Hope

It was a space that radiated a deep sense of wrongness.

A sky colored in blue crayon.

Clouds rubbed in with pure white chalk.

Trees here and there left half-colored, and birds frozen midflight, were flat and crude.

In a word, it was a strange space.

When he lowered the head he had tilted back, he saw dark green grass spread out past the horizon.

Of course, it looked as though it had been roughly shaded in with a green colored pencil, so it felt just as wrong.

A picture drawn by a child who had only just begun learning art.

A world inside a still, flat plane where everything but himself had stopped.

That was what it felt like he had stepped into.

“...Hmm.”

Even so, it was perfectly clear where he had to go.

Because amid that childish style, there was only one being that looked like a work of hyperrealism.

A crooked, bizarre tea table.

A chair, likewise made of clumsy, connected lines.

The being seated there was a woman white from head to toe.

Her hair and eyebrows.

Her eyes were languidly closed, and even the long lashes extending from them were terribly white.

Hio trudged over and plopped down opposite her, before the bizarre tea table.

It was not difficult to guess who the woman with the mysterious air was.

The strange phenomenon he had seen just before coming here, and the voice he had heard.

The place he had thought was only a magician’s house had truly been a sacred domain.

Then the woman before him was.

“Goddess Rifue.”

The last god remaining in this world.

Rifue, the Goddess of Hope.

As if Hio’s words were correct, Rifue smiled pleasantly.

Her eyes still closed, she smiled as though she truly enjoyed this moment.

“Child.”

Her lips parted quietly.

The voice that escaped was neither resonant nor mystical as it had been in the holy domain, but it was clear and composed.

“Will you drink? It will put your heart at ease.”

He knew at once what she meant.

Because atop the picture-like tea table, a teacup that likewise looked as though it had been drawn appeared.

There was nothing inside the crooked teacup, but Hio picked it up and brought it to his lips.

There was no suspicion.

As if Rifue’s voice itself possessed some power that excluded doubt.

And so he tilted the empty teacup with nothing in it, and soon, like a lie, liquid filled his mouth.

A bittersweet taste began to spread.

The moment it passed down his throat, his heart grew calm and the tension began to drain away.

He had thought he was not particularly tense, but contrary to his thoughts, his body had been utterly strained by the unfamiliar space and alien sense of wrongness.

“It tastes all right, doesn’t it?”

Rifue looked at Hio with closed eyes.

Instead of answering, Hio set down the teacup and looked around at the drawn clouds and sky, the grass and the table.

“You have absolutely no talent for drawing.”

He had seen Rifue’s drawings before.

The Monster Wave at Yon Torno Castle, which had been meant to blind the eyes of the gods.

The pitiful drawing on the cover of the Catalog of Patience he had received as a reward, and the scenery now, looked exactly alike.

“A completed picture has little hope in it. That is why I like pictures like these.”

“I see... In any case, if a conversation like this was possible, you should have done it sooner.”

Was it because his heart had become too comfortable?

Though this was certainly an unfamiliar space, and Rifue was someone he had never seen before, she felt close to him.

Perhaps he wanted to complain a little.

Rifue merely gave such a Hio a benevolent smile.

“It was possible because you came to the holy domain. Their eyes are everywhere, but even they can do nothing about my realm, so they always wish to destroy it.”

“Then the Abyss Monsters really did target Hiberunia because of its divinity.”

“That is so.”

Rifue languidly leaned back against the chair and lifted her head slightly toward the sun in the sky.

Of course, the sun was a fake sun drawn in red and yellow, and Rifue’s eyes were still closed, but she smiled happily as though she were truly receiving warm sunlight.

In that state, she spoke softly.

“It must have been very hard.”

Why was it that his heart shook so violently at that one small sentence?

“It must have been very hard for you to come this far.”

If he had heard those words at some other time, or from someone else, he would have simply nodded vaguely and let them pass.

But this time, he could not.

Instead, as if he were truly complaining, words came out.

“...What are they? What am I fighting, and what am I supposed to do?”

It was surely because of that strange drink.

Had there ever been a time in the past several years when he had let down his guard like this and rested at ease?

When he had no power, his heart had been uneasy.

After he gained power, neither his body nor his heart had been comfortable.

The sense of responsibility that had built up little by little without him realizing it was far too heavy, and those he could trust and rely on were few enough to count on one hand.

So the reason complaints kept spilling out was surely because his heart, always uncomfortable as though being chased, and the pressure that he had to become stronger, had melted away for the first time.

“I’ve missed too much. There are more things I regret than I can count. I wanted to save them, I wanted to be with them, so why are there so many things that don’t go the way I want?”

He had wanted to save him.

Berga Pavlenko, his teacher who had first taught him magic and shown him the direction he needed to take.

If he could have, he had wanted to save him.

He had wanted to rescue them.

Ariel, who had endured for a thousand years. Regarda, who had stayed by his side. He had wanted to rescue those two beings from their pain.

The reason he could not, no matter what excuse he made, was ultimately because he lacked ability.

If he could turn things back, he wanted to turn them back.

Even Ataolf, the worst villain who had killed countless people, he had actually wanted to live.

He had wanted the Sword Saint to somehow succeed in persuading him, so they could live together.

It was not some cheap sympathy. It came from an extremely selfish heart.

Because if one of the strongest helped him, it would be of great use.

Because the heavy burden he carried would become at least a little lighter.

“What should I have done?”

Had this really been the best?

Was there no better way?

He had always acted indifferent, but in truth, inside, he had regretted and blamed himself countless times.

He had said he was trying to stop the predetermined destruction, yet in the end, everything was full of things that did not go as he wished.

Was he not human?

No matter how much he had experienced it as a game, had not too many things changed?

To foresee and prevent all of that, and take everything he wanted, he was an incomplete human being.

“Would it have been different if I were the Supreme Heavenly Demon from the game, whom everyone admired and desired?”

Though he pretended not to know, he knew the expectations countless people placed upon him.

If it’s the Supreme Heavenly Demon, he’ll be different.

If it’s the Supreme Heavenly Demon, he’ll do something somehow.

As expected of the Supreme Heavenly Demon.

No matter how much he pretended not to know and acted calmly, would those gazes and expectations disappear?

Expectation and reliance had piled up slowly and grown heavier little by little, and before he knew it, they had been crushing him.

“...Child.”

Rifue’s expression as she looked at Hio was steeped in deep pity.

“That is what hope is.”

Her closed eyes still did not open, but as though she knew everything, she grieved with him.

“Everyone looks to it and expects from it, but no one cares about the weight and pain that hope bears.”

And yet she said.

“That is why it is hope.”

Even so, it was hope.

Always at the very front, far enough ahead for everyone to look upon and wish for, because it did not waver, it was hope.

That was what Rifue was saying.

“I am sorry. This is all I can do for you.”

With her eyes closed and her posture straight, she slowly raised a hand.

In her pure white, graceful hand, a brush was suddenly held.

“Before records even began, even before the birth of mankind, we were fighting.”

The brush moved elegantly.

In time with it, a picture appeared in the sky.

The first things painted were light and darkness.

The whitest light, and the deepest darkness.

“After a long battle, we won. The deepest darkness sank to the deepest depths below.”

The darkness weakened, and the light rejoiced.

As light descended into the place where darkness had been, many things were born.

Plants and animals, humans and fairies, monsters that were violent but did not stray from the proper order.

Even dragons, who protected all of it.

The world was composed, and it began to stabilize.

The place where darkness had been was thus filled.

An era of peace and progress passed like that, and only when even the fact that the deepest darkness had ever existed was beginning to fade.

“It appeared again. The deepest darkness had, before anyone knew it, returned as the abyss.”

Over the countless living beings smiling brightly in midair, thick darkness was painted over them.

The beginning of the war recorded as the “Strangeness.”

It was the beginning of calamity.

Dragons fell, and fairies and spirits hid or perished.

When the story progressed that far, Hio could not help but ask.

“Why didn’t the gods intervene?”

Was it not a future even Kreutzwald had foreseen?

Then would those beings called gods not have known?

If they knew, why had they left that horrific war alone?

To that, Rifue answered.

“The darkness had grown more greedy, and sought to cover not only its original place, but other worlds as well, with their shadow. That is why we had to stop it, but we could not.”

The hand holding the brush continued to move.

Countless living beings were drawn in the air. Light and darkness were painted over their heads.

“Because we loved this world we had created far too much.”

If they had intervened directly, perhaps they could have stopped the abyss.

But what meaning would there be in that?

The world would be erased in the aftermath.

The gods loved everything in the world, and for that reason, they could not step forward directly.

Because if they directly clashed with the abyss, the world would have vanished.

“The heart is something so precious that even we could not cast it away. The moment we cast it away, we would have been no different from the abyss.”

The moment they reached that conclusion, it became a great current of fate and ultimately advanced toward the path of predetermined destruction.

Just like... the ending inside the world of Ventaiell.

“Rather than forcibly delaying the predetermined destruction, we sought to give it variables.”

If they used the many authorities of the gods, they could probably have delayed the scheduled destruction for a long time.

But the reason they did not was because the darkness would endlessly surge in, and in the end, destruction was the fate predetermined for this world.

So they intended to use that vast authority to give it small variables.

Even if, because of that, they lost their power.

Even if they fell into a long sleep from which they could never awaken again, they loved this world they had made that much.

“Child.”

Therefore, what they left behind until the very end was hope.

The last remaining god was Goddess Rifue.

The Goddess of Hope.

That goddess spoke to Hio.

“You, all of you, are those who twist predetermined fate.”

The two hands that had stirred the air with the brush were now neatly folded and set atop her lap.

“Though it grieves me that I cannot see how fate, already greatly shaken, will change from here on.”

Rifue’s closed eyes remained as they were.

Yet contrary to her words of regret, a peaceful smile rested on Rifue’s lips.

“Even so, I am glad. You came to find me before it was too late.”

What did she mean by glad?

Before he could wonder about it, something changed.

“I am sorry that we cannot talk more.”

The world of the picture that had stretched broadly beyond the horizon was narrowing.

The endlessly vast space was clearly shrinking, and beyond it, pitch-black darkness was gradually approaching.

“Will you come to join the forlorn hope? Or will you form a new forlorn hope yourself? It would be fine to try something entirely new, too.”

Rifue spoke as though she could no longer see beyond that.

She placed both arms on the table and slowly lowered her body.

The narrowing space.

Her languid voice.

“I am curious about the end of your story... but I am so very tired.”

Rifue lay face down, truly as though she were exhausted, using her two arms as a pillow.

“The system has been perfectly established. What I wished to pass on to you, you will receive all of it once you return. So child, do not forget.”

Rifue, the last goddess remaining in this world.

The Goddess of Hope.

She said this as her final words.

“You are my hope.”

With the sight of Rifue languidly falling asleep as the last thing he saw, his vision only drifted endlessly far away.

「Item — ‘Catalog of Patience’ is destroyed.」

「The effect of Item — ‘Catalog of Patience’ has been permanently bound to you.」

「Ancient Grimoire — ‘Book of Dragon Summoning’ has been acquired.」

「Authority — ‘???’ has been acquired.」