Chapter 159 - Bombshell Declarations
"...Ah."
Isolet, seated at the head of the table with a devastated expression, slowly rose to her feet.
"Girls... everyone."
She tried to share what she had just witnessed with the girls around her, but...
""..........""
She fell silent upon seeing the girls' faces twisted in an anguish too profound for words.
No questions were needed; it was clear they had all recalled similar memories.
"Ugh..."
In that tense atmosphere, Isolet finally stood, her body trembling uncontrollably.
- Swish...
She began to take slow steps forward.
"C-Commander! What in the world happened...?"
"Is the battle over? What does any of this mean...?"
"...Out of my way."
She shoved aside the messengers blocking the entrance.
"...Ah?"
As she stepped out, she paused and glanced back.
Her gaze fell on four girls who had risen from their seats.
- Swish
Isolet emerged from the tent alongside them.
"Frey..."
Murmuring in a dazed tone, she started walking somewhere.
"We need to gather Frey..."
After walking for some time, she arrived where Aria had collapsed in exhausted tears, Perloché lay felled by some unknown force, and Abraham slumbered under the influence of drugs.
- Swish, swish...
With hollow eyes, she began gathering the sparkling dust on the ground.
- Swiiiish...
The four girls behind her joined in, their faces equally vacant.
They scraped together traces of Frey for a while.
"We... we have to gather Frey... quickly..."
Seeing Isolet speak in a quivering voice, they hardened their expressions.
"Before the wind scatters it... before this last remnant he left behind vanishes... we have to gather it now!"
Even as they reacted, Isolet continued filling her scabbard with the glittering soil from the ground.
".......Ugh."
Her poker face finally cracked, and she began to sob.
It was the first tear she had shed since vowing to the heavens as a child knight that she would never cry.
"...Professor, what memory did you see?"
Serena, watching Isolet with trembling voice, posed the question.
"It was a memory of Frey from his childhood."
Isolet slowly began recounting it to Serena and the pale-faced girls.
"I clearly remembered the memory that young Frey had tampered with..."
"What... kind of memory was it?"
Serena asked, her eyes hollow.
"...What kind of memory, you ask?"
Scraping the ground until her nails were raw, Isolet looked around at the girls beside her and began her tale.
"It was the day I visited Frey's house for training as usual, only to lose a spar to the boy who challenged me."
"...You lost, Professor?"
"A complete defeat. The little brat who had been sulking after losing to me using only my left arm the day before... sent me flying in a single exchange."
Isolet's hand began to tremble as she spoke.
"I was coughing up a storm, embedded in the wall, and do you know what he said when he looked at me?"
"What... did he say?"
"He said he was scared."
"...Ah."
"Suddenly becoming a hero was scary, gaining power too immense to control was scary, and..."
Even in her deranged state, the scene vividly replayed in her mind as she continued.
"...he said it was scary that he could no longer rely on me."
Tears like chicken droppings fell onto the sparkling dust she hadn't fully gathered.
"That child was trembling in despair at the fact that he could no longer act spoiled around me or hurt me."
"Aah..."
"I don't know what happened, but I approached to comfort him anyway..."
She continued haltingly.
"...and then he tore a scroll, forced a wide smile, and left his final words."
Her bloodied hands shook as she spoke.
"No matter what happens from now on, he said he'd respect me as the second-most in the world."
A hush fell over them.
"And he truly kept that promise."
In the silence, only Isolet's choked voice spoke.
"According to Perloché, enduring eons of agony through countless regressions..."
"He remembered my teaching that the sword was meant to protect the black-haired one, not cut him down, and smiled brightly..."
Clutching the soil with bloodied hands, Isolet lamented on.
"I, who promised to take him as my most beloved disciple... broke that promise. Yet even after all that, he respected me."
Her tearful lament filled the garden, met only by echoes.
"During the academy siege, it was Frey who saved me, not Ruby. At the auction house, he rescued me from brainwashing. When students were forced into sponsorships, he covered their tuition."
"........"
"But I... I..."
Hearing the echoes, Isolet wore a fragile expression she'd never shown in life.
"...Hngh."
She bowed her head and gritted her teeth.
""........""
Silence reigned for a moment.
"...My parents turned me into a warlock, making Young Master's mother into a werewolf."
"I contributed to Frey killing that werewolf."
"I... forced him into an oath that he'd die if I didn't become emperor."
The girls, breaking the silence, began sharing their recalled memories one by one.
"...I took ninety years from Frey's lifespan."
The already somber mood hit rock bottom with Serena's dead-eyed murmur.
"Indeed."
In that dire atmosphere, Isolet...
"This sword was given to me by Frey too."
Gazed at her beloved sword, momentarily set down to fill the scabbard with his traces, her expression shifting.
"Frey is a swordsman... and to a swordsman, the sword is like a second self."
"...Yes?"
"If the sword is a second self, then the scabbard is the vessel that holds it."
Her eyes held no trace of past charisma, no battlefield valor,
"So... if we fill this scabbard with every trace Frey left behind..."
nor the tenacity that never yielded in any situation.
"...we can at least give him a proper funeral, can't we...?"
They brimmed only with tears.
"Um, everyone..."
As the girls, entranced like ghosts, pushed soil into the scabbard at Isolet's words,
"It's... about time."
""........??"
A fidgeting imperial official approached, and they tilted their heads at him with hollow eyes.
"J-Journalists and envoys from every nation are packed in. The official press conference is already hours overdue. Any more delay, and there'll be riots...!"
"...What nonsense is that?"
Isolet, still sniffling, asked coldly on behalf of the glaring girls.
"The hero party, who just finished the battle deciding the world's fate... hasn't issued an official statement. Isn't that obvious?"
The official sweated profusely in reply.
"W-We... aren't even the hero party..."
"L-Lady Ruby isn't here... Lady Perloché has lost consciousness for some reason... so the next highest are you, Lady Isolet, and Lady Clana."
Isolet flinched at "Ruby," but as the official pleaded desperately,
"...Where will my press conference be announced?"
She rose and asked.
"A-Across the entire empire. It'll be broadcast empire-wide."
"........I see."
Nodding at his words, Isolet...
"Then let's go."
Grimacing, swallowing her tears, she stood.
"But that...?"
"...Don't worry about it."
...cradling the scabbard filled with Frey's traces like a treasure.
.
.
.
.
.
.
- Click, click! Click!
"Over here! Look this way!"
"Why the several-hour delay past the scheduled time?"
"You maintained that the hero party discord rumors were baseless last time—is that truly the case...?"
As Isolet, Kania, Serena, Clana, and Irina appeared at the press conference, the room ignited.
"...Silence, please. Be quiet."
The fervor died instantly at Isolet's words, her face unnaturally grim.
"Wh-What? Did they really lose?"
"...But they don't look defeated."
"Then why do their faces look like that?"
Because they were people first, journalists and envoys second.
The outcome of a war on which their lives—and the world's—hung was impossible to ignore.
""..........""
Thus, even after silencing everyone, Isolet's wordless demeanor made the journalists tense.
"Why has the sun been shaking uneasily since earlier?!"
"Did the hero party win?!"
"What happened to Hero Ruby and Frey?!"
Isolet cleared her throat, facing those who turned tension into questions.
"I will answer."
With a sorrowful expression.
"The sun's instability requires further explanation from the Saintess, who is currently unconscious. We ask for your understanding."
She began.
"The hero party's victory or defeat is too complex to detail fully now... but one thing is certain."
Pausing briefly,
"...Frey is dead."
She dropped the first bombshell.
"What does that mean?!"
"Then what about Hero Ruby...?"
Journalists' eyes bulged, questions flying, but
"I just heard questions about Hero Ruby and Demon King Frey's whereabouts."
Isolet ignored them.
"In response, I will reveal one truth everyone must know."
She continued calmly.
- Click, click! Click!
As journalists' attention snapped to her unusual words,
"Ruby was not the hero."
Clutching her scabbard tightly, Isolet unleashed the second bombshell.
"Nor was Frey the Demon King."
The third followed before they could recover, freezing the journalists mid-shutter-click.
"Frey Raon Starlight was..."
Glancing at the pale girls behind her,
"M-Master..."
"Frey... Frey was really the hero...?"
"...Impossible."
...and the sub-heroines fielding questions.
"...the hero."
Choking back sobs, she declared to the entire empire.
"Frey Raon Starlight was the hero who protected us."
That day, the empire fell silent.