Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 20 - Chapter 6

6. To Friends

We reached a decision not long after we returned to Daybreak Village. We were going to side with the No-Life King.

There were those who argued against doing so, but it was readily apparent that acting completely hostile toward the No-Life King and his side would not be a bright idea. The No-Life King already knew where Daybreak Village was, and had a good grasp of how much strength we could muster. We had to assume he’d shared that intel with the other races. If we were going to oppose them, then we had to be ready to abandon Daybreak Village. Even if some of us were willing to try to start over again from scratch, it seemed more reasonable to work with the No-Life King for now, and hold on to the shelters and facilities we had already built as we considered what would come next.

Kuzaku passed our official response to the No-Life King. The allied forces that had united under the king were going to deploy around the Crown Mountains before dawn on the eighth of August, 662 A.C., and launch our assault from all sides as the sun rose.

The dark tumors, the sekaishu, were said to be the remnants of the red star struck down by the primordial dragon. Apparently, it wasn’t able to fully kill the star. But that was our goal this time around, and so we named the mission Operation Starfall.

We made plans and prepared extensively before the battle. As we did, the No-Life King provided us with vital information, such as how it was possible to protect relics from the sekaishu by packaging them in a certain way. Some of the undead created by the No-Life King had bodies covered in animal fur. The sekaishu couldn’t detect relics that were wrapped tightly in their tanned hides. It wasn’t enough to simply sew a hide shut around a relic, though. The hide had to be sealed with wax, so once that seal was undone, the protection was permanently broken. We were basically going to carry the relics to the Crown Mountains in a sealed state, and then unseal them when Starfall began.

Who among Daybreak would participate in Starfall, and who wouldn’t? It was left to each of us to decide that for ourselves, with one exception. Or rather, there were two. Before she even had the opportunity to say anything, Yume was immediately barred from joining the operation, as was Ruon, obviously, since he wouldn’t even be a year old when it happened.

We couldn’t just leave Yume and Ruon at Daybreak Village while everybody else went, though. But there were a decent number of people who didn’t want to part with Ruon, so deciding who would stay actually turned into a bit of an argument, but once things were hashed out, Kajiko, Mako, Azusa, Cocono, and Yae of the Wild Angels were appointed to guard them and help out with childcare.

Once it was set in stone that Operation Starfall would be happening, even I, who’d been spending all of my time doing manual labor in Daybreak Village before, started making trips to the Wonder Hole. I’d resigned myself to the fact that my instincts were going to have dulled from disuse, and it turned out that was indeed the case. I genuinely worried that I wouldn’t be able to get them back to where they were, but the day would keep getting closer whether I was out of practice or not.

The members of Daybreak taking part in Starfall would travel through the Wonder Hole to the exit near the Lonesome Field Outpost, and then move in small groups toward their designated positions around the Crown Mountains. Before our departure, Kuzaku left Daybreak Village to return to the No-Life King. I don’t remember doing anything special to say goodbye. It was just a simple “See you later,” “Mm-hm,” sort of thing.

With only a few days left until our departure, I was barely getting any sleep. I would lie there in my sleeping spot feeling wide awake until I finally decided to sit up for a bit. Then I would lie down again, trying to at least rest my body, only to sit up once more. I did that over and over again.

On one such night, when Daybreak Village was fast asleep, and I could hear the bugs, the birds, and the beasts in the surrounding area, I noticed someone approaching my little hovel. At first, I thought it was the person on night patrol, who I periodically sensed passing by, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case when they called out to me.

“Haru-kun. You still up?”

“Yume...”

“Hey, mind if Yume joins you?”

“Sure. Of course you can.”

I was sitting on the ground with one knee up, and Yume plopped down next to me. She smelled incredibly sweet. Or, no, not really sweet. It was a fragrance filled with the blinding brightness of life. I felt something catch in my chest, and for a moment I was intensely jealous of Ranta. I also thought about how I had to protect Daybreak Village. No matter what happened, I had to defend Yume and Ruon to the death. Was cutting off the sekaishu at the root absolutely necessary to accomplish that?

Given the situation, we had no choice but to side with the No-Life King. I knew that intellectually. But unlike the No-Life King, who might himself be a relic, the sekaishu wouldn’t come after us so long as we didn’t carry relics around. If we gave up our relics, then couldn’t we live on in isolation?

But on the other hand, the No-Life King was inside of Merry. Merry had said that relics were filled with possibility. Soma and his group had found hope in relics too.

So I might be able to give up one thing, which would allow me to protect something else. But then there would surely be other things I could no longer protect. Do I want to give that one thing up? Or do I actually not want to give anything up? If I could protect everything, that would be the best. If only I had the power to. But I know better than anyone how truly powerless I am.

“Haru-kun, this mighta just been Yume’s dream,” Yume said before laughing. “It’s a bit hard to tell. Yume’s losin’ her confidence a bit too.”

“Your...dream? Oh... You mean you had a dream?”

“That’s kinda fuzzy, y’know? But anyway, Merry-chan came to see us.”

“Merry...?”

“Yep. Merry-chan was sayin’ she wanted to see Ruon’s face.”

“Uh, you mean...her, all alone?”

“She was alone, yeah. Sneaked into the hut all by herself. Yume and Ruon were sleepin’, and when Yume woke up, Merry-chan was there. But that’s kinda weird, right?”

“Well...yeah, it is.”

“Was it really a dream? But Yume talked to Merry-chan, y’know? ‘Congratulations,’ she said. And ‘Lemme see him again when he gets bigger.’ Or maybe she didn’t say ‘lemme.’ Merry-chan doesn’t talk like that. But anyway, Yume told her she could come anytime. Told her it’d be nice if she could just stay here with us. Yume knows it’d be hard. But we’re comrades and all. And friends. Merry-chan’d feel lonely if Yume didn’t say it, and Yume really does feel that way too.”

“Yeah.”

“Yume’s got a feelin’ they’ll be able to come back some day. It’ll be tough, though. If Yume didn’t have that feelin’, she couldn’t take it anymore. That’s why, when everyone’s sayin’ it’s impossible, Yume chooses to believe that, no, that’s wrong, they can come back. Merry-chan, and Setoran, and Kuzakkun, and Shihoru, they’re all gonna come back for sure. But Yume’s got her hands full with Ruon right now. He’s runnin’ Yume...rabid...?”

“Ragged?”

“That’s the one. Ruon’s a bundle of energy, and he’s been runnin’ Yume ragged. Yume can’t take care of anythin’ else, but Yume’s choosin’ to think that everyone’ll be able to come back. It’s all Yume can do. Sorry.”

“What you’re doing is more than enough.”

We can get them back. I chose to think that. We can get it all back. Merry had said there was a possibility, and that wasn’t something I could disregard.

The relics. Everything about this is too big for a little guy like me to handle. Like, not only am I hesitant to take the first step, it feels like my legs will give out if I try. But even so, if she says that relics are the key, then I have to seize on that lead no matter what it takes.

“It’s a good thing that he’s inside of me.” Merry had even gone as far as to say that. I struggled to see it as good fortune, but it was true that there was a relic of immense power residing inside Merry.

First, we’d wipe out the sekaishu, and secure the No-Life King’s freedom. Once that was done, we’d have Merry help us talk the No-Life King around, and we’d make use of him, or even join hands with him if that was possible. Then we’d search for relics. Relics with the power to let us get it all back.

A few days later, we set out from Daybreak Village and entered the Wonder Hole through the entrance near the Dusty Wasteland. We’d long since finished packaging and sealing our relics.

Akira-san passed me a relic wrapped in the hide of an undead.

“It’s called Fatalsis, the fatal dagger. We’ve found other relics of the same type, so we know its effect. It will deliver certain death to whatever you stab with it, but only once. Then it shatters. I’ll leave it with you. Those sekaishu...the night-clad ones, I think you called them? I don’t know if it can kill them or not, but it’s worth a shot.”

“But why me?”

“I’m no good with daggers. I’m too clumsy for them. I thought a thief like you could put it to better use.”

There weren’t many thieves in Daybreak, and I was pretty much the only one who used a dagger. Did Akira-san hand me Fatalsis for purely practical reasons, like he was claiming? I don’t know. But even if it was a single-use item, it was pretty reassuring to have a one-hit-kill weapon. Everyone in Daybreak Village knew I was a fragile person, and that my heart was already broken, so maybe Akira-san was trying to be considerate in his own way.

We left the Wonder Hole at the Lonesome Field Outpost exit and broke into teams.

Ranta and I headed east together. We crossed the Quickwind Plains and headed into the foothills of the Tenryus, and then proceeded further east from there. I think it was around July thirtieth when we reached our first destination at a point eighty kilometers due south of the Crown Mountains. The Quickwind Plains were flat, so we could make that eighty kilometer trip in two or three days, or possibly just one if we really hurried.

We rested for a number of days in the foothills. We weren’t simply lazing around, though. We fished in a nearby river, and we hunted, and we did other things too.

There were dragons living in the Tenryu Mountains. Ranta suggested we try to find one, and we went mountain climbing. Did we ever find a dragon? I know for sure that we went looking. But I don’t remember seeing one, so I’m pretty sure we were unsuccessful.

On August sixth, we headed back down out of the foothills and returned to the Quickwind Plains.

We arrived at our designated location in the middle of the night on August eighth, where we met up with the Tokkis, who had arrived first. Team Renji soon joined us. Renji also had a priest named Wado from the Berserkers with him.

The twelve of us were the rearguard, and a full third of our team—Tada and Anna-san of the Tokkis, Chibi of Team Renji, and Wado—were priests.

The vanguard was made up of Soma’s team of six, if the flesh golem Zenmai could be counted as a person, Akira-san’s team of six, and the six Typhoon Rocks, for a total of eighteen people. They would have already arrived at a point closer to the Crown Mountains.

The vanguard also included Soma’s comrade Shima, who was a shaman and could heal people; Akira-san’s sword friend Gogh, who was an ex-mage and priest; and Tsuga of the Rocks, who was also a priest. Akira-san and Kemuri were paladins, so while they might not have been as capable as the priests, they could also heal some wounds.

In accordance with Setora’s plan, the members of Daybreak were south of the Crown Mountains, a combined force of undead, hornedfolk, piratsians, centaurs, and kobolds were to the north, the orcish army was to the west, and Forgan and the gray elves were to the east. We would advance at dawn. It was expected that the sekaishu would start attacking immediately, so each group would try to push them back and advance as far as possible. Then, when the time came, the No-Life King would strike the sekaishu at its root.

We were all quiet as we waited for sunrise, only close comrades occasionally exchanging a handful of words. Even the usually noisy Anna-san and Kikkawa of the Tokkis barely spoke at all.

“At times like this, it’s best not to say anything,” I remember Ranta murmuring as he sat there next to me. “No need to go raising your own death flag. Everyone’s figured that out,” he said with a little laugh.

He might have meant that as a joke. I thought of laughing to humor him, but I couldn’t remember how to.

In time, the eastern sky started to brighten, and I was able to spot a group of silhouettes a few hundred meters ahead of us. Someone waved to us. Kikkawa jumped up and waved back.

The Crown Mountains were black. Just pitch black. They had been given their name because they looked like a crown no matter what angle you viewed them from. However, that had completely changed. The mountains, now swollen and covered in pure darkness, looked like a massive upside-down bowl. I didn’t need more than a passing glance to know that what we were looking at was nothing more or less than a solid mass of sekaishu. And they weren’t simply covering the Crown Mountains, they were spreading out from it in all directions.

In the area around us, there were a number of dark strands that were not so much flowing like a river as crawling across the ground. While we had been traveling toward the mountains, we had more or less been able to avoid the sekaishu as long as we were careful not to tread on them. If our foot touched a sekaishu, then we took a circuitous route around it, or we jumped over it and kept on moving. But it’s entirely possible that we had simply been lucky to encounter relatively few of them.

As it got brighter, we were shocked to see how much the sekaishu had spread. If you were to add up all the black parts of the area surrounding us and compare it to the land that wasn’t black, then there was no question that the former was the larger of the two. That was a new piece of information for us. The dark growths, the black tumors, were steadily eating away at the surface. If we had left them to it, it might not have happened immediately, or even anytime particularly soon, but those black tumors would have eventually engulfed all of Grimgar, wouldn’t they?

Maybe the sekaishu wouldn’t attack us if we didn’t have relics. But could we survive in a Grimgar where the sekaishu were running rampant? Even if we had air to breathe, people couldn’t live on that alone. We needed water to drink and food to eat. Would we be able to secure those things once the sekaishu covered Grimgar? Could we sleep on top of the sekaishu?

Like it or not, we probably had no choice but to extirpate those black tumors. Even setting aside the No-Life King’s objectives, there was likely no escaping the fact that we had no other way forward.

“Well, we’ve got no choice but to do this,” the bespectacled Tada said as he swung his warhammer around. “So now it’s just a matter of doing it.”

“Fighto happatsu, yeah!” Anna-san went around slapping the other Tokkis on the back.

“Oh, going for an eightfold increase from ippatsu to happatsu? Are you sure that’ll be enough, though?”

At this comedic jab from Kikkawa, Anna-san immediately adjusted to, “Fighto hyappatsu, yeah!” raising the usual one ippatsu to a hundred.

Inui took off his eye patch. I don’t really know why, but he seemed to think that would do something.

I got hugged by Mimori. I couldn’t do anything to return her feelings, but I stayed still.

Adachi whispered something to Renji. Renji nodded, seized Adachi by the back of the head, then immediately let go. It was pretty rare to see him do something like that. Adachi was a calmer man than most, but he was obviously shaken up by it. Ron laughed at them. Chibi was smiling too.

I didn’t know the priest named Wado very well, but I’d heard him talking with someone about how the Berserkers had treated him like a slave, and that he didn’t have many fond memories of them. I also remember people whispering behind his back that maybe that was because he had an awful personality. I’m in no position to judge. I had hollow cheeks and sunken eyes that made me look gloomy, and kind of took a cynical attitude to things. But anyway, Wado was talking with Tada, Anna-san, and Chibi about how they would handle the healing during combat. If his clan had worked him as hard as he claimed, then it was probably because he’d had the abilities to merit it.

Did I have a conversation with Ranta before things kicked off? We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the Crown Mountains. I’m sure that we did talk, but I’m strangely unable to remember a word of it.

“The sun’s coming up!” a voice shouted from among the vanguard. It was Soma’s voice.

Operation Starfall had begun.

I had the Fatalsis that Akira-san had given me strapped to my back, still sealed in undead hide. It was a single-use weapon, so I didn’t intend to unwrap it until it was time to use it.

The vanguard included many people, Soma among them, who used relics regularly. But I was the only person in the rearguard who had one. If I kept my relic sealed, the sekaishu would be drawn toward the vanguard. That was going to make things difficult for them, but it meant the rearguard could focus on providing support. That was part of the reason we were divided into a vanguard and a rearguard.

The sky had already brightened considerably, yet the ground remained dark. No, not just dark, black because of the sekaishu.

There was a flash of light on the eastern horizon. Sunrise.

That was when the sekaishu began moving. The black parts of the ground all began writhing at once, and a heavy rumble arose, not so much echoing as coming from all directions. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN—anyone who didn’t flinch at that low, heavy noise must have been crazy. It certainly scared me. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN—before I knew it, I was overwhelmed by the low, heavy vibrations of the sekaishu, and just stood there in a daze. Ranta shouted at me. He’d already drawn his katana. Even though he was standing right next to me, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN—but I realized I couldn’t just stand there, of course. The sekaishu were already swarming the vanguard. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. It looked like a black wave was about to sweep our forward team away, but then someone swung their sword and triggered some kind of magic, knocking the sekaishu back. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. And yet, even as they were repelled, the sekaishu kept coming at the vanguard in droves.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. At some point, a chaotic river of sekaishu formed in between the rearguard and the vanguard. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Renji, Ron, Tada, Kikkawa, Inui, Mimori, and Ranta charged into that stream. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. I had a weapon in my hands. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. But I didn’t remember drawing it. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. I hadn’t taken it out consciously. My body had probably done it on its own in response to the fear. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. I was shocked, and also ashamed, to realize I was in a state where only my defensive instincts were still working. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. But there was no time for shame. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. I had to follow Renji and Ranta.

NNNNNNNNNN. I belatedly chased after my teammate. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Ranta was fast, and I couldn’t seem to catch up to him. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. Kikkawa was at the very rear, so I passed him first. NNNNNNNNNN. Renji and Ron were already trying to hack their way through the torrent of sekaishu. No ordinary sword, no matter how sharp, could cut through those black tumors, though. Not even Renji’s one-edged sword that he had taken from Ish Dogran or Ron’s oversized meat cleaver could do anything to them. NNNNNNNNNN. But even if cutting through them was impossible, they could be knocked away with enough brute force. And when it came to that particular area of expertise—if that’s the right term for it—the best person we had wasn’t Renji or Ron, it was Tada.

When Tada swung his warhammer, black things flew through the air and scattered all over. It was all I could do to stay out of the way, but Kikkawa somehow managed to block any that came toward him with his shield, and knock them away with his sword. Mimori was doing a good job of pushing the enemy back as well, swinging her sword with all the might her two arms could muster.

Of course, Renji and Ron were no slouches either.

How was Ranta holding up? He wasn’t using his katana. Instead, he weaved through the dark tumors, sometimes kicking them away as he pushed further and further forward.

I don’t know about Inui. That strange man had always had a thing for disappearing from sight and then suddenly reemerging to do something totally ridiculous.

“Okay! Okay! Let’s go, go, go, yeah!” Anna-san’s cheering cut through the low rumble.

It’s impossible to break through this unending current of sekaishu, I thought at some point. But the rearguard was actually making steady progress.

Soon, I caught sight of the vanguard again. They weren’t like us. They were operating on another level.

Akira-san, his wife Miho, the dwarven warrior Branken, and the elven archer Taro, along with Gogh, Kayo, Kemuri, Shima, Pingo, and Tsuga—the priest of the Typhoon Rocks—were fighting in a close formation to improve their defenses. Miho and Gogh, who was a priest but could also cast mage spells, occasionally unleashed earth-shattering blasts that blew the sekaishu away. It looked like fairly powerful magic, but it was nothing to the two of them. I had seen them unleash even more incredible magic once before. They were undoubtedly holding back, conserving their strength for a long battle. That was probably also the reason why Akira-san, Branken—who wielded an axe larger than he was—and Gogh’s wife Kayo—who had impressive skill with a greatsword—were deliberately choosing not to move up any further.

But unlike Akira-san and the others I mentioned, the Typhoon Rocks—with the exception of their priest Tsuga—were going wild. There was Rock, with his typhoon-like hair, who was a real powerhouse despite his small size; the bald-headed giant warrior Kajita; the slender, glasses-wearing dread knight Moyugi, who was about as lightly equipped as possible; the feral katana-wielder Kuro; and the mysterious Sakanami. Their builds and fighting styles were all over the place. It looked like they were each just doing whatever they wanted, but no one got too far ahead of the group, or isolated from it. They went around, changing positions in a revolving circle. Where Rock was one second, Kajita would be the next, and then when Kajita moved, Moyugi would be there, and then he would switch with Kuro, and Sakanami would barge in, and Kuro would smoothly relinquish the position to him and drift elsewhere.

When people worked together for a long time, they tended to develop clearly defined roles, and had a deep understanding of one another, which was what allowed for that kind of flexibility. But even then, not many could make it work like the Typhoon Rocks did.

It was plain to see that they were organized, and yet it didn’t seem like anyone was in command. Kajita—who was more dexterous than he looked—and the aloof Kuro were doing a good job of filling any gaps that opened up, but none of them were sacrificing their own individuality or limiting themselves for the sake of the group. They were well-balanced. However, their tactics didn’t give me the impression that they had been aiming for balance when they had come up with them. They meshed together miraculously well. Their priest, Tsuga, wasn’t in the circle with them, but if a situation where he needed to act ever arose, he’d probably dive right in there. The six of them were strong. Each was outstanding individually, but as a group, they were among the best of the best.

Of course, that praise is somewhat cheapened by the fact that Soma, Lilia, and Zenmai the golem were operating on a completely different level from them.

Zenmai wore a frightening mask, and none of his skin was exposed, but he only had one head, and a torso with two arms and two legs attached to it. His arms were a little too long, but he was more or less human in form. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a thick chest. His upper arms and thighs bulged in a way that was almost sickening. If a person trained to the extreme, it wasn’t totally impossible for a human to get a build somewhat close to that. But no human, no matter how muscular, could ever pull off the feats Zenmai was capable of.

Case in point, Zenmai’s approach to dealing with the sekaishu was to simply rip them apart with his hands and throw them aside. The sekaishu could be as thick as narrow pipes, giant snakes, or hefty logs, but they tended to be really long, to the point that it was hard to tell where they started or ended, and Zenmai was just grabbing them and literally tearing them into pieces. Even a blade in the hands of a skilled swordsman couldn’t cut through the sekaishu, so how was Zenmai able to do that to them?

That was already surprising enough on its own, but when Zenmai threw the pieces of sekaishu away, they flew absurdly far. What he was doing was inhuman. But Zenmai was an artificial man who had been constructed by Pingo, who had studied necromancy, so it wasn’t really that strange that he could do inhuman things. Well, no, strange is still strange. That golem scared me. But the member of their group who boggled my mind the most had to be their elven teammate.

Lilia came from a proper elven family, and had been raised to be a sword dancer from birth. The elves were descendants of the forerunners, and were a race that was similar to but still different from us humans. That said, they looked a lot like us. The other descendants of the forerunners—the dwarves, gnomes, centaurs, and kobolds—were like distant relatives at best, but if you told me the elves were our brothers or sisters, I would have accepted it without question. But it’s possible that we’re only similar in appearance.

Rather than running around the battlefield, it was more like Lilia was jumping to and fro. If there was space for an elf to put her foot down, she could probably stand there. And no matter how far two footholds were from each other, an elf could move between them with a single leap. Maybe none of that is true, but watching Lilia in action made me believe that it was.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me what Lilia was doing. It looked like she was performing a flashy, beautiful dance in front of the sekaishu, but there was no way she’d do something so pointless. I had no doubt she was holding a sword, but I had no idea how she was using it. The only thing that was clear to me was that when Lilia spun or turned, the sekaishu were knocked upward or twisted around. I don’t think she was throwing them like Zenmai, because the slender Lilia obviously couldn’t have done that, but something was clearly happening. No, that’s not quite right. Lilia was making something happen.

The only reason the enemy wasn’t taking serious damage from her attacks was because they were sekaishu. If I had gone up against Lilia, she would have beaten me instantly before I could do anything. How many people could have fought evenly against her? What heights would one have to ascend to in order to even perceive her sword skills?

Though Zenmai’s and Lilia’s abilities lay in different directions, they were both in a completely separate dimension from where I was standing. And then there was Soma. He transcended dimensions altogether. You might even say that he was ultra-dimensional.

Soma was wearing the Magai Waiomaru. The fiery orange light the relic armor emitted must have been giving him some kind of power. That much was easy to guess.

One swing of his katana tore a hill-like mass of sekaishu to ribbons and sent it flying away. Then he stepped forward and swung again, slashing open a rift in the earth. Oh, and it also sliced up and blew away a bunch more sekaishu in the process. With each sweep of his katana, there was a sound akin to a scream. If there happened to be sekaishu in the way, his blade instantly scythed through them. Soma was easily the biggest threat to the sekaishu.

The vanguard were closer to the Crown Mountains now than they had been when Operation Starfall had begun at dawn. It felt like there was an infinite amount of sekaishu gushing out of the mountains, and the entire area we were in was being buried in the black things. It was like we were awash in a sea of black, and the only reason it hadn’t swallowed us up was Soma. No matter how impressive Zenmai and Lilia were, if Soma hadn’t been there, we would’ve been completely unable to resist the dark waves, and eventually the black sea would have drowned us.

I was a long way from calm and composed at the time, so I can’t say anything for certain, but Soma and Soma alone could do more than just push back the sekaishu. I’m not sure this is the right word, but it seemed like he could actually kill them.

I wasn’t able to confirm it for myself, but I’m pretty sure Soma’s katana was doing more than just cutting the sekaishu and sending them flying. I can remember seeing sekaishu shrinking and becoming like empty husks before turning to dust after he slashed them.

Only Soma could reduce the amount of sekaishu around us. But without his relic, the Magai Waiomaru, it’s possible that not even he would have been capable of doing that, so maybe we really had the relic to thank for the success we were having, but the way I look at it, Soma was the one killing the sekaishu, and they probably focused their attacks on him because of that. The black waves came from every direction, racing toward Soma without giving him room to pause.

But despite that—no, because of that—Soma didn’t back down. He was always at the head of the vanguard, and while he wasn’t pressing forward constantly, he was advancing toward the Crown Mountains little by little. He drew in the sekaishu, pulling as many as he could toward him, and gradually whittled away at them.

Our role in Operation Starfall was to be bait, and Soma was doing that job flawlessly. The only thing the rest of the vanguard and rearguard needed to do was support him.

I was able to catch up to Akira-san and the rest while barely doing anything myself. Uncharacteristically, I started to think, This could be surprisingly simple, and, Things are actually going pretty smoothly. But pretty much any time that sort of thought crosses my mind, it means that something is about to go wrong.

“...!”

Suddenly, Gogh—who had a smaller build and looked like an artist in his priest robes—collapsed.

“Honey!” cried the female warrior Kayo, who struck a sharp contrast to Gogh with her much bolder proportions. Her face was twisted in distress.

The elven archer, Taro, nocked an arrow and aimed up into the sky. “You hurt my dad!”

What was Taro trying to shoot? I spotted his target flying in the sky above us, wearing gold armor and a crown, and carrying a staff. The thing floating there wasn’t human. Its body was a little too small for that. But more importantly, it was clad in the black of night.

“Night-clad—”

I’d encountered three night-clad ones before now, and this one was one of them. The night-clad one was pointing their staff in my direction. Not toward me specifically, though. Their staff fired off a light that was like a bolt of lightning. Taro’s arrow was on course to hit the night-clad one, but it was blasted to cinders by the light, which continued on past it. If Taro hadn’t done a backflip to get out of the way, he’d have ended up like his adoptive father Gogh.

“Sacrament!”

Fortunately, Gogh hadn’t died instantly, and Tsuga, the priest of the Typhoon Rocks, healed him with light magic. But the night-clad one kept on firing their light.

“We can’t have that!” Akira-san moved around, blocking the light with his shield, which could apparently endure it. Branken the dwarf shielded himself from the light with his greataxe, the female warrior Kayo met it with her greatsword, and Soma’s companion, Kemuri the paladin, deflected the light with his longsword. Each time their weapons struck the light, it caused minor explosions. Were those people just able to shrug those blasts off?

“Ah, nu, pa, du, ha, yna, ku, suu, ri, sha...!” As Miho used her staff to draw something resembling elemental sigils, the air currents around the night-clad one grew violent. It wasn’t just wind. The moisture in the air froze into a vortex of ice. You could have called it an ice storm. There was even snow falling down on us from up above.

The night-clad one was in the middle of the ice storm, seemingly unable to move out of it. It looked like they couldn’t fire off that staff’s attack anymore either. Miho’s magic was working.

“Sorry...!” said Gogh, who was back in action after Tsuga’s Sacrament. He began drawing more of those shapes that resembled elemental sigils.

“Kui, la, va, dra, shinay, an, tal, vis, na...!”

A fireball appeared above Gogh’s head. The flames roared as they rapidly grew. Once it was bigger than Gogh himself, it shot upward.

The fireball scored a direct hit on the night-clad one, going off in a massive explosion above us that swallowed up both them and the ice storm. The noise was incredible, as were the heat and the shock wave. I wasn’t able to stop myself from crouching down and covering my head with both of my arms.

“No, that wasn’t enough!” Akira-san shouted.

Immediately, that light shot down at us again. One bolt after another. Akira-san and the others were probably blocking with their shields, or weapons, or whatever, but I was still crouched down in a state of panic. If the light had come for me, it would have scored a clean hit. But the light was going after Akira-san and the others. That’s why I was spared.

“Don’t just stand there in a daze!” I can recall Ranta shouting at me. I hadn’t even realized he was beside me, as I was so deep in shock.

“Adachi!” I heard Renji shout.

Then Adachi rushed into the middle of the vanguard with Chibi in tow. I watched as Adachi pressed a razor-like dagger to his own left wrist. He slit it wide open, and his blood flowed freely. He raised his left arm up high, and chanted frantically. This was the Blood Spell he’d learned on the Red Continent. A clear wall that appeared almost colorless, but on close inspection had a faint red tint, rose from the ground to surround Akira-san and the others. It was shaped like a dome, or maybe a cylinder. Ranta grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me inside the wall too. That light came down at us like lightning, but it couldn’t break the barrier.

“Thanks, now we can catch our breath,” Akira-san said with a laugh, and Branken and Kayo smiled. Miho and Gogh, who had nearly died, were both fascinated by the Blood Spell. Taro was glaring up at the night-clad one.

“What do we do?” the dreadlocked paladin Kemuri asked.

Akira-san shrugged. “If Gogh and Kayo can’t take it out with their combined magic, there’s nothing we can do. I’d love to leave it to Soma, but I clearly can’t ask him to fly.”

“Yeah, guess not,” Kemuri responded with an exasperated shake of his head.

Why were they so calm? It was like they’d been in this sort of situation many times before, and had always come out fine. Maybe they had.

It was true that ordinary weapons and magic couldn’t harm the sekaishu. But the night-clad one had taken nearly fatal damage from Gogh’s blast. We were managing somehow. And besides that, we still had Soma as our trump card. The situation was bad, and it didn’t look like we could turn it around in a hurry, but things could’ve been going a whole lot worse. Even I’d had experiences like that before. Looking back at it now, we still had room to maneuver.

“I can’t keep this up for long,” Adachi said. He didn’t have a particularly good pallor even at the best of times, but by that point he was pale in the face, and his body was shaking.

“Hey!” Ranta pointed toward the west with his katana.

I looked in that direction, and saw that the sekaishu were writhing darkly. They were shifting about all over the Crown Mountains, but the way that those particular sekaishu were undulating was different somehow. They were waving around, reaching up to heights of two or three meters, no, even up to four in some places. And at the highest point they reached, there it was. The night-clad one with the shining shield and sword. Now we had to deal with that one on top of the staff-wielder.

“That sword and shield were Shinohara’s,” Akira-san noted.

“Yeah,” Gogh agreed with a nod. “Beheader and Guardian. Those are definitely his.”

I had thought I’d recognized them from somewhere. When I had encountered the night-clad one near Alterna, I’d been confident that the sword and shield were relics, and Shinohara had crossed my mind. Because I’d known that Shinohara had carried sword and shield relics, and the ones that the night-clad one had been carrying had clearly resembled them. But I had never thought about it any more deeply than that. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to consider it.

Shinohara had always been difficult for me to understand. He was awfully friendly, and had helped me out from time to time. I’d thought of him as a reliable senior, but then he had started to try to curry favor with Jin Mogis. That had struck me as shady, but we’d known each other a long time. We’d fought together too. Maybe I just didn’t want to think that that thing might be Shinohara.

But at the same time, maybe I had known all along. They had Shinohara’s sword and shield. There was a human inside of that night-clad one, or the remains of a human, since he was probably no longer alive. It was Shinohara. He’d been absorbed by the sekaishu and had become a night-clad one.

“Um, I’m gonna go.” I probably could have worded that better. Looking back on it now, there was no need to try to play it cool, so I should have expressed myself more clearly. I doubt Akira-san and the others, even Ranta, had any clue what I was trying to say, or what I planned on doing, at first.

“Huh?!” It was Ranta that shouted first. Of that, I’m sure.

“Uh, hey, wai—” Who was it that called after me next? I think it was probably a woman. That meant Miho or Kayo, or perhaps Shima. Definitely not Chibi. She rarely spoke in words that could clearly be distinguished as language.

I went outside the wall formed by the Blood Spell. Why wasn’t I swallowed up by the waves of sekaishu that were pressing in on us? Honestly, I don’t know, but at the time, I could see a path. I had something I was trying to do, and I knew what to do in order to accomplish that goal.

I’ll be the first to admit how mediocre I am, but sometimes, and I’m talking incredibly rarely here, my focus rises to a peak, and everything just goes well for me. Maybe you could say that I get into the zone? I don’t mind doing the same thing over and over. That probably has something to do with recognizing my own mediocrity. I’ll improve more by doing something twice instead of once, ten times instead of twice, and a hundred times instead of ten. Repetition teaches my body how to do things, even if I’m not very good. Then I can manage the bare minimum even when my head’s not working. I feel like that habit, or pattern of behavior, was key to unlocking that state of extreme focus. That said, I don’t know how to find that key, and I can’t even see the door, let alone the keyhole. But on occasion I suddenly find myself with the key in my hand, pushing it into the keyhole of that invisible door. I’d turn the key without even meaning to, the door would open, and I’d be on the other side. That’s how it is for me.

I didn’t so much cross the black waves of sekaishu as ride them without resisting their flow, stepping from wave to wave, letting them raise me to where I could use another wave as a stepping stone to transfer over to yet another that was close to it. I’d specialized in Stealth, the one skill essential to a thief. It suited my personality. I’m exaggerating here, but that’s basically because I was a nobody, and it let me be who I was. I moved from one dark wave of sekaishu to the next without breaking my Stealth. But then, those things weren’t either humans or beasts, so did Stealth even work against them? I never even stopped to consider that. I barely had a conscious thought at all until I found myself standing behind the night-clad one, the former Shinohara.

I had the relic sealed in undead hide strapped to my back. The moment I opened that package, the sekaishu and the former Shinohara would notice me. They can’t notice me yet. I’m nobody. I just need to get close enough. I didn’t tense up. I was doing everything right. I thought it would work, and so what if it didn’t. I was a nobody. My existence was nothing. Even if I couldn’t do a thing, even if I accomplished nothing, then that would just mean that a nonentity had done nothing.

I only had fifty centimeters to go before I reached the dark back of the night-clad one that had once been Shinohara. I held the hide bundle in front of my chest, and tore it open with one slash of the dagger I was holding in my left hand.

The former Shinohara tried to turn. I was holding the Fatalsis in my right hand with a backhand grip, and as soon as it was out of its hide package, I stabbed it into the former Shinohara’s throat. If I’d been a tenth of a second, no, even a hundredth of a second slower, the ex-Shinohara would’ve decapitated me with Beheader, or sent me flying with a shield bash from Guardian. I didn’t feel the blade strike anything. If I were to reach for a comparison, it was like stabbing a sword into water. That was about the level of resistance I felt. The Fatalsis easily pierced through the sekaishu covering the former Shinohara. Its blade wasn’t even thirty centimeters long, and it buried itself into the night-clad one all the way to the hilt instantly. And once it had gone in as far as it was going to, the fatal dagger vanished without a trace.

I’m a little slow, but even I was startled when that happened.

“Huh?” I recall murmuring in disbelief.

Now, as I understand it, what happened next started not before the Fatalsis disappeared, but after it was gone.

The dark sekaishu turned a shade of gray that was almost white. And it wasn’t just the sekaishu wrapped around the former Shinohara. It was the ones that it had been riding on, and the ones that had gathered in that area like a writhing whirlpool. I don’t know how many sekaishu there were around me in total, or if it was even possible to count them like that, but all of the sekaishu in a ten, no, fifteen to twenty meter radius instantly turned that pale gray.

I was standing on top of those sekaishu. Up until that point, standing on them had been different from standing on rocks or sand, but there had been a certain level of stability to them. However, once they turned that whitish gray color, it was immediately clear to me that that was about to change.

They’re gonna collapse, I thought. They’re about to fall apart.

The whitish gray sekaishu were as brittle as dried out bones that had been left exposed to the elements for many long years. They crumbled to dust under my feet. Obviously, I started to sink into them, and the further I sank, the more the gray sekaishu crumbled away.

I fell about five meters, covered in gray sekaishu, or perhaps I should say I fell that distance inside of the gray sekaishu. If they had been bones, the dust might have irritated my eyes or made me choke, but I thankfully didn’t encounter any problems like that.

Having lost their black color—though, is it really accurate to say that the blackness of the sekaishu was their color? Isn’t black the absence of color? Well, anyway, having lost their black color, the sekaishu became extremely fragile, falling apart under even the slightest touch, and they broke into finer and finer pieces until there was nothing left of them.

I fell into the dried grass of the Quickwind Plains, rolling as I landed in an attempt to avoid the full force of the impact.

Shinohara couldn’t do the same. Because he was dead. He was lying face down on the ground, with his back side pointed toward me. I had no intention of going over to him and cradling his body in my arms. His body wasn’t rotted or anything, but he was weirdly white. The gray sekaishu turned to dust and vanished without piling up on the ground. Shinohara was lying there dead, with Beheader and Guardian right next to him.

“Haruhirooo!”

I was stuck in a daze until Ranta called my name. It could only have been a few seconds, though. I put away my dagger, grabbed Beheader and Guardian, and tried to head back to the others. A flash shot toward me like lightning, and I instinctively held up Guardian to block it.

“Someone take these!” I handed the relics off to one of my comrades. It was ultimately Kemuri who ended up using them.

Even with the former Shinohara defeated, there was still another night-clad one dropping lightning on us from up in the sky. I also knew that there was at least one more. They were wearing Aragarfald, the armor Renji used to wear. I suspected Jin Mogis was inside of that one. He’d been carrying a relic too.

The transparent wall surrounding us was getting pretty thin. As Adachi, who was using the Blood Spell, stumbled and nearly fell, Chibi moved to prop him up.

“Adachi, that’s enough!” Renji shouted.

When the transparent wall dissipated, the night-clad one descended from above. Maybe they planned on getting closer so they could pick off those of us who weren’t able to defend ourselves using swords or shields? They had been maintaining an altitude of around fifteen meters before, but now they had lowered themselves to around seven or eight meters.

I remember thinking, Oh, crap. And yet despite that, I didn’t feel a sense of urgency about it. The Fatalsis had struck down the former Shinohara. Shinohara was already dead, so pardon my use of a somewhat more pretentious phrase, but I had laid him to rest with my own hands. I may have been feeling the satisfaction of a job well done. I think I also had the sense that I wouldn’t be able to do anything more.

“I’m betting it all on this!” Soma shouted.

Of course it was all going to be up to him. But not even he could leap seven or eight meters straight up to take a swipe at the night-clad one. No, Soma didn’t jump. He lowered the tip of his katana to the ground, and swung it upward and diagonally.

“Yahhhhhh!”

Soma’s swordwork usually came across as beautifully flowing rather than powerful. But not this time. He swung his katana like he was throwing an object of incredible mass. He put all of his strength into that swing. It looked to me like Soma’s katana stretched to several times its length. It wasn’t as if the extended blade hit the night-clad one. No, that’s definitely not what happened. It was more like he fired something that warped the air out of the end of that extended blade, and that was what hit the night-clad one. I can’t explain it any other way.

The night-clad one had been right about to fire off another lightning attack. But then the golden armor they were wearing, and the crown, and the staff all split in two. There was a bursting noise as the night-clad one was bisected from head to pelvis. It seemed less like Soma had cut through them, and more like some irresistible power had forced them to move in two directions, tearing them apart.

“Eyeaugh.” Ranta let out a strange sound, like he wanted to express he was already sick of this.

For my part, though I was shocked Soma was able to do what he’d just done, it also kind of made sense to me. Soma was still human, but he could do things no human ever could. Because he was a hero. Heroes could do that kind of thing.

Seeing a hero helped to rouse us ordinary folk. It gave us courage, and let us dream that maybe we could do what seemed impossible. We simply had to follow behind the hero who carried the flag. That was pretty much all us riffraff were good for. We want to believe the future lies wherever we’re headed. It’s something we can’t help but hope for. And a hero lets us believe that it does.

After slowly swinging his katana back down, Soma pointed it toward the Crown Mountains. Then he started walking. He was already heading toward the Crown Mountains.

Even with two of the night-clad ones down, the sekaishu hadn’t stopped coming at us. The night-clad ones were gone, but that was all that had changed. We were still exposed to the black waves of sekaishu. Leading the way, Soma would swing his blade, and blast the sekaishu away. Now that Kemuri had gained Beheader and Guardian, he was able to deal effective blows against the sekaishu as well. But with that said, the other members of Daybreak couldn’t do anything more than knock the sekaishu aside or push them back a bit. It wasn’t like we were making easy progress, but it wasn’t sluggish, and we were starting to pick up speed.

Even as the Crown Mountains—which no longer looked like their namesake, but like a massive, pitch-black bowl that had been turned upside down—started to change shape, Daybreak kept on marching forward.

“Giants?!” Ranta sounded almost giddy with excitement.

There were a number of thorns growing out of that overturned black bowl. I call them thorns, but on closer inspection, they weren’t really anything like pins, or even poles. They were tall and slender, but humanoid in form. The lanky giants. Those giants had lived on the Quickwind Plains since ancient times, and had been spotted especially frequently around the Crown Mountains. On our way to Alterna, we’d seen a lanky giant that had been caught by the sekaishu. That was what had become of them after the sekaishu got them. They had become night-clad lanky giants, or perhaps lanky giants infected with black tumors.

How many of those dark lanky giants were there? Seven, maybe eight? Ten? No, more than that? And rather than just appearing on the mountain, it was more like they had been birthed from it. They ambled down from the mountains, with two, maybe three of them coming our way. The others looked like they were heading to the north, east, and west.

Do we have to take these things on? Even Soma would have a tough time against enemies of that size, wouldn’t he?

I might have been the only one faltering and thinking that kind of thing. Daybreak kept moving onward. Soma even started running toward the dark lanky giants, and some of the other members of Daybreak let out a battle cry. Not only were they not afraid of the giants, their morale had gone up a notch.

Maybe we can win, I remember thinking.

I still didn’t believe, on a personal level, that we could. But I couldn’t trust my own intuition. I wasn’t the one who would be the deciding factor in the battle. If the rest of Daybreak thought they could win, then they were probably right. Because I was the kind of guy who couldn’t be confident in victory until it was over. It was like a kind of insurance. I was prone to messing up a lot. Because of all my failures, I wanted to be emotionally prepared for when things didn’t work out.

“Look over there!” Who was it that said that? In my memories, it was Renji. He must have pointed as he was saying it, because I realized what he meant immediately.

I was keeping my eyes on the dark lanky giants that were coming toward us, and I had the Crown Mountains in my field of view. There was something floating over the top of the mountains. I’m sure it hadn’t been there the whole time. If it had, we would’ve noticed it sooner. It was a shining blue orb. Did it fly in? How large was it? It wasn’t as small as a bird, but at the same time, it wasn’t anywhere close to the size of the dark lanky giants. It was pea-sized next to the Crown Mountains.

“That’s the No-Life King!” Akira-san shouted.

Was he able to see something that far away that clearly? Well, even if he couldn’t, he must’ve been able to tell somehow.

The shining blue orb began descending. A massive sekaishu, like a giant snake, reared its head out of the pitch black of the Crown Mountains. It had many heads, dozens of them, and it looked as if all of them were snapping at the shining blue orb. They were snapping at it, actually, but the snake’s dark heads vanished the moment they touched the shining blue orb.

We were decoys. Daybreak, the combined force of undead, hornedfolk, piratsians, centaurs, and kobolds who were attacking advancing from the north, the orcish army attacking from the west, and Forgan and the gray elves who were positioned to the east, all of us were just decoys. Bait to distract the sekaishu. The No-Life King was the one who was going to put an end to the conflict.

But more than that, the fight against the sekaishu wasn’t the end of the story as far as the No-Life King was concerned. He had his eyes on the future. It was what lay beyond that one battle that mattered to him. And it was the same for us.

If this were where everything was going to end, we wouldn’t have nearly as much of a reason to fight as hard as we are. This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. Fortunately, we haven’t lost anyone in Daybreak yet. We shouldn’t lose anyone, and ideally the other races will have minimal losses too. This is a new beginning for us.

According to the old legend, the sekaishu have been in Grimgar for a long time. The nameless one dropped the red star to stop a fight between the two gods. The primordial dragon struck down the red star, and its pieces became the sekaishu. Relics. Were all of them relics? Old relics try to expel newer relics. Was it a competition for survival?

But if we’re intelligent, we can communicate, and maybe we can find a way to avoid conflict and reduce the fighting over time until it goes away. That’s what the No-Life King was trying to accomplish.

If this is it, then we have no choice but to eliminate our rival for survival, and bring about the conclusion of the old era. Then we’ll gather under the No-Life King who settled things, bend the knee, and debate how to build the new era. Right now, we’re taking part in the ceremony that will usher that new era in.

The shining blue orb erased the countless grasping sekaishu tentacles attacking it in no time at all, and then slammed into the pitch black mountain.

There was a poof, like the sound you might hear when you expel pressurized air from your mouth. It seemed like a light noise, but it echoed over a considerable distance.

Then a blue light started spreading out in concentric circles starting from the point where the shining orb had entered the dark mass. The light flew past us, and continued expanding far and wide.

Was the blue light responsible for what happened next? The sekaishu lost their color and turned a whitish gray. Gray. The sekaishu turned gray, crumbled, and faded away.

The dark lanky giants fell one after another as the sekaishu were stripped away from them.

The Crown Mountains weren’t black anymore. For a moment, they were wrapped in gray, and then the gray vanished, but even then they didn’t regain the crown-like appearance they’d once had. The sekaishu had ground down and crushed the peaks. All that was left was a rounded, heavily warped set of mounds. But regardless, the sekaishu had been wiped away. Or at least, there wasn’t any trace of them left near the Crown Mountains.

That’s when it happened. A pillar of blue light rose up from the rounded Crown Mountains. It was tall. Incredibly tall. It rose all the way into the sky, and I couldn’t see where it ended. At first, the pillar of blue light looked like a single vertical line. But it kept on getting thicker. There was a repeating tung, tung sound coming from somewhere—from within the Crown Mountains, I soon realized. I felt vibrations too. It wasn’t clear what was making that noise, just that something was happening. The No-Life King was doing something. The root of the sekaishu was probably inside the Crown Mountains, down in their foundations, or perhaps even deeper than that. What did the sekaishu’s root look like? We may never know, but it was there. The No-Life King was trying to destroy it, and this was part of the process. That was pretty much all I could infer.

The only thing I was able to do at that point was stand in place, gazing up at the pillar of blue light rising out of the Crown Mountains. And it wasn’t just me. Everyone else was doing the same thing. The sekaishu were disappearing. Or they’d already vanished. All we could do was watch. There was nothing else for us to do. Nothing.

The pillar of blue light never spread out wider than the Crown Mountains. Actually, it remained quite a bit smaller than them, aside from its height. It did keep getting brighter, though, until it was too bright to look at directly. It wasn’t going to blind us, but you’d have to squint if you wanted to keep your eyes on it for long.

I don’t know how long it was before the light stopped growing in strength and started to diminish, but I was looking at the blue pillar the whole time. It didn’t feel like it took forever for it to do whatever it was that it did, but neither was it over quickly. And once the light started to weaken, it quickly returned to a single line, then vanished like it had never been there at all.

“Is it over?”

I don’t think any one person said that. It was more like multiple people said it at practically the same time. I was thinking it too. Was that it? Had we put an end to the conflict? Had the No-Life King extinguished the root of the sekaishu? Had the sekaishu died out? We didn’t have the answers to those questions, so all we could do was wait. The No-Life King would emerge from the Crown Mountains soon enough, and announce that he’d accomplished what we’d set out to do. I’m pretty sure all of us, myself included, were imagining how that scene would play out.

Something flew out of the peak of the Crown Mountains. It wasn’t a shining sphere or anything like that; it was just a distant speck, flying like a bird, but it felt like it had to be the No-Life King. It rose up rapidly, dozens of meters above the Crown Mountains, stopping at maybe around a hundred meters in the air.

There were lots of voices saying things like “Oh?” and “Is that...?” and “The No-Life King?”

As for me, the word “Merry” ended up falling out of my mouth without me consciously thinking about saying it.

It may seem foolish of me, but at the time, I was thinking, Now I’ll be able to see Merry again. The No-Life King is inside of Merry. That’s not going to have changed. The No-Life King has his own will, and his own objectives, and I don’t know if he’ll free Merry. It’s not even clear if that’s possible. But even so, I should at least be able to talk to her. I never hugged her when we spoke under the great tree in the Wonder Hole. I had been regretting that. Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but she had wanted me to, right? The next time we met and I was able to talk to her, I had every intention of doing so.

No matter what she does, I’ll be at her side. With her. Maybe she won’t want that, and she’ll refuse. That’s fine too. I’ll do it because it’s what I want to do. I’ll tell her that. No matter what outcome awaits us, I want to be with her until my life runs out. That’s pretty much all I can do, so I hope she’ll let me. Merry, please let me be with you.

I was about to start running forward. But then the Crown Mountains—no, with how much they’d changed, the mountains didn’t look much like a crown anymore, so I couldn’t really call them that—the mountain formerly known as the Crown Mountains suddenly erupted or something. I screamed and fell over as a tremor thrust me upward. There was a horrible rumble, but the scene before my eyes was even more intense.

The mountain formerly known as the Crown Mountains ruptured, and massive hunks of rock and other stuff went flying all over. There was a burst of smoke, or dust, or something similar, and I lost sight of the No-Life King—of Merry. The mountain formerly known as the Crown Mountains soon ceased to be a mountain at all. Most of it went flying into the air, and by the time I was able to think, They’re coming this way, the rocks that had originally appeared to be fist-sized now looked huge, and were still getting closer.

I ran around in a frenzy because if one of those things hit me, I’d have been dead instantly. Even as I ran this way and that, a dense cloud of smoke, or maybe dust, billowed and swirled for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of meters around where the Crown Mountains had once stood, as if it were descending to wreak havoc on the land. And there was something inside it. I couldn’t sense any more than that there was something, but I could definitely feel its presence. Anyone could have, even Ruon, who wasn’t even a year old at the time, would have been able to sense it if he’d been there. That’s how overwhelming the being’s presence was. Just by being there, it warped and twisted everything, its power bringing about and enforcing changes with no room for objection. The word “overwhelming” can’t even begin to describe how overwhelming it was.

“Haruhirooo!”

Ranta called my name, but I didn’t look at him. I was still managing to pay the bare minimum of attention needed to keep an eye out for incoming rocks, but I found myself unable to turn my gaze away from the being in the cloud.

Beams of light were tearing through the cloud, being emitted by something within. Was the shining object giving off heat too? It was hot. I could feel the heat. It made my skin sting, and my eyes dry out and hurt. The light was expanding as it tried to blow away the cloud around it. I felt like I was staring straight into the sun. But the sun is far away, and looks small when you see it from down here on the land. The thing I was looking at was different. It wasn’t right next to me, but it was close enough I could have run to it.

What is that? It’s light. Light itself.

There weren’t any more giant rocks flying. The cloud was about to clear.

It’s light.

The light was shining.

I shouldn’t look at it. It’ll blind me. It’s horrifying. Yet at the same time, I can’t help but stare. And I don’t care if my eyeballs melt away. What is this feeling?

I wanted to get down on my knees. But not to bow my head. Because I wanted to see the light. What did I think I would get out of gazing up at it? I don’t know. But I bent my knees and lowered my hips.

“You idiot! The hell do you think you’re doing, Haruhiro?!” Ranta seized me by the shoulder and violently dragged me back to my feet.

What was I doing? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. The light was just too powerful. It warmed me, heated me, tried to make me boil. It was terrifying, but it also felt like it would let me escape from myself. If I gave myself over to the light, body and soul, I’d never waver again. I wouldn’t suffer anymore.

“I know what that is! It’s Lumiaris! And you’re no priest or paladin!” Ranta shouted at me.

“Lumiaris...”

Ranta, what’re you talking about, with your nose shoved right up in front of mine. You’re yelling right in my face, Ranta. You know? That that’s Lumiaris? What’s that supposed to mean? What? Lumiaris? That? That’s the God of Light, Lumiaris?

According to legend, at one point, peace on the continent of Grimgar was shattered by two gods that came from beyond the sea and sky. They raised such a ruckus that the primordial dragon was roused from its sleep. The two gods had been fighting an intense war with the forerunners as their servants. The dragon joined the battle in an attempt to punish the two gods with death. Who had won? One of the two gods? Or perhaps the dragon? None of them. The nameless one dropped the red star down from the heavens. The primordial dragon shot down the red star, and its fragments became black tumors. The two gods vanished, buried under those tumors—the sekaishu—and the exhausted dragon entered a slumber in which it perished.

The stone and clay tablets we’d found in Darunggar had also depicted the battle between Lumiaris and Skullhell. In the same way that the people of Darunggar had once fought each other, joining either the God of Light or the God of Dark, long ago, the forerunners had also been divided into two camps and fought here in Grimgar. For some reason, the two gods had moved their fight from Darunggar to Grimgar. But eventually, their battle in Grimgar had come to a conclusion. Except, I suppose it had never really ended after all.

The two gods had left Darunggar. That was why Lumiaris’s blessings and Skullhell’s power couldn’t reach there. We hadn’t been able to use light or dark magic very well during our time in that world. But they still had followers in Grimgar. There were wielders of light magic, and there were dread knights. The two gods had simply disappeared, buried beneath the sekaishu. The sekaishu had been sealing them away.

“O light! May Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you!” someone said in a loud, eloquent, melodious voice.

I looked over and saw Akira-san was drawing a hexagram in the air with the tip of his sword. His eyes shined radiantly, light spilling out from both his pupils.

“O light! O Lumiaris! O liiight!”

The dreadlocked paladin Kemuri raised Beheader, which I’d taken from Shinohara, and was moving Guardian in a hexagram pattern. His eyes were also shining.

“Ohhhhh! O, light! Light! Let there be light! O Lumiaris!” There was light in Gogh’s eyes too as he swung his staff. He was a former mage, but he wore a priest’s robes. He’d devoted himself to Lumiaris when he became a priest.

“Ahh! Light! Light! Liiight!” Tada as well. The glow coming from his glasses wasn’t him making them catch the light like usual; it originated from the eyes behind them.

“Light! It’s light, yeah! Lumiariiisss! Liiight!” And Anna-san.

“Let there be light! May Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you!” And Tsuga of the Typhoon Rocks.

“O Lumiaris...! O light...!” Wado, the priest who had previously been in the Berserkers, knelt down and made the sign of the hexagram on his forehead repeatedly.

“What the—?! Hey!” Renji roared.

He was probably shouting at Chibi. There was something wrong with her. Though she wasn’t ranting about Lumiaris, there was a light in her eyes. I could see that there was clearly something wrong with her, but I still couldn’t believe what she did next. Chibi slammed her battle staff into Renji’s head with a thrusting motion.

Renji must have been caught totally off guard. He almost went down, like his legs had given out underneath him. He stayed on his feet somehow, but Chibi kept going, clubbing him repeatedly in the face. The whole time, her lips were moving. Maybe she was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. The light was shining in her eyes. It also looked to me like she was crying.

“Chibi! Stop!” Adachi tried to get in between them, but Chibi took him down in one swing.

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Ron was at a total loss for what to do.

“O light!” Kemuri the paladin used Beheader to decapitate his comrade, Pingo the necromancer, causing Pingo’s golem Zenmai to be reduced to nothing but a corpse doll.

“What?!” Soma deflected Akira-san’s katana as the other man slashed at him. With Soma’s skills, he should have been able to strike back immediately. But he was up against Akira-san.

“O light! O Lumiaris!” Akira-san attacked relentlessly, not even pausing for breath. Soma was totally being forced onto the defensive.

“Akira-san! Stop! Why are you doing this?!”

“Liiiight!”

Tada pulverized Kikkawa’s head with his warhammer. Mimori just stood there as Anna-san closed in and pointed her hands up toward Mimori’s face, which was quite a long way to reach for a woman as petite as Anna-san.

“Blame!”

“Ah!” Mimori stumbled back as Anna-san unleashed an intense light right in her face.

“Lumiariiiiis!” Tada followed up with a flash of his warhammer that sent Mimori flying.

“Yoooooo!” Inui let out a strange shout as he tried to put Tada in a pinion from behind, but Tada easily threw him off, then hit him with his warhammer.

“Liiiight! Liiiiight! Ha ha ha hahhh!”

“O light!” Gogh raised his staff high as his wife, the warrior Kayo, and his adopted son, the elf Taro, were racing toward him.

“Darling!”

“Dad!”

“Judgment!”

The light that burst forth after Gogh’s shout blinded me. My vision went white, and I couldn’t see a thing, but I could hear Gogh, Akira-san, Anna-san, Tada, Tsuga, and Wado praising the light and chanting Lumiaris’s name while the Daybreak members begged and pleaded with the priests and paladins to stop, or tried to get an explanation from them.

Ranta started shouting, “Oh, damn! This is bad! Real bad! Ahhhhhh!”

I realized I had crouched down and shut my eyes without consciously deciding to. When I opened them, I found that I could see, though my vision was pretty blurry. I immediately closed them again.

I don’t need to see this. I don’t want to see anything. Sink. Submerge my consciousness into the ground. I was trying to use Stealth. Of course, that was in no way a good time to be doing so, and I knew it. But what am I supposed to do? Even as I’m doing this, my comrades are hurting each other. People are getting killed. I’m sure some have died already. What can I do? There’s nothing I can do, is there?

“Haru, Haruhiro, Haruhiro! Haruhiro, please!” Ranta draped himself over my back like a child begging for a piggy-back ride.

What? The hell do you want now, man? Seriously, what?

“He’s coming! He’s coming! I know it! I can’t resist! I have to obey! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill everyone who doesn’t follow him and I’ll offer their deaths to his name! I won’t be able to stop myself! I know he’s coming! He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s comiiiiing!”

What’s he on about? Why is he rambling in my ear like this? I can’t even make out what he’s saying properly. “He”? Who’s “he”? What’s this about?

Ranta practically had his lips pressed to my ear. I looked at Ranta and saw something on his face. Ranta was crying.

Ranta’s crying. Why?

Those tears, they’re not transparent. They’re black. Pitch black. Ranta’s crying black tears. And they aren’t just streaming down his cheeks. His eyes are stained black too. He’s got his arms around my neck. It’s like I really am giving him a piggy-back ride. Ranta might actually be clinging to me.

“Help me, Haruhiro. You’re the only one I can ask. Only you. Kill me, Haruhiro. Do it now, while you still can. Before he comes. Before he dominates me. Before he takes full control. If you don’t, I’m gonna kill you. And not just you, I’ll kill them all. Everyone. Even Yume and Ruon. I’ll do it for S-S-Skull—no, I can’t. If I say his name, it’s over. I’m begging you, Haruhiro, kill me! Kill me right now!”

How could I possibly do that? I can’t. I could never. You want me to kill you, man? Ranta. I can’t do it. I can’t kill you. I’m just not able to. I don’t want to kill you. I mean, what about Yume? And Ruon? Oh. Oh, I see it now. That’s what this is about. Yume and Ruon. It’s not me he’s worried about. It’s that he doesn’t want to kill Yume and Ruon. He can’t let that happen. But Ranta also can’t refuse. Because he’s a dread knight. He’s dedicated all of the murders he’s committed as a dread knight to the Dark God, Skullhell. Ranta’s been accumulating vice. He’s sworn again and again that he will obey and serve Skullhell. And in return, he received power. He can’t go back on that now. No matter how much he wants to. And the priests and paladins who’ve received the protection and boons of Lumiaris are the same.

The sekaishu were sealing the two gods away. Both the God of Light, Lumiaris, and the God of Dark, Skullhell. It’s not just Lumiaris. Skullhell’s in there too. He’s coming. Skullhell will emerge after Lumiaris. He’ll appear on the surface. And when he does...

I had been crouching down, with Ranta on top of me, but a moment later, it was Ranta who was on the ground. Our positions had been completely reversed. I had grappled Ranta from behind, and I was covering his eyes with my left arm. My left hand was holding Ranta by his right ear, and I had my dagger gripped in my right hand. The blade hadn’t touched Ranta yet.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s my line, moron,” he countered with a smirk.

I quickly slit Ranta’s throat with my dagger. Then, without a moment’s pause, I quickly started stabbing him all over, aiming for vital points, as I tried to snuff the life out of him as fast as possible. Even once I sensed he was dead, I kept stabbing him just to be sure.

I released his lifeless body and stood up. Light and darkness were twisted together in the place where the Crown Mountains used to stand. Light above, darkness below. They’d probably been in one big stack with the sekaishu on top, Lumiaris in the middle, and Skullhell on the bottom.

With the sekaishu eliminated, Lumiaris had emerged first, and then Skullhell had pushed Lumiaris up and surfaced too.

All I could tell was that Lumiaris was the light and Skullhell was the darkness. Did they have no physical forms? Or were their forms simply beyond the comprehension of a lowly being like me?

But that didn’t matter to me anymore. I wasn’t even interested in the members of Daybreak who were killing each other. I mean, I had just killed Ranta. Sure, Ranta had asked me to do it. I had thought that I was doing the right thing, or doing the only thing I could do. I’d had no choice. But even so, I had killed Ranta.

I turned my back toward what had once been the Crown Mountains. Was I walking, or running? I don’t know. Either way, I got out of there. I fled. I ran away.