if to prove her words, the goddess seized Lethe's own authority.
Her body transformed into starlight and shot into the sky — then, at the speed of light, crashed down into the very heart of Roke Island.
KKWAAAAAAAANG!
Lethe hastily threw up a barrier of divinity. All of Roke Island shuddered, cracking and splitting apart, whole sections of it tumbling away into the sea.
[Aaaah—]
Ever Kire's voice rang out.
The goddess's upper half had become one with the bedrock of Roke Island. Huge as it had been before, it was still staggering to behold. Her torso, towering higher than any mountain, was taller than every peak on Roke Island combined.
And her arms, grotesquely elongated — when she spread them, they could reach from one end of Roke Island to the other.
[O you who wield the same omnipotent power as I!]
And upon the beheaded goddess's chest, a new face took form — the features of Ever Kire.
[Cutting down the goddess with the power of divinity was your mistake!]
The goddess raised both arms toward the sky, and divinity rippled in her palms.
That divinity condensed and solidified, taking on the shape of the enormous scythe Simon had used to behead her.
[Hahahaha! This power! THIS is the power! With this power alone, the world will be mine!]
The scythe swelled larger and larger as Ever Kire poured out her mad laughter.
[From this day forth, every human born upon the Continent shall serve and worship the beheaded god for all eternity!]
Across Roke Island, the statues began to change. Pillars and monuments warped into the image of the beheaded goddess raising her scythes. Her standards were being imposed upon the world itself.
Watching the goddess slowly assemble her scythe, Lethe's face went hollow and her mouth fell open.
"What do we do now..."
"No need to worry."
Simon rose to his feet with utter confidence.
[Hahahahahaha! Hm?]
Ever Kire noticed the anomaly too. The scythe's shape refused to settle, shifting and shifting again.
Gudeudeuk!
Kudeuk!
As if some fatal error had occurred, the scythe's form kept twisting endlessly from one shape to another.
[Kghk!]
The goddess's vast ocean of divinity was being sucked wholesale into the scythe.
And even that wasn't enough. The goddess's wrist began to fuse with the scythe itself, and now it was trying to swallow her entire body as well.
[Wh-why is this happening!]
Ever Kire made a wish.
She wished for the scythe to be completed — to become Simon's Scythe of Final Death, exactly, perfectly, down to the last detail.
But that was, without a doubt—
[AAAAAAAARGH!]
— beyond her ability.
The goddess's body was being dragged into the scythe, and the scythe was now growing larger than the goddess herself.
But a wish already made could not be taken back.
The wish strove endlessly to sculpt an impossible scythe into being, chasing a form it could never complete — and Ever Kire's power and the goddess's power alike were being devoured as its fuel.
The god was annihilating herself.
'...Substitution.'
Lethe stared at Simon in silence.
'What did that boy create back there? That was definitely no Saintess's technique.'
"Lethe."
"Ah — yes."
"This is our chance."
Crackle — pop—
The world around them began peeling away like strips of skin, flaking to the ground.
It was the sign of decomposition. Beyond Ever Kire's self-destruction, her special ability itself was shaking loose for some reason of its own.
Simon held out his hand.
"We have to strike now, before Ever Kire can fix this."
Lethe took his hand and stood.
"What's the plan? Your Saintess's power has drained away too, by the look of it. And my divinity won't work on her."
Simon grinned.
"I've got a way."
Soon after.
The two of them began walking toward the rampaging goddess.
Simon had returned to being a necromancer. Jet-black rose slowly in his right hand; his left, covered in the assembled bones of Pier, closed around the Greatsword of Ruin.
Lethe channeled the Saintess's authority, divinity rising in her left hand.
Tat!
Tat-tat!
The two of them broke into a run at the same moment.
The jet-black and the divinity in their respective hands swelled larger and larger.
"This is really going to work, right?"
"It'd better!"
Simon answered.
"Unless the people of the Continent want to serve a beheaded goddess, that is!"
"Unless you want Roke Island reduced to scorched earth, that is!"
The closer the goddess came, the faster the two of them ran. Ever Kire, consumed with forging the Scythe of Final Death, was paying the two of them no attention whatsoever.
Simon turned his right hand toward Lethe's left. The sphere of jet-black and the sphere of divinity rapidly inflated in size.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
The two spheres ground and crackled against each other, touching at the very edge. Together, Simon and Lethe leapt into the air.
"HAAAAAAAAH!"
With the jet-black and divinity pressed together, they hurled it. The two powers spiraled around their point of contact, spinning round and round as they flew toward the goddess.
Cheojeeok!
It wasn't over yet. Simon raised the Greatsword of Ruin in his left hand. Layered thick upon the greatsword's magic circle was his own Hemomancy circle.
The effect he'd learned in Hemomancy class was Blood Storage. The sword was saturated with his own 'SM-1' blood — one of the ingredients of Chaos.
"Going in!"
Lethe, still airborne, gathered the power of the stars and pressed it against the greatsword's hilt.
The force of gravity.
Using it as propulsion, Simon let out an enormous roar and flung the Greatsword of Ruin.
TKWAAAAAAAANG—!
The greatsword, wreathed in starlight, streaked through the air trailing a tail like a comet.
It bored precisely into the gap between the divinity and the jet-black hurled moments before.
PAJIJIJIJJIJIK!
Simon's blood blazed to life between divinity and jet-black, violet sparks spraying outward. Simon and Lethe collapsed to the ground in a heap, and Simon spat out dirt, jerking his head up.
"Come on!"
Lethe screamed after him.
"HIT HER!"
Centered on the greatsword, the violet light swelled greater and greater. Ever Kire, thrashing to tear the scythe free, only belatedly sensed the attack and twisted her body around.
[You little insect!]
She made a wish.
Stop.
In this world, any attack could have been brought to a halt with ease — but.
[?!]
It didn't work.
The power of Chaos bearing down on her was dyeing the world violet.
[What in the...!]
The Scythe of Final Death, and that violet power too — the same.
Not even the authority to create gods could stop them.
[What the hell ARE you—!]
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
The power of Chaos punched clean through the goddess — and at last, the goddess came crashing down.
'We... we did it.'
Simon sank to the ground with a smile of pure relief.
And then, at long last—
the false world began to collapse completely.
Everything Ever Kire had distorted was reverting.
The statues of the beheaded goddess turned back into pillars and architecture. The shattered fragments of the stadium crawled together of their own accord and fused, and Roke Island settled back onto the surface of the sea.
The goddess's long arms stretched toward the sky — along with the Scythe of Final Death she had never finished. Her body was dissolving.
HAAAAAAAK—!
And the moment his eyes opened—
"Ah!"
Little by little, the empty stadium — the one that existed before the distortion — began to come into view at last.