“We’re going to make the Princess the Emperor.”
It was what Silbert had said the moment the civil war began.
Four rankers, excluding the Supreme Heavenly Demon.
Their goal was to make the weakest Princess the victor, thereby making Silbert the emperor’s closest confidant.
“We’ve placed a trustworthy person by the Princess’s side, so the odds must have risen dramatically.”
I could easily guess that the person Silbert spoke of and the person I’d seen in the city of Sauer were one and the same.
Immediately, I made a separate plan.
A plan to seize the First Prince’s legion and engineer a crisis for the Princess’s camp.
There was nothing difficult about it.
The horror of Charm was that if you unleashed one charmed person, it would spread like a plague through them.
I personally stepped in, blocked the flow of information, and executed the plan.
I know.
I know this was by no means something the Supreme Heavenly Demon would like.
But what can you do.
I’d wandered for a full two years searching for him.
It was the sole goal of my meaningless life.
I had a duty to make it certain.
The plan was perfect.
The Princess’s legion was driven thoroughly into a corner, and the only path of escape was a frontal breakthrough.
If hidden strength existed, it would inevitably be revealed.
And overwhelming strength at that—the kind that wouldn’t suffice with mediocre power.
Suppose Silbert had encountered this situation without any preparation.
His psychokinesis was certainly an excellent skill, but it was far from enough to lead a war to victory alone.
It might be effective against large forces, but it fell short of breaking through the legion’s elites and taking the prince’s head.
If Silbert was at that level, the other rankers need not even be mentioned.
Two overwhelming individuals who always placed their names above mine. It was a feat only possible for those two.
I knew the whereabouts of the one who had ranked second among them, so only one remained. Only the Supreme Heavenly Demon could overcome this crisis.
Dark clouds gathered.
Kwaaang—!
Thunder as if the air were tearing apart. Pure white flashes engulfed my vision.
Dozens, hundreds—a baptism of lightning strikes layered so many times it was impossible to tell.
“Slay the Prince.”
From the first bolt until the prince’s head fell, mere minutes had passed.
“Aah……”
I couldn’t help but tremble.
* * *
“I love you. Airaits.”
How sweet was the fruit obtained after such a process.
Whatever the reason, wasn’t the Supreme Heavenly Demon—Hio Pavlenko—whispering love to me by my side?
The embrace was warm, and the whispered love was so tender.
Enough to make me want to be buried in it for a lifetime.
“Yeah! I love you too!”
The flow of memories, drifting as if swept away by gently rolling waves, now felt as though little remained.
“I love you.”
A memory that intense.
I was happy.
Because I felt I had finally come to know what love was.
Somehow… it felt a little familiar too, but what did it matter?
I had never been loved in my life. I had never loved before.
Love was a deficiency that had never existed for me.
That was why I yearned for it and wandered to fulfill it. It had become the goal of my life.
How could I describe the rapturous feeling of a lifelong deficiency being fulfilled?
But it was like a pleasant dream, and by the time I came to my senses, it was already time to wake.
“Found it.”
I had finally discovered the Artifact lodged atop the roof of the gray castle’s spire.
What suddenly welled up was anxiety.
The intuition that this happiness, this fulfillment, would never return again.
I could tell instinctively.
I couldn’t help but know, because I had watched for so very long.
If Hio, who taught me love, who let me experience it, left this place, would he truly love me?
Would there come a time when he called my name and whispered that he loved me again? Would there ever be times when he embraced me, held my hand, and walked with me?
The reason my heart sank with a thud was because I knew all too well that there would not.
While he cared for everyone around him, he never gave his own side to any single person.
Because he never turned away from even the most trivial request and gave his all, he could never look at only one person.
So.
“Hio Pavlenko.”
Isn’t it inevitable?
“Come to my side.”
This moment was one I had pictured my entire life. One I absolutely could not let go of.
“Tell me you love me.”
If I had known love could be this sweet.
If I had known one-sided love could hurt this much, I would never have begun.
The voice of Hio Pavlenko whispering love to me. His gaze. His warmth.
The street we walked hand in hand was shrouded in fog, but it didn’t matter.
“I love you. Airaits.”
Could there be an emotion this happy in the world?
Were all people living in such happiness?
This is too unfair.
I’m experiencing this for the first time in my life.
That was why I never wanted to escape it.
How can they love, part, and love again so easily?
I’m… truly experiencing this for the first time……
…Is it really the first time?
I don’t know.
In any case, what was certain was that such immense fulfillment was hard to escape.
“I love you. I love you.”
That happiness lasted roughly three days.
And the price for three days of love was my life.
* * *
“Now you and that mage get out there and fight actively too.”
Ataolf’s words.
I offered futile resistance.
“Before you leave, make sure I kill Hio Pavlenko.”
It was a fight I could not win from the start.
I had steeled myself, but it was a predetermined tragedy.
I could not send Hio—afflicted by Charm—out to war.
Because if I did, it was clear he would truly hate me forever.
The price for coveting love even though it was not permitted to me.
The greed of wanting to love despite being abandoned by my parents, despite being a creepy person.
The time had come to pay the price for that excessive greed.
I turned and buried myself in Hio’s embrace.
I would have to undo the Charm binding him.
He would immediately head for the Artifact, and I would lose my life at Ataolf’s hands.
Expecting that much was nothing particularly difficult.
I wasn’t afraid of dying.
“You really speak cruelly. Don’t you, Hio.”
“…Yeah.”
I spoke while buried in his embrace, but something was strange.
Strength entered the hand holding Hio.
“As expected of the leader of the Black Fang. A villainous threat befitting the worst of villains, isn’t it? How could you try to tear us apart?”
“Yeah.”
My heart sank.
Because those answering words weren’t warm. Because they were no longer sweet, my body stiffened without realizing it.
I had tried to release the Charm, but……
It had already been released.
“Do you… love me?”
That final question was a struggle.
An ugly struggle coveting the impossible.
And the answer that returned was.
“Yeah. I love you.”
It was no longer sweet.
It wasn’t warm, nor was it soft.
Feeling somehow as if I might cry, I couldn’t lift my head.
While still like that, I asked Hio a question.
“Why were you staying still instead of moving right away?”
What returned to that question was worry.
“You’re going to die.”
Hio Pavlenko was that kind of person.
A warm person who worried about me even after I’d done such terrible things.
“Hey.”
That was why he was someone I could never have.
“What I’m doing, it’s love, right?”
I regretted asking that immediately.
Afraid he might say no.
I was frightened because I couldn’t fathom what answer would come back.
That was far more frightening than dying.
“No. You don’t have to answer.”
So I slipped out of his embrace and turned around.
I spat it out, dressing a vow to myself as if it were certainty.
“This is love.”
Kwaaang—!
The sound of lightning immediately after. Since it was obvious where Hio would be heading, I had to buy time.
《Skill—‘Charm’ activates.》
I cast the skill toward Ataolf with all the strength I possessed. Of course, I knew it would not work.
“In the end, you make a foolish choice. Airaits.”
What I needed was a very brief moment.
Just enough for Ataolf’s gaze to turn to me, for that black mist to claim my life.
That’s all the time I needed.
Kwang!
In an instant, my body was pierced and slammed against a wall, my consciousness fading.
It was death.
* * *
“Don’t cry.”
A voice suddenly spoke.
“Aren’t you crying too sorrowfully? Don’t cry.”
I don’t know what it is, but crying? Is it talking to me?
“Yes. Airaits.”
Those words are absurd.
Telling me, who had never cried once in my life, not to cry.
It seems it doesn’t know I’m an emotionless, creepy person.
“Then what is it that I saw?”
I don’t know what it’s talking about having seen, but it’s nonsense, a wasted effort.
“Don’t turn away, Airaits. It must have hurt, been hard, and lonely as if dying, but still, don’t turn away.”
What… does it mean by turn away?
I can’t understand it at all.
Even though I can’t understand, my head is strangely dizzy.
“Don’t abuse yourself. It’s okay now. Because it’s all over. You can stop your terrible self-loathing now.”
Those words somehow felt warm, and my dizzy head felt like it was calming down.
“Open your eyes wide, don’t turn away, and look straight. At the memories you skipped over.”
The deepest foundation of the soul.
From the first memory, I climb back up again. I scan through them slowly.
Five years old.
Grabbing my father’s pant leg as he beat my mother, I was crying.
Then I was kicked and sent flying, but my mother ran like mad and wrapped her arms around me like that.
Cradled in her embrace, I cried endlessly.
…Strange. It was a memory I was seeing for the first time. Something I had never experienced.
But it was clearly my memory.
Eighteen.
Sitting blankly at my mother’s funeral, people muttered.
A creepy child. A child who doesn’t shed a single tear. A child who devours her parents.
I thought they were all correct. Because I was that kind of child.
And so night came.
I blankly looked around the empty funeral hall and headed to the bathroom.
I locked the bathroom door, closed the toilet lid, and crouched on top of it.
And then I began to cry my heart out.
Sobbing as if my breath would stop, I collapsed as if fainting, and when I rose, I cried again.
After crying all night, morning came.
I opened the bathroom door nonchalantly and came out, sitting again in front of my mother’s photo, blankly staring at the ceiling.
While doing so, people came again and muttered.
A creepy child. A psychopath. An emotionless child.
I thought they weren’t wrong. Because not a single tear had come out of me then.
…It was a thought vastly different from the memory I was seeing now.
After the funeral, I returned alone to the empty house.
On the dark dining table sat a cake, still in its packaging.
“To our beloved daughter.”
Along with a letter that began so.
Reading it, I… was crying again.
Carefully reading every single letter to the very bottom, then going back to the top and reading from the beginning again.
Tears flowed endlessly.
Nineteen.
I came to know of a game called Ventaier. Naturally, I fell into it.
Outside of sleeping hours, I stared only at the monitor screen.
No, actually, I spent more time sleeping in front of the computer.
I thought it was only because the game was fun. I remembered it as simply playing games because there was nothing to do at home, because it was dark and dreary anyway.
Looking closely once more, it wasn’t that.
Unconsciously, I had refrained from leaving my room.
The cake still sat on the dining table without even the packaging removed. The letter placed atop it was the same.
Every trace remained perfectly intact in the house.
Traces of my mother preparing food in the kitchen. My mother’s clothes, cosmetics, slippers.
Because if I took even one step out of my room, I had to face all those traces. Because I simply couldn’t clean them up.
I had subconsciously turned away. I had forced myself to fall into Ventaier because I had no other choice.
If I hadn’t used Bentair, well… I probably would have just died.
And so time passed, until the final memory—the one just before death.
“You know.”
The question I barely managed to ask as I lifted my head, after holding Hio tightly in my arms.
My voice was trembling endlessly.
“What I’m doing… this is love, right?”
My eyes were brimming with tears.
Facing them, Hio’s eyes were shaking wide, as if flustered.
It wasn’t that Hio wouldn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.
Perhaps because I knew that, I might have turned away on instinct.
Before Hio’s heart could weaken, with the wish that he would hurry and do what he had to do. With the wish that he would make it happen, no matter what.
…Yes. Like what Mom once told me.
Love is a heart that cares for someone other than yourself.
Because I instinctively realized that, I said it with certainty.
It was never something I had made up.
“This is love.”
…I had, in truth, known love. I had experienced more than enough of it—so much it overflowed.
Because I had received love far beyond what I deserved, I couldn’t accept the fact that I had lost it.
—I love you. My daughter. I love you more than anything in the world.
Perhaps the reason I had wandered in search of love was because I wanted to feel that, even just one more time.
No, maybe I simply missed Mom.
—I love you too, Mom.
Perhaps the fact that I never got to say those words became a bitter regret lodged in my heart, and that was why I had cried out for love so desperately.
* * *
“My god… What in the world……!”
“Commander!”
“Sir Mahel! Are you all right?”
The Royal Knights Damon and Melissa reached the spire of the Gray Castle first, and countless others hurried up after them.
All around the castle, the entire imperial army was gathering.
Ataolf and Vitalianus lay collapsed side by side.
In one corner, a woman they had never seen before lay dead, buried beneath the wreckage.
“A priest! Bring a priest, quickly!”
“Commander! Please, come to your senses……!”
“What on earth happened here……?”
Everyone who had climbed the spire gathered around Vitalianus.
They moved in haste, worrying with all their might and trying to heal him.
No one.
Not a single person paid any attention to the man whose heart had been pierced by a sword, or to the woman buried beneath the wreckage.
“Clear the way! The Sword Saint is in critical condition!”
“Move aside!”
And so Hio Pavlenko silently looked down at the two corpses from which the souls had already departed.
The worst criminal on the continent. The head of Black Fang and an unparalleled villain, Ataolf.
A sociopath who had driven countless people to their deaths solely for his own benefit, Airights.
Before long, the deaths of the two villains would be announced to the whole world.
At the news, people would cheer, rejoice, and go wild.
They would say, At last, they’re dead. Good riddance.
There would surely be places where people sang songs and held festivals.
For the end of a villain was usually like that.
Because the death of a villain was, of course, only natural.
Perhaps among all those people, one person might ask this.
—But how did they end up becoming villains?
Then the other person would think for a very brief moment before answering like this.
—Who knows? Does it matter? They must have been bad people anyway.
So.
“Guardian Knight… Are you all right?”
That was why.
“I’m fine.”
Wouldn’t it be all right if at least one person remembered your beginnings?
Wouldn’t it be all right if at least one person pitied you?
“What on earth… happened here?”
Wouldn’t it be all right if at least I grieved over your deaths?
“It was just… well, nothing much.”
It was a common end for villains.
[Hidden Trait: Violence Is Not Okay! (Endurance: 914 / 1000)]