episode_0062

When I realized, I, too, like the people of the kingdom, was one of the humans who longed for a hero more than anyone else.

Someone wishing for a hero to appear more desperately than any commoner.

It couldn’t be helped.

─Until a hero appears, this chaos will never stop.

It had no intention of stopping.

「…You sang so much about wanting to be a hero.」

「Are you happy now that you’ve achieved the heroic dream you so desired? My younger sibling.」

I remember the words the members of 《Black Serpent》 spoke that day in front of the heroes of the mausoleum.

It was by no means words uttered toward a stranger they had never seen before.

「They’re worth fighting for at long last!! Aren’t they? You there, big brother, who’s been stuffed as a hero!」

The members remembered them too clearly—those who should have completed their heroic mission and been forgotten by the world.

It was by no means a voice directed at an unfamiliar stranger.

At the same time, it was no exception for me that the faces of the heroes were not unfamiliar.

Because each of the 18 heroes there was an extension of myself, nurtured by my own hand.

It should have been just a story from a game, seen beyond the monitor. It wasn’t. Yet, the moment I believed it wasn’t, the game’s story, etched with my fingerprints, appeared once again.

What exactly is this world? Why did I become ‘Rain Grey’?

─What did the real Rain Grey desire, and where are they now?

No matter how much I pondered, no answer emerged.

But if the truth I saw in the mausoleum is correct, and heroes truly are ‘puppets of the world,’ then they will continue to obstruct 《Black Serpent》, just as they have until now.

In other words, the lives of the members currently protecting me cannot be guaranteed either.

I didn’t want to let that happen.

I don’t desire an ending where the characters I raised mindlessly defeat the members of 《Black Serpent》 from beyond the monitor.

─Even if it was a meaningless imitation riddled with lies, I had an obligation as the leader to guide them.

Just as they, Aria, consistently protected me while I wandered this unfamiliar world.

Even if it was the result of their blindness and foolishness, beautifully deceived by my lies, those lies were everything to me.

When I realized, all that was left to me was the lie within the relationship called 《Black Serpent》.

Because, at least for me, that blatant lie shed redder blood than any truth.

Even to protect that lie, the existence of the heroes I saw in the mausoleum is nothing short of ‘my blemish’ that must be erased from this world.

Therefore─ I, mingled among the common people, longed for a hero more desperately than anyone.

*

That man was the embodiment of revolution.

He advocated for revolution in a more radical and extreme form than anyone else, and he hated to his bones the old system deeply rooted in this country, the unjust authority, and the submission to a power-based regime.

Therefore, he had no doubt that a revolution that would overthrow this nation from its foundations was the true spirit of the age.

Such a revolution ended in a pipe dream, too brief to even be called a three-day reign [a proverb for very short-lived power].

“…Lord Robespierre, it’s not too late even now. To seek asylum in the Empire as we are and plan for the future─.”

“The Empire, you say?”

The moment he heard those words, the embodiment of revolution retorted in a voice so cold it seemed to freeze.

“Are you saying we, who fight for liberty, equality, and fraternity, should flee to the Empire?”

“There’s no other way!”

A small barony whose name wasn’t even written on the land register. It was a barony in name only, a speck of land like a grain of millet at the very edge of the Holy Kingdom, whose existence was virtually unknown.

That cramped territory was the last bastion where the revolutionary forces, who had once come close to overthrowing the kingdom, had gathered.

Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the failed revolution, now the ringleader of a band of traitors, bit his lip until it bled.

The man, known as , who had dedicated his entire being to the revolution.

“Does the dream of the Republic end like this?”

After biting, he murmured softly.

“─The villains won.”

At first, it was a very small whisper to himself.

“The villains won.”

Next, it became a slightly louder mumble,

“The villains won! The villains won!”

Soon, he repeated the same words endlessly, screaming like a madman. In a voice filled with rage, indistinguishable from laughter or sobs.

However, none of his comrades there restrained the frenzied Robespierre.

At first glance, it might have seemed as though everyone was swallowing their words, overcome with the same sorrow.

Indeed, that was the case at first. But from a certain point, it wasn’t.

Because no one there had the ears or minds to listen to Robespierre’s cries and empathize with them anymore.

Crumble.

A human form splintered into cubical shapes and crumbled on the spot.

Masses of flesh, blood, and bone that should have formed a human face and body shattered into countless geometrically shaped cubes, with perfectly matching side heights and base lengths, and collapsed.

A single person intricately fractured and shattered into thousands, tens of thousands of cubes.

Along with that, a human silhouette emerged from the shadows in the corner.

It was the silhouette of a woman, her hood pulled low, a black coat that looked like a uniform fluttering around her.

Even without wind, countless blades clashed within the freely fluttering coat hem, emitting an eerie sharpness and metallic clanging.

“…Are you Robespierre?”

When he realized, Robespierre was the only one left alive there.

Even so, he was neither afraid nor intimidated. He didn’t even panic. He merely understood.

“Evil has come!”

After understanding, he simply continued to rave and shout endlessly.

“The victorious evil has finally come to cut off our last breath! It has appeared to mock good, scorn justice, and trample the squirming spirit of the age!”

In front of the raving Robespierre, the woman’s silhouette paid no mind.

“…The spirit of the age, you say.”

“Yes. Revolution is the spirit of the age! It was the dream and ideal that this era cried out for and yearned for!”

“How unfortunate.”

She merely murmured indifferently in a voice as cold as ice.

As if it truly didn’t matter to her, as if it were simply someone else’s business.

“However, there’s one correction to that statement.”

“A correction?”

“Certainly, revolution was once the spirit of the age.”

Before swinging her scythe, the reaper, claiming to be his last companion, spoke.

“But it seems the age has changed its mind.”

“Changed its mind, what do you mean?”

“A simple change of heart.”

Change of heart.

The age changed its mind. What on earth did that mean?

“As for me, I have no way of knowing what the Leader is thinking.”

The statement that the spirit of the age changed its mind was the same as saying the Leader changed his mind.

Because the spirit of that man, Rain Grey, the leader of 《Black Serpent》 to whom she was loyal, was precisely the spirit of the age.

In Selena of the Dark Moon’s view, there was no difference between the two subjects. They held the same meaning and were merely homonyms with different pronunciations.

“After all, there is only one unchanging spirit of the age.”

“…What is that?”

Robespierre asked again. Simply out of pure curiosity.

“To be hostile to the world.”

So the reaper, who had claimed to be his companion, replied.

“The age is one who stands against the world.”

“…”

“Therefore, the spirit of the age is the struggle to resist the will of the world.”

The moment he heard those words, Robespierre’s frenzy ceased.

Along with that, he somehow understood her words. So naturally. As one with deep insight glimpses a truth hidden behind a veil.

The age is one who stands against the world.

“《Enemy of the World》, then.”

Her Leader, too, is one who stands against the world.

That is why Selena of the Dark Moon swore loyalty to that man.

Still─ for Selena of the Dark Moon, there was no difference between the two phrases. They were merely different pronunciations sharing the same meaning.

“…History is a dialectic forged in the struggle between the age and the world.”

Robespierre recalled the words of an idealistic historian who had once left such a statement.

“You speak in difficult terms.”

The reaper, claiming to be his companion, shrugged and smiled.

“Unfortunately, I am an uneducated elf, you see. I don’t quite understand such difficult terms.”

Because she was not an elf educated enough to understand such difficult and metaphysical discourse.

She merely knew and felt it in her bones.

As a Dark Elf, born from the depths of the gutter, wandering until she met that man.

After meeting him, becoming a member of 《Black Serpent》, and dedicating her entire being to his ideal.

The conversation ended there.

When she realized, the man before her was no longer singular.

“Why did you leave us like that?”

In front of the man who had become multiple, the Dark Elf, Selena of the Dark Moon, murmured alone.

“…Rain.”