The Defense of Loholan (Finale)
I led Rubia toward the center of the village.
Fortunately, her wounds were healing little by little.
Even so, my mood showed no sign of improving.
I still couldn’t understand her.
“What were you going to do if you died?”
The coldest voice this body could manage slipped out.
“I told you. I don’t die. I… can’t die.”
No.
It wasn’t that Rubia couldn’t die.
The Rubia I had seen in the game’s settings wasn’t immortal.
If she gave up, she could die whenever she wanted.
If she abandoned everything, she could die right then and there.
The fact that she was still alive like this meant—
No matter how much she claimed to hate it, to despise it—
She still liked this world.
She still had attachments left.
“Noah…?”
“Yes.”
I was irritated with Rubia.
I hated her.
Stubborn.
Foolish.
She said she hated the world.
Said she hated people.
Said she didn’t want to save them.
She had been betrayed like that.
Betrayed again.
So why wouldn’t she give up?
Of course Rubia shouldn’t give up.
I hoped she wouldn’t.
I hoped she wouldn’t break.
But.
Even so, I wished she would give up.
I wished Rubia would value herself.
I didn’t want her to die abandoned by people, the way Father had.
A hero—
Shouldn’t die like that.
They should remain forever in people’s memories.
They shouldn’t be forgotten.
“Why… why are you angry with me?”
I split the head of a goblin loitering in front of us in half.
The one behind it, I tore open from the torso. The one beside it, I savagely severed its limbs.
“I-I’m not angry.”
The orc’s noisy bellowing grated on my ears.
I jammed my greatsword into its maw.
Again and again and again and again.
I kept stabbing until no more sound came out.
Brain matter splattered onto the hand clasped with Rubia’s.
“Ugh… Noah…!”
I wiped it roughly on my clothes.
Then pressed forward again.
Toward the center of the village.
Every time we met a magic beast—
I cut off heads, ripped open waists, tore off limbs.
I snatched up their weapons and threw them, stabbed, smashed.
My thoroughly broken mind hunted for the screams of the villagers.
Pathologically.
I spread my Qi Sensing and painted the picture inside my head.
The dead appeared.
Corpses.
Severed limbs.
Chunks of meat that no longer held any shape.
Nausea rose.
I erased them from my mind.
I searched for the living.
I painted those who could still be saved.
Ironic situations even cropped up where people I’d come to rescue mistook me—drenched in blood—for a magic beast.
As many as possible.
Everyone along the way, I saved and sent to safety.
That was how we reached the center of the village, and I spread my Qi Sensing again.
A few adventurers were still hunting magic beasts.
Had they been forced back when the formation at the gate collapsed?
Or had they stayed behind, unable to bear the guilt of running?
I didn’t know.
I gripped Rubia’s hand tighter.
“Were there adventurers who stayed until the end?”
“A f-few… not even twenty. I told them to fall back.”
“Why?”
“Because they would die. I… as you saw earlier…”
I squeezed Rubia’s hand.
Harder.
Hard enough that a moan slipped from her lips.
“Does this hurt?”
“Ugh… nngh… i-it hurts…! Why are you doing this…!”
“You feel pain just like everyone else. So why did you do that?”
Even harder.
Hard enough that her hand might break.
I clenched it.
But Rubia didn’t get angry at all.
Still in that gentle voice.
As if it weren’t my fault.
She spoke to me warmly.
“You… nngh, did the same thing. To protect me… you got hurt so badly.”
“Why would you go that far for someone like me?”
I have a reason I have to protect you.
Until I hear the answer I still haven’t found.
Until I resolve the question Father left me, you have to stay alive.
But.
You’re not the same.
“As I said before… Noah is my milestone.”
Again.
Words that dragged up the past again.
Words that made me think of Father and Mother.
She said them so casually.
My chest ached.
I loosened my grip.
Rubia’s hand carefully slipped free.
She stroked her own hand, never taking her eyes off me.
She didn’t even seem to resent me.
I swung my greatsword at an orc charging Rubia.
Its guts, blood, and flesh splattered thickly across her.
Rubia gagged and trembled.
“Ugh… N-Noah… a little gentler…”
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
I had done it on purpose.
Because it was infuriating.
Because I was… just irritated for no reason.
Because I hated the Rubia who made me like this.
I widened my Qi Sensing.
From the south, Luci and Heinzel were slowly walking this way.
Ahead of them, an adventurer who looked Gold-grade was cutting down magic beasts.
The villagers’ wails rang out.
Why had they come so late?
Save my child.
My parents.
My family.
Screams that they had died because of them.
Resentment with nowhere else to go.
It was all directed at the remaining adventurers.
Luci and Heinzel let it wash over them as if they were used to it.
But the Gold-grade adventurer couldn’t.
Little by little.
The villagers’ despair was infecting him.
“There was a Gold-grade adventurer.”
“Ah… yes. He was one of the ones who held his ground until the end…”
“Anyway, he abandoned you and ran.”
“I told him to go. He’s not at fault.”
I swung my greatsword roughly and cut down a charging magic beast.
Its entrails soaked the ground.
“Rubia.”
I hoped she wouldn’t harbor twisted feelings.
I hoped she wouldn’t warp.
I hoped she wouldn’t collapse watching the person she chased fall apart.
Even if that person died, I hoped she would think they had died like a fool.
Unlike the me of the past.
I hoped she wouldn’t live a hard life.
And.
In the end—
I hoped she would give me an answer.
“Yes…?”
So I had to tell her.
That I wasn’t sacrificing myself for people.
That I acted out of my own stubbornness.
“I have to save people.”
Rubia’s head tilted.
“It’s not a hero complex. Not a sense of justice either. I don’t want to do it either. I’m scared. But…”
How do I explain this?
What my late father and mother left behind.
Mental illness.
Obsession.
Shackles.
Despair.
Terror.
Sorrow.
Relief.
Duty.
Hope.
A mixture of all of it.
“It’s the reason for ‘my’ existence.”
This wasn’t some clean thing like a sense of justice.
It was filthy and sticky.
Caked with ash.
A tenacious self-obsession, a delusion.
“So don’t go feeling… responsibility or guilt or anything. It’s not pure desire to save these people. This is just… ah, I don’t know.”
Luci and Heinzel were approaching, waving.
“I won’t die, so stop fretting.”
I left the escorting to Heinzel and Luci.
“The person beside you. The one who said they’d protect you for life.”
I closed my eyes and spread my Qi Sensing.
“Watch carefully what kind of person they are. And—”
The entire village painted itself in my mind.
I painted the magic beasts.
Thousands of them.
The thousands those damn adventurers hadn’t even managed to kill half of.
Their bodies, their muscles, their blood vessels, the blood flowing inside.
An orc swinging its arm with the muscles of its belly and shoulder.
Luci’s movement as he cut it down.
A goblin charging with the muscles of its legs.
Heinzel smashing the goblin’s skull.
The quickened heartbeats of adventurers excited by killing magic beasts.
The movements of living things painted themselves.
I felt the premonition of every motion.
“Don’t die. Don’t even think about dying. Don’t break. Live forever.”
I charged into the magic beasts.
I crushed a goblin’s head underfoot.
I plunged into the midst of thousands of them.
I read the movements of their muscles.
I dodged with the barest minimum of motion.
And into their weakest points.
Their weak spots.
I swung my greatsword.
There was no satisfying feel of the cut.
But I cut them.
Then I charged the next magic beast.
I parried its attack and brought the blade down.
Still no satisfying feel.
I couldn’t even feel the magic beast’s heartbeat.
I wet my dry lips with my tongue and continued the motions.
The blood-soaked greatsword went berserk.
The axes the orcs swung.
The clubs.
Hands.
Arms.
Legs.
Heads.
Entrails.
All of it floated into the air and mixed together.
The villagers’ screams were buried under the magic beasts’ shrieks.
The village’s despair was covered by the magic beasts’ deaths.
The greatsword swung again.
My legs moved.
My body was thrown.
I moved before thinking.
I thought while moving.
I scattered the greatsword.
I swallowed the droplets of blood.
A goblin’s spear tip sank into my thigh.
The blade drew a crescent and crushed the goblin’s head.
An orc’s axe shattered my shoulder.
My outstretched left hand gouged out the orc’s eyeball and rummaged through its skull.
Still like that, I swung the orc around.
Goblins were swept away and flung off.
I stepped back and parried every attack.
My back touched a building’s pillar.
Nowhere to dodge.
I brought it down.
I recalled the sensation of collapsing the barrier wall.
In that brief moment, dozens of spears, swords, fists, and claws lunged at me.
Luci’s Unique Ability cut them down.
I focused on my Qi Sensing.
I focused on my senses.
I found the weak points.
I found the lines and cut.
The building collapsed.
The ground caved in.
Debris from the building fell toward me.
I painted my own movements.
In this situation—
The most efficient movements.
I followed the movements.
I followed the lines and swung my greatsword.
The cascading rubble was all cut.
Deflected. Scattered.
Magic beasts struck by the fragments burst apart.
I sucked in a breath and stamped my feet roughly.
Acrid dust tore at my lungs.
I swung the greatsword.
It reached their weak points.
Torn, cut, burst.
Everything of the magic beasts soaked the surroundings.
An elite orc’s hammer swung.
I couldn’t dodge.
I couldn’t deflect it.
Parrying was impossible.
I painted Luci’s movements in my mind.
I reproduced them with my body.
I moved my muscles exactly as those movements dictated.
I twisted the greatsword and let the hammer slide past.
Flowing water.
The hammer, swung with full force, buried itself beside me.
I stepped on the hammer, climbed the arm, and jammed the greatsword into its maw.
I kicked the hilt with my foot.
The elite orc’s head, spine and all, was ripped free.
I slammed the greatsword down as I landed.
Dozens of goblins burst apart.
My stomach churned.
I clung to a consciousness that felt ready to collapse at any moment.
Blood kept rising.
It wet my dry throat.
A crack ran through my leg bone.
It made me think of more efficient movements.
I swung the greatsword.
I killed magic beasts.
Killed them, killed them.
My mind burned.
My whole body screamed.
Thanks to that, I didn’t lose consciousness.
Gradually my Qi Sensing narrowed.
The picture grew blurry.
One more.
One more beast.
One more drop of blood.
I moved my body.
An orc’s fist slammed into me.
I rolled across the ground, spitting blood.
My ribs were shattered.
They pierced my lung.
I couldn’t breathe.
I pulled out a potion and downed it.
I forced the potion that tried to come back up, along with the blood, back down.
I gripped the greatsword.
And I tore into the hundreds of magic beasts surging like a wave.
Until the bottom was visible.
Until the wave stopped.
Until everything was settled.
My body never rested.
Toward their weak points.
I swung the greatsword.
The weak points no longer painted themselves.
Every direction was still full of magic beasts.
Then—
I just had to swing the greatsword.
I narrowed my Qi Sensing and focused on my own body.
I controlled every movement so my body could move more efficiently.
Even the slightest waste was a luxury.
I painted the most efficient path and moved.
I swung the greatsword.
Until nothing around me caught on it.
Until no more blood splattered my body.
Stubbornly, I scattered everything I had.
I could no longer feel the weight of the greatsword I was swinging.
I could no longer sense it with Qi Sensing.
I could no longer feel it with my body.
Everything was broken, shattered.
All that remained was the hilt.
Even so, I swung it.
And then—
Not a magic beast—
I touched Rubia’s embrace.
I was held.
I collapsed.
I wanted to hear Rubia’s voice.
But.
I couldn’t hear it.
Not the people’s screams either.
Not the despair, not the pain.
Not the magic beasts’ howls.
All I could hear—
Was simply, endlessly—
The sound of Rubia sobbing.
I smiled faintly.
I wiped away Rubia’s tears.
And then—
So that Luci and Heinzel could hear—
I wrung my throat that could no longer make sound, and spoke.
“I… came in first… so… buy me… a meal.”
With those words as the last, “my” consciousness went dark.