Chapter 78

“Yahiro!” “Shoot…!” Hisaki got past him by going through Yahiro’s body. Hisaki’s real target was Iroha. After getting his attack nullified, Yahiro couldn’t reach him right away, and Iroha was defenseless against him. “Iroha!” Nearly fully draconized, Hisaki swung his great sword down on Iroha while she glared straight at him. Then, Hisaki suddenly stopped. The scales covering his body shattered like glass. Weakened, he could not bear the weight of his sword and fell to one knee. Hisaki’s draconization was undone, and he lost his Lazarus powers. Yahiro and Iroha watched in bafflement. What happened? Then, Yahiro heard something falling behind him. Nina was on her knees. A blade pierced through the center of her chest. A straight sword with a mystical silver shine. “Ahh… This I did not expeeect… Color me surpriiised…” Nina turned around slowly. Looking at her from above was a girl with long white hair and red eyes. Sui. She had woken up and stabbed Nina from behind with the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. “Ninaaa!” Hisaki screamed at the sight of her injury. “Don’t touch her!” Hisaki picked the sword back up and launched himself at Sui, but his movements were hopelessly slow. Nina was no longer supplying him with dragon aura after being stabbed by the divine instrument. He lacked the power of the Lazarus. Sui brushed him away easily with her draconized right arm. Her giant claws slashed his body deeply and he was blown away like a dirty rag. Yahiro watched at a loss for words. “You’re here, my dear brother.” Sui smiled sweetly while licking the blood off her claws. “Sui…!” Yahiro shouted his sister’s name as he glared at her lips, dyed red, the crimson trail extending to her cheeks. Sui narrowed her eyes in glee as she looked back at him. 7 “Don’t you find it laughable, Brother?” Sui spoke quietly as she looked around at the hollow land adorned only with one tree. “An artificial dragon medium created by Ganzheit and an unborn baby… These hollow dolls are going to decide the fate of the world. Perhaps a fitting end for this sham of a world.” Blue lightning shot from snickering Sui’s fingertips. The thunder shot at Iroha, but Yahiro beat it down with his katana. “Pity,” Sui muttered. She was only trying to mess with Iroha, rather than Yahiro. “This power… It’s from the dragon factor you stole from Natazuka…?” Yahiro pointed his sword at Sui. She had nearly no dragon medium power left, as shown by her being unable to fight without Natazuka’s Regalia or the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. But that was no big deal for her. She wasn’t there to fight Yahiro. Her wish was to destroy the world, to take revenge on the world that hadn’t accepted her. “This is your last chance, Brother. Become one with me. Let us watch the twilight of the world together.” Sui reached her still-human left hand to him as she asked him to accept her power and become her Ouroboros. “Stop it, Sui.” Yahiro refused her wish. He could not accept her invitation. Not because he hated her, but because he did not wish to destroy the world. “Ganzheit’s warmongers, the guys who used you, are no longer around. There’s no reason for you to destroy the world.” “Oh, but there is. You still don’t understand?” Sui sneered. “It would be fun, don’t you think?” “Fun…?” “Yes. The happiness people spent their whole lives to obtain, the history and culture built over such long stretches of time…it would all disappear forever, even from memories.” Sui opened her mouth wide and cackled. Her once beautiful face had already transformed, the inside of her jaw filled with sharp fangs. “I’ll destroy it all. I was never loved, I never got anything, and I will now rob the world of everything! Could there be anything more fun?! That’s karma!” Her shrill laughter echoed in the hollow world. The still-water land at her feet cracked. Obsidian fragments scattered as a pitch-black mirror appeared from below. “I’m destroying the world because I hate it. I won’t leave an unshattered piece of this world where you aren’t mine!” “Sui…!” Yahiro fell to the ground under intense pressure. It felt like a giant rock weighed on him, more powerful than Nathan’s repulsive barrier. A gravity attack. Superbia’s real power. “That mirror, it can’t be… A Relict Regalia?” “Yes. Ganzheit brought this divine instrument here four years ago. My true Regalia, from before I was robbed of my power, was engraved in this mirror.” Sui’s expression contorted in delight at the return of her power. It wasn’t lost only because Iroha’s flames burned her dragon factor. Sui continued opening this Ploutonion she created four years before. The black mirror was absorbing her dragon aura. Sui had regained her power by recovering the mirror. Now she could reach Ouroboros on her own. She needed no Lazarus. After all, her wish was to simply destroy the world. She did not need to maintain it. “What a shame, Brother. If you had accepted my power back then, you would’ve been able to feel it now…!” Sui’s gravity force increased, making Yahiro’s bones screech. “Yahiro!” Iroha tried shooting flames to erase Sui’s powers. “Iroha Mamana! Stay away, hollow doll!” Sui noticed and controlled gravity to shoot pieces of the land like bullets. The obsidian-like fragments rained toward Iroha, but right before they could reach her, she was shielded by a large sword. “Minato?!” Yahiro moaned, still pushed to the ground. The heavily injured Hisaki had defended Iroha. “Kurao-no…Nuboko!” Hisaki stabbed his sword into the ground. A marsh area under his control extended to swallow Yahiro’s and Iroha’s footing. As they were disconnected from the black land used as its channel, Sui’s powers lost effect, and Yahiro was freed from the gravity attack. “Hisaki?! Why…?!” Iroha asked. Hisaki didn’t reply as he looked at Nina on the ground. It was as though he was saying it was what she wanted. “Nina… What’s with your body…?” Yahiro twisted his face in shock. Nina was not bleeding despite being stabbed by the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. Instead, scale-like translucent crystals fell from her body. Unrecoverable draconization, just like Miyabi’s right eye. Even graver than Miyabi’s. Lethal. “Ahh… You found out. It’s because of my experiments. I did a lot to investigate the dragon medium powers.” Nina laughed softly. Yahiro shook his head. “Minato, were you helping her…to save her life…?” “…I knew…that the dead…that I couldn’t return to that world.” Hisaki spoke like a scolded child. Yahiro felt like he saw Hisaki’s real face for the first time. “But I wanted to believe Nina’s words…” Hisaki exhaled and fell to his knees. He hadn’t fully recovered his Lazarus powers because his dragon medium was near death. “We’ll give you our powers… Destroying the world for no reason is boring. I’m more interested in what sort of world Iroha can make.” Nina grabbed the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi and pulled it out. Then, she shoved her hand into her wound and pulled out a small clump the size of a heart. It was a red crystal. She gave it to Hisaki, and he gave it to Yahiro. “I really wanted to see the outside of this wooorld… Too bad,” Nina said with the innocence of a child before closing her eyes. Hisaki held her in his arms as she crumbled to dust, then he suffered the same fate. Only the sword stabbed into the ground remained. “Satisfied now, Brother?” Sui said coldly as she looked emotionlessly at the crystal they left behind. “Luxuria’s Regalia… You think anything will change now that you have that?” “…Yes,” Iroha responded. She glared at Sui, quiet flames in her eyes. “You haven’t noticed, Sui? You don’t hear the voices?” “…Voices?” Sui furrowed her brow. She tried to deny Iroha’s claim on reflex, but then she shut her mouth. She noticed it. “Yes. Millions of voices… Prayers from around the world. The voices of the people watching the video my siblings are streaming. Runa, Gula’s medium, is delivering them to us.” Iroha’s gaze lacked hostility. She stood defenseless, yet Sui subconsciously took a step back in fear. “Everyone is cheering us on. They want us to save the world. Sui, where do you think the dragon power you’re using right now comes from?” “It…can’t be…” “Humans and dragons coexist. Ouroboros protects this box, this world where people’s souls live, and the people’s emotions give it power. No matter how many divine instruments you collect, no matter how powerful Superbia’s power is, you alone cannot defeat us.” “That’s a lot of baseless confidence… How stupid!” Sui argued back emotionally. Iroha shook her head with a smile. “It does have a basis. You should know that better than everyone else. You know that the dragon power flowing into us is getting stronger and stronger.” “Just…shut your mouth…!” Sui shot fragments of ground again, but none of them reached Iroha. They went right through her as though they were illusions. “Luxuria’s…material permeation…! Then how about this…!” Sui fired the electric shock she stole from Natazuka, but it was blocked by the metallic crystal blades that shot up silently from the ground. “Vanagloria’s power…?! How…?!” “I told you. Everyone’s cheering on us. The wish of a single dragon medium won’t change the world. The world chooses the dragon medium.” “But… That can’t be… I won’t accept it…!” Sui shook her head violently, yet the dragon aura surrounding Iroha was becoming colossal. Acedia’s, Ira’s, even Tristia’s and Superbia’s powers whirled around her, protecting her. The powers of the eight dragons originally came from the Supreme Absolute—the Taiji. They were all originally one power. “But Iroha Mamana, as long as I…as long as I can get rid of you…!” Sui picked up a fragment of the land, sharp like a knife, and ran. She charged to stab Iroha with its pointed end. Yahiro blocked her way. He received the stab to his stomach and hugged her. “Brother?!” Sui’s eyes grew wide in shock as Yahiro looked at her gently. “It’s over… Let it go. The time for revenge is over…Sui.” Yahiro and Sui used to be close siblings, but she suffered under the whims of adults from the moment she was born, and her brother never noticed. Even if they were to go back in time, their fate wouldn’t change, but they could end that fate, and only Yahiro could do it. “Burn to ash, Avaritia.” Still holding Sui, Yahiro turned into a dragon—a fire dragon that would burn everything to the ground. The light burned the world tree and the flames extended throughout the vast Afterlife to purify it. Then the world went back into motion.