Principles
“I have no words. To think such a degenerate had infiltrated Ordella...”
The Roan party had protected not only Tyramore but the entire Holy State.
To protect Ordella's reputation, they had kept the incident from leaking to the public, but the Pope's attitude toward Roan's party had undeniably grown much more favorable.
And so?
Was Roan pleased by this?
“I hope you will continue to join forces with us to bring light to the continent...”
Did he readily accept such a proposal?
“Ah, no thanks.”
No!
Not at all!
As always, he rejected it without a single shred of hesitation.
The Pope felt a mixture of regret and unease.
Fearing that such a powerful figure might be snatched up by another faction, he cautiously dangled a piece of bait.
“Then... how about this? It seems one of your companions belongs to our order...”
Belgard.
She was standing slightly behind the others to stay out of sight, but it seemed she had been noticed long ago.
“I am willing to reinstate that exiled priestess, who violated our doctrines, back into the Cheryl Order. What do you say?”
“...Is that a good thing?”
Jane asked Belgard, but the Pope answered in her stead.
“It is the opportunity of a lifetime for an exiled priestess. Normally, once you are cast out, you are never welcomed back.”
Looking at Belgard's expression, it did indeed seem like an incredibly tempting offer.
However, accepting the offer meant choosing between two paths.
The first was for Roan's party to submit entirely to Ordella's authority.
The second was to leave Belgard behind in Ordella.
A soft-hearted leader. There's nothing easier to manipulate. Tug on one of their companions, and the rest will follow on their own.
The exiled priestess, Erian Belgard.
He had once dismissed her as a mere degenerate who went around dispensing unauthorized charity, but looking at her now, she was a veritable goldmine.
“Now, I shall leave the choice to Sister Belgard. What will you do?”
The Pope fully expected Belgard to accept.
“No, thank you.”
But what came out of Belgard's mouth was a flat refusal.
The Pope's lips twitched at her response, which seemed to have caught Roan's infectious bluntness.
“I have already let go of my attachment to the order. Traveling with Mr. Roan has made me realize what is truly important.”
She clasped her hands together and channeled her holy power.
Though she had been exiled, her devotion remained unbroken, evidenced by the brilliantly shimmering holy power that blossomed around her.
A graceful refusal, devoid of any hostility or rebellion.
A polite demeanor that left no room for argument.
It was the best countermeasure Belgard could deploy right now.
And why?
Because the Pope's faction could not afford to make trouble for Roan's party, whose exploits had already spread far and wide.
The Pope and his followers were forced into a position where they had to treat them as honored guests and watch them leave.
It was, without a doubt, a flawless victory for Roan's party.
And that night.
“Ahahaha! You should've seen that Pope's face! You were bowing your head, so you missed it, right?”
A refreshing burst of laughter echoed inside their lodgings.
It was Jane's.
She was stomping her feet in sheer excitement, clearly finding the whole situation incredibly satisfying.
“Seriously, thinking about it again just makes me feel so good. His intentions were so transparent. It was basically, 'I need to put these guys under me and exploit them.'”
“Ah... so I wasn't the only one who felt that way.”
Charbun agreed with Jane and looked at Belgard.
“Then, did you refuse because you felt that too, Lady Belgard?”
“That was certainly a big part of it.”
But.
“Even if I hadn't sensed those intentions, I don't think I would have changed my mind.”
The exiled priestess, Erian Belgard.
“I actually like this title now. As Mr. Roan said, we all have at least one flaw.”
“That's right.”
“Why are you agreeing so readily?!”
Roan openly agreeing, and Jane snapping back.
Their bickering had become a staple of the group, and it would feel empty without it.
Watching them, she felt reassured once more that she had made the right choice.
Her resolve fully solidified, Belgard let out a bright, open laugh.
“So, I think I prefer living like this.”
She spoke, then quickly added as if she had just realized something.
“Of course, that doesn't mean I'm completely satisfied! From now on, I plan to live like Miss Jane—speaking my mind and saying exactly what I want!”
“That's the spirit!”
Be true to your desires.
Say everything you want.
Even if the other companions say no, I will always turn my head in the direction you want to go.
“So? You wouldn't say that unless you wanted something right now. What is it? To get stronger? Or maybe some kind of gear?”
“Yes, actually. There is something I would like you to tell me.”
“...Something to tell you? I don't really know how to use holy power, though.”
“It's not about that. In fact, it's something only you can tell me, Mr. Roan.”
The seeds of destruction.
“I want to know what kind of destruction drove me to my death.”
At her words, Jane tilted her head in confusion.
“Huh? Didn't we already take care of that? What was it, Serenar? We beat that thing.”
Jane added that, by extension, her own doom should be averted now as well.
But Roan did not agree.
“No, it doesn't end just because we dealt with one. You, Jane, and you, Charbun—you will both continue to be targeted.”
Since they only had one life, there was only one event that had claimed it.
But they hadn't simply fallen to a sudden ambush.
The ultimate reason they had succumbed was that they had been utterly exhausted by a relentless onslaught of consecutive crises.
“...What? There's more?”
“Me... as well?”
“Yeah. I didn't mention it before, but remember the Emperor from last time? That was the event that killed you, Charbun.”
And there were many other threats besides that.
He wasn't trying to scare them.
He simply wanted them to be prepared and take precautions.
Roan had never kept secrets from them, so he didn't hesitate to speak.
But that was only from the speaker's perspective.
Jane, listening to this, let out a heavy sigh.
“Sigh, right. Come to think of it, we've never actually heard the full story of your past.”
Because his predictions were always spot-on, they had simply followed him without question.
Only now did Jane feel a genuine curiosity about the past Roan had lived through.
“What exactly did you go through in that past life you keep talking about?”
She asked Roan about the old days.
“Hmm...”
Roan trailed off, a rare occurrence for him.
Thinking he didn't want to talk about it, Jane waved her hand dismissively.
“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm sure there are things you'd rather not think about.”
“No, it's not that.”
There was just too much.
Too many memories were rushing back.
The incidents he had faced.
The laments, the tears, the rage, and the deaths of his comrades—there were simply too many.
He was merely trying to figure out where to begin.
Roan stroked his chin in thought for a moment, then looked at Jane as if he had made up his mind.
“I've decided! I'll tell you the parts related to you, Jane!”
“What? Why me?!”
“Because you were the one who asked!”
Dammit.
As usual, speaking up first had earned her a secondhand experience of her own death.
But this was Debi Jane.
Having been thoroughly influenced by Roan, she was no longer the type to back down from such things.
“...Go on.”
She adjusted her posture, ready to listen.
“Alright! I'll start from the earliest events and go in order. My memory might be slightly off on some details, though.”
What followed was a relentless succession of extreme crises and brush-with-death encounters, contrasting sharply with Roan's cheerful tone.
A bloody battle against a dragon.
An onslaught of demons.
Betrayal by someone they had believed to be an ally.
Mana squeezed out to its absolute limits.
A mana rampage.
Jane reaching the threshold of transcendence amidst the jaws of death.
Flames that incinerated everything in their vicinity.
Barely managing to suppress all of that, and finally finding a hard-won moment to catch her breath.
An ambush in her hometown, where she had returned just to close her eyes for a brief rest.
And the death that found her at the end of it all.
A series of spine-chilling, extreme situations unfolded one after another.
Perhaps because Roan, who had witnessed it firsthand, was the one describing it, the scenes felt almost visible before their very eyes.
In the midst of this, a single question struck everyone.
“Um, Mr. Roan...?”
It was Charbun who broke the silence, cautiously raising his hand.
“Yeah?”
“I know this is incredibly presumptuous of me... but didn't you have to endure all of those things continuously? From what you've said, it sounds like you were the only one left alive in the end...”
“That's right.”
Roan recalled the final sight before his death.
It was a landscape that, far from reaching the end, felt as though it had only just stepped onto the starting line of the apocalypse.
“After going through all of that... how can you still smile like this? If it were me, even if I had returned, my personality would have... changed drastically.”
One would not easily trust others.
One would look at everything with cynicism.
One would try to bear everything alone.
One would act entirely on their own, without seeking out comrades.
All positive emotions, including laughter, would have vanished.
Yet, the man standing before them displayed the exact opposite of those traits.
He cried, laughed, trusted, and cheered them on.
A path they could never have walked had they been in his shoes.
Roan replied calmly to his question.
“Do you know what one of my biggest regrets from my past life is?”
Showing only my worst side until the very end.
“Crying, throwing tantrums, cursing the world... I was like that right up to the end. Since I only ever said negative things, their final moments couldn't have been very peaceful.”
And now, he had returned here, standing before them once more.
“I want to live with a positive and bright outlook. Of course, I won't be acting like that in the middle of a dangerous situation, but still.”
A philosophy forged from the determination never to repeat his regrets and mistakes.
It was both an atonement for his regrets and a conscious choice that had carried him all the way to this point.
Though it began as Jane's history, the tale of the past ultimately concluded as Roan's story.
Having listened to it all, Jane nodded and delivered her assessment.
“You're a lunatic.”
“That's harsh!”
Roan, protesting Jane's blunt evaluation, turned his gaze toward Belgard.
“So... you said you wanted to know what killed you?”
“...Yes.”
Belgard hesitated, taken aback by the sheer scale of the events, which was far grander than she had imagined, but she soon steeled her resolve.
“It was because of a Greater Demon.”
“...A Greater Demon?”
“Yeah. It probably doesn't mean much to you right now. It's not a title given to the run-of-the-mill demons that appear on the continent.”
In the highly individualistic realm of demons.
Occasionally, entities powerful enough to rule and dominate other demons would emerge from that space.
A colossal existence that no single individual could ever hope to summon or control.
A perilously dangerous being that required a dozen highly capable individuals just to perform the summoning ritual.
“And you, Belgard, were caught in its grasp and dragged away while trying to stop it.”
Into the unfathomable abyss.
Without even being able to scream.
Hearing this, Belgard nodded with a serene expression.
“I understand. Hearing that seems to have solidified my resolve even further.”
As if she had something else to say, Belgard looked straight into Roan's eyes.
“I want to become stronger too. Without caring about the means, the methods, or the tools—just like Miss Jane.”
It was an active, self-driven expression of her desire to grow.