Ishura - Volume 6 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15 - Glory, in One's Grasp

“The bastard’s…moved while using Greatshield of the Dead. Star Runner’s going to escape!”

Shalk the Sound Slicer, realizing the fatal transformation in Alus the Star Runner, tried to relay as much information as he could.

With just his power, or potentially even with the power of the other hero candidates, they may not have been able to stop him anymore. At least, if he was allowed to fly off from here, the damage and casualties would grow even further.

“…Attacks aren’t going to have any effect on him anymore!”

As a result of the fierce fighting up until now, Alus had exhausted a majority of his equipment.

Hillensingen the Luminous Blade had returned to Toroa’s hands, and at the same time, he lost Trembling Bird as well.

He no longer had the magic items that delivered autonomous multifaceted attacks in Rotting Soil Sun or Ground Runner.

He had likely gone through all of his deadly magic bullets, including the magic lightning bullets. Even his rifle itself couldn’t have avoided some adverse effects from the harsh nonstop gunfire Alus was putting it through.

Torn off halfway down the whip, Kio’s Hand now managed to hold out only in hand-to-hand combat in his magic swords’ stead and little more.

Yet now was the truly worst moment of all.

Alus the Star Runner, his consciousness and memory degenerated and letting his multitudes of magic items run wild, had transformed into an immortal automatic machine, slaughtering without any goal.

Sure, he’s run out of his offensive magic items…but that’s not any comfort at all.

The threat he posed hadn’t been mitigated at all; if anything, it was only growing worse.

There was a magic item capable of destroying Aureatia very close to the second borough of the Eastern Outer Ward.

The Cold Star

Just needs to steal again, is all.

The incessant arrows from Horizon’s Roar, splitting through the sky, stopped.

Shalk could see the silhouette of something taking flight from the point of death, having been killed thousands of times and still persisting.

Alus’s figure, wrapped in the vestiges of Mele’s earthen arrows, hot boiling rock, looked like a flaming bird.

A part of him, his neck perhaps, moved, and he turned his path toward the small tower at the Third Fortress.

The next arrow came flying in to obstruct his path, but it had been launched before his immortal tenacity had been made clear. Unable to keep up with his godlike agility, the arrow’s aim missed the mark.

He was actually accelerating his flight speed. He couldn’t be destroyed.

I can’t get at him in the air.

Alus the Star Runner was going to immediately attack the Cold Star’s gunner and steal the magic item.

Then he’d shoot at his next target—either Mele the Horizon’s Roar or potentially the city of Aureatia itself.

Such a future couldn’t be prevented.

Alus was arriving at the small tower.

Metal claws scratched at the small tower’s parapet.

“Took you long enough.”

A white spear was right before his eyes.

The inexhaustible thrust flashed, casting away sound itself, and pushed Alus downward, destroying the parapet with it.

“I was getting real tired of waiting for you,” Shalk spat, already having snatched the Cold Star from its pedestal and gripping it in his hand.

Such a future couldn’t be prevented—for anyone else besides Shalk the Sound Slicer.

After a significant delay following the clash, the bespectacled gunner shouted, “Hey! What the hell’s going on with Star Runner’s body?! Forget the Cold Star; how the hell’s it still unscathed after taking a direct hit from Horizon’s Roar?!”

“Just to be sure. Take shelter.”

“Saying this just in case. Get outta here.”

Shalk left behind just two short remarks before jumping off the top of the small tower.

In the time it took Alus to fly in a straight line to the small tower, Shalk had run all the way here.

If it was now impossible to offensively keep Alus preoccupied, then he’d use the same method he had at the start.

The only option was to use the magic item Alus wanted as bait and turn Shalk himself into a target to keep him pegged down.

But where?

The choice was between either the second borough or the fifth borough, flanking the third on either side.

Shalk wanted to avoid the flames of battle expanding to another district.

He wanted to choose the fifth borough, where there were likely no survivors left behind, but that area, where Tu had sunken down with the Rotting Soil Sun, had already turned into a muddy mire. Would he be able to have the mobility necessary to battle Alus there?

Whichever place I choose, though, now that he can’t be killed, I need to lead him outside of Aureatia. The second borough is closer to Aureatia’s border… Guess that’s my only option.

Shalk’s series of thoughts had finished even before he landed.

Kicking off a church roof, he drove his spear toward Alus as the wyvern tried to fly away from below the small tower.

“Where is…my treasure…?”

Way too hard.

Shalk could tell from the recoil he felt in his spear that his thrust didn’t affect Alus at all.

He had been able to knock Alus down moments ago because this thrust had been fixed mainly at the parapet and had destroyed the wyvern’s footing while simultaneously throwing off his balance right after landing.

This latest thrust served only to provoke him.

“Kio’s…”

The magical whip, extending out faster than the speed of sound, immediately hacked at Shalk.

Using the recoil from this attack and without kicking off with his legs, Alus flew up into the sky. Outside of Shalk’s spear’s range.

“…Hand.”

“Can you see the treasure, Alus the Star Runner?”

“The treasure’s…”

Shalk broke off in a run without waiting for the answer.

Fast enough for Alus to still visually follow him. To ensure that he could engage him in the second borough of the Eastern Outer Ward, without letting the damage spread any further.

There’s got to be someone else who’s come here besides me. Someone somewhere who can do something about this.

Guiding Alus outside of Aureatia—this was the only plan Shalk could enact alone, but was it even realistic?

Alus right now didn’t seem to be acting with any reason that Shalk could comprehend.

However, if the apex adventuring rogue was trying to storm Aureatia…did that mean he wouldn’t stop until he had done just what he had done in countless dungeons and labyrinths before, destroy Aureatia and plunder all its treasure?

If that is true, then this is a losing battle.

No one had imagined it, but this fight had come with a time limit from the very start.

A fight to win before Alus the Star Runner, obtaining a cogwheel body that maintained his combat functionality in perpetuity, managed to perfectly adapt the Greatshield of the Dead to his new form.

This has got to be what the original demon kings were.

Shalk could tell that the shadow of ruin had begun to pursue him from behind.

A nightmare that laid everything in the world bare, plundered it, and journeyed until the death of it all.

From the era before the True Demon King…

Born among the most populous natural enemies in the skies, the strongest of them had all transformed into legend.

An adventurer and a plunderer.

The natural enemy of miniankind.

Gigant Town. Mele the Horizon’s Roar’s firing position lay sixteen kilometers north of the Eastern Outer Ward.

“…Can’t do any more than this. A waste of arrows,” Mele casually remarked, lowering his enormous black bow.

Cayon didn’t intend to object, but he was unable to experience the same world that Mele saw.

Sitting with his legs crossed in his chair, he simply looked off in the same southern direction.

“What’s happening? You said you hit Star Runner, didn’t you? The observers even reported several times that they confirmed he had been hit, too,” said Cayon.

“Hell, I wanna ask the same damn thing. In any case, my attacks aren’t working anymore. If I gotta do this without destroying the city, then I can’t try shooting up into the air and hitting Alus a bunch of times until he’s buried in the dirt, neither. End up destroying the whole city right down to the bedrock that way. So I got nothing left,” Mele replied.

“…I get it, okay.”

The trajectory of the arrows Mele shot at Alus had all been aimed toward the sky, tracing a path as though they had suddenly leaped from below. He hadn’t let a single one of them land in the city.

Not only that, but he threaded them through the intricately woven streets of Aureatia’s high and low cityscape, without letting the aftershock of their impact even touch the buildings. Despite showcasing this utterly sublime technique over and over again, Mele’s breathing wasn’t ragged at all.

“This is plenty. I never planned on having you be any part of this to begin with anyway… You’ve worked hard enough, right, Mele?”

With the battlefield past the edge of the horizon, Cayon couldn’t possibly feel the reality of it all from here in Gigant Town.

However, the fact that Mele’s skills weren’t enough to fully stop Alus remained.

Would this be the end of Aureatia? he thought.

“It might be a bit callous…but if this isn’t enough, I’m fine with it.”

“That so? In that case, I’m gonna take a nap.”

Mele yawned as he departed.

The Sine Riverstead’s guardian, from the very beginning, felt no obligation to protect Aureatia.

Holding this Sixways Exhibition to put an end to these champions, only to have them save the city when Aureatia itself was actually under threat, was far too self-serving—Cayon thought.

If Aureatia was brought to ruin, then no one was going to show up trying to take Mele down.

Cayon’s absolute highest priority, Sine Riverstead and Mele the Horizon’s Roar, hadn’t changed.

Thus, there was nothing to be done for Aureatia.

The question is, if I can really be convinced of that, I suppose.

He sighed.

The individual citizens living in Aureatia weren’t to blame for anything.

He understood that.

Cayon couldn’t do anything while innocent people died, just like during the era of the True Demon King.

Who could hope to fight against a threat that even Mele the Horizon’s Roar couldn’t annihilate?

That’s why I’m trying to believe that the situation’s hopeless.

The sounds of footsteps were coming back his way.

Mele’s footsteps. Mele never moved when he was atop Needle Mountain. As such, it was a noise Cayon hadn’t known in Sine Riverstead but had come to perfectly recognize after coming to Aureatia.

“…What’s wrong? Wait, what are you doing?”

Mele bore a massive iron pillar on his shoulder.

Of course, it was massive by minian standards, and when compared to Mele’s enormous frame, it instead resembled a long arrow. One of the iron arrows that was embedded Sine Riverstead’s Needle Mountain.

“Weren’t you going to take a nap?”

“I’m free to do whatever I damn well please, aren’t I? I just…lay down for a sec, and suddenly I was wide awake.”

“You’re never honest, are you?”

“Bah, can it.”

Mele sat down cross-legged and stuck the iron arrow vertically into the ground.

“If things start to look real bad, I’ll stop Alus with a net by unraveling this thing with Word Arts. May not be able to blast him to bits, but I should be able to stop ’im from flying off somewhere.”

Cayon thought back to the shapeshifting iron arrows he saw in the seventh match.

Mele’s Craft Arts, turning this enormous iron pillar into countless fine iron wires.

Normally, these arrows were capable of wrangling wyverns all at once, expanding in midair. Now Cayon finally understood that this was what the technique was used for.

“…In exchange, though, the second borough’s not going to get through it unscathed, is it?”

“Probably not.”

No matter how fine the iron wires may have been, once fired with the speed of Mele’s archery skills, they became a weapon of total annihilation, able to easily sever everything they went through. While he may have been able to restrict the might of its impact to keep the damage to a minimum, they still needed to be prepared for it to result in some number of casualties.

So I have to come to a decision, then. Mele’s not going to let me run away from this, is he?

Mele the Horizon’s Roar may have indeed been the guardian of only Sine Riverstead.

However, like Cayon had witnessed during the match against Shalk, he was a warrior and a noble-minded champion.

Cayon the Thundering needed to ensure that he himself was a sponsor becoming of his candidate as well.

“I’ll get in touch with Hidow and propose the idea as an emergency defense measure for you. But if it doesn’t get approved in time…shoot, and I’ll take the responsibility, Mele.”

“Alus! Where are you, Alus?!”

The steam automobile raced through the leftover ashes of what was once the second borough of the Eastern Outer Ward.

A majority of what was once an intricate network of buildings had been torched, or already destroyed by Sabfom’s troops, and now with the blaze extinguished, there was space for them to just barely get through.

“Alus… Gwaugh!”

The car frame sank down at an angle, together with the sound of something breaking. The car itself was reaching its limit.

Almost everything besides its essential components had been pierced by the Gatling gun, and after colliding several times during the rigorous drive, the balance of the car’s body was lacking considerably. It was close to a miracle that it had been able to drive this far.

“Dammit, it’s always like this with these cursed automobiles…!”

“At this point, it ain’t about the car, y’know.”

Crawling out from the car’s interior, at this point a crushed mass of iron, was Aureatia’s Sixth General, Harghent the Still, as well as the hero candidate Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

“Fine…I’ll walk then!”

“That ain’t happening for me right now.”

Harghent looked at Soujirou’s right leg. The prosthetic leg. When Soujirou had encountered Mestelexil, his fighting form was so superhuman, he hadn’t seemed to be in such a state at all, but he had lost his right leg, an extremely important body part for a swordsman.

For the average person, he was obviously incapacitated. To then escape from the hospital and willingly step into a dangerous location like this would be rightly seen as sheer madness.

“…Soujirou the Willow-Sword, I hate to say this, but you…”

Harghent had raced this far with Soujirou in a state of near delirium.

It was fair to say that they had each dragged each other here. Their connection was a strange one.

“You’re not going to be any help at all coming in a state like that. Alus is flying. You can’t even chase after him on the ground below. Erm, well…did you think about that at all?”

“Yup. I mean, yeah, you got a point.”

Soujirou smiled while he sat on the ground.

“But hey. He might swoop down close enough for me to cut ’im dead. Could happen by accident, or Alus may come down and challenge me himself. See, me…I’d get real pissed if there was a party kicking off somewhere without me, and I looked back on it thinking that things could’ve ended up that way if I was lucky. That’s all.”

“That’s it, huh?”

Harghent smiled feebly.

Coming all this way, just for that.

Harghent was aware he couldn’t accomplish anything. He had come here knowing he’d be nothing but an unneeded, extraneous presence even if he did.

Even an abomination, completely detached from Harghent’s reality, like Soujirou the Willow-Sword was just the same as Harghent after all.

In which case, there was no longer any need for him to hesitate. No matter who ridiculed him, he was going to face off against Alus.

“…Alus! Alus! Harghent’s here!”

Harghent’s shout, growing hoarse, was swallowed up by the sky.

Ahh. The sky’s too vast.

Unlike Harghent, only able to crawl through the debris, Alus lived in such a vast open world, with so much freedom. What did Harghent need to do to catch up to him?

Was he in the shadow of that building? Was he, at that moment, busy flying off in a different direction?

If he had already departed from this district and flown off somewhere, there was no longer any means for Harghent to keep after him.

“Alus… Hnaugh, ngh!”

He awkwardly tumbled over.

It was his age. He had used up so much of his stamina and energy just getting this far.

Despite thinking from deep in his soul that he wanted to achieve something, nothing ever went how Harghent wanted it to, and he only ever showed this version of himself to the world, clumsily thrashing about.

“Alus, where are you?! Where…?”

His shouts, too, began to trail off, growing weaker.

It was ridiculous to think a single wyvern would be conveniently within the narrow patch of sky Harghent saw when he looked up.

Harghent possessed neither supernaturally powerful sight, nor godlike speed to instantly race through the city.

He wasn’t a shura with the power to fight, but merely an aging man who had found his way into a disaster zone.

“I won’t give up… If I give up here, I’ll lose who I am. I’ll catch up to you, Alus. That’s what I came here to do…!”

When he encountered Alus again, he had made up his mind about what he was supposed to do.

It wasn’t to ask for his forgiveness or to converse with him as a friend.

He would battle against Alus the Star Runner as his enemy.

If Alus’s aim in annihilating Aureatia was to get revenge on Harghent, then by accepting all that resentment for himself and being cut down by the wyvern, this battle might come to an end.

If there was the slightest possibility created through exchanging an inconsequential life like Harghent’s for a nation, then it was more than worth the price.

Thus, he would die.

If I died, I could escape from the shame and guilt. Right. Let’s do that. I’m sure that dying…is much easier than I’m imagining it to be. Just by escaping down the easier path, I’ll be able to carry out what I’ve decided to do.

It didn’t matter how pathetic the idea was. He just needed to avoid any hesitation until he met with Alus.

If he could just meet him, Harghent could change his mind and plead for his life, and Alus would still take his life regardless of Harghent’s intentions.

He understood that the gap in their strength was so big, it was laughable and presumptuous even to challenge Alus to battle in the first place.

“Harghent… Harghent is here! Alus…!”

Then a silhouette appeared, as if to answer his cries.

It was a black-clad man, shrouded in an ominous aura.

The man raised one hand slightly, showing a flaccid smile.

“Hey there, General Harghent. I was looking for you.”

“Y-you’re…”

There was one other hero candidate Harghent the Still had a connection with from the Lithia War.

Kuze the Passing Disaster. The Order’s most powerful assassin.

“You were searching for me?”

“Sure was. Been decided that you’re gonna have to die.”

As well as the clearest and most evident incarnation of death in the land.

Aureatia Central Assembly Hall, second communications room.

As a result of processing the tremendous amount of information constantly flowing in the midst of the extremely tense situation, the Aureatia bureaucrats’ exhaustion was beginning to reach their limit.

Once they’re pushed to the limit, everyone’s going to start getting stupid.

Hidow could sense it in the chaos of the citizens and soldiers he heard through the radzio, as well.

It was just as true for him and the others directing them. He didn’t have any confidence that the orders he gave in the radzio call a moment ago were truly the right decision or not.

While this showed just how little time he could spare on each thought he had, it was clear that his judgmental abilities were on the decline compared to normal.

Ending the call, he changed over to a different line and listened to a situation report.

He wasn’t able to understand the situation on the ground just by listening to the account once, so he made them repeat it once more.

Ah, I remember now. In the era of the Demon King, everything was a mess. Engulfed in chaotic madness, everyone and everything became totally incomprehensible.

Back then, there was a wealth of anecdotes detailing inadequate directives that led to evacuating citizens straight in the direction of the Demon King’s Army, or city soldiers massacring residents unprompted.

Each time, there would be a preposterous number of victims, in the tens to hundreds of thousands, and this came to be considered normal.

The radzio call finished, and he poured back the remaining half of the water in his cup. Lukewarm.

“…Ha. Is he an idiot? No one in their right mind would do something like this.”

When it came to both the speed of his invasion and his exterminating power, Alus the Star Runner was a disaster that far surpassed that of the True Demon King, but despite this, casualties were being kept in check as much as Aureatia’s strength could manage.

If this calamity had arrived during the era of the True Demon King, they wouldn’t have gotten away with a mere ten thousand dead. Every single person would have likely met their end. Since back then, everyone had been a fool, pressed to their absolute limits.

“…Fool. That damn idiot,” Hidow spat quietly, looking at a scrap of a report sitting on the edge of his desk.

The report had been submitted quite a long while ago at that point, but he hadn’t found time until now to clear it from atop his desk.

—Sixth General Harghent the Still had escaped from Romog Joint Military Hospital.

“The True Demon King is dead, and you’re still at your wit’s end? So much time has passed…”

A completely hopeless man right through to the very end.

Even knowing he couldn’t do anything, he still blindly charged onto a deadly battlefield.

Hidow knew that he was foolish enough to do such a thing. Harghent was definitely going to go, even if he had to be smeared with mud and crawl through the gutter to get there.

Steadying his breathing, intermingled with an exasperated chuckle, Hidow returned to the next radzio call and his next instructions.

Information on Harghent’s movements was simply that inconsequential. However…

I’m going to kill hopeless utter fools like you, you hear me?

“Alus the Star Runner’s getting lured away by Shalk the Sound Slicer. Honestly don’t know how long that’ll last, though.”

“…Is that so?”

The two were sitting down beside each other on debris of the city now turned to ruins.

Harghent the Still and Kuze the Passing Disaster.

He was a run-down and sullen man.

“Might be best…to fortify the airborne defenses in the Jikiegee Mercantile District. If Horizon’s Roar’s air superiority is waning, then the easiest path for a wyvern to take to the royal palace is bound to pass through one spot in that district… Erm, so did Hidow say anything along those lines?”

“Bweh-heh-heh. Look, they only give me the bare minimum of what I need to know. Heck, I don’t even know how to find Alus.”

“……I see…”

The sky was blue.

The loud thunderclaps of Mele’s arrows from a few moments ago had stopped, and the quiet made it seem like it had never happened at all.

However, somewhere in the second borough here, Alus was battling with Shalk, and the slightest tremor from the aftershocks would have been enough to blast away Harghent where he sat.

He could hear far off in the distance what sounded like an explosion and something collapsing.

Far away. Harghent unconsciously rose to his feet, but it was definitely not a distance he could hope to run on foot.

“W-well then.”

Harghent asked, his voice cracking, “You’re going…to kill me?”

“Pretty much. Also, there was something I had wanted to ask you once we met. See, I’m still technically a clergyman and all… I thought that if you had anything to confess, I’d hear you out.”

“What do you want to ask?”

“About Curte of the Fair Skies.”

Harghent gulped. The truth behind the sense of shame he felt toward Kuze was his guilt about his own actions during the Lithia War.

“R-right. I remember. That girl…she was a civilian. She shouldn’t have been a casualty. If I was better put together…she could’ve come back from that tragedy and so much more…”

Curte had faced off against Harghent of her own volition.

She had formed a true bond with a wyvern, which was precisely why she tried fighting Harghent, who killed them. The white-haired young girl he saw that day seemed to be almost a mirror image of Harghent himself.

“I-if by any chance—”

“It’s okay. Calm down.”

“…Right. Excuse me. I’ve thought before that, if there had been some way to save her…then that would have been the right thing to do. She must have wanted to be happy. Curte, the citizens of Lithia, the Mage City soldiers…even all the wyvern fighters, too.”

“I was the one at her side when she died… So you talked with the girl, did you?”

“Th-that’s right. I…I killed her. That’s what I’ve always…how I’ve always seen it…”

“Well, I…so this is just my own thinking here. But I think that girl chose her fate to go together with the wyverns. If she had chosen a path as a minia, then…she might’ve recovered and even still be alive, too. The thing is, no one’s decided that’s what happiness means or anything. Even the Wordmaker’s never said anything about what’s right between minia or wyverns.”

Those who chose a minia’s path didn’t necessarily find happiness.

That was exactly it. Harghent had continued to battle as a minia, became a general, and yet this was how he had ended up.

“…I’ve always regretted it all. The whole time.”

Was he talking about Curte’s death or about the life he had led for himself? Likely both.

“I’m the same way, General Harghent.”

Kuze’s big hand touched Harghent’s back.

“Hey. What d’ya think you’re doing there?”

There came a voice from the opposite side of the collapsed alleyway.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword was looking their way, his sword hanging in one hand.

“Try anything stupid, and I’ll slice that arm right off.”

“…Sorry to say, but you’re not able to kill me, Soujirou the Willow-Sword.”

Harghent watched the exchange as if it didn’t concern him in the slightest, but it took him a moment to recognize the hard, sharp sensation he felt on his back through his clothes.

A blade—most likely a kitchen knife he had picked up from the charred ruins—was being pressed into Harghent’s back by Kuze.

This man had come to kill him.

“Let me go ahead and explain the situation. A little bit before I arrived, I got a notice from Hidow the Clamp.”

“H-Hidow…?!”

“Told me, if Harghent managed to make it this far, to do him a favor and kill him.”

“Ha. That’s, well…ha-ha.”

Harghent couldn’t help but laugh.

Too stunned even to fall to his knees, he cried as he laughed.

“I—I guess…that makes sense.”

An incompetent like him had been forsaken by Aureatia a long time ago.

Harghent’s incompetence was so hopeless, it had driven the brilliant Hidow to hand down such an order. While driving the automobile here, he had continued to pointlessly ponder the meaning in coming to a place like this, but the problem was far more fundamental than that.

“R-right. Ha-ha. What a worthless life. I can’t come up with anything to say back, even right before I’m killed. I—I never…had the right to find my resolve or choose my own path…from the very start…”

“…Cut the crap, you asshole,” Soujirou said, irritated.

Even from this distance, he was likely capable of unleashing sword skills that could instantly end Kuze’s life. However, they wouldn’t reach him. Kuze the Passing Disaster’s abilities were already common knowledge to a majority of the Twenty-Nine Officials.

The ability to immediately slay his enemy first, the instant he faced a risk of death.

Even Soujirou the Willow-Sword was sure to intuitively sense the threat Kuze posed.

Harghent, possessing nothing at all, had no way to avoid such a death.

“The fact you haven’t come at me yet means that you can actually see your fate, can’t you…Soujirou?”

Kuze placed his hand on his own left breast. He was terribly quiet, and ominous, like death itself.

“…………”

“Harghent the Still. I know exactly how Curte of the Fair Skies died. There’s one other thing I realized from that girl’s final moments…”

“Alus…”

Harghent called his friend’s name.

Kuze wasn’t looking up at the sky. He hadn’t noticed.

“That’s right. There was no need to search. That’s because Alus the Star Runner…”

Those wings, in the narrow patch of sky Harghent saw when he looked upward. A familiar three-armed silhouette.

The figure, tragically transformed entirely from who he once was, had his musket raised.

The mumble, as if whispered into the sky, rang loud and clear in Harghent’s ears.

“…My friend…”

He went to pull the trigger.

Kuze the Passing Disaster looked up into the sky as if he understood how everything was going to end.

“…will try to protect you.”

A star fell.

I like to talk to minia.

That’s why I made sure to talk to any of them I spotted who had strayed from their flock.

What sort of tools were being invented in minian towns? What sort of dungeon rumors were there, and what sort of people returned from them? What sort of magic items were used in recent wars and battles?

That was the sort of stuff I would ask them.

What I truly wanted to ask more than anything was what Harghent was currently up to, and how important he had gotten, but I didn’t.

If my friendliness with Harghent got exposed, while it wouldn’t bother me any, it would cause trouble for him. Since that wouldn’t be fair, I tried not to do that as much as I could.

That was why when I first heard about Harghent after I began my journey, it made me really, really happy.

I think I heard his name come up as a commander of a wyvern subjugation squad somewhere along the border between the Northern Kingdom and the Central Kingdom. There were the names of three others, but I was so happy to hear Harghent’s name pop up, I totally forgot about the other commanders’ names.

Harghent was doing exactly what he told me he would do, after all.

Once I knew he was still giving it his all, I went out on more and more adventures of my own.

If Harghent was moving forward, then I had to grow, too, and catch up with him.

We didn’t see each other for a long time, but I was always racing around to see new worlds to make sure I could boast about it all to him when we did.

The continent was far more vast than the map used by minia in the kingdoms I had seen.

I thought there was nothing beyond the four corners of the map, so this was like I was being told I could still fly out even farther, way beyond the horizon, with their own civilizations, dungeons, and treasures, too, and the excitement kept me awake for several days.

There were times I’d worry, too—since wyverns could be found anywhere, I thought Harghent might have been in these far-off places as well. And given that if he was, he’d be there to fight wyverns. It mean that Harghent might never show up to places where there weren’t any of them at all.

My treasure stash grew more and more. I also defeated incredible enemies, whom I myself couldn’t even believe I’d bested.

The occasions where I would skillfully use my treasure to obtain my next piece of treasure increased as well.

This was because I had trained in the seaside shack to grip pebbles in my hands.

It was thanks to Harghent that I became able to move my arms well.

…There were also occasionally years when I’d get really worried that Harghent might have died. In times like that, I’d often talk with minia who seemed to know a lot about anti-wyvern campaigns. I’d anxiously wait for his name to crop up, so that was probably when I most often brought up my own adventures to others.

But Harghent was always off fighting somewhere, even if it was unbeknownst to everyone else. He had been a kingdom soldier at one point, and there were other times he was fighting off in some land with a name I’d never heard of before.

Each time I heard this, it made me happy.

I was happy to hear that Harghent hadn’t stopped his adventure.

I continued such adventures for several decades.

The treasure I had amassed to show off to Harghent had swelled to an innumerable amount.

Harghent really was an incredible guy, but he didn’t do the sort of stuff I did, like defeating dragons, or conquering labyrinths and dungeons, which nearly proved fatal.

Harghent wasn’t going to grow stronger than a dragon, and he even lost sometimes to other minia as well.

I had known all about that for a long time.

When I’d be talking and Harghent’s name came up, there were some who would make fun of him for that sort of stuff, but I always wondered why they didn’t praise him.

Harghent had continued advancing onward without stopping for several decades.

I had never heard about Harghent stopping his wyvern hunt while I was continuing my own journey, not even once.

The fact that he didn’t stop his adventuring or fighting, become a normal minia whose name wasn’t known to anyone, and give it all up for good was the most incredible thing of all.

So even when I met with Harghent again, I thought I’d try not to flaunt all the treasure I’d amassed on my adventures as much as possible.

Since I’m still a wyvern, I could never create anything on my own.

My treasure and my prestige were all stolen from someone else.

Someday when I met Harghent, I wanted to bring something I could really brag to him about.

Like how Horizon’s Roar held Sine Riverstead so precious, something of my own.

It wasn’t that Harghent started my adventure for me.

It wasn’t that Harghent was my only friend.

No matter the terrible things someone may have said about him, I was always able to say it with total confidence—

Harghent was an incredible guy.

Unlike me, he never stole anything.

Eastern Outer Ward, second borough.

Amid the bizarre stillness after the tempest of destruction halted, there were some who witnessed the conclusion.

Half of them were the Aureatia soldiers under Sabfom’s command who had been engaged in rescuing civilians. The remaining half were the residents they had saved from the gaps between houses and canals.

Unlike the back-and-forth clash from earlier, Star Runner had appeared at lower altitudes, visible to many of the residents.

Then, without any warning, he crashed down.

The din of destruction, of battle, showed no signs of continuing.

“Alus, he’s…,” one of the Aureatia soldiers said.

“Who felled him?”

“A wyvern. That must’ve been Alus.”

“It wasn’t from that light attack that was flying around a few moments ago?”

Each one was a quiet murmur, but in the townscape, now silent after being entirely consumed in flames, their voices resounded far.

Harghent the Still and Kuze the Passing Disaster heard this commotion as well.

“Alus! Alus! Wait for me…!”

Escaping Kuze’s grasp, Harghent ran with tottering steps.

Forward ahead. To where Alus fell to the ground.

“…There’s no point in trying,” Kuze murmured as he watched the small figure depart.

No matter how invincible Alus the Star Runner’s body may have become, there was only one fate for those stabbed by Death’s Fang.

“He’s going to die.”

He hadn’t any had intention of killing Harghent from the beginning.

The brief pantomime was a tactic dictated to him by Hidow.

He had made use of the most unnecessary piece on the battlefield, Harghent, to take down the strongest of all adventurers.

Kuze looked up to the heavens. A fair afternoon sky.

Both Curte and Alus had hearts that cared for someone of a completely different species.

Which was why they had lost.

“Bweh-heh-heh.”

Beginning to walk off toward where Alus had crash-landed, Kuze then turned back around to look at the other side of the road.

Soujirou was still lingering there.

“You’re not gonna go after him?”

“Nah. From here…”

His sword was sheathed. There wasn’t any life here that he was supposed to cut down.

“From here, the rest’s up to Old Man Harghent.”

He nearly tripped over himself as he ran.

To the spot where Alus had fallen.

The place could no longer be described as a “building.”

It was some mass of stacked debris, collapsing in the blaze, piled up in a heap.

The metal staircase leaning diagonally must have been a vestige of the construction that had once stood.

“I’m coming…!”

Harghent forcibly continued forward as he put his foot through the now brittle staircase.

Falling over so much that he wasn’t even sure if he could stand again, he grabbed the rubble with his hand and crawled his way up the hill.

Blood seeped from the fresh wounds all over his body. He didn’t even know where or how he had gotten any of them, so numerous were his awkward trips and falls.

It was as if they were representing Harghent’s life itself.

Recklessly jumping forward, fighting haphazardly, he was beginning to lose sight of his goal; and by the time he saw his friend’s back, he had used up absolutely everything, leaving himself completely exhausted.

“Alus…I, haah, I… Alus… We haven’t settled…”

He had continued fighting for over forty years.

The child who told a deformed wyvern about his ambitions that fateful day was now an old man.

He lost his breath every time he ran, and his knee joints had hurt him from long before he even sortied from the hospital.

Each time he took a step up the rubble, it felt like his heart was going to give out.

He hadn’t even been able to become the madman he was supposed to be.

Which was why he couldn’t move on while ignoring the intense pain he was in.

He had never once been able to mentally maintain control over his physical body.

However.

He couldn’t break. He couldn’t stop.

Because he was sure it had been far more than this.

The journey the strongest rogue of all had raced through had included far more hardship than what he was experiencing now.

“Hah…hah… Hargent io kouto.” (From Harghent to Aureatia steel.)

He had gone on a long journey himself. A journey to catch up to his only wyvern friend whom he could never possibly reach.

The sixth wyvern cleanup campaign. The eighth wyvern cleanup campaign. The twenty-second wyvern cleanup campaign.

Like the champions who had been defeated throughout history, he had even challenged Vikeon the Smoldering.

He had confronted Lucnoca the Winter, whom no one had ever seen before, and made her acknowledge his proposal.

Praise me.

Someone, say that I did a good job.

“Haml nanta. Sainmec.” (Approaching waves. Tower of shadow.)

He incanted fragmented Craft Arts with breaths nearly lacking any oxygen.

Twisting the staircase iron, he began to create a colossal crossbow.

A weapon for battle. That was what he had come here for and nothing else.

“Meaoi nam tell! Laivoine!” (Revolving firmament! Nock this arrow!)

He was Aureatia’s Sixth General. His second name was Harghent the Still.

His Craft Arts wove together a mounted mechanical bow, its mass on par with a carriage.

It had a name, as well.

The sort of name a child would come up with, shameless and far grander than it deserved.

Dragon Slayer.

“Alus. You… This time, I’ve come to kill you for good… Alus…”

“……”

Alus the Star Runner lay at the top of the rubble.

The strongest adventurer of all, who had traversed across all legends and grabbed all imaginable glory in his own hands.

A champion who’d carried out his sole selfhood to whatever lengths, even slaying dragons in the process.

He had lost all the treasure he had amassed.

His enchanted swords had been taken to hell.

Both Ground Runner and Rotting Soil Sun were lost.

He had dropped the musket he carried until the end, and the Greatshield of the Dead, and even Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine, now fused with his body, were unable to preserve his fading life.

Defeated, and lying nearly covered by rubble, that life was beginning to run out.

“You’re…”

“Incredible” was what he wanted to say.

When Harghent had first met him, he wasn’t even able to move his third arm.

He hadn’t seemed capable of learning proper language, either.

Harghent had belittled him, thinking he probably wouldn’t last long.

He hadn’t thought that they’d be able to become friends.

That same three-armed wyvern had done all of this.

Alus the Star Runner had become a mighty champion known to everyone throughout the land.

The true story, much bigger than anything else he had accomplished, was known only to Harghent.

“…Harghent.”

“D-don’t die.”

That wasn’t it. That was unnecessary.

That wasn’t what he had come all this way to say.

“I… Thinking back…about Toroa the Awful…”

Right now, Alus had nothing.

He was losing the memories of his glory and his very ego.

“Why didn’t he finish me off…? Maybe he understood…what I wanted.”

“Can you hear me? Alus…Alus!”

What had Alus the Star Runner wanted?

Harghent had known the answer from the start.

He desperately yelled to make sure Alus could hear him from the grips of death.

“Alus… You’re…awesome! It’s true! I’ve always thought so! There weren’t any other wyverns like you! You were strong, faster than any one of them…stronger…”

These childish words were the only ones that came to Harghent.

He had thought Alus was incredible.

Just like Alus would always laud Harghent with praise no matter what, the truth was Harghent wanted to acknowledge Alus and praise him, too.

“You’re…you’re the most incredible guy in the world! Alus!”

“…Really?”

Alus tried to raise up his arm.

He didn’t have any strength left. He didn’t have a single weapon on him.

However, Harghent knew what he wanted to do.

Alus was trying to aim his gun.

Until the very end, the moment his life was exhausted.

He was trying to duel a foolish, stunted minia who had never seized any glory of his own.

“I…did nothing but…steal, however…”

It doesn’t make me happy at all to get complimented by a wyvern like you!

That was all a lie.

It had made him the happiest of all.

“…Now I’m finally…able to give back…”

“Sniff… Hngaaaaaugh!”

Harghent loosed the projectile.

The massive arrow pierced through Alus’s skull, and with it, Wing-Plucker killed the lone wyvern.

His strength began to drain from him, but he couldn’t let himself collapse.

He understood what he needed to do.

Harghent the Still staggered as he walked to Alus the Star Runner’s carcass.

Then he looked down below him from atop the rubble.

There was ruined city. Residents menaced by fear.

The citizens who got left behind. The soldiers who went through the do-or-die battle. They were waiting for him to speak.

“Al…Alus. Alus the Star Runner! Has just been slain!”

A wave of whispers spread through the silence.

“W-we are—”

There wasn’t a single person among them who was expecting Harghent the Still to achieve something.

He was an outdated, powerless military officer who never once paid any heed to the people, fully absorbed in his own self-preservation.

He had never once seized true glory for himself.

“We are victorious! N-no longer…will you all be threatened by this self-proclaimed demon king! The citizens who endured, the soldiers who supported them…have conquered this terror! Here is the proof! I, Sixth General, Harghent the Still! Proclaim that Alus the Star Runner has been put down!”

To ensure that everyone there could see—to convey a conclusion to a bitter struggle.

A new champion held aloft his friend’s pitiful corpse.

“He’s…he’s dead!”

“It’s over! General Harghent got him!”

“I saw it for myself, Harghent!”

“Lord Harghent!”

“Ahhh… I can finally go home!”

“Harghent!”

“Harghent!”

“General Harghent!”

“Sixth General Harghent!”

Among the cheers of the citizens extolling his grand achievement, Harghent crouched down.

I’ll become a hero.

Praised and recognized by so many more people, not just the people of the village.

“Sniff… Nhauuugh…!”

Two hundred and nineteen dead or missing. Seven hundred and forty injured.

The second to fifth boroughs of the Eastern Outer Ward annihilated.

The battle Aureatia had dedicated all its efforts to, against a self-proclaimed demon king, was over.