episode_0018

“Uh, why…”

“Nia, wake up!”

“Nia is already wrong, Battlelock. We need to prepare for the next attack. It’s a large-scale air strike with the Demon King, the Succubus Queen, and even a traitor!”

“Take up your bows! Summon the spirits! Fight to prevent those filthy demons from polluting the World Tree any longer!!”

The elves weren’t idiots, either. As soon as Hira launched his first attack, they all gathered under the World Tree, took a battle stance, and aimed their bows.

At the same time, one elf among them, who looked particularly old, stepped forward.

“Elder! Why do you want to negotiate with those demons!”

“…Negotiation?”

No matter how I looked at that behavior, it just felt like a farce.

All of them, the same elf supremacist bastards.

She hummed and swung her legs on the branches of the World Tree, as if she were a sorceress from a myth who would seduce leaders and lead their countries to ruin. Of course, I should give her one last chance. A chance to examine her ideology.

“I’ll give you a problem, Nia. And the rest of the elves there.”

“…What is it?”

Still she was aiming her bow at me.

“A comrade who has been fighting battles where life and death are at stake for years… No. That’s an exaggeration.”

Leah continued, gritting her teeth.

“You tried to save me by treating me like a slave, but I became a woman and lost my power, so you abandoned me without saying a word, even though you knew exactly what would happen.”

There was a serious sense of hatred and revenge in those eyes, and there was a murderous look in them that made me seriously consider asking Abel if he was okay.

“Also, the one who saved the World Tree that had to die after going through all that trouble, just because I lost my power and something went wrong, and the bastard who told me to sacrifice my life to create a new World Tree even though he knew I would die. Which one do you think is wrong? You should answer correctly.”

The audience becomes quiet for a moment.

That only lasted for a moment, and soon boos erupted.

“Oh, that’s why it happened?”

“A guy who doesn’t know his place. He may not be grateful for the favor!”

“That’s why you were abandoned, you idiot!”

“Hey, wait a minute… Niaya. What the heck is this- What does that mean!”

And even Nia began to pull back the bowstring more and more, gaining confidence in the water riding of the rest of her kind, excluding the elders.

“That… That’s right, this is all your fault…! If only you had… If only you had accepted my offer…! The World Tree and my family would have been fine. We could have all been happy! Die…!!”

-Shoot!

The sound of the bowstring being pulled back could be heard cheerfully, and an arrow was shot at the head with the intention of killing.

Oh, of course I didn’t avoid it. Because I trusted some parasitic brother, Demon King.

As if not to disappoint expectations, this time too the arrow was blocked by the barrier and fell out in vain.

“They’re all wrong.”

As expected.

“You guys… have not proven that you are worth living anymore.”

therefore,

“Elf is extinct today.”

Sleep on the ground with that arrogant history.

Where should I start? No, actually, the word ‘where’ doesn’t matter. I’m going to destroy everything anyway.

“But still, it would be better to do that at first, right?”

“I guess so.”

We took out what we had prepared a long time ago from our pockets in an elegant and ostentatious manner.

A black flame inside a transparent glass bottle, it was something Abel had specially made just for me.

“First… Let me tell you this. The reason your new World Tree dies is entirely because of you, Nia.”

“No, don’t let go of that hand! Don’t let go!! Stop right now!”

-Tink!

Without fail, the glass bottle fell hundreds of meters and landed at the bottom of the World Tree.

-Whooo!!!

The once pure white and sacred old tree was covered in black flames, its life force being drained in real time and withering away.

“A huge campfire.”

This was Abel’s comment. As he said, the black karma rose endlessly and steadily into the sky like a pillar.

But, I wanted to put another expression here.

A blazing fire that burns the hopes of the elves.

In reality, even though my feet were immersed in the flames, it was barely warm enough to tickle, let alone hot. Well, it didn’t seem to be the case for the World Tree.

“Eeee!!!! No, no!! World Tree!! I’ll save you!!”

And, like moths flocking to a fire, the elves threw themselves at the fire, called the spirits, poured water, and did everything they could to put it out. And originally, it was more hopeless to have hope go out just by trying to light a small spark… So I left them alone.

No, to be exact, I abandoned all of them except two of them.

“Ahhhh… World Tree! World Tree!! I’m sorry, World Tree, for hanging out with such a beast that doesn’t know grace…!!”

“…I knew it would happen someday… …It’s all your karma, no… It’s our karma.”

The elf elder and Nia, the two of them, were dragged back up to the world tree by Han. It was something I had asked them to do.

“Nia, but since we have a special fondness for each other in the past… I’ll let you watch from the special seat.”

“What are you talking about, Elder! I will do my best for the elven society and the World Tree-”

“Shut up, both of you. Only Leah is allowed to speak here.”

Oh, I was about to ask, but before I could say anything, Abel shut them both up. I didn’t want to see the bickering of the soon-to-be-extinct Kampfs.

“By the way… I asked you to do it, but it’s really perfect.”

“The name Demon King is not a vain one.”

Abel’s black flames, far from extinguishing, had already been burning for hours, eating away at the life of the World Tree and physically burning the remaining corpse – a white old tree – without causing any harm to humans.

-Sway, sway…

The blackened bark of the World Tree fluttered like flower petals in the wind that blew without warning.

Around that time, the elves also sensed the death of the World Tree, and some of them cried with bloodshot eyes, hugging the World Tree’s corpse, while others shot arrows at us. Or, perhaps because they were smart, some of them sensed the future and tried to run away… Very, very rarely.

“Now it’s time to trample. Hira, Han. You guys run wild. ”

Your role is to decorate the stage of revenge by death.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes…!!”

“Your honor.”

Hira and Han jumped in opposite directions.

“Die! Traitor!!”

“The enemy of the World Tree…!!”

“If I can’t save the World Tree, I’ll take you!!”

The mad ants and elves’ rush was just like that. They turned into suicide bombers because they found out that the world tree, which was like a god to them, had died.

The battle between Hira and Han, which lasted for several hours, was polar opposites.

Every time Hira shouted “Enchant!” and swung his fist, dozens and hundreds of elves would explode without even being able to scream, and even the pieces would ‘stick’ to other elves like shrapnel from a grenade, creating a chain reaction of blood mists.

Han, on the other hand, wore heavy-looking heavy armor, but the battle was surprisingly quiet, except for the elves’ shrieking screams. His longsword quietly stabbed the elves’ necks, hearts, and even groins from a blind angle, and even when the elves barely got close, Han scornfully avoided their attacks, and their attacks simply stabbed each other.

However, one thing that was the same was that if there had been no variable called quantity, the battle would have ended in victory for Han and Hira long ago.

“…I can do better. Look at that. Instead of swinging my sword to the left to block the attack, I should have leaned forward slightly to dodge it. Then I could have attacked once more-”

” It’s the opposite. If you leave, it’ll end too quickly, so there’s nothing to show Nia.”

“…”

Nia had her eyes tightly shut. With her mouth forced shut, she seemed determined to at least avoid reality.

And there was no way I could just let that happen.

“Do you have any matches, Abel?”

“Here it is.”

Abel quickly tore off a piece of debris the size of a toothpick from the branch of the World Tree he was standing on, directed the flame to a single point, and handed it over, calling it a match.

Actually, I just needed a stick to open my eyes a little, so it didn’t really matter.

“Where did you turn your eyes? Did it feel like reality would disappear if you didn’t look at it?”

“…”

I opened Nia’s eyes, which were tightly shut without mercy, with my fingers. She seemed to have noticed what I was trying to do, and although she couldn’t make a sound, she shook her head back and forth in a desperate attempt to refuse, and I had a hard time keeping her eyes from getting hurt.

-Phew!

After forcibly opening Nia’s vision by inserting a stick between her eyelids, he succeeded in forcing her head right into the middle of the fight.

At first glance, tears of blood were streaming down her cheeks.

Is it because the World Tree died and the species was wiped out in just a few hours? Is it because of the blood that flowed physically? I personally hope it’s the former.

“Originally, I wanted you to, like me, chew on the damned reality in the midst of time that is so much that it almost makes you vomit, and in the midst of time that doesn’t disappear, and to chew on it over and over again, and to try to erase it but keep chewing on it, and eventually to accept reality.”

“…”

“But then again, when I thought about it, I didn’t want to spend that much time on you. Now, there are people waiting for me in the Demon King’s Castle, and there are people who are like my fool and who really like me, not just a one-sided delusion.”

“..!! !!!”

At that point, Nia twisted her whole body again as if she had some strength left. Perhaps it was the same kind of resentment that someone like me was happy after destroying the elf race like this.

“Still, you should be grateful to me. It’s a mercy I really didn’t want to bestow, but… You’ll be in despair for at least a few hours. I know from experience that despair is like inn soup, the longer you boil it, the thicker it becomes as time passes.”

As she said that, Leah grabbed Nia’s hair and shook it a few times. She was a little annoyed at the thought of having to kill her, who had treated her like a lowly slave during the party, after causing her only a few tens of millions of times more pain than she had suffered. No, if Abel hadn’t been there, she would have suffered only a few tens of millions of times more.

Of course, it was a consideration that did not reach Nia, who was dying with only blood and flesh fragments in her eyes, while her neighbors, friends, and acquaintances were all gone. There was no need to reach her.

Despair rose up like water filling a round bowl like a snowball.

The time had already passed and the sky was turning orange, it was the afternoon with the sunset.