The Angel Must Die (2)
Hearing Azalea speak in a voice thick with conflicting emotions—“Kaira… you couldn’t have… found… mother…”—Kaira let out a soft chuckle.
“Yes. All thanks to your concern.”
Mother.
I gazed at the girl standing there blankly with an expression utterly devoid of reason, waiting only for Kaira’s orders. Her swollen belly brimmed with tentacles, shadows fluttering even across her skin. She was a stranger, yet familiar because she resembled Kaira. I sneered.
“So you went through all that trouble to find your mother, only to turn her into this kind of monster? You’ve got quite the peculiar tastes, kid.”
“She’s not a monster!”
Kaira briefly wore an angry expression before her face softened again into a smile.
“She’s an angel. The most ideal form—one transformed so the one beyond could project a faint echo of their power into this world. Though I suppose insignificant creatures like you could never understand.”
I had known from the beginning, but… seeing that chilling smile on the face of the girl who had once been our comrade, I could no longer deny it.
Kaira was gone. The red-eyed wizard girl who, throughout that grueling journey, had sometimes bewildered us, sometimes left us uneasy, but most often gifted us with the warm feeling of home—she had vanished.
What stood before us now was simply… a monster that had to be removed for the world’s sake. A pawn from another realm, more vicious than even the Demon King who had at least wielded power with some trace of will. I gripped my axe and angled my shield.
“Understood, kid. Then this is goodbye.”
Kaira smiled gently.
“It’s not goodbye—it’s a beginning. In every village I’ve passed through so far, not a single person possessed the qualifications to receive the blessing. They all simply withered into dried shadows and perished… Still, perhaps the two insignificant beings once hailed as great heroes might become comrades like Pirel.”
Two?
Sensing something strange, I glanced behind me. The little jelly kid who had been clinging to me was gone.
Well, that bizarre creature can change into any form. Looks like she’s already begun whatever plan she prepared.
With that thought, I charged toward Kaira. Her smiling face remained unchanged, but writhing shadows shot toward me with the speed of arrows. She truly meant to kill me and turn me into a puppet.
By my ancestors, by my father’s name, that would never happen.
After reading the direction of the incoming tentacles, I raised my shield and struck them aside. The shadows creeping along the ground and sky from my right—I severed them with swings of my axe.
I never worried whether such primitive martial arts could affect incorporeal shadows. I was not the sort to entertain such doubts. And just as expected, even physical force could cut off Kaira’s corruption.
In truth, it was not purely physical. The pinnacle of technology forged by the nation’s artisans, the spells of wizards, and above all the protection of my ancestors—who manifested and lingered to guard my weapons—shielded them from a corruption so dark and deep its depths could not be measured.
“Oh my. The Demon King neutralized you in a single strike, yet you seem to have trained quite diligently at your age?”
Mockery that could never have come from Kaira’s personality flowed from the being that had stolen the child’s face. To absorb our lovely comrade wizard, mimic her appearance, and spout such filth—this could not be forgiven. The blood of the mountain people does not forgive such desecration.
I severed the tentacles and charged toward Kaira…
“Kaira…”
An intense light passed over my head, so bright I could barely keep my eyes open. I had worried it might not sever the lunging tentacles, but such concern proved unnecessary. Wherever the light touched, shadows melted away. Darkness is merely the absence of light; when light shines, it has no choice but to retreat.
“Don’t you dare insult her!!”
There was no need to wonder who or what the being radiating that light was.
Azalea’s body blazed with light. She was beloved by the God of Vengeance, the God of Wrath, the God of Light, and the God of Midday, yet this was not the radiance bestowed by the God of Wrath.
No… the light she possessed as the saint favored by the God of Wrath was only a fraction of the halo now enveloping her. This ever-shifting, multicolored, mystical radiance was a power I had never witnessed in the Azalea of old.
The sacred energy surrounding Azalea carried the light of new spring grass, the quiet scent of autumn leaves, the gentle breeze that carries away loved ones from graves, the drumbeats that send warriors marching toward victory, the darkness of night that beckons sweet dreams, the heat of molten iron from the hometown foundry… the salty tang of seawater, the pungent vitality of rain and wind stirring the earth…
And the aroma of freshly baked bread—that scent which grants life and vigor to the people of the world—wrapped around Azalea.
Around her swirled the distilled essence of everything an intelligent, worshipped being in this world could imagine.
“This is…”
The Demon King had been favored by several gods from beyond. Now Azalea… received the combined favor of every being worshipped in this world, every existence that could be called a god.
To stand against the dark shadow from beyond the world that sought to devour it by using Kaira’s body as a vessel, all the gods of this world had poured their power into Azalea. That had to be it.
Awe filled me, but I did not carelessly expose any openings. I gripped my shield and axe with renewed strength.
“Oh my… It seems the entire world has blessed Lady Azalea. This… means I really was hated that much.”
Though Kaira spoke in a playful tone, there was nothing playful about the force of her attack. The shadow controlling both Kaira and the body of her young mother Pirel surged toward Azalea with enough power to blanket the sky.
Azalea swung her sword without a word. The jet-black tentacles in the path of her blade—no, every tentacle in the space beneath Azalea’s presence—melted away helplessly.
Kaira’s expression grew more serious. Nearly all the remaining skin on Kaira’s body tore open as if bursting, and an uncountable number of tentacles erupted forth. They could no longer even be called tentacles. They were closer to pitch-black rifts torn through space itself.
I raised my shield in tension, bracing for impact, but the flow of those torn spaces seemed to ignore me almost completely. Every attack focused on Azalea, the saint chosen by all the gods of the world.
“What the—?!”
I clicked my tongue. What a horrifying creature.
The voice echoing in my ear suddenly paused. A sob— no, the feeling of someone about to burst into tears—flooded directly into my mind. This monstrous being… truly believed Kaira was her mother.
“…You monstrous little brat. You’ve made a firm resolution. I respect that.”
“Understood. I’m going.”
I gripped the axe handle with all my strength and charged toward Kaira like a cannonball, my eyes fixed on her as she focused on Azalea. Even as I began my sprint, neither Kaira nor Pirel spared me so much as a glance.
And just as I drew close enough that even our people’s short legs could bring my axe to bear on Kaira, a single cry rang inside my head.
From the experience of countless battles, I could tell. Kaira’s body, which had been writhing with tentacles, froze for an instant and staggered.
I brought the axe down vertically.
Praying to the souls of my ancestors… and to the spirit of Kaira who had been swallowed whole.
Kaira’s movements stopped. Only then, as if finally remembering I existed, she turned with sluggish motion and a look of shock—staring at me, whom she had completely excluded from her thoughts.
Thick black liquid flowed from inside Kaira’s ear. Had Rin finally failed to endure and melted away? Or was Kaira’s corruption materializing and leaving her body?
A voice reached me—whether it was Rin’s lingering thought transmitted through the ear-whisper, or something the dominated Kaira forced her own mouth to say, I could not tell. Or perhaps it was simply my own hallucination, wishing it to be so.
I felt the souls of my ancestors scattering from the axe as it cleaved Kaira’s body. The magic that had eroded her—no, the very magic flowing in from the world’s seams that she had become—assailed the axe with a toxin so potent it nearly consumed the weapon. Yet even as the ancestral protection faded, I split Kaira’s body apart.
Kaira was severed in two.
Her brain, stomach, liver, and intestines—organs no longer recognizable as belonging to a human or any living creature—spilled from the gap in her bisected torso, all stained a gray, colorless hue.
Neither the fragrant scent of fresh bread that had always emanated from our comrade, nor the stench of decay that should have risen from a severed corpse, could be detected. From Kaira’s remains came only a horrifying absence of any smell, as though she had never been a living thing at all.
As life fled the vessel that had been used for the descent of a being from beyond the world, the lightless darkness that had covered the sky, the earth, and this entire realm as if ready to tear it apart, simply dispersed. As if it had never existed.
And then Azalea’s greatsword, wreathed in light and fury, crashed down upon the head of the girl who had been Kaira’s mother. The head did not simply sever—it was utterly crushed. Gray blood and brain matter exploded outward. The sound of bone fragments striking my armor and shield rang out clearly. Just like with Kaira, no metallic scent of blood or anything else rose from Pirel’s shattered skull.
A horrifying silence followed.
I loosened my grip and let the axe fall until its head touched the ground.
The combined blessing that had enveloped Azalea—the grace bestowed by every god of the world with whom she had both cooperated and clashed—began to fade. The woman who had swung a greatsword as tall as herself as the apostle of the God of Wrath now…
Collapsed to the earth.
“Hic… huu… uuuuuh…”
I approached her side.
“Kaira, Kaira… huu… Kaira…!”
I knelt and placed a hand on the saint’s shoulder.
“Do not grieve, Saint.”
“Kaira… huuaaaang, Kaira…!!”
I removed my helmet. With my vision now clear, I watched the magic that had blackened the ground slowly dissipate outward from Azalea.
“Don’t cry… We…”
Nature, which had frozen the moment Kaira’s presence vanished and died completely, now drew in a long-held breath. Wind began to blow. Thin clouds gathered into dark masses, and a light rain fell. Color returned to the world that had lost it everywhere the rain touched.
“We saved the world, damn it all…”
On the wind that began blowing once more came a familiar scent.
The scent of freshly baked bread, the kind that stirs up old memories.