“Wow……”
A young, childish exclamation echoed softly through the lighthouse corridor.
“It’s amazing……”
“Yeah.”
The children murmuring so were Leo and Carlos, ten-year-old adventurers from Dadohae, belonging to the Red Garnet Adventurers.
The two children were looking around the lighthouse.
“Right?”
The priests of the Altar were chasing them, calling them intruders, but in truth, they had simply seen a window and climbed through it. The small window had been open as if to say, Please come in.
To begin with, Lia had never told them to go inside the lighthouse.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
In any case, once they entered the lighthouse, even Carlos’s eyes began to shine.
That was how wondrous the interior, made entirely of snowflower stone, was. The ceiling, floor, and walls were blue without a single blemish. The lamps and ornaments that lit the darkness were white.
And in this blue-and-white space, Deculein’s aura filled the air.
“……Wow, Carlos. Carlos. Look here.”
Their mission was reconnaissance, but Leo kept poking around here and there.
More than curiosity, it was his “animal instinct” that was guiding him.
“What is it this time?”
But since the boy was as intuitive and instinctive as he was stupid, if they followed Leo, there might perhaps be something important there.
“Over there. Over there. Follow me.”
Leo ran first, and Carlos followed after him.
Leo stopped in front of a certain door. He peered through the small gap left ajar.
“Carlos, look here too. There are lots of pictures.”
“What pictures……”
The moment he was about to say something, the door creaked open first.
As if it had been waiting for them.
As if it were telling them to come in.
“……”
“Oh, it opened.”
Goosebumps prickled across his body, but Leo stepped inside first without a shred of suspicion. Startled, Carlos grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Hey, hey. Don’t move around so thoughtlessly.”
“Look at this, Carlos.”
Leo pointed at the countless paintings hanging on the wall. Carlos first glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be any particular danger, and soon he looked at the same thing Leo was looking at.
“Look at the paintings.”
They were paintings. More precisely, they were certain “landscapes.”
Carlos’s eyes widened.
“……I think they’re people trapped by Deculein.”
Just as he said, there were people inside the paintings. There were houses, there was land, and there were many people.
“……”
Leo and Carlos walked slowly as they looked around. Like children who had come to an art gallery—no, like children seized by something even more solemn than that, rather overwhelmed.
“Huh?”
But then, among all those canvases.
They discovered something a little out of place.
“……What’s this?”
Carlos’s brow faintly furrowed. Leo’s eyes sparkled with question.
It was none other than—
“Deculein?”
Deculein.
The enemy of this era, and the villain trying to destroy the continent.
His portrait was suddenly hanging on one side of the wall.
—What are you two doing!
Just then, a sharp voice flowing from the crystal orb pierced their ears.
It was Lia.
—Get out right now! You’re not supposed to go in there yet! No, why did you go in on your own—
“Lia. This place is amazing.”
Leo cut Lia off. Then he showed her the garden through the crystal orb.
“I think people are trapped here.”
—……Sigh.
Lia let out a sigh and said,
—You did find it well. Wait there for now. I’ll come there too……
Click—
The communication cut off. But it wasn’t by choice.
A huge finger descended from above their heads and snatched away Leo and Carlos’s crystal orb.
“……Huh?”
“Hm?”
The two children innocently tilted their heads and looked up, and a heavy shadow fell over them.
“So there were brats in a place like this.”
“……”
A man looked down at them with a grin.
As Carlos and Leo looked up at him, their faces became rather tense.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Jeylon.”
Jeylon. The knight once called the Colossus of the Continent, who had collaborated with the Altar and been imprisoned beneath the Imperial Palace.
No matter how young Leo and Carlos were, they knew his name well, and they knew his strength too.
After all, he was famous as the man “right below Zait.”
“Syrio. What should we do with these guys?”
Jeylon flicked his eyes somewhere and asked.
On one wall of the garden, Syrio, who had been leaning there, swept back his blond hair.
“What shall we do?”
Syrio also asked someone. That someone was in the darkness of this space, and Carlos and Leo also turned to look there.
Features like a bird of prey. A man utterly wasted and haggard, with the appearance of a skeleton, skin clinging to bone without flesh.
The name of the man who had lost all the ambition he once had—Syrio spoke it.
“Gilteon.”
* * *
“I got it! I got it! I said I got it!”
I got it, I finally got it, I figured it out, am I not a genius?
Louina’s voice rang out again and again, crying eureka in just that manner.
“No! So what did you get?!”
On the other hand, Yeriel’s voice shouted as she gripped the wheel, frustrated because she had no idea what this eureka was about.
Vroooooom———!
Through the dark forest road at night, Yukline’s sedan raced amid the commotion.
“Ah, my heart is pounding. Step on it!”
“I am stepping on it! What did you figure out?!”
“Step on it, step on it!”
“God damn it!”
Vrooooooooooom————!
The sedan shot forward like mad. More steeply than any famed steed, and smoothly even over the rugged mountain slope. It was thanks to the 「Midas’s Hand」 bestowed upon Deculein’s personal sedan.
“It won’t take long, right?!”
Louina asked. Yeriel nodded.
“We’ll be there in a day.”
Even Myeolji would be enough with a day.
Its performance was so perfect that Yeriel admired it even as she drove. It also made her feel newly resentful.
He’d been riding such a nice car all by himself until now.
So from now on, they had to ride it together.
They had to share it.
One day I’ll ride it, another day you’ll ride it, and we’ll keep doing that.
Until we become a grandmother and grandfather.
“Then hurry up and go!”
“No, before that, what did you figure out?!”
“I figured out this formula.”
Louina spoke. The excitement filling her voice bounced every which way.
“I figured out what he’s trying to do.”
“……And?”
Yeriel asked, desperately calming her pounding heart.
Louina nodded fiercely, trying not to lose all the “analysis” packed into her head.
“He isn’t a villain.”
“……”
At that moment, Yeriel pressed down on the accelerator.
Vroooooom———!
The sedan surged to a speed of several hundred kilometers per hour, but at some point the road vanished and a forest path appeared. All kinds of obstacles blocked the way ahead.
But it didn’t matter.
Yeriel wrapped the sedan in a barrier and rammed straight through.
Plowing everything up like a bulldozer……
“But there’s one problem.”
Just then, Louina’s expression turned serious again.
Yeriel asked back,
“What is it?”
“Mages know. That what I’m thinking, in the end, someone else will think of too. That it’s only a matter of time.”
“……”
“It would be fortunate if I were the first…… but if.”
Louina turned to Yeriel. Yeriel, focused on driving, was looking only ahead.
“If a mage who hates Deculein figured it out first……”
“For example?”
Yeriel asked.
Louina pondered quietly, then answered in a low voice.
“A man like Gilteon.”
* * *
……Gilteon was looking around Quay’s garden.
Taking in the scenery of each painting with his eyes, he twisted his lips as if in futility.
“Was Iliade’s ambition for nothing more than this?”
Sylvia was trapped inside here.
The child who was Iliade’s only hope, on the 「Outer Side of the World」, doing nothing more than playing nanny.
Wasting her talent on embracing lowborn, commoners, utterly worthless humans who were not even needed by the continent……
“Is this Deculein’s fault as well?”
Empty pupils. A weakened, cracked voice. Trembling fingertips.
Gilteon had wanted Deculein to become Sylvia’s firewood.
He had wanted Sylvia to burn Deculein and become the greatest mage.
“That cunning bastard……”
However, now Sylvia was being used by Deculein.
Her talent, that brilliant power that should illuminate this world as Iliade’s light, was being squandered on the likes of Deculein.
“What shall we do with those two children, Gilteon?”
Just then, Syrio asked.
Leo and Carlos, fully on guard, had now raised their mana. Jeylon looked at them as though they were cute, as though he were looking at hedgehogs.
“Will you follow my will?”
“Well, I am a knight of Iliade, aren’t I~ And you saved me too, Gilteon. I will follow.”
“……”
Gilteon looked at Syrio in silence.
“You are the Altar’s confidant.”
“……Yes. Well.”
“Convey this to the priests of the Altar. Deculein is trying to betray the Altar.”
“……”
Gilteon took a bound volume from his bosom and held it out.
It was the 「Analysis of Deculein’s Lighthouse」 that he had personally written.
“As my heart crumbled to pieces, as I dug through the futility of having lost everything, I came to understand. I learned naturally. Deculein’s true intentions.”
Gilteon’s voice rang out softly.
He had interpreted Deculein’s lighthouse with his own power, analyzed it, and in the end, perfectly seen through his will.
“Is that so?”
Syrio asked back as he accepted the analysis. However, he did not open it.
After all, as a knight, he wouldn’t understand it even if he looked.
“What sort of betrayal is it?”
“……It is simple. They say the god of the Altar intends to erase not only this continent, but even souls.”
“Yes. Complete regeneration.”
Syrio answered. Gilteon twisted the corners of his mouth with a faint snort.
“Deculein does not. He is trying to preserve the humans of this place.”
Because of that, my daughter is being wasted.
Gilteon clenched both fists.
“And then Deculein claims he will sacrifice himself, playing at some grand cause that makes no sense. Well, Yukline and Iliade have always been opposed.”
Iliade and Yukline.
Water and oil.
Magical houses that could never mix, and in the end had no choice but to stand against each other.
“Syrio. I would rather wish for complete destruction.”
Gilteon turned to Syrio. Syrio quietly nodded.
“I will crush Deculein’s unsightly grand cause. I will not let things go as that bastard wishes.”
“……Hm.”
For Syrio, the Altar’s confidant, this was a very good thing.
Still, he was curious.
So he asked.
“Is it because Sylvia could not become an Archmage?”
At that, Gilteon laughed softly. Chuckling, he shook his head.
“Syrio. Iliade’s will is ambition, and ambition is flame.”
He stopped speaking for a moment and let out a low sigh.
An empty sigh flowing from an emptied body.
Looking at him, Syrio felt it.
“My ambition, Gilteon’s ambition, has disappeared, but Sylvia had such ambition. The ambition to become an Archmage…… She had both the ambition and the talent to fulfill the family’s long-cherished wish.”
Gilteon gritted his teeth. Then he condensed flame in his grasp.
“However, that ambition. That ambition which could have become the sun, now.”
He looked around at the paintings filling this garden.
Now that Epherene had stopped the Floating Island and had already become an Archmage.
Sylvia was inside there, preserving useless humans and wasting herself.
“It has become nothing more than a fireplace meant to warm someone.”
A fireplace.
Perhaps because the comparison felt so true even after saying it himself, Gilteon burst into a sorrowful laugh.
“Iliade should be an eternal flame……”
Fwoosh—!
In an instant, the flame born in Gilteon’s grasp spread across his entire body.
“Yet Sylvia is trying to be satisfied with a mere campfire.”
A final voice filled with regret, sorrow, contempt, and rage.
Perhaps, a will.
“Such a child is not my daughter.”
And so, Gilteon prepared the magic he had conceived.
“This damned continent, that fucking Deculein.”
Using his own flesh as the medium, using this heart and blood vessels and muscles and organs as the medium, using all the mana and magic and knowledge this mind had accumulated as the medium.
“I hope you are destroyed.”
To become an eternal flame and burn this lighthouse.
To scorch the passage of the humans Deculein was trying to preserve, so that all of them would be trapped on the 「Outer Side of the World」.
“……As the Altar wills.”
With his whole body blazing like a supernova, Gilteon murmured. He quietly closed his eyes.
And then……
——No!
A voice rang out from somewhere.
Lia’s cry.
Having rushed into this lighthouse, she knocked Gilteon down with her own body.
“Guh!”
Gilteon tangled with her and rolled across the floor.