Choice (3)
He was traveling through the memories of his past.
His expression was peaceful, and his voice was clear.
“My name is Thomas Fanning.”
Zylas spoke.
“In my late teens, I spent my youth in the bloody battlefield of a foreign war. I lost an arm, but I protected my family, my homeland, and my beliefs until the end.”
On his taut skin, thick wrinkles appeared, as if they were forming.
I remained silent and listened to his words.
“Do you know what thoughts I had while bombs rained down? That I wanted to raise cattle.”
Zylas seemed to be thinking of that time and fell silent for a moment.
Then he slowly continued.
“I don’t know if we won or were forced to retreat, but the war ended anyway, and I returned home to start a ranch. I succeeded. I earned a lot of money. At first it was small, but later I bought a satellite just to take a look at my farm.”
Only then did the name Thomas Fanning flash across my mind.
The blond white man who had been the founder of the largest dairy company in the United States, with a kind smile on his face, placing it on the front of his product and exporting dairy products all over the world.
“I earned money that I couldn’t even count. But as I got older, my children, and their children, so my granddaughters. I lived for the pleasure of seeing my granddaughters. But do you know what they said?”
Zylas’ voice sank.
“They called me a racist. The kids who were raised by my money, who live wearing good clothes, pointed fingers at me saying I was embarrassing them.”
The old man with the kind, big laugh I had once known disappeared, and a cynical young man appeared before my eyes.
“Actually, what’s different about the black people saying those animals? Even though their intelligence is lower than our dogs, how much they eat. Even though I fed them and pretended not to mind because the food in my mouth was cheap, and even gave me money, my granddaughters still accused me of being a racist. Does that make sense? It’s absurd.”
Zylas laughed dryly and continued speaking.
“When I see those claiming human rights, equality, and such, I wonder what’s wrong with their heads. How can all humans be equal without going mad? Right? Hehehe.”
Zylas tapped his head with his fingers as if knocking.
“If all humans are equal, why do some people in the blood flowing through their bodies become noble white skin, and others become beast-like black people? Hmm… they’re different. They can’t be the same. …But when I actually experienced it, no, they weren’t. Black people were just born that way by chance. It’s not their fault. They were just born that way by chance.”
Surge of emotions — joy, anger, and injustice — swirled across Zylas’ face.
“You’re a prosecutor. Can you assign guilt to the result of chance? Is it right for my parents to be branded with a death mark as black people and live their whole lives that way? Can your head, your conscience, accept that? What’s different between being born black and suddenly falling into this shitty empire upon opening your eyes? The empire that points a sword at you without hesitation just because you came from another world… Are you going to tolerate it?”
Zylas stared at me silently.
All of them had already lost their minds and collapsed.
The equipment recording the situation had been destroyed long ago.
Now his eyes demanded I speak the truth.
No, it was an expectant gaze, one seeking complicity.
He already knew my true identity.
“……Were you a Redneck?”
“Haha. H. H. H. H.”
Zylas answered with loud laughter to my question.
“As expected. Our side’s information is never wrong. Zeo Blood, Earthling. By the way, I haven’t heard the term Redneck in a long time. Hehehe. I didn’t work until my back was burned by the sun like those poor Southern bastards, but I was proud of my beliefs.”
He stopped speaking for a moment and swallowed hard. As if he had been holding back a long story.
“But, now! It’s not like that now. I hate the me from back then. No matter how hard I tried, there are things I can’t change. I must never point a sword. I should have gently wheedled the food out of them. If I didn’t feed them and just whipped them endlessly, pushing them into a corner like that, what would happen? …In the end, they would burst. Boom!”
Zylas made a sound like a gunshot and laughed silently.
“That’s why I decided to become a villain. I will use my entire body as fuel to destroy the empire and create a new world. How about it? Won’t you join me?”
At that moment, a massive aura I had never seen before began to rise behind Zylas’ back.
A cold sensation ran along my spine.
The air around me seemed to freeze and grow cold.
Countless magic circles floated up from the void, and a completely different colored aura began to erupt.
“What is this?”
An incomprehensible energy.
An aura that seemed to mix all the fluctuations of the world — mages, spirit summoners, aural knights — and was being released from a single person’s body.
Unknown energy.
“Come with us. Will you exterminate the evil beings of this world, cut off the emperor’s neck, and dominate the Gilorian Empire while living like a human? Or will you live like a dog as an imperial collaborator? Choose.”
Brilliant lights extending from the magic circles wrapped around Zylas’ body.
The aura turned into gray smoke and began to crawl across the floor like a living organism, filling the space.
The gray smoke greedily absorbed the light, and the vision completely darkened.
In the darkness, a faint outline slowly revealed itself.
It was Zylas.
I closed my eyes.
The past ten years of living hidden in the Gilorian Empire passed like a panorama.
Those who were like me, heretics who fell into this world without knowing the language and were arrested.
Their cries carved into my chest.
Piteous screams begging to be saved.
But knights dragging them mercilessly with expressions as hard as stone, without a trace of pity.
Every night, quietly falling asleep while clutching my pounding heart.
The two unfamiliar suns.
The moon more desolate than on Earth.
And the faces of colleagues shadowed by the moonlight.
Colleagues who willingly gave up their lives to save me.
The innocent appearance of children born in this land.
Familiar yet clearly warm kindness and smiles.
Thump. Thump.
The sound of my heart began to shake the space.
With the heartbeat, mana flowed throughout my body.
And the people in Clovan City who died of an unknown infectious disease while their bodies melted, with not a trace of mana left.
…They were not monsters.
They were living, breathing, feeling beings.
And like me, like us.
Just innocent existences.
I opened my eyes and spoke to Zylas in a low voice.
“Throw away that cowardly excuse, Zylas.”
Then, from beyond the gray smoke, Zylas’ voice echoed low.
“Disappointing. You’re just an imperial collaborator after all. Then you have to die.”
Zylas spoke in a scratching voice, and the gray aura that had filled the space began to rush toward me.
Black auras surging from everywhere in space, targeting me.
The heavy black aura, as waves piled upon waves and crushed the space, began to cover me.
I stared at the approaching black aura and began to carve a small thought into my mind.
When the inner thought took shape.
The surrounding air began to ripple.
The air collided with the fine currents flowing through my skin, and the area around my heart grew hot.
With a rapidly beating heart, mana circulated passionately throughout my body.
And I clenched my fist.
Blue lightning formed at the fingertips and began to emit a powerful light about to explode.
I brought both hands together and pulled the lightning current to its maximum.
A massive current swirled through the fingers like a vortex.
The blue current vortex split and traveled up my arms, surrounding me.
Crash!
The lightning energy spread intensely across the ground and shook the entire space.
Kuquaquaquang!
Lightning shot up like consecutive explosions.
With thunderous sounds, it shook the surroundings.
The lightning that spewed from my hand shot into the air and exploded, and the ground blazed as if swallowed by electricity.
When the giant black aura of Zylas and the endless lightning clashed.
Kuquaquaquang.
The collision of energies that shook the world.
Kwakuakuakwong!
The explosive that swelled to swallow space began to mercilessly destroy everything around it.
Zylas’ subordinates, torn apart by the explosion.
But without caring, Zylas began to increase his aura.
“Come.”
In front of Zylas, an abyss-like black sphere rose.
A black sphere growing as it swallowed everything around it like a black hole.
“If this continues, it’s dangerous!”
The mages, knights, and Piaget’s subordinate who had collapsed if I pulled the lightning aura would be blown away by the explosion like dust.
I recalled another thought in my mind and subtly twisted my hand.
Then, the blue light that had been flashing in the dark space split and spread radially.
“Hehehe. The weak sympathy shortens your lifespan.”
The blue light emitted a current and pierced the fallen colleagues.
“I just didn’t want to become a monster like you.”
I fixed my gaze on Zylas’ approaching black sphere like a great tide and spoke.
Because I had to distribute the lightning aura to my colleagues, it was difficult to respond properly to the black sphere in front of me.
The black aura was getting closer.
My body was being crushed, and it felt as if my brain would shatter.
I was suffocating.
The vision was shaking.
Black blood spurted from my lips when.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound of the earth rumbling came.
I turned my gaze toward the source of the sound.
A powerful light curtain suddenly spread from the darkness.
“I didn’t come because the sun didn’t rise twice. I came to find you.”
Therion, the former owner of Clovan City, arrived with the centaurs.
***
“Everyone to your positions.”
Centaurs clad in silver armor, holding glowing spears like mythical heroes.
When Therion raised his spear, the other centaurs also raised theirs high in follow.
Soon, the faint light flowing from their spears extended into the sky and began to spread through the darkness.
“Light Shield!”
The ultimate defense formation that no other species could imitate.
The legendary Light Shield that had protected countless people in the past battle against dragons unfolded before my eyes.
“Kukuk. Even though you’re half-human, half-horse… You can’t stop me!”
Zylas’ eyes turned white, and he began to strengthen his power.
Black mist enveloped his body and swirled.
Like a starving beast seeking food, the black sphere devoured everything around it.
The giant black sphere pushed against the Light Shield.
When black and light met.
Intense energy exploded explosively.
Flash and darkness twisted the space around them.
It was like night and day coexisting in an instant.
While darkness and light writhed to swallow each other, I took a deep breath.
“Therion.”
At my words, Therion nodded and spoke.
“We will be prepared. We will protect these people.”
Therion shouted at his group with straight eyes.
“Hold on, brothers.”
With his shout, the Light Shield brightened momentarily and pushed back the black sphere.
At that moment.
I carved a thought into my mind and maximized the mana within my body.
Just before my heart would explode with a pounding thump.
I clenched and unclenched my fist.
Then, blue lightning filled my vision, and lightning exploded from my hand.
Kuquaquaquang!!
A brand new blue flash standing like a wall from the ground to the sky.
The current swirled and rushed ferociously toward Zylas.
Kwakuakwong!
Blue lightning swallowed the black sphere and exploded.
With a roar, the black sphere shattered into pieces.
“Uwaaaah!”
Zylas, pierced by lightning, screamed in pain.
And more summoned lightning.
Kwakuakwong!
Every time blue lightning cut through the air, a deafening sound that shattered dimensions slammed into my ears.
Kuquaquaquang.
Again, a blue lightning flashed between the black spheres and fell into the center of Zylas’ body.
A thick, pitch-black current enveloped the entire body of Zylas, which had been blackened.
“Uwaaaah!”
When I slightly twisted his wrist.
The blue current wrapping Zylas’ body floated him into the air like a living organism, screaming in pain.
And again.
I stabbed the summoned lightning.
Again, stabbed.
I continued to hammer the blue lightning.
Zylas’ giant body began to shatter into pieces.
“This is the last.”
Kuquaquaquang.
When I summoned lightning again.
The struggling body of Zylas began to become hazy like gray dust.
Kuquaquaquang.
The final lightning pierced Zylas’ body as it turned to dust.
His form became hazy and vanished instantly.
The black and pressure that had filled the space completely disappeared.
Only the blue current remained in the empty space.
I breathed heavily and looked around.
Waaaaaaah!!
The centaurs were cheering with victory.
But in a corner of my heart, a strange sensation twitched.
“Something’s wrong…”
A faint trace of energy flashed for a moment.
Therion approached and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Prosecutor, you saved Clovan City.”
The centaurs’ cheers echoed.