Ch.213Monarch (5)
by fnovelpia
A blood-soaked cathedral.
Judas Snakus, arriving late, looks down at his feet.
There lay a battered old man.
“……”
The Sovereign.
His appearance was completely at odds with such a title.
Both legs were rotted and broken, and his remaining left arm had been severed.
Dozens of swords were embedded in his abdomen.
The light had vanished from his eyes.
“Sovereign.”
Judas’s voice did not tremble.
However, beyond his fully opened eyelids,
His white pupils were shaking.
It was a rare glimpse of the boy’s bewilderment.
“Why… why.”
Judas immediately bends down.
Black energy swirls around his fingertips.
“I’ll heal you.”
He was composed, but not calm.
Judas was clearly shaken.
He reached out his hand impulsively.
“You won’t die, so keep your wits about you…”
“That’s enough.”
But the Sovereign refuses his touch.
With a voice devoid of even the slightest tremor.
“……You’ll die like this.”
“Who doesn’t know that?”
“If not me, no one else will be able to heal you.”
“I was a Cardinal once, you know. I can’t help but, ugh… know what state my body is in.”
The old man’s voice was feeble.
Blood bubbled in his throat,
And his pierced lungs refused to allow breath.
He could only mutter, barely audible.
“Ah….”
A dying candle.
The wax at its end and the hardened scabs of life.
Life was pitiful, and death was so shabby.
The boy asks about his detachment.
“Did you plan this from the beginning?”
“Well… call it a simple change of heart.”
“You must have known it was impossible. Facing three apostles of the Demon God was reckless.”
“Do you still not know me? I don’t, *cough*… back down. I grew tired of that… long ago…”
He neither hides nor flees.
That was the path the Sovereign had walked.
Ever since he abandoned his true name.
“This is the punishment I deserve.”
As he had lived on his own terms, so too was his end on his own terms.
There was not a trace of regret in those footsteps.
“It’s a moment I’ve been looking forward to.”
The old man’s punishment was not received from someone else.
It was simply what he had imposed upon himself.
Therefore, the old man had no regrets.
Everything was his own choice.
The Sovereign was withering away.
“So… you needn’t blame yourself. There’s no reason to feel responsible. This is merely the result of a wicked old man’s actions.”
The old man closed his eyes.
He could no longer see ahead.
He speaks toward the nearby presence.
“I ask you.”
To respect the Sovereign’s punishment.
“Don’t interfere with my story.”
“……”
Judas looks down at the Sovereign.
A stubborn request.
Of course, it wasn’t the boy’s business.
They were bound by a contract.
If he forcibly saved him, the Sovereign would have no say in the matter.
But…
“Thank you.”
Judas couldn’t bring himself to reach out.
He merely clenched his fist and pulled his arm back.
Sensing his fading energy, the old man smiles faintly.
It was a completely relaxed smile, rarely seen.
“I rather like this too.”
Gasp, gasp.
Breathing that seemed about to cease at any moment.
It represented the little life that remained.
Even through labored breaths, the old man continues speaking.
“When my time came… I thought I would end my life alone on a vacant throne. This end isn’t so bad either. With someone watching as I appear at my weakest and most pathetic…”
Consciousness drifting away.
Various voices brush past the old man’s ears.
Perhaps it was the phenomenon called a life flashing before one’s eyes.
At this point, it didn’t matter anymore.
-Master! What will we learn today?
-Tell us another Bible story!
Memories of when he was happiest, despite being demoted.
The disciples the old man had uniquely loved.
-Your Eminence Cardinal.
-Is even this God’s will…?
The girl who changed the old man’s path.
The child he ultimately couldn’t save due to his powerlessness.
-Ah, you’re talking about that previous incident.
-Tsk… how annoying. Don’t get in my way.
The detestable upper echelon.
The greedy ones he had slaughtered with his own hands.
-My Sovereign.
-From today, I shall follow you.
Those who gave another name to the old man who had abandoned his own.
The kingdom’s villains who wanted to walk alongside him.
-Your Majesty, there seems to be a commotion in the kingdom.
-Do you intend to clean it up yourself this time as well?
-We shall accompany you.
Things he had pulled from the trash.
The royal guards, including Unknown.
And more.
And more.
-From today, you belong to the kingdom.
-From now on, your name shall be Disloyalty.
-Never hope for happiness.
-You are nothing but a monster.
The silver-haired girl the old man had tried to suppress.
Disloyalty… no, Neria was her name now.
He had done terrible things.
-This isn’t mercy.
-I won’t kill you, but from now on you’ll have to move as my puppet.
-It means you must pay the price. By the way, you have no right of refusal.
And the old man who had been the invincible Sovereign.
The narrow-eyed boy who had defeated him.
And.
-Yeshua Immanuel.
The name he had abandoned long ago.
Every moment of that life flashed before his eyes.
Like watching a cheap play.
But.
“Even so, I…”
Yeshua was not weak even then.
He merely muttered with a hoarse voice.
“…I have no regrets.”
Yeshua did not break.
Nor did he regret.
No… perhaps he did regret.
He was evil, but not despicable.
Then.
Yeshua’s consciousness was severed.
The thin breath that had continued finally stopped.
His body lost life, and his soul was forgotten.
A star of the past fell like a meteor.
“……”
The boy stood before him.
The old man who departed bearing all his sins, evil, and punishment.
As if seeing him off on his final journey.
It was the end of a villain.
***
The old man whose life had ceased.
I quietly look down at his body.
“……”
The corpse was mangled beyond repair.
Not a single part remained intact.
With a sunken heart, I was taking in the entire scene.
In my hand that I couldn’t bring myself to extend, a drop of lie remains.
The dispersing shadows resemble the night sky at dawn.
-This is the punishment I deserve.
I hadn’t expected it.
I didn’t know Baobh would launch a full-scale offensive at this point.
I didn’t know all the Demon God’s apostles would appear.
I didn’t know they would skip their original target, the Academy, and attack the Cathedral.
I didn’t know it would coincide with the day I visited my family home, delaying our response.
And… I didn’t know you would sacrifice yourself to stop the apostles.
I never expected that you would die like this.
-So… you needn’t blame yourself.
-This is merely the result of a wicked old man’s actions.
I realize once again.
That I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent.
All I knew was knowledge from the original work, and all I could do was what my power allowed.
“……”
It wasn’t the first time I’d lost someone close.
In my past life and in this one, I’ve walked countless thorny paths.
I just didn’t know I could still feel so powerless.
Just as one cannot cover the sky with a palm, lies cannot erase the world.
I feel a thorn in my heart.
-You know what?
-You might hate me even when I’m dead, but I don’t think you’re all that bad.
An enemy I clashed with endlessly. More foe than comrade.
Had I grown accustomed to him during that time?
The death of a villain left quite complex feelings.
I chew on an aftertaste I cannot identify.
“M-Master…!”
“Something feels off about this atmosphere…!”
That’s when it happened.
A call that sounded like a scream from behind.
It was the group that had arrived at the cathedral with me.
I turn my head.
“That crack over there is getting bigger!”
Blazing blood-red air.
The black magic that the conductor had been casting until just now.
‘Surely killing the caster should have disrupted the magic’s balance…’
For some reason, the crack wasn’t fading.
Instead, it was spreading, unleashing its ferocity.
I try to suppress it with my output, but it doesn’t work at all.
Rather, it felt as if my power was being absorbed.
I hastily withdrew my hand.
“Ugh…!”
This was a first.
It was the first time Judas’s power had been overwhelmed by any phenomenon.
Moreover, the power I felt through the crack was strangely familiar.
Even amid this, the black magic continued to expand.
Crack, crack-!
Through the widening crack, I look toward the conductor’s corpse.
What the hell had this madman done?
The answer would soon become clear.
“M-Master…!”
“Something’s coming out of the crack!”
“Everyone stay calm and respond.”
“……”
Lezia panicking.
Ameila drawing frost to her fingertips.
Selena calming the children, preparing to command.
Finally, Irene silent, as if sensing something.
The fox’s pupils were shaking particularly violently.
“This can’t be…”
The next moment.
From within the blood-red crack, it emerges.
Its pitch-black steps were as quiet as death.
Everyone around instinctively holds their breath.
“……”
Step-.
A silence as if time had frozen.
What revealed itself from the crack… wasn’t human.
It was a black mass. Only shaped like a human.
At first glance, it looked like someone’s shadow.
‘That’s…’
It was something I’d never seen before.
A face that had never appeared in the original work.
‘But.’
I instinctively recognized its identity.
Something of a caliber that could suppress Judas’s power.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe it.
I never thought it could manifest like this.
‘Even in the original work, there was nothing like this…’
Step-.
The shadow that had taken several steps forward.
Upon discovering us, it stops in place.
Then it tears its pitch-black face wide open.
As if smiling.
<So this is where you were hiding.>
<My fragment, Pinocchio.>
Whoosh-!
As it opens its mouth, the air in the area is compressed.
While looking at my companions, I glare at it.
With my mouth, I mutter the identity of the pitch-black being.
“……Demon God.”
Demon God.
The deity worshipped by cultists, the primordial night.
At the same time, a transcendent being that governed the world’s order.
With cold sweat streaming down, I mutter.
“This is troublesome.”
=Fuck.
We were facing the evil god of the world.
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