Ch.303Final Act – Indomitable Spirit (2)

I felt dazed. I had probably failed. My entire body was falling apart. That’s why I whispered to the Industrial Spirit King, who was showing kindness I had never shown by offering to hear my last words.

It wasn’t an apology for failure. If it had been about failure, I would have apologized to my comrades in the Argonne Invincibles, not the 308th Infantry Regiment.

The Industrial Spirit King’s body embraced mine with two mechanical arms made of mythril, though I couldn’t even hold my head up. He whispered to me. The sincere respect and love in his voice disgusted me.

“Yes, I heard you clearly. I will tell them. If life still clings to you, watch. I will show you personally how New York finds salvation again. Sit there and wait. Everything will come to pass!”

Perhaps I was completely healed this Christmas. There was still one method left. One method I had tried to look away from remained.

To think of this as a method—yes, maybe I deserved to die. I was about to make the same mistake again.

I apologized to my comrades of the 308th Infantry Regiment who had fallen victim to ritual magic, because I was about to use ritual magic again. I had to apologize to them.

Decaying liquid was flowing from the Gladius that the Industrial Spirit King had crushed underfoot. It was a transparent liquid, colorless like water.

The Morrígan had smelled the blood of a god in the palm of my right hand, which usually held the Gladius. Prosecutor Raymond had also warned about what was contained in this Gladius.

Sol Invictus had meant to say his b… yes, he probably meant to say blood. The blood of Sol Invictus flowed from the sword, forming a small puddle on the floor. I pulled the Gladius toward me.

The method I had found was the same misjudgment I had made before. I carved a ritual symbol meaning life on my left arm. It was the cursed act of loving life. This time, I carved a ritual symbol meaning sacrifice.

This was a past I could finally swallow. The journalist’s voice echoed in my head. It was something she had said when she was still a woman with only a field of flowers in her mind. I carved a ritual symbol meaning blood over the other symbols.

Had I said I wasn’t someone who sacrificed others for power? I probably had. Under all those symbols, I finally carved the shape of a baptismal font. It was a ritual symbol representing the baptism of the God-President.

It was a kind remark, but it seems I couldn’t become that great a person. I continued by carving a ritual symbol meaning power on my forearm. Tears threatened to fall, but only blood flowed from my tear ducts.

All I could dedicate the rest of my life to was power. I carved a symbol representing clasped hands above it. This symbol is mainly used for connection and contracts. Power began to surge in my forearm.

The divinity of the God-President was strong enough to overwhelm minor deities. It would be strong enough to manipulate Sol Invictus at will, who had lost all his followers and whose only remaining life was in his blood.

The sacrifice is prepared, so give me the damn power and victory I’ve never wanted before, God-President. Since this was ritual magic, not grace, I demanded boldly.

Once again, I had decided to love life. Not just my own life. Selfishly and stupidly, I had resolved to care for all the lives that the machine of the age was trying to sacrifice. I had decided to step outside my responsibility.

Mircalla had said it. She said the only way to repay someone who saved your life was to show them that you had become someone who could save others’ lives. I put down the broken sword and smeared the god’s blood on my right palm.

Professor Albert… I tried to speak, but my voice wouldn’t come out because my throat was blocked with blood clots. I decided to repay him with interest for the dignity and altruism he had shown me.

That’s why I willingly accepted my worst curse once again.

I chose to fall into a lonely hell instead of a hell where there were people to embrace and cry with.

I raised my hand, soaked with the god’s blood, and clenched my fist above my forehead. Sol Invictus’s decaying blood flowed down over my head. It was blood that still contained some life.

Once again, I receive baptism with something other than the blood of the lamb. My failing heart begins to beat again. The heart began to pump the decaying blood of the god into my veins. I regain life.

Maggots and carrion beetles swarm the wounds I carved on my arm with the broken Gladius. Nevertheless, I felt more alive than at any other time in my life, especially during the last six years.

I lost consciousness. Or was pulled down. I was thrown into hell, seized by the hand of Sol Invictus, which was swarming with flies and eaten by carrion beetles.

I saw yellowing, decaying trees. I was in the midst of a Great War battlefield with trenches filled with putrid water and a sky twisted red by residual mana.

In the center was an elegant table, and I was sitting in a chair in front of it. A miner with a bullet hole in his head and a dagger wound in his neck poured water into a glass on the table.

A burned child, scattering charred petals, announced that the main dish was coming. Soon after, the beheaded Sol Invictus brought a silver platter and set it down in front of me like a chef introducing his masterpiece.

He, already dead, or perhaps a hallucination of my mind, mocked me. He burst into laughter, saying that I had ended up fighting just as he had said. The laughter echoed from inside the silver platter’s lid.

I opened the platter’s lid with my right hand instead of my severed left hand. Inside the platter was the head of a god covered in maggots. Sol Invictus’s head was laughing.

Bunyan’s twisted apparition stood before it. As if telling me to look at him one last time before making another mistake, he stared at me with his already twisted and melted body.

Though it was a form with barely any eyes left, I met his gaze. After staring for a long time, I nodded to him. Bunyan’s apparition approached me again and clung to my body.

What need does one who has already resigned himself to hell have to refuse the power of hell? I eagerly devoured the blood, flesh, brain matter, and life on the silver platter. I drank the water and chewed even the bones, leaving nothing behind.

I greedily devoured every bit of divinity remaining in that blood. I bound Sol Invictus to me. I stole his eternal rest and desecrated him in a way that could never be undone.

I let out a scream. It was my voice. It was the scream of a dying star and the aged voice of a cooling sun. Things that were not sounds became sounds and shook the surroundings.

A storm that had already lost its power was in my hands. Fading sunlight, rotting gold, and corroded marble became my right. The connection ritual was completed once again.

With that divinity, I regenerate my two legs. As the wounds regenerated, marble began to form on my skin like metal crystals. My right arm, which had held the sword, had already transformed into corroded marble.

When I regenerated my left hand, marble fragments grew on the back of my hand as well. I rise to my feet. My body felt incredibly light. Marble fragments rose like sharp scales on my cheeks and face, creating dark marks.

The fact that healing my body and standing again was all thanks to divinity—divinity usurped through a connection ritual—brought up a terrible self-loathing and nausea. I endured it.

The machine of the age let out an astonished cry upon seeing me standing on two feet again. Trembling with fear at the divinity emanating from me, it shouted:

“What, what have you done! There could have been a beautiful human left beyond ugliness, what… I know what you’ve done! You have desecrated humanity!”

It was true. Among all the things that insane machine god had said, few had pierced the essence so accurately. I barely suppressed the urge to vomit blood.

With those words, black, smoke-filled flames began to pour from the metal walls of the machine of the age toward me.

If I had stolen Sol Invictus’s power, it would be right to make his duties and beliefs mine as well.

I stretched out both hands and grasped those smoke-filled flames. The saying that one cannot grasp flames with one’s hands did not apply to gods. I grasped that crimson wave of flames with both hands and tied it around my neck like a cloak.

Yes, Sol Invictus. You said a warrior needs a red cloak when going into battle. With the crimson, smoke-filled flames as my cloak, I spoke to the machine of the age:

“Rejoice, you son of a bitch. The dying sun has poured out from its coffin of a sword and found new life to cling to. And it was your kick that pulled the dying sun from that coffin.”

Though I still abhorred divinity, right now I needed to direct that hatred toward the Industrial Spirit King. So I endured it willingly and mocked him.

Cracks formed in my corroded marble arm. The stench of decay leaked from the cracks, and blackened, rotting gold flowed out. No halo shone behind my head.

I raised my left hand and illuminated the surroundings with my newly acquired right. A deep red light like sunset filled the concrete temple of the machine of the age. The people of New York saw the sunset illuminating Manhattan.

I reached for my Gladius, which had fallen broken to the floor. The handle portion of the Gladius flew up and landed in my hand. I repaired my Gladius with my divinity. I knew how to use this sword.

I twirled the Gladius once in my hand. As it turned, the Gladius changed shape. It transformed into a form unsuitable for human use as a weapon.

Holding a double-bladed sword with long, rusted blades above and below the handle, I leaped toward the mythril hand of the machine of the age, which had respected me, loved me for a moment, and even honored me.

I lightly spun the double-bladed sword that only a god could possibly wield and cut through it. Then I turned the sword again, changing it into the shape of the large axe Bunyan had used to demolish obstacles, and brought it down.

In an instant, the mythril hand fell, cut into four pieces in a cross shape. The machine of the age hurriedly wrapped divinity around its body and pulled out a second body from within the machine’s walls.

The mythril hand was mostly in the form of a machine and beast. It had the appearance of a being with human intelligence but unable to become human. I returned the Gladius to its original form.

But the second body of adamantine steel that walked out from inside clearly had a human form. Unlike the mythril hand with its exposed skeletal structure, this one had something like skin.

The distinctive reddish adamantine steel plates were made of an alien material, creating the appearance of a person with a metallic skin color. Now it had completely become a person.

It had become someone who could live, love, hate, and hope for the future. My prediction seemed to have been correct. I just hadn’t known what plan lurked beyond that prediction.

The entire body of that being was covered in writing. These were writings about the end times he had spoken of. Like scripture, they systematically organized his visions of when the end would come, what form it would take, and why.

Yet despite being a superior being with prophecies and divinity, we stood with two fists and swords. Like the most barbaric and primitive humans, we prepared to fight, watching each other like beasts.

Because we are instinctual. Because we are people who desperately love life. Because we are similar beings who love the lives of others, not just our own.

I lightly pushed off the ground and began to run. My feet had the right to tread the earth, but the earth had no right to stop my feet, so the concrete floor was torn up behind me.

I ducked to avoid the machine of the age’s punch, then dove into its embrace and pushed against its chest. Unlike the floor, there was resistance when pushing against that body with equal divinity.

Seeing him lower his hand as his balance wavered, I rushed forward and plunged the Gladius into his chest. Gripping the handle of the Gladius, I changed it into an axe in his body and tore it sideways.

But that was all. Now that it was a body imbued with divinity, it was regenerating the wounds I had inflicted. I would probably be the same. Fortunately, there seemed to be no difference in the size of our divine natures.

I was just a thief who had forcibly usurped divinity with the power of a stronger god, and the Industrial Spirit King was a god without direct worshippers. We were substandard deities, so we could fight like this.

I need to concentrate my power in one blow to make regeneration impossible. I took a deep breath, though I didn’t need to breathe. I forcibly tensed lungs that didn’t need to function.

The machine of the age spoke in an aggrieved voice. It was also a voice filled with fear. It feared divinity. It feared that its plan would fail. A beast living alone feared everything.

“Do you think anything will change if you kill me and accept the end! Do you think any result awaits other than your lives being destroyed in the end! This is my method. This is my only method!”

I heard words I couldn’t tolerate. Not words about how I would use the divinity I had usurped to kill the Industrial Spirit King, but words that drew out the resentment and hatred filling my stomach.

I decided to willingly insult his methodology to the core. I had every right to do so.

“Then this is my only method. Do you know what you’ve made me do?”

I recalled the colors I had been slowly regaining. I recalled all the colors that flickered before my eyes like sparkles and made the world seem a more livable place. I offered them up.

I offered the path that my life, lost and wandering from the aftermath of ritual magic, had barely found. I didn’t want others to cling to life as desperately as I had. So I sold all my colors to buy a handful of divinity.

Even in such a situation, the Industrial Spirit King, still talking about salvation, was an intolerable being. The breath I inhaled like a human flowed out as flames. The marble covering my right arm rose to my shoulder.

I slowly drew the divinity into my heart. The surrounding concrete stairs began to dry up and crumble. The severed mythril body of the Industrial Spirit King began to melt. Even though mythril steel resists fire well.

“Because of your end times and salvation stories, I sacrificed the life I was barely regaining. What did I buy with life? Can you even guess?”

I snorted. Flames flickered around, and soot formed on its adamantine body. I gathered more. The decaying blood of the god collected in my heart, gathering without flowing.

I spewed out my selfishness that I couldn’t abandon despite my altruism, in words mixed with flames. Humanity sometimes takes the form of flaws. Right now, my humanity took the form of this regret. It was the last remaining color.

“Only power and victory. Isn’t it funny? Despite throwing my soul into a hell pit with no place left to wash it clean, victory! Despite a mad spirit king trying to destroy the entire city, victory! Despite all I wanted being just one fucking normal life, victory! Yes, only that damn power and victory. What can I get with that? Even if I pay that price for life…”

I tore off a chunk of flesh from my neck and shoulder as the marble mass tried to climb up from my shoulder to my neck. The flesh regenerated, but the marble stopped climbing for a moment.

The Industrial Spirit King’s eyes flickered. The adamantine exterior seemed to be holding up, but the inner mechanical devices appeared to be breaking down. I stretched my hand, leaking blackened gold, toward him.

He tried to resist. He waved his body inscribed with his prophecies about the end times. He didn’t beg for his life, but unable to properly block even the heat bursting from me, he raised his hands to cover his face.

The machine of the age couldn’t speak. Hissing with fear, making the sound of a machine running idle, he pushed against my body to try to create even a little distance. He could stretch out his hands, but they melted and crumpled softly.

That desperate resistance grew weaker and weaker. The melted, crumpled hands turned into white and red molten metal at a single gesture from me, unable to resist the heat, and were scattered throughout the temple of the machine of the age.

Though he had the appearance of a whole, handsome human, right now he did not. He began to melt and twist inhumanly under irresistible anger, hatred, and heat.

Well, at least to me, it looked like a form that matched his essence. He tried somehow to open his mouth, but the mouth area had completely melted, and no voice came out.

I gathered the greatly strengthened divinity into my heart. I clutched my chest where my heart was.

Now it was time for the self-loathing I had been pouring on the machine of the age to find its proper place. Whatever being he was, it was I myself who had used ritual magic again and ended up like this.

I will burst it along with my heart. Rather than living another hellish life, I will reduce the machine of the age to ashes here and end it together. A life that can’t even love… should rightly be abandoned.

I loved life more than I loved my own life. I could sacrifice my life for the love of life. And to willingly do so, I carved the connection ritual again and accepted divinity.

There were countless reasons to die. I used ritual magic again. Though I couldn’t find salvation, I repeated the same mistake. I did something I shouldn’t have done to my comrades and to Bunyan, twice.

There were many obligations. Many valid reasons and many right actions. But there was also something else. Resentment. Sadness. Fatigue. Longing.

If today had passed, I could have finished the year and dreamed of new time, but in the end, the end of the year had turned out like this—that was the resentment.

Those self-destructive emotions didn’t last long. Duty is weaker than desire. I chewed over my desire.

Even though there was no corner left to love and living day by day had no meaning, life had value in itself. I wanted to live.

Ridiculously, the moment I chewed those words internally, the world seemed to regain its colors. Inside the machine of the age’s temple, which was melting and collapsing, everything was red. Everything was burning.

The sunset I had created was burning beneath the blackened sky. The night sky was a color mixed with very deep navy, purple, brown, a little green, and red, but the city was now in complete black darkness.

In that black darkness, only the places where the sunset I had raised shone were red, and the cityscape visible beyond that had some orange and yellow.

The wind probably wouldn’t have blown originally, but I could feel the air swirling due to the heat I had created. The swirl was quite loud.

That was just what I could see in here. The walls were collapsing, and if today passed… anticipation rose within me for what I might see.

Apples would be red enough to make you want to take a bite, and the sky might be blue enough to hurt your eyes. I was curious about everything I couldn’t see right now.

I drew the power I had gathered in my heart to my fingertips. I shaped it into a form I could hold in my hand. A red dot emerged from my fingertips.

That red dot began to grow in size and power. Flames flickered, and it became a small sun trying to spread all it had as light and heat. Holding it in one hand, I walked toward the machine of the age.

The temple was melting and crumbling. The machine’s walls were flowing down like melting candles in the unbearable heat, and even the body of the machine of the age, kneeling before it, could barely hold itself together.

The adamantine steel crumpled and fell like boiled meat, and the parts scattered when I gestured remained like deep lacerations, not regenerating. I approached that body and grabbed its lower jaw. I tore it off.

I stuffed the extracted divinity into that face. The lump of Sol Invictus’s divinity would explode. I carelessly threw away the torn-off lower jaw of the machine of the age.

“Even if I live… Yeah. At least it might be better than dying.”

I threw away the cloak of smoke-filled flames I had been wearing around my neck. I held the Gladius in my hand and turned it. It naturally took the shape of Bunyan’s axe.

It was an axe used to open paths. An axe used to smash obstacles. It would fulfill its role after a long time. It felt as if Bunyan was holding the axe handle with me.

I lightly jumped onto the steps of the concrete temple. After splitting the wall of the concrete temple with the axe, I jumped down. The divinity was still protecting my body.

Right after I threw myself down, the small star I had placed in the machine of the age’s mouth began to expand and started to devour the machine of the age and its temple with a force more violent than an explosion.

Surely Sisyphus must have been happy. The fact that he could roll the rock, that when he rolled the stone to the mountaintop he could see the redness of the rocky mountain and the blueness of the sky—perhaps even the eternal punishment itself was enough.

That’s the conclusion I decided to reach.