Ch.10033. The Sky Came Crashing Down (2)

I hear a sound.

“In the beginning, let there be light.”

Next would be darkness.

And then.

“Let there only be fire and water.”

Clang!

Clang!

The sound of metal being hammered.

The world I saw with open eyes was unbearably cold and pale.

The gold hovering before my eyes was extremely unpleasant and irritating.

But even that is now merely faint.

“Now only one step remains.”

One step.

A step for whom?

And who is speaking?

The pale world before my eyes has vanished.

All I can see is darkness.

Pure black darkness.

Yet why?

Even within that vast darkness, there was light.

The faint light eventually forms points and lines.

It spreads, however dimly.

I’ve seen this before, vaguely.

Yes. A familiar sight.

The night sky.

It was like the night sky spread endlessly above and below.

That kind of scenery.

For some reason, there was something enormous there.

In the far distance.

That enormous darkness was emitting a strangely vivid light.

No, that’s a bit strange.

There was no separate light in the darkness.

‘Ah.’

Enormous darkness.

Circular.

No, a spherical ball?

Yet around it was exceptionally brilliant.

As if light embraced the dark circle, the ball.

But the darkness residing there stubbornly, firmly guarded its domain without allowing even a single ray of light or a point of light.

‘What is it?’

What am I seeing right now?

Could this be death?

And is that place… hell? Heaven? The place they say you enter after death?

The heaven my mother described wasn’t like this.

The demon realm described by demon-kind would be different too.

Even hell where devils dwell, or the underworld, wouldn’t look like that.

For some reason, I had that feeling.

A sight impossible to see on earth.

Yet the darkness before me, residing there,

Was brilliantly radiant.

Its vastness was so endless that…

…I eventually forgot even my own existence.

Me?

Who am I?

What am I?

To begin with.

Am I necessary?

There is something I can do because I am me, as myself.

Yes.

In the end, I exist for that purpose.

Existence.

Life and death.

Life.

And.

If there’s something I must do now.

…It’s obvious.

Live selfishly.

In old memories, Aces almost resented himself for striving for others.

Why live like that?

Why not devote yourself to greater things?

“……”

What does it mean to be great?

To leave your name in history?

To be praised by everyone?

To be complimented? Acknowledged?

What meaning does that have?

Then was my life, scorned by all, the opposite of greatness?

How will history mention my existence?

Born as the child of a great warrior, impressive in childhood but later scorned and ignored even in my own country.

In the end, one who allied with the Demon King and was abandoned by the world, or rather, chose to be abandoned… something like that?

Perhaps I won’t be mentioned at all.

Treated as if I never existed, called taboo or disgrace.

“……”

Do I need to care?

It’s all meaningless.

That’s not where I exist.

I am here.

Isn’t that enough?

I suddenly realize.

In life.

If there was the greatest obstacle.

It was, in the end, myself.

If only my heart changes like this.

So desolately.

Everything in the world turns upside down.

“……”

Someone was looking this way.

He was there from the beginning.

I just realized it late.

“You have already tried hard enough. Yet you want to take one more step from here? Why? For whom?”

“……”

He asked.

So I said.

“For myself.”

And.

“If there are no coincidences in this world. Then everything must be inevitable.”

If so.

“There must be a reason why I came to know about her.”

If after a lifetime of being used and abused by others,

The freedom I finally gained was actually a false cage set by someone else.

“Whether she wins or loses, she will never find salvation.”

What she has done may never be forgiven.

But, didn’t I learn while glimpsing her memories?

She didn’t kill the villagers.

She merely put them to sleep.

But because she was clumsy with her abilities, her powers,

She’s still confused about how to undo it.

Perhaps she even partly intended to protect them.

If she hadn’t intervened,

Others might have harmed the villagers’ lives.

She came to that realization.

She’s truly so clumsy.

So unreliable as a human.

…I can’t even feel sympathy.

But.

Her nature is enough to feel pity for.

If there is the best atonement and forgiveness for her,

It would be… creating an opportunity for her to clean up what she has done herself.

“……”

But she is bound by a contract.

She must kill Leo who has drawn his sword.

I knew better than anyone how the absolute compliance contract was structured through the Demon King.

Even I was bound by it.

Therefore.

If she could kill Leo but doesn’t,

It means she has no will to comply with the contract.

That is essentially the same as breaking the contract.

“So you plan to make it impossible for even her to act, preventing her from fulfilling the contract. Is that your plan, your will?”

“……”

“But you would need the power to stand against it. Do you have such power now?”

“……”

I am.

Not a hero.

One who holds an indomitable will.

One who certainly achieves victory.

I am not such a hero.

But.

“Is the fact that I cannot do it a reason why I shouldn’t try?”

“Even though you’ll die?”

“I’m already dead. Whether I die now or a little earlier. It’s the same.”

“Things might end in an even worse way.”

“Then I must strive to prevent that.”

“How?”

“……”

I’m not in a situation where I have the luxury to think that far ahead.

“Even if you throw away your life like this, are you confident you won’t regret it?”

“……”

As for regret.

I’ve done plenty of that.

I think I once heard a similar question from someone.

“As long as I never forget. Looking back at the past already engraved, it would be impossible for me not to regret.”

As long as I don’t forget.

Unless I desperately try not to recall it intentionally.

I will regret it every time I remember.

And carrying that regret, I moved forward.

That’s how I reached this point.

Therefore I…

“I will use my life as I see fit.”

Without needing to consider anyone’s opinion.

Without calculating gains and losses.

If I want to do it, I do it.

If my heart is drawn to it, I do it.

If I believe it must be done.

…I don’t hesitate.

Isn’t that freedom?

Counting whether I can or cannot, judging,

What freedom is there in that?

“I see.”

“……”

Again.

I look up at the sky.

It’s a pure white sky.

Now covered by something, leaking white.

The blue sky was hardly visible.

My body is still cold, and vague.

My mind is only dim, my senses only dull.

No matter how firmly I steel my heart,

I wonder if I can even rise from here.

I pondered a little.

……

…

Perhaps I lost consciousness for a moment.

For some reason.

There was something I seemed to have seen before.

A small baby angel.

When I saw it before, I remember it crying over an abyss.

But now.

It’s smiling.

Strangely.

My shoulder rises.

……?

Turning my head slightly,

Someone’s hand was holding my shoulder.

Not just that.

On the opposite side too, someone’s hand was touching me.

Though my body was infinitely heavy, my upper body was raised with strange ease.

And just like that.

My body is lifted.

From the edge of my vision, someone reaches out.

The child, with a smiling face, extends that tiny hand and firmly grasps mine.

And then, pulls hard.

It seemed woefully inadequate for that small hand, that small body to handle me.

Yet somehow, my body was lifted with ease.

The hands that had been holding my shoulders and waist were withdrawn.

The figures of those who raised me fleetingly crossed my dim gaze.

There were men, and women.

There were children, and even four-legged beasts, and furry creatures.

Though I could hardly distinguish their attire, faces, or expressions,

They all looked at me and murmured in an incomprehensible language.

“……”

Suddenly.

Looking down,

The child who had been pulling my hand.

A child with a somehow familiar appearance suddenly presented a small sword.

Holding the blade with both hands,

As if presenting an offering to a king or noble.

As the child offered the sword on half-bent knees, I instinctively grasped it.

Only after taking it did I realize.

…It was the sword I had been using.

Remarkably.

Though I had just retrieved it from the blacksmith,

Despite enduring such hardship in this short time,

This sword was so perfectly intact.

[……]

I hear a voice.

The child eventually retreats slowly,

And disappears along with the baby angel.

‘Saint Cariel.’

Why are you here now?

If I’m not mistaken, that child just now… the one I once saw…

‘I don’t know.’

My mind is confused.

Yet somehow my body has been raised.

It was as if someone forcibly lifted me up, setting me on my feet.

Nevertheless.

These two legs were standing.

Then, I can only move forward.

I cannot see the path.

But I move according to my intuition.

I continue walking, step after step.

Eventually.

I arrive.

I don’t know why it’s this place.

But suddenly, I felt that this is where I should be.

“……”

Looking around, I realize this is the terminal point of beginning and end.

On one side, light.

On the other, like a disaster caused by nature, a fierce storm was raging.

For some reason, everything is only dim.

As if everything feels unreal.

But no.

Everything is real.

‘Is this really.’

The end?

Only now do I realize.

What encouragement I received, what comfort I was given on my way here.

[Ancestor.]

[Respect to your life.]

[How could you have lived like that?]

[My master envied you. And now, even I have become your disciple.]

[What use are hundreds or thousands of words? That life itself is the clearest answer.]

[Why do you try to save others instead of yourself?]

[Even in death, I won’t understand you. Why do all those called heroes and saints make such a fuss? Why do they make us feel so ashamed and miserable by their very existence?]

……

Who is it?

Who are they to speak to me like this?

I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s an auditory hallucination.

No.

Those are all real.

But, at least not now.

Probably not in the near future either.

…How do I know this?

Clang!

Suddenly.

A period is placed.

Before me is a massive chain.

No, massive chains, thousands of bundles tied together forming a pillar.

A huge tower.

Perhaps a tree.

Countless weapons hung on it.

Under the desolate sky, on the barren earth,

It grew like a pillar supporting the sky.

What am I seeing?

[Someday, someone will come with a sword you made.]

A blacksmith hammers a sword.

The skinny blacksmith, the one-eyed blacksmith,

Ignoring someone’s words like that.

He hammered the heated metal.

Clang!

[This is the end!]

He thrusts the holy sword into the heart of a giant fox.

The fox made of gold screamed in agony with all sorts of strange noises.

But it’s not the end.

Eventually the white-haired warrior draws another sword from his waist.

And with a single stroke,

Cuts off the giant fox’s head.

Then golden blood sprayed as if to fill and soak the world.

Thus.

That sword, in the warrior’s hand,

Cut off the head of the Demon King, the golden beast that once ruled the world.

By that act alone, the sword gained sufficient meaning.

Even then, the sword didn’t bend, crack, or break.

Truly a masterpiece.

Eventually the sword is passed to a girl.

The warrior glimpsed his future in that girl.

But.

[Lord Rueld. I don’t have confidence to wield this.]

So.

[I want to entrust this to Cariel.]

At the girl’s request, the warrior accepted with a happy yet somewhat regretful heart.

Eventually.

To the child with dark hair resembling his wife,

But with golden eyes resembling himself,

The warrior presented that sword.

Saying that when the child becomes a knight, this would protect them.

He couldn’t bring himself to say it was the sword that beheaded the Demon King.

But if the opportunity arose later.

When they stood shoulder to shoulder.

At a campsite or during a meal.

Whenever he boasted of his achievements.

He would tell them.

That in his prime, with the holy sword, he beheaded the Demon King.

And that sword…

Was given to him with respect by the follower of a knight who had brought him his only despair.

That there was someone called Grandeus who, despite being a commander in the Demon King’s army, somehow upheld chivalry, protected the weak, and was braver than anyone before enemies.

Someday, he hoped to confess this.

With such complex feelings, the warrior handed the sword to his child.

It seemed too heavy to hold now,

But someday, the day would come when they could wield it skillfully.

That day…

……

And.

[If a child comes looking to repair that sword you made, you may use this.]

The knight of darkness.

Cut off his own arm.

It quickly transformed from an iron mass in the shape of an arm into an unrecognizable substance, melting like mud.

Like gathering sand and damp soil,

The blacksmith collected it into a leather pouch,

And reminded his son of what he had seen and heard.

[After I die, he will come to you. Completing it is our collective aspiration.]

You must remember.

[If you fulfill that properly, from then on, you are free.]

And so.

The man.

Finally met him.

When a boy with a dark impression handed over a bent sword,

Though he didn’t show it, he trembled as if his heart was seized.

The prophecy was fulfilled.

The aspiration that Grandeus had passed to his father, unknown even to the Salvation Knight Order.

Why he did so, I don’t know.

But, watching will reveal it.

He, the great Grandeus, was said to glimpse the future.

Then indeed, when this sword is completed.

…Will he return? Will he be resurrected?

Or.

……

“……”

Come to think of it.

Why didn’t I think to read memories or remnants from this sword?

No, I’ve only recently become able to understand and handle this.

So I didn’t pay attention to it.

If I say that, it’s not strange that I have nothing to say.

I don’t have the strength to laugh, yet laughter escapes—what does it mean?

Moreover.

Now, I seem to understand something.

‘Ancestor.’

Those who were talking to me just now.

Were they someone from the future?

Then what ability did I have to see them?

And received their help?

I wouldn’t have understood until recently.

But now I do.

“I am…”

Light floods in.

On one side, a massive storm, like a collapsing tower, tilts toward me.

——

————

And so.

Light as light.

Storm as storm.

All those things mixed together.

Ascended to the sky in an instant.

As if proving the intense aftermath, vibrations shook the earth in all directions, tearing at the ground,

While the entangled light and frost rose into the sky as a storm.

And.

At that very moment.

A black light.

Shot up vertically.

The entangled storm of light and frost.

As if being sucked through a tiny gap.

Into the black beam of light.

It gets sucked in.

-?

The vast calamity that boasted an enormous volume and shook the magnitude of nature.

Begins to diminish in volume due to the tiny beam of black light.

By the time all those things felt sucked into the black light,

All that remained was only.

A black pillar that pierced even the sky.

Existing as if cutting through space and sky, as if inflicting a wound,

It perfectly.

Swallowed all the calamity in the area.

-Could it be.

Did you see.

All of this too.

Comrade.

How far will you.

—Mock life?

Even in a situation that should be joyful.

For some reason.

The Demon King lamented.

Sighed.

And again.

…became angry.

Truly that is.

The disloyal Dark Star.

The disobedient Black Light Star.