“Kim Woojin.”
Lia called his name. At that moment, her eyes fell on the blue forget-me-nots. Unable to bring herself to look at his face, she looked instead at the vase on the wooden desk. At the blossoms there, their heads tilted.
“……”
Deculein said nothing. In the lengthening silence, tiny expectations, thoughts of perhaps, bubbled up in Lia’s heart like little droplets of water.
But when she suddenly raised her eyes to look at him.
When she studied his face from the corner of her eye.
“……Ah.”
She realized that wasn’t it.
“Kimurin? What’s that, Lia?”
Leo asked.
A name that no one on this continent would even recognize as a name.
Leo’s reaction was utterly natural, and the same was true of Deculein.
“……”
Right now, he was far too dry, far too indifferent, to be someone who had just been called by “a name no one in this world should know.”
His expression was like Leo’s, as though he didn’t know whether it was a name or an object.
Even so, Lia tried to read Deculein’s reaction: the lines of his face, the beating of his heart, the dilation of his irises, the movement of his pupils, even the slightest change in the atmosphere.
With the skills she had learned and honed while living and growing as an adventurer on this continent……
“There is no time to stand there blankly.”
Then Deculein spoke. Only then did Lia come back to reality.
She realized it had been a delusion.
[36 : 03 : 23]
The quest timetable still shone across her retina.
Lia clenched her fists tightly. She looked at Deculein again, and at the sky over his shoulder.
——There was a celestial body.
What had been like a tiny dot had, before she knew it, become as distinct as a waning crescent.
“Yu Ara.”
Suddenly, Deculein called her. Lia answered dazedly.
“……Huh?”
As if he found her pitiful, he shook his head.
“You must have something to do.”
Lia belatedly came to her senses.
The timetable was ticking down in real time. She couldn’t afford to be shaken by something so personal.
“This lighthouse, the meteor, will destroy the continent.”
Lia said. Leo and Carlos also nodded.
“……I suppose it will.”
Deculein agreed so, with a faint smile, and lifted a certain notebook from his desk.
“I know. Better than you do.”
“Then why?”
Lia asked for the reason.
“I still don’t understand. Even if you don’t draw the meteor down…… you should be able to accomplish what you want.”
She felt as though she vaguely understood Deculein’s objective.
But there should be no need for him to help complete the lighthouse.
“Do you think you know my objective?”
Deculein said. Then he swept his gaze around the space.
Lia looked around as well.
It was rather plain for Deculein’s taste, yet the bookshelves, made of wood that still carried an antique dignity and refinement, were unmistakable.
Bookshelves. Bookshelves. Bookshelves.
A scene like some kind of library.
“I may be deceiving you. Making you misunderstand my objective, and buying time until the continent is destroyed.”
Lia looked at him without a word.
“……You don’t lie.”
“I do.”
Deculein said.
“And I already have.”
He looked back at Lia.
“Just like you.”
“……?”
Lia’s brow furrowed. What lie, all of a sudden?
Deculein chuckled and pointed at Carlos.
“You said you would make that half-man, half-demon able to become human. And yet he is still the same.”
“……Ah.”
Carlos. As a half-man, half-demon, he was still exactly that.
She had tried countless times to purify the demonic energy mixed into his blood—
“It cannot be done.”
Deculein shook his head.
“You cannot turn someone who is already half-man, half-demon into a human. Even if it were possible, losing oneself is no different from death.”
Carlos glared at Deculein. But perhaps he could not overcome his instinctive fear, for the moment Deculein glanced at him, he immediately lowered his eyes.
“Yu Ara. The meteor can no longer be stopped.”
Deculein turned his back. From the center of the open sky, he watched the meteor breaking through the atmosphere.
“Even if I die, even if this lighthouse is destroyed, that destruction cannot be avoided.”
“……”
“Those filthy, lowly humans. Those things that dared to defy nobles without knowing their place, insult mages, and disparage knights.”
His voice as he recited those words was gentle.
“Those cockroach-like creatures living on this continent.”
Looking at the sky, he gave a sneer.
“At last, they will go extinct.”
“……”
Without realizing it, Lia toyed with her necklace. This crystal orb was recording everything happening here.
“……And then, it will begin again.”
Deculein looked back at Lia.
“A new world, with all those lowborn creatures gone.”
His voice seethed like that of a villain. If this was an act, then it was truly a remarkable one.
“However, before that.”
Thud——!
At the same time, Deculein’s staff struck the floor, and mana bloomed forth. It rose like mist and wrapped around Lia, Leo, and Carlos.
“Uh, huh?!”
“Urgh!”
Leo and Carlos let out brief cries and vanished. The crystal orb hanging like a necklace also stopped functioning.
In Deculein’s space, only Lia remained.
“At last, it is just the two of us.”
She quietly glared at Deculein.
“Yu Ara.”
The way he called her name. His voice had suddenly become warm.
“There is something I must say.”
“……Something you must say?”
“Yes.”
He had something to say.
Deculein’s face as he said that was so at ease, so soft, that for some reason she flinched hard enough for her shoulders to tremble. And then the next words he uttered were……
“I loved you.”
They were a shock.
A sudden pain, as if her heart were being wrung tight.
A pain even she could not understand.
But whether he knew that or not.
“It is not a lie.”
Deculein’s sincere confession continued, still calm and unadorned.
At that sincere confession, Lia’s lips would not part, as if they had hardened.
She did not know what she was supposed to say.
“I loved only you……”
As he spoke, a small smile spread across Deculein’s lips.
As though he were looking back on the old past, recalling a beloved memory.
“I was glad you existed.”
A boyish smile.
Two eyes like a lake.
Lia stared at him, her mind blank for a moment, but soon she felt hollow.
Because he was not Kim Woojin.
Because he was Deculein.
“And because you existed, I was able to endure.”
These were not words from Kim Woojin to Yu Ara.
“I thought, so many times, that I wished I could see you again, even just once.”
They were words from Deculein to Yu Ara.
“……”
Yu Ara bit her lip hard.
Her heart was trembling, the flesh of her face was quivering, and her eyes were already blurred white with tears. These expressions, which even she did not understand, were impossible to control.
Even knowing he was Deculein, just hearing those words made her so happy.
So sad.
And so terribly envious.
“……Yeah.”
That was all Lia answered.
No matter how she thought about it, she felt she could not betray Deculein’s feelings, so she pretended to truly be Yu Ara.
“But knowing that, you still did something like this?”
She asked back playfully.
It was meant, in her own way, as a reproach toward Deculein……
“I did not know you would be here.”
But Deculein’s answer, returning immediately, carved an even deeper mark into Lia’s heart.
It twisted Lia’s face into an expression about to cry.
“If I had known you were here, I would have taken a little better care of this body.”
Saying so, Deculein handed her the notebook on the desk. Lia wiped around her eyes with her sleeve. Then she received it.
“What…… is this?”
“Read it later.”
On the cover were only the words 「Diary」.
“A diary……?”
The instant Lia murmured that, Deculein’s mana rippled blue. It wrapped around Lia.
“……Huh?”
Lia stared blankly at Deculein.
“Our conversation ends here.”
His face, as he said their conversation was over, was a little strange.
No, it was far too strange.
“Why……”
Why are you smiling?
With the happiest face, with an expression he had never shown anyone else.
“I wish I had known a little sooner.”
Why are you saying that……?
* * *
Emperor Sophien was climbing the lighthouse.
The sword hanging from one hand was already wet with blood and gleaming, and her eyes were thick with murderous intent. She cut down every altar member, magical beast, and chimera that tried to halt her advance, and climbed the lighthouse floor by floor.
She ascended without hesitation.
Graaaaaaaah────!
When some chimera of the altar came charging in with a monstrous roar,
Swaaaaaah───!
Sophien’s swordsmanship poured down like rain.
Like a downpour that could neither be avoided nor contained.
Every streak of every sword slash carved through the chimera.
“……Wow.”
The knights watching could only marvel. For the emperor was displaying swordsmanship that needed no help from knights, swordsmanship that had surpassed all knights.
“There’s no time to be impressed! Hurry up and climb!”
Maho shouted. In her hand was a map of the lighthouse.
She was guiding the emperor with it, a map she had obtained from somewhere.
“Yes!”
Gawain answered. Delric also moved his legs steadily. They climbed the lighthouse stairs.
Thuuuum————!
Then a tremendous vibration rang out. A grand wave of mana that shook the earth’s axis.
The bizarre disaster caused by the meteor’s descent.
It did not end as a mere “phenomenon,” but agitated the mana circulating through the knights’ bodies—in other words, through their blood vessels.
Krrgh——!
Cough—!
Groans and coughing of blood erupted all at once. The bodies of countless knights, mages, and Jeokgwe tumbled down the stairs for a moment, and the only ones even somewhat fine were Ganesha and Emperor Sophien.
Because of that, the advance halted for a while.
“……What weaklings you are.”
Sophien said. She took a cloth from her pocket.
“There is not much time left.”
She said so as she wiped the blood from her sword with it.
“……”
However, the loyal retainers watching her said nothing.
It was partly because of the pain from the mana’s turbulence, and though there were many words hovering in their mouths, they could not bring themselves to let them out.
“Hmph.”
The emperor glanced at them. They were the eyes of a sovereign, stained red.
“……Are you thinking it is useless?”
“……Pardon?”
One of the knights answered blankly. The emperor asked again in an icy voice.
“Are you thinking there is nothing to be done about a meteor that has already come that close?”
“……”
There was only silence.
Just as she said, the meteor was already right before them.
If they destroyed this lighthouse, would the meteor disappear?
Could the continent escape destruction?
“……It does not matter.”
Even so, Sophien said it, her voice filled with absolute certainty.
“Trust only in me.”
She looked up at the ceiling. She looked toward him, who would be waiting at the top of the lighthouse.
“All of you need only do what you must.”
What they had to do.
What Deculein had to do.
And what she had to do.
“……I will take care of the rest.”
Sophien knew.
What Deculein intended to do, and what would happen to this continent.
“I will handle everything.”
Because she knew, Sophien said so.
Because she was the emperor born the noblest on this continent, and because she was the one who bore the greatest responsibility on this continent.
“Leave everything to me, and you need only follow me.”
Those words were meant equally for the pathetic knights who had collapsed here, and for the “beloved bastard” watching her from above.
“……I will devote myself to all of you.”
Sophien vowed so.