Shoooooo...
Standing in the falling rain, I am looking at the main gate of the Imperial Palace. Standing ramrod straight, I stare at that firmly shut gate.
I think I know what Sophien is troubled by now, what agony she is suffering.
Perhaps it was already within the range of what I had expected. Perhaps it is not so sudden after all.
Because now, she is becoming “human.”
After more than a hundred years of repeating death, after knowing and seeing only the meaninglessness of life, she came to love someone like me...
“Count. What do you intend to do?”
At my side now are my forces.
Of course, to call them forces would be far too thin, far too shabby. They are men stained and corrupted by the Altar.
“What in the world is that Emperor thinking...?”
One of them asked me.
It grated on me.
That tone was contemptible.
The sight of the most worthless one calling the most noble woman “that Emperor” without even an honorific.
“...We do not yet know what she is thinking. We will simply do what we must. The Lighthouse is already prepared.”
The Lighthouse.
A guidepost that will lead the comet that will descend upon the continent.
When that day comes, the continent will be destroyed, and it will be reborn.
According to my will, or according to Quay’s.
“However... before that.”
I took off my outer coat. I flung it aside carelessly.
“As a subject, I ought at least to show this much.”
Thud.
I knelt on the road before the Imperial Palace. Filthy mud splashed and seeped in, and the fierce rain and wind battered my entire body.
“C-Count?”
The men beside me were flustered. They hovered awkwardly, hesitating over whether they too should kneel, or do something else.
I said to them,
“I will wait alone. Until the Emperor comes out.”
“Pardon? But...”
“Until the Lighthouse is activated, it is more convenient for us if the Emperor does not move.”
I explained the reason.
In truth, it was an excuse.
“However, the Emperor suddenly sealed the Imperial Palace. The timing is poor. No matter how much I have stood on the opposite side of the Emperor, I should at least probe her intentions in this manner.”
The Emperor must come to the Lighthouse, to Myeolji, and drive her sword into my heart.
To be shattered by the master of this continent.
That is my role.
* * *
The next day, at Masal’s official residence.
“...What on earth is going on?”
Lia and Ganesha are tilting their heads as they listen to the breaking news in the newspapers and the reports relayed through the crystal orb.
“Is this what politics is?”
The Emperor has closed the Imperial Palace. Since the closure of the Imperial Palace traditionally meant, “I am dissatisfied with you all and burdened with many concerns,” Deculein was the first to rush over and kneel. After that, the pro-Emperor retainers also knelt without delay.
And so now, the front of the Imperial Palace is packed with all kinds of nobles.
“Lia, if you think about it, isn’t this the perfect opportunity?”
“The perfect opportunity?”
Lia blinked.
“Yeah. The perfect chance to assassinate Deculein. They say he’s kneeling there without magic, guards, or anything else~”
“Uh... I don’t know. Not really. More importantly, when will the analysis be done?”
She quickly changed the subject.
The countless mages gathered in Masal are still absorbed in analyzing the Lighthouse. They are continuing the research from the Floating Island, and every one of them looks absolutely awful.
“Who knows. Go check and come back~”
“...Yes.”
Lia opened the office door. As soon as she stepped into the corridor, a sheet of paper fluttered in.
It was magic paper.
Lia picked it up, then walked with steady steps to the middle of the central living room.
“...There are so many.”
There really are so many.
Two hundred people are gathered in this one place, looking over the Floating Island’s materials and discussing them with one another.
Two hundred heads gathered together, all struggling over a single magical formula of Deculein’s.
—This. Look at this. Here, we managed to analyze this formula for now, right?
—That’s wrong.
—Why?
—First of all, don’t talk down to me... and I don’t know either. More importantly, Deculein is... truly a genius of the century. And someone like this was called a plagiarizing professor?
Lia swept her gaze over them.
There were many mages, but Louina was nowhere to be seen.
“Um. Where is Professor Louina?”
“Ah. In there. She suddenly went in alone.”
“Yes.”
She knocked on the place a mage pointed to.
Knock, knock—
There was no response.
Knock, knock—
There was no response this time either, so she simply opened the door.
“Um, Professor Louina...?”
“...Hup!”
Louina froze in an awkward posture.
She was making a motion as though trying to hide some documents.
“What are you doing?”
“Uh...”
Louina rolled her eyes as though troubled, then scratched the back of her neck and laughed, hahaha.
This person is bad at lying too.
She figured something out.
Lia narrowed her eyes to slits.
“Why? What is that? What are you trying to hide?”
“I-It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing. Did you perhaps figure something out about the formula?”
As Lia kept asking, Louina licked her lips with her tongue as though her mouth had gone dry.
“Uh, that’s...”
“You did figure it out, didn’t you?”
“...Haa.”
Louina nodded with a sigh. Then, with a somewhat despairing face, she flopped down into a chair.
“Yes. I figured it out. More or less.”
“...More or less?”
“...”
Louina lifted hundreds of magic documents.
“This is Deculein’s Lighthouse formula broken down into three hundred parts.”
“...Three hundred parts?”
“Yes. Well, I didn’t do anything up to this point. I had my students gather them one by one. The purpose of this Lighthouse is... I mean, I think I know what its purpose is... and that purpose is...”
Suddenly, Louina’s mouth shut tight. She touched her eyes and nose and let out a sigh.
Lia thought she knew what she meant.
“Is it the destruction of the continent?”
“...Ah.”
Louina’s eyes widened.
Lia had known for some time, but Louina was someone who did not know the Altar’s purpose.
No, perhaps even the believers of the Altar still did not know the Altar’s purpose.
“That’s right. The destruction of the continent. This Lighthouse is trying to draw in a comet from beyond the world and drop it onto the continent.”
Louina rose from her seat and tapped her telescope.
“I’ve already observed what that comet is.”
“Oh, really?”
“...You don’t seem very surprised.”
“Yes. I expected it to some extent.”
“Is that so? As expected of the adventurer Her Majesty chose, is that it?”
Louina gave a bitter smile.
However, Lia’s expectations and Louina’s expectations were slightly different in nature.
While Lia had vaguely expected things to turn out this way according to the quest line, Louina’s was an empirical “prediction” based on magical analysis and research, as well as observation.
Therefore, Louina’s prediction had evidence.
Through newspapers or the press, it could be officially “announced” throughout every corner of the continent. The true purpose of the Altar could be exposed, together with reasonable support.
“What is that comet?”
“Who knows. I haven’t named it yet, but it’s half the size of our continent.”
“...”
As an aside, Lia was in the sciences. Therefore, she had learned earth science a very long time ago, and she also knew that even if an asteroid one-tenth the size of a planet crashed into it, that planet would perish.
But if it was half the size of the continent?
From the moment it approached orbit, all hope would be gone.
“There is still one part I haven’t interpreted yet... but isn’t that unnecessary? We already know its purpose for certain.”
“Then why are you sitting here instead of revealing it?”
“...Because even if I reveal it, I don’t think we can stop it. I think it will only cause social chaos.”
Louina spoke in a self-mocking tone.
“I really only ‘know’ its purpose. I don’t know how to stop it. I truly don’t know a single way. Magically, it is a truly perfect, flawless formula.”
Louina fluttered the paper in her hand.
“It’s perfect. I admired it as I looked at it, honestly. How could Deculein create a formula like this?”
It was an extremely mage-like sight: admiring an enemy who intended to destroy the continent, her cheeks even flushed as though she were enchanted by his formula.
“But why does that man want to use that talent for something like this?”
Murmuring that, Louina let go of the paper. Deculein’s formula slipped from her fingers.
“...It’s all right.”
Picking it up, Lia said,
with a somewhat resolute face.
“I don’t know much about magic, but there are definitely flaws.”
“...Flaws?”
Louina turned her tired face toward Lia.
“Yes. Such a perfect formula must be fussy, right? So only the caster who created it can handle it, wouldn’t you say?”
“...Ah.”
At Lia’s words, Louina’s eyes widened as though she had realized it belatedly.
“Leave these documents as evidence of Deculein’s war crimes, and we can aim for the moment when Deculein tries to activate the Lighthouse.”
Lia handed them back to her and said,
“At that time, we kill him.”
...Deculein is probably hoping for that too.
Because Lia now felt she understood Deculein’s intentions to some extent, she simply swallowed those words.
“...Yes. Right. Deculein right now really is a terribly wicked villain.”
Saying that, Louina took hold of the papers again. Then she immediately resumed studying.
Lia tilted her head.
“What are you doing?”
“I said there was still one part I haven’t interpreted. I’m going to analyze it again.”
* * *
...In the underground library of the Imperial Palace.
Sophien is walking there.
She stretches her fingers toward the shelves, running them over the covers of those countless books.
The feel and smell of paper, leather, and ink, and among them, Deculein.
She selects only the books thickly marked with Deculein’s traces and gathers them into her arms. Holding an armful, she sits in a chair.
“...You read quite a lot.”
There are hundreds of books that are especially steeped in his scent.
All of them are first editions of rare books kept only in the underground of the Imperial Palace.
Truly, a man who loves books.
Rustle—
Opening the cover and turning the pages, Sophien reads the book he read.
Rustle—
The history of the Imperial Palace. Records of magic. Myths from the ancient era. Proofs of divinity.
As she reads all manner of things, suddenly,
she turns on the crystal orb in her arms again.
“...”
Before the main gate of the Imperial Palace, Deculein.
He is still waiting for her, kneeling.
“His body must not be well.”
Sophien is worried about him. Deculein’s body right now is not normal.
He is dying.
Even mere rain and wind would have an ill effect on him.
“...But tell me. If I truly carry out your death with my own hands.”
Sophien quietly imagines it.
As you said, if you become the great evil that gathers all evils together.
And I become the sovereign who punishes it.
“Would I not be killing what is most valuable to me, and gaining what is most worthless?”
To Sophien, the Emperor is worthless.
Not only the Emperor. Everything in this world has no value to her.
Even if everything on the continent were combined, it would not be worth more than Deculein.
“As time goes on, those thoughts become clearer than anything...”
Step.
At that moment, the sound of footsteps echoes in the darkness of the library.
An eerie, wavering aura of mana.
Whooooo...
A wind blowing through the underground.
A current of air that does not spin aimlessly, but approaches in a straight line and stirs Sophien’s hair.
“...”
Sophien suddenly looks back there.
Her eyes widen.
“...Sophie.”
Someone calls her “Sophie.”
A name that, when the Emperor was very young, even her father and mother had barely dared to use.
“It has been a long time.”
Muttering as he pleases, as though greeting someone he is pleased to see.
A man walking toward her step by step.
An elderly man in his early old age.
Sophien said his name.
“...Rohakan.”
He smiled faintly.
“Yes, it has been a long time.”
“...You should be dead.”
Sophien rose to her feet. She glared at him and analyzed his authenticity.
Whether it was a false body, an illusion, or if he had truly returned alive.
“Hoho. I am already dead, but I am not a fake. Fragmenting my consciousness and leaving it behind like a time capsule was an easy enough task for me before I died.”
Rohakan spoke. Then, without hesitation, he approached and sat across from Sophien.
“Sit. The time I can maintain this is not long.”
“...”
Sophien remained standing and glared at him. Rohakan merely grinned.
“Did I not tell you? That I saw the future.”
“...”
“I knew that, at this moment, you would suffer. I knew you would agonize. That is why I left my thought behind. Because I had something to say to you.”
Suffering. Agony.
Seeing the ridiculous Rohakan speak of her emotions, Sophien twisted her lips.
“You claim to have known. Me.”
“That I do.”
Rohakan pointed with his finger toward the ceiling above.
“But that Deculein fellow is more admirable than I expected.”
“Admirable?”
Sophien’s brow distorted.
“That he is. I failed to protect you, but is Deculein not still protecting you now?”
“...”
Sophien silently tilted her head askew. Her sharp eyes aimed at Rohakan like a blade.
Rohakan chuckled and continued.
“Sophie. You are being healed.”
Healed.
For some reason, Sophien can sympathize with that word.
“The you I see is more alive than ever before.”
Sophien is not dead now. She is not rotten.
Those old, lifeless eyes have vanished before she knew it, and she is filled with more vitality than ever.
“How many days do you need?”
Thinking about it, humans can suffer because they are alive.
If they die, they cannot even feel suffering.
Pain itself, this anguish itself, the suffocation and sorrow and tears one feels while loving someone—surely these are proof that one is alive.
“Until then, I will stay by your side.”
Rohakan said. Sophien looked into his eyes.
“I will tell you everything you are curious about...”
A low smile rose to Rohakan’s lips.
“And I will help you kill that man.”