Training (2)
“I am a genius.”
The shrill cry burst out so suddenly that I let my hand slip from my mouth.
“…What?”
“I. Am. A. Genius.”
I stared at Ser as she enunciated every syllable with deliberate clarity.
Okay… and I’m supposed to do what with that?
“What does that have to do with you pouring mana into my body?”
“To be precise, it wasn’t mana, but anyway. I am a genius. And because I am a genius, there are things only I can know.”
Her unreadable violet eyes fixed on me.
“As I thought, Lady Rubia and I are alike.”
“If you’re talking about hair color… well, yes?”
Mine was silver-white.
Ser’s was a milky shade.
Same white family, more or less…
“The hair color is similar, but that isn’t all.”
The mana that had been rampaging through my body withdrew again.
“Lady Rubia, do you hate humans?”
“I do.”
“So do I.”
The corner of Ser’s mouth curved gently upward.
“A vile breed.”
“Detestable.”
“Selfish.”
“Enough to make your teeth grind.”
Ser’s eyes crinkled with amusement.
“See? We really are alike.”
The seamless flow of her words made my body flinch, but I kept my voice as even as I could.
“I don’t know. I’m hardly the only one who hates humans.”
“That is not true. Lady Rubia… you lost your family, didn’t you?”
“…And?”
“So did I.”
The carefully maintained expression on my face crumpled.
“I have no idea what the point of this conversation is. If you’re trying to get under my skin, congratulations—you’ve succeeded. But… someone like you doesn’t seem the type to do that for fun.”
I forced the rising irritation back down and continued.
“Just get to the point.”
“An incident that defies all understanding no matter how hard you think about it. An accident born from coincidence piled upon coincidence. The power that settled into your body after everything was over. And a physique that is unnaturally, absurdly hard to kill.”
“…What on earth are you—”
“I gathered the key points of what I experienced. Is it the same for you, Lady Rubia? Judging by your reaction, it is.”
Violet eyes that seemed to hold the dawn itself stared straight through me.
“I swear upon Yggdrasil. I have not investigated Lady Rubia in the slightest. What past you carry, what deeds you have done, what your recent movements have been—none of it. I looked into nothing.”
I couldn’t understand.
What the woman in front of me was saying.
Why she was saying it.
“If it unsettles you, I will speak of my own past first. To begin with, I was a genius. Raised in a family of mages… hmm, that part doesn’t seem important. At a young age I entered the Magic Tower and achieved a great many things.”
“Yes.”
“By the time I turned nineteen, the world was already calling me the Miracle Archmage and singing my praises.”
“How impressive.”
“Heh. Yes, thank you.”
Ser smiled contentedly and stretched out, then straightened up and set her coffee cup down.
“Then the Tower Master stabbed me in the back. He tried to use my exceptional talent to open a gate to the Spirit Realm. He hadn’t always been that sort of man, yet he suddenly began acting as though he had gone mad.”
An incident that defies all understanding no matter how hard you think about it.
“But here’s the irony. The magical formula the previous Tower Master had spent his entire life researching was fundamentally flawed, and the very intent to summon spirits was so arrogant that the spirits themselves flew into a rage. As a result, every single mage inside the Magic Tower was slaughtered. Starting with the Tower Master, the elders… and even my parents.”
An accident born from coincidence piled upon coincidence.
“The funny part? Once everyone was dead, the power of the spirits settled into my body—the same body that could no longer use magic.”
The power that settled into your body after everything was over.
“What do you think happened next?”
Ser’s smile deepened.
“…Exactly the same as me.”
“Indeed. As expected, I truly am a genius. No, wait—perhaps ‘detective’ would be more accurate than ‘genius.’”
Chuckling softly, Ser sank into the sofa and continued in a languid voice completely different from before.
“No matter how many times I tried to die, I could not. Truly, abnormally so. I cut out my tongue, severed my wrists, downed poison, threw myself into a fire, hanged myself, gouged out my eyes, slit open my belly and pulled out my entrails—”
A physique that is unnaturally, absurdly hard to kill.
“—and a highest-ranking light spirit would appear and heal me against my will.”
She lifted the coffee cup in front of her and tipped it to her lips.
It had gone lukewarm.
“So… the reason you’re telling me all this—no, how did you even figure out that I’m the same?”
“You seemed to despise any seat of honor with particular intensity, so I checked, just a little.”
“With that… mana-like thing earlier?”
“Yes. And sure enough, Lady Rubia, just like me, is under the protection of a being whose rank is immeasurably high.”
Smiling brightly, Ser formed a tiny water spirit in her palm.
-Kyua?
“Even if I casually murder spirits like this—”
-Kyuiiiik… Kiaaaaaaa!!!
Puhwaak—!
“—the Spirit King never punishes me. He sits on his throne and does not so much as stir. But…”
Ser glanced around, picked up a knife, and drove it hard into the same hand that had just crushed the spirit.
“When I do this, I can feel it. The Spirit King himself moving to interfere with me.”
The moment her words ended, the knife embedded in her hand vanished, and the hole it had punched through her flesh filled itself in.
Exactly the way my divine power healed me of its own accord.
Naturally. Inevitably.
“Haa…”
I kept sipping the lukewarm coffee, piecing together the unconnected sentences.
Why she had suddenly told me all this.
About Ser, who had walked the same path as me.
About that lofty being who supposedly protected us both.
By the time the coffee in the cup was nearly gone, a conclusion I could not accept—did not want to accept—had formed.
“So… what you’re saying is that the reason I—no, the reason we—became like this… wasn’t coincidence. It was inevitability?”
“Yes, exactly. That your family died, that power appeared afterward, that you endured countless incidents and still could not die—”
“—means there is a role in this world that we absolutely must fulfill.”
“Precisely.”
Nodding with a smile, Ser rose from her seat and began brewing a fresh pot of coffee.
I watched her back and sank into thought.
The role I had to fulfill.
The role of the Priestess.
To burn my body and save the world.
I knew that.
I knew it, and yet…
It wasn’t that I had become the Priestess and therefore had to do it.
From the very beginning, my existence itself had been meant for that purpose…?
That this body of mine,
from the moment it was born into this world—
or perhaps even before that—had been bound by a predetermined fate.
That I grew disillusioned with the world,
that I fled Erden because I did not want to save such a world,
that I met Noah,
that I fell in love with her,
that I came to want to protect the world she lived in and loved—
all of it, every last bit, had been decided.
“You seem quite shaken. Please drink something warm and calm yourself.”
Before I knew it, Ser had sat down on the opposite sofa and held out a cup of coffee.
“…Why are you telling me all this?”
With a soft clink, Ser set her own cup on the table and slowly opened her mouth.
“I took my time. I searched through countless tomes, ancient civilizations, every event of the Age of Chaos. In particular, I dug deeply into Lady Cartia, who stays by Lady Noah’s side.”
“…So you knew.”
“I am a genius. There is no way I would not know.”
Is this what happens when you’re praised as a genius from childhood after entering the Magic Tower? Or was she always this arrogant?
My tangled thoughts cleared a little at that single brazen remark.
Then Ser, her voice now subtly softer and more at ease than before, smiled.
“Heh. You seem a bit calmer. Just now I deliberately said something I didn’t need to. I’m glad it worked. Otherwise even a genius like me would have been rather embarrassed.”
“If you’re such a genius, why don’t you guess what I was thinking?”
“You were wondering whether entering the Magic Tower at a young age turns a person this arrogant and conceited, weren’t you? I wasn’t originally like this. I simply found living this way more comfortable as time went on. And I did not say anything untrue. I am, in fact, a genius.”
“…Yes. You’re a genius. Congratulations.”
“Please do not look at me with those eyes. I am not mad.”
“No. You seem plenty mad to me.”
“Already baring your true feelings just because we’ve grown a little closer? You mustn’t do that. There are far too many humans who would dig into that and exploit it.”
“If I ever bared every last one of my true feelings, the two of us would no longer be able to remain in the same place.”
“Ah… I see. That is possible. I have no desire to die either, so I shall refrain from provoking Lady Rubia any further. Heh.”
Watching Ser sip her coffee with that leisurely smile, a dry chuckle slipped out of me.
“Fine. Still… it’s true you helped me. Thank you. I feel calmer now.”
“Yes. I shall gratefully accept the praise.”
I marveled at her endless shamelessness and tilted my own cup.
A short while later, Ser spoke in a bright, clear voice.
“Lady Rubia, you should thank me.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“From this moment on, I am going to suffer terribly. I will not die, but it will hurt enough to make me wish I would. Even so, I believe Lady Rubia needs to know this as well, so I am telling you. Therefore, thank me.”
“…What?”
What is this lunatic saying now…?
I had assumed it was more empty talk, but the look in her eyes right now… seemed quite serious, so I bowed my head to her.
“Um… yes. Thank you.”
Having finally extracted her gratitude, Ser nodded in satisfaction and opened her mouth again.
“Have you never found it strange?”
“…What?”
“The heroes who shone during the Age of Chaos all vanished, leaving only their names behind. Even the great Lady Cartia was no exception.”
“That’s… true.”
“It was not only humans. Every other race disappeared as well. The long-lived elves, the dwarves, the demonkin—all of them.”
“Wait, hold on. Disappeared…?”
“There are no corpses. There are no traces of war. Nor did a meteor fall from the far side of the sky. They simply… all… vanished.”
A light smile still hung on Ser’s face.
“Is that not strange?”
“It is strange. Definitely…”
“I thought about the reason.”
Her milky hair swayed gently.
“Why every other powerful race had to disappear. Why the soul of the celebrated Cartia had to remain. Why I had to be connected to the Spirit Realm. Why Lady Rubia had to become the Priestess.”
Violet eyes locked onto mine.
“Regarding all of that, I reached this conclusion: this world runs on human lives as its fuel.”
Ser’s face grew pale.
“The one who brought the Age of Chaos to an end was the human Cartia. Therefore the strongest race—humanity—was chosen. As fuel.”
Blood burst from her eyes.
“The stronger, the more outstanding, the higher the rank, the better the fuel. But… the races that lived through the Age of Chaos were not only humans. There were impurities mixed in.”
From her nose.
“And so the gods overturned that era once. To filter out the impurities and leave only pure fuel.”
From her mouth.
“The End.”
From her ears.
“They overturned the world with the End. And what was created afterward is the world we live in now.”
Her skin split open.
“A completed world.”
Her bones warped.
“The False Paradise.”
Yet still—
“Erden.”
—she smiled as she spoke.
“The tree that connects the world to me—Yggdrasil—is the gate that leads to Erden.”
Ser’s body began to collapse.
“And Lady Rubia… is the key that opens that gate. That is what I believe.”
[Even so, I want to believe that even in an age like this, it still exists.]
Just before her falling body touched the floor—
[Carrying the hope of humanity that has continued since the Age of Chaos.]
—her voice, riding the wind, delivered one final message.
[One who will stand against the gods, achieve God-Slaying, and open a new era.]