Chapter 222: All as Planned

The golden castle was much quiet than the city outside.

Yuki had some problem passing through the main gate… as she had to fight four guards stationed there and then calm down the people who were trying to get inside.

She had to say that… leading a lot of people was not something that everyone can do and she had no talent for it.

Maybe it was because she had always been lonely and isolated, having been living in her apartment for all these years. and even coming here had not made much changes.

At first she indeed tried to make herself helpful by leading the group of people out of danger, but at the end she could not protect them. After that she had stopped dwelling into the possibility of becoming a central figure.

Having a group of small people was different.

On the other hand, her brother had always been trained to lead masses. He had always been the central figure, even among countless geniuses like him.

After she passed two archways and large lobbies with several empty rooms… a feeling of deep unease settled in her heart. Then not long after she saw the first corpse.

She saw blood pooling at the center of the lobby from both sides. Yuki gulped hard and coldly looked at the corners and found the bodies of several players huddled together.

They all were dead!

’Who-Who could have done something so vile? ’ Her perfect expression, suddenly crumbled to that of disgust.

She didn’t know what happened here, but one thing was clear and that was the fact that something was wrong. The silence was artificial, someone had killed everyone inside the castle.

She continued on without wasting time and finally reached the final arch and stopped at the threshold, hiding behind the archway, where Ishiki had stood just a few minutes ago.

The throne room opened before her in ruin… the pillars were fractured, floor was cratered. And the dragon’s body lay in its long pool of gold at the right side of the room.

Her eyes widened in disbelief at what she was witnessing. Then she saw other people as well.

Kenji was on the floor just besides the dragon’s body, breathing in shallow wet intervals, one of his hand was pressed flat against the tiles and other against his chest from where red Blood continued dripping.

In front of him was Ishiki slumped against a pillar, and his face seemed to have frozen at the state of utter shock.

And at the center of the room, with his back to the entrance and his face toward Ishiki, stood Renji.

His pink hair caught the lamplight.

She had not seen him in a very long time.

But she could tell that something was very odd. And at that moment, a window suddenly appeared in front of her.

[The New Emperor of Aethelburg has been Chosen – Renji Koyo]

’What??’ She almost blurted out that in surprise… but maintained her secrecy and kept hiding, listening.

Ishiki looked as shocked as she was, as he was staring at empty air in front of him. What was happening here?

’Ishiki is alive… but Filch said that he was dead in the Cathedral. ’

“This feeling of having absolute power,” Renji proclaimed with a chuckle. “I now stand -”

“How Long?” Ishiki intervened.

Renji looked at him without saying a word. He was pushing himself up using the pillar as a support. It was evident from his movements that his body has been pushed past its limits and the effort of it was audible in his breathing.

He stood up and looked at Renji with, bloodshot eyes.

He said nothing at first.

The silence stretched between them and Yuki counted the seconds without meaning to.

“How long,” Ishiki said. His voice had very little left in it and he only had one question left that matters and he needed the answer before anything else can happen.

“How long did you plan this,” Ishiki said again. “How much of it was yours.”

Renji was quiet for a moment, then he said the words that made Ishiki’s world crumble.

“From the moment you stepped outside that village, to this moment, right now,” Renji continued. “All of it was as I planned.”

“You being saved from the demon in the Crimson Canopy, because it could not stay longer.” He paused. “Yuki losing consciousness after healing you.”

Ishiki remembered back to the day, he and Yuki first encountered the demon in the Crimson Canopy. He had almost died… but the Demon left without finishing them because he could not keep track of time and Demon’s could not come out under the Crimson Moon.

It was because Renji had played with his senses of time. Now that he thought about it. Renji’s appearance that day was way to convenient.

Yuki, against the archway, said nothing.

She stared at the stone in front of her face and listened, she felt something she did not entirely have a name for.

“Filch’s coma,” Renji added. “The duration of it. The particular circumstances that kept him from acting during the period when his acting would have changed the course of things.” He paused again. “And everything that followed. Everything you made and every choice you believed you were making.”

Ishiki’s jaw was locked.

“The demons,” he said. It came out barely above a breath.

“I gave them an idea,” Renji explained. “That the Orb could be used to free their lord. That there was a path to what they wanted and it ran through Aethelburg.” He looked at Ishiki with those pink eyes that registered everything and displayed nothing. “They are useful indeed. They moved in the direction I needed them to move. They created pressure in the right places at the right times.”

“The fall of the Secondary Ring tonight was arranged,” Renji said, without inflection. “In order to create sufficient commotion. The city needed to be occupied with itself.” Then he smiled. “I killed everyone inside in order to prepare the final set.”

His smile didn’t waver as he pointed to Ishiki.

“You were the bait, I needed Kenji here, believing that he was running his plan to its conclusion, which required you to be the variable he was chasing. Everything Kenji did tonight, he did because he believed he was a step ahead of you.” He paused.

The lamplight pressed down on all of it. On Kenji bleeding on the floor beside the dragon’s headless body. On Ishiki against his pillar, destroyed and upright. On Renji standing in the center of the room and his pink eyes reflecting the lamplight with indifference.

“The demon you were saved from,” Ishiki murmured… “Yuki passing out. Filch. All of it — you are telling me that from the beginning.”

“The decisions were yours,” Renji interrupted him, as if to clarify. “Every choice you made, you made. I do not manufacture those things — they cannot be manufactured. What I do is place the conditions in which certain decisions become inevitable for certain people.” His pink eyes held Ishiki’s across the ruined floor. “I am not responsible for what you felt. I am only responsible for the shape of the situation that produced what you felt.”

Ishiki’s rage having reached bottleneck, exploded in that moment. He moved with his battered body. His actions had no strategy, no plan or anything. He just wanted to hit the person in front of him.

“SCREW YOU!!”

He crossed the distance between himself and Renji with everything his broken body had, which was not much and was also absolute.

Renji moved at the same moment.

He moved sideways and took a single step that put him outside of Ishiki’s direct path without requiring him to retreat.

His hand came up and the ordinary looking sword manifested itself in his hands.

Ishiki stumbled and caught himself on one knee, halfway between the pillar and where Renji had been standing, and looked up at the blade angled toward him.

He did not flinch and instead glared back.

Renji looked down at him.

“I am sorry,” Renji said, “that it had to be you.”

He raised the sword and moved it down.

At that moment, Kenji moved too. He was not yet dead… and his expression was not human at all, his tongue was lolling out and his eyes displayed madness.

“Give those orbs to me!” HE screamed and launched at Renji. “I will be able to revive Akari with them. You Son of a Bitch!!”

Renji stepped back and moved his blade, cutting the maddened human’s left hand from his elbow.

Yuki stepped out from the arch at the same time.

She crossed the throne room at an extraordinary pace. Her frost blade was already formed, already at the angle of attack.

Renji heard her.

She knew because she saw it but for some reason he did not act.

She was right!

The frost blade entered from behind without any resistance from the later.

Between the fourth and fifth rib on the left side, angled upward and it easily found the heart.

Renji’s sword hand dropped.

He looked down at the blade’s tip protruding from his chest. His pink eyes moved over it slowly, without showing much emotions.

The Orbs felt the dying begin.

The golden threads in his veins reversed. The golden veins in his body pulsed in reverse manner and pushed out the energy that had not yet fully settled down. From his palms… two orbs separated themselves and fell to the ground.

They came to rest on the golden floor between everyone.

The sword fell from Renji’s hand. It landed with an ordinary sound.

His knees folded.

He turned as he went down… until he was facing upward. Until he was looking at the ceiling of the throne room.

His pink eyes were open.

Yuki stepped around him and stood where he could see her.

She looked at his face. The pink hair spread against the cold golden tile. The pink eyes, still carrying that complete and untroubled attention even now, even in this situation.

She did not speak and simply looked at her brother, who looked back at her.

In all the years she had known him she had catalogued the things his face did and the things it never did. There was one expression she had only ever seen it produce once, a very long time ago when they were mere kids.

He wore it now.

“Yuki,”

He just said her name. His mouth opened once more.

But, whatever he intended to say, he did not say.

The pink eyes went still.

The smile that remained on his face was small. His heart had been frozen because of her ice and now it stopped beating, once and for all.

Yuki stood over her brother in the ruined golden throne room and looked at his face for a very long time.

She did not cry, nor did she speak. She stood with her frost blade hanging at her side and she looked at what she had done, which was also what she had had to do, which were the same thing, and she let them be the same thing without trying to separate them.

The two Orbs sat on the floor in the lamplight.

Warm… patient… and belonging to no one.

Silence spread across all of the floating island. Every single person had gone silent, in either shock, disbelief or happiness.

Every battle that was taking place across the desolate and ruined premise of the secondary ring and relief flooded what had earlier been consumed by despair.

In that moment a single Notification surfaced in front of every single human eyes currently alive in the city of dreams. The Capital of the Aethelburg Empire.

[Congratulations, the Scenario is Completed]

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