Dietrich had no one he could truly call a master.
An ordinary commoner born in the back alleys.
For someone like Dietrich, even getting the opportunity to learn was no easy thing. In that regard, he had been fortunate.
Thanks to his friend Kult, he had been able to become an apprentice knight of a marquis household.
But what he gained from that was only the realization that his own ceiling was absurdly high.
There was no one capable of teaching him.
At most, what he had learned was how to hold a sword, how to swing it, and the proper mindset.
That was why Dietrich had no one he could call a master.
“Cough!”
And so, when he ran into a wall—
When his growth came to a halt, there was no one he could turn to for advice.
He had to overcome all of it on his own.
In that sense, Dietrich’s master was himself.
This won’t work.
And because of that, whenever he could not find an answer on his own, he became completely helpless, as though faced with an impenetrable wall.
Dietrich’s talent was extraordinary.
But the wall before him was equally immense.
The only things capable of overcoming it were himself or…
“You possess remarkable talent.”
…an overwhelmingly powerful warrior, someone so far beyond him that even he could not begin to deal with them.
In that sense, Dietrich’s masters were also the overwhelming enemies he had faced.
Through countless defeats, Dietrich had achieved exponential growth. Yet there was also a problem that came with it.
“You’re relentless. Indeed, I think I can finally understand how those who fought me must have felt.”
He still had not solved the problem that only he could resolve.
The fusion of Divine Power and his ability.
Trace which summoned the past into the present, and Divine Power which returned the present to the past.
The two forces were fundamentally opposed.
That was why it was impossible to use them simultaneously.
Perhaps it truly was impossible.
But he was certain of one thing.
Kult, why did you choose me?
Perhaps Kult who had unknowingly bestowed a blessing upon him and tried to make him a paladin had known the answer.
But Kult was gone.
He did not know what Kult had seen in him.
This was a problem that no one else could solve.
He had to solve it himself.
“Argh!”
Dietrich had always learned through powerful opponents.
He had always grown stronger by facing them.
And this time, the enemy before him was so overwhelmingly powerful that victory was impossible without growth.
I have to do it.
Against such an overwhelming opponent, Dietrich continued trying to fuse Divine Power and his ability.
It was no easy task.
If anything, it only increased the injuries accumulating throughout his body.
Every time sword and spear collided, a scream escaped Dietrich’s lips.
It would not have been an exaggeration to say he had already suffered fatal wounds several times over.
Yet the reason he could keep trying was because Helena believed in him and continued supporting him.
When Helena’s heart had first been pierced, he had been furious beyond measure.
But after seeing her rise again and immediately return to the battlefield, he changed his mind.
Helena was no longer a child who needed to be protected.
If that was the case, then perhaps it was all right for him to focus on himself for once.
“So annoying…!”
A vivid surge of anger.
Dietrich glared at the Black Knight Lanius who effortlessly blocked every strike no matter how fiercely he swung his sword.
Strong Sword, Flowing Sword, Phantom Sword, Tyrant Sword…none of them worked.
But what angered him most was that he himself was Lanius’s greatest weakness.
Lanius’s ability was [Regeneration].
And Dietrich’s ability [Trace] was the greatest counter to healing powers, including Divine Power itself.
Yet he could not make use of it.
Lanius never revealed his [Regeneration], and Dietrich never managed to leave a [Trace].
The difference in skill was that great.
This was the first time he had been outclassed not in power, not in the uniqueness of an ability, but in pure technique.
“Haa…”
His mind had been pushed to the brink.
His body had been battered to its limit.
Death crept closer with every passing moment.
Within his blood-stained vision, two lights crossed paths.
What were you thinking?
Dietrich asked.
He asked the unseen Kult.
A pure white radiance and a rainbow-colored glow.
Divine Power and Trace.
Why didn’t you ever tell me anything? You could have at least given me a hint.
Dietrich did not know.
Kult had taught him everything he himself did not know, yet never taught him the one thing he needed most.
Especially when it came to swordsmanship and his ability.
Why?
Kult had intended to make him into a sword.
And yet he had told him nothing related to that path.
He had merely led him to the entrance.
I don’t know.
His vision was red.
Blood flowing from his head blurred his sight.
Now that I think about it, you never once gave me an answer.
There had been a time when he wanted to stand on his own without Kult’s help.
He wanted to cast off the weakness that had always made him depend on him.
But looking back now, he had learned nothing.
He knew nothing.
Everything he possessed had been chosen by himself.
Kult could have indoctrinated him even further if he had wanted to.
“Yeah…”
The lights before his eyes were no longer distinguishable.
The holy radiance of Divine Power and the rainbow brilliance of Trace had become impossible to tell apart.
Dietrich did not know.
He had no way of realizing that the two lights, which had endlessly devoured one another, were gradually becoming one.
Now that the lights had merged—
For some strange reason, his sword was shrouded in black.
“There must have been a reason. Knowing that is enough.”
All he needed to know was where the entrance to the path was or that the path existed at all.
Because walking it forward was his responsibility.
The reason Kult never told Dietrich anything was because Dietrich was the closest thing to perfect purity.
Trying to teach him something would only have hindered his growth.
A talent that existed not in the realm of logic or reason, but instinct.
A beast that could only observe itself when immersed in a state of complete selflessness.
Because his vision had been obscured, he had been trapped by the belief that the two powers could not be combined.
There was no need to think about how to harmonize two opposing forces.
“Haa…”
Dietrich swung the blackened blade, stained by blood, at Lanius.
Bang!
A different sound rang out.
For the first time, Dietrich’s sword completely stopped Lanius’s spear.
But that was all.
The gap in physical strength and the power accumulated through time could not be overturned so easily.
Little by little, he was pushed back.
Yet raw power was not the only thing gained from the fusion of Divine Power and his ability.
Slash!
Blood burst forth.
“Mm!”
Through the gaps in his helm, Lanius’s eyes narrowed in pain.
Dietrich’s attack had not landed.
It should have been impossible.
If anything, it had been Dietrich who barely managed to block Lanius’s attack.
And yet, merely coming into indirect contact was enough to affect the opponent.
“I see. So that is the nature of this power.”
Lanius smiled.
It was truly a strange thing.
An ability that inflicted effects without ever making contact.
Then what kind of effect had it produced?
“Have you dragged wounds from the past onto the body of the present?”
A power that summoned traces of the past into the present.
A power that returned the present state back to the past.
The result of those two forces intertwining—
It reverted the current body to a moment in the past when it was covered in traces and wounds.
A deadly ability.
Especially for someone like Lanius, who had spent his entire life on the battlefield.
So then… are these wounds the most recent ones I received?
Blood poured from every part of Lanius’s body, yet he remained calm.
If anything, he became even more composed.
The wounds reproduced upon his body.
The traces of the past.
“They say a single mistake can follow a person for the rest of their life.”
From the wounds he received in his battle against the Great Warrior Vidar to the injuries inflicted by the Judge Tillis… old scars resurfaced across his body.
If he remained exposed to that power any longer, even wounds from the era of the Great War might begin to overlap onto his flesh.
“Hmm.”
Among them, one wound hurt far more than the others.
A searing pain spread through his abdomen. The wound Tillis had given him.
The battle against Vidar had been difficult, but the wound from Tillis was especially painful.
Because it had been caused by his hesitation.
It was a wound born from the hesitation he felt back then.
And beyond that, from the hesitation he felt when destroying the nation of the elves.
And if he traced it back even further—
“Enough.”
—to the day he lost his wife.
And to the fact that he had fallen in love with his elven wife in the first place.
Do not create someone you love.
That was Emperor Abraham’s creed.
It was sincere advice that could only come from someone who knew the wounds such love could leave behind.
Lanius had been no different.
Countless years had passed, and he now lived little differently from a creature sustained by violence and madness.
Yet the emotions that had once burned like a flame still remained.
Whenever that old love occasionally resurfaced, Lanius found himself regretting it again and again.
“How much longer do you intend to torment me?”
A sinister aura flowed from him.
The brutality of the Black Knight, who had spent most of his life on battlefields, began to emerge.
“Lunael, just how long do you intend to hold me back?”
He should never have loved her.
“I hate you.”
The mistake of that day had followed him for a lifetime.
Yes, a lifetime.
For someone like Lanius, who had lived for centuries, her existence had interfered with his judgment time and time again.
“I hate you!”
The tip of the Black Knight’s spear turned black.
It was different from the “light” dwelling within Dietrich’s sword.
This was a “color”. It was dark and thick, as though black ink might drip from it at any moment.
“I should never have loved you!!”
He hated the love he had felt back then.
He hated that beautiful farewell.
He hated the fact that such a moment had existed at all when he himself had become such a monstrous person.
She had told him, even in the face of death, that she loved him.
She should never have done that.
Had she ever realized that those words would bind him for the rest of his life?
“It is done.”
A power like black ink dripped from the tip of the spear.
Even Dietrich felt a chill at the sheer extremity of the technique before him, a level of mastery beyond measure.
It was the ultimate strike.
A blow that even the Judicator had failed to stop.
His attacks could recreate wounds from the past without even touching the target?
Then the answer was simple.
End the battle before that power could take effect.
“Die. All of you.”
This was a spear that had killed countless people.
A spear that had ended innumerable lives.
A pitch-black spear born from all of those deaths.
The strike he unleashed now was connected to every one of those moments.
It contained his entire life.
His ugliness.
His sins.
The life of a man who had killed more people than almost anyone else.
No one could stop it.
There was no way anyone could stop it.
Thud!
It could not be dodged.
Dietrich realized it instinctively. This strike was not aimed at him alone. It was an attack that would pierce everything in a straight line, himself included.
Behind Dietrich stood Helena and the rest of the Misfits group. Even if every one of them managed to evade it, the World Tree still stood beyond them.
At minimum, something would be lost.
At worst, everything would be lost.
It was that kind of attack.
A strike that forced an utterly horrific choice, one with no way out.
“Haah……”
Dietrich did not dodge.
He knew it could not be blocked. This strike would kill him.
And that was not all. It would erase everything along its path.
Just as black ink swallows an entire painting.
That was why not dodging was no different from throwing away his life.
Like a moth diving into a flame.
A truly foolish act.
Yet Dietrich knew.
There was only one way to overcome this strike. It could not be blocked, and if he dodged, the World Tree would be destroyed.
Even if I die, I will bring down the Black Knight here and now.
Death could not be avoided.
In that case, he would accept that absolute punishment himself. It was the most efficient choice.
He was the only one who could kill the Black Knight, and this was his only chance.
Either everyone dies, or one person dies.
In that situation, the best option was to stake his own life and take his opponent’s head.
To save everyone else.
That was the path with the highest chance of success.
Kiiiiing!
A sharp ringing filled his ears.
The moment he thought the spear had been thrust forward, it was already right in front of him.
But at that moment…
Slash!
Dietrich’s sword cut through Lanius.
There was only a single sound.
Lanius’s strike made no noise at all.
More precisely…
“I knew this would happen.”
Lanius’s spear failed to pierce anything. Ironically, the strike that should have claimed at least one life ended up killing no one.
The reason was simple.
“Haha……”
At the sight of the girl before him, he had unconsciously altered the trajectory of his spear.
He had made the same mistake again.
The girl stood before Lanius with her arms spread wide.
Knowing the destructive power of the attack he was about to unleash, she had rushed forward to stop him.
The moment she realized that the person bleeding to protect her was certain to die, she could no longer stand by.
As the Mother of All Things, she could not allow a certain death to unfold before her eyes.
Nor was she mature enough to simply watch those who fought and bled for her.
“So the mistake I made back then has come back to hold me back once again.”
“I-I survived…?”
The avatar of the World Tree bore the appearance of Tillis as a child.
After all, the birth of this World Tree itself was tied to Tillis.
“I should have killed her back then. I never should have turned away behind such shallow sophistry…”
Lanius had never been able to kill Tillis.
Not when he destroyed the nation of the elves.
Not when she carried out large-scale acts of terror in her pursuit of becoming a Demon King.
And not now.
“No matter what I do, I cannot erase it. I cannot cover it over.”
He could not kill her.
Because that young elf resembled his wife.
That was all.
For that reason alone, he had spared Tillis.
He had dressed it up with excuses, and that single mistake had continued to haunt him ever since.
Even now, he had repeated the same mistake over and over again.
“It is truly difficult.”
Once, he had loved.
He wanted to erase that moment.
When he found that he could not erase it, he tried instead to bury it beneath something else.
The strongest strike he unleashed was born from that very emotion.
He wanted to cover it over as one layers black ink across a page.
He wanted to forget.
Yet even that strike was incapable of erasing her existence.
“Lunael.”
The awakened power of [Regeneration].
A life displaced from the flow of time.
After wandering for countless years, standing at last before death itself—
The Black Knight Lanius spoke.
“I loved you.”
Something he could never erase, no matter how hard he tried.
Something he could never bury beneath anything else.
A pitiful emotion that had blossomed within a life stained by madness and violence.
The confession of an immature fool.
“Now… I can say it with certainty.”
He could no longer deny it.
The life of a butcher with no end in sight.
As the Emperor’s Spear, he had committed countless atrocities. He knew he deserved neither love nor the right to speak such words.
But this was his last chance.
He would surely fall into hell, and there would never be another opportunity.
The cowardly villain Lanius hesitated for a long while before finally speaking.
There was no longer any need for excuses.
And only in the face of death did he finally find certainty.
“I love you. Forever.”
Throughout all of his eternity, that feeling had never once faded.
That love still endured.
It was still alive.
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