Volume 4Epilogue

The mana-sealing collar fitted at my throat had shut my magic away entirely.

The most closely guarded confinement tower in the Imperial capital was a quiet place that, the jailers aside, almost no one came near. Shut inside a room of thick iron bars and stout stonework, I gazed at the moonlight that spilled faintly in from without, and turned the recent, heart-quickening battle over and over in my mind.

“They’ve achieved an evolution beyond anything I imagined… it may be that they truly will become the saviors who put a period to this blood-soaked history.”

In the battle in the underground waterway, I tasted, for the first time, a proper defeat. Those two were the first ever to make me bend my knee, I who repeat the same span of time over and over.

“…I’m glad.”

The two of them were a single ray of bright light let into my eyes.

“Valtrune von Felsdorf and Aldia Graetz. In the world one before this, they were swallowed up in calamity, pitiful things and nothing more, and yet… the power an Elect who has inherited their memories holds, the power to change the world, is not to be taken lightly after all.”

Footsteps walking the tower’s spiral stair rang out. The moonlight hid behind cloud, and the chill space ringed with iron bars was dyed in the dark of night.

“…I’m not finished yet, either. Not until I’ve seen with these eyes the moment the world is saved.”

The footsteps drew nearer, step by step, toward me as I murmured alone. The figure that appeared before the iron bars turned a plain, clear hostility on me.

“Oh my, oh my.”

At the merciless presence bent on crushing even me flat, I felt a kind of nostalgia.

“Those two just might overturn the worst of endings. Don’t you think so too?”

Without answering my question, the woman beyond the bars, her long blue hair swaying, spoke in a cooled voice.

“…I’d thought I made it clear you were to keep away from us, back in the Dyrst region.”

“A warning? Don’t you mean, throwing cold water on a beautiful death-struggle?”

When I said it back, she gripped the bars with both hands. The strength in them was more than I’d pictured, a monstrous power enough to warp the thick, sturdy iron.

“Where you’re concerned, I’d honestly be fine killing you right here and now.”

The dense killing intent I’d felt from the sky in the Dyrst forest came back to me. This feeling, too, was different from the time I’d lost to those two. A death-scent that raised the hairs down my spine filled the air.

“Can you kill me, I wonder?”

“A Saint who can’t use magic is nothing to be afraid of.”

Regret, irritation, sorrow, hatred. In the woman’s heart a great many feelings tangled together, complex, and their point was aimed at me, her enemy. That there’d been something in her past was plain. But she had been entirely off my radar. Had I known ahead of time she’d grow strong enough to kill me, I’d surely have observed her at leisure in the world one before.

“You really do hate me. Is that because you’re one of the Elect? Or is it some other grudge?”

“Don’t play the innocent. It was you who set the Kingdom and the cult on the Empire!”

“I act only for my own reasons. The Kingdom and the cult are nothing more than some of the tools I used to see my aim done.”

“You devil…”

“Well now. Which of us is the true devil, I wonder.”

I’ve only ever taken the actions I needed to carry my mission through. Let a threat draw near the Empire, and the Elect will move without fail. To find the ones I’d searched for, setting the Kingdom and the Empire against each other was the quickest road.

“…In the end, you fanned acts of war just to see your own aim through. Truly despicable.”

“The Kingdom army’s invasion of the Empire was down to the Second Prince’s recklessness. What of it is my responsibility?”

“The Second Prince was smitten with you! That a cunning thing like you used that man to send troops into the Dyrst region, I can work out without hearing the details!”

She shouted, carried away by her own feelings. In the hushed confinement tower no one came near, her voice carried well.

“…Well, never mind. As you are now, your magic’s sealed and you can do nothing. Content yourself with sitting quietly and watching us topple the Kingdom and the cult.”

“Fufu. Then I’ll wait for that moment with pleasure. Struggle all you like, foolish little Elect.”

By the time I’d finished speaking, she was already gone. The savage air vanished, and silence came again.

“…I’d rather like to try my hand against her too, one day.”

She was, in all likelihood, a being that edged out, by a slim margin, the pairing of the still-growing Valtrune von Felsdorf and Aldia Graetz. Without the bars between us, I too might have been crushed to death in that superhuman grip.

“The third Elect, is it.”

The blue-haired Elect. The power she held would run to more than a monstrous strength beyond the human, no doubt.

Sadly, she hadn’t the potential in her to kill god. And yet, as things stood, she was likely the strongest Elect in this Empire, no, in this whole world. So my reckoning ran.

“Come to think of it, there’s been an outrageous beast-stink about the place for a while now.”

The moonlight that had been spilling in was blocked by something large, and, covering the small light-opening, a great rolling reptilian eye poured its gaze on me.

“…Oh my, oh my. What a carefully disciplined dragon. Fufu. I feel the very same killing intent as its master’s.”

The monster’s golden, gleaming pair of eyes, a good two sizes larger than an ordinary dragon-mount’s.

Ah, truly, coming to the Empire was the right call. Because it brims so full of the hope of granting me the very ideal I long for.