The Collective Will - 6
Using World-Ending in a personal duel was a taboo even He had never broken. Preparing the technique inevitably left an opening, and in that gap a single enemy strike could put you down. In other words, turning World-Ending on an individual was pure madness—possible only if you trusted your opponent not to interfere.
Anyone with even a shred of common sense would never let the idea leave their lips. And yet, for some reason—
I don't find it distasteful.
Whether it was because of Tala's precedent, or because I sensed this pointless fight would never end otherwise, I could not say.
But this much I knew with a dim certainty. Even without the precedent I would have accepted those words; even if I could have finished things the ordinary way, I would still have nodded. Reason screamed that it made no sense, yet instinct whispered that it was right.
It's perfect for crowning the end.
To end this tiresome cursed bond, for a defeated man who could not die alone to bring it all to a close—it was more than he deserved. Whatever end he proposed would be more splendid than any other.
To finish everything with His technique, at the very place where He had fallen. Just imagining it brought a laugh unbidden. Did it not mean I could finally cast off every last regret and lingering attachment?
"Very well. Let's do it."
So I answered him. If, as three years ago, this too ended without a conclusion, I would have bitten through my own tongue in shame. At least that catastrophe could be avoided now.
At my reply he nodded. Strange. As if he had believed I would of course accept. Who in their right mind would agree to such insanity and show that kind of faith?
Regrettably I had become one of those madmen—but it no longer mattered. From the moment I raised the banner against the empire at His side, I had lived by discarding common sense and reason.
"Tala would be delighted if he saw you."
"That bastard would be delighted no matter who he saw. But he'd be happier seeing a comrade."
An undeniable truth, so I only curled the corner of my mouth. Yes—Tala would welcome me whether I went to the underworld or he did.
And if he learned the cause of death was the same World-Ending as his own, he would roll on the ground howling with laughter. Obvious.
Never been right in the head.
As I settled into stance, the sight that entered my vision nearly drew a hollow laugh. He, too, was preparing World-Ending just as I was.
In truth, if he attacked me in this moment I would fall then and there. Defenseless, with no reinforcement of any kind, a blade through the heart meant death in an instant. Even He could not have escaped that end.
Yet surprisingly—no, as expected—he abandoned the ambush and prepared the strongest strike he himself had named. This place held only the two of us; breaking his word would not have stained his honor. Even with witnesses, disposing of the enemy leader would have brought no blame from anyone.
You should have been born a little farther north.
No matter how I turned it over, he had chosen the wrong birthplace. Born a nomad, he would have been the warrior second only to Him. We would have raced the steppes together and built a nation of our own.
I gently shook my head at the sudden flood of thoughts. Clinging to impossibilities was foolish. Having finally gained the chance to shed regret and attachment, I had no wish to create new ones.
A thrust, is it?
Before I knew it he had drawn the hilt gripped in both hands back to the height of his right shoulder. Intent on ending it in a single blow, he had chosen a thrust over a slash.
Correct. For a technique used against one man, narrowing the impact range was right.
So I would match him. Since we had agreed to exchange one strike, was it not better to answer with the same attack?
I'll pour everything into it.
The instant I took my stance I detonated every scrap of mana in my body. Until now I would never have dared; the act wrecked the body. But this was the final attack. Whether my arms shattered or my organs burst, I no longer needed to care.
Besides, the madman before me was clearly going all out as well. Holding back was impossible.
I can end it.
Sensing the aura rolling off him, I was certain. When that power collided with the power I was driving, someone would die. Better both of us die than both of us live. There would be no embarrassing result such as "even World-Ending was a draw."
In that moment I felt a flicker of gratitude toward Tala. Without that pioneer, the very idea of exchanging World-Ending would have been impossible, and my end would have remained distant beyond reach.
"Karl Crassius!"
At my cry he—Karl Crassius—answered without words.
"It's been fun until now!"
With those words I drove my sword forward. Bones twisted and muscle melted, but I ignored it.
Then Karl Crassius—
—Darkness swallowed everything.
Light appeared.
I snapped my eyes open and the life-flashing-before-my-eyes got halfway uploaded before it bounced off. I must have blacked out. This time I had truly almost died.
Lying on my back, I looked up at a sky wretchedly torn open. No matter that the technique had been aimed at a person, the shock was far beyond anything a human body could contain. The blast that had raced outward had mauled the heavens once again.
If the sky looked like that, the earth needed no description. Barely lifting my head, I saw the ground itself melting away.
And it still seemed to be melting.
Worse than with Tala.
Well, in mastery of Sky Slash, Dorgon and I had always been ahead of Tala. After he died, the two of us had survived for years more.
I took several deep breaths, then planted a hand and tried to rise—
Ah.
At the familiar emptiness I pushed up with the strength of my legs and waist instead. Full-power impact had wrecked my arms as expected.
Still, this is a decent result.
Nothing remained of my right arm below the shoulder; my left hung useless, several fingers gone. Surprisingly mild for the price of an unrestricted full-power Sky Slash. And the wounds carried no permanent "unhealable" curse. As long as they could be fixed, that was enough.
The moment I was upright I started walking. Faintly—very faintly—I could feel mana that was not my own.
Of course it was so thin and precarious it was barely there. The condition was obvious.
"Huh. You can walk?"
Dorgon, sprawled in some strange place after being flung a long way, let out a hollow laugh the instant he saw me approach.
"You're one to talk looking like that."
From my side, the fact that this bastard could still speak—no, that he was still alive at all—was the real surprise.
The arms that had taken the heaviest impact were simply gone, whether severed or exploded. Below the waist nothing remained either. Looking at him, the fact that I had only lost one limb felt like a miracle.
"I overdid the sorcery. Still breathing in this state—being too good a shaman turns out to be a problem."
Staring at that grotesque wreck, Dorgon chuckled, as if complaining that excessive doping had even cheated instant death.
"Ah, don't worry. These aren't injuries that recover."
"I can see that."
It was glaringly obvious he had only avoided dying on the spot; he was stating the obvious.
"That aside, it feels hollow. That drawn-out fight ending in a single exchange. I should have done this from the start."
Dorgon muttered with half-closed eyes. Yet contrary to the word "hollow," his voice carried a strange lightness.
"Still, you were the one who brought my end, so I'm satisfied. Yes—as expected, my end could only be by Karl Crassius, by you—"
"Hey."
I cut off Dorgon just as he was slipping into private last-words mode, and dropped to sit on the ground. If this bastard was still alive, I had plenty of questions.
"What exactly were you thinking when you rose up?"
Dorgon closed his mouth and simply looked into my eyes.
"It's not as if you didn't know the empire already saw you as a threat, and you hadn't even fully united the North. More tribes chose surrender over fighting us. And with that force you decided to challenge the empire?"
I could not understand it. This bastard was neither reckless nor empty-headed. If anything he ranked among the cunning and sharp-eyed—that was precisely why he alone had survived the last war and opened a second one.
Yet such a man had led tribes that were little better than loose powder, had not even properly controlled his own ranks. Despite many ways he could have harassed the empire he used none of them, abandoned command entirely, and insisted on a one-on-one duel with me.
I could not understand it. Until now I had focused on the gains the empire could harvest from his actions and simply moved on, but if the man himself would speak his true intent, I needed to hear it.
"An embarrassing question."
After a long silence Dorgon let out a short laugh and turned his face toward the sky. It looked as if he meant to say nothing more, and I was about to press him—
"I wanted to die without a word. But since I'm still alive, I suppose I have no choice. Answering the victor's questions is the loser's duty, isn't it?"
At the offer of pure confession I closed my mouth again.
"...As one who could not die alone, I sought to bear the final responsibility."
At those words my mind went blank.
Kagan had led a hundred thousand nomads against the empire. The nomads, who for ages had been unilaterally swept away by imperial campaigns, poured out their rage without filter and sought to build a nation of their own free from imperial interference.
They failed. The hundred thousand suffered near-total annihilation; the hero and great warriors who led them all died.
And the one left alone in the wreckage was Dorgon. Amid the death of the nomads' dream and hope, the one who remained was Dorgon.
"I was confident. That if it was Him, if it was us as one, we could defeat the empire. So we meant to break them on the steppes, make a moderate peace, and raise our own nation. We had no interest in the imperial heartland."
In fact the empire had come within a hair of recognizing a nomad state. Like Dorgon's confidence, the dream had nearly come true.
"But even then we lost. And so hope vanished. Having an advantage that might appear once in all of history and still losing—what hope could remain after that? Hope turned to despair in an instant."
They say the higher you climb, the longer the fall. When that once-in-a-lifetime chance disappeared, the nomads sank into self-loathing and powerlessness. Having fielded this force and still lost, what could we possibly do? Our fate was simply to live like this and be crushed like insects by the empire—so they said.
"I wanted to stop that. We had failed to create our nation, but I could not accept my people, my race, dying without even leaving a name."
So he had once again gathered the nomads. Rather than sit still and be purged by the empire into death or wretched subjugation, he decided to drag the empire to the negotiating table.
"You know the rest without me saying it."
I nodded without meaning to. Knowing Dorgon's true intent, every puzzle piece locked into place.
Why he had forced an uprising that threatened the empire. Why, even so, he had avoided irritating the imperial army as much as possible. Why, despite claiming the title of Khan, he had never truly governed the tribes under him. Why he had simply watched the deserters leave.
To raise the ransom price, was it?
If Dorgon had never risen, the northern nomads would have continued living in scattered tribal units as they had before Kagan. Then they would have taken the full force of an empire whose eyes had turned bloodshot against any second Kagan, and they would have died in silence. In that process the nomads would have become thoroughly subjugated—or outright slaves.
But Dorgon had united them and threatened the empire. Because of that the empire reached for the card of co-optation rather than unilateral purge.
Now it made sense. It made sense, and yet...
"Was that worth courting death?"
It was too excessive, too mad a reason. An empire that had already endured the Great Subjugation War and the succession disputes was reluctant to spend any more national strength. The man who had grasped that fact and forced the empire to play the co-optation card—how could he not understand the rest?
To subjugate nomads scattered by tribe, the empire would have been thorough, but it would not have overexerted itself. The purge Dorgon feared could only have come after decades, even centuries.
For the sake of that distant future he had stood before the empire again. A man who might have lived out his natural span if he had simply hidden and kept quiet had instead chosen death with his own hands.
Clear suicide. He did not possess Kagan's martial power. Even if he had killed me here, the imperial army would have purged him eventually.
"I already told you. The responsibility of one who could not die alone."
At the answer delivered as if the question itself were absurd, I closed my mouth again.
"I promised my people a nation of our own, a world free of the empire's threat, and I failed. I bore the collective will of the North and could not live up to it."
As the doping effects began to fade, Dorgon coughed several times, blood mixed with the spit, before he managed to continue.
"He bore the will of the North and died for the North. I, who was lesser than Him, had to die crushed beneath that same will for the North."
Because from now on the people's will must no longer be the traitorous heart that followed the Heaven-Defier against the empire, but the loyalty that purged the wicked under the empire's name.
Having added that, Dorgon laughed for a long time.
As if the situation itself delighted him, he only laughed.
Crazy bastard.
Hearing that laughter, I could not help thinking so.
The man who could not die alone and so bore the responsibility alone, who had floundered in the ideal they failed to achieve together, had finally gone mad.
Only a madman could have conceived of such a plan.