Al Los sprinted across the snowfield. A small blizzard rose over his flailing legs.
“What is it?!”
Jukaken asked from behind him. For the moment, he simply chased after him without knowing why.
Al Los answered.
“The place where Deculein died is suspicious. To be precise, the place where his mana remained.”
Deculein’s mana was special. Those who had reached a certain realm were all like that by nature, but Deculein was quite unique even among them.
Literally “unique”—that is, singular.
Deculein’s mana resembled its owner; it never disappeared, never broke apart. It lingered in place for a long time, waiting only for its master, who would soon arrive.
“He’s drawing a magic circuit with his corpses.”
Al Los spoke. Jukaken furrowed his brow.
“With corpses?”
“Yes. And Gerek is cooperating with him in that.”
“……Bullshit. Gerek, with Deculein?”
Al Los nodded. Deculein had likely contacted Gerek and requested his cooperation quite some time ago.
“The one who first found the revived Deculein and delivered the magic theory to him. The one who told him what he needed to do next. All of it must have been that bastard Gerek.”
Gerek of the Super-Senses.
A monster with no equal on the continent in the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, and so on, as well as in physical ability, cognition, and perception.
If it was him, deceiving Sylvia’s eyes would be entirely possible.
“No, but still—”
Jukaken, who had been about to say that there was no way that madman would ever cooperate with Deculein, suddenly stopped and thought.
What if the price Deculein offered was “the right to kill him countless times”?
Jukaken muttered.
“……Was Idnik wrong?”
“No. Different. The magic theory Idnik read and the magic theory I read are different.”
The magic theory Idnik read was the work up to the “seventh” Deculein.
However, the magic theory left for Al Los was the result of the “eighth” Deculein suddenly appearing just before he was endlessly slaughtered by Gerek, and making one final round of revisions.
“In any case, follow me. Let’s go see. What Deculein, that professor, is doing right now…….”
The two ran. The trampled snowfield spread like mist, and with a soft rustle── the snow-laden trees shook, sending white powder drifting down.
And…….
Crunch, crunch. A single current of wind carved into the pure white world.
A stream of some magic, moving as though chasing them.
* * *
Step── step──
In the thick darkness. The sound of shoe heels rang out with unusual clarity.
A place where not even the faintest light existed, where convection had stalled and the air did not flow. Thus, a place Sylvia and the Voice’s eyes could not reach.
I am walking through that underground.
To find a suitable place.
Step── step──
I do not know when this plan was first devised.
I merely received the “message” from Gerek the moment I rose as myself, and I willingly understood it. I accepted it completely.
Step── step──
The existence that is me is a fake, and yet, through my death, something can be accomplished. The most ideal goal can be reached.
The demon can be killed.
That much is enough to satisfy me.
It is sufficient to bear.
Step── step─
Suddenly, footsteps overlapped with my own.
“Deculein.”
A voice calling me.
Then, someone appeared before me as though blocking my path.
An artistic human who brightly illuminated this space.
“I’m Al Los. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Al Los said so, wearing a small smile. Strangely, she seemed glad to see me, but I did not yet know why.
“It really is him!”
The human beside her, pointing at me with wide eyes, was Jukaken.
“…….”
I silently stared at them.
Al Los let out a small sigh. Then she took one step closer and asked.
“Professor, have you been killing yourself all this time?”
Her voice was rather plaintive, as if filled with pity, but to me it was no great question.
“Yes.”
I nodded. Al Los furrowed her brow. It was an artistic face.
“Why?”
Art asked. I answered simply.
“I merely discovered the method.”
One of the great principles of magic: mana resembles the caster.
The uniqueness imbued in my mana is “willpower.”
Therefore, it does not shatter at any moment, nor does it break. The power that connects mana to mana is stronger and more steadfast than anything.
“……What method?”
“The method to save that child.”
Thus, while the power that created the current me belongs to Sylvia and the Voice, the more I become like myself, the more I realize myself, and wholly seize myself.
No one in this world can imitate me.
“…….”
Al Los closed her mouth. Jukaken scratched the back of his neck for no reason.
Time passed within that gentle silence. Wind seeped into the windless space.
“……Will you be all right?”
Al Los asked briefly. There was a measure of sympathy in her voice.
“There are still many circuits to fill in this magic circle. Hundreds of times…… perhaps even thousands.”
Which number I am now, which death I have chosen, I do not yet know.
Nor do I know which number death the next me will choose, or how many times it will repeat.
I do not know.
……However.
“Whatever it may be, I have no choice but to choose it.”
“…….”
Al Los swallowed. She looked at me with her lips pressed tightly together. Her two eyes were moist like a lake.
“If I can save even one person, even if I die thousands of times.”
I looked into my heart.
The destruction of the Voice. The death of the existence called me.
More than even those, my pity for Sylvia.
“……There is no other way.”
This was the conclusion I reached.
At the very least, I cannot let Sylvia die.
“Why.”
At that moment, a voice approached.
Al Los and Jukaken flinched and turned that way, and a child revealed herself from within the underground darkness.
No, a woman who had grown up completely without my knowing.
“……Why.”
Sylvia.
* * *
A dark underground. A long passageway. Part of the magic circle.
Within it, Sylvia looked at Deculein. Deculein looked back at her.
“……Why.”
Sylvia could not understand.
Why.
Why.
Why.
Why couldn’t they simply live together here? Why was he trying to destroy the Voice while sacrificing himself like that?
“We can just live here together.”
“…….”
Deculein said nothing. That frustrated her. Sylvia ran to Deculein and grabbed him by the collar.
“Together…….”
“Sylvia.”
Then, he called her name.
Looking down at her, he quietly recited, as though tracing back to old memories.
“I am reminded of you when you were young.”
The memories of Deculein, not Kim Woojin.
Though the scenery was too faint and faded, even in Deculein’s distant memories, the child called Sylvia clearly existed.
“The child who was holding Ciel’s hand. The child who hid behind Ciel’s back as if afraid of me, avoiding my eyes.”
“…….”
“That small child has grown so much, and is looking at me now.”
At that moment, Sylvia felt as though her breath would stop.
She realized it belatedly.
The Deculein of now had not shared time with her.
While the Voice’s time flowed endlessly, he had only repeated death.
“Back then, perhaps I was a little jealous of you.”
The emotion the original Deculein felt upon seeing young Sylvia.
That little girl had skill roughly equal to his own at the time, and the scale of her talent was so vast that comparison itself was impossible. The despair and jealousy he felt upon realizing that in that instant.
“And perhaps, I regretted it.”
Sylvia looked up at Deculein.
“Sylvia. Not all of my choices are right.”
He looked down at her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
It was warm. For no reason, she glanced at it from the corner of her eye.
“Even if you came to hate me for killing Ciel, I should have let you hate me at my side.”
“…….”
“Back then, I should have taken you as my disciple.”
Once, Sylvia had wanted to become Deculein’s disciple.
Like Epherene now.
“Then there would have been so much more I could have taught you. I would have prevented you from being swayed by Iliade.”
However, Deculein had refused.
It was not simply for Sylvia’s sake.
Deculein’s flaw of character. The jealousy and envy stuck to the bottom of his heart had, to some extent, rejected Sylvia.
“The same was true in the past.”
Deculein continued in a low voice.
“Should I have refused Giltheon when he asked me to kill Ciel?”
At that moment, Sylvia’s body trembled. She leaned her face against the hem of Deculein’s clothes.
Giltheon’s instigation to kill Ciel.
It was something she had vaguely expected, but it was still sorrowful.
“However, Sylvia. Regret is a useless emotion. No matter what I regret now, my choices do not change, and living inside regret is no different from dying. Just like you are now.”
“…….”
“Sylvia. Do not run away.”
Sylvia nodded. She took one step away from Deculein.
She clasped both hands to her chest, and while looking at him, conveyed a single sentence as if in prayer.
“I love you.”
Sylvia knows Deculein.
“I love you so much that my heart hurts every time I see you. I wish we could be together for the rest of our lives.”
She knows the man who killed Cielia.
“But we can’t. And it hurts so much.”
She knows the man who tried to make her hate him, for her sake.
“……My paradise.”
She knows the man who tried to protect her from Giltheon, from the Intelligence Bureau.
“It was you.”
Only now, at last, did she come to know.
“……But a paradise that is only happy does not exist.”
Sylvia said so and smiled faintly. It was a smile that resembled crying.
Deculein nodded and said.
“I am still beyond the sea.”
“Mm. I know.”
Sylvia answered.
The two looked at each other like that for quite a long while…….
“……..”
“…….”
Al Los and Jukaken watched them from a slight distance. They did not dare to intervene.
Then, from the underground ceiling, long hair slid down. Jukaken and Al Los flinched in surprise, but soon furrowed their brows. They grabbed the hair and yanked it hard.
“Oof!”
Gerek was dragged down with it. Jukaken asked in a whisper.
—Where were you?
“I was underground. How would you guys find me in the first place~?”
—……But you, did you really cooperate with Deculein?
Gerek grinned. Sweeping back his long hair, he said,
“Cooperate? I killed him.”
—Then why aren’t you killing him now?
“I don’t feel like it. No, I killed him about eight hundred times, I think? Around then, I got a little sick of it and asked him. How many more times do I have to kill you?”
Al Los silently listened to Gerek.
“When I did, he said there were still at least a thousand more times left. Something about there being parts of the magic circle that needed a little revision…… so, well, you know.”
Gerek shrugged.
“Now I’m killing him out of a sense of duty~ taking turns with my family. It feels a bit like a period of boredom in a relationship~”
Each of my family members probably killed him at least thirty times, you know? Gerek boasted proudly, laughing aloud.
“……Then, when the real Deculein comes, are you going to kill him?”
Al Los asked. There was a distinct hostility in her voice.
At that, Gerek twisted his mouth into a broad grin.
“Of course~ The real Deculein won’t have the memories of dying anyway. That’s cheating. I have to kill him. Properly.”
“…….”
Al Los’s face hardened as she looked off to the side.
Sylvia and Deculein.
Things seemed to be resolving to some extent between the two of them, but if the real Deculein failed to arrive, it would all be for nothing.
To begin with, the mana that would operate this magic circle was Deculein’s willpower, and that willpower was a force no one but its master could handle.
“……Oh~ It’s Idnik. Hey, Al Los. The person who was wrong is coming over there.”
Then Jukaken pointed behind them mockingly. Just as he said, Idnik was approaching with a robe pulled over her head.
“Yo~ Idniiiik~”
When Jukaken grinned and demanded a high five, Idnik silently shook her head.
“Why? You were wrong. Don’t want to admit you were wrong? You said Deculein was trying to kill Sylvia.”
“…….”
Idnik kept her mouth firmly shut. Al Los said to her,
“Idnik. Go to the guild room and look at what I organized. It’ll be a little different.”
“I know. I saw it. I was only half wrong.”
“……Half?”
“Yes.”
Idnik let out a small sigh.
“According to his theory, Sylvia will not die. That is true.”
Instead of Sylvia’s mana, the mana of existence Deculein carries.
In other words, if his willpower is used in her place, then it is true there is no need to kill Sylvia.
“However, that does not mean Sylvia’s sacrifice is unnecessary. And the Deculein now is…….”
Sylvia looking up at Deculein, Deculein looking down at Sylvia.
Looking at the two of them, Idnik continued quietly.
“……Let’s talk about the details later. There is such a thing as letting sleeping dogs lie, after all. I’m a mage of the desert.”
Saying that, she gave a faint laugh and shook her head.
“……What are you talking about?”
“Right. Al Los, looks like being surpassed by you was a bit of a mental shock for her…….”
Al Los and Jukaken looked at her as if dumbfounded.