It’s truly pathetic.
The knights’ advance kept sweeping me away at every turn. There was no way I could stop their heavy charge.
Crackle!
If it weren’t for Lobelia’s support arriving whenever things got dangerous, I would already be a cold corpse.
Of course, that wasn’t a good thing.
It wasn’t as if Lobelia had the luxury of worrying about me. She was supporting me despite being in no position to spare the attention.
And every time she did, she had to pay the price.
“Urgh!”
Lobelia frowned as Abraham’s flames grazed her arm.
It wasn’t even a direct hit. Just a graze, yet it brought an unbelievable amount of pain.
“Haha…”
What on earth am I even doing?
At this point, I’m not even sure what I wanted anymore.
Still, there was one thing left in my mind.
“Please give up, Johan.”
“I’d rather die than listen to you, Alice.”
I’m taking Alice with me.
I don’t care what she wants. I don’t care about world peace or some greater cause.
No matter what, I’ll make it happen. That was the only thing I had my eyes on.
“I have no intention of turning back, even if I die, until I drag you out of here by force.”
“Why…? Why are you doing this? This isn’t like you.”
Alice shouted while pounding her chest in frustration.
The nerve of her. She had the audacity to act like that after launching a magical bombardment at the person who came to save her.
“What exactly is ‘like me’?”
“Go back. And live like the small-minded coward you usually are. Stop getting involved in pointless matters and take care of your own life!”
“You’ve got it wrong.”
I don’t know how badly she underestimated me, but she was wrong.
“Want me to show you what I’m really like?”
Getting involved in things that aren’t my business? Sure, she wasn’t wrong. If it hadn’t been my problem, maybe that’s exactly what I would have done.
And she told me to take care of my own life?
This is my life.
Because I don’t think I can keep living with my eyes wide open after losing you twice.
A lot of words came to mind.
I could have said something cool. I could have shown an unbreakable resolve.
But I’m only human, and what came out was nothing like the heroic lines I’d imagined.
“How dare a commoner lecture a noble like me?”
“Uh… Well, that does sound exactly like something you’d say. But, um… how should I put this…”
The Oracle stood there in stunned silence.
Even some of the knights who had been pressing me moments ago visibly inhaled in shock.
Had they lived such upright lives that they’d never encountered something like this before? For someone who had lived as the Emperor’s sword, she could be surprisingly naïve.
“Pwahahahahahaha!!”
But it wasn’t just the knights who were shocked.
Abraham, who had been fighting Lobelia, suddenly doubled over laughing.
“Ghk!”
Then he got punched by Lobelia.
Honestly, he showed a surprisingly human side more often than I expected.
“…….”
Having just committed an impressive act of filial impiety against her own father, Lobelia stared at me with expressionless eyes.
I don’t know why everyone was reacting like that. Did they really not know I was this kind of person?
All I’d done was openly reveal a side of myself that I usually tried to keep hidden.
I’d lost too much blood. The filter had simply come off.
“Hah. Well, you got me there.”
Abraham shook his head.
I wasn’t entirely sure who he meant when he said he’d been caught off guard.
“You were just such a textbook example of a corrupt noble that I couldn’t help myself.”
He really was human after all.
Since I’d been thinking of him as a monster, that unexpected side of him felt strangely unfamiliar.
“It feels like the first time in a long while that I’ve had a genuine laugh. Johan Damus, I shall reward you. I’ll spare your life today.”
“…Huh?”
“I rescind my order. Don’t kill him. Break his arms and legs and throw him out.”
In a sense, it was exactly the sort of command a tyrant would give.
The fact that he could decide whether someone lived or died based purely on his mood was genuinely chilling.
Was my life really worth no more than a single joke?
“Thank you for your generous mercy. But you don’t actually think I’ll walk away on my own just because of that, do you?”
Ever since earlier, he’d been trying to shake people’s resolve with a few casual words.
In a situation this hopeless, the promise of survival was undeniably tempting.
The problem was that his generosity was missing the one thing that mattered most.
“If you’re feeling so kind, how about sparing Alice too?”
“Hmm, perhaps you’re right. It is only fitting that I reward our Oracle as well. She has supported me in countless ways.”
“……”
“Alice, Oracle of the Empire. I hereby grant you the title of Count, along with the surname Rosemary.”
“Leave, Johan Damus. How dare an heir who hasn’t even completed his formal succession lecture a Count?”
“No.”
They’re really giving it right back to me like that?
The Emperor and Alice alike. Every last one of them gets on my nerves.
More than anything, what frustrates me is that no matter what I do, I can’t win.
I simply couldn’t picture myself beating Abraham in an argument.
And that’s the one area I was actually confident in…
“Now then, shall we continue? You’ve had enough time to catch your breath, haven’t you, Lobelia?”
“……”
The Emperor gripped his sword once more.
That relaxed demeanor he maintained throughout the entire fight made him seem utterly impossible to defeat.
***
Abraham’s words had been playful, but in the end, they became the heaviest chain wrapped around my neck.
“Ghk!”
I had been reduced to a rag.
Not only were my arms and legs broken, but I had been slammed onto the ground and left completely unable to move.
I couldn’t use [Adventure].
It was too precious to use now.
This was also my spare life.
If I had been killed, everything that happened would automatically have been turned into a dream and returned to me. But as long as I wasn’t dead, I could choose when to activate it myself.
That’s why I couldn’t use it.
I couldn’t spend this one remaining life merely to heal my body.
And even if I did, what would change?
I was already restrained. What good would restoring my body do?
If I was going to use it, I should have done so earlier. Since I failed to make that decision, all I’d accomplished was letting a valuable card rot in my hand.
Maybe even that playful mercy and those jokes had all been part of his plan.
The Emperor was a monster.
For all I knew, it really could have been.
“…Goodbye, Johan.”
Alice murmured those words to me as I lay restrained on the ground.
Something about her voice sounded sorrowful, and I twisted my body desperately once more.
See? You don’t want this either.
You don’t want to die.
Then what gave you the right to lecture me like that?
“…….”
No sound came out.
I had been restrained in a state that was perfectly calibrated…not enough to kill me, but just enough to leave me helpless.
My ears rang.
Every sound around me seemed distant, as if it were fading away.
It felt as though I had been abandoned here alone, bound and left behind.
“What’s this? I told you to know your place.”
I heard a voice.
A hallucination.
The image of a nobleman with his face wrapped in pure white bandages flickered before my eyes.
Even though my face was pressed against the ground, it felt as if I could see Kult Hereticus standing right in front of me.
“You weren’t careful enough. If you had devised a more subtle and effective scheme, things might have turned out differently.”
Ah, what an irritating bastard.
Why was the image of a villain like him surfacing at a time like this?
“Weren’t you someone who knew right from wrong? What you’re doing now is an unmistakable evil.”
I saw shimmering silver hair brushing against the floor.
Green eyes, vibrant with life, were smiling at me.
The Saintess Tillis was pouting her lips as she warned me.
“Good joins with good and moves forward together, but evil is always devoured by a greater evil. This was never something a petty villain like you could handle, was it?”
Well, yeah. I’ll admit it. Even if I tried to become a villain, that’s the extent of the person I am.
Sure, I ended up taking down all the losers in front of me, but was that really my doing?
It was my friends who made it happen.
“You can’t have everything. At the very least, there was one thing you should have given up.”
A scholar built like a mountain adjusted his glasses as he lectured me.
The scholar Vidar spoke sternly, as though he intended to teach me a lesson.
“You already knew how difficult that would be.”
Seriously, this is absurd. Maybe because I’m about to die, I’m seeing all sorts of people…. But why are these bastards the ones showing up in my life flashing before my eyes?
I’ve had plenty of good friends around me too, haven’t I?
At this rate, even the Scriptwriter is going to show up.
“You fucking idiot.”
Yeah, that sounds like our Scriptwriter, all right.
Wasn’t he always the kind of person who said whatever he wanted without any warning?
It’s only natural for an old man lying in a hospital bed to be agitated.
“If you were determined to achieve your goal, you should’ve brought everyone with you. Protecting some while sending others away…what a brilliant thing you’ve done.”
That one definitely hit where it hurt.
If I’d brought everyone and charged forward together, the outcome might have been very different. Of course, more than a few people would probably have died along the way, but still.
“You were afraid of people dying.”
Clink!
Along with the rattling of chains, that emotionless voice spoke one last time.
Wrapped in a tattered cloak, a figure who looked neither old nor young appeared before me. The Great Sage Faust.
“What makes you any different from me now?”
Good question.
In the end, I too had spent my time running from one thing to another, only to find myself cornered alone at the edge of a cliff.
And the people appearing in my life flashing before my eyes weren’t loved ones like Yuna or Ariel, but the pieces of trash I had buried in my past.
Had they come to greet me, perhaps? Come to pick up a fellow piece of trash?
“Johan Damus.”
I could hear their voices. The voices of people no different from me.
The voices of failures.
“When your purpose wavers, you inevitably run yourself aground.”
The Prophet Kult spoke.
The boy with the symbol of Elysium etched into his eyes was shedding tears of blood.
“If you don’t even realize that you’re hurting, what meaning can understanding possibly have?”
“The Judge Tillis spoke.”
The woman, her entire body stained red by blood falling from the empty sky, lowered her head with a bitter expression.
“Stake your life on it.”
The Great Warrior Vidar said.
Having cast aside the guise of a scholar, the wild and rugged barbarian grinned.
“Lose yourself in your dream.”
The Scriptwriter Deus said.
The mechanical being that had cast off even its flesh in pursuit of its dream creaked and groaned.
“Believe in yourself.”
The Great Sage Faust said.
Freed from every restraint, the old man closed his eyes, his appearance gaunt and worn.
“Bullshit.”
That was my answer to all of them.
For some reason, the worst criminals imaginable had gathered together to lecture me.
Shouldn’t you of all people be the last ones saying things like that?
Why are you trying to teach me anything? You’re the ones who lost to me.
“True.”
They answered.
Each of them had found their own answer in their final moments before departing, and now they laughed at me before turning their backs.
They were not good people. Even less were they people to take as mentors.
There was nothing to learn from watching their backs.
And yet…
“At least they can serve as cautionary tales.”
I stood there now, carrying the memory of their failures.
I knew why they had failed. I remembered how each of them had ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.
The words they had spoken to me were also the answers I had once given to them.
They had all been my own words.
“Haa…”
I drew a deep breath.
My restrained body still creaked, showing no sign of moving.
But that was fine.
For now, that was enough.
Thinking about it, it was almost laughable.
I was weaker than the knights before me.
My talent was meager, and the effort I had accumulated fell far short as well.
I had put in effort in my own way too.
When faced with someone’s death, I had swung my sword until my hands bled.
I had thrown myself into illusion magic until my mind nearly unraveled.
The wall of talent was high.
You can only use that excuse so many times before it stops meaning anything.
I worked hard? I thought things through?
I resisted until I was covered in blood and my entire body was on the verge of breaking apart?
So what?
That was all it amounted to.
Emperor Abraham was strong.
The mere aftershock of the power he wielded was enough to make it impossible for me to stand on the same stage as him.
Just another extra who would be swept away by overwhelming force and removed from the stage in an instant.
That was where I stood now.
And after finally making it onto the stage, this was all I had to show for it.
Simply stepping onto the stage wasn’t enough. Whether you became its hero or its villain, if you wanted to stand at the center, then you yourself had to change.
Yes, now was the time.
“Stop—”
The time to stake everything.
“—O’, moment.”
I will become the Demon King of this stage.
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