Because Leticia had broken that cage of loneliness and fear for me. I knew that there was nothing that bound me now. “I suppose I should be impressed, Kaito,” came a voice. “We caught you at your weakest moment and outnumbered you two to one,” came a second voice. “And yet you still live.” The pair who stood over me were like giants formed of ice. One, the Leonid beastfolk, Leon, a martial artist whose fists were his deadliest weapons, dressed in his training garb. The other, Lilia, of the race of demons, wearing a purple, dress-like spellcaster’s robe. I had trusted them both so much that I’d been willing to leave the weakened Leticia in their care. Now they looked like complete strangers. “H-how?” I asked. “Where did you find a poison so strong it prevents even me from teleporting?” Leon answered my question as though keeping secrets from me was no longer necessary. “That was the Cursed Toxin of the Fey Queen,” he said. I could piece together the rest. “I see,” I said. “So you didn’t kill her after all.” The Fey Queen ruled over the Fairy Kingdom. But her people weren’t the kind and gentle fairies from kids’ tales. They saw humankind as nothing more than toys, and the pranks they played were beyond the pale. They would lead travelers astray in the forest, causing them to die of starvation. They would summon hordes of monsters or sabotage adventurers’ equipment without their knowledge. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Sometimes, they stole newborn babies and toyed with them until they died. If they took a shine to a particular human, they’d erase the memory of them from people’s minds. Sometimes, they’d even turn someone into a brain-dead zombie for no reason. To get away with their mischief, they brainwashed people. Consequently, almost everyone would find a way to dismiss what had happened to the fairies’ victims. They’d say it was an accident, or that the victim had it coming, or that it was only natural. Only a very small fraction of people were able to resist this, and it was only these few who knew what a threat the fey truly posed. “So that’s why you were so insistent you be the one to kill her,” I recalled. “Oh, it all makes sense now.” There once was a man who lost everything to the fey. One day, a capricious fairy took a liking to him. This fairy proceeded to erase the memory of him from his parents, his wife, and his children, then asked the man to be their playmate for the rest of his life. Naturally, the man refused, but when he did this, the fairy grew so angry that they blinded the man in one eye, paralyzed him in one arm, and aged him to the brink of death. This man had not seen even thirty summers, and yet when he appeared before me on the road, his skin was saggy and wrinkled, his white hair thin and balding, and with his final breath, he begged for my help. All he left behind was his diary, which told of his awful fate in wretched, pitiable words. After reading it, we all agreed to go to the fairy village and put a stop to the fairies’ trickery once and for all. While I caused a distraction, Leon advanced on their leader, the Fey Queen, and dealt the final blow. Or so I thought. I wanted to know why Leon had kept her alive, but there was something else I needed to ask. “I was worried about you guys, you know. Now I know I didn’t need to be. Tell me…what did you want?” I wanted to know why. I wanted to know why warmth slipped from my hands. Why sharp knives dug into my arms and tore them apart from the inside. Why my breath turned to ice and froze everything in sight. “Tell me, Leon. Could you not just have waited for Leticia to live out the rest of her life? Did you have no faith I’d return? Did you want the glory of killing the demon lord yourself? Did you think it was the best way to end the war?” “…” Leon remained stone-faced and unfriendly. “Tell me, Lilia. You know how much Leticia looked up to you, so why? Why did you turn against her as well? Answer me! Answer me!!” “…” Lilia remained stoic and calm. “I thought maybe she just didn’t have as much time as we predicted. I thought maybe you two were in danger, or she’d hurt you, and that’s why I didn’t see you there when I got back…” I clenched my teeth so tightly, I could hear them grating. The tightness pressed down on my heart, begging for an answer. “So then tell me why! Why couldn’t I find the arcstone after I killed her?! And why can I feel its very same mana emanating from the crystal in your staff, Lilia?!” Something was ringing in my ears, growing louder and louder, suffering all the while. I could feel my mind screaming out as it rotted away to nothing. “Tell me!!” I yelled, my words burning the walls of my throat. “Both of you! Why did you betray her?!” “…You know nothing, Kaito,” said Leon. “You don’t belong in our world. Neither of you do.” I could barely hear his words. “I feel sorry for you,” he went on. “You and the young lady as well. But we must put a stop to this charade, or else the tragedy will never end. It will go on and on, repeating the cycle, until finally it tears this world apart. So long as evil exists in this world, it can be defeated, but a broken world can never be remade.” “What…are you talking about?” “Our work began long before you ever set foot in this realm,” explained Lilia. “We are more than prepared to commit any sin, if that is what it takes to return it to the hands of its people. We have resolved to walk this path, no matter what we lose along the way. In fact,” she went on, “I have already sullied my hands with my brother’s blood. There is no going back now.” “Y-your…brother?” I stammered. “Hold on…you killed him? But that means…” Leticia had already taken revenge for her brother’s murder. But it was not against Lilia. I demanded to know more, but the woman refused to speak another word of it. “That is all in the past,” she said. “It was the only way to save the world. Once, I hoped there might be another way, but fighting against the roles of the hero and the demon lord proved impossible. The only way is by combining the power of the arcstone, the godstone, and the power of the void that you possess.” “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!!” It didn’t make any sense. It just didn’t make any sense. Their incomprehensible justifications were like smoke in my eyes, sparking my anger. “The hero and the demon lord are not meant to exist,” said Lilia. “Leticia was going to destroy this world. To save it, the two of you needed to die.” To save the world? We weren’t supposed to exist? “Lies!” I cried. “Leticia wasn’t going to destroy the world! She asked me to kill her so that she wouldn’t hurt anybody!!” “It doesn’t matter,” said Leon. “The role of the demon lord itself is the threat. It is a plague upon this realm, as is the hero.” “All we are,” said Lilia, “is entertainment for a cruel and callous goddess, content to watch the same story play out again and again while we suffer. Once this world is reduced to a barren husk, she will throw us away.” Entertainment? A cruel goddess? A barren husk? Dammit, I don’t have a clue what’s going on! Their words sounded hollow to my ears. I understood what they were trying to say, but it didn’t seem real. They weren’t lying, either. Their eyes were not deceitful, but noble and pure, brimming with determination. Whether or not what they were saying was true, they believed it. Once I realized that, I lost the will to argue, and all the strength left me. “…Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Just answer me one thing: Why did Leticia’s transformation complete so quickly? Were you behind it?” “…Yes,” replied Leon. “It was I who removed the arcstone. Without it to suppress the rising evil inside her, she succumbed to her fate immediately.” At this confession, the part of me that was screaming out for closure died. It had been a mistake, then, to leave Leticia with them. I had committed a fatal error in judgment. There would have been very little the weakened Leticia could do to defend herself against those two conspiring together. Especially since one of the perpetrators was her own beloved sister. Leon channeled mana into his fists, which began to glow with a golden light. Lilia raised her staff, and its tip swelled with unfathomable darkness. “…I do not mean to make excuses, Kaito. I must kill you and become stronger. To save this realm, the hero must perish.” “This world has no need of heroes, of demon lords, of priestesses or princesses. We will not be its pawns. And so you must die.” I didn’t care anymore. I just didn’t care. I was tired. Because I no longer recognized the world I’d sworn to protect. The world whose people I had tried so hard to give a happy ending. And in the end, the people I’d trusted had betrayed me. Somewhere in my steadily decaying mind, a nerve disintegrated. One that had been trying to tell me something very important. “I don’t care anymore…” “…You’re my enemies now.” “Rgh! Lion’s Golden Roar!” “Shadow-Eclipsing Spine!” Leon’s mana took on the visible form of a roaring lion’s head, while Lilia’s became a pitch-black spear that obliterated all it touched. If those two attacks hit me now, debuffed to hell as I was, it would be the end of me. “If” being the operative word. “Devour them, Gluttony.” ““Wha—?!”” Something appeared that could only be described as a hole torn into the fabric of space. The attacks disappeared into this hole and vanished completely. In my hands was a bloated, flesh-colored blade—the Sword of Sin: Bottomless Greed. Currently, it was in the form of a weapon, not in the humanoid shape it adopted when fully unleashed. This was the first time either of these two had seen this form in action. I had created it to counteract the sword’s penalties and to increase its ease of use. The downside was that I didn’t have access to its reality-bending powers, and so the sword was only useful against entities of the same power level as me or weaker. I thus gained versatility while giving up the power to execute a complete reversal of fortune. But versatility was exactly what I needed right now. Leon and Lilia knew about Gluttony’s main power, but they weren’t prepared for this. ““Grh!!”” The pair had poured a significant amount of mana into their attacks and were thus left off guard. I capitalized on that chance by summoning my next soul blade. “Time to play, Lust.” “Oh no!” “Krh!!” The next blade I summoned shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow—its name, Sword of Sin: Lusty Little Girl. I swung it, and an enormous toybox enveloped the pair. “Now, get lost.” The box made a gulping noise and vanished into thin air. Leon and Lilia weren’t dead. In this form, my Swords of Sin weren’t powerful enough to take them out. But with those two out of the picture, I would finally be able to teleport away. I figured if they’d sealed my ability to leave, I just needed to get rid of them instead. Somewhere far, far away, as far as possible. Where exactly I’d sent them, even I didn’t know. “It’s going to be a while before I can teleport,” I said to myself. For now, I had to hide away somewhere and wait for this poison to run its course. Besides, I’d used the Swords of Sin, so now Metelia knew where I was. “The hero must perish.” “And so you must die.” “…You think I care?” I hung my head, hands clasped tightly around the bag that held Leticia’s heart. There were people who wanted me dead just because I was the hero. “I have to go back…,” I muttered. “I have to return to Earth.” I repeated the words I’d uttered so many times before. After that, the air fell silent once more. The only things in this world that answered me were the sun beating down on me and the sea spray on my skin. However… …nothing in this realm could make me feel anything anymore. Waking up left me with a bad taste in my mouth, like I’d swallowed a handful of worms, and they were all crawling about back there. The closer I got to my vengeance, the more insistent my dreams seemed on reopening old wounds. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window, but Yuuto and Mai were still fast asleep in their beds. “Eh-heh-heh…sleeping in the lap of my dear brother…” “Ugh…no…stay back, giant tins of mackerel…” Where did I even begin? “I was hoping the training would temper your minds a little…,” I muttered, brushing the hair off my darling little sister’s sleeping face. “I knew you wouldn’t let the pressure break you, but you’re taking it even better than I expected. Too well, in fact.” The two of them had tasted blood already. On Earth, where death was always so much farther than it was here. On top of that, they’d crossed the line, not out of necessity, but of their own accord. But it was one thing to execute a captive foe and quite another to stand up to wild, ferocious beasts and heinous murderers. They needed to get used to things trying to kill them back. At the start of my adventure, I had been thrown into battle without knowing the terror of either killing or of being killed. It took me a while to get used to it all, and until that time, I was shaking in my futon every night, unable to sleep a wink. “Next to these guys, I look like a total wimp.” I didn’t know whether they were strong-willed or just simpleminded. “…But we can’t sleep forever, can we?” ““Hrh!!”” I hit them with my intimidating aura, and the two of them instantly awoke, jumping out of bed and looking around for the danger. “Wakey, wakey, you two. Sweet dreams?” Upon seeing me, the pair of them relaxed. “…Dear brother,” said Mai. “If you’re planning on entering my bed, you could at least wait until we’re alone.” “Morning, Kaito,” said Yuuto. “Think you could wake us up a little gentler next time? …You did get me out of a fishy pickle, though, so I guess I can’t complain.” The training yesterday seemed to have been a success. To think that if I’d gone through the same thing when I first arrived, I could have been snoozing the whole time. Still… “Three out of ten. Too slow,” I said. “You need to wake up at the moment the danger is produced, not only when it hits you. Also, you need to move as soon as you sense it. Don’t stand around gawking like chickens, trying to find out where the danger came from. If you know something’s out to kill you, then what are you doing? Waiting for it to happen? Do you two have death wishes, or are you just plain stupid?” I delivered my lecture with a smile. “Sob. You’re so mean, dear brother…” “Ha-ha, yeah, your words have more bite to them than I remember…” “Flattery will get you nowhere. Next time, if you’re not up to snuff, let’s see… We’ll write something on your forehead, and you’ll have to walk around like that until dusk.” The two of them scowled, and I heaved a deep sigh. Well, they’ll get the hang of it after a few battles, I thought. And that chance should be coming up on us pretty soon. If my bait was taken up, we’d have our battles soon enough. Then these two would have no choice but to sharpen their senses. Instinct was nature’s greatest teacher. “We’re heading out to sweeten the line, so go freshen yourselves up,” I told them. “We still need to clean and gut our catch, so there’s not much time. Chop, chop.” I clapped my hands, and the two slowly dragged themselves into action. We needed to be extra careful and provide only the best of lures if we wanted to guarantee snagging our catch.
Chapter 98
15 min read