-14-
“GAH… AH…AH, AGH! Have the last two thousand years been for nothing?! Impossible! This can’t be!” Reniement painfully tried to remold the dust that had been the Staff of the Saint. I stood next to him and pointed my blade at his head.
“It’s over. If you’re willing to talk about the higher beings—”
“Bastard! You bastard, you bastard, you bastard! You sent away Lord Jonas… I hope your soul is cursed for all eternity!” cried Reniement as he tried to grab me, tears flooding from his eyes and his expression wild.
I pulled back and dodged, then swung my sword. The strike slashed through him at the waist, and the two halves of his body thudded to the ground.
Without the Staff of the Saint, Reniement was just level 2,000.
“Ah, ah, aaagh… For what did I suffer these past two thousand years…? Just one more step…aaah, and I would have seen this world devoured…” Reniement lifted his trembling arm toward the sky.
“You’re still alive?” I asked, and Reniement looked my way. “You said a lot of extreme things…but in the end, it wasn’t that you wanted to fulfill your faith. You just wanted to enjoy killing.”
“Ha…ha ha ha… All lost children seek reasons for what it is they need to live… Death and destruction, they are everything to me, and Lord Jonas was simply a reason to affirm that. That is all…” Reniement’s eyes opened wide, and his gash of a mouth curled up in a grin. “Outsider, can you hear it? The sound of rats scurrying away?”
I listened close to my surroundings and could hear the faint sound of small animals moving. I looked toward the piles of rubble from the collapsed buildings and saw rats running about in fear and confusion.
“Those are the people who lost their human form because of my curse. Those who lost their original forms from the curse also lost their intelligence. All they should have is the vague feeling that they used to be something else, and that will stay with them as they continue their pointless lives.”
That was probably that first death magic spell Reniement used, Hamelin.
“I love that curse, I love it, I love it… I wanted to fill the entire world with that curse… Ah, but at least I can hear the sweet sound of them scurrying as I die. That is one small blessing for me. Curse Locklore! I only pray the other two will bring destruction upon the world!”
Reniement grinned demonically, his spasming arms stretched toward the heavens.
…He’s an unpleasant man who won’t stop resisting until the very last moment.
“White Magic Level 20: Gorgon’s Tears.”
Just then, the entire city of Luperm was bathed in light.
I shaded my eyes with my hand against the glare, while looking for its source. On top of a high tower, I saw Lunaère.
“Lunaère-san? Why is she here?” I murmured.
She was recovering several other pawns, so I thought she would be far busier than we were… Besides, what was that spell she just cast?
Just as those questions were running through my mind, I heard a cheer rise from the area around me.
I thought everyone had evacuated this area a long time ago, but it was suddenly filled.
“Wh-what happened…? I’m not dead…?”
“I feel like I was a rat just now… B-but, I changed back…? I’m back!”
It sounded like all the people Reniement had turned into rats were back to their original form. That spell Lunaère just cast must have broken the death magic curse.
“No! Why? Why?! M-my spell can’t be broken! Something must be wrong!” shrieked Reniement.
“It looks like nothing went well for you, Reniement,” I said as I raised my sword.
“I don’t accept this! I don’t accept it!” he screamed.
I brought my sword down and split Reniement’s head. After shaking the blood from my blade, I returned it to its sheath.
“Kanata!” cried Pomera as she and Philia ran over to me.
Philia was swinging her right arm around. “Look, look, Kanata! The light healed Philia!”
She hadn’t been able to regenerate the wound she got from the Spear of Mammon, but it was back to normal now. The irreversible curses were undone.
We took advantage of the chaos there to get away unnoticed and met up with Lunaère on an empty street.
“You came, Lunaère-san. Thank you,” I said.
“I checked how you were doing using Tiamat’s Eye and the situation looked bad…” said Lunaère, starting off sounding proud, but then her face paled and she covered her mouth. “…A-actually, I just had a bad feeling and came since I wasn’t busy. You already defeated the attacker by then… I was a bit late.”
“You weren’t busy…? Lunaère-san, didn’t Veranta push a lot of stuff on you? What about those other pawns?”
“I’m done with them.”
“What?”
Lunaère folded her arms a little smugly. “I defeated the Giant of Famine and the World Beast, and then I destroyed the Dragon Orb and the Tome of Annihilation. I rushed through them so we could meet up again, since it would be bad if something happened to you.”
“Uh-huh…”
Talk about a speed run. And Veranta evaluated each of those four things as far more dangerous than the Staff of the Saint. Did that mean that we were done with all the things we could do to prepare for the fight against the higher beings?
Anyway, we needed to go back to Veranta and report, especially after the Reniement incident.
“I feel like…there’s no way I can compete against Lunaère…” said Pomera, and she let out a heavy sigh.
“Pomera, bend down! Philia will pat your head!”
“Thank you, Philia…”