Ruina is still analyzing Deculein’s lighthouse.
Of course, his formula is so perfect—so perfect that it has already pierced through to the essence of the world—that even Ruina can do no more than feel admiration and awe. Even so, she cannot stop.
Because of a mage’s sixth sense.
There is something in this lighthouse.
A deeper, far grander meaning is hidden within it.
Like the art called Mosaic. Within this enormous formula, the “totality” of its tiniest fragments is surely the most harmonious and beautiful thing of all……
“Are you still studying?”
A voice seeped into Ruina’s ear. Her shoulders flinched as she turned around.
It was Yeriel.
Deculein’s younger sister.
Ruina tilted her head.
“Yeriel……?”
“Yeah. It’s been a while.”
Yeriel pouted as she sat down on a chair. Then she pointed at the magical formula Ruina had been analyzing.
“……That magic is Deculein’s work, right? Do you think you understand anything?”
“…….”
Ruina smiled bitterly.
“I did figure something out. But I’ve already made all of that public.”
“The continent’s destruction, that thing?”
Yeriel’s tone was curt. Well, this child hated Deculein, after all.
“Yes. But……”
“But?”
Yeriel asked back. Ruina hesitated.
Deculein’s meaning hidden within this lighthouse.
She still did not know what it was.
And if she did not know, it was only right not to speak carelessly.
“……It’s nothing.”
Ruina shook her head with a faint smile. Yeriel silently clenched her teeth. Her expression looked almost aggrieved. Frustrated.
“What’s nothing?”
Yeriel placed her palm on Ruina’s desk. Ruina’s gaze went to Yeriel’s fingernails.
As if she had chewed them to bits like a child, there was not a single intact spot on any of her ten fingers. It seemed she had bitten not only her nails but some of the flesh as well.
Well, no wonder.
Because Deculein would shake Yukline’s standing.
“I know. I know you hate Deculein. Still, could you not take it out on me?”
“…….”
At that, a heated breath slipped through Yeriel’s teeth. Only belatedly did Ruina look up at her face.
Sorrow and anger.
At the sight of that expression, where the two seemed twisted together, Ruina momentarily forgot what to say.
“……Yukline will be safe. You’re cooperating with His Majesty, after all.”
She had assumed it was because of the fate of her house and thrown out those words.
But Yeriel remained the same. Rather, as though suppressing her emotions—as though forcing down with all her might the words about to burst from her throat—she lowered her head deeply and trembled all over.
Ruina took the hand she had placed on the desk.
“Do you hate Deculein that much?”
At that moment, Yeriel shook off Ruina’s hand. She sharply narrowed eyes that had somehow filled with moisture.
“……Is there any reason to hate him?”
Yeriel continued in a trembling voice.
“Thanks to him, I’ll become the head of the family.”
The head of the family. Ruina nodded as though she understood.
“……I suppose so.”
Ruina knew Yeriel. Though, since the days when Yeriel attended the Academy, they had merely happened to meet and talk two or three times a week at most, they shared one clearer common denominator than anything else: their hatred of Deculein.
“You were always like that, even in the past.”
Yeriel had always valued her family, and acted for her family.
She hated Deculein, but loved Yukline.
“I understand.”
Kuuung————!
At that instant, a tremor shook heaven and earth.
A reverberation that rattled the walls and made the mana in the air resound violently.
In that moment, Ruina felt it. Her whole body bristled on its own.
“……!”
Glaring out the window with wide eyes, she murmured quietly.
“It’s begun.”
“……What’s begun?”
Yeriel asked. Ruina looked back at her, then burst into laughter.
“That…… pfft.”
“……What is it? Why are you laughing?”
Because the mana had suddenly convulsed, Yeriel’s hair was sticking straight up. As if she had been struck by lightning…… no.
This was not the time for that.
Ruina gave a dry cough.
“Ahem. Deculein’s lighthouse has begun operating.”
“…….”
Yeriel’s expression turned serious again.
“So now, I have to go. To the lighthouse.”
Saying that, Ruina gathered her materials.
In any case, holing herself up in this office would teach her nothing more. She felt she needed to see the lighthouse itself before any inspiration would come.
“……I’m going with you.”
“Hm?”
Yeriel spoke. Ruina looked at her with a rather startled expression.
But soon, she sternly shook her head.
“No. It’s dangerous.”
She draped a robe over her coat.
“Dangerous? Don’t say something so presumptuous.”
“……Presumptuous?”
Ruina frowned. Yeriel gritted her teeth and added,
“Yeah. You’ve only been saying presumptuous things. This whole time.”
“……What are you talking about? Anyway. You stay here.”
“Who says I hate him?”
Yeriel’s words stopped Ruina as she was about to leave.
Ruina, hand wrapped around the doorknob, turned back to Yeriel.
Yeriel, paying no mind to her hair standing up like a bird’s nest, said to Ruina,
“……Deculein. I don’t hate him.”
“……?”
Ruina’s eyes went a little blank. Small droplets of water gathered in Yeriel’s eyes.
Drops where all the worry and sorrow she had carried until now had condensed into round beads. When she shook her head, they scattered like starlight.
“I don’t want him to die.”
Yeriel confessed slowly. With a frail, trembling voice, desperately ignoring the tears welling up.
“Deculein. That shitty bastard.”
The person called Deculein.
Though they were, biologically, complete strangers, Deculein had still accepted her as Yeriel. They were connected by the heart.
Her love for him could not possibly be hidden, and she did not want to hide it.
“I don’t hate him. I don’t. So……”
Deculein desired his own death according to his wish, and now that wish was about to be fulfilled.
“I don’t want that damn bastard to die.”
How could there be a younger sister who wished for her older brother to die?
“…….”
……And Ruina.
From that Yeriel, she gained a certain inspiration.
The one and only trigger she had needed all this time.
That trigger had been with Yeriel.
“Not something meant to destroy……”
Ruina’s eyes turned blue. Around Yeriel, whom Ruina was looking at, formulas rose in the empty air like bamboo shoots after rain.
Calculations no one else could know, magic circles, circuits, dots and lines bloomed as though encroaching……
“If it is something meant to protect.”
……and began assembling themselves as they pleased.
* * *
Emperor Sophien selected those who would shatter the Land of Extinction with her. Among them were Red Demons, adventurers, knights, and more; there were commoners, and there was even the president of the principality.
When that fact was announced, of course no small commotion arose, but before the “great cause,” everyone bowed their heads.
If the Altar could not be stopped, the continent would be destroyed.
If the comet fell, humanity would be crushed into the debris of the cosmos.
—I shall personally uncover the truth of the lighthouse.
It was Sophien’s declaration that she would personally take to the battlefield.
The instant she did, the Imperial Palace declared martial law and the legions were summoned, but Sophien had no intention of moving with such feeble fools.
Only, late at night.
She called only those she could trust to the underground of the Imperial Palace, preparing for a secret entry into the war.
Kuuung———!
Then came the cry of magical power. That sound, announcing the beginning, shook the Imperial Palace.
“…….”
Sophien settled herself calmly, and when she suddenly looked beside her—
Maho.
She was reading some documents while both her hands trembled.
They were the “internal accusation documents against Deculein” that Yeriel had delivered.
“How can this beee……?”
Maho muttered with a grave face. Sophien merely remained silent, but Gawain at her side opened his mouth in her stead.
“There is not a single lie. Deculein killed all the executioners of the Floating Island, and made a staff out of their corpses. Yeriel herself delivered the evidence.”
It was a fact difficult for Maho to believe.
Deculein was the benefactor who had spared her life. He was not the sort of great man who would offer himself up to something like the Altar.
“There must be some misunderstand—”
“Shh.”
Sophien placed a finger to her lips. At that very moment, in the underground of the Imperial Palace, the sound of footsteps arose—tap.
At the same time, a person appeared.
At that sudden appearance, Maho flinched in surprise, and Gawain drew his sword, but Sophien stopped him.
“She is a Red Demon who will aid us.”
A Red Demon who would aid the Empire.
The Emperor’s words were rather strange, and difficult to accept, but in any case, now that they stood before destruction, it could be called normal enough.
“I greet Your Majesty.”
The woman whom the Emperor had called a Red Demon quietly bent one knee.
“I am Ellie.”
Ellie, who introduced herself politely.
Sophien smirked and looked around at the knights behind her.
“You may look forward to it. To this Red Demon’s uncanny talent.”
Being a Red Demon alone was already monstrous enough, and if uncanniness was added to that as well—just as the knights, including Delric and Gawain, swallowed dryly—
“Go.”
Sophien said that one word, and Ellie nodded, rose, and took a single step.
Only one step.
That one step overturned the axis of the earth.
It felt as though the underground of the Imperial Palace had been flipped upside down. In an instant, their sense of balance collapsed, and it felt as if every organ in their bodies were being pulled to one side.
Amid nausea surging madly up their throats, they could only squeeze out death throes like, “Ngh!” “Ugh!” “Kgh!” as they shut their eyes, then opened them again.
“……We have arrived.”
Ellie’s voice announced their “arrival.”
“Truly a convenient talent. So this is what it means to be a Red Demon.”
As the Emperor praised Ellie, Gawain and Ihelm stared blankly around them.
Until just three seconds ago, they had certainly been in the underground of the Imperial Palace.
But now, demonic energy clung thickly to their skin, the dark sky was stained with poison, and the ground was already a dead, lifeless land—the Land of Extinction.
That desolate scenery filled every direction.
“Your Majesty. This is……?”
Gawain asked back with a startled face, but Sophien’s expression was quite cold.
The Emperor merely raised a finger and pointed ahead.
“There is no time to be surprised. Look. Is the lighthouse not moving?”
Deculein’s lighthouse. Wrapped in a halo of light, it resonated quietly, a guide awaiting the end.
Sophien looked around.
“Come, to the lighthouse. There, I have someone to meet.”
Moving her legs, tying her long red hair tightly like a horse’s tail, and drawing her sword in advance to let it hang in one hand, Sophien repeated someone’s name.
Deculein.
Deculein.
Deculein.
After murmuring it about three times, just a little—
The heart that seemed to be wringing her dry felt a little more at ease……
The lighthouse’s operation.
Refined magical power pierces the sky, opens a path, and guides the celestial body.
The faithful prostrate themselves inside the Sanctuary and pray, while the high priests of the Altar arrange their battle lines to stop the imminent intruders.
On the other hand, those who had been watching me begin to approach slowly.
For the ending I desire.
With faith in me, or with hatred for me.
And I wait.
Until those trying to come to me reach me.
“……It’s quiet.”
Yulie said.
Today’s Land of Extinction, and the lighthouse, are quieter than ever before.
A silence drawn taut with tension. A solemnity filled with faith.
I set my staff down on the road surface and nodded.
“Yes. Soon, everyone will be contained within this canvas.”
“……Hm?”
Yulie’s eyes went round. She turned to look at me with a deer-like face.
“Are you telling me now?”
“……Ah.”
I laughed softly.
Come to think of it, I had never told Yulie what I intended to do.
Epherene would know, of course, and by this point, Ruina and Idnik must have vaguely noticed as well……
“Yes. This lighthouse is actually an amplifier. With it, I will imprison every person on the continent inside the canvas.”
“Before the comet falls, you mean?”
“That’s right. All humans must be preserved.”
The planetary collision is a fate that cannot be prevented, but humanity’s extinction is not included in that fate.
Even if the planets collide, humanity can be preserved.
That was Epherene’s idea, and I agreed with it.
“And……”
Just then, as I was about to explain a little more kindly—
—This is terrible! Intruders have appeared!
The urgent cry of a priest came from the crystal sphere atop the lighthouse.
—Two of them are climbing up to that place! Please be careful!
An urgent report that saviors, under the name of intruders, were coming up to me.
I gave a low smile, and Yulie gripped her sword. Then, looking at me, she murmured softly.
“……Together with you, Professor, this final moment.”