I wasn’t sure why, but even after winning the battle, I didn’t feel the least bit happy. I felt empty inside. Even though it hadn’t been the actual Ayane, in all other regards, she’d still been herself. That’s why all I felt was emptiness.
“Well done, Mr. Abel.”
A little bit after Ayane’s body disappeared, I heard Cain’s familiar voice. He must’ve been watching our battle from somewhere.
“She was the strongest of all the dolls I’ve made so far—a masterpiece. What’d you think? Did you have a good time?”
As usual, he has zero emotional intelligence. “From the bottom of my heart, I can say it was incredibly unpleasant. Looks like you’re still into playing with dolls,” I remarked.
“Yep! And thanks to that, I’ve only gotten better. Wow, this really brings me back. I remember when you first complimented me on my Necromancy Magecraft.”
When we first met, one of the first things Cain could do was control the dead with his magecraft. The reason that he’d been invited to join Chaos Raid in the first place had been because the polish of the magecraft had been so exceptional.
“Take a look at my collection! I’m sure you’ll be happy!” Cain said with pride, before putting his hand on the ground and activating his Ashen Eye magecraft.
He was using the ground to create new dolls. This is the Necromancy that he’s so good at, huh? The new dolls he was making had familiar faces.
Good grief. I never thought that I’d come face-to-face with these people now. It’s been two hundred years.
Cain had made three individuals: Roy, Maria, and Daytona—the very same people that I’d traveled with so long ago.
“Sorry, Abel, but could you die? It’s for world peace,” Roy said.
“I challenge you, Abel! I’ll show you how strong I’ve gotten!” exclaimed Maria.
“I think it’s time you get a hard lesson!” added Daytona.
This development really irked me. The three dolls he’d made had the exact same appearance, voice, and personalities of their originals from two hundred years ago.
“How stupid,” I said.
I immediately activated magecraft to immobilize my enemies, creating a barrier of gravity using Obsidian Eye magecraft. The three of them grunted with surprise, but I wasn’t going to show them any mercy. After all, they were just dolls. I wasn’t interested in experiencing any more of this farce. In the next moment, no sooner than they’d sprouted out of the ground, they’d been crushed to pieces and returned to it.
“Aw, that’s not a very nice thing to do to your precious comrades,” Cain said.
What a disingenuous guy. The fact that he’d been able to so faithfully recreate them meant that he’d taken their corpses and tampered with them—more precisely, extracted their genetic data. I had no way of knowing if the three of them had died of natural causes or if Cain had murdered them. But trying to discuss the ethics of it all was probably pointless.
“Mind if I ask? Why are you trying to anger me?” I said.
“Hm? No real reason. I just wanna play with you,” he said, flippant and intentionally inflammatory. “Like I said before, I completed my Immortality Magecraft. But the price I had to pay for eternity was an unquenchable monotony. In a world without you, I’ve just been so bored.”
Such ego. But, thinking about it, he’s always been like this. Though our party’s objective had been to defeat the Demon Lord, Cain had always been the only one with a different objective.
“Let’s talk about the past a bit—about everything I’ve seen in this world up until now,” Cain said. Admittedly, this had been something I’d been a little curious about. Cain had used Immortality Magecraft to stay alive all this time, and so, he had a first-person’s account on all the history that’d transpired. “After you activated your Reincarnation Magecraft, all that was waiting was a long civil war between humans.”
As Cain talked, images began appearing in front of my eyes. I’d heard about the war he was referring to. Two hundred years ago, the Great Four defeated the Demon King of Twilight who’d ruled the world, and brought peace. But problems arose almost as soon as that’d happened. In the aftermath it was unclear how the land once singularly ruled by the Demon King would be divided, eventually resulting in the humans devolving into civil war. The war lasted for a century, and resulted in a great number of victims.
“I grew to loathe humans from the bottom of my heart,” Cain said. “Can you blame me? The Hero Party didn’t save the world so that we could witness humans fight each other so shamefully.”
A part of me sympathized. The number of victims in the civil war vastly outnumbered those who’d lost their lives during the Demon King of Twilight’s rule. Saving the world only for it to immediately fall back into chaos...I had complicated feelings about that.
“That’s why I turned every important person in the world into my own doll. I did it to stop the war—so I could realize my goal of a truly peaceful world.”
Hm. This is the first time I’m hearing about this. But, in a way, it makes sense. Cain could manipulate the dead with his magecraft, so it was completely possible for him to control every politician in the world.
“Humans are fundamentally idiotic creatures. No matter what, they repeat mistakes of the past. Despite being haughty and powerless, it’s the selfish ones whose voices are the loudest. I hate it.”
Most likely, Cain was saying these words from a sincere and heartfelt place; as someone who’d been raised by demons after his family had been killed, he held values that normal people couldn’t comprehend.
“Mr. Abel, I have a proposal... Would you help recreate the world with me? In my ideal world, even Amber-Eyed mages wouldn’t be discriminated against,” he said. His eyes held the same pure innocence that he had as a child.
Recreating the world, huh? I’m not interested in that at all. Cain saw this entire world the same way he’d seen everything since he was a kid—as a toy to be played with.
“No thanks. I have no reason to work with you,” I said.
All I wanted was to live a peaceful life. Even if his goal was to make a peaceful world, I couldn’t approve of the lengths he’d go to in order to accomplish that.
“I see,” Cain replied. “In that case, you leave me no choice. You’ll be the last one of my friends, Mr. Abel.”
Good grief. Doesn’t look like there’s a way for us to avoid fighting each other.
“Come. I’ll play with you, after all this time.”
Negotiations have failed. As his mentor, it’s my job to properly educate this foolish pupil of mine.