Ch.1003Cheap Excuse

With a thunderous roar as if the sky itself was being torn apart, the green barrier and the twilight of stars collided and burst into flames.

Was this her final struggle? The World Tree extended both hands forward, creating a green barrier made of trees and flowers to block Leviathan’s flames.

Of course, it was nothing but a futile struggle.

Despite deploying all her remaining divine power to create a defensive barrier, against the god-slaying power imbued in the twilight flames, it was merely kindling that would burn the moment it was touched.

“Kuh, nnngghh…!”

Heat and embers passed through the barrier. The World Tree grimaced and groaned as they touched her.

Slowly but surely, her physical form was being scorched and fading away in the flames.

“You don’t know when to give up. I have no interest in your begging for life, so just die already!”

I glared at her and put more strength into my arms, pushing the sword forward.

To crush the World Tree’s final resistance, burn through it, and then incinerate her true form hiding behind it until nothing remained but ashes.

“This is not… begging for… life…!”

The World Tree gritted her teeth and protested.

“I am merely…! Trying to protect… the future of the fairy race! Their tomorrow…!”

She claimed that her attempts to persuade me with nonsense or negotiate weren’t to save herself, but to protect the future of the fairies who would remain.

Whether this too was nonsense or sincere, I couldn’t tell.

“The future of fairies? You sound just like Varnir.”

…Well, either way, my answer wouldn’t change.

“It’s truly laughable, really.”

I stepped half a step forward and sneered.

Both the World Tree and Varnir seemed unable to rest in peace, worried that the fairies they’d leave behind might be exterminated by humans…

“If you were so concerned about the future of fairies, you should have properly managed and led them from the beginning. So they wouldn’t face destruction from accumulated karma!”

That was their responsibility from the start.

Perhaps in the time of Carlos the Great or before, but now the Empire—and I—only oppose beings that harm humanity.

It was the fairies who first kicked away the possibility of peaceful coexistence and started a war because they disliked the Empire-led order.

Moreover, the atrocities they had secretly committed against humans over the past few centuries were severe.

Therefore, the World Tree’s protests were nothing more than the futile pleas of a murderer about to face retribution, hypocritically claiming murder is wrong.

“The karma of you humans is no less severe!”

The World Tree cried out in indignation.

“Ask that cursed pure white goddess! How the human empire of Xanten treated us four thousand years ago! She knows better than anyone!”

She brought up karma from four thousand years ago.

“The atrocities of that terrible empire that deserved destruction, which despised all species except humans!”

She ranted about the alleged atrocities of Xanten, a human empire said to have existed in ancient times.

“So that justifies committing the same or worse acts for thousands of hundreds of years? Don’t talk nonsense. If you had grievances, you should have settled them with those responsible!”

Making me repeat myself again. Just like a married couple, she’s saying exactly the same things as Varnir.

“Such sophistry…! When we finally gained the power to do so, Xanten had already fallen! Leaving only a small number of descendants!”

“Then you should have stopped!”

“Are you saying we should have forgotten our grudges without taking revenge?!”

“Yes! You should have abandoned your futile revenge against enemies long dead and your hollow ambitions about Alvheim’s glory, and tried to build new relationships!”

They had their chance.

A chance to bury old grudges in ancient memories and peacefully coexist by taking the hands extended by present-day humans.

As the dwarves had done, as the Dragonic Kingdom had done.

But the fairies chose the opposite. Like the werebeasts who still hate the Empire and endlessly eye the north, they transferred their hatred to the descendants of their enemies.

To those who had never even heard of the Empire called Xanten or whatever.

And not stopping there, whenever they regained power, they waged war against other races with ambitions to place all other species under their feet.

“If you were truly concerned only about your race’s safety, you could have done that. Even to avoid this burning future!”

The divine barrier was gradually fading. The World Tree’s fingertips burned away in the heat. Leviathan’s flames were growing fiercer as they devoured her divinity.

“Kugh…! You, you short-lived species might be able to do that! Mayflies who don’t live past a hundred years. For you, those events are merely the past!”

The fairy goddess contorted her face and stepped back.

“But we are different! For us, it is not the past! It never was!”

She glared at me and cried out as if spitting blood.

“How could we forget! How could we let it go as a thing of the past! If we did, it was clear that all fairies would eventually decline and perish, pushed aside by humans!”

Ancient hatred. Anxiety and fear created by old memories. A sense of responsibility and urgency that she had to do something.

Indignation at facing destruction before forces of fate and powers that couldn’t be resisted.

All these emotions were boiling within that roar.

“You’re looking far into the future. How can you be so certain!”

“Because I have seen it! Your true nature. The sadism and barbarism that you humans reveal when you finally gain power over all others!”

“You must have seen those idiots from four thousand years ago!”

I denied all those emotions. The typical lamentations of those trapped in the past, unable to escape, which the World Tree was desperately spewing.

“What’s different! What’s different, I ask! Elpinel will not let go of her grudge against us. Those who follow her will throw all fairies into hell! Isn’t it the same!”

The World Tree, with flames spreading to her body and her forearms completely burned away, cried out while bleeding greenish-red blood.

This time, she wasn’t wrong.

In fact, Lacy, who could be considered Elpinel’s agent, believed that all fairies should be exterminated with only a small number preserved like animals in a zoo.

I could clearly envision her crucifying and burning fairies at the stake the moment the World Tree died and her blessing disappeared, declaring that the time of divine punishment had finally arrived.

“Even you are the same now! Can you deny it?”

And I too, after the capital was invaded, had once declared that I would turn fairies into creatures of legend.

That meant the extermination of the fairy race.

Although it was more of a statement to show how firm my resolve was, rather than something said with complete sincerity.

“You cannot deny it! Because you, all of you, came here for revenge! Ignoring your own sins as past while claiming that our sins, even after more than a thousand years, are all present matters!”

Perhaps thinking my momentary pause in rebuttal meant her words were getting through, the World Tree continued to pour out her indignation.

“You say old grudges should have been forgotten? Fine, let’s say that’s true. Then when exactly do the things we’ve done to you become ‘the past’!”

Fairies lived long lives. Long enough that those who committed sins eight hundred years ago could still be alive today, untroubled.

In other words, it would take an enormous amount of time for fairy sins to be buried in the past.

The World Tree protested that this was unfairly unjust.

“By the time it’s finally called ‘the past,’ fairies will have already gone extinct or been reduced to livestock! Isn’t that right! Tell me!”

“…So, you find that so unfair? After continuing those atrocities for all that long time you speak of?”

To me, it sounded like a tantrum. Enjoying the benefits of a long lifespan without complaint, but crying out that the disadvantages were unfair.

“Then you should have died earlier. If living for over a thousand years makes you feel so wronged, you could have fallen on your sword after living a hundred years!”

Humans had all died—those who committed the original sins—but fairies, with their long lives, couldn’t help but have the perpetrators still alive.

Thinking about it, there couldn’t be a more absurd sophistry.

*Crack-crack-crack!*

I took another step forward, pressing down on the World Tree.

The blackened green barrier, seemingly reaching its limit, began to crack with a screaming sound.

“Then…! What about those who committed no sins! What about them? Do you believe all fairies alive today are connected to what you call our sins!”

The World Tree coughed up blood and desperately changed her argument.

“They are not! Most have lived without even knowing about this! Yet you intend to kill them all and make them slaves!”

Even if they had committed sins, only the perpetrators should be punished—why punish the entire race for those sins?

“While shamelessly proclaiming that justice has been served!”

Where is the justice in that, she asked.

“Ha, what a curious coincidence. Don’t you think? The people you raised like cattle and devoured probably lived without knowing anything about Xanten or whatever it was!”

It was practically a self-contradictory excuse.

Because that’s exactly what the World Tree and the fairies had been doing all along. They had tried to exact payment for the sins of the ancient empire from all humans, regardless of their connection.

*Crack!*

Therefore, I mocked her and shattered the barrier made of divine power.

“So you’ll exterminate us? Take the same revenge? Then what makes you any different from us!”

Beyond the completely shattered barrier, the World Tree, with flames now spreading across her entire upper body, played her final card—moral equivalence.

I couldn’t help but laugh. It seemed those backed into a corner always resort to moral equivalence in the end.

“Is that the end of your last words?”

I had intended not to listen at all, knowing she would spout nonsense, but somehow I ended up hearing it all.

And as expected, it was nothing but nonsense.

“You say if we exterminate you, we’re no different from you? Well… perhaps that’s true. If we really acted as you say.”

I extended my sword forward.

The twilight blade pierced into the World Tree’s shoulder.

“But that.”

The fairy goddess twisted in agony and let out a scream that seemed to shatter the world.

“That’s for me to decide. Not someone like you.”

To kill. To save.

To destroy everything. To embrace even a part.

To become like them or to become something better.

All these actions would be determined by my will, not by the paranoid delusions of fairies trapped in the past.

As I desire, as I act.

“So die and watch. Whether we truly are no different from you, or completely different!”

The World Tree’s resistance completely vanished, and crimson-golden flames consumed her entire body.

The world of fairies met its twilight.