Chapter 131. Ariel.
Chapter 131. Ariel.
Time flowed on, and a few years slipped past in what felt like an instant. I'd been quietly pouring funds into the village, helping it prosper. The days of people starving in poverty were long gone.
Ariel had long since opened a little clinic next to my stall, devoting herself fully to tending the sick, and thanks to her, there were no more sick to be found. The village women, touched by her dedication, had even started helping out on their own.
"Sihu! It looks like I'll have to close the clinic!"
For most shop owners, closing up shop is a grim word. But for Ariel, it was pure joy. It meant there wasn't a single sick person left who needed her.
"Yeah. You've done good."
On the day the clinic closed, a crowd of villagers came by with bouquets and food, thanking her for everything she'd done and celebrating the closure.
Even after the clinic shut down, she kept coming along to help me with the stall every day. And before long, word got around that I was closing up shop too.
"Sihu! Is it true you're quitting the business?"
"Uncle Tom, where in the world did you hear that?"
"Where I heard it doesn't matter! Is it true?"
"Yes, it's true..."
"Huh, and why's that? Business is good, isn't it?"
It really was doing well. I was the only one who could reliably supply large quantities of high-quality timber from deep in the mountains, and word of mouth had made the business thrive. Not to mention all the rare, hard-to-catch fish I kept bringing in.
"It's about time I headed back home."
"Right... you've been saying you'd go back to your hometown for ages now..."
"Yes, that's right..."
"Then you come to dinner at our place tomorrow. The wife said she's making something special and told me I'd better bring you. Alfred and the others'll be there too."
"Ha ha, I'll be there for sure."
Uncle Tom said his piece, turned around, and strode off. And he didn't forget to drive the point home one last time.
"Be sure you come!!!"
The next day, Ariel and I went to Uncle Tom's house, where they'd laid out such a massive spread you'd think it was someone's birthday. We spent the evening drinking with the villagers one last time, then headed home.
The moment we got back, she leaned her back against the tree we'd planted right after we started living together. It was the sunniest spot on our little forest-encircled property. The first time she'd said the grounds looked too barren, I'd dug up a nice tree and brought it home for her.
"Hee hee, I'm so excited!"
"I'm going to run into the royal capital's main district tomorrow. Want to come along?"
"Nope! I'll be getting everything sorted out here for what we're going to do on Earth!"
I had to stop by the capital's main district to convert all my money into gold. To handle that much coin, you needed the exchange in the capital. On Earth, gold was a universally stable resource—practically an international currency. Not that it would be hard for someone with my skills to convert gold to cash on the black market anyway.
Working a normal job on Earth was never even a consideration. Earning money through labor is one thing, but if you're missing for five years, your resident registration gets invalidated—mine would already be gone.
No company was going to hire a suspicious case like me, and if I did want to work, I'd have to go trawling through temp agencies and the like.
'After all the shit I went through on Titan, you think I'm going to work a goddamn job on Earth...'
My plan for Earth was simple: buy a building, put a modest café on the ground floor, and run it with Ariel while we lived out our days.
A day passed, morning came, and I told Ariel I'd be right back. Our bags for Earth were already packed—not that there were many. I'd only kept a few things I genuinely valued. Everything else, I figured, we'd just buy new once we got there.
The reason I'd come all the way to the capital was that the sum was so large, and the nearest place that could handle it all was here. The clerk who saw the amount I was moving looked flustered and hurriedly escorted me to a fairly high-end reception room.
"Ahem... that's quite a substantial sum. We do offer an escort service for safety."
"That won't be necessary."
I waved off the man who seemed to be the manager and swept the enormous pile of gold into my subspace.
"Oh, subspace magic... you must be a fairly accomplished mage. My apologies for the discourtesy."
"It's fine. Am I free to go now?"
"Yes, thank you. We hope to continue serving you going forward."
He must have pegged me as a rare high-roller—he bent practically ninety degrees at the waist seeing me out. I headed home, running through the essentials in my head.
"Hmm... the biggest problem is my resident registration... it's probably been about six years on Earth now...?"
'You see, I spent about six hundred years living in another world and I've just returned...!'
They'd call me insane and the police would escort me straight to a mental ward. Not that I'd be caught even if hundreds of cops came at me, mind you.
I was walking the mountain path home past the village where I'd done business for years when I felt a disturbing surge of mana coming from the house.
It was unmistakably not Ariel's aura. Her essence had never held anything as filthy and foul as this. Before I even finished processing the thought, my body was already hurtling toward the house at a terrifying speed—fast enough to nearly rip the surrounding trees out of the ground as I passed.
— BOOM!!!
I gave no thought to the door, smashing straight through the wall. The first thing I saw was a ring of Celestials—wings as pure white as Ariel's—surrounding her.
The next thing I saw was the multiple spears driven clean through her body. And Ariel, with eyes on the verge of going dark, looked at me and gave a faint smile. Blood trickled from the corner of that smiling mouth.
"The criminal who dared deceive and mock the Celestial race, who squandered the grace bestowed by the Heavenly God, has come."
"..."
Silence. No tears, no screaming. I just stared. My state of mind at that moment was like a nuclear bomb a second from detonation. If I let this rage loose as it was, it wouldn't just be Ariel—the village would be erased from the map.
"Why attack Ariel? By your own logic, I'm the one who deceived her."
"Is it not a sin born of her own insufficient faith, that she allowed herself to be swayed by the words of an unbeliever?"
"And you waited all this time, only to show up now?"
My flat tone must have looked to them like a man who had given up on everything and accepted death, because they started chattering away.
"The humans of the Lower Realm could not know, but we have been preparing a Holy War, seizing the opportunity of the Demon God's death."
As if I wouldn't know. The one who killed that lofty, arrogant Demon God who commanded the entire Demonkin as his own limbs—that was me.
"..."
"And now, with all preparations complete, we intended to judge this heretic as the final act—to prove our faith to the Heavenly God and strengthen our internal unity."
"So basically... you meant to use Ariel as a scapegoat."
— Creak... creak...
I ignored them and walked toward Ariel. The wooden floor, left unmaintained because we were about to leave, groaned underfoot, as if giving voice to my heart.
— Shing...!
The lower-ranked Celestials, clearly beneath the spear-wielders, drew their swords, signaling that I should come no closer.
"Enough."
The ones who had leveled their blades lowered their heads at their superior's command and sheathed their swords.
"Witness firsthand what becomes of an unbeliever and a heretic, and repent before the Heavenly God."
Blood had welled up from her mouth, staining her once-clear face. I carefully wiped it away, and as she always had, Ariel gave a quiet, gentle smile. I forced myself to smile back, hiding the expression that was about to freeze over. Then I laid my hand on the spears piercing her body.
— Fwump...!
Every last spear vanished as if they'd never been there. If it weren't for the holes they'd left in Ariel's body, no one would have known they'd ever existed.
"Wh-what...! Weapons forged from tempered light...!"
"Ariel, wait just a moment."
I let a trace of my Origin Essence flow into her. At that, the ragged, gasping breaths eased, and a hint of comfort returned to her pallid face.
"This one is no ordinary man. All Knights, judge the unbeliever—"
— Fwump! Fwump! Fwump!
Nothing. Simply nothingness. The knights and their armor, their weapons—all of it, gone.
"Th-this is...!"
He poured mana into his own spear, swinging it at my neck with all his might.
— Clink...
"...!"
He stared at the spearhead pressed against my throat, his face a mask of disbelief. Slowly, I pinched the blade between my thumb and forefinger.
— Crack!
"This can't be...! A weapon personally bestowed upon me...!"
— Splash!
When I threw a punch at him—now the lone survivor—it didn't make the sound of a fist hitting flesh. It made the sound of water bursting.
He stared down at his own stomach with a look of utter incomprehension, where a clean, pale hole had been punched straight through. I slowly pulled my hand back; a sickening, squelching noise of organs and blood accompanied it. In my hand, now withdrawn, I held his heart.
— Crunch!
Watching his own heart burst before his eyes, he coughed up blood, collapsed, and died. His corpse, too, was consumed by that same unknowable force and vanished. Once it was over, I gently lifted Ariel into my arms.
"Ariel..."
"Hahh... Sihu... I'm sorry."
"What do you have to be sorry for?"
"I can't go with you now... I was supposed to be there to talk with you..."
"..."
"And I wanted to meet that unnie you said you were close with..."
"Hey... strictly by age, you're way older than her..."
"Hee... even back at the start, you told me I smelled and to go wash... you're so rude to women..."
The light in her pupils was slowly dimming. The man who was the best in the world at killing, ironically, had no talent for saving anyone.
"We're supposed to go together..."
"I'm sorry..."
Even that faint glimmer in her eyes soon went completely dark. She was dead. An uncontrollable rage began surging up from inside me. Everything around her—everything except her—began to be destroyed. Chaos swallowed it all.
The only things left to remember her by were the belongings I'd already packed for Earth, and the painting of the two of us together—the one I'd finally given in to her stubbornness over and commissioned from a traveling artist.
I laid her gently beneath the tree we'd planted together in front of the house, and cast a preservation spell over her. And then, on that very spot, I made a vow.
I would tear the wings from every Celestial in this world. I would kill the Heavenly God last, bury you, and scatter the bones of the Heavenly God as fertilizer for this tree.