The One Who Is Nothing
Encouragement.
It is the act of stirring another's strength so they might rise to their best. Yet in all the years he had lived, that Bastard God had never once offered him a word of cheer.
No — far from encouragement, there had not been so much as a single mention. It was as if the god had never even known he existed. While he flailed and drowned in a bottomless swamp of consciousness, the god had always looked away, as though laughing at him from a distance.
And yet.
Now, of all times…
…Only after he had died.
The god had summoned his soul — and only then begun to cheer for him.
Why?
When he had longed for it so desperately, not a single word had come. He had upheld the god's will, forged his realm of mastery, and helped elevate the Knight King's renown — and still that god had denied his existence to the very end.
And now it cheered for him?
Could it be that it simply wanted Randolph destroyed?
Randolph…
Wilhelm lifted his head and looked at him. A body, like his own, puppeteered by that Bastard God. The soul layered over it was surely the body's true master. Yet Wilhelm saw the wrongness in that soul at once.
Evil.
That soul had not been stained by evil. It had simply been born as evil. It had been evil from the beginning, and so it remained evil still.
But that was strange. Humans are never born as evil. If one had been —
"You are a half-measure."
— then that one would be incomplete. Not a proper human at all.
"…I am a half-measure?"
The moment the words reached him, Randolph's face twisted. He could not accept it. Though he had been defeated on God's Island and sealed within the Gate of Truth —
"I am the complete one. The sole and absolute master of this body!"
— he had merely reclaimed what was rightfully his. And this time, he would become whole. One defeat was enough. He would never be locked behind the Gate of Truth again. That experience had been so hideous it still made his skin crawl.
I will never go back. Never!
The memory rose, and Randolph shuddered once. But a nightmare, once past, was only a nightmare. Moreover, the ordeal of entering the Gate of Truth and emerging from it had made him more complete still. Only now did he feel truly upright.
He looked at Wilhelm — at the fool who had dared call him a half-measure. An ignorant, blind creature who could neither see, nor feel, nor think.
And above all —
"You… ah."
Randolph smiled. Was it an aftereffect of passing through the Gate of Truth? He had succeeded in seeing through Wilhelm completely. And the true form that appeared was this:
"Aren't you the half-measure?"
Who was calling whom incomplete? Hollow eyes. Skeletal hands and feet. A ruined child, locked in a cave, howling like a broken thing. Randolph clicked his tongue.
"Body, name, honor, even memory — not a single one of them is yours, is it?"
Nothing belonged to him. Nothing ever had. Could something like that even be said to exist?
"You are nothing."
"Ah."
Wilhelm nodded — so readily it almost seemed he had been moved.
"Yes. I am nothing. A half-measure."
As if being nothing were preferable to being an awkward half. And only then did Randolph understand the unease that had been gnawing at him.
"…It seems you and I are simply not compatible."
The man standing before him. He and that man were natural enemies.
The conversation was over. All that remained —
Shiiing!
— was a life-and-death duel between the one who was nothing and the half-measure.
Everyone held their breath.
"…"
"…"
They simply stared, fixed on the screen replaying before their eyes. Not a single Awakener could so much as open their mouth. Wilhelm's ascent of the tower had been pure shock.
He never gave up. He never fell. No matter what hardship came, no matter what storm raged against him — he simply walked forward in silence.
He was stronger than any of them had imagined. Upright. Heavy. Soft. A being more worthy of the title Knight King than anyone alive. The strongest man Raiga had ever acknowledged!
He's strong…
Is that what it takes to become strong?
Just watching sent a tremor through them; their hearts pounded. Before a strength they had never experienced, never even witnessed. And yet that overwhelming power had its reasons. If the same situation had been given to them — could they have climbed that tower? Could they have cast aside every wound of body and heart and charged forward like a maddened bull?
I couldn't.
Impossible.
It could not be done. Knowing was not the same as doing. And still, in every heart watching Wilhelm's challenge, a small spark caught fire — the spark of wanting to grow stronger. The thought that they must grow stronger. The hunger to walk the world beside him, to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
But the climax had not yet arrived.
At last — the thirtieth floor. The moment Wilhelm reached the summit of the Tower of the War God —
"That's…"
"Randolph!"
— Randolph, the Eternal God, appeared. The supreme powerhouse who had swept the Hall of Fame from the moment of his debut and claimed first place outright. The very architect of the chaos now gripping the Tower of the War God — and at the same time…
…that man was Phantom himself.
But unlike Randolph, Wilhelm's condition was catastrophic. Unyielding will had carried him to the thirtieth floor, yet the wounds accumulated along the way were almost too terrible to look at. Not a single part of him was whole. It would not have been strange if he died on the spot. An ordinary person would already have died a hundred times over.
"…Is this as far as he goes?"
"No!"
"…Wilhelm!"
"Wilhelm!"
They cried out at the top of their lungs. Without realizing it, they had become one with him. Without even registering that they were shouting, they howled his name.
Did that encouragement reach him?
Bastard God has used a Broken Fragment of the Golden Rule (20,000h) to cheer for Wilhelm.
Someone had poured a full twenty thousand hours' worth of fragments into cheering for Wilhelm. Twenty thousand hours. Until now, the combined fragments of countless Awakeners had barely scraped two thousand. And here was ten times that amount, spent without the slightest hesitation.
"T-twenty thousand hours?"
"What?"
"Bastard God?"
"Who is that?"
"A god is cheering for Wilhelm?"
Every watcher reeled. Twenty thousand hours of fragments — a quantity no single person could possibly possess. Even a god should not have been able to. And yet it had happened.
And Wilhelm was complete.
"My Knight King…"
Saintess Seia's eyes trembled wide. It was not only the Awakeners watching Wilhelm's challenge. More than five hundred thousand souls who had climbed the tower were watching with them. And the majestic figure of the completed Wilhelm was almost identical to the Wilhelm of the Great Expedition — the last image Seia had ever seen of him.
That Wilhelm was invincible. A man who had not feared even the Demon King — a living symbol of humanity. And ironically, the Randolph standing opposite him was like the Demon King of that era. An endlessly terrifying, dread-soaked presence.
And then —
"Ah…!"
— the two beings collided.
I think.
Therefore, I am.
Even if that existence is "nothing" — Wilhelm had clearly existed, and he existed still. Here. Now.
"Not bad, Wilhelm."
Shaaaaaaaaang!
…as he swung his sword.
With every clash of blade on blade, the vibration shook even the soul. Randolph's attacks were a force that dismantled domains themselves — shattering mystery, shattering existence. He was a destroyer. A being who truly lived up to the name.
"Not even on God's Island has anyone excited me like this!"
Randolph, too, was astonished. The Lords of the Abyss and the Primal beings he had faced on God's Island had all been strong. But none of them had satisfied him. Each had been missing a screw — incomplete in some essential way.
The Whale of the Celestial Axis, the Unborn Existence, and the Sunken Emperor had at least been worth fighting. The Sunken Emperor, in particular, had been the most entertaining of them all — using those tiny, insect-like things to threaten even one who had reached the truth. And the Unborn Existence? He had been genuinely surprised. He would never again fight something so unbalanced. The Whale of the Celestial Axis had shown little will to fight, so the bout itself had been dull — but her power, at least, he had been forced to acknowledge.
Everything else had fallen short of expectation.
But this one — Wilhelm?
For a nothing, he surpasses them all.
Wilhelm was the defective product. A "nobody" from whom everything had been stripped. And yet he was exciting Randolph more than any of them.
Why?
Perfection.
It was the sword. Wilhelm had nothing but the sword. And so his blade was without flaw. Wilhelm's sword came close to the ideal Randolph himself desired. It carried absolute, unblemished justice. And so he coveted it.
But something was strange.
A swordsmanship this complete — and of a kind I have never seen.
The Gate of Truth. Within it, every finished product exists. A technique of this completeness ought to have been there — yet even inside the Gate, Randolph had never seen Wilhelm's swordsmanship.
Moreover, this is less a sword art than… some kind of phenomenon.
Flawless and complete — yet it was not swordsmanship. It was something wearing the mask of swordsmanship. Something was contained within the technique itself. But was that even possible? For a technique called swordsmanship to hold something else inside it? If it had been something ordinary, he would not have been so astonished.
Clang! Claaang!
The more their blades met, the more that thought hardened into certainty.
…Am I being pushed back?
…Because, little by little, he was. He could not believe it. It was impossible. From God's Island onward, he had never had a true rival. He was the complete being, worthy of the word strongest. And yet he was being driven back — by the sword Wilhelm swung. By that swordsmanship.
I am being overpowered by the swordsmanship itself. By something that transcends even my existence!
This was some great stature that had met Wilhelm and sublimated into pure swordsmanship. But a stature that great should also have been contained within the Gate of Truth. The moment he saw it, he should have recognized it. And yet he did not know. No matter how many times he looked, he could not understand. Fresh from the Gate of Truth, he ought to have known everything.
Of course — there was one exceptional case. If it was something he could not know, something that did not exist there —
In that instant, Randolph's eyes began to shake violently.
"From whom… did you learn that swordsmanship?"
…Because somehow, he thought he already knew. That was not a swordsmanship Wilhelm had created. It could not be. No matter how endlessly a nobody polished the blade, he could never reach a sword like this.
"Where? How? Did you meet him?"
It was impossible. It should never have happened. He had been wrong. If his present suspicion was correct — then this man, Wilhelm, was not a nobody at all.
And then Wilhelm slowly opened his mouth.
"In Nabelung Forest."
…There, he said, he had met him.
In the month he had been trapped in Nabelung Forest. In the days when he had swung his sword for no reason but survival. In the days when he had thrashed and struggled to understand himself —
The one who, long ago, had threatened the Heavenly Realm — and so had been made into nothing.
The one who was truly nothing.
…He had met him there.