The corridor of the Imperial Palace. Like a spiderweb or a labyrinth—a place where no one knows what connects to what—I wander there.
Thud, thud.
A silent darkness where only my footsteps ring out vividly. At the far end of that corridor, I see a person. Standing as if waiting for me, looking at me.
Thud, thud.
He is the end of this world. The one who most resembles a god, the final believer.
I approach him without hesitation.
“Quey.”
Quey. He sways like a ghost and faces me.
I spoke.
“Go to the Altar’s Myeolji.”
Myeolji. Quey stared into my eyes without a word.
I spoke.
“Go to your shrine.”
Shrine. Doubt settled in Quey’s retinas, but only for a moment.
He spoke.
“You already seem to know my thoughts.”
I nodded.
At that moment, magical power condensed beside Quey. Mana gathering like a whirlwind formed a shape—no, a life.
They are ‘Couriers.’
“Let’s go.”
Quey gestured slightly. Then the Couriers’ magic enveloped Quey and me.
In the fog, I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them again.
“We’ve arrived.”
Quey said. I looked around the area.
It was the ‘Myeolji.’
A land where life cannot survive. A cursed earth where demonic energy ripples.
A lighthouse built there.
“A lighthouse, is it.”
In the very center of the Myeolji, a structure rises high as if to touch the sky.
“Yeah. You recognized it at once. Cretos used to call it a tower.”
Quey formed a small smile. I looked at the lighthouse with [Comprehension] and [Naked Eye].
Everything hidden within—its functions, intentions, meanings, and will—was grasped at a glance.
“……There are still parts that are lacking.”
That was the conclusion.
I turned to Quey.
“You didn’t design it? It seems you lack the skill to claim yourself a god.”
“…….”
Then Quey laughed bitterly. He poked my shoulder with a finger.
“Deculain. You know. Dolls have a lifespan.”
Quey pointed at his own body.
“I am incomplete. No, I am not me. I am merely a me that imitates me…… truly nothing but a ‘doll.’ The real me is outside this world.”
Then turning to me, he pouted sullenly.
“Because you interfered with me, I don’t have much time left.”
If one tried to make it truly perfect, it would be possible. But the problem is time. Right now, Quey is still in a doll-like state—a false flesh with clear limits—so there is no need to aim for perfection.
“Deculain. Do you understand now why I came to find you?”
Quey asked me.
I nodded.
“Let’s cooperate.”
“……?”
Quey’s face trembled slightly. Tilting his head, he looked at me.
Well, it must be an unexpected, immediate answer.
“You intend to observe a comet with this lighthouse and destroy the continent.”
“It is a reset. Washing away original sin, regenerating purity anew.”
“That is destruction.”
At my words, Quey shook his head, but had little rebuttal.
After all, we are parallel lines unable to convince each other.
“However, you and I building this lighthouse together, though our purposes differ, can be called the same process.”
Quey closed his mouth for a moment. As if understanding at once what I was trying to say, without a word.
“This lighthouse is incomplete.”
Right now, this lighthouse is merely a ‘lighthouse capable of observing the distant cosmos.’
“I know. But it’s enough to reset the continent.”
Quey’s words are indeed true. Before long, when the comet arrives, it will be able to demonstrate enough power to erase the continent.
“You don’t deny that it’s incomplete.”
But if Quey and I combine our strength, then rather than simply observing the universe.
It could evolve into a ‘lighthouse capable of observing anything that exists.’
“From the start, sufficient and insufficient aren’t so different.”
A faint smile rose to Quey’s lips.
“To complete the lighthouse, you need my power, and likewise, to observe god, I need your power.”
Now, I am requesting temporary cooperation.
An expedient ‘means’ that may betray the Emperor and the continent, even if for a greater ‘purpose.’
Does this violate ‘Deculain’s principles’?
……It does not.
“Even if God truly descends again, there will be no change in this moment or my will.”
Quey’s voice sank low.
“Rather, God would wish for the continent’s destruction too. Since the descendants of Godslayers are gnawing away at this continent.”
“Quey.”
I looked at Quey. Quey looked up at me too.
For some reason, he is pitiful.
Also ridiculous.
“God does not control the will of His creations.”
“…….”
“The choice was always yours.”
He listened to my words quietly.
“It was ‘you’ who interpreted the Book of Revelation as Godslaying, ‘you’ who prayed for ten thousand years, and ‘you’ who were ultimately isolated from the world.”
A being who served God all his life, only to have his existence shattered.
“You who now resolve to become a god, and you who declare you will erase the continent— all of it is ‘you.’”
Then, a certain smile spread across Quey’s lips.
Yet it is not a warm emotion. Merely a cold blaze mixed with hostility, rage, and chaos.
“In the end, the choice was yours. That is why, now, you are proving the Book of Revelation.”
“……Which revelation do you speak of?”
To Quey, who asks back in a chilly voice, I speak my answer.
“That God chose His own death for your freedom. That God’s death was, in the end, suicide.”
Even Quey, who lived only for God, embraced his own will once God died and vanished.
That is the proof.
“Not that your licentiousness killed God, but that God killed Himself for your freedom.”
Fwoosh—!
Suddenly, a red aura flared up from Quey’s body.
As expected, it was a death variable.
“God would not do that. Dying by His own hand, such a human act—”
“No. It is precisely because He could choose even death for Himself that He is God. By dying of His own accord, God yielded to us the purest and most fundamental thing…… ‘death.’”
“……Then.”
Quey clenched his teeth. The death variable gushing forth like a waterfall pricked at my throat.
“Why did I remain without dying?”
Rage surged in his voice.
He, who had maintained composure until now, reveals his honest heart.
“It was ten thousand years. All that time, did God not know that a being like me would be born?”
Quey asked.
I met his eyes and answered.
“He wouldn’t have known.”
“……You’re wrong. You don’t know God.”
“Then, He knew.”
“Wordplay?”
Quey’s mouth shut tight, and I shook my head.
“Wordplay? How could a human know God’s will? However, one thing is certain.”
I shifted my gaze back to the lighthouse. I quietly looked at that dark structure.
“That is why I have come here, is it not.”
“…….”
Quey shows no reaction whatsoever. Did he lose his words for a moment at my astounding ego and sense of self?
But this is not a petty joke or jest.
I continued solemnly.
“Either God did not know of a being like you and hurriedly prepared me, or He knew and arranged me in advance. Either interpretation is possible. The heart called ‘faith’ belongs not to God, but to the believer.”
“Impertinent. Your soul may be special, but it is not God’s will.”
“The impertinent one is you, Quey. I am not ‘merely special.’”
Not merely special.
Standing in this Myeolji, looking at that lighthouse, thinking of ‘Him’ watching me from somewhere high in the heavens—it faintly, naturally becomes clear.
“I am unique to this world.”
“…….”
“Furthermore, I am as great as the God you served.”
For a moment, Quey’s face goes blank.
Yet there is not a single lie or bluff in it.
Kim Woojin dwelling within Deculain. The ‘me’ who descended here from outside this world is virtually no different from ‘that person’ who created this world.
I spoke.
“Only now do I think I know why I have come here.”
“…….”
“It is thanks to you, Quey.”
Quey is silent for a long while.
But that death variable soon subsides, and those dumbfounded eyes soon shift to a face that finds it amusing.
“You mean the reason you came here was me?”
I did not bother to answer.
I extended my hand to Quey.
“Let’s cooperate.”
“……Hmm.”
“You cooperate too.”
At the moment I say this, whether it is my heart or my mind, a corner of something aches like a knife stabbing it.
Perhaps because, regardless of the purpose, this process is little different from betraying Sopien.
Quey caught that point too.
“The Emperor you serve will find it a pity.”
“……It is a life with little time left anyway. Furthermore, this is truly Deculain’s conclusion.”
The Altar’s maggots are multiplying on the continent.
Because of the ‘Spirit Elixir.’
The reason I did not bother suppressing those tempted by power is because that is ultimately the ending Quey desired.
Because internal strife where humans kill one another will destroy the continent.
“Deculain’s conclusion…… even if your entire house is annihilated?”
Quey asked back.
“You are the Emperor’s royal guard, yet a fallen traitor collaborating with the Altar.”
Collaborated with the Altar.
Contributed to the completion of the lighthouse.
No, directly designed, renovated, and completed the lighthouse.
“A first-class war criminal who attempted to destroy the continent, blinded by power. You could become a greater black hand than your teacher Rohakan.”
The fact that I joined hearts with Quey will be revealed whether the Altar wins or loses.
It will stain my name and house with filth.
“No, it will become so. Without fail.”
I nodded.
“I do not mind.”
It does not matter.
From the start, Deculain is neither a treacherous minister, nor a loyal subject, nor an opportunist, nor an apostate.
Neither a petty man who values only his own safety and glory, nor a fool who would destroy the continent solely for His Majesty the Emperor, nor a paranoid obsessed with principles, nor a weak man merely blinded by love.
“I already know my identity.”
I belong to nothing.
I am merely…….
“A villain.”
A villain.
The villain by the name of Deculain.
Quey’s eyes looking at me tremble slightly.
“As expected, I am a villain.”
And, just as a hero excludes evil with his own good.
A villain saves good with his own evil.
“It is right for a villain to vanish along with evil.”
The future Quey desires—that is, the tragedy of humans slaughtering one another while blood spurts—will not come to pass so long as a great evil that concentrates that wickedness exists.
* * *
Meanwhile, Yulri is sitting at a table playing cards.
The members are Leo, Lia, and Carlos of the Crimson Garnet Adventurer Party. The game is poker.
“But why can’t we go outside, Lia?”
Leo asked.
“There are things called Couriers. Call.”
Lia answered, putting chips on the table.
“Couriers?”
“Yeah. They’re demonic beings that teleport humans anywhere; seems the Altar released them into the Imperial Palace as a check.”
The Altar. Yulri pricked up her ears at their conversation.
“Then if they catch us, we could get teleported to the Myeolji or something?”
“That’s possible, too. But it’s not just the Myeolji; you could get moved to some other abnormal place.”
“Raise.”
At that moment, the boy called Carlos instantly doubles the bet. Yulri starts and looks at him, while Leo and Lia watch her with fascinated eyes.
“What will Lady Yulri do?”
Lia’s words, sounding like commentary.
Yulri bites her lip for no reason.
Her hand is two pair, sevens and twos.
But the pot is a whopping 10,000 Elne. Of course, they are chips gifted for free by the Imperial Palace, and it is just a friendly game rather than gambling, but it is too weak a hand to step up to this.
“……I fold.”
Yulri laid down her hand. Lia snickered.
“Aw, what. You’re such a scaredy-cat.”
“……Yes. So it seems.”
She doesn’t rise to the provocation. She can just win the next round.
“Then let’s show our hands. Mine’s two pair, sixes.”
The hand Lia revealed was two pair, sixes. A somewhat weak hand.
Yulie scoffed inwardly, but the cards turned over after that were all not even a single pair…
“…I won.”
Yulie watched Lia take the pot with envious eyes, then needlessly pouted her lips and shuffled the cards.
“By the way, do you all know about the rumor spreading around Imperial University these days?”
She asked cautiously. Lia was the first to react.
“A rumor?”
“Yes.”
Lia looked into Yulie’s eyes. Yulie, too, met her gaze and measured her for a moment.
Is she a just person?
“The spirit fluid?”
Lia said. Yulie flinched.
So the rumor really has already spread far and wide.
“Yes.”
“Well… ordinary people don’t know, but adventurers like us all do. That spirit fluid is famous among adventurers, too.”
“Ah. Do adventurers also drink things like that spirit fluid?”
“Some do. But fewer than knights or mages. Most became adventurers in the first place because they hated being bound to anything. But…”
Lia narrowed her brow slightly, as if suspicious.
“What about you?”
“I do not borrow power from such spirit fluid.”
“Then that’s a relief.”
Lia gave a faint laugh.
But for some reason, the way she smiled was strange.
Yulie’s eyes narrowed slightly.
A face she was certain she had seen somewhere before.
Familiar.
If it felt familiar to her now… in other words, it had been familiar ten years ago…
“Ah?”
A certain scene surfaced in Yulie’s mind.
To be precise, it was from long ago, so faint she could not even remember when or where she had seen it: Deculein, still in his Academy days, secretly meeting someone and smiling. The woman in that memory she could not even recall.
“Why?”
Lia tilted her head, and Yulie asked back, her eyes wide.
“By any chance, do you know someone named Yu Ara?”
It was at that moment.
Crackle—!
Suddenly, the ceiling light shattered, and the window broke.
“Who’s there!”
Yulie hurriedly gripped her sword. Lia, Leo, and Carlos likewise wrapped mana around their bodies.
Darkness settled over the room in an instant.
Within it, there appeared a certain demonic being, exuding an eerie chill.
“…Shh. It’s a Messenger. For now, our lives aren’t in danger, so don’t be too tense.”
Lia took Yulie’s hand. Yulie was startled, but Lia spoke like a professional.
“Everyone, hold hands. That way, at least no one will be separated on their own.”
For some reason, her words inspired trust.
Yulie nodded, gripping her sword in one hand and Lia’s hand tightly in the other.