#230
Cleanup (2)
When his first attack failed and the Immortal King counterattacked,
Zios thought he was certainly dead.
The sharp thorns that dug into his entire body and destroyed his heart and other organs, and the dreadful energy that spread through him like poison, were not things the living could withstand.
However, the life force that had already transferred into his blood-red aura kept him from dying instantly even though the vessel of his body had been shattered.
And the baptism of holy power from the Saintess, which followed before it was too late, was enough to hold his life in place, if only for a moment.
Saintess Riesta was holding back the Bone Dragon and the Immortal King’s wave of attacks while maintaining the blessings granted to the party members, and even as she did so, she squeezed out what little strength she had left and devoted herself to restoring Zios.
‘If she wastes any more strength on me here, the others will be in danger too.’
But knowing full well that it was like pouring water into a bottomless jar, he shook off the Saintess, who tried to stop him to the very end, and forced himself to rise...
And when he took in the sight of Heinrich’s battle as he faced the Immortal King, he let out an exclamation without realizing it.
‘Ah.’
A recklessly daring challenge and the iron will that carried it through, so vivid even from such a considerable distance.
Even as his body was torn apart, broken, and burst open, he never stopped in the end.
With the single-minded determination that he would reach that seemingly impossible goal no matter what.
Zios gazed at that sight for a moment, then raised his spear and offered a reverent prayer.
‘Lord God, I know full well that I cannot be the main actor...’
To burn away the last of his life, of which little remained, and lend one hand to that hero’s step forward.
Perhaps that would be the finest possible ending for a man named Zios Calkin.
‘Please let this lowly life be of even the smallest help on his path.’
And so he gathered even the threadlike energy that had been sustaining his life and unleashed his final blow.
The moment the Immortal King effortlessly destroyed it, he despaired.
Immediately afterward, as though in answer to his prayer—he trembled as he saw the dawn that illuminated the darkness dwell within Heinrich’s body.
And the moment the hero’s holy sword pierced the heart of the absolute evil of this world, the Immortal King, whom he had believed no one could ever approach,
he suddenly realized something.
‘Ah, I see.’
That was the destiny ordained for this world.
Even if they could not defeat the Immortal King here and now, the final conclusion would, in the end, not be so different from that.
In a strangely distant state of mind,
he was able to feel certain of that inevitable end.
“Lord Zios! Please come to your senses!”
“Mr. Zios!”
“Saint, quickly, over here...!”
While he was immersed in such thoughts,
only when he sensed the commotion buzzing close by did he realize that he had lost consciousness and collapsed.
Had what he realized just a moment ago merely been a dream?
For now, he could not know.
“Lord Zios.”
He struggled to open his eyes at the low voice calling him and faced the hero, who was looking down at him with worried eyes.
The hope of this world and the savior who would bring light to the continent, Saint Heinrich.
“Ahem, brother. I brought you a gift.”
Soon after, Harley appeared, dragging some lump in his hand.
His already scant equipment had become tattered, making him look even more revealing than before.
“Ah! As for what this bastard is...”
Since Zios no longer even had the strength to open his mouth and could only stare quietly, Harley proudly chattered on, saying that the monster was the ringleader of the group that had led the opening of the Abyss.
It was indeed a gift satisfying enough to make his eyes fly open.
Though, in his current state, where he could not so much as lift a finger, he could only be satisfied with watching the bastard be disposed of before his eyes.
...No, to be truly honest,
he thought that revenge no longer mattered anymore.
Whether that was because he had hunted black magicians all across the continent until he was sick of it, or because of the realization he had just felt, he could not know.
‘I can leave the rest to these people. They’re far greater than someone like me.’
Right now, he simply wanted to rest.
For some reason, the voices of Riesta, Isea, and Lydia echoed faintly from far away.
Just as his mind grew hazy and he felt as though he were sinking down into an endless floor,
“Sleep peacefully, Lord Zios. May you have good dreams.”
with that warm voice, strangely clear, as the last thing he heard,
he soon fell into a deep sleep, a small smile hanging at the corners of his mouth.
Just as those words said.
Thinking that he hoped he would dream of meeting the family he missed.
***
Rattle—
When I opened the window, a refreshing breeze blew in and tickled my face.
After savoring that feeling for a moment, I leaned against the window frame and stared blankly outside.
In the air that felt cool with winter approaching, I saw the courtyard, harmonizing with its surroundings and exuding vitality.
A garden I had tended by calling upon the power of Harris, the High Elf, through “Individual Projection.”
Perhaps thanks to that, the front yard of the house boasted a natural beauty beyond what even a professional gardener could have maintained.
“Hah!”
As I admired the scenery for a while, a hollow laugh suddenly escaped me.
A comrade who had been with me for quite a long time had died because of me just moments ago, and here I was, looking at a well-kept garden and thinking things like this.
How absurd was that?
‘I really am quite broken.’
I quietly closed my eyes at the self-loathing that surged in.
‘Zios...’
In truth, I had known from the beginning.
As much as he wanted revenge... perhaps even more than that, he wished for his own death.
For someone like him, the hero’s party, infamous for its abysmal survival rate, may have been the perfect place.
Of course, since I had never intended to let anyone die from the start, I had meant to indirectly help him with his revenge and persuade him to slowly put his heart at ease...
‘To think things would turn out like this.’
A sigh slipped out along with a bitter smile.
At that time, Hans had truly intended to kill every comrade present there.
If not for Zios’s actions, Heinrich probably would not have reached transcendence in time, and my main body’s awakening would have been delayed as well. Perhaps every last member of the party really might have been slaughtered.
Until the enraged Hans showed killing intent toward Zios, Heinrich had never even imagined that he would truly go that far.
‘...Should I call it fortunate, at least?’
Calling the result achieved by a comrade throwing away his life fortunate.
I was aware that it was a rotten sentiment, but it was still true that it was better than facing the worst-case scenario.
‘...Yes, in return, I’ll have to make sure I finish his revenge properly.’
With Baltheon as the last of them, it was safe to say that most of the bastards involved in that incident had been dealt with.
There were still remnants left in the South, but the tribes that had been oppressed all this time would rise up and cleanly take care of them.
‘Just in case, I should leave Harley there until the matter is handled for certain. The problem is that bastard, the Revolutionary, who’s the final mastermind.’
I had even pressed Siana, who had been an executive of the Oath of Reversal, to try to find out about him, but he had hidden his information so thoroughly that there was nothing useful.
After compiling various clues, all I could find out was that he was trying to bring “something sealed in the Abyss” back into the world.
‘I still don’t know exactly what that is, though.’
There was no need to even consider that it would be something more sinister than death or madness.
Perhaps it was a Demon God trying to destroy the world.
‘No, did Siana say Demon Gods fall under the jurisdiction of the Demon Realm, her homeland?’
In any case, if I continued interfering with his plan like this, he would eventually have no choice but to step to the front himself, and that would be the perfect opportunity to deal with him.
I opened my closed eyes and once again looked down at the garden blankly.
Even though I had roughly organized my thoughts, my head was still complicated, making my chest feel heavy.
...In truth, Hans’s sudden acceleration during that final battle was largely due to mental corruption, but the extreme actions he had shown before that were not entirely because of it.
‘Because I’ve actually been tormented by temptation every time too.’
If I set aside ethics and conscience just a little, I could obtain karma much more conveniently and efficiently.
But I had been deliberately ignoring that with the humanity I had learned, trying not to cross that final line...
And then that bastard Hans went and caused an accident.
The self that lacked the morality which had served as the brake on my impulses all this time had finally done it.
‘For now, I stopped the troops marching south from the Immortal Castle before they left the mountain range.’
Not only that, the damage the Immortal Army had inflicted on the continent so far was enormous.
Yet even amid all this, my inner self was rationalizing it, saying, “What’s already happened can’t be helped. It’s not like I did it because I wanted to.”
“Ha, haha...”
A self-deprecating laugh escaped me again.
Because I really thought there was no helping me as a human being.
Still, thanks to that selfish thinking, my complicated heart became much lighter.
And once that happened, my interest turned to the results I had pursued even while crossing the line I had maintained until now.
In fact, so many major incidents had occurred in succession in such a short time that I was somewhat looking forward to it.
“Huh?”
And that anticipation was satisfied far beyond anything I had expected.
I had only slept for two days in Earth time.
Even in Auterica time, it had only been a little over twenty days.
『Karma Shop』
『Enhance Unique Skill (1,200,000)』
『Enhance Status – View Details』
『Karma Possessed - 9,999,627』
A number of points I had never seen before
was there.
“...Wow.”
At that absurd unit, a foolish exclamation slipped out without my realizing it.
‘Ten million is right around the corner.’
The total points I had poured into enhancing my unique skill so far were 6.3 million.
If I added the points used for enhancing my status on top of that, wouldn’t it roughly be similar?
Simply put, an amount of karma comparable to what I had used so far had come into my hands in its entirety.
‘How much did I have left before I fainted? I don’t think it was that much.’
On top of that, karma did come in large amounts right after major events, but there was also no small amount that came in belatedly after being affected by those events.
Perhaps this overwhelming number had appeared because those things happened to align by luck.
‘Even so, ten million...’
A society that had barely maintained stability even during the monster madness incident had finally collapsed with Hans’s all-out invasion of the continent.
The continent now had to prepare for the Immortal Army, which could attack at any time regardless of the front lines against the monsters, and as most territories entered wartime footing, Hans’s infamy soared without knowing where the sky ended.
‘On top of that, stopping Riley’s assassination in Jeron must have been big too.’
Princess Riley, who had the imperial family at her back and led her forces into a large-scale search.
After a persistent investigation, she had finally discovered that the one behind the incident was the Duchy of Hermanhart, one of the only four great houses in the empire, the maternal family of the Crown Prince and the birth family of the current Empress.
‘They haven’t made a large-scale announcement yet, but a clash is only a matter of time.’
Given the current situation, a crisis in which the survival of humanity was at stake, there was understandably a cautious mood.
After all, it was an enormous scandal that could, with one wrong move, even develop into a civil war.
This too was top-secret information I could only know because she personally told me when she came to visit Hesperon every day and chatted before leaving.
‘The biggest event was probably defeating the lycanthropes on the Enamel Continent and protecting the World Tree.’
Because Harris had become practically half-plant immediately after that incident, I did not know the detailed current situation.
However, protecting the World Tree, the incarnation of a god, and preventing the continent from sinking was, in itself, an achievement worthy of being called one.
‘And then there was what happened this time... cleaning up the dangerous elements in the South and repelling the Immortal King.’
On top of that, through those various processes, hadn’t Harley, Harris, and Heinrich all reached the realm of transcendence?
After laying out everything that had happened, even this overwhelming amount of karma was sufficiently understandable.
‘What exactly can I do with this karma?’
Before the enormous reward that had become reality, the anguish that had shaken my heart until just moments ago evaporated cleanly.
The only thing ruling my mind right now was the question of how I should use this!
Even as I was carried away by anticipation, the karma was rapidly increasing.
Perhaps due to the effect of the time difference, the number that had been just short of ten million filled up in an instant.
At last—the first digit of the points changed.
And at that moment.
《Achievement Accomplished! Your unused karma points have exceeded ten million.》
《The hardships and trials that failed to kill you will make you even stronger. As a reward, the special privilege “Karma Shop Ver.2 Update” is granted.》
《By accomplishing an achievement, your karma increases further.》
Unexpected text filled my vision.
‘...A shop update, now?’
Apparently, this Akasha System
wanted me to spend my karma lavishly without holding back.