“Enough.”
Sophien shook her head and rested a finger on the corner of the Go board.
A large board made of wood. A stage where nineteen horizontal and vertical lines formed 361 points of play.
A game like a teacher, one that had stirred the interest of the indolent Sophien and awakened her competitive spirit.
“There will be time enough for something like Go later.”
However, reality was not Go. It was right before her eyes.
She did not want to miss it because she was focused on a mere wooden board.
“……Is that so?”
At that, Deculein smiled as if disappointed. He tossed out a playful remark.
“I had intended to show you a difference in rank that could never be overcome.”
Sophien glared at Deculein and shot back.
“I am going easy on you. If I defeat you, there will be no reason left to play Go.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
A challenger finds it easy to burn with passion. Because there is a goal to surpass, because there is always an enemy who defeats them.
On the other hand, one who has reached the summit loses that passion. Passing through a life always dry and joyless, they eventually become indolent.
Just as Sophien had.
“The person at the very top has the least fun.”
Sophien took one step closer to Deculein. Looking up at his immaculate attire, she moved her hands.
Swish—
She loosened his tie and raised only one side of his collar. Deculein’s expression twitched.
“……Deculein.”
Sophien called his name. She looked into his eyes.
“Who are you?”
She asked him.
Who are you.
The emperor, who had known Deculein all this time, still did not know Deculein’s name.
“What do you mean, who am I, Your Majesty?”
Deculein asked in return. Sophien twisted the corner of her mouth with a faint scoff. It was a sneer.
“……I am asking your real name. You never told me yourself.”
Even so, Deculein did not waver.
This man was always like this.
In every situation, at every moment, he always maintained his composure and never showed humiliation or disgrace.
Because he was always constant, and because he was unchanging, when she was with him even this very moment seemed to become nothing more than “daily life.”
A daily life that seemed as though it would continue on forever.
You are there, and I am there, and neither of us disappears, and it simply continues on ordinarily.
“And yet, somehow, I feel I know it even if you do not say it.”
Sophien had once heard a certain name.
Those unfamiliar three syllables someone had murmured to themselves remained in her mind.
“Kim Ujin.”
“…….”
Deculein’s pupils trembled slightly. That faint agitation was proof more certain than anything.
“……I see.”
Deculein nodded. Without denial, without explanation, without excuse.
Still so very Deculein.
He said,
“Yes. That is also my name.”
Kim Ujin was his name…… no.
Kim Ujin was “also” his name.
“I am Deculein and Kim Ujin. There is no real and false. Those two selves, those two souls, both respect and like Your Majesty.”
Respect and like.
The timbre of those words was enough to fluster Sophien. More than enough to silence her for a while.
“…….”
In the meantime, the sound of rain rang clear, and the mana in the space slowly filled.
Deculein’s magic was beginning to operate.
There was not much time left.
“……After hearing such words.”
Sophien barely opened her mouth. She continued in a trembling voice.
“Do you think I will be able to go on living?”
To live meant to carry on with life.
Yet to Sophien, the meaning of life was not the continent, nor the empire, but a person.
“Everything around me will be agony, as though even the wind were peeling the flesh from my skin, and your face will rise in the lake.”
He quietly listened to the emperor’s complaint.
“I may try to forget you by burying myself in tedious state affairs, but such things will be easily finished. In those empty hours, you will rise again.”
Saying so, Sophien smiled.
“No matter how hard I try, I will die in the end. For death will be easier than forgetting you.”
A heart spilling out as it pleased. Her own feelings becoming ever more certain.
————.
Just then, the lighthouse trembled with detachment, like the emperor’s heart.
“However, I cannot turn back your heart with my confession, so I will ask only one thing.”
Only one question.
Only one answer.
That was what Sophien needed.
“Yes. Anything.”
Deculein said.
“Hmph.”
At that, the smile on Sophien’s lips deepened like a fox’s. Her two eyes curved like crescent moons.
“……My question is this.”
Her voice somehow turned mischievous.
“Just as Deculein loved Julie, and Kim Ujin loved Yu Ara…….”
He was Deculein, but at the same time, he was Kim Ujin.
Therefore, he was not Deculein, and he was not Kim Ujin.
Two people who had become one person. Souls that had found harmony.
That was why Sophien asked this.
“Could you have loved me?”
Could he have loved me?
If more time had been given, if that “daily life” had continued.
Could this man have loved me?
“…….”
He seemed to ponder quietly, seemed to sink into thought, but only for a moment.
Rather, he soon wore a face filled with absolute certainty, and with that expression he looked down at her, slowly……
“I—”
“No.”
Sophien stopped his mouth.
She shook her head.
“……It would be better not to hear it.”
It could not be helped.
Whichever it was, she would regret it, be saddened by it, and suffer to the point of death.
“……Yes.”
He, too, accepted Sophien’s whim.
Sophien looked up at him and smiled.
“Then, this is the end.”
“Yes. So it seems. It felt long, but looking back, it was short.”
“Truly, you are right.”
Sophien gently closed her eyes.
When she closed her eyes, she recalled the day she first met this man.
Deculein introducing himself as her teaching mage.
The man who taught her magic, explained runic script, and challenged her to Go and chess.
The man who saved her as she floundered in indolence and ennui, taught her the emotion called love, and degraded her into something like a “human.”
“Your Majesty.”
The man who fixed me to this continent.
“It is time.”
His voice informed her.
At that moment, she felt the particles of magic gathered in this place. The spell formula and mana caressed her skin.
Sophien instinctively gripped her sword.
“Deculein.”
Sophien looked up at Deculein.
Deculein answered quietly.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
That word, yes.
That title, Your Majesty.
The ends of his sentences, always calmly tied off.
His impeccable attire, and his bearing more aristocratic than anyone else’s.
“……I will miss them.”
All of it, she would miss.
The fact that she would never see it again made tears flow in grief.
“I will want to see you.”
……Just then, Deculein’s expression stiffened faintly.
Seeing that, Sophien smiled once more.
“Now go.”
She drove the sword into his heart.
——!
The foundation of the lighthouse shook as if a trigger had been pulled.
Sophien’s mana pierced the iron man’s body.
“……As much as I love you.”
Sophien gazed at Deculein while gripping the sword.
She stared at the spell formula blooming within his body together with the emperor’s mana.
“I wish for your happiness.”
Together with that low murmur,
Shaaaaaaaa——.
His magic spread throughout the entire world. The simplest spell formula of telekinesis wrapped around the whole continent.
All living beings, all lives, into his embrace alone…….
* * *
—……Deculein did not even kill the child of the Jeokgwe.
At Elesol’s ear, Primienne’s voice lingered.
Deculein, who had not even killed the child of the Jeokgwe.
—He knew I was Jeokgwe, yet he did not expose me.
Elesol’s eyes scanned the analysis Yeriel had brought. She was reading the results of Ruina’s interpretation of Deculein’s lighthouse.
—Elesol, you must have some vague idea too.
The lighthouse that would lead the continent to destruction.
And yet, Deculein’s other intention hidden within it.
—Deculein is not trying to kill the Jeokgwe. Rather……
Crush—!
Elesol crumpled the analysis sheet in her fist. Then she looked around.
Everyone was reading the same thing.
Ganesha, Gawain, Delic, and Maho as well…… all without a word. With rather sorrowful expressions, all their faces darkened.
“……So?”
Then someone asked. Elesol turned toward that place.
It was Ellie.
“So what are you saying we should do? Are you saying we should save the Professor?”
Ellie asked Yeriel. Yeriel glared at him without a word.
“Nothing changes just because you bring something like this. No, even if it does change, we must not let it. It would be interfering with the Professor. You know that too, Miss Yeriel.”
“…….”
Becoming the villain himself, becoming the great evil, and meeting death.
By that, the chain of hatred would be severed.
That much was the result Deculein wanted, wished for, and planned.
“I know.”
Yeriel said.
“I know too. But…… he does not have to die.”
Yeriel’s wish was simple.
She only wished he would not die.
She only wished he would stay alive.
“He could just pretend to be dead.”
“He is not a frog. How is he supposed to pretend to be dead?”
Ellie, whose emotions were faint, asked back logically even in that situation, but Elesol restrained him.
Yeriel gritted her teeth.
“Then you want to leave it like this? No. I cannot accept that.”
She wanted to protect Deculein. Just as he had protected her, she too.
Yeriel took one step forward. Toward the far side of the lighthouse, toward that place frozen like ice crystal—
“Feelings that are only feelings are a nuisance.”
Ellie stopped her.
“Furthermore, we received Her Majesty’s command. She told us to let no one approach that place…….”
——!
Just then, the foundation of the lighthouse suddenly shook.
At the same time, magical energy bloomed in every direction.
Proof that the “most important moment” was at hand.
“Move!”
Yeriel ran at that instant. She released a superhuman mana even she did not understand.
Before anyone could stop her, toward that place where time and space had frozen.
Toward the place Julie had blocked, and toward the place where Deculein was.
“Deculein———!”
Crying out his name.
* * *
……Drip.
……Drip.
Rain falling on the Land of Extinction.
Rain soaking the continent.
The water of life.
……Drip.
……Drip.
Watching those raindrops flow honestly from above to below, Quay felt it.
The purest magic to originate from this continent, and the countless human presences vanishing by means of it.
Deculein, who had succeeded in taking only “one step.”
“……It is a little different from the extinction of humanity you desired.”
At those words, Quay turned around.
Creto.
He was free from Deculein’s magic.
To be precise, Quay was protecting him.
“Would this not be your defeat?”
Creto asked as if mocking him, but Quay calmly shook his head.
“No. It is not much different. In any case, they cannot emerge from the Outer Side of the World.”
「Outer Side of the World」
A space that was not space, isolated from the world.
Those contained there would become existences that were not existences.
“How can you be so certain?”
Quay merely smiled.
“It is simple. Because I am still there too.”
Even he did not dare come out, and his main body was still there. A mere human mage could not interfere with the Outer Side of the World.
“Do you think it is possible?”
Quay asked Creto. Creto looked out the window and answered.
“Yeah. I think it is possible.”
……Drip.
……Drip.
Between the slowly falling rain, a massive celestial body appeared.
The destruction that would condemn this continent.
It was approaching very quietly, together with the rainwater.
“Phenomena, existences, and existences that are not existences—all surely have lifespans.”
Creto suddenly said.
Quay looked back at him with transparent eyes.
“There is no eternal life. Nothing can live forever.”
Creto, continuing his sentence, also met Quay’s eyes.
“Therefore, time takes precedence over all things.”
Time takes precedence over all things.
Perhaps that was correct.
“So, what you are saying is that you hope the broken continent will regenerate and the Outer Side of the World will naturally disappear simply by ‘waiting’?”
“……Perhaps. Magic has a lifespan, and your authority surely has one as well.”
“Haha. Even though it would require ten thousand years, perhaps even more than twenty thousand years?”
The Outer Side of the World surely had a lifespan as well.
When that “appointed time” passed, the Outer Side of the World would be dismantled, and perhaps the people trapped within it could return to the continent.
However, that span of time would likely be ten thousand years.
No, perhaps twenty thousand.
“Quay, you said you prayed for ten thousand years, did you not?”
Creto asked.
“Yeah. That is right. Then they too, for around ten thousand years…….”
At that moment, Quay’s lips stopped.
He had realized something.
“……Yes.”
Creto looked at him and gave a small smile.
“Even if your authority cannot be eternal, there is something close to eternity on this continent.”
At those words, Quay soon wore a smile.
He looked at Creto with a face that said he understood.
“……「Eternal Winter」.”
“……If time is frozen, then ten thousand years ceases to be time.”
“Epherene, and Deculein, were never trying to defeat me alone from the beginning, were they?”
It had not been Deculein alone.
Nor had it been only the two of them together with Epherene.
Three, perhaps four, and perhaps even five.
“……That is right.”
Creto agreed as well.
……Drip.
……Drip.
The rain gradually thickened. Quay watched it in silence, as though lost in thought.
……Drip.
……Drip.
After remaining like that, he silently turned away. He moved his legs with rather sorrowful steps.
Watching his back as he walked off, Creto asked,
“Where are you going?”
“……I am going to meet Sophien.”
Quay answered. Creto let out a small sigh.
“The final battle?”
“……Yes.”
Quay looked back at Creto and answered.
“Whose faith is stronger—now we must contest that.”