The achievement of dividing one’s soul and pseudo-immortality. Although everything had gone well at the start, when he’d tried to use his magic to show his skills during an entrance examination, a deviation between his soul and mind had caused him to lose control, leading to tragedy. Furthermore, he’d lost his sanity upon realizing that his ego hadn’t been perfectly re-created, and his memories and personality became muddled by his delusions.
In other words, this wasn’t Udo, but...
“Aaaaah! I?! We?! Udo?! No! No, that’s right! Nonono! You! We! She! I! Whoaaaaagh!” Udo started losing his marbles as he remembered that he hadn’t just forgotten the technique for transferring souls, but that he’d been one of the products of this technique.
“I’d considered the possibility that they weren’t mentor and disciple, but rather the same person. It seems that I was right. I believe his name was...Asher. This is the result of casually experimenting with duplicating your soul. Are they exactly the same person? Do they possess the same will? The same mind? Since no one can prove any of that, it can only lead to insanity,” Lara commented indifferently as she watched Udo through the mirror. “Let’s end this now.”
“Diediediediedie! If you plan to get in my, our, your way, then diiiiie!”
Lara created a pathway for entering the mirror, and the Hero’s party marched into it. Words were unnecessary. There was no point in saying anything anymore.
“Don’t get in the way of our futuuuuure!” In an instant, Udos of all ages split into an army a million strong, their shouts echoing all around. All of them were the same individual, created by the simulation and soul transfer technique running amok. Because they were linked, they would each instantly revive unless they were all killed at the exact same time, making this quite the hassle.
The deluded mage Udo—or Asher—appeared before the Hero’s party and was crushed without leaving a single trace. The million identical individuals were unable to withstand the overwhelming mass of the darkness that enveloped them all at once...
The world was engulfed in darkness.
“See?! When such fathomless idiots are born in this world, you would want to wipe everything clean, wouldn’t you?! You want to start over and try harder?! Do better next time?! Duplicate your soul to become immortal?! Even if you polish your exterior and gain superficial inner experience, if your core nature remains the same and you don’t try to change it, it’s all pointless, you fool!” This shout belonged to a being so hollow and improperly re-created that he couldn’t even realize that he was also included in his own rant, objectively speaking.
Sazaki twisted his body and placed his hand on his katana. Lara’s fingers started shining abnormally. Stein readied his Null Wave at full power. Max turned completely blue inside his armor. Elrica’s staff was covered in shining runes.
“You’re also in the same situation. Don’t you understand that?” Ferd asked the black mist, shining so brightly that nobody could look directly at him anymore.
As if there would ever be a story that takes place before the main character is born. That book wouldn’t sell a copy. Oh well. I wasn’t prepared to die anyway. A part of Max’s consciousness was running away from reality as he cursed at the black mist in his mind.
This being was too imperfect, too patched together, too hollow. He was nothing but a pale imitation, an inferior reproduction who didn’t even understand why he was here right now.
“You’re all defective creatures to begin with! Humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and all the rest! You kill each other in wars for honor, money, justice, or some other ‘great cause’! You slaughter every last person, even the elderly or infants! Those dogs who kill their prey to eat are far better than all of you! Why have you been killing each other for nonsensical reasons for thousands of years?! I’m sick of it! All of it! The living races? Yeah, right! You don’t care about life any more than I do, yet you have the nerve to call yourselves that!” But his voice was exactly how Ferd and the rest remembered it.
“Allow me to make a prediction! You defective creatures will destroy each other even without me doing anything! In the worst case, you might destroy this planet itself! So it would be much better to destroy you all now! Here and now, I’ll bring an end to this shared resentment that will continue until the end of times! The number of lives I will eradicate now will be far less than the number you living races would ever take from here on!” There was passion, rage...and despair.
All educational institutions, including the ones in Greer, the Academic City-State, taught the exact reasons for the outbreak of the great war: All living beings had fallen from grace because they’d killed, cursed, and violated their own kind. Then, one of the primordial gods had risen in response to the cries of darkness and negative thoughts, forsaken all living beings, and sought to eradicate them.
“In the end, all of you will die out! If you don’t want to die right now, try killing me!” A self-righteous transcendent being who’d dreamed of the preciousness of life yet chose to cast it away. “Come! It’s time to settle things!”
In front of the Hero’s party stood a being with a dark mist emanating from his entire body. This was the one who’d destroyed the world and taken countless lives. This was the power of darkness he wielded, limitless and bottomless. He was the incarnation of the despair and death of every living thing and the very antithesis of the Hero—the light that had filled the world. The great god and king of demons.
“Feeeeerd!”
A phantom of the Great Demon King had appeared. But this had been impossible to begin with. The artifact used Udo’s desires to calculate the world, but since reproducing the most essential parts was extremely difficult, it kept spitting out errors. That was why such unlikely events were taking place now.
“I am the darkness, the end of life!”
The Great Demon King, who should have been defeated at the very end of the great war, had suddenly appeared. He was difficult to reproduce and just patched together, with only his surface-level rage being apparent.
Just before the Great Demon King could make a move, a blade of murderous intent compressed to a terrifying density turned into a red glimmer and came flying at his neck. Sazaki, the Lightspeed Blademaster, and his bewitched sword were going all out. The ultimate speed cut through the space of darkness that rejected everything and definitely reached its mark. However...
“You’re too fast, you drunkard!”
If it was too fast to avoid, then there was no need to worry about it. Even being cut along with space itself only caused a bit of pain to the Great Demon King.
“The tower falls. The heavens fall. Let ruin come here. Let destruction come here. Now is the time of annihilation.”
Lara activated her magic without a moment’s delay. Unlike what she’d used against the army of undead, the beam of destruction that was fired from this magic circle was impossibly slim. In other words, it was incredibly concentrated, and it clearly contained far too much destructive power to use against a single opponent. If any of her apprentices were here, would they be rendered speechless to learn that she’d even chanted to cast this spell? No, they’d probably understand that it was only natural for their mentor to get serious against the Great Demon King. While chanting delayed a spell’s activation, its power increased with each spoken word. However, there were very few enemies that Lara would need to go to that trouble for. It was because she was up against that Great Demon King that she had no choice but to go all out.
“Odd little creature! Why are you throwing these pebbles at me?!”
Although thin, the destructive power was beyond human understanding, and yet the Great Demon King batted it away with his bare hands like it was a balled up piece of paper. As the magic was deflected behind him, it dragged everything around the point of impact into a void of nothingness.
Normally, Max, Stein, and Sazaki would have jumped in at this point, but they matched their pace with the slower Ferd; the three of them couldn’t stand before the Great Demon King without him.
“At least remember that you lost, you giant moron! I’m gonna crack your skull open again!”
“What are you talking about, you fool?!”
The two ultimate counterparts argued like common thugs, but the clash of the extreme light and darkness was the end of the world itself.