Ch.186Return – 5

The golden light bloomed like a flower as soon as it touched the monster. A golden aurora appeared in the sky, and a galaxy of gold was embroidered across the heavens. Particles filled with sunlight floated and sparkled.

Neither its eighteen heads, nor its body the size of a small hill, nor its front paws capable of easily destroying a mountain were of any help before the golden sun.

The world that had stopped as dawn broke began to move again. This didn’t mean time was flowing. It meant that under the vivid light, the sight of everything melting away was revealed for all to see.

“Kee, keeeeeek……”

The monsters summoned in numbers large enough to fill the horizon instinctively sensed the danger of divinity and let out roars not of threat but of terror. Their bodies turned not forward but backward, yet the sun was fair to all.

A shark monster that tried to escape by soaring high into the sky turned into a handful of ashes and scattered among the aurora. A four-headed mole that tried to hide by digging into the ground withered away before it could even burrow an inch.

It didn’t take long for the horizon, once teeming with writhing monsters, to return to a straight line.

I withdrew the divine spear. The body of the largest monster, which had held out until the end, collapsed like dust scattering in the wind. Aria, now alone again, shuddered.

“Shall we continue? I don’t mind.”

I spoke calmly.

I was the only one who could. The seven behind me were busy gaping at the golden light embroidering the sky, while Aria was busy bursting into maniacal laughter while her body trembled.

“…Yes. That’s right. We should continue. It’s not like stopping now would change anything, right?”

“You understand well.”

Aria, who had been staring at me with clear eyes that didn’t match her crazed laughter, briefly shifted her gaze for a moment. Not at me, but behind me.

Her body lunged forward. It truly happened in a flash. Reacting to her speed, I used physical enhancement, and everyone else’s movements froze in place.

Aria, layered with all kinds of magic, was rushing toward me. I stepped sideways to confront her head-on. Before our bodies could collide, our magics met first.

Light and magic collided.

Through the stopped time, the sound of something exploding reached my ears.

—!!!!!!

Columns of fire, sulfur, and lava in orange and yellow hues shot up haphazardly into the sky. Diagonally, explosions containing pure mana itself burst forth, and on both sides, swamps of lightning-infused poison overflowed.

Countless overlapping spells scattered. I saw the shockwaves that had burst out randomly trying to curve around the light barrier toward the back. I twisted the direction. A hemispherical barrier began to unfold behind me.

Almost simultaneously as the mana forming the barrier intertwined with divinity and spread out, I caught sight of shockwaves crawling like spider webs over its surface.

Each of those thin threads of shockwaves could easily crush a building. If time hadn’t stopped, the sound alone would have been enough to damage one’s hearing.

Aria’s hand moved again. A black sphere appeared in a space not yet covered by the barrier. As the sphere activated, I noticed the surrounding space slowly beginning to distort.

Light extended from the divine spear. The extended light pierced the center of the sphere that had just begun to rotate. Pierced through its middle, the sphere turned white and evaporated before it could even begin to absorb anything.

Meanwhile, the steadily expanding barrier finally enveloped all seven people. They still couldn’t move a finger.

The shockwave that had spread a moment later exploded as soon as it touched the ground. For an instant, the world flashed. A tremendous wind rushed in to fill the space where oxygen had rapidly evaporated.

“—Mira!!!!!!”

In that brief moment when I turned my head to check their safety, Aria changed her target and lunged at me. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say she was trying to embrace me.

After all, she was covered in all kinds of mental magic.

Spells to evoke specific emotions in the target, to extract and discard specific memories, to inject fabricated memories, to distort them, to amplify emotions or conversely erase them.

Mental magic that could turn the target into a puppet or slave once contact was allowed was approaching within range. Her intentions were obvious, but that meant once I allowed her to approach, it would be over.

This time, all my memories except those of Aria would be completely, utterly extracted.

I fixed the divine spear to the ground and summoned Eternity. At this moment, endless mental magic continued to form around Aria.

A golden light, not blue, settled on Eternity’s blade. I twisted my body and drew the familiar sword path. As Eternity flashed, a stream of red liquid spurted from Aria’s body.

Immediately after, countless golden trajectories appeared.

The magic circles melted away where divinity had cut through. But Aria, as if refusing to give up, clung to me even more desperately.

Exactly one second had passed since Aria lunged at me.

Aria, who would have made a loud crashing sound had time not been frozen, tumbled across the floor. The sound of her coughing, “Kelock, kelock,” broke through the quiet atmosphere.

“Be care… Huh? What?”

As the exchange ended and physical acceleration was released, words that had been stretched incomprehensibly long became audible again. Rosaria, who had been trying to warn of danger, looked around in confusion.

“Mi-Mira… just now…”

It seemed only Leona could somewhat follow our exchange. While everyone else was staring in confusion at Aria, who was coughing up blood, she alone was looking at me and quietly sweating.

Even Nika the chairwoman, who was maintaining her Succubus Queen form, appeared visibly shocked.

“As expected… it’s you, Mira…”

Aria staggered to her feet. Blood that started from her shoulder ran down her left arm, dripping from her fingertips, as she painfully clutched her stomach.

During the one-second exchange, Aria had been almost completely overwhelmed. A slight graze on her cheek at the very end was the only successful attack she had managed.

“I didn’t think the difference would be this great… even while you’re still sharing your power with me…”

“Say it correctly. I’m not sharing it—you’re taking it.”

“…If you disliked it being taken, you could stop it. It wouldn’t be impossible for you now. I know everything… You just like being connected to me, don’t you?”

“If I cut off the power going to you now, this place would collapse along with us. We haven’t even found a way back to the original world—you want us to become dimensional orphans?”

“Ah, you noticed?”

Aria smiled broadly. It was exactly as I said. The reason this world’s time remained frozen was because of Aria, and if for any reason that became impossible, the entire world would collapse.

Because all the time that had been stagnant would rush in at once.

Without any interference, it might hold out for a while, but if Aria were alive, she could bring that “while” forward to just a few seconds later. To prevent such a situation, I couldn’t forcibly cut the connection—I had to properly release it.

That’s why I had kept her alive. I needed to hear the method before killing her.

“Yes, I noticed, so hurry up and tell me. Both how to interfere with the world and how to return to the original world.”

“I’m disappointed. You should know I won’t do that.”

“And you should know what method I’ll use if you refuse.”

“Of course. You want to rummage through my head, don’t you? Scramble everything inside my head to make me an idiot, then sort through my memories and take what you want. How could I not know?”

“You know but you’re not surprised?”

“It’s not like I can do anything about it anyway.”

Aria sneered with a slightly pale face.

“Even after extracting all my power, you regained your memories and appeared before me. You’ve skipped several stages of gambling to reach the final stage, but you’ve grown stronger along with me. No matter how many monsters I summon from the first world, they’ll all melt away. If I face you head-on, I’ll just be overwhelmed like just now. So what more can I do here?”

Then, with a “Kolok” cough that brought up blood, Aria spread her arms wide and exclaimed in an exaggerated tone as if performing in a play:

“Come, Mira. I’m ready. Now finish it. You need to rummage through my memories to find both the way back to the original world and the way to protect this world. Go ahead.”

“……”

It was true, but that resigned attitude was very unsettling. I couldn’t tell if she had something up her sleeve or if she had truly given up.

I was seriously considering just killing her first and then examining her corpse—it would be fine even if she was dead as long as it was right after death—when someone approached from the side.

“…Mira.”

It was Leona, holding the holy sword.

Leona’s eyes were brimming with tears, looking like she might cry at any moment.

“That thing you mentioned… about rummaging through memories. What Aria said. Is it possible with dead people too?”

“As long as not too much time has passed.”

Memories remain properly maintained for at most about 5 minutes, after which they begin to rapidly deteriorate. After 10 minutes of death, retrieving anything is practically impossible.

Of course, in the current situation, this hardly applied. I wouldn’t leave Aria’s body unattended for 5 minutes after killing her.

“Then… listen. This might sound shameless… and if you don’t like it, Mira, that’s fine… but could you… let me kill Aria with my own hands…?”

“What? Are you seri—”

I was about to ask if she was serious but closed my mouth. The tears that had been welling up in her eyes had finally begun to flow. Looking at her quietly, I took a step back.

In the original story, it was Leona who killed the Demon Lord and ended the novel. So I thought it was right to leave the task of ending this fictional world to Leona as well.

“Be careful. You never know what she might do.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mira.”

Leona, not even thinking of wiping away her tears, approached Aria with the holy sword. Aria greeted the approaching Leona with a strange smile.

“Hello, Leona. Or should I call you Miss Brunhild?”

“…Aria.”

The golden blade touched Aria’s neck. Even as the tip of the sword pressed into her neck, Aria remained calm. From the outside, it was hard to tell who was stabbing whom.

“……”

Ten seconds passed, thirty seconds passed, a minute passed. The two still hadn’t moved.

“What are you doing, Miss Brunhild? Let’s get this over with.”

“…I have one thing I want to ask you, Aria.”

“You say you’re going to kill me, and now you have a question? What a twisted taste. Well, fine. For old times’ sake, I’ll answer. What is it?”

“Did you… ever really think of me as a friend?”

Hearing those words, Aria paused for a moment.

The silence didn’t last long. A pure and bright smile, just like the Aria from the original work, appeared on her face.

“How dare you try to put yourself on my level? Disgusting.”

Leona’s body visibly flinched even from a distance. Then the holy sword pierced through that neck. Aria collapsed slowly, her smile unchanged. Leona climbed on top of her.

And then, she raised the holy sword high and thrust it into her chest. Just as the hero in the original story had done to the Demon Lord.

Aria’s fingertips twitched and tried to rise, then fell lifelessly to the ground. Her movement ceased completely.

“Hic… huuk…”

Leona was crying on top of her.

This was the ending this world had reached—different from the original novel’s conclusion.