It was a strike prepared with the resolve for self-destruction. Merely avoiding or deflecting it would render Maximilien's attempt futile, and he would shatter under his own power.
"Yes. I understand. Your gears."
Knowing full well, the King of Humans reached out her hand in return.
"It's interesting, but that's all."
Flame-wreathed teeth and a pale, soft hand collided. The human hand opposing the massive mechanism appeared far too frail. The teeth lunged as if to crush the King of Humans in an instant.
The result was the exact opposite.
Sparks flew between the fist and the teeth. The teeth ground away as if scraped against sandpaper. The crushed and mangled iron fragments became gunpowder in themselves, causing small explosions.
Iron pressed and melted. Shattered metal debris. Flames and sparks. Clutching all of it within her hand, the King of Humans remained composed. Enduring the barrage of teeth without a hint of faltering, she spoke.
"No matter how powerful the strength you envision in your mind, it's useless if you lack the foundation to withstand it."
The magnitude of force produced by the interlocked gears approached the sun in theory. Even the King of Beasts would not dare withstand it.
But that power existed only within Maximilien's imagination, overflowing with greed without considering the limits of reality... it was nothing more than a delusion.
"It wouldn't work. Even you know it wouldn't work. Why commit such reckless acts and make yourself sad?"
Muttering as if sorrowful, the King of Humans pushed away the Solar Wheel with a slight exertion of force.
That was all.
The King of Humans was cold reality, and while Maximilien might have been the master of gears, he could never become the master of the world. The wall of reality collided with everything he had.
Massive force reversed course. The gears that had reached their limits snapped simultaneously. Gathering all the power of every gear meant the shock would also be transmitted to all of them.
Hundreds of gears lost their interlocking and scattered. Blood-soaked fragments rained down.
"Kuaaaaaaaah!"
Bones crushed, gear fragments bored into his body. Rotational force converted to searing heat, crushing him down.
The unbearable force recoiled directly and destroyed Maximilien. Dropping to his knees, Maximilien vomited blood from every orifice in his body and muttered.
"Qigong... So that's it... Was that technique also chosen?"
The King of Humans withdrew the qigong she had dispersed from her hand and said.
"Useful. Different from gears."
Maximilien had suffered severe damage in the previous battle and reconstructed his body with gears. Now that all of it was destroyed, he was as good as dead.
That he could still speak at all was thanks to the few remaining gears moving in place of his bones. If his consciousness severed even briefly, he would fall asleep and never wake again.
Sensing this was the end, Maximilien painstakingly forged each word.
"...Heh, heugh. Honest, and powerful. Different from him."
Though he didn't specify who he was referring to, the King of Humans understood and nodded.
"My brother might have been. He's weak and ordinary, so he has to use everything he can."
Those without power have no luxury to be choosy about their means. Observe sufficiently, understand and analyze, then hide it all until the last moment to catch the enemy off guard—that's the only chance of victory.
However, that is the perspective of the weak.
"...You are simply too strong. Enough that you have no need for what is mine."
The overwhelmingly strong are not bound by such things.
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A general of the Military Nation's Six Commanders, an alchemist considered for the Chairman of the Assembly of Nations, and an executive of the Pinnacle of All Things.
Even Maximilien, counted among the strongest, was nothing more than an ordinary person before the King of Humans.
"Knowing that, why did you do it? You cannot change me. You clearly knew that."
It was an affectionate yet emotionless question that a parent who fails to understand their child might ask. Maximilien endured that gaze and slowly raised his head.
"...Do you truly not know the reason? Even as the King of Humans?"
"I don't. The one who would have told me left."
"Kuhaha! Then, even my death has meaning."
Maximilien laughed while vomiting blood. Even as his life flickered faintly like a candle before the wind, having found the last thing to burn, Maximilien gathered his final strength and opened his mouth.
"Listen, King of Humans who knows not humans. Humans live to leave themselves behind."
A human facing death does not lie. Even while casting off the shell of life, there is no need to weave a shroud of falsehood.
Maximilien had always been honest, but before death, he became even more so.
"Whether children, achievements, teachings, or creations. They live to leave something in the world, to engrave the traces of their existence. Their lifespans are short, but what they leave behind will remain even after their death."
Some might disagree. Or they might point out that such words are too broad to carry meaning.
But to the man named Maximilien, that was truth, the fuel that drove him.
"But that alone is not enough. All things have endings. My descendants will one day be cut off, and my creations will wear away and vanish in the flow of history. Teachings will eventually be forgotten, and achievements will be buried in the soil."
Maximilien grasped the heart gear attached to his chest. Forcefully holding and pulling out the core that moved his entire body, feeling his body crumble, he squeezed out his last strength and extended the gear.
"Only achievements comparable to the Demon God will remain eternally, becoming the foundation of the world and praising me."
The blood-soaked silver gear spun round and round by itself like a waterwheel. Maximilien extended the gear containing everything he was and spat out blood-soaked words.
"Take it. King of Humans. This desire you cannot comprehend. This human wish you have never realized...! Even if I die like this, even if I failed to engrave my gears upon you...! I will carve gear marks, at least, into your heart...!"
The gear containing all his strength did not reach the King of Humans.
But the gear containing all his emotion clearly reached her. The King of Humans received the gear as if enchanted.
"Remember... me...!"
With those final words, Maximilien's body collapsed. Falling apart and scattering in pieces, the sight was closer to a breakdown, a disassembly, than death. It was an ending fitting for Commander Maximilien.
The King of Humans, who had watched Maximilien for a moment, turned away. Immediately after, red flames burned Maximilien's corpse. With uncharacteristic gentleness, cremating his remains as if wrapping him in a warm embrace.
The King of Humans silently gazed at the gear he had handed over. Maximilien's keepsake continued to spin round and round even after its owner had breathed his last. If another gear were connected to this one, it too would spin without stopping.
For this was the relic of Maximilien, the Mage of Gears.
"Even without you saying so, I would remember everyone."
She was the world's smallest columbarium, a library mourning the forgotten.
Reading, remembering, and cherishing all humans.
Made whole by that alone, she was the King of Beasts who mourned in solitude.
A columbarium does not know the resentment of the ashes, and a library cannot read the words of its books. It merely keeps and holds them.
There is no librarian to read the books. The library only shelves them, unable to open their pages.
The King of Humans, clutching the gear, headed toward where she needed to go.
A butterfly flew in from somewhere and alighted on Nevada's corpse. The butterfly, feeling along her eyes as if they were flowers, sensed something strange and spread its wings. Contemplating whether to drink the blood-tasting dew, the butterfly exercised restraint and left.
In the transparent eyes left behind after the butterfly departed, the light had vanished. The star's flame had severed Nevada's life along with the Demon God. Her burned lower half had disappeared somewhere, and only from her chest upward remained scattered on the ground.
Even the Demon God's end should be no different from an ordinary death....
It was different.
Roots sprouted from the cut surface. Roots that had grown by consuming the corpse frantically felt along the ground. After burrowing deep into the earth, they gradually spread and touched the roots of all manner of plants.
Nevada's roots, which had explored the earth for some time, eventually reached the Tree of Origin.
At that moment.
Flowers bloomed from Nevada's corpse. Like flowers blooming from a corpse, or like cordyceps, the flowers that had grown by devouring Nevada's body had grown large enough to swallow her entirely. After Nevada's corpse was covered and melted away, becoming one with the world, the flowers dropped their leaves and bore a large fruit.
That sight closely resembled the fruit from which humans are born.
How much time had passed? Reaching the Tree of Origin, receiving essence, and consuming Nevada's corpse. The flesh fruit that gradually grew and developed had fully ripened before anyone noticed.
Crack. The skin of the flesh fruit split open, and pulp no different from amniotic fluid overflowed. From within the writhing interior, a tiny girl tumbled out.
It would be what Nevada looked like as a girl who had just come of age. The horns on her head were as small as fingers, and her arms and legs were as bare as winter branches. Coughing as if suffocating, the girl slurred her words like a fool.
"Cough, cough. Ah. Ah."
Newly born Nevada stood on the ground with trembling legs. She looked at the fruit she was born from and blankly muttered.
"Did I... die...?"
Origin Regression. Nevada's technique that plunges immortal beings into the great cycle of nature, causing them to lose themselves forever. A mortal power that even killed the Immortal Sacrifice God.
Nevada used that power in reverse, resurrecting herself from death.
The Tree of Origin is both the Demon God and Nevada's inherent demonic way. It was possible because her consciousness remained within it. Even if Nevada dies, she can reconstruct her body by contacting the Tree of Origin.
"What happened? Who... Ugh."
But losing herself was the same for Nevada.
Memory dwells in the flesh. Even memories engraved in the Tree of Origin cannot be as vivid and sensitive as the senses of a beast. Nevada struggled to recall the memories she had accumulated before death, but it was similar to trying to sprout leaves from a withered tree.
However, even a withered tree has things it cannot forget. Nevada recalled the desire she had engraved upon the Demon God.
"...My liege. I must see my liege again."
Nevada's everything, Nevada's desire, and Nevada's lingering attachment and past.
That remained even after her body was reconstructed once more, and it moved Nevada.
"Where could my liege be? I was surely serving my liege. I cannot lose my liege again. I..."
"Nevada. It's been a while. Did you sleep well?"
A soft voice, as if transmitted from within a dream, was heard. Nevada was startled as if her breath had stopped. Merely hearing the voice, dew formed at the corners of her eyes that had dried like a withered tree.
Where the voice came from, Nevada's liege whom she had longed for even in dreams was there.
"Ah, ah..."
"You've gotten younger? Since you were born anew from this tree? It seems many unspeakable things happened to you as well."
"My liege..."
"But, Nevada. I'm curious."
Nevada's king was still gentle and curious. And still cold and indifferent as well. Without wiping away her flowing tears, without embracing the rejoicing Nevada. Merely watching gently, she asked.
"Is reviving me something worth doing even if it meant making your body into a tree, passing through all manner of life and death, and enduring eons of time?"
However, that was the liege Nevada wished to see. Nevada answered with tears streaming.
"...Yes! It is so! This one has lived for that alone every moment!"
"I see."
It was sincere, and therefore it was true. The human heart needs no calculation of understanding; that alone is the end.
"You've waited long. I won't say I'm sorry. If I apologized every time I failed to grant a wish, I would become an apology doll."
"Those words are improper. How could this one dare wish for such a thing. This one merely hoped for my liege's return."
"And?"
And? She had never thought about what came after. Seeing the King of Humans again was such a distant and unrealistic desire for Nevada that she had no leisure to consider what would happen after it was fulfilled.
But human greed is endless, and a desire once blown does not stop.
"It's a command, Nevada. Tell me what you desire."
At the command given by the King of Humans, Nevada poured out the great lump in her chest.
"...Let all humans look up to my liege. Reign so that none dare slander, assassinate, or insult my liege!"
"Reign!"
"Reign!"
"Reign!"
Members of the Baskerville family. The Pinnacle of All Things. And countless ordinary citizens who had awaited the king's return.
Drawn together by the king's existence, they all began to cry out with one voice at Nevada's words.