301

Chapter 301: Proof (6)

Before the cliff upon which a mass of Demonic Energy had risen, the Hero offered a quiet prayer.

“God.”

To those who sacrifice, the honor they deserve. To those who do not give up, courage equal to the task. To those who seek salvation, unmistakable hope. Proof that devotion has value.

“If that cannot be so.”

…Yet God said: Good must be done for its own sake.

The exhortation to goodness cannot be rewarded. Just as the cycle of nature is not something to praise, and growing old with the passing years is not something to reward, goodness was something that ought to occur naturally, not an act for which one should expect anything in return.

“Then be harsher still.”

Thus, goodness is cruel.

“Test us more severely than anyone else.”

Humans were creatures who yearned for something, yet goodness offered them nothing in return, making it the most ungenerous thing of all.

“So that I may be used wholly as a weapon.”

But even so, she had to pursue it. Though goodness lay in a realm beyond human reach, though her unrewarded heart shattered and her entire body was crushed beneath thankless devotion, she had to.

“Allow me to be used as a weapon that neither thinks nor decides for itself.”

Because she was the ‘Hero,’ it was only right that she should.

“Then I shall arm myself with fortitude and faith that no inner demon can breach.”

But she was a person who was not only the ‘Hero,’ but also human.

“I will uphold Your will forever as a weapon, not as a human being.”

The half-formed thing that could be neither human nor Hero prayed over the heart buried in the grave.

May God roll her onward as a wheel of inevitability. May He ordain that she trace an unwavering course.

Her flesh could tear and her bones could be ground to dust, so long as the future showed that a mortal’s doubts were futile, that within His omniscience lay a greater purpose.

“And so, God.”

If that were to happen.

If she were given the certainty that simply believing and following would resolve everything.

“This is what I beseech of You.”

She could sit amid dust and ashes and await the burnt offering. She could climb onto the altar herself and submit even if ordered to cut open her chest and tear out her heart.

“Please allow me to exist as the Hero.”

For it was a human who suffered in sacrifice, not a Hero, and so she could do it.

KWA-BOOOOM!

The mace, packed to its limit with Divine Power, brought the cliff crashing down.

“You cra—”

I swallowed the curse that had escaped me without thinking and moved. I leaped from one fragment of the collapsing cliff to another.

Of course, it was far from easy. Running out of Mana was one thing, but I had also let all the tension drain from my body after the climb.

Who in the world could have expected the Inquisitor to do this? I had imagined she would either give up and leave or scale the rock face. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought she would smash the entire cliff apart!

[Insane Hero.]

No, seriously. If she had simply climbed up the rock face, I could have sensed her presence, thought, Oh, she’s coming up, and escaped at my leisure. I never imagined she would choose the ‘If you won’t come down, I’ll make you come down’ method.

Thinking that the Inquisitor had become incredibly violent while I had not been looking, I desperately stepped across the falling debris.

The fatigue that had flooded in when I relaxed was quite heavy and made my body stiff, but I had no other choice. I groaned like someone who had run a marathon with a body that never exercised, only to face the muscle pain the next day.

[Step on that and jump!]

Throughout it all, the demon was remarkably cooperative. It made me wonder just how much the bastard hated the thought of dying.

“You fucking….”

At the same time, it pissed me off. The thing guarded its own life that desperately, yet it had never treated anyone else’s life as being worth even a stone by the roadside? That bastard truly deserved to be punished.

Rrrrumble!

“……!”

[God-fucking-damn it…!]

But there was a limit to how much I could struggle with almost no Mana and a body exhausted past its limits.

I made it to the very top of the tumbling debris, but failed to set foot on the cliff. My body lost its balance and finally plummeted along with the masses of rock.

Thud, ka-boooom, rumble-thud.

The chunks of cliff that fell first must have sent clouds of dust billowing everywhere. New fragments piled higher and higher atop them, and then I was added to the heap.

“Cough.”

「Ah….」

The force of the impact, combined with the injuries from several pointed rocks piercing my body, made me cough.

The blood mixed into it confirmed internal bleeding as well, but I was not particularly shocked. After falling from fifty meters up, it would have been stranger if my organs had not ruptured.

“Hah….”

Understanding that did not make it any less regrettable, though. There was a child who needed to be given a chance. I had decided that I wanted to endure for him, too.

Why did it have to be now?

Rustle, crumble.

Stone dust continued raining down around me, crumbling apart with brittle snaps. Some of it fell on my body, further wrecking what was already mangled. One leg was crushed, and an arm was buried.

Wouldn’t even the Hero die from this much? I spat out blood once more and rested my head against the ground.

BOOM!

In the meantime, part of the ground heaved, and someone burst out.

Armor that shone despite the light coating of dust. Red hair that had grown dry and seemed to have faded slightly. A greatshield that was not ornate, but not devoid of artistry either.

That uncommon appearance defined the person’s identity. It was the Inquisitor.

“Khup, mmph.”

I suppressed another cough as I watched the Inquisitor find her balance on the sloping ground.

Why was she coming out down here after smashing the cliff? Had she failed to get clear while bringing it down and been caught in the collapse? Those thoughts came as an added bonus.

[Fuck, fuck, fuck…!]

But ridiculous as that conclusion might seem, from another perspective it was only natural. To break a cliff with a mace, she had to get close, and the Inquisitor was not particularly fast on her feet.

「…It’s all right.」

So I could neither laugh nor cry at this absurd situation. All I could do was lament as I looked at the young woman I had once cherished and the boy trying to console me.

「You did everything you could.」

While he spoke, the woman who had been finding her footing on the sloping ground finally saw me. A brief silence filled the distance between us.

Cough.

“……!”

But how long could this standoff last?

With the boy who looked ready to cry and the expressionless priest before me, I spat out the blood that had risen in my throat. I wanted to hold it back, but there was nothing I could do when my body refused.

The blood that had choked off my breath splattered across my chin, neck, and chest. For the first time, the Inquisitor’s expressionless mask broke.

“…Demon Knight.”

I had thought she had lost every last shred of affection for me, but perhaps that was not the case. Seeing her shaken by my bloody cough, I tried to gauge how the Inquisitor’s feelings might have changed while I was gone.

Had the distance I put between us, hoping my loss would not become a wound to her, meant anything? Had my betrayal instead caused her immense pain? A storm of thoughts swept through me.

“I received an oracle.”

Then our eyes met. I saw the green eyes that had always sparkled whenever they looked at me, but no longer shone that way.

A profound realization struck me in the head.

“An oracle commanding me to kill you.”

Could it be that I had been mistaken about something all this time?

“Demon Knight. That is why I—I….”

I had assumed that whatever I meant to you must be small enough for you to endure.

That the pain of losing it would surely be weak enough for you to overcome.

Because you were a child who stood firm even when I pushed you away, I had believed you would someday forget this pain as well.

I.

I had….

“I came to kill you.”

Ah. If the demon and the boy had become sinners against me, then I was the sinner who had wronged you.

I was the unforgivable sinner who had wronged you.

Read only on MUGEX

The young woman stared at the person who had once been her aspiration, her idol, the one beside whom she had wished to stand.

The buried arm and crushed leg. The rock jutting through his abdomen. The scratches, the tears, the flayed skin. It had been a long time since she had seen that strong man so utterly ruined. All the more so because, until now, the only beings capable of wounding him had been Great Demons or foes who had prepared for him with painstaking thoroughness.

‘This isn’t right.’

But the one who had injured him now was no demon. Nor was it someone who had prepared to target the Demon Knight.

‘This really isn’t right.’

She was the one who had reduced the Demon Knight to his present state.

‘That man is the Demon Knight, of all people.’

In one corner of the Hero’s chest, the heart she had buried beneath stone whispered. But what could she possibly say to it? This was all the result of her choice, a sight she herself had created. Yes, this scene had been made not by a demon, but by the Hero.

‘He’s the man who saved all those people—who saved me.’

And so the Hero ignored that reverberation and raised her mace. He had once said that death was the only salvation, so she gripped the weapon firmly, believing this choice must be right for him as well.

As if that could possibly be true. The heart that had been buried once more stirred.

‘This can’t happen. It mustn’t.’

Would she believe words that even she herself did not believe simply because they came from her heart? The heart continued to struggle desperately. But there were no choices left. The Hero turned away from it and tightened her grip on the mace.

For the Hero to pass judgment upon one who harbored a demon—to deliver death to an innocent person for whom death was the only means of salvation—

was only natural in itself, and so she did not hesitate.

‘After all that man has accomplished, I can’t kill him!’

But the heart spoke again. That is wrong.

And so the Hero raised the mace with her eyes shut. This was the right thing to do. Even if only to prove her resolve, the words she repeated inwardly were exceedingly brief.

‘How… How could I…?’

Even so, the heart screamed. What had once been the Hero’s heart wailed in protest. Before those sobs, the Hero silently put strength into her mace.

Perhaps that was simply how it had to be. Because she was the Hero. Because she was God’s sword, God’s agent, and God’s messenger.

‘Please….’

And so the Hero shut her ears to the cries of the heart that had once been human and brought the mace down. She swung it, hoping this would become his salvation.

“Inquisitor.”

But it did not reach him.

I moved my lips, conscious of my breath beginning to rasp. I worried no sound would come out, but fortunately, it seemed to have reached her. The mace stopped beside my head.

This is pretty frightening.

“Don’t.”

But there was something I had to tell her now.

“Don’t do it, Inquisitor.”

I did not know whether this was the right choice. I could not even be sure whether I was leaving yet another wound on an already wounded young woman, or deceiving you for my own sake.

“Don’t kill yourself.”

But my sin ran too deep for me to stop out of fear, and the thought of you being hurt was too pitiful to bear. I did not care if my sins grew deeper, but I did not want to see your wounds grow any worse.

“…Why would you say that? I am not trying to kill myself. I am trying to kill you.”

I gazed steadily at the young woman who was laboring to keep her face expressionless. Her voice trembled despite her efforts to suppress it, and her eyes rippled though she tried to keep them calm, filling my vision.

I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to do this. The scream rising soundlessly from deep within those green eyes pierced my heart. It was a scream I had created.

“Not me—you! I am telling you that I am trying to kill you!”

In the face of that scream, I was devastated and plunged into bottomless sorrow.

No one in the world could want to kill the person they admired. Losing someone who had shared your journey would be agony even for an older adult. Why had I never considered that? Why had I been so certain you could overcome it?

“You, of all people! You are the one I am trying to kill!!”

You had only just stepped into society, only just become an adult.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize to me.”

“It’s all my fault.”

“You have committed no sin.”

“It was all because I….”

“I said this was not your fault!”

Nineteen and twenty. On Earth, that was the line society had agreed upon to divide children from adults.

“The fact that you are a demon.”

But the moment a nineteen-year-old child became a twenty-year-old young adult, could the person who had been a child instantly become an adult? Just because eleven fifty-nine p.m. on December thirty-first became midnight on January first of the following year, would every mode of thought and pattern of behavior transform into those of an adult?

“The fact that I have no choice but to kill you.”

No.

Just because the line society had agreed upon meant that he would now be treated as an adult did not mean the person who had been a child until a moment ago would immediately mature. What allowed a former child to grow was more experience, more things lived through.

“None of it is your fault.”

Only more time could turn a child into an adult.

“So, Demon Knight, resent me. Think of it as my failure to save you because I am inadequate.”

Of course, the Inquisitor was probably not literally a child who had only just gone from nineteen to twenty. But physical age and mental age were different, and a child raised in confinement within the Temple could not be regarded in the same way as one raised while experiencing the world.

And so the Inquisitor was young. Just as the boy who had struggled alone and endured in isolation had failed to reflect the five years that had passed, remaining frozen in that earlier time, this young woman was young as well.

“That I sentence you to death because I could find no way whatsoever to save you, and that in this moment I repay grace with resentment—all of it has come to pass because I lack virtue, so condemn only me.”

You were a child who had grown only within the narrow field of vision imposed in the name of serving humanity.

“I….”

“You once told me that you were certain I would overcome all these trials.”

And so, in the end, all I could do was kneel and beg.

“If you still believe that, Inquisitor, then give me just one more chance.”

You were a child who did not even know how to be rightfully angry or recognize that you yourself were hurting. All I could do was fervently pray that you would give me the chance to put things right first.

“I won’t let you see me waver again, so please give me a chance to atone to you.”

Ah. Please, don’t tell me that this apology has come too late.