I Don't Want to Die After All (3)
It was a state almost impossible to create through artificial means—extremely unstable, yet devastatingly powerful. The endpoint of corruption that could only be reached by one’s own unyielding resolve. Among the abyss cultists taken alive and cast into the Humanity Sect’s purification wards, some occasionally regained their human selves after enduring bloody penance. Yet they could never return home. The risk of unforeseen catastrophe was too great. The priests offered them only two choices: lifelong labor inside the purification center, or an honorable death as a human being. Those who had become human once more only to slip back into the abyss carried darkness that had grown far too deep.
“Ah, finally. Phase two begins.”
An icy tension gripped the arena. His heart, sensing mortal danger, hammered violently. Nathan’s smile widened. This time it was not manufactured.
“Bring it on.”
Benny bit her lip. Everything was unfolding exactly as planned. Yet she hated it. She harbored no childish illusions. She had long since passed the age—more than a century ago—where she could believe that someone she loved would remain unchanged forever.
Nathan.
But the expression on Nathan’s face displayed across the screen was…
Aspen rested a hand on Benny’s shoulder in silent understanding. Only then did she release the breath she had been holding.
Not there. I… I didn’t want it to be like this.
The death knight answered Nathan’s anticipation in full. At the colossal shape rising from the earth, Nathan let out a genuine gasp.
“Wow. No joke.”
Human history had never known a perfect cavalry charge. That did not mean there had never been commanders capable of handling mounted troops with perfect freedom. The limitation was biological. The instant the word “charge” was applied to a beast, an inevitable contradiction arose. A creature sturdier than a horse lacked the intelligence to obey orders like a warhorse. A creature smarter than a horse lacked the legs to gallop like one. The horse, the best available compromise on a question with no perfect answer, was an unfortunate improved breed that frequently shattered its own ankles on impact. At least until the Human Union discovered the Hammer Steed.
Hidden within the demonic realm of the eternal permafrost lay the tundra plains. From that cursed land had risen a hoofed predator. The Hammer Steed. A strange herbivore that traveled in groups of three or four, chasing wolf packs for sport. A horse-maned scoundrel that kicked mother wolves to death and devoured their pups instead. That monster had dragged the dreamlike concept of the “perfect cavalry charge” into the realm of reality.
Pain, fear, resentment, resignation—when pitch-black rage swallowed every last emotion, Lawrence overcame one of his greatest traumas. And he gave it shape through the power of the abyss.
The rare warhorses the Lion Wing Knights deployed for “perfect charges” in frontal warfare. Hammer Steeds.
Twelve minutes after stepping onto the gladiator field, Nathan felt something close to fear for the first time.
“Bring it on, Orleans.”
“Bring it.”
“Come on. Kill me. Go ahead and rip apart the son of a bitch in front of you any way you like!”
The boredom and yawns had vanished. The corners of his mouth rose on their own with pure anticipation. For the first time he felt truly alive. Stimulation. The kind only a life-or-death struggle against a dangerous opponent could provide. He hated to admit it, but Nathan seemed addicted to that stimulation. Without a blood-soaked battle he might simply yawn himself to death, just like the worthless old bastards in the stands.
It had begun.
The death knight drew a colossal cavalry lance from the shadows and vaulted onto the pitch-black Hammer Steed. No spur was needed. The horse forged from the abyss was an extension of his own body. The charge came without warning, beautiful in its lethality. The lance tip hurtled forward to shatter his skull. Nathan hurled himself sideways, barely containing his explosive laughter.
Before his feet even touched the ground, a dangerous sound reached him—the sound of hooves the size of a polar bear’s paw slamming into the earth and pivoting.
“That’s it. That’s cavalry!”
The instant he planted his feet, Nathan gripped the two-hander with both hands and loaded every ounce of recoil into the swing. How long did he think life lasted?
In the time that seemed frozen, Orcus’s question rang in Nathan’s ear. Proof that the opponent was truly formidable.
I probably answered that way, Father. If long, a hundred years. If short, one year old.
Wrong. Every creature’s life lasts merely a few seconds. Perfectly fair.
If that’s what you say, then so be it. But you didn’t need to hit me while saying it.
A skilled cavalryman’s charge is instantaneous. A barbarian’s axe swing accustomed to murder is instantaneous. The nadir demon firing its poisoned needle from the earth, the wendigo pretending to be a tree and swinging its claws from behind your back—also instantaneous. The time granted to any one life is only that. And you are losing even those few seconds right now. Focus.
Again, you didn’t have to beat the crap out of me every time you felt like teaching something. Fuck you, you never even gave birth to me, Father.
Every warrior devotes decades to mastering that single instant. Even then it only buys the next few seconds, but life has always been that way. Petty. Cruel. A game that only returns the slightest sweetness after you offer everything as fuel for the fire.
Screw you.
How faithful have you been, and how faithful can you be?
Four years ago he would have hesitated to answer. But now Nathan could reply without doubt. He had been utterly faithful. He had not wasted even a single moment.
I was faithful. Perhaps—just perhaps—enough to finally fulfill my long-cherished wish of beating my father to death.
Nathan moved his feet with perfect timing and swung with all his strength. The motion was closer to a throw than a cut. Against an enemy’s explosive charge, the impact point had to be the softest part if he wanted to avoid being shattered. But he was used to it. The gap between life and death had always been razor-thin.
Before he could even register the sensation, Nathan knew the blow had landed. What he had not anticipated was the sheer force of the collision. A terrifying power that rivaled even the chimera of the floating arena. Carried away by the mass, Nathan flew backward and tumbled across the floor.
The death knight who had charged past him only stopped when he reached the far outer wall of the arena.
The Eleim who had been holding their breath in silence rose from their seats with a roar, cheering the unbelievable reversal. Thanks to the uproar, no one heard Lawrence’s murmured words.
The first charge and collision. The one sent rolling across the ground was not Nathan. Nathan stood up giggling, brushing dust from his shoulders. Lawrence had no idea how the impact had been dispersed, but his own severed head was slowly sliding along the clean cut surface.
A clear, decisive end to the match. At least in any ordinary case.
Yet the head falling with utter despair never touched the sandy floor. Nathan, staring blankly as the severed head began to crumble, let out a sigh of admiration the instant a black hand snatched it from the air.
Damn. Was I born under a curse when it comes to severed heads?
The arm covered in living, pulsating plate armor tucked the head firmly against its side. Lawrence’s eyes, wide open, stared straight at Nathan and wept tears of blood. The sight that should have been horrifying instead filled Nathan with the urge to offer genuine praise.
“I am Nathan Maia, single-winged knight of the Lion Wings. I respect that unyielding spirit and accept your challenge. Come, last knight of Orleans!”
Though spoken with complete sincerity, the words could only sound like mockery. The death knight unleashed a nightmarish scream and began a second charge.
Hammer Steed and a master rider. A combination that spelled absolute destruction for any foot soldier. Yet once again Nathan Maia did not dodge. As though he had a method for everything.
Lawrence could not endure it. He spurred the horse born from his own mind. The approaching lance tip seemed to have grown even larger. Its size rivaled the dragon-hunting great lance once wielded by Lion Wing Knight Til. It was not Nathan’s imagination. Lawrence’s mass continued to swell, fed by the abyss that kept rising inside him.
It is not over. It is not over.
Running through the wind, Lawrence thought. What? It was not over yet. Orleans remembers. What was not over? The kingdom’s wrath had not been extinguished. Our duty had not vanished. The five-hundred-year history of the Orleans cavalry would not be broken. It was not over yet!
In that wilderness there had been a voice of injustice. There had also been an inner voice demanding that injustice be opposed. Shedding bloody tears, Lawrence gripped the lance with his entire soul. In his hands was the long spear that would answer that demand.
Orleans had possessed a thousand cavalry, the pride of the kingdom. Comrades who could reach anywhere in the world so long as they had horses to ride beside them and weapons in their hands. Warriors who would charge anywhere to resist the world’s injustice. To those who became the wind together, the fame of a territory or the scale of a family meant nothing.
Lawrence remembered every emblem and color engraved on their shields. And on that day, Lawrence had been there too. The day the Orleans cavalry, who had sworn to die for the people, were forced to meet their end while still holding that oath. The day the duty of Orleans declared that their time had run out.
An unprecedented flood of refugees. Enemies advancing from an unexpected direction. On that day Lawrence, eldest son of the Orleans royal house, defied his father’s command and joined the cavalry. If they were truly to be defeated and buried in the wilderness, if no one remained to cover their honorable corpses with clean red cloth, then at least he could shed royal blood over them in respect.
He ran. He ran as the wind, hoofbeats thundering alongside his own. Toward the valley of death where every journey ended and the burning plains. Toward monsters that swallowed men and tore the world apart, and death knights no human could hope to face.
That was the ending he had written with the tip of his lance.
Lawrence gathered every one of those memories onto the point of his weapon.
My honor to His Majesty the King. My life to the people of the six plains.
The pitch-black Hammer Steed erased the distance in mere bounds. Dozens of meters vanished behind the cavalryman’s shadow. At the final hoofbeat, Lawrence and the Hammer Steed leaped high into the air as if rejecting gravity itself.
My saddle, my cavalry lance, and my dented armor—to the glory of the seven harbors.
A maneuver cavalrymen never trained because it was unnecessary. A bizarre technique meant to crush the enemy with the rider’s entire body. Yet at the same time it was perfectly rational. If victory could not be won by weapon against weapon, and if the rider was a death knight who had already escaped death’s yoke, then the massive violence carried by the Hammer Steed’s momentum came crashing down.
Nathan admired the application. And he felt regret. Four years earlier he had faced an enemy who favored a similar method. If only he had told him in advance—would Lawrence have altered his strategy?
Lawrence de Orleans felt a sensation as familiar as his own body. It was not the feeling of Nathan being crushed and bursting as intended, nor the violent impact against the ground. It rose from a far more intimate place.
I’m sorry, Father.
The instant the Peres family’s secret technique—Full Moon Slash—hooked beneath the Hammer Steed’s belly and lifted it, what Lawrence felt was profound disappointment.
It didn’t work. I tried so hard.
Spinning through the air with several tons of force behind the rotation, Lawrence finally faced his own frustration with calm acceptance. The sensation of being flipped upside down like a thrown doll. The premonition of the final shattering fracture, weighted by the warhorse caught between his legs.
Lawrence tried not to close his eyes. If this was the finale of his wretched life, he wanted to burn every last detail into his memory. But perhaps even that final wish had been nothing more than a futile hope.
Hey. Fuck.
In the moment his spine and skull were crushed, Lawrence could not even tell whether his eyes had closed.
Even surviving after that… isn’t it truly a curse? How fucking embarrassing.
The faint mechanical hum of the floor. Memories of defeat flickering past like a dream. When Lawrence regained consciousness, even deeper memories rose unbidden.
Take my life instead. At least spare them.
The prince who had never grown up even at thirty had begged like that and sold himself to the abyss, believing it was the best he could do. Yet when he looked back, the expressions he saw were filled with despair. The cavalry kneeling in utter defeat, sobbing. The citizens who had forgotten the urgency of their flight and simply sat down in the road.
That day the prince realized the sad truth: even the solemn ending he had chosen for himself was a disappointment.
It had been a fool’s conviction, just as Nathan said. Because even after death the disappointment had not ended. If it had been someone else’s story he might have been able to laugh.
Your life itself holds no value, but it seems enough to purchase your despair.
The abyss knights who had brought the Orleans cavalry to their knees had laughed as they spoke. What they had accepted as payment was not Lawrence’s will but its symbolism alone.
If he had not been a prince, what would he have been? Wouldn’t he have died long ago after stupidly eating hemlock like the fool he was?
Lawrence de Orleans blinked his eyes open. The first thing he saw was his own severed limbs scattered across a factory-style rail. That alone was enough to deduce the situation. A gruesome sight he would never have witnessed if mere dismemberment could kill him.
An incinerator. I’m being fed into the incinerator in pieces.
Heat rose beneath his neck. As the flames of the incinerator drew closer, Lawrence calmly closed his eyes.
Yes. Some people end this way. Not everyone can be the protagonist.
“Lawrence—!”
Along with an ominously familiar shout, the rail stopped moving. His dangling toes, about to drop into the incinerator, halted.
“Lawrence de Orleans—! Where are you, Your Highness the Prince—!”
At the title “Your Highness,” the first thing that came to mind was the Orleans cavalry. Lawrence’s eyes flew wide. How had they reached this distant heaven? Had they developed a way to ride warhorses through the sky?
But as the voice repeated, Lawrence cursed himself with bitter self-mockery once more. What a pathetic wretch, clinging to empty delusions. His father’s words had not been wrong at all. There was no way such luck would ever follow him. That was the damned Nathan Maia’s voice.
Even after falling this far, the bastard had come to torment him again. Where was the limit of human malice? Had he ever seen such a vicious son of a bitch?
Fucking bastard. Nathan Maia. Fucking bastard. Nathan Maia. Fucking bastard. Nathan Maia…
Lawrence squeezed his eyes shut and focused. His severed limbs twitched strangely, obeying the command. Fingers crawled over, grasped his head, and began dragging the rest of him by the elbows toward the mouth of the incinerator.
Nathan and the gladiators of Galarhorn, who had stormed the incineration facility wearing masks, noticed Lawrence’s suicide attempt a moment too late. They rushed forward with desperate screams.
“Uwaaaaagh, we’re sorry, Your Highness the Prince—! Don’t go in—!”
“Stop him—! No, catch him—!”