Toward the Finale of the Story
Toward the Finale of the Story
Before the Saint died and the Demon King descended. The Pope sneered at the Saint who had driven a knife into his own heart.
He didn't know his place. He never appreciated that trash from an orphanage, who had coincidentally become a Saint, could bare his fangs at him.
And he sneered just as equally at that profane demon embracing the dying Saint.
Had that cursed child of ill omen not felt a happiness beyond his station? And within the Holy Kingdom, a nation that was the very symbol of sanctity, no less.
He felt refreshed.
When he thought of those eyes that had looked down on him like garbage, he even regretted not having stabbed him himself instead of forcing him to take his own life.
A vulgar pleasure blossomed within the Pope's heart. It was akin to the twisted pleasure one felt when trampling a beautiful flower that had bloomed tenaciously even in a garbage dump.
"...What are you doing, Hero?"
That was when the Pope's eyes caught sight of the Hero.
The Hero was standing still, making no preparations whatsoever. The Pope did not like the look of this.
"Grip your sword. The Demon King is not as..."
He was certain the Hero was acting this way only because he didn't truly know the Demon King. The arrogance unique to the strong, or the baseless bluster and confidence unique to hot-blooded youth.
The expectation of earning the great achievement of being the first Hero to subdue the Demon King with the Holy Sword.
The Pope thought the Hero was conceited, filled with such things. So, having seen the Demon King with his own eyes, having stood before it, as an adult who had lived long in this world, he was about to offer a word of advice to this young Hero before him.
The Pope's eye level changed.
From the height where he could see the Hero's face, suddenly only the Hero's abdomen came into his view.
"...Aaaaaaagh!"
Belatedly, the Pope realized that his legs had been cut off.
Only then, because of the exquisite delicacy of that transcendent strike, did the pain of his body being severed finally arrive.
"You son of a bitch! What have you done!"
The Pope was enraged. Why was he, an honored guest, being treated like this? Had the Emperor of the Empire failed in educating his child? Damned wretch. Did he hope to remain unscathed after treating him like this? Arrogant.
I will ruin your life from top to bottom, you insolent colt.
So thinking, the Pope began to draw up his holy power to reattach his severed legs.
However, the legs would not reattach. Looking now, he saw that not even a drop of blood was flowing from the severed cross-section. That was when the Pope realized what had cut him.
The sword of God that slays evil, the Holy Sword. He had been cut by that sword, a miracle forged by God that permitted no regeneration whatsoever.
"...As I thought, I figured you were something this could cut."
But as powerful as it was,
the Holy Sword could not cut just anything.
For it was a divine authority that existed solely to punish evil.
That is, the Sword of Judgment, the Sword of Evil, could only cut the wicked.
Because it was a sword that would stop before cutting a virtuous person.
"You are a shameless wretch. Did you truly think the Empire would embrace the likes of you? Did you think a traitor who stabs his own nation in the back could find rest on this sacred Imperial soil? Is that what you believed?"
At those words, the Pope's face twisted.
From the beginning, the Emperor had intended to discard the Pope.
A case of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs after taking the last one.
"The Father of the Empire does not take in beasts like you."
Only the Pope had thought they stood on equal footing. From the Emperor's perspective, he was a goose whose belly had been slit to extract the last golden egg. Trash with no use other than being cooked and eaten.
"...Consider yourself fortunate that I only cut your legs."
The Hero was a man who understood the greater good.
He did not kill this trash himself.
Instead, he merely cut his legs so he could not flee.
"As the Imperial Prince, I command. Gag that piece of trash. He is not conducive to concentration."
Zeke adjusted his grip on the drawn Holy Sword.
Soon, he sharpened his energy sense and corrected his stance.
He intended to go to that Demon King, who was weeping bitterly, throw the Pope at him, and hope he died caught up in the battle.
That was what he, a plunderer, considered to be the only mercy he could offer, tainted with hypocrisy.
A variable occurred at the moment Canaria's neck was broken.
It was when the clouds veiled the sun and a deep darkness settled.
The atmosphere changed in an instant.
A red warning light went off in Zeke's intuition, and he instinctively began to feel terror.
A cold sweat began to trickle down.
Faced with the king of ill omens, rising while wearing a black crown, the Hero felt a terror greater than any he would feel his entire life.
"...In the end, she has departed. Solomon."
So speaking, the Demon King rose. The moment their eyes met, those golden eyes, Zeke's instincts screamed.
"Everyone, run!"
He completely revised the plan.
Mercy or not, this was a situation demanding swift action.
However,
the Demon King's existence was on a wholly different plane, enough to render such worries from Zeke meaningless.
"...Are you this era's Cain?"
Even though he had instantly charged and swung the Holy Sword wreathed in sanctity, the Demon King casually raised a finger and blocked the blade. A void space appeared between them. A paradoxical space that could never be reached.
The Hero strove to shatter that paradox.
Sparks flew in the empty air. The Hero, the only existence capable of holding a tug-of-war with the Demon King, was intent on giving his all to cross that space and touch this sword to that being's neck.
"Give up. Even Cain could not cut through this space alone."
They were in different weight classes. That was the most fitting description.
How could human standards apply to a calamity-like being? For it was impossible for a human to completely cut through a storm, to still the shaking earth, to cease the falling torrential rain.
Reaching the Demon King before him was just as impossible.
And in this world, only one existence could make it possible.
"Without the Saint, the Hero alone cannot kill the Demon King."
It was the Demon King's sneer. And Zeke felt that sneer keenly. For even while he exerted all his power, that Demon King was leisurely surpassing his full strength with a single finger.
"...That aside, you lack the eyes to see your surroundings."
At those words, Zeke looked around. A void space stretched out, containing nothing but the Saint's corpse. Before the question 'Since when?' could surface, Zeke widened the distance. It was a judgment that drawing any closer would be disastrous.
It was the correct answer.
"Still, you have some intuition."
He could see the ground where the Demon King stood gradually rotting away. Simultaneously, he saw enormous wings forming behind his back. Those ominous hands, laden with ill omens, began to sprout around the Demon King.
If he didn't make the optimal judgment, he would die. Having judged thus, Zeke racked his brain and came to a quick decision. The verdict his mind reached was to grab the Saint's corpse and flee.
He focused his muscles on his legs. Then, like drawing a bowstring, he launched himself backward to retrieve the Saint's corpse.
'His judgment, at least, is better than that ruffian Cain's.'
The Demon King watched Zeke with interest.
As his body's synchronization was not yet complete, he could not follow Zeke's speed. For it was a weak body, unadapted to a battlefield that moved and changed in increments of 0.01 seconds.
'A pity.'
If only the Saint were here, it would have been a reasonably good fight.
So thinking, the Demon King reached his hand toward the direction of Rosaria's corpse. Since he knew what was being targeted, timing that moment was easy.
For just a split second, he saw the snow on the floor be kicked up into the air. No matter how arrow-swift one passed, if the path was known, some degree of countermeasure was possible.
In a battle of numbers fought in 0.01-second increments, the victor was the Demon King.
"Hello?"
A transparent arm snatched up Zeke and the Saint's corpse simultaneously.
"It was a good, but bad judgment."
For sometimes, even if it was the correct answer, there were situations where choosing it was not an option. Grappling for a second correct answer, a third option, was a necessary skill in battles between those who had reached transcendence and beyond.
Zeke's defeat was not solely because he was weak.
It was merely that arrogant nature of trying to save everything.
It was merely a tragedy wrought by goodness. For sometimes, one could only reach the correct answer by abandoning a comrade, by setting down the gold.
"Checkmate, is it?"
Zeke groaned, "Hgh—." The armor draped in sanctity visibly rusted and rotted away. In contrast, Rosaria's corpse, despite having no such armor, did not decay.
That was precisely the reason the Saint was necessary in battle against the Demon King.
That was because a betrayer was, in the end, a defeated dog. If that existence had been stronger than the Main God, it would have become the second Main God, not been branded with the epithet of betrayer, the Demon King.
Because the Demon King's divine authority, which rotted all things and made his arrogant absurdity into reality, could never overcome the Saint's authority.
The proof was this very situation, where even the residual authority remaining in her body could not be overcome, and thus even her dead corpse could not be rotted.
"Think of it as being born in the wrong era."
The Demon King brutally tightened his grip. At the same time, Zeke's armor shattered and began piercing his internal organs. It was then, as he groaned in pain and spat blood from his mouth.
With a sensation of Kung—, the Demon King's knees buckled.
"...Solomon?"
A divine authority manifested in that spot.
It was a shackle Rosaria had placed just before dying. Her final gift, prepared in case Canaria's body was stolen after her own death.
The chains bound the Demon King's body. Sanctity began to erase the darkness and burn it away. The Demon King gritted his teeth and began resisting, trying to break free from the Main God's authority.
Naturally, the grip crushing Zeke weakened.
Simultaneously, Zeke tore through the weakened shadow with the Holy Sword he held, and began to struggle to escape the Demon King's Domain with the Saint's corpse.
"As expected... you're the best."
The Demon King smiled a twisted smile under that pressure. Flushed even, he expressed his reverence to the only being who could fill his void, feeling a sense of ecstasy at this entire reality.
A clear, ringing laugh, "Hahahah!" from the Demon King began to echo throughout the dark domain.
"As expected, in any era, you are the best, Solomon!"
The restraints grew increasingly severe. The massive binding, forged by burning an entire life, held a different weight. A pressure as crushing as a mountain bore down on the Demon King's entire body.
"Good... truly, good!"
It was as if a thirst was being quenched.
For this pain, this helplessness, the things he felt from this fear and pressure, all approached him as proof that he was a living being. The Demon King, having regained this brief exhilaration, began to laugh madly and enjoy his restraints.
At the sight, Zeke hesitated for a moment. Perhaps this was the only chance to kill that being. In that brief moment of hesitation, the Demon King opened his mouth.
"You'd best not entertain any foolish thoughts."
Do not disturb my amusement.
The Demon King sneered as he spoke, and Zeke could only retreat in regret. He, too, had roughly gauged that being's caliber by clashing directly—no, by failing even to land a touch.
It was not a being he could cut down alone. He judged that he had to go outside, alert the world to the gravity of the situation, and gather the mightiest from across the world if they were to stand against that being.
He gripped the Holy Sword again.
Presently, he swung that sword, clad in golden holiness, with all his might.
Because the final Binding Rosaria had cast had weakened the Demon King, Zeke was miraculously able to escape the Demon King's Domain.
But what unfolded before his eyes was not hope.
It was only another despair.
"...What is this."
There were no people. Where they had stood stood only massive pillars of salt, and the snowfield, which should have been white, was stained red.
A red snowfield soaked in blood, where thousands of salt pillars stood.
Realizing that just moments ago, those had been human beings, Zeke suppressed the reflexive retching his body produced in response to the bilge-like emotion rising instinctively.
But since one cannot dam a river with bare hands,
Zeke vomited stomach acid mixed with blood.
Could any human witness that catastrophe before their eyes and not crumble? No human could remain composed before the fear of gazing upon the unknown, experienced in the presence of a transcendent being.
The Hero, too, was merely human.
A human who knelt before the irresistible.
He had only been lucky not to become a pillar of salt. He had survived only because he was born with the fate of a hero and because the Saint's remains were beside him.
He could not deny the fact that he was no different from them.
"...Is there no one left?"
The brain's self-defense mechanism kicked in under excessive shock.
Firing off that subjunctive "what if" repeatedly, the happiness circuit in Zeke's mind began to spin as if ablaze. Eventually, he posited an absurd assumption: perhaps they all managed to run away?
Because if he didn't think that way, he wouldn't be able to stand up again.
Thanks to that, Zeke managed to lift his wretched body to its feet by the power of self-deception's internal narcotic. Clutching the Saint's remains he had retrieved, he staggered forward, confirming his own state.
He was pitiful. The image of an imperial prince was nowhere to be found. He looked no different from a straggler who, unable to die on the battlefield, hid among the corpse fields, clung to life for a month, and finally escaped when he saw light.
Yet the Demon King's laughter continued to blanket the sky.
It was the sound that called Zeke back to reality. The sound that became the medium stirring the fear blooming in his heart. Yet Zeke continued to flee from it. He changed his thoughts, deceived himself.
He denied reality and surrendered his body to Fantasy.
Yes, this was a nightmare.
Everything he was seeing,
it was a dream he was having back in the Empire.
The blood-red snowfield, the salt pillars filling it utterly.
And the Demon King who had been trying to kill him until just moments ago.
All of it was a nightmare.
Yes, when he closed his eyes and opened them again, everything would have changed.
He would wake up in a warm bed.
Then he would rinse the sleep away with cold water,
and go to the training grounds as he always did.
There, he would swing the Holy Sword and realize he was the Hero...
"...What are you doing."
He knew the truth.
No matter how many times he closed and opened his eyes,
this sight would not change.
And, regrettably, he was the Hero.
The Hero who took up the Holy Sword to punish evil.
"...It was different when I cut down the Pope."
When he had cut off the villain's legs, he had been the Hero then.
His actions were filled with conviction, he was righteous in all of it.
And he had been basely intoxicated by the feeling of cutting down evil.
But what of him now?
Even as he fled from that pure, colossal evil which was incomparable to the Pope, he still thought of himself as the Hero.
"...You disgusting bastard."
Crunch. Zeke's teeth ground together.
At the same time, he saw the dead Saint's remains.
They were the remains of a sublime one. Before his eyes lay the portrait of a martyr who had given her life for love, who had plunged the cold blade of death into her own heart while thinking of the world that would come after.
She was a being noble in life and in death.
And Zeke looked back upon himself.
Was he noble?
No, he was merely clinging to life in a wretched manner.
Did he have the resolve to burn his life away for his mission?
If he had, he would have burned this life then.
"...I'm unqualified."
Before being a Hero, as a human being.
Zeke gave himself a failing grade.
Then, without hesitation, he drew the dagger at his waist.
Presently, by the etiquette of the Empire, he cut his ring finger and swore an oath.
That he would no longer flee from evil.
Ignoring his trembling legs, he turned his body around.
The Hero, now ascended one step higher, headed toward the Demon King once more.
Advancing neither fast nor slow, he moved his wretched body through the shadows he himself had punctured.
He readjusted his grip on the Holy Sword.
He finished his preparations to face evil.
The moment he finished steeling his resolve and entered that place—
"...Rosaria."
The Demon King had already vanished.
What existed there was a being with white hair and silver eyes.
Canaria stood there, having taken the Saint's power into her hands. Wreathed in the sacred Saint's Authority atop the Demon King's corrupted earth, tears streamed from her eyes, which had changed from gold to silver.
"...From now on, answer only what I ask."
Those hollow eyes, that Canaria, looked at Zeke.
"...Where is Rosaria."
A question, colder and emptier than anything.
"...And where, is that son of a bitch, the Pope."
And a question, burning with malice more fiercely than anything.
What filled the corridors of her heart, emptied by loss, was the flame of vengeance. An endless malevolence, enough to make the Demon King look laughable, smoldered in her eyes.
"...The Saint's body is outside, and the Pope is probably, at the dais in the Holy Kingdom..."
He couldn't understand. What exactly was the being before his eyes? Zeke felt a sense of wrongness his mind couldn't comprehend.
She was contradiction given form.
Repulsive, yet sacred.
Dark, yet bright,
frightening, yet benevolent—such a being.
And so, Zeke simply obeyed that being's command, blankly.
Without even time to understand the reason, he obeyed the answer.
"...Then get out of my sight."
The Saint who bore the face of the Demon King commanded the Hero.
The Hero understood nothing.
Where had that horrific Demon King disappeared to? Why did the one who was becoming the Demon King wield the Saint's Authority? ...And why was he himself obeying the being before his eyes?
But once again, before he could assign any rationale to it, Zeke's body began to move.
Instinctively, like a salmon returning to its home, Zeke neither retorted nor resisted the strange being before him, but simply returned to the Empire.
The moment he vanished, Canaria too came outside.
*
"...Why, did you make that choice."
Canaria let out a sorrowful sigh. Even as her breath met the cold winter air, no steam rose. With blank eyes and an empty face, she began to walk barefoot across the red snowfield.
At the same time, the snowfield began to return to white.
"And why... did you tell me to live happily, words like that."
The being who wanted to die but was unable to began to move her heavy steps toward the body of the one who had become her reason. Upon the snowfield that had been dyed red, only one set of footprints remained white.
"...Please, at least tell me how."
Before she knew it, Canaria had reached her. She knelt before Rosaria's body, which lay smiling in death, and asked her the way.
How to live,
how to be happy in a world without Rosaria.
Because Canaria could not possibly know.
Standing before the corpse of her lover, who had departed leaving an unsolvable conundrum, she had nothing left to do but keep asking for the answer.
"...Rosaria."
Those tears touched the Saint's eyes.
Presently they traced the lines of her face, as though weeping with her in that endless sorrow.
"......I will make my own answer, even if I have to force it."
For that was the very nature of the Demon King.
To deny the rules set by the Chief God and carve one's own exception into this world. To ignobly ignore an allotted fate and disadvantageous laws, and write one's own second answer over top of them.
Canaria now intended to desecrate the laws of this world.
"...I love you. I loved you, and I will love you. Only you."
Canaria lifted Rosaria's hand.
Then, she pressed her lips to her ring finger.
It was a cold hand.
A hand that had grown terribly cold, unlike that time.
And then, just like that time,
she bit down on that finger, engraving their mark upon each other.
"...I will make you happy, for all your life."
It was a tragic proposal that would never reach her.
"...Because if I don't, I can't keep my word to Rosaria. In a world without Rosaria, in a world where you aren't happy, I am not someone who can shamelessly pursue happiness and live."
Canaria began to use her Divine Power. The sun-like Saint's Authority that Rosaria had passed on to her as she died. She bestowed that warmth, the very thing that had allowed her to live, upon that body which had gone cold.
The knife wound piercing her heart, the dried stains of flowing blood.
And that skin which had lost its color, that body which had ceased to function.
It was a miracle of God that mended everything.
Even so, Rosaria did not wake.
"...Even if it takes sacrificing the world, I will bring you back."
A declaration that she would achieve the miracle of resurrection.
The moment she finished, Canaria, cradling Rosaria's body like a Pietà sculpture, continued to walk across the blood-dyed snowfield.
To kill the one who had not yet become a pillar of salt,
the root of all these calamities.
Canaria, who had become something beyond Saint and Demon King, headed for the Holy Kingdom.
Toward the finale of this tale that had become a tragedy, at the place that was both the beginning and the end of all happiness.
...That day, too, was a winter of falling snow.