Johan was taken down.
Monia was stunned by how quickly everything had happened.
“Hmph.”
Librarian Molech slammed Johan into the ground and slowly straightened up.
Since Johan had landed headfirst, he looked completely unconscious.
“I meant to crush his skull right then and there… and he’s still alive?”
Molech growled, rubbing the neck that Johan had slashed.
“Kh!”
Monia immediately thrust her spear.
Molech’s body still wasn’t in perfect condition. Maybe, just maybe, she could kill him now.
“Hmph!”
Clang!
But Molech swatted the spear away with his hand, as if brushing off a mere insect.
Monia lost her grip and dropped the weapon easily.
Of course she did. Her body and mind were already exhausted.
She had only recently gotten out of a sickbed; her stamina was at rock bottom.
And she had been pushing herself relentlessly without sleep ever since.
It wouldn’t be strange at all if she collapsed right then and there.
“Gah!”
In an instant, Molech grabbed Monia by the neck.
“Give up, dear guest. Or must I trample your last sliver of hope myself for you to understand?”
Still holding Monia up by the neck, Molech pressed his foot firmly onto Johan’s head.
It was a miracle Johan hadn’t died from that earlier blow.
A bit more pressure, and his skull would be crushed without resistance.
“So…what will it be?”
Monia looked down at Johan.
The dark emotions that always surged within her whenever she saw him were strangely quiet now.
Maybe Shax’s power could no longer shake her.
In the end, Monia could only nod in resignation.
She was someone who barely had the will to live in the first place.
She didn’t want to cling to life any more than this.
Everyone else’s lives were too precious to be sacrificed for someone like her.
“I’ll go quietly. So just… leave that bastard alone.”
Monia sneered.
But it was a sneer directed at no one but herself. A pitiful mockery of her own weakness.
***
The Black Knight, Lanius, was locked in fierce combat with Tillis.
She was the one he had whimsically spared.
He had wiped out the elves, but never gave much thought to what came afterward.
As expected, sparing her had been a mistake.
That foolish choice was the very reason for today’s nuisance.
“Hmm.”
A golden spear, brimming with ferocity, carved a trail like a comet dragging its tail.
Kwaaaang!
Just a single swing.
Spun around from his center like drawing a circle, the spear swept away everything within a 30-meter radius like a typhoon.
“Young elf. I have a question.”
“Hmm, and what would that be?”
Tillis, who had effortlessly dodged Lanius’s previous attack, shrugged her shoulders and waited for him to continue.
“What is your objective?”
“I thought you already knew.”
Lanius shook his head. Of course, he did know her goal and in rather specific detail.
Once the Oracle aligned with the imperial family, there were many things he learned whether he wanted to or not.
Gathering the seventy‑second ranked demons to be reborn as the Demon King. Then bury the world in shadow and, by sending it into eternal sleep, achieve world peace… it was a mad idea.
In one sense it’s world peace; in another it’s the destruction of the world.
Honestly, Lanius could hardly call that idea incomprehensible.
He had lived for a very long time, and in that time he’d seen and killed plenty of lunatics.
“I’m asking why you nurture such a dream.”
“Hmm… I don’t know?”
Tillis’s dream was enormous.
And now she stood on the verge of realizing it.
So why had she dreamed that dream?
If she at least blamed the world, he might have understood.
If she’d ranted about revenge or hatred of the world, he might have felt some guilt.
But Tillis was different.
Even though the one who’d burned the World Tree and the elven lands stood before him, she showed not hatred but only calm.
She even sighed as if dealing with him was tedious.
“Just because I can?”
Tillis had an objective.
But there was no driving force behind it.
It wasn’t for a cause.
Not to avenge anyone.
Not to carry on someone else’s dream or to keep a promise.
In short, Tillis decided to destroy the world “just because”.
After all, she happened to have the power to do it.
Lanius couldn’t begin to understand that bizarre way of thinking.
“People often call me a mad berserker.”
Lanius was insane.
That was something he fully acknowledged.
After all, wasn’t it more unnatural for someone who had bathed in blood for centuries on countless killing fields to remain sane?
Once the spark of battle ignited within him, he was like a fuse that wouldn’t burn out. He wouldn’t stop until his enemy was dead and gone.
Collateral damage along the way? Not even a consideration.
So yes, it made sense that people called him a berserker.
“But you… you’re the real lunatic.”
At least Lanius could still think.
He could understand, at least in his mind, what was right and what was wrong.
He had become a monster through endless tempering in blood, but what about the elf before him?
Tillis had no cause. No justification. Not even a shred of desire.
How could something like her even exist?
He couldn’t comprehend it.
It felt like looking at something fundamentally alien and it disturbed him.
“If only you had hated me.”
Had she at least resented him, the tip of his spear might have dulled just a little.
But now, he felt not a shred of sympathy for Tillis.
“What can you do?”
Tillis smiled as she watched Lanius begin to radiate a ferocious killing intent.
An innocent, pure smile.
“I suppose that’s why they call me a saintess.”
The most alien being in this world charged at Lanius, sword in hand.
***
Tillis’s attacks were heavy, each blow carrying weight, yet dazzlingly swift and varied.
Her twin blades swung with a chilling ferocity, and the diverse powers wielded by the demons under her command were enough to disorient any opponent.
Lightning that could dye the sky itself, infernal fire that made the earth bubble like molten lava, storms that sliced through steel pillars like tofu, and cold so intense it could freeze blood on contact.
Every kind of power, every form of brilliant swordsmanship closed in around Lanius’s neck.
“Hmph.”
Lanius, in contrast, was utterly composed.
Every movement he made was deliberate and grounded.
Holding his ground, he deflected the twin swords and the barrage of demonic powers aimed at him with nothing but a single spear.
To an outsider, it might have looked like he was being overwhelmed.
But the moment he had fended off all of Tillis’s onslaught—
A thrust, infused with all his might, shattered the forms of the demons in an instant.
With overwhelming force, he pierced through their powers, driving his spear clean through Mastema’s wing and striking Tillis’s body.
Shreeeeeeek!
The sound came only after.
Just the act of swinging his spear caused the air to rupture, unleashing a sound so loud it could tear through ears.
Whooooooosh!!
Tillis, unable to withstand the full force of Lanius’s blow, was sent flying.
Cradled mid-air in Mastema’s arms, she was hurled several meters away.
Even as her arms trembled from the shock, Tillis laughed while looking at them.
“To think it hit that hard even though I blocked it properly…”
He’s strong.
Lanius realized the battle wouldn’t be easy the moment his strike failed to pierce her heart.
In terms of skill, of course, Lanius far outmatched Tillis.
In both power and technique, Tillis couldn’t hope to keep up.
But stamina—
That was another story.
“This much? I can handle it just fine.”
Tillis didn’t tire.
To be precise, among the demons she commanded was one whose power continuously restored her stamina and healed her wounds.
Unless he severed her head in a single blow, defeating her was impossible.
Lanius couldn’t help but account for the aging of his own body.
“No other choice, then.”
He gripped his spear tightly.
Truthfully, he could fight another thirty minutes. If it came to that, reinforcements would arrive, and when they did, he could finish Tillis off for good.
But there would be blood.
An absurd amount of blood, flowing like a river.
Sacrifices were to be expected on the battlefield. But this time, he didn’t want that.
A sliver of pity had taken root in him….just enough to make him hesitate, with the last elf standing before him.
Back then, he had added excuses to the command for genocide.
He could have killed her. But he didn’t. Because he hadn’t wanted to kill a child.
He had used the order of extermination as an excuse to cover for his deviation.
“This is something I brought on myself. I should be the one to resolve it.”
Because anything else would only smear his lord’s name.
Abraham was already known as a monster among the people.
A few more stains on his reputation wouldn’t change much.
But just because something was familiar didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
As the only one in the world who truly understood Abraham, Lanius had no intention of shifting the blame for the consequences of the seeds he had sown.
“In the name of His Majesty the Emperor.”
Even if it meant pushing himself beyond his limits—
He would end it with the next strike.
If the enemy’s shield was too strong, then he would simply crush both shield and wielder with a force so absolute that no defense could withstand it.
“I shall prepare the execution grounds for you.”
The knight in black armor, who had remained solemnly in place, finally took a heavy step forward. As if the time had come.
What gathered at the tip of his spear was blackness.
Power, condensed to its very limit, swallowed even the colors of the world.
“…….!”
The moment Tillis saw that blackness at the spear’s tip, she too resolved to give everything she had.
It was no longer a matter of reason, but instinct.
Even compared to the sword the Emperor had wielded days prior, she instinctively sensed that the power concentrated at the tip of that spear was far greater.
“Mastema.”
There was no avoiding it.
Blocking it was impossible.
To respond to the blow of the Black Knight, now within the realm of certainty, Tillis drew upon the power of every demon she had ever commanded.
Wings unfolded.
On each wing, the sigils of the demons she had gathered began to glow.
Those sigils, in every color imaginable, began to intertwine—
Weaving together as if forming a single, grand magic circle.
At last, all the light merged into one, beginning to shimmer in a silvery white glow.
“Lemegeton.”
When Tillis uttered the word that symbolized all demons, a beam of silvery-white light burst from Mastema’s eyes.
Fzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!
The clash of those two immense powers was quieter than anyone could have expected.
Lanius’s blackness tore through Tillis’s silvery white as if devouring it whole….effortlessly.
There wasn’t even an impact.
The blackness, infused with overwhelming power, advanced without hesitation, like a brushstroke covering a blank canvas, leaving not a single trace of the silvery white behind.
“Ah.”
And in the moment that blackness reached her eyes—
Realizing her full-powered strike had been so easily nullified, Tillis let out a single stunned syllable, thick with disbelief.
And in that very instant—
“Hrm!”
Her loyal subordinate threw himself forward, using his entire body to block the blackness.
***
Lanius’s full-power strike could be described as the very essence of nothingness. Something even the Emperor Abraham had no answer for.
There was a reason he was known as the Emperor’s right hand and closest friend.
Though Abraham far surpassed Lanius in overall fighting power, there was one technique…just one that even he could not overcome.
And it was that fact which allowed the two men to build a trust that was pure and unshakable.
Lanius’s strike wasn’t something that could be stopped just because someone stepped in the way.
It covered over everything. Stained it black.
Though it left little visible damage, it destroyed whatever it was aimed at without fail.
It was a secret technique born of a lifetime on the battlefield, not by obliterating everything around him, but by striking with absolute precision—
So precise, so silent, that no one ever truly understood its destructive power.
“Ha…”
Lanius’s spear pierced clean through Molech, who had hurled his huge body forward to shield Tillis.
Molech’s enormous form was dyed black—
Becoming just another part of that darkness.
There wasn’t even a trace of resistance left.
The power behind Lanius’s thrust hadn’t diminished in the slightest.
But…
“…I’ve grown soft.”
At the last moment, Lanius twisted the tip of his spear.
The black energy gathered at its point faded away as it passed by Tillis’s head.
“Guh!”
And the price was steep.
Lanius lowered his head, looking down at the sword piercing through his abdomen.
He had hesitated.
Because the scene overlapped with a memory from the past.
The moment he pierced through Molech, he was suddenly reminded of another—
When the parents of a young elf threw themselves forward to protect their child.
Yes, it had been the same back then.
Lanius had felt a flicker of pity at the sight of the small girl looking up at him.
Though he never showed it outwardly…
“So that’s what it was…”
He had thought that after all these years, whatever humanity he once had had long worn away.
Lanius let out a hollow laugh.
He hadn’t known.
No one here could have known.
“It wasn’t charm.”
Tillis’s ability wasn’t charm.
Even the Imperial Intelligence Division hadn’t figured that out, it seemed.
But it couldn’t be helped.
After all, she probably didn’t know it herself.
Tillis believed her ability was charm, but she was wrong.
Her true ability was…
“Emotional amplification.”
It was a truly ironic thing.
That someone who seemed so devoid of emotion possessed such a power.
This feeling of pity. It was a lie.
Merely a false sense of pity, amplified by Tillis’s ability.
“Khuhuhu…”
And yet, Lanius didn’t find it entirely unpleasant.
He was a man who, as the Emperor’s sword, had taken the lives of thousands over the years.
So worn down that even the label “monster” no longer fazed him.
But just for this moment…
“Looks like… there was still something left in me after all.”
He realized that he was still human.
“The sky may be dark… but I can’t say I feel all that bad.”
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