The Observer
Swish! A brilliant burst of light sliced sharply through the pitch-black tentacles. The severed limbs lost their strength and cascaded to the ground, yet from the obsidian body dozens more stalks immediately lashed out.
The silver-white knight drove forward with a powerful step. Both hands gripped her greatsword tight. The instant her upper body—pulled to its absolute limit—snapped free, an explosive trail of light detonated along the blade as it cleaved the air.
The sword energy fired once more, ripping the serpent-like tentacles to shreds.
An endless exchange. How long could they possibly endure?
“Asera! Hold out until the villagers finish evacuating, then we pull back too!!”
“Got it! Stay safe to the very end!”
Behind Asera, Lien’s crimson rapier trailed blooming flames. The battle melted the creature’s black hide beneath scattering fire—a miracle wrought by Lien, who had only just recovered. Even so, the toll of continuous fighting could not be hidden. Though she showed nothing on the surface, anyone could see at a glance that she was exhausted to her limit.
I have to shoulder all of it somehow…!
Sharp slashes poured relentlessly from the tip of Asera’s blade. Severing the tentacles and carving away at the body was not difficult. Dodging the incoming black tide and chaining follow-up strikes—it was hardly a taxing fight for someone of her caliber.
Only…
“…It feels like trying to cut the river with a kitchen knife.”
There was no end. No matter how much she sliced, burned, or hacked, the colossal body restored itself in seconds.
Can a single kitchen knife extinguish a vast ocean?
The question rose unbidden in her mind.
Why has there been no information about a monster like this until now?
The United Kingdoms were renowned as the continent’s foremost intelligence power. There was no way the guilds would have overlooked something this absurd. Why had a creature whose mere presence evoked cataclysm never even been named?
Guoooooo—
That was when it happened. The beast ignored them and pivoted its massive bulk toward the opposite side.
“Huh? Civilians…?!”
Lien pointed toward one edge of the plain, having spotted something in the creature’s movement. Asera’s gaze followed. There, someone was sprinting forward without hesitation—black hair whipping in the wind, sturdy frame, ordinary villager’s clothes.
“……?”
For some reason, Asera could not look away from the man.
“Why isn’t he running away by himself?! What the hell is he doing?!”
Lien’s cry was thick with bewilderment. The sound snapped Asera back to herself. Her eyes immediately slid to the man’s side.
“…He’s carrying something.”
“Wait, that’s… a Dragon Lantern! Hold on, hold on! It’s smoking—looks like it’s about to blow any second?!”
Dragon Lantern. A high-density flame sealed inside an explosive stone. Its destructive force was monstrous; a single blast could easily erase half the village.
“And that direction leads straight into the thing’s maw… That person is in serious—!”
—His legs kicked hard against the earth.
It happened in an instant. By the time she regained her senses, Asera was already sprinting at full speed. Only then did she register Lien’s desperate shout behind her.
She surprised even herself. She could not understand why she was racing toward that stranger.
Because he was powerless? Because he would die if he stayed there? No—it was something more primal. A gut instinct that she could not, must not, let him die.
From here she could only see his back. She could not even make out his face. And yet…
—Guoooooo!!
A thick black tentacle lashed through the air, aimed at the man running ahead. It must have recognized her as a clear threat.
“Danger…!!”
A short cry. At the same time she stomped the ground so hard it cratered, halting instantly. Then she poured every ounce of strength into her legs and shoulders and swung.
The motion was so perfect and economical it startled even Asera. The silver-white slash tore space apart as it flew, bisecting the dozens of tentacles about to swallow the man whole.
Slaaash—!!
Having noticed Asera’s strike, the man running ahead glanced back.
“…!”
His head turned slightly over one shoulder. Only half his face was visible. And that man—was smiling faintly at her.
“—?”
Relief? No… longing? Why would he look at her—a total stranger—with such an expression? Her mind still could not catch up. Only a fiercely familiar, distant yearning hammered wildly inside her chest.
So why—
The unknown shiver that froze her in place lasted only a heartbeat. By then the man’s back had already reached the creature’s gaping maw. And he leaped.
Without the slightest hesitation, he threw himself into the pitch-black throat.
To anyone watching, it was clearly a suicidal act.
“—??! No!!!”
Every nerve in her body stood on end. The moment a metallic roar erupted and she tried to hurl herself after him—
Grab.
“What are you doing?! Do you know that guy?! No matter what, getting that close is dangerous even for you!!”
“Let go, Lien! Just a second—just one second is enough!!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?! Are you trying to die to that thing?!”
It wasn’t like that. The explanation rose to her throat but there was no time to speak. Her face was etched with desperate urgency, as though begging to be allowed to save him.
Even so, Lien refused to release Asera’s arm.
“Why are you acting like this?! You’ve been weird ever since earlier, Asera!!”
She was right. Asera herself did not understand why she was behaving this way. Her head could offer no explanation, yet her heart was screaming madly. How could she possibly describe the crushing sense of loss at watching something that must never be lost crumble before her eyes?
“Please, Lien!!!”
“I said no!! If I let go now you’ll run straight out!!! We have to escape from here first—!”
—Ping.
Suddenly a piercing blue trajectory cut across her vision. It came from the village. Whatever it was flew in a straight line, splitting space apart.
“What is that…?”
The blue-white streak carved a vivid line across the battlefield where the black sea and crimson flames raged. Scattering ice fragments of cyan and white coldly bisected the burning sky. In moments it arrived directly before the creature’s enormous maw—the exact spot the man had just thrown himself into. Then the blue line condensed into a single point and bloomed with dazzling cold.
Had he ever harbored such a desire? The craving to see everything, even the places his feet could never reach.
For example, the hundreds of billions of stars spread across the night sky. The longing to witness even a single plain pebble tumbling through the lightless abyss of some nameless planet.
Grotesque, perhaps. He had always believed it stemmed from the primal urge to know all things.
Darkness enveloped his entire body. A nauseating oily stench and scorching heat seared his skin.
“I loved watching the world.”
The world was like a tower built from the pebbles of causality. Even the slightest change could shift its drawn trajectories, altering the future’s direction moment by moment.
Therefore, a world he had never seen would surely unfold ahead of him.
“I wanted to capture every last part of it with my own eyes.”
Well, that didn’t mean he was the type to thrash and scream about not wanting to die for the sake of self-satisfaction. After all, some moments could only be witnessed at the moment of death.
The Dragon Lantern in his arms had reached its final stage. It tore through the black darkness and found its last destination. The face of Asera he had glimpsed moments ago was exactly that kind of moment.
“Damn… she really was beautiful.”
There was no way she had recognized him. She must have seen the explosive and come running in a panic. Even in such a desperate situation, her upright willingness to risk herself for a complete stranger was truly wonderful—because he had been the one to shape that very personality.
“That’s why she’s so reliable.”
Though still immature, she would become a brilliant light no matter where she went. She would walk the path written for her in the original story.
—The world definitely has a protagonist.
So everything was fine now. All things would flow exactly as he knew the ending should.
“Then that’s enough.”
A dark-red core pulsed like a heart. Absurdly small for the creature’s size.
So you really weren’t going to leave the village after all.
It was fine. In the end he had managed to see with his own eyes one of the characters he had created. What greater satisfaction could there be?
So you really weren’t going to leave this village?
That was fine too. What could someone without power see of the world even if he left? He had spent hundreds of nights planning his departure, but now none of it mattered.
He hurled the Dragon Lantern toward the core. The stone collided with the nucleus and erupted with ferocious heat, on the verge of detonation.
“This is what I’m supposed to do. Now it’s enou—”
Noriel, don’t give up on the things you want to do.
—Ah. That memory was definitely cheating.
Don’t deceive even yourself. In the end, the person who knows you best is you…
Probably a deathbed vision. Or lingering regret. The words rising from beyond the end finally reached him and melted the resolve he had steeled.
“…”
Wouldn’t it be okay to say just one thing? Since it was the last moment, he suddenly wanted to speak honestly.
He drew in a breath of the foul air inside the black darkness.
“I missed you. Yeah… I guess I missed you like crazy.”
He wasn’t speaking to anyone.
“Aah, I wanted to see everything, to know it all so badly. How many nights did I lie awake because the future was driving me insane with curiosity?”
A longing he had always carried, a desire he had suppressed by compromising with reality.
“Every minute and second of the world changing was lovely. Even the fields fluttering in the wind felt precious. This quietly flowing century was too dear to waste. Aah, even now I’m going crazy wanting to know how this whole situation ends.”
A world built from countless intertwining causations. Its majestic process and the ending it would finally reach.
He had simply—
“I just wanted to see it.”
With that one desire, he would gladly step forward anywhere.
—.
—Observer.
That is the trajectory of inevitability.
The one who looks down upon all things.
For it is the god of all.
Observer.
Sit upon the prepared century and witness the truth that shall come.
The future belongs to those who act.
It is the eternity permitted to those who wish to see.
?
Huh? A resonance. A sound ringing inside his head. Or perhaps a voice echoing from the empty space of the world itself.
The unfamiliar voice pierced his mind, seizing his scattering thoughts and dragging them upward in a single breath.
An overwhelming sensation he had never encountered before. Who— The question never fully left his lips. An intense radiance flooded his vision.
Light erupted from the crest engraved on the left side of his chest, near his heart, tearing apart the pitch-black sight.
“—What the.”
Even that question failed to finish. Because he heard a faint voice that sounded like Dohesi’s.
“…! ……?”
Why?
He forced his heat-blurred vision back into focus. The first thing that forced its way into his eyes was blue light. Then a face far too familiar—one that should not be here—appeared.
—Dohesi.
“…??”
Before the question of how could even reach his throat, a cold sensation enveloped his whole body. Dohesi, descending as though pouring down from above, wrapped her arms around him with crushing strength.
“??? Wait, huh?!”
“Why are you always like this?”
Her voice came out urgent even though the words were barely formed.
“Are you crazy?! What were you trying to—!”
“I really hate it. I’m so, so tired of it.”
“But… this is just like you.”
“So I guess that’s why I like it.”
Right after, the sensations arrived simultaneously. A cold yet gentle blue flash. And the deathly roar that crushed everything from all directions.