Ch.18460. The Race Between Me and Fate.(3)

The moment the wooden spear pierced his body.

A pale mist flowed reluctantly from his body like black smoke.

-Kiaaaaaak!

With a horrific scream, a death rattle.

The shadow presumed to be Ahriman was driven out from his body, pouring forth vile screams from within the darkness.

But that wasn’t all.

“Huh.”

The boy who stood against him with a golden curved sword.

The wooden spear that had pierced Kariel’s body.

It suddenly exploded and split, reaching toward the small frame of the boy in the distance, dividing into dozens of branches and suddenly expressing indifferent hostility.

This immediately led to a physical attack.

“This isn’t good.”

The boy, exposed defensively, inwardly sighed.

Because he had already discerned with his own eyes that its essence was something that could kill him.

The boy moved his body like the wind.

Thanks to that, there was no damage.

“Stop there. I didn’t approach to harm him. I only came to do what you just did.”

“……”

Though the boy, Verethragna, tried to express his lack of hostility through gestures and words.

Elehermina, who had approached Kariel and observed his condition for a moment.

She was still glaring at him with half-open blue eyes, as if she had unfinished business with him.

Kariel had lost consciousness.

Yes. That was enough for now.

The rest…

“There’s still something left between us.”

“What do you mean?”

Letting her flame-spewing sword flow away.

Somehow holding a half-burned staff in her left hand, and in her right, a long wooden spear made up of countless branches that had sprouted again without notice.

Elehermina charged forward without preamble, holding them as a pair.

The boy also reacted reflexively to her charge, but was equally perplexed.

However, he was one who pierced through essence.

He immediately grasped where her existence originated from, and what it was.

“…How can this be?”

The boy’s gaze turned briefly to one side.

There was a woman of unknown identity being helped by a silver-haired girl of a race other than ordinary humans.

The image of that woman who had confronted him earlier, even exchanging blows and landing a hit, caught the boy’s gaze as if piercing through.

‘Is it that?’

Though incomprehensible, he immediately realized it was a situation that required no understanding.

What matters is the hostility before him.

The woman exuding animosity.

She’s an extraordinary being.

Earlier, the destruction in the form of a girl was something that far surpassed the extraordinary.

But what drove it away was none other than… the woman before him.

Is this also the arrangement of the Lord of Light and Wisdom?

‘Even so.’

This seems a bit excessive.

“Distracted…”

Crack!

“Mmm!”

“You seem… to have leisure?”

He ended up allowing his shoulder to be hit.

The broken staff.

It was a massive seal of destruction in the form of a burned staff.

But what actually caused more harm was that thing, which even with just a slight brush made his entire body’s strength scatter like a broken pottery vessel.

That… branch.

That spear made of intertwined branches.

But while it looked like a spear because it was bundled together, it was actually something completely different.

Because it could split or break at any time, scattering fragments.

“But possessing that won’t force me to accept defeat.”

“……”

Elehermina, who didn’t chase after the retreating boy, just stared at him intently.

“Let me correct your misunderstanding. I have no intention of defeating you. There’s no reason to.”

“…?”

“I already know that whether as a created being or a transcendent, you’re an entity I cannot defeat.”

But there was someone who had repelled and driven back that thing.

No need to look far.

That girl who had dominated and ruled this place until just now.

The red and dark destruction.

Did that girl drive it back because of her strong desire for victory? Or because she was a lawless one who indiscriminately spewed violence? Because she was a tyrant?

“To defeat you, I’d have to change the premise itself. It would generally be impossible… but as I am now, I lack nothing.”

Though it was only half, from the burned staff clutched in Elehermina’s left hand, pure white flames erupted.

“I will burn both the sky and earth you stand on. What meaning does victory or defeat have here?”

“……”

It sounded absurd, but now he knew.

What that woman held in her hands.

And that she was the one and only being who could fully wield it.

Verethragna immediately understood.

For instance, that too was destruction.

No, it was arbitrarily representing destruction.

…She had already known that this was the only winning strategy that could stand against him.

‘But this is inappropriate.’

Who would speak of destruction in front of oneself, even knowing this fact?

That’s a realm impossible even for Verethragna, the war god himself.

So if someone had reached that level, it would mean an existence that even he couldn’t handle.

Therefore.

“Are you prepared to die here?”

Without respect or intimidation, the boy calmly guessed her condition in a composed tone.

“……”

But.

That woman seemed more insensitive and heartless than that jet-black youth.

No.

While the youth seemed to be suppressing and skillfully controlling it.

This woman truly, truly seemed to have nothing.

Even to the eyes of insight, her existence was extremely empty, and everything that made her up was vacant to the point of unfamiliarity.

“A promise is a promise. I can’t kill you anyway… but this is your karma too. You who trampled on all people, bear your responsibility obediently.”

Elehermina leaned back as before and quickly threw the wooden spear.

“Oh my?!”

It’s not that he couldn’t respond.

Yet, strangely, it was not easy to do so.

“From the beginning, this was a gift for you.”

So receive it well and serve it.

“Mistilteinn.”

The thrown spear pierces through the boy like a beam of light.

“Where!”

He strikes it.

With that impact, the wooden spear breaks, is cut, bursts.

It splits into tens, hundreds of fragments.

All of them become like thorns, arrows, daggers, and projectiles, raining down on the boy’s entire body.

Though he hastily rode the wind to escape.

Some of those branches lodged into his chest, thigh, and elbow, following the wind.

Even so, they were just the size of tiny thorns.

While removing them might be annoying and irritating, they clearly wouldn’t lead to fatal injuries or wounds.

“Kugh!”

Yet the one pierced by them was engulfed in a shock as if his soul was splitting apart.

“……”

The distance was already too great to follow.

In the distance, the sight of the boy kneeling on the ground and panting seemed both pathetic and naive.

Whoever he was, when kneeling and bowing his head, that’s all he amounted to.

Tomorrow would be different, and it was different until just now.

But it was of no concern to me.

“……”

Calmly regulating her breath, Elehermina turned her gaze back toward Kariel.

Somehow Zora had already come to support the woman and was approaching Kariel, but she looked confused, seeing the wooden spear piercing his body, not knowing what had happened to him.

“I see. So you were the starting point.”

Seeing Elehermina speaking blankly toward empty space, Zora instinctively looked in that direction.

Nothing is visible.

Nothing at all.

But.

-…You. Do you think that judgment is correct?

The former Demon King, the golden girl, immediately realized.

That woman could see her.

That she had reached a realm where she could see.

But that was… a momentary miracle.

“Right and wrong. Correct and incorrect. I don’t want to ruin things by having my thoughts trapped in such concepts.”

And as if answering the Demon King’s question, Elehermina spoke in a resolute tone.

Her hair, which had turned so white that it had essentially transformed into a quality similar to the flames surrounding her body, showed no trace of the previous bright red color.

“W-what? You, you can see it too? The spirit that Kariel says he sees?”

“……”

So that’s how he explained it.

At Zora’s question, Elehermina rarely smiled.

Though it was just for a moment.

“I’ve pondered many things. But the situation changed rapidly recently.”

The Demon King of this era.

It was a being that couldn’t be reasoned with or persuaded.

Though somehow they survived.

Everyone was on the brink of death due to exposure to its curse.

That’s when.

Heba, Hebatein told her the secret to solving this.

In exchange.

You must endure until then, she said.

She took upon herself all the curses that her companions had acquired.

With a body reduced to rags, she alone shouldered the heavy cross. Would Irenis have been like this?

It seemed impossible to endure even for a moment.

But she had to endure.

Not for myself.

For everyone.

And for him, who would be waiting ahead.

Elehermina spoke to Zora.

“Let’s go back.”

“Oh, yes. But what about this woman?”

“Leave her be. Then… there will be those who will take care of her.”

She, the current Heba, doesn’t die meaninglessly here.

She has an immortal body to begin with.

Even when Elehermina herself, with Zora by her side, had entered the temple after many twists and turns to find her.

She was clearly alive.

Though only in body.

Like all the giants inside the temple.

Similarly, with reason and soul gone, it could be seen as a moving corpse.

It doesn’t matter.

When the time ripens, someday they will retrieve her… or even if they don’t, there will come a time when it won’t matter.

In the end, this too is a matter of choice for them.

So it’s neither misfortune nor bad luck.

-Is that all you have to say, seeing this body? The accumulated questions and emotions, there must be quite a few?

“……”

Elehermina looked at the Demon King, the golden girl who was smirking with an indifferent face, and said.

“Nothing at all.”

-Nothing at all?

Who is she imitating?

But the eyes of Elehermina, who spoke thus, seemed utterly sincere.

====

“Fool. How long are you going to lie there?”

His eyes opened at that voice.

Still the unfriendly Demon King.

His expression involuntarily soured.

“Hey. The sun is already setting, you know? Are you going to keep lying there? Imitating a slug? Save your eternal naps for the grave.”

“……”

Is he still half-asleep?

Or rather… did this Demon King eat something wrong? What’s she going on about?

“Get out. Hurry.”

“……”

What trick is this now?

The place where he woke up was, for some reason, inside a small house.

…Opening the rough wooden door, as the Demon King had said, the sun was gradually setting.

And sitting on a tree stump a little away from the door was…

“You’re awake.”

Elehermina.

She asked.

“How are you feeling?”

“……”

It’s strange.

There’s a sense of oddity, but.

I’m not quite sure.

“Let’s walk a bit. Yes. A stroll, I mean.”

On the right were sparse trees, and on the opposite side was a strangely brilliant golden wheat field.

Walking side by side along the small path between them, Elehermina spoke.

“We grew up pushed by dawn and blessing. Duty and responsibility, all of those operated regardless of our will.”

“……”

What is she trying to say?

The sun is setting.

Yet still, the world remains infinitely bright and brilliant.

It was quite difficult to open one’s eyes and look ahead.

After walking and walking, they arrived at.

A small hill.

Climbing up the hill’s path.

What spread out below was a massive city.

A distant, far-off massive city.

“Look, Kariel. Our homeland. Our destiny. It was everything in our world, and also the cruel labyrinth and prison that arbitrarily sentenced our fate, but still, we lived there and grew up there… and someday we thought we would be buried there. That’s how we grew up.”

“……”

He thought about speaking, but what words were needed?

He wasn’t sure what to say either.

Perhaps that’s why.

It ended up with only Elehermina talking.

Though she didn’t seem to mind at all.

“I’ve been taught all along how to accept right and wrong. Among those, there wasn’t actually anything I wanted. It was just representing someone else’s cause and interests, merely minimizing the damage that would grow if left unchecked. Yes. Just like how you must extinguish a fire to prevent it from spreading.”

However.

“I was simply afraid. If I didn’t fulfill my duty, someone would get hurt. That would be fatal. I could save someone with my touch, but the opposite could also happen. I could do what others couldn’t. Yes. That was another curse in a way.”

“……”

That’s not like a curse, is it? Why is she saying such things? And why now of all times?

While I pondered such questions, she continued speaking.

It sounded like a monologue, or in a way, a confession disguised as talking to oneself.

“I made a promise with my past self. But gradually, all of it became more and more faint. My past self disappeared, and only my current self took that place. Memory guides me, but memory is ultimately bound to be overlaid.”

“…?”

“I thought I understood your circumstances, but that was partly a wrong judgment. I’ve been thinking more about your past self than your present self. That was my biggest mistake. Though I now understand that’s what made you who you are today, it wasn’t right. Either way.”

“El. What are you… trying to tell me? Do you think I still… resent you? Is that it?”

“We were puppets of fate. Well-trained slaves of destiny. Though they say all this created the best outcome, it wasn’t the best for us. It was… the best for our world, not for us. I realized that too late. That’s what I’m sorry for.”

“What are you talking about? Explain so I can understand.”

“It’s not your fault. But we were weak and swayed by fate. If the weight of our fate isn’t heavier than the mass of our lives. Then wouldn’t the relationship and compatibility be reversed? Yes. Having reached such a conclusion and inference, I am now in this place. The reason I came before you… is for that reason.”

“…Do you think I understand when you explain it so vaguely and archaically?”

“The point is, it’s not your fault.”

“……”

“It will be tough going forward. But you will be able to move forward.”

She reached out her hand.

A pure white flame bloomed over her hand.

“…What is this?”

“Take it.”

“……”

I have an ominous feeling.

This was like intuition.

“This will light your path forward. Don’t worry. It won’t harm you at all. This is, as you know well, her. Heba. You won’t pretend not to know now, will you?”

“…Where is this? More importantly, what are you trying to do? Are you playing with me?”

I know where this is.

But that’s not what’s important.

Why am I here.

…And why is she.

El.

Why you are here is the point.

If this isn’t a dream, a false reality.

Or even if it is a false reality, a dream, such a world.

For some reason, only the El before my eyes, not a falsehood, illusion, or fantasy, but the true her.

I simply couldn’t help but consider it.

“……”

El let out a bitter chuckle.

“It would have been nice if you had just accepted it casually.”

She shook her head, side to side.

“Well. There’s nothing to regret about this either.”

Then, as if shaking off lingering attachments.

“Even if. Throughout this world and the next, there were tens of thousands of women who adored and admired him.

Even if all that affection was scraped together down to the last speck.

In the end, it wouldn’t match the love contained in this one body.”

“……”

“It was a message left by my past self to my future self.”

Kariel.

“The prophetic dream seen by my mother is an unavoidable fate. It will surely come to pass. And long before that, you were already designated as one who would burn a world without me. That’s a future that will definitely happen, sooner or later, and was the past. Though it’s not the case now, the ways of the world can change at any time. But for now, somehow, that future has changed. It’s a good thing, but… that’s not the end of it.”

“……”

She spoke again.

“We still don’t know anything. But one thing we’ve figured out. How to prevent fate from being our master. That is, either we dominate fate, or we become so enormous that even fate cannot hold us.”

To do that, what exactly should we do?

“I’ve been searching for that all along, and recently found the answer.”

The future my mother, my mother has seen.

The way to reverse it, to overturn it.

…Was surprisingly simple.

But since even what I thought was simple could be a misconception.

I couldn’t easily put it into practice even though I knew it.

“Like the sea where the front waters are pushed by the back waters and eventually filled. Our resistance is that meaningless.”

But.

“…Then we should eliminate the river.”

We might not be able to eliminate the sea, but eliminating the river should be possible.

“Even this might just be a temporary measure… Yes. For now, this is all.”

“Stop talking to yourself… What are you trying to say? The point first…”

“Kariel. You won’t become the Demon King.”

Because.

“I will die shortly after becoming the Demon King.”

“…?”

What is this woman… saying?

You crazy woman. The Demon King has already been born. Besides you, already…

“She is not the Demon King.”

…?

“She’s another product of tragedy, pretending to be the Demon King.”

“Do you know her identity? Who she is?”

“She is your daughter, born between you from another world and Alesia.”

“……”

For a moment.

Bubbles, droplets.

And among the many, many worlds contained within them.

One point suddenly came to mind.

That was.

…After I allowed Alesia to accompany me to Somern village.

The holy sword I mistook for Elbat.

When I fell into despair because I couldn’t draw it.

Yes.

As time passed, we who traveled together and comforted each other.

Eventually we ended up together…

And because of that, having lost everything, it all turned into tragedy.

“…!”

There was something that flashed.

The sword technique of Grandeus that the Demon King of that era eventually displayed at the end.

That… chillingly aggressive and offensive swordsmanship she showed.

‘Could it be…’

Is it a different sword technique formed by another version of me, who lost Alesia and our daughter, engulfed in vengeance and killing intent?

But I have neither the talent nor the skill to create sword techniques.

Then does that mean it’s a product of desperation, formed through countless real battles and life-or-death struggles?

“…El. How did you know that?”

“Whether the World Tree or the Demon World Tree, they ultimately originate from the Great Tree.”

The Great Tree?

“This.”

The staff split in half, broken.

It wasn’t difficult to recognize what that burned staff was.

“I’ve taken measures. It will be hard for the Demon World Tree to spy on you from now on. So she, your daughter, will be sent more actively, but that will all be resolved if you embrace this power. Don’t you already have the conditions to neutralize it?”

“……”

On her outstretched palm, the pure white flame was still trembling ephemerally.

“It’s just a fact I discovered while searching for the culprit that made the world resent you. What I gained from the Great Tree fragment was just confirmation of that.”

“……”

This doesn’t add up.

I knew she was capable, but… there’s no way she could be this transcendent.

Then this is…

“How much has she blabbered to you?”

“She?”

“…The golden beast.”

There’s no way Elehermina could have reached this point alone.

I know better than anyone, having faced her since childhood, that she’s intelligent and superior.

But not to this extent.

This was beyond the issue of being smart and wise.

“…Excellent.”

Perhaps that’s why.

Unlike before, Elehermina smiles slightly… no, broadly.

“Now I can be a little more honest, but time is not on our side. I didn’t expect time to pass so quickly. They say by the time you notice, it’s already too late. Huh.”

For some reason, she smiles innocently.

Then, turning her back slightly.

By now, the sun has sunk and even the twilight is fading.

Light dims, and darkness arrives.

The brilliant time of the sun is now gone.

The quiet, dark, lonely time of night has come.

“The view from here is really nice, isn’t it, Kariel? I really like it here.”

So.

“Will you allow me to stay here? I’m asking for permission… Yes. Let’s call this the first selfish insistence of my life.”

She reaches out her hand toward me again.

Above her grasp, pure white flames flicker.

But now, for some reason, that spark had become very small.

“Come on. Hurry.”

Eyes as blue as frost, and red hair soaked in darkness yet still crimson.

It whimpers in the wind, giving off its final scarlet light, and finally sinks into silence.