Abraham didn’t leave behind a single word after that. You would have expected him to say something to Lobelia, the next emperor, but instead he quietly lowered his head and slowly passed away.
Was it because he lacked the strength to speak? No, that probably wasn’t it.
Considering his willpower, he could have spoken dozens more sentences if he wanted to.
He simply chose not to. He decided to leave nothing behind.
Quietly, slowly, I could feel Abraham’s breathing growing fainter.
It was a humble death. Unlike the course of his life, it was also a quiet one.
And then, the moment Abraham died—
“Mwahahahahaha!!”
The demon that had been keeping silent all this time burst into loud laughter.
Shadows spread.
As though trying to swallow up my exhausted body, the expanding shadow looked down at me and shouted,
“What a shame, Johan Damus! You were planning to use that bizarre magic of yours to nullify our contract, weren’t you?!”
“……”
“I knew it all along. I had already figured out that you never dispelled that magic before making a contract with me! You thought you could deceive me by maintaining one spell inside another, but how ridiculous!”
A gigantic arm made of shadow descended as if to grab me.
“But look! The scars left behind by the emperor have been engraved upon your soul! If you break the spell and try to ignore the contract now, you’ll die.”
“I wasn’t planning to do that anyway.”
“……”
Apparently this brat had built up quite a bit of resentment after getting pushed around from all sides.
Well, that was understandable.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I never intended to leave myself a way out in the first place.”
If I thought I had a backup plan, I felt like my resolve would weaken. So I truly intended to throw everything away.
And to begin with, there was no guarantee that [Adventure] could even undo a contract.
Considering that it couldn’t even heal the wound inflicted by Lævateinn, I wasn’t sure something like that was possible in the first place.
“……”
The shadow, which had expanded so dramatically, quickly shrank back down.
“Ahem, ahem. It seems I misunderstood you.”
“You mean you suspected me.”
The fact that she immediately started with mockery and contempt made it obvious she had been convinced I was going to betray her.
“Silence, Johan Damus. You can’t live without me anyway.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
Yuna, who had been unusually quiet throughout the battle, finally spoke for the first time that day, and her words rang out with particular clarity.
“You bastard, I told you to watch how you say things. Someone’s going to get the wrong idea.”
“Did I say anything incorrect? I merely stated the facts.”
Mephi stood there, shamelessly confident.
And on top of that, the brat wasn’t even in her old little kid form anymore.
With the way she looked now, anyone who saw her could easily get the wrong idea, which gave every word she said a completely different weight.
“Johan Damus can’t live without me. No, if I don’t help him, he’ll be wiped out almost immediately.”
“Say it properly. Why?”
“W-Well…”
Even now, after making a contract and obtaining tremendous power, was Yuna still intimidating to her? At the low rumble in Yuna’s voice, Mephi visibly shrank as she answered.
“His injuries are severe, despite how he may look. They’re fatal. Judging by the standards of the original Johan Damus, these are wounds that would have killed him roughly four hundred times over.”
“Why are you using a person as a standard?”
“Would you prefer I explain it using meat?”
“A person is fine.”
Just hearing it phrased that way painted a horrifying image in my head.
“Take a look.”
“Hey! What are you doing?!”
“Stop making sounds like a little girl, Johan Damus. It makes me want to kill you.”
Seriously, who suddenly lifts someone’s shirt like that? Of course I was startled. Do you have any idea how delicate my heart is?
“These are wounds inflicted by the emperor. They can’t be healed with divine power, and even natural recovery would take a full ten years. Of course, if left alone, the wounds would spread and kill you long before they ever healed.”
Well, that made sense.
The sword Abraham wielded had always been that powerful.
Considering I had assumed even a graze would annihilate me, this was almost a relief.
“And I, this great Child of the End, the strongest Great Demon, the youngest child whom Father is proud of, Lord Mephistopheles, wield the authority of time manipulation.”
“This little punk grew up and started piling on a lot of titles.”
Her body had grown, but her behavior had somehow become even more childish.
“Stop yapping, Johan Damus. Do you still not understand? Your life now depends entirely on my mercy.”
That was true.
For all practical purposes, my contract with Mephi had been fulfilled the moment we defeated the emperor.
Even if she decided to collect my soul right now, there wouldn’t be much I could do about it.
“But you’re not going to do that.”
“……”
The relationship between Mephi and me had grown fairly close by now. We weren’t at the point where we’d part ways in something as simple as this.
Perhaps Mephi felt the same way, because she couldn’t bring herself to refute what I said.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. If I collected your soul now, I’d only be collecting a damaged soul. It’s simply more efficient to heal it first and then retrieve it in its original condition.”
“……”
“Just talk, you son of a bitch.”
“Yeah sure.”
“You bastard.”
Wow. I was actually trying to let that slide, but apparently she couldn’t keep a straight face.
Looks like the poker face is slipping for the first time in a while.
Then again, what was I supposed to do? What she was saying was textbook tsundere behavior.
The kind that went out of style ages ago, no less. It was impossible not to feel the corners of my mouth twitch.
“Anyway, Johan Damus’s life is practically in my hands.”
“……”
At Mephi’s confident declaration, Yuna’s eyebrow twitched, but she couldn’t think of anything to add.
For some reason, my chest suddenly felt tight.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why was I the one feeling suffocated?
Wait a second.
“Ghk!”
I really was suffocating now. Physically.
My head spun, and I couldn’t breathe properly.
“Johan Damus?”
Mephi who had half-buried herself in the shadows while avoiding Yuna’s gaze tilted her head and looked at me.
Judging by her reaction, it didn’t seem like she was the one responsible for this.
“This bastard. Talking all that big game, and you can’t even do one thing right……”
The wound hurt.
It felt as though the blood in my entire body was boiling, and my vision swam.
And the moment my consciousness faded into darkness—
“……!”
For some reason, the only thing that began to stand out clearly in the darkness filling my vision was Lævateinn, the sword Abraham had wielded.
***
Laevatein, the Demon King’s Corpse.
A divine weapon imbued with the power of destruction.
It was so catastrophic that it could leave scars even upon that black void, and its power was such that a mere graze felt capable of killing four hundred versions of myself.
And in reality, the wound left by that blade remained engraved upon my body like an ancient scar.
If Mephi hadn’t suppressed its power by manipulating time, I would have turned to ashes long ago.
But was that really all there was to it?
Was a sword forged from the Demon King’s flesh merely powerful?
Levateinn had brushed against my body.
Which also meant it had unquestionably made contact with me.
“……”
I was standing before darkness.
As I looked up at the darkness stretching infinitely, wider than any ocean, it felt as though my soul might be dragged away somewhere by its sheer presence alone.
“Why is this……?”
If there was one thing shining within that darkness, it was the crimson blade in my hand.
Levateinn.
I was bewildered because I had no idea why the sword was in my grasp.
I couldn’t let go of it.
I couldn’t drop it, and I was certain that I must not.
“……”
It felt as though someone was looking down at me.
No matter where I looked, there was nothing but endless darkness, yet an overwhelming presence lingered all around me.
“Who are you?”
I asked in a trembling voice.
No answer came.
A fear clearer than any I had ever felt coiled around my entire body like a gigantic serpent.
And then, at that moment, a voice spoke.
A will whose origin I could not discern pierced directly into my soul.
“What you hold in your hand is the body.”
Lævateinn
“What dwells within your body is the soul.”
The Demon King Jedidiah.
“And what connects them is qualification.”
The great demon Mephistopheles.
“Thus, the end of the world has once again been completed.”
Whose voice was that?
At the chillingly emotionless voice, I found myself thinking of the being Lapis and Mephi called “Father”.
But no, that couldn’t be it.
A being like that shouldn’t be capable of communicating in this way.
At the end of all things, there is no will. Only a concept that exists in and of itself.
Then whose voice was this?
“It’s a hallucination.”
This wasn’t anyone’s voice.
Nor could it possibly be anyone’s voice.
“It’s nothing more than an illusion.”
This was something created by my own fear.
It was simply easier to believe that someone was speaking to me.
But I knew.
The “end” of all things exists.
And right now, it was looking down at me.
Yes, it was only watching.
It wasn’t saying anything at all.
The truth was that I was so afraid of that fact that I had convinced myself I could hear a voice.
I had tried to drag the incomprehensible down to a level where I could somehow understand it.
That was all.
“Do not look.”
“No, you must face it.”
“He is far away.”
“No, he is within you.”
“Can you see him?”
“Can you hear him?”
“Can you feel him?”
“Is that truly so?”
“Is there not nothing at all?”
The incomprehensible voices continued to echo through my mind.
I couldn’t tell which of those emotionless voices, if any, was the truth.
I couldn’t do any of it.
I couldn’t even understand whether I was truly standing upright.
What was I doing right now?
It felt like my head was about to split apart.
“Stop!”
The knowledge that he was watching me filled me with an indescribable terror.
If only he had said something.
If only he had shown some sign of intent.
Then perhaps I wouldn’t have been this afraid.
But he did not speak.
Nor did he reveal any will.
He simply existed there.
At the destination of all things.
At that very end.
The mere fact that he existed there was enough to inspire fear.
Then was I moving toward that end?
Was I trying to return to Father’s embrace?
I had wandered for a very long time.
I had rebelled.
I had fallen into slumber.
Yet Father never reproached me.
Not when I shattered him.
Not when I tried to hide how deeply Alice’s death had wounded me.
Not when I failed to toy with the hopelessly naive Faust and instead willingly fell for Johan Damus’s schemes.
“Huh?”
Then who was I?
Which one of us was I, exactly?
Jedidiah? Johan Damus? Or was it Mephistopheles?
Amid the confusion, the only thing I could be certain of was that I was a child of the Great Father.
“Father.”
I have returned.
So, as you always have, watch over me.
Bear witness to me, the one who will adorn the end of all things for your sake.
“Johan has three fathers?”
“……”
It was then, while I stood there entranced, staring blankly into the darkness.
That playful voice snapped me back to my senses in an instant.
The part of my mind that had been dissolving into the darkness hastily rebuilt its walls.
That had been dangerous.
Truly dangerous.
I had nearly abandoned myself without even realizing it.
What chilled me most was that this wasn’t some trick of the “End”.
It was a refuge I had chosen for myself out of fear.
Still, I was lucky.
“That line could sound very strange depending on who’s hearing it.”
Letting out a sigh at the mischievous joke, I turned around.
A single gray line had been drawn across the world of darkness.
It was so thin that one could easily miss it without consciously looking for it.
That boundary was the path from the beginning to the end. The “process”.
And standing somewhere along that process, I found someone.
Not the remnant called Oracle that I had lost that day.
“Alice……”
It was really her.
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