国产午夜亚洲精品AⅤ

Chapter 322 [Illustration]

It was surely a fatal wound.

However, what I saw next left me even more horrified.

“Ugh...!”

Boom!

Leverier Lanche, quickly assessing the situation, unleashed a burst of Divine Power, flinging Sarkegar away from him. Sarkegar, who fared even worse against Divine Power than I did, was thrown backward, and groaned as he slowly got up.

Leverier Lanche clutched at his chest, from which bright red blood was still gushing.

Woooong...

The wound began to heal.

Although his heart had been shattered, it was regenerating. Leverier Lanche was slowly recovering from the fatal wound to his heart, even as blood trickled out the side of his mouth.

“That’s insane... Are you even human?”

“Demon King, what are you talking about?” With an expression as hard as iron, Leverier Lanche wiped the blood from his mouth. “This is what it means to be human.”

Leverier Lanche, having restored his shattered heart and ready to fight again, looked at me and said, “The gods accept my faith and make the impossible possible. This is something that only humans can achieve because the Five Great Gods love humanity.”

Leverier Lanche seemed to believe that Divine Power was a privilege exclusive to humans.

“Therefore, reclaiming the relic from an unholy being like you as quickly as possible is my mission and duty. It is the way to repay the gods’ love,” he added.

Leverier Lanche’s fanaticism was different from Radia’s.

Radia Schmidt’s fanaticism was passionate and intense, but Leverier Lanche’s was a refined madness.

A cold fanaticism, devoid of excitement, anxiety, or anger. One that was meticulously honed and sharpened. Leverier Lanche, having been infused with a torrent of Divine Power, looked over at the now-risen Sarkegar, who had disguised himself as a holy knight.

“A being that wears the skin of another. You truly have a despicable subordinate, Demon King.”

“...”

I had anticipated that Leverier Lanche would possess formidable strength, but this was far beyond what I had imagined.

He could recover even when his heart had been pierced. This creature couldn’t be killed unless his head was severed.

I was beginning to doubt whether it was possible for his stamina to be exhausted by the relentless lightning strikes.

At this point, it seemed that Sarkegar and I would not be enough. We also needed Loyar to join forces with us.

Even then, would it be possible?

I was realizing the tenacity of the holy knights in the most unwanted way.

They enhanced their bodies, protected themselves with blessings, imbued their swords with Divine Power, and could even survive wounds that should have been fatal.

If that wasn’t a zombie, then what was? Not all holy knights were like this, but Leverier Lanche was the pinnacle of them all, and could do all those things.

Leverier Lanche launched himself toward Sarkegar and me once more.

Thud! Boom! Crash!

“Ugh!”

Though we were the monsters, we were barely dodging the ferocious attacks of this rampaging beast, struggling to keep pace against its onslaught.

Slash!

Leverier Lanche recognized that Sarkegar’s attacks could penetrate his defenses, and he didn’t allow Sarkegar to get close enough to deliver a fatal blow.

Sarkegar’s black blades, formed by transforming parts of his body, could indeed pierce through Leverier Lanche’s defenses.

However, even when an attack succeeded, it changed nothing.

Woooong!

Leverier Lanche never allowed himself to suffer a fatal wound, and even when injured, he quickly recovered.

I couldn’t even fathom the limits of his Divine Power.

A long, drawn-out fight was the only strategy, but it was uncertain if I could survive Leverier Lanche’s attacks long enough for that.

“Your Highness! You should consider retreating!”

Sarkegar’s shout rang in my ears.

‘Right.’

We could end this chaos and retreat immediately. I knew very well that it was time to consider that option.

We had successfully rescued Olivia and Adriana, and I had acted openly as Baalier.

If we retreated, though, Adriana and Olivia would be in danger once again.

People would undoubtedly question the fact that Adriana and Olivia had been rescued by demons. Even though they knew nothing about it, the misunderstandings and suspicions of others could lead to the worst possible outcome.

Alternatively, Leverier Lanche might turn a blind eye to all of this and try to manipulate Olivia again.

If I didn’t kill Leverier Lanche, the outcome of the day’s efforts would be worse than if we had done nothing. Therefore, I couldn’t retreat.

“No. Either he dies, or I die. One of us must die today.”

Leverier Lanche looked at me, cautioning me with his eyes. “Do you think you have a chance, Demon King?”

“Yes. I won’t die here. I’ll kill you and survive.”

“On what basis do you make that claim?”

Just as Leverier Lanche had his fanaticism, I had my own.

“Because that’s just how this world works,” I said.

Miracles that always seemed to favor me happened again this time.

Self-Deception? Incantation?

I didn’t care about all that.

This wasn’t about belief; it was a fact.

This second life of mine was a punishment, and my punishment couldn’t be as trivial as dying at the hands of Leverier Lanche in a place like this.

A greater punishment awaited me. There were more things I had to endure, more sorrows and pains prepared for me.

If I were to die from something like this, I would be disappointed that the punishment given to me was this trivial.

“There are too many things ahead of me for me to die now.”

I wouldn’t die before experiencing all of them.

Perhaps one day I would crumble, get trampled, go mad, kill, or die in those experiences. Or perhaps I could break through all of it and seize happiness. In any case, this wasn’t the place for me to fall yet.

“Even if the Five Great Gods descended to kill me here, I wouldn’t die, Leverier Lanche.”

This wasn’t some kind of belief or deception; it was simply a fact. Such a level of certainty from me caused a different light to flicker in Leverier Lanche’s eyes.

“Your blasphemy has gone too far, Demon King.”

A fanatic always felt disgust when faced with another form of fanaticism. He now felt what I felt towards him.

I wouldn’t die until I had experienced all the stages that had been prepared for me.

I would ensure that Olivia wouldn’t be forced into further sorrow.

I wouldn’t let her return to a life where she couldn’t even explore what it meant to be herself, buried under the mantle of a saint.

I was going to lift both Adriana and Olivia out of this pit of gods, faith, and belief.

Every place where humans lived, every realm where humans existed, might be a cesspool for its own reasons. Ultimately, though, I would show them that things other than cesspools existed.

I would grant them freedom. A life where they could ponder and choose their own path, not one where they had to adapt and succumb to what was forced upon them, but one where they made their own choices after going through their own struggles.

I had decided to grant both Adriana and Olivia true freedom.

“I will. Kill. You.”

This was the most chilling vow I had ever made.

Leverier Lanche adjusted his grip on his sword.

He didn’t say anything like, “Do you think you can do that?”

He seemed to sense that something had changed in my demeanor.

‘Let it happen again. A miracle. Come to me. Don’t you still have many desires for me? There are many things I have yet to go through. Aren’t you raising me up just to bring me down? I haven’t reached the top yet.’

I wanted a miracle that would allow me to take the life of Leverier Lanche, an enemy that I couldn’t possibly best at my current level.

I prepared myself for that miracle.

Anger... To ignite the fuel that would produce the result I considered a miracle, I had to be angry.

Surpassing my actual limits always required willpower.

Leverier Lanche despised me. The time for words was over. He prepared for another attack.

“Die, Demon King!”

Crackkkk!

Leverier Lanche’s sword came down, his blow striking the ground and distorting it, sending out a massive shockwave. I barely dodged the direct hit, but had to roll several times along the ground to do so. Sarkegar was also fighting valiantly, but he could only inflict minor scratches.

The iron wall named Leverier Lanche remained steadfast. It was a wall that, even when crumbled, would rebuild itself.

A blue and white light began to coalesce around his sword. He was channeling his Divine Power offensively. The next attack was more than a mere slash of his sword. He was about to attack me with an explosive discharge of mana and Divine Power. Just like Sabioleen Tana had shown, mages were not the only ones who could perform area-of-effect attacks.

He intended to kill me in one blow and leave. He was preparing a massive strike.

Though Tiamata was the source of my Divine Power, I couldn’t draw Divine Power from within myself, and could only utilize Tiamata’s power under limited conditions.

Leverier Lanche, a holy knight of Ouen, and Tiamata, a Holy Relic of Ouen.

Ultimately, we were both drawing on the same type of power, and I was inferior in that power.

It was Divine Power against Divine Power. In such a contest, I would always lose, because I could not draw on it as much as he could.

Whether he was a fallen cleric or a mad fanatic, the time and experience he had accumulated were real.

“Disappear with the light.”

This was what it meant to be a war hero who returned victorious from the Great War.

I had to surpass all the experience he had accumulated.

He was a madman who would not die unless I severed his head or inflicted some other truly mortal wound.

I had to rely on my own power: Anger, Faith (Self-Deception), and Words (Incantation).

And also the fate that was given to me.

Since that fate had yet to arrive, I wouldn’t die.

I needed a miracle that could kill this monster, and I knew what that was.

Facing the enemy who was preparing his strike, I gripped Tiamata with both hands.

Though it was impossible to infuse it with power while holding it, I spoke with determined anger.

‘Tiamata.’

As he swung his sword and the storm of Divine Power in the form of physical force tried to engulf me, I directed my command towards Tiamata, which was radiating Divine Power in all directions.

‘Become a demonic sword.’

Rumble!

The white light that had been surging from Tiamata turned into darkness that consumed the light.

To kill a monster that drew on Ouen’s power to regenerate infinitely, it was obvious what I needed.

I needed the opposing force.

Rumble!

Burning through wasn’t enough. Within the wave of light pouring down on me, I pierced through it, shrouded in darkness.

“Y-You...! What have you done to Tiamata...!” Leverier Lanche cried out in horror as I charged towards him.

I was right.

I couldn’t defeat Leverier Lanche with the same power he wielded. So, I summoned an opposite force, breaking through with the power of opposition.

Using a force that opposed his, I could penetrate his ironclad defense and sever his lifeline.

I had only one chance.

There was no need to explain the situation to him. I would run my blade through his throat before he could understand what was going on.

Piercing through the surging light, shrouded in darkness that the light couldn’t invade, I reached the astonished Leverier Lanche in an instant.

In just one moment, life and death hung in the balance, and history could be rewritten.

The line between life and death was ultimately a matter of a single moment.

‘Revise.’

[Using 1000 achievement points.]

‘Incantation.’

Shrouded in the power of the demonic sword, I shouted a single word at Leverier Lanche, who was drawing back his greatsword to stab me in response.

“Stop!” I exclaimed.

“Ugh! This... this is...!”

One step.

One span.

Life and death could be decided by such a small difference.

I thrusted my sword towards Leverier Lanche, whose movements had been momentarily halted by my Incantation.

“Ugh...!”

I succeeded in plunging the demonic sword Tiamata into his heart.

***

I had transformed Tiamata into a demonic sword.

That was the miracle I had wished for.

I had strengthened the power of the Incantation using Revise, freezing Leverier Lanche’s movements at the critical moment.

As a result, Leverier Lanche suffered a fatal wound.

This time, it was truly a mortal wound.

“Ugh, ugh... ugh!”

He clutched the demonic sword Tiamata embedded in his heart, but all he could do was cough up blood.

The holy knights, already weakened by the prolonged battle in the firestorm, had reached their limits. Seeing Leverier Lanche kneeling on the ground, a sword through his heart, they began to flee.

They likely believed it was better to survive and report the situation than to prolong a losing battle.

“Ugh... ugh... ugh...”

“Persistent, aren’t you?”

Even with his heart impaled on the demonic sword, Leverier Lanche wouldn’t die easily.

A white glow enveloped his entire body. He was desperately clinging to life with Divine Power.

Even after taking a direct hit from an opposing power, he could still channel Ouen’s power weakly.

“H-How... could... T-Tiamata...”

I hadn’t anticipated that he would be such a monstrous opponent, but even fighting against the power of the demonic sword that was consuming his body was beyond his limits.

Though they originated from the same source, they were opposing forces.

Leverier Lanche could survive Sarkegar’s attacks, but he couldn’t withstand the unholy power flowing through the demonic sword Tiamata.

He was merely prolonging his life through sheer desperation.

I stood there, calmly looking down at Leverier Lanche, who was kneeling before me, clearly wanting to pull out the demonic sword embedded in his heart but lacking the strength to move even a finger.

As I watched him in his final moments, Loyar, in her lycanthrope form, approached me.

“Your Highness, I will pursue the fleeing holy knights.”

“Good. Take Sarkegar with you.”

Sarkegar, though shocked by how I had transformed the sacred sword into a demonic sword, hadn’t forgotten what needed to be done.

“Don’t let a single one of them escape. No one must know that I wield Tiamata.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

To be precise, Olivia could not witness the Demon King wielding the sacred sword. Sarkegar would have ensured that Olivia was far away. There was no chance she had witnessed this scene.

“Who... are you...?” Leverier Lanche muttered, blood dripping from his mouth.

“The Demon King.”

“Why did you attack me—no, why did you attack us...? Why did you save Olivia...?”

Only on the brink of death did Leverier Lanche seem to question my motives.

Why would someone claiming to be the Demon King save Olivia and Adriana? What was this talk about Miss Temple?

“Let’s... cooperate... Demon King...” he said, his voice fading.

“... What?”

With his dying breaths, Leverier Lanche said softly, “You want... to rebuild the Demon Realm... don’t you...? In that case... a division within the empire... would benefit you... If we cooperate... a common goal... It would be... an offer you can’t refuse...”

I couldn’t help but be dumbstruck by his words.

“If you were going to say that, you should have said it earlier.”

Only on the brink of death did he pathetically speak of compromise.

“It sounds like you’re begging for your life,” I said.

“You will... need me too...”

If he had said this with a clear mind, he would have seemed like a fanatic who was willing to betray humanity for the sake of the divine.

At this moment, though, Leverier Lanche’s words were nothing but the desperate flailings of someone on the verge of death.

He was, in the face of death, abandoning everything.

“Begging for your life when you’re on the brink of death shows you’re not pure. Not keeping your methods pure in pursuit of your goals, but changing your methods depending on the situation shows that your intentions aren’t pure either.”

I looked down at him. “Leverier Lanche, you are disqualified in too many ways to serve Ouen.”

At my words, Leverier Lanche looked at me with dying eyes.

“Do you... truly claim to be Ouen’s champion?” he asked.

“Do you think otherwise?” I replied.

Leverier Lanche struggled to look up at me.

He stared into my eyes.

“I see...”

It was as if he was trying to find something he had lost.

“Yes... Ouen’s champions were originally... those who punished humans.”

Ouen’s champions... They had not been demon hunters or undead slayers, but hunters of humans.

They had traditionally been tasked with executing corrupt dark mages or demonic cultists, and the last Champion of Ouen before me had been killed fighting demonic cultists.

Ouen’s champions were originally those who killed humans, not demons or undead.

He continued to look up at me.

“A Demon King being Ouen’s champion... might not be so strange after all...”

Only on the brink of death did he accept that I was Ouen’s champion.

Had he come to terms with everything after his defeat? Did he see his defeat as Ouen’s will?

My god is right. I face death because my god has abandoned me.

Thus, I am wrong.

His fanaticism remained unshaken even in the face of death.

In the end, in the face of death, he even had to accept the demonic sword Tiamata.

If Ouen had truly been on his side, he wouldn’t have been defeated.

He had to acknowledge that I was Ouen’s champion, despite all his doubts about me.

I pulled Tiamata from his heart and pointed its tip towards the neck of the kneeling Leverier Lanche.

“I believed I was pure,” he said.

It sounded like a protest, but it wasn’t.

Ouen’s champion, wielding Tiamata, had made his appearance. Not for anything else, but to kill a holy knight who claimed to serve the god of purity.

Thus, he left his final excuse: that he had believed himself to be pure.

He might truly have been pure.

He might have genuinely believed that the justice he believed in was the right path.

His last words were his final excuse.

Slash!

With a single slash of Tiamata’s blade, I ended Leverier Lanche’s life completely.

The life of a fallen priest, taken by a fallen Holy Relic.

In the end, Leverier Lanche had fallen twice to the same entity.

I stood there, dazed, in the ruins of the destroyed monastery, which had been shaken to its core by chaos.

The storm had passed, and only charred ruins and rising smoke were left, illuminated by the pale winter moonlight.

Ignoring the headless corpse of the former leader of the Order of the Holy Knights and his head rolling lifelessly along the ground, I stared blankly at the sky.

In the end, I hadn’t gone where I’d needed to go.

‘What should I say?’

If I said that, once again, I hadn’t been able to be there because of unavoidable circumstances...

‘What would Ellen say?

‘No... Do I even have the right to say such things anymore?’

I had planned and succeeded in the monumental task of annihilating the former leader of the Order of the Holy Knights and a secret religious faction, to prevent a division within the empire.

I pondered what excuse I could give to Ellen.

This situation should have felt absurd, but it didn’t feel funny at all.

“...”

As I stood under the winter night, a message appeared before my eyes.

[Special Achievement Unlocked - Turning Point in History]

[The death of a key figure (Leverier Lanche) who should have existed in the original timeline has been confirmed.]

A turning point in history, caused by killing someone... This was the first time it had happened.

[As a reward for achieving the special achievement, you have acquired the trait ‘Apostle (使徒)’.’]

[Trait: Apostle]

[Description: You have become the true master of Tiamata.]

It was a simple statement, but I felt like I understood what it meant.

Tiamata in the form of a demonic sword, and Tiamata in the form of a sacred sword...

I had become, in the truest sense, Ouen’s champion, capable of wielding both for the first time in history.

***

It was late at night.

The Miss and Mister Temple Contest venue was still brimming with excitement, wrapped up in thunderous cheers.

The long contest had come to an end, and the only thing that remained was for the winners to be announced.

Glittering confetti rained down from the ceiling of the auditorium.

Olivia Lanche, a strong contender for the win, had not participated.

The reason for her absence was unknown.

—This year’s Miss Temple is Ellen from the Royal Class, first year!

Ellen had surpassed all other formidable candidates and was crowned that year’s Miss Temple.

Amid the applause and cheers of the crowd, a crown of flowers and a bouquet were handed to Ellen, who was dressed in a white gown.

Her Royal Class classmates clapped vigorously and congratulated her.

However, Ellen’s expression remained stiff while she stood in that glorious position. She stared blankly at the floor as she stood holding the ornate crown and bouquet that signified victory.

Ellen, who had needed just one vote, had received many.

All but that one vote.

Despite having been chosen by so many people, Ellen couldn’t shake the feeling that the world had abandoned her.