EPILOGUE | The Undead King and the White Maiden On a bright and sunny day, a huge crowd of citizens gathered in the square in the middle of the capital. Each one of them stared uneasily at the tall wooden platform erected there—an execution stand. “Is King Calyx going to be executed soon?” “That’s crazy! No matter what crime he committed, how could Gelan execute his own nephew? He’s still only eleven years old!” “Besides, most of what the prime minister said about King Calyx destroying that village were probably lies…” While their hearts ached, there was nothing they could do. They lamented their powerlessness as a squad of soldiers approached from the castle. But the moment the people saw the figure on a horse leading that squad, their eyes opened wide in shock. “Lady Diné?! I thought she was dead…” “I knew a monster hadn’t really killed her!” The people cheered at the sight of the kingdom’s protector, the descendant of a god, her red hair flowing as she gallantly approached. Their jubilant cries gave way to gasps of shock as they saw who she was dragging along with a rope. “Gelan?!” Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Gelan had chased out the young king Calyx and declared himself the new monarch. Now his hands were bound like a criminal’s as he was dragged onward. “Wh-what is this about…?” While the citizens stood there in disbelief, Diné pulled Gelan up onto the execution stand. She addressed the people watching with rapt attention, her voice amplified by mana. “You have all probably heard from this man that King Calyx betrayed the kingdom and unleashed a fearsome disease. However, that was naught but lies. That’s because Gelan lusted so intensely for the crown that he destroyed Krio Village with the green rot!” “What?!” To depose Calyx and become king, Gelan had plotted to eliminate the holy knight who stood in his way. He had used a green-rot-infected monster to destroy Krio Village in an attempt to lure Diné out and kill her with the disease. “While I was off fighting a monster, this man led a shameless coup and stole the throne from King Calyx. But he made one miscalculation. As you can see, I am not dead!” “Oooh, Lady Diné’s incredible as always!” The people all cheered at the sight of Diné, composed and proud. “With the assistance of a traveling magic user I met around that time, I rescued His Majesty from his imprisonment and exposed this traitor’s crimes!” She epitomized the knight in shining armor who defeats the villain and saves the imprisoned princess—trivial details about their genders aside, the same story known and loved by many had otherwise played out in real life. That’s exactly why the citizens accepted Diné’s story without any serious questions. The reality had been far more complicated. No one would expect that an Undead King had been involved. “This man betrayed his nephew, his own kin, and even killed the citizens he swore to protect, all to sate his own desire for the throne. What is an appropriate punishment for this man?!” The people started shouting angrily in response to Diné’s question. “The death sentence!” “Kill him!” “He can’t get away with this!” Their rage didn’t stem only from his betrayal. Among the crowd were people with friends and relatives from Krio Village. “How could he?! My aunt, my uncle!” “Make him suffer as much as everyone who died!” Their hate turned to a wave of animosity and struck Gelan as he trembled. For a brief moment, contradictory emotions flashed across Diné’s face as she watched the people, but she turned her expression stony again and drew the holy blade. “Let the gods judge evildoers. Erupt, Vulcanus!” Diné’s blade burned red-hot, and two knights beside her forced Gelan down as he struggled, exposing his neck. “Know that the mercy of His Majesty, King Calyx, allowed you to die by the honor of the blade of the God of Fire. Now, descend to the afterlife!” With her last words, she brought down the holy blade, and the head of the prime minister, the former king’s younger brother, rolled. There was no unsightly spray of red blood because the flame of the blade had immediately cauterized the wound. But the severed head still rolled away from its body and fell from the execution platform. The crowd rejoiced in unison. At that moment, a middle-aged man in the crowd stood frozen, staring at the execution of Prime Minister Gelan—or at least the execution of something that looked exactly like Gelan. “Impossible…” After some treatment he didn’t want to think about, he had been locked away in the jail. Eventually, he was released and brought to this square, where he witnessed everything that had just happened. A knight scooped up the head and held it aloft for the seething crowd to see. The thing bore the same face he’d seen every day in the mirror. “Did I…die?” Gelan couldn’t help but touch his own neck, but obviously, his head was still connected to his body. But above the neck was a visage that didn’t resemble the executed prime minister’s at all. While he stood rooted to the ground, Diné responded to the cheers, ordered the knights accompanying her to take care of the body, then withdrew. Finished with watching the public execution, the crowd slowly started to dissipate. “That Gelan bastard was the worst of the worst. I bet he was doing all sorts of nastiness in the shadows that was just as bad.” “I’m terrified to think what would have happened if someone like him had stayed king.” “But he’s dead now. The country will surely heal.” The people spoke ill of the dead prime minister, their expressions cheerful as they returned to their homes and jobs. With that, Prime Minister Gelan was dead to everyone—and to the Erythron Kingdom. The only one who knew the truth was a nameless man who still hadn’t budged. “W-wait! I-I’m not dead!” “What?” A group of young men on their way home stopped and looked at the man as he suddenly started shouting. “What’s wrong, sir?” “It’s me. I’m—” The moment Gelan tried to tell the younger men his name, his body stiffened like stone and refused to let his words escape. The terrifying Undead King had placed a geas on Gelan that prevented him from ever speaking his name again. “Ah, gah…” “What is it?” “He’s drunk. Hey, we should go get a drink in celebration, too.” The man stood there, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. The young men stared with suspicious confusion, then quickly turned and left. Others were the same. Gelan wasn’t garbed in the extravagant clothing any would expect of the prime minister. No one thought twice about the middle-aged man who looked like any other commoner you might find. That’s right—Gelan was a commoner now. He’d lost his status, face, and previous name, so everyone saw him as nothing more than a regular person. On top of that, his former self had just been publicly executed. It would be impossible for him to speak his name or for anyone to call him by his name for the rest of eternity. “I am, I aaaaam—!” The man screamed, having lost everything but his life. The people around him regarded him suspiciously and passed quickly to avoid getting involved. As the wave of people began to fade, Gelan also disappeared somewhere into the city. Terios, Mira, and the black cat had seen the whole thing from the highest floor of the castle. They had watched as Diné executed Prime Minister Gelan—or the fake, rather. Days earlier, Terios had used the body of a man who’d died in an accident to make the fake by changing the body into a homunculus, then making it move with Create Flesh Golem. “And now the prime minister is dead, but the man still lives,” muttered Terios quietly, telling Mira that he’d killed Gelan without killing him, just as she’d asked. “It’s pretty horrible torture to make him live without his face or name. It’d be more merciful to end his life and release him from his misery.” Mira spoke as if she pitied Gelan; the grin on her face told a different story. As they spoke, Mira stared down silently at the square. “……” “Are you satisfied?” “…Yes.” The girl nodded slightly in response to Terios’s quiet question. Even so, she wasn’t entirely convinced. While Gelan was likely suffering a fate worse than death, the person she loathed so much she wanted to kill him was still alive. Forgiving him wouldn’t be easy. However, Mira had already decided to let it go. She didn’t search for the man somewhere in the square and instead looked up at Terios. “Teacher, what are you going to do now?” “Hmm, I’ve been debating that.” Terios held his head in his hand. “The truth is that I had hoped to spend more time slowly getting people accustomed to undead beings like myself and to a new lifestyle where they utilize bone golems for farming and other tasks. But then this coup incident occurred.” The death of the prime minister cleared King Calyx of all suspicion. But Terios worried that the loss of the prime minister, who played a pivotal role in the kingdom, would thrust Erythron Kingdom’s inner circle into intense chaos. “By pinning everything on the prime minister, the general and his men haven’t been blamed for the coup, even though they helped carry it out, so all of our concerns haven’t disappeared.” Calyx needed the ministers who had once betrayed him to follow him from here on out. While Diné was at his side protecting him, the situation was more severe than it might have been had the prime minister remained in power. “I have to do something about this, don’t I?” asked Terios. “If you don’t do anything, the country will probably collapse from the inside before long,” speculated the black cat with a huge smile, agreeing with Terios even though he really wanted someone to offer dissent. “That virgin lady’s strong, and she’s not that dumb, either. But she doesn’t seem equipped to fight political battles, and she probably won’t ever change her position of supporting the king, right? Plus, Calyx is a total crybaby.” “I know…” Terios sighed heavily. This state of affairs brought on the prime minister’s coup in the first place. The matter of Calyx’s weakness still remained. It was unlikely that another coup would succeed, not with Diné keeping an eye out. But the holy knight’s holy blade couldn’t defend against the king’s retainers losing their drive or from them abandoning the Erythron Kingdom and defecting to another country. “Don’t you think this country will quickly fall to ruin if no one takes on the responsibility of the kingdom for that crybaby?” “Huh…?” Mira’s face paled at the black cat’s negative outlook for the kingdom. “This country is going to disappear?!” “Well, I can’t say there’s absolutely no chance it will…,” clarified Terios, replying vaguely as Mira clung to him. The prime minister was blinded by his own ambition and led a coup. If only he hadn’t done that…, thought Terios. There was still one glaring question out of this whole issue that hadn’t been answered. Where in the world did the prime minister obtain monsters as dangerous as a wererat contaminated with green rot and the Throne, a disciple of a god no longer in this world? Those monsters had spells cast on them to make them obey humans. I don’t think that’s something he could have gotten in the Erythron Kingdom. It was a small rural country in the far northeastern corner of the continent. There weren’t any magic users powerful enough to force monsters into submission, and there weren’t any ancient ruins that hid treasures with powerful magic. He must have gotten them from another country—I can only imagine that Xanthon in the south was involved. In other words, this incident was a plot by a foreign power to weaken the Erythron Kingdom so they could get a foothold in the country to conquer them. It didn’t matter if the prime minister’s plan succeeded or failed. Either way, the country would plunge into chaos and become an easy mark. A truly nasty strategy. Whoever had concocted the plan was cunning. They weren’t going to sit idly by. If Terios and company didn’t pull the country together and get it ready for war before that person made their move, the Erythron Kingdom would certainly be destroyed. “Ohhh nooo, if the country is destroyed, the children in Krio Village will face sooo much hardship! Is there aaanyone who can take the prime minister’s place?” “Grrr…!” As she whined innocently, the black cat kept glancing over at Terios with a wicked smile. He couldn’t help gritting his teeth. “I thought I’d failed last time because I had to rush while I was still alive. I thought I could take it slow and steady this time. Why isn’t it going as planned…?” lamented Terios. “That’s obviously because you’re blessed by Lady Luck.” “No, I’m most definitely cursed by her!” he snapped, taking his anger out on the cat, who was smiling like she was relishing every minute of it. Mira put her hand to her mouth and laughed as she watched them. “Hee-hee, I’m a little jealous of how close you two are.” “No way. We’re not close.” “My, so cruel.” Terios denied Mira’s statement immediately, but the cat tapped his cheekbone in an overly affectionate manner with her tail. “Teacher, sometimes you’re unfair and scary, but I think you really are a kind person. Because you won’t abandon us or the country,” complimented Mira. “Well, I’ve sworn to build a peaceful world and started acting on that, so I’ll do everything I can,” replied Terios. He’d never considered the option of throwing it all away and starting again. He’d seen many enemies make a habit of fleeing from battle. It kept them from fighting to the end and had ultimately sealed their doom. But Mira didn’t think much of Terios’s actions because she didn’t know anything about his past. She just gave him a wide, joyous grin. “I love how serious you are, too,” she said. “Thank you.” Terios wasn’t ashamed to have a pretty girl tell him she liked something about him, blushing as she did. “Oh my, I suppose you’d expect a man who had lain with seven wives in his time to have a little more wiggle room than a certain cherry boy.” “…Teacher?” “Mira, please calm down. What happened while I was alive has nothing to do with who I am today. Besides, they’ve all already died.” Taking out the mithril dagger when the black cat let the cat out of the bag, Mira’s expression suddenly clouded over. Terios tried desperately to get her to listen. “Ha-ha-ha, looks like your lady problems aren’t over even now that you’re a skeleton!” “And whose big mouth made this happen?!” shouted Terios angrily again at the audacity of the root of all evil. Their hilarious exchange cheered Mira up. She smiled again, then said, “Teacher, please do your best to make a world where people can live peacefully, without going through the pain that we have.” “I will, I promise.” Mira held out her small hand, and Terios squeezed it in his bony one. Thus their fates were intertwined. An Undead King who became such after a lifetime of committing massacres, then swore to never kill again, and a maiden who would continue to dye her white hair fresh with blood on his behalf.
Chapter 12
14 min read