Chapter 277

“I told you, did I not?”

The Last Minister spoke.

“We are the last. There is no next time for us.”

He is huge.

Larger than the old castle.

From a height higher than any human, he looks down with an eagle’s head.

He is clothed in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine powers, the very power humans struggle and writhe to obtain even if they dedicate their entire lives.

“It was always us. Fifty-three years ago, 400 years ago, and 1,000 years ago. Of course, it has always been us since the days of Hotus.”

“…Oh, oh….”

Grief.

A being that transcends cognition crumbles human reason just by being there.

“…How can this be…?”

Grand Duke Pret muttered, his mind gone.

“What have I known? Was everything I knew as the whole world merely such a vain shell…? Then how fleeting and foolish beings are humans…?”

“It feels good to see you finally realize a little how to awe God.”

The Last Minister raised his hand.

Just with his gesture, the stone walls crumbled down.

He had no intention of tearing them down, but because he was so huge, all sorts of things caught on him and shook.

Two of the two hundred men were crushed there and screamed.

Power is originally like this.

The right to shake the life of small things with just a breath, and yet bear no responsibility, is indeed human power.

“But lo and behold.”

The eagle head laughed.

The beak was sharp.

“Cordis is a human empire. It does not need a God. Therefore, I must crush you all. So that you cannot tell anywhere that we are actually Gods. It is a very simple matter.”

“……Ah…….”

Grand Duke Pret opened his mouth.

He was still gripping his sword.

That made it even more desperate.

It is a sword he has relied on all his life, yet how can it look so weak like a straw?

He realized that he had been deceived all his life because it was lamentably weak.

“……What was I, my whole life? I am… Grand Duke Pret, a member of the Upper House of the Dawn Brotherhood, one of the Seventeen Elders, yet…….”

The things he relied on crumbled one by one.

It was a natural reaction of a human standing before a God.

Because one wants to run away from that fearful existence but cannot, one eventually realizes that all the power one possesses is essentially nothing but a trick.

“……However…….”

The Grand Duke’s hand trembled.

“……Ah, however, when did I…….”

He did not let go of the sword.

It was only that much, but he was clearly gripping the blade.

“……When did I live knowing the meaning……. Life is always impatient. Have I not already realized that it is always looking for a chance to deceive us ….”

“Ho?”

“…Sword, my sword….”

The Grand Duke cried.

He ended up shedding tears without realizing it.

It means vain things melted and flowed down his cheeks.

Even though vain things melted like that, he is still holding the sword.

Perhaps because his sword was not vain to him.

He had already made up his mind.

From the time he saw the three young heroes howling and confronting the war with the Empire, from the night he deeply dwelled on his aged martial power, from the time he felt sympathy for Shion screaming, from the time he came to meet Kerenneus.

“…Shabby like a toothpick, my sword. And yet so precious to me, my sword….”

All along, he intended to die.

He did not want to die, but since he could not help it, he was resolved to meet the most meaningful death.

But he is afraid.

But he endured.

But he could not endure it all.

But, he did not let go of the sword.

“…Even if I hate it because it is too shabby to rely on…. Even if I hate it, it cannot be let go, this is my… my sword….”

“Oh…!!”

The Last Minister let out an exclamation.

“Finding a new light at a time like this?”

In his eyes, the sight of Grand Duke Pret’s soul transforming was clearly visible.

When the soul changes, the Ars changes.

He saw that the Grand Duke was advancing to a new level at an age over seventy.

“What are you trying to show, Grand Duke!”

The Last Minister’s eyes shone.

“Perhaps, could you please this old eagle? May I look forward to it? If it is hard, I will help. I will definitely help….”

The Last Minister knows that a person’s soul is a single story.

And that life is a process of becoming a single story.

He felt very joyful seeing the epic poem named Grand Duke Pret attempting to leap into a new realm before the curtain call.

Enough to want to help with the realization.

“Think, Grand Duke. Think….”

The Last Minister whispered from a high place.

The two hundred men had already lost their minds.

They will die as they are.

Because they stood before a Man-God.

“Why did you grab the sword? From where did that heart begin? If you look at where your life started, you can see the trajectory…. Then you will know where to go too….”

“…Beginning….”

The Grand Duke muttered.

His mind had sunk too deep inside, so he was not properly recognizing the situation.

He just blankly ruminated on the Last Minister’s words.

“…I read a story.”

“A story?”

“A story of chivalry….”

Riding a horse, wearing a sword, fighting bad wizards and saving princesses.

Sometimes fleeting, sometimes magnificent, a sight that was pleasant even though he could not get a grasp on it was a true joy to him.

He wanted to become such a knight.

Once, he really lived such a life.

But it was fleeting.

But it led to now.

But is this not the end?

But is there not a little left still?

But, from ideal to reality.

But, from reality to ideal.

But, falling.

But, leaping.

“……Is that so.”

He realized his life.

Once he lived an ideal.

Once he lived reality.

He sometimes forgot reality within the ideal.

He sometimes forgot the ideal within reality.

Like that, he always went back and forth.

He endlessly repeated falling and leaping.

“Is that so?”

Amidst that, he always lived wearing a sword.

He knew that his sword was not an object for cutting.

This was an axis.

It was something that tied the middle and kept the center.

Then his life tied to the axis called the sword, was a single movement.

“Was I always swaying like this?”

Grand Duke Pret’s Ars who discovered his own axis,

‘Pendulum of the West’.

His sword was the axis.

The blade does not waver.

Grand Duke Pret hung onto it and moved as if dancing.

Regularly, from here to there, repeating falling and leaping, he gripped the sword firmly with new strength.

“…Hmm.”

The Last Minister stroked his chin.

He saw Grand Duke Pret’s soul performing a pendulum movement.

It held a new light, but it did not feel satisfying.

“It is more boring than I thought.”

The Last Minister,

Lifted a finger,

And crushed the Grand Duke and the two hundred men at once.

***

A gift arrived for the Seventeen Elders.

It was a box wrapped in thick paper.

The sender was marked as Kerenneus Cansella Caseptus, Prime Minister of Cordis.

There was a severe stench inside the box.

The content was Grand Duke Pret’s severed head.

***

[I told you, did I not!]

Shion cried out again.

He vented his anger against the high-ranking figures of the West who were at a loss for words.

He looked at the head of Grand Duke Pret, who was smiling strangely.

He looked peaceful as if he had realized something.

Then he should have just lived longer, why did he die with such a relieved face.

[I, clearly, told you! The recommendation to end the war is the Empire’s trick!!]

[…No, we do not know yet if the recommendation itself is a trick….]

[Please just shut up!]

Shion Pollinglight spewed blue flames from his eyes.

It was intense enough that the heat was conveyed even beyond the communication mirror.

[They killed all two hundred people who went carrying gifts, so would the recommendation to end the war be genuine! It is just that you want to believe so! Because you are cowards who have no courage to fight anymore!]

[…….]

Even at the blatant insult, the opponent could not answer.

Because Shion’s words stabbed deep into their lungs.

It was proven that Shion was right.

Grand Duke Pret’s severed head became the evidence.

In a way, it ended up as Grand Duke Pret wanted.

[Even now!!]

The Regression Prince shouted.

He was raising his voice all along.

After realizing that the end of his long-cherished desire was right around the corner, he had been impatient all along.

It was fortunate that it sounded like a passionate voice to others.

[We must prepare! Let us prepare to strike first! When the bastards have lost even a little momentum, taking the perfect opportunity, completely drying up their seeds, digging in until the end…!]

…….

Shion closed his mouth.

He wanted to say.

Let’s dig in and dig in to cross the Great Mountain Range.

And let’s invade all the way to the Great Imperial Palace, trample and destroy everything of the Empire.

Let’s grind and drink the Golden Throne.

But it was too early to tell such a story.

So he had to endure.

However, the heat was conveyed.

The fact that Grand Duke Pret, one of the highest-ranking men in the West, ended up in a gruesome state birthed fear.

All the powerful figures here realized anew that they might not be different from Grand Duke Pret.

[……Shion of Merion.]

It was Hika Hireium.

He is the leader of the Dawn Brotherhood.

[So what do you want? What are you planning.]

[Perfect victory.]

Shion answered immediately.

It was something he had been preparing for while sharpening his sword for 7 years.

[A surprise attack they cannot help but suffer even if they know our plot. An attack with all our might!]

[Where?]

[The land they cannot help but pass.]

[Then there is only one place.]

Hika Hireium said.

For the Imperial Army that crossed the Waist Gate to return to the mainland, they must pass through a vast and desolate land.

The West called that land this.

[Dimashq Plains.]

***

The meeting ended quickly.

Shion put away the communication mirror, and became alone with Amethus.

The jade-eyed man said.

“We have really come to prepare for a decisive battle in the Dimashq Plains. Since Elder Hika is cooperating, the whole West will gather strength there.”

Amethus had a somewhat bitter face.

It is because Shion seemed to have his heart stolen by the task of destroying the Empire rather than the deaths of Grand Duke Pret or Secundus.

No, perhaps Shion might have been like that all along.

He might have lived somehow holding onto a heart broken by hatred, but now he just could not hide it anymore.

Still, Amethus wanted to comfort his master.

“It went as you intended.”

“…As I intended…?”

Shion muttered.

“…No, no. It is completely different. This is not it. This was not it….”

“……?”

He blinked his eyes.

Whether he closed his eyes or opened them, he saw Grand Duke Pret’s face.

The miserable sight of the severed head did not leave.

Even rubbing his eyes was the same, so curses popped out.

Amethus asked cautiously.

“……What is it?”

“I mean it is not, Amethus.”

Shion gritted his teeth.

“Grand Duke Pret must not die. He was a person who should not die….”

“…Pardon…?”

Amethus was perplexed.

He could not understand what on earth Shion was saying.

“Are you saying you did not know he would die?”

“…Yes.”

“Then you should not have sent him. You knew that Kerenneus is one of the Hotus Eight Gods… a thousand-year-old Man-God!”

“…I knew, of course I knew….”

“You knew, so why did you not know? Grand Duke Pret knew he would die! He was resolved like that all along!”

“……But…….”

Shion wiped his face.

With his palms, from his forehead to his chin, roughly, several times.

Still, he could not calm down and rolled his eyes here and there.

“……At that time, he did not die.”

His eye sockets began to flow fishily again.

“In the same situation… he met Kerenneus alone but returned without a single scratch….”

“…If you mean at that time….”

“…At that time, before, passed away… my first life….”

Confusion began to seep in.

It entered through his armpits, dug between his collarbones, and grabbed his heart.

Shion ended up giving his heart without even the energy to resist.

“……But why did he end up dying this time, Grand Duke Pret……?”

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