At my assertion, Samuel wore a peculiar expression.
"Do you trust my sword?"
His vaguely twisted lips soon drew a crooked smile.
"You've distrusted me all this time, and now, of all times."
At first glance, his words sounded like resentment, or perhaps like petulant complaining.
"Here of all places, where you were betrayed."
"Sir Samuel."
With his sword tip drooping toward the ground, Sir Samuel slowly approached me.
Xenon's shoulders, which had been relaxed for a moment, tensed up again. He kept me hidden behind him, ready at any moment to face Samuel's sword.
Samuel's gaze passed indifferently over such a Xenon.
"You asked about my rest."
Xenon held me tight and slowly moved his steps toward the castle. Conversely, Samuel was walking toward the cliff where we had been standing just moments ago.
"I didn't expect you to ask about that."
A hollow voice flowed from Samuel as he stood gazing beyond the cliff.
"My rest, you say."
As if he had heard something absurd, he chewed over the word 'rest' several times. Then he glanced back at me.
"If I ask for it, will you give it to me?"
Beyond Samuel, I could see the sun setting. I had thought the blue light was definitely stronger just moments ago, but in the span of just a few words, the sunset glow was growing stronger.
Samuel, who had turned completely toward me with his back to that sky, spoke in a dry voice.
"I know that you would have done so in the past, but I also know that you won't do that now."
Samuel's gaze turned to my hand. The hand that had been flashing with green light all this while as I granted rest to the Knights of the Round Table.
But now, not even a speck of light flowed forth.
It wasn't that I lacked the authority. I still had power remaining. It was just...
I simply didn't think I should use this power on Samuel.
Samuel, having confirmed my plain hand, smiled bitterly and murmured.
"Because I've confirmed it to the point of being sick of it, all the while coming here—that I didn't belong within your boundaries."
* * *
Not everyone desired freedom.
Some felt a sense of stability in the fact that they walked exactly the path the god instructed. Therefore, they rather resented the proxy who cut the threads of fate for them.
The Knights of the Round Table, who unanimously called them foolish, worried whether the proxy might have suffered some wound to her heart.
So they endlessly praised. How sublime the goddess's proxy was, how great their cause was.
「Even if someone refuses, in the end we will liberate this world.」
The proxy spoke thus to her knights and smiled. It was an undoubtable truth.
Because this liberation was not merely for the sake of all living beings in the world.
Because it was not simply a righteous act of granting free will to god's playthings.
At the end of this journey, the goddess would finally cast off her heavy authority and be able to enter eternal sleep.
「For that is the goddess's will.」
The goddess's proxy now knew. The reason she had to reach the end of this path.
As long as she was a fragment of the goddess, as long as she was liberated through the goddess, as long as she wielded the authority of death...
The goddess's desire was her path.
「Death is merciful to all, but to one person alone, it is endlessly cruel.」
However, goddess, can the rest you desire truly be said to be the same as my rest?
「Pardon?」
「Truly contradictory, isn't it, Sir Samuel?」
The first knight wore a puzzled expression as if he didn't understand her words. He didn't seem to think at all that there was any underlying meaning to her words.
He always accepted her words uprightly.
His constant integrity made the proxy comfortable. That must be why she kept revealing her inner thoughts before him.
「Do you think that forcing unwanted freedom on them truly makes them free? In their eyes, I too will appear as a puppet of death. They will ask what makes me different from themselves.」
「You say such words because you haven't experienced it.」
「Do you not agree with their thoughts, Sir Knight?」
「Of course not.」
Whenever conversing with the first knight, the proxy always felt a strange sensation. As if he could see through a person's inner thoughts, he always spoke the words she wanted to hear.
「I know that you possess free will.」
How great a comfort those words were to her.
The proxy smiled brightly and swallowed the truth back down her throat.
Her knight's words were wrong. She had never been free from the beginning.
She was the sole puppet the goddess held and waved in her grasp, and she would become the sole existence unable to obtain that mercy at the end of this path.
* * *
"Do you know? Death is merciful to all, but to one person alone, it is endlessly cruel."
It was a familiar phrase. Where had I heard those words before?
After pondering for a while, I recalled that I had heard that sound in the scene Deiris had shown me long ago.
They were words Samuel had spoken when he pointed his sword at Deiris. Along with the words that what was needed to complete the final authority was the captain's soul.
"And death has always been cruel to you. In the past when it tried to annihilate your soul, and now when it resurrected you who desired no resurrection."
Samuel continued speaking slowly.
"This is the atonement I chose, and the single chance I begged from the goddess and obtained."
Samuel's words were too vague and didn't flow smoothly.
Standing behind Xenon, I stepped slightly forward and replied.
"Samuel, I wish you would speak in a way that's easy to understand."
At my words, Samuel raised his sword instead of answering, which he had been letting droop all this time.
Is he perhaps trying to point his sword at me?
The suspicion that briefly arose soon vanished. It was true that Samuel reached his hand toward me, but he wasn't pointing his sword.
"The method of performing the final authority is simple."
He was holding out the sword's hilt to me.
"Fill this sword with your authority and strike me."
I looked at the sword held out to me, at a loss for words.
The sword, with white divine power undulating upon it, looked like a large white feather.
"After that, pour out all the power you possess and perform the final rest. Just as you have done for the knights all this time, like that."
The rest I had given to the knights until now hadn't involved any remarkable technique. I had simply let out the power I possessed, with the heart of wanting to grant their wishes.
Then was Samuel asking me for rest now?
"...Are you saying I should kill you, Sir Knight, and then give rest?"
Even as I uttered it, I wondered what in the world this meant. With a dubious expression, I looked at Samuel's sword, and Samuel offered a firm negative answer.
"My portion of rest has not been granted to me."
Then to whom was I supposed to give rest? Still not understanding, I asked again.
"If I don't kill you, I can't complete the final authority?"
So it turned out a sacrifice was needed for the final authority?
"Precisely, I must completely exhaust my divine power. Because..."
Samuel, who had been trailing off, spoke in a slightly lower tone.
"That is the price."
"Price?"
"Yes."
Samuel, who had been facing me arrogantly, slowly lowered his gaze.
"The price to grant you rest."
* * *
「You are my final mission.」
The proxy sometimes said such things to her knights. Those words were truth without a sliver of falsehood.
The twelve knights were those who supported the proxy, stood at the forefront, and bore the heavy duty together. Their sacrifice would be recognized for its value before the final authority.
Unlike others who had merely been freed, the twelve knights had the right to obtain rest.
In whatever form they desired, whatever it might be.
「I will never turn away from your devotion.」
At the point when the followers of Birth were lowering their spirits, when the temple serving Birth was burning, and when countless threads of fate that had been bound to spindles were being cut and fluttering...
The proxy finally sensed that the time had come. She traveled throughout the world cutting the threads of fate, and even the handful of remaining followers lost their strength.
The excellent proxies of Birth all crumbled.
The proxy's final duty was to grant rest to her knights and then abandon even the authority that had created her soul.
In that sense, Belladia Castle guarded an excellent position. The river flowing through this place would extend throughout the continent and embrace even each small life the proxy couldn't see.
If she perished here, the death authority she abandoned would likely spread throughout the world.
By that time, she had let go of everything. Since this body was resurrected through authority in the first place, it was only right that when the authority disappeared, this body too would die.
Though it was sad that even her soul would disappear, since it was originally the goddess's, what was strange about returning to the goddess?
「...It is all finished. There is no knight to block my path, and you may lay down the heavy burden the goddess passed on to you.」
If only her knight hadn't spoken those words she had so wanted to hear.
Looking at the traitor's sword soaked in blood, the proxy lamented.
Why do you, even at the very end, speak the words I want to hear?
Though all the long-prepared work had gone awry and it was despairing, the proxy felt a faint sensation of relief.
As the price of failure, all power surged backward, the goddess despaired, and Birth thrashed about.
Amidst the world crumbling in chaos, the proxy slowly moved her lips.
「For now, I want to rest.」
Finally, she made a choice with genuine free will.
It was the first in her life.
The proxy's memory ended there, so she had no way of knowing.
The state of mind of the first knight who witnessed her first will.