Ch.222222. Freedom

Whoosh!

While soaring into the sky thanks to the Warshooz, Aria, dangling beside Findenai, quickly glanced down.

It felt strange watching Professor Deus and Luanes, the leader of Dante, working together to push back the tentacles.

After all, two people she had considered absolute allies and absolute enemies were now joining forces to clear a path for her.

Bang! Bang!

“Ha, nice shooting?”

Findenai grinned as he watched Deia’s shotgun providing clean cover fire.

They were climbing up the towering Romuleus, but since it was practically a vertical climb, their speed wasn’t particularly fast.

Without the Warshooz, they wouldn’t have even been able to attempt the ascent.

Knowing this, Findenai deliberately jumped off Romuleus and used the Warshooz slightly delayed to conserve fuel, but…

“Kid, this is getting dangerous?”

Findenai spoke with labored breathing and sweat dripping down his face. Looking down, they had climbed to a dizzying height, but that also meant they were approaching the top.

“Are you out of fuel?”

“Yeah, it’s about to run out.”

“……”

Aria pressed her lips together. They were just a little bit away from reaching Romuleus’s mouth.

A solution came to her mind, but she found it difficult to voice it.

“Get ready to use me as a stepping stone.”

But Findenai unhesitatingly offered the sacrificial method that Aria had been thinking of.

“…Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Falling from this height would be fatal even for someone like Findenai.

Of course, powerful Black Mages like Deus and Luanes were waiting below, but still, risking one’s life falling from such a height required extraordinary courage.

“Hey.”

However, Findenai raised the corner of his mouth as if amused.

“You think my master would just stand by and watch me die?”

A belief without a hint of hesitation or doubt. A declaration that could be called blind faith.

Aria nodded, feeling a bit envious but also thinking that her own faith was just as strong.

“Alright.”

The moment he heard her answer, Findenai took action. He grabbed Aria, who was tucked under his arm, with both hands and threw her upward.

Whoosh!

Cutting through air resistance, Aria floated upward helplessly before beginning to fall back down.

Simultaneously, she drew mana and concentrated it in her legs.

“This might hurt!”

Findenai was now clinging to Romuleus’s body like a rock climber.

Aria fell toward him, stepping on his shoulders and compressing her body like a coiled spring.

“Ugh!”

With a groan of exertion, Findenai held firm.

Bang!

With a wave of mana, Aria used him as a foothold to leap upward. As she shot up at tremendous speed, Findenai, unable to withstand the impact, fell downward.

“Hnngh!”

Her flesh trembled against the air resistance, and the high altitude brought cold and strong winds.

But she managed to stab her blade into the monster’s massive mouth and hang on.

After reaching the top, Aria immediately checked on Findenai. She felt a twinge of envy seeing the scantily-clad maid safely in her master’s arms.

“Grrrr!”

Aria entered the mouth that stretched toward the sky. Passing between enormous teeth, she found countless tentacles disgustingly extending upward inside.

And in the center was Mul, who had become one with Romuleus’s body.

His upper body was Mul, but his lower half had transformed into tentacles as he glared at Aria.

“You’ve followed your destiny to come here.”

A bizarre echo that sounded like many voices mixed together.

Aria gripped her greatsword Duatein tightly as she glared back at him.

“I don’t know about that. I just came here to kill you.”

Tentacles extended from all directions, poised to engulf Aria at any moment, but Mul himself was smiling as if greatly amused.

“That is precisely your destiny, savior of the continent.”

“……”

“In the end, you came here. To kill me, who has put the continent in danger.”

“……”

“In the end, you cannot escape your destiny.”

Mul laughed uproariously.

But Aria, without changing her expression, asked him honestly.

“I’m curious.”

She couldn’t help but wonder.

“Why are you going to such lengths?”

A question that cut straight to the core.

Romuleus, a god unknown to people.

“What do you want that makes you so obsessed with me?”

The reason he tried to return Aria to the hero’s path even as he himself fell.

“You seem to value ‘me’ as a person too much for this to be just about saving the world.”

“……”

Mul’s mouth, which had been laughing heartily until just now, clamped shut. For the first time, confusion and concern appeared in his eyes.

“While traveling to various places and working to save the world, I learned many things.”

Aria slowly approached Mul.

The tentacles that had been blocking her path were now frozen, their movements ceased.

“People have so many different reasons to live. It’s a kind of freedom.”

Happiness, honor, wealth, religion, anger, revenge, love, family, friends, hobbies, and more.

People live with countless different goals. They truly are a free species.

“Demons live for pleasure alone. They would give their lives for their own enjoyment, but are completely indifferent to everything else.”

Some demons find satisfaction in deceiving others, some in watching struggles, some in being worshipped, some in satisfying their hunger.

They count these as reasons to live and maintain their existence.

So then.

“What about gods?”

Aria had always wondered.

Even abandoning the position of a god.

Coming down to this land in such a hideous form.

And in the end.

Giving up his life to bring Aria back to the hero’s path.

What do gods desire?

“What is it that you want?”

Mul’s lips remained tightly sealed.

By now, Romuleus had stopped the howling roars it had been making continuously.

It simply stood firmly in place.

“That guy…”

Then, one statement.

Mul glared at Aria with eyes mixed with love and hatred.

“Shinwoo Kim has influenced you greatly.”

A name uttered with suppressed hatred. Aria nodded without hesitation.

“That’s right, the professor made me this way.”

In the past, she would have just cut him down. She wouldn’t have bothered with conversation, just bisected Mul while worrying about the commotion below.

That was actually what Mul wanted.

“Because I am his disciple.”

Seeing Aria speak with such pride, Mul exhaled a dejected sigh.

As if his death would truly be in vain.

“The reason gods live.”

Perhaps that’s why.

Mul gave Aria the answer she wanted.

“It’s for you.”

“…What?”

Completely unexpected.

Utterly out of nowhere, Aria was bewildered, but Mul answered calmly.

“This world exists for you.”

“……”

“We gods have always waited for you, and we move toward the predetermined moment when you will save this continent.”

He seemed like a different person.

Like an actor.

Removing his mask, stepping off the stage, shaking off the role he had been immersed in.

It felt like she was finally having a real conversation with Romuleus, not just a god.

“And after that?”

After she saves the continent.

Then what?

When she asked with that question in mind, Mul shook his head.

“We don’t know either.”

“……”

“That’s why we look forward to that day. We hope that the day you bring salvation might also be the day freedom comes to us.”

It was a truth filled with despair.

She could now understand why these beings called gods were so desperate to return her to the path of a hero.

And why they were so hostile to Deus Verdi, or rather, Shinwoo Kim.

“You are the purpose and subject of this continent’s existence.”

Protagonist.

Hero.

Words she had heard to the point of nausea. But hearing them from a being who was truly a god carried an almost unbearable weight.

However.

“I see.”

Aria answered boldly.

“Too bad.”

As if it had nothing to do with her.

“Helping fulfill your mission is our reason for existing. As the master of the continent, you must save this land.”

Perhaps it seemed like reality avoidance or running away from her mission. Romuleus was reproaching Aria, but she shook her head.

“You fool.”

With a playful rebuke, as if it were amusing.

“There’s no such thing as a protagonist of the continent.”

“…And you’re saying that?”

In response to Mul’s deflated words, Aria rested Duatein on her shoulder and grinned.

“I can say it because it’s me. The hero, protagonist, savior of the continent that you speak of? I don’t care about any of that.”

“……”

“Am I more special than others?”

The one who leads the play is called the protagonist.

Others behind them are supporting characters who essentially function to assist the protagonist.

If this were limited to fiction, that would be fine. But if applied to reality, how pitiful it is for the supporting characters.

In the end, aren’t all their actions just used as seasoning for the main character?

“Then I’ll abandon being special.”

Aria steps down from the stage.

She will more definitively discard the name of hero.

In the end, if everyone becomes a supporting character,

Conversely, everyone becomes a main character.

And that would be salvation for all those who existed solely for one girl.

“……”

“What? You don’t like it?”

“What you’re doing is ultimately ignoring our long wait.”

“That may be so.”

“In the end, you’re just betraying us who have worked for you. You’re just running away from responsibility.”

“Yes, I know.”

Mana erupted from Aria Rius’s entire body.

The enormous power she had been suppressing all this time. The return of the girl who once nearly saved the world.

“So what?”

It might have been different before.

In fact, in the second playthrough of the original game, Aria sacrificed herself to save the continent.

But now it was different.

She had learned from a certain professor that that wasn’t the true answer.

Duatein rose high.

The gluttonous sword that had devoured a god’s avatar and could cut down a god just once.

“As the hero Aria, breaking my destiny is…”

The massive mana enveloping the greatsword rose like a pillar toward the sky.

At that, Romuleus, who had been still until now, began to move violently.

“The last salvation I can give to everyone.”

So that everyone could hold their own value, not tied to Aria.

“The continent’s salvation! Its destruction! Will you truly ignore that?!”

Romuleus’s massive mouth began to close. At the same time, the tentacles inside his mouth rushed toward Aria.

But facing Mul, who was shouting in desperation, Aria answered proudly.

That person will take care of it.

“Damn you! Our waiting! Our efforts! Our preparations for you! My life! You’re throwing everything away!”

“Freedom for everyone.”

As the beam of light struck down and the hero truly stepped off the stage,

This continent, which had been bound to the girl named Aria Rius, lost its purpose.

And that meant freedom.