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Table of Contents
Illustration

Epilogue I: The System Drowned in Despair

Chapter 1: Pure Intentions, Ulterior Motives

Chapter 2: A Worthless God, A Boring Goddess

Chapter 3: The Northern Key, The Southern Gate

Chapter 4: The Heart That Won’t Drown in Despair

Epilogue II: The System Drowned in Despair

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Epilogue I: The System Drowned in
Despair

---

He was engulfed by a horrible darkness, cutting his senses off. He

couldn’t see or hear anything anymore.

He tried reaching his hand out to see if someone might help him. But
it didn’t reach anyone. He couldn’t even see his own hand when he
held it out. It was just too dark.

“I…”

When did he end up in this dark place?

Sion Astal looked around.

He was sitting at the throne, the heart of the Roland Empire. But
nothing of worth was there.

People called him the hero king. But he wasn’t, really.

His late mother had told him something once.

“You don’t have to be scared of anything, Sion.”

Sion shook his head. He was scared.

Scared, Mom.

People died because of him. People lived because of him.

That knowledge made him shiver every single day. But nobody heard
his voice.

“You grew up to be such a kind child.”

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But kindness alone couldn’t save anyone. The world was far, far
darker than he could have ever imagined. Kindness alone… couldn’t
save anything.

He’d still decided to try anyway, to keep moving forward. To save

everything he could see. He wanted to save as many of the weak and
crying people as he possibly could. But in doing so, he’d dipped his
hand into darkness.

“So… you won’t be alone even if I’m not here with you anymore.”

Sion smiled. “You’re wrong, Mom. I’m not kind at all… That’s why I’m
all alone.”

The darkness that he dipped his hand into was endless.

He looked down at the hand that he submitted to the dark. His hand
that tried to bear everything to save everyone. The arm that he held
out to change the mad world. To protect the people who were
precious to him, to continue seeing their smiles. His precious
something.

And in the end…

“……”

What happened, in the end?

When he closed his eyes, a face rose to the front of his mind. It was
Ryner Lute, a sad smile on his lips. The Ryner of his memories turned
to face him… and spoke.

“The orders you gave Luke Stokkart…”

That was all he’d said. But Sion knew what the rest would have been.
He had ordered Luke Stokkart to deal with Ryner Lute - to

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exterminate him… to exterminate the monstrous Alpha Stigma
bearer Ryner Lute.

But how did Ryner know that?

Ryner looked like he understood everything when he met Sion’s

eyes. He’d been making the same sad face as usual then, like he’d
given up on everything, including life itself.

Ryner didn’t have to say anything. Sion had heard him perfectly clear
even when he was silent.

“Oh, okay.”

It was screaming.

“So you think I’m a monster too.”

His heart was screaming from sadness.

“…You’re wrong,” Sion had protested. But it came out feeble.

“You think I’m a monster too, don’t you?”

No!

That… that wasn’t what he thought!

He didn’t think Ryner was a monster at all!

Sion wanted to scream that.

Ryner just smiled that same sad smile.

“It’s… it’s not your faults. I loved you guys.”

His face was always full of despair. His heart was closed up in its
despair. And he disappeared, just like that. There was nothing Sion
could have done about it.

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“……”

Sion held his hand out, as if to grab Ryner even after all this time. To
grasp the Ryner in his mind. He might not make it in time again. So
he threw his hand out, desperately trying to reach… but it wouldn’t.

“…I already know why I can’t reach you now,” he whispered.

Sion pulled his hand back and stared down at his own palm.

“Help me, Ryner. Let’s change this country together.”

Together.

Let’s change it together.

“Ha… hahah.” Sion couldn’t help but laugh dryly about that now.
What a farce.

Sion had held his own hand out, and then destroyed that very hand
himself.

He asked Ryner to help him with the same lips that ordered Ryner to
be killed. He himself had ordered Luke to kill Ryner if he should go
berserk or betray Roland.

“I… I’ve never thought you were a monster,” Sion said.

“But you’re still going to kill him, aren’t you?” A clear and pretty
voice suddenly asked from the darkness.

Sion didn’t raise his head. Because even if he did, no one would be
there.

“You’ll kill him. It’s the right answer.”

Sion didn’t answer him. He just repeated himself quietly. “I never

thought he was a monster…”

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“Ahahahahahhaha. You sure are nice, Sion… but who cares if he
dies?”

Who cares?

Sion raised his head to look into the dark. But there was something
worse than darkness there… something far darker and far more
wicked than even darkness itself.

The malice itself spoke. “You can only walk the correct path. You
must have the strength to trample that path, even if what lies under
your feet is precious to you. It doesn’t matter if you feel friendship or
even love for them. That is the single qualification you must possess.
Now show me that you have it. Take another step along the correct
path… another step along your path.”

“……”

Sion exhaled. But his breath didn’t turn into air. It turned into
darkness.

Sion’s eyes fell to the papers scattered across the floor. Luke had
given them to him.

He gazed at them for a moment.

“…I…”

His words turned to darkness.

11
Chapter 1: Pure Intentions, Ulterior
Motives

---

“…So?” Luke Stokkart prompted quietly.

He was a twenty-five year old man with a calm expression. He had

light green eyes, and his hair was already white despite his age.

His calm eyes stared into the darkness.

He was in a dark alley, the sort that light didn’t reach.

“Who are you and what do you need from me?” Luke asked.

“……”

The darkness didn’t answer.

Luke shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want to answer, then I suppose

that’s your ch—”

“I have Milk Callaud in my posession.”

Luke narrowed his eyes. “Hmm… and?”

Six men appeared from within the darkness. They lacked a real sense
of unity, each wearing a different set of plain clothes - the kind one
could buy anywhere.

“……”

But Luke understood who they were as soon as he saw their posture.
They were people who had undergone the Roland Empire’s military
training. And they’d gone through quite a lot of it, too - they didn’t

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move more than necessary, and they didn’t leave any gaps to be
attacked from.

One of them spoke in a deep, oppressive voice. “Won’t you come

with us, Luke Stokkart?”

“Hm. What would you do if I refused?”

“…I wouldn’t be able to guarantee Milk Callaud’s health or life.”

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Luke smiled bitterly.

The way these men appeared, the way they responded to him…
everything was going exactly as he predicted. The second Milk
disappeared was the second he’d realized what was happening.

He’d gone to her room before to ask if she might want to go

somewhere tomorrow only to find that she wasn’t there. She hadn’t
asked for their permission before leaving, and she wasn’t the type of
girl to go out in the middle of the night like that. She was honest,
brave, and kind… well… that wasn’t really relevant right now,
though…

She didn’t have anyone to escape in the middle of the night with,
and she’d already agreed to polish their plans for tomorrow with
Luke then. Her running out in the middle of the night on her own
free will despite all of that was impossible. But she hadn’t been in
her room, so several possibilities for what might have happened
naturally came to mind…

1. She’d gotten into an accident of some kind.

That wasn’t likely. Because on top of being a good, honest kid, she
was also very capable, and… well, no, better cut that off there for
now. The point was that it was extremely unlikely for her to have
gotten into an accident that she couldn’t deal with herself.

Onto the next possibility, then.

2. That questionable fellow Ryner Lute had appeared and led her
astray.

That was… the most likely scenario. Chief Milk was energetic, smart,
and a good listener, but that guy - Ryner or whatever his name was -
was going to steal her from them someday. It wasn’t… impossible…

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that she’d keep running away even if they chased after her if that
happened…

“……”

But that couldn’t be. Because he knew Ryner Lute’s location. That
was his real job, after all.

Ryner Lute had left the inn he was staying at in the dead of night in
order to head to the Eris residence, his face full of urgency. That was
when Chief Milk would have had to have contact with him, and she
wasn’t there.

Onto the next possibility.

3. She was abducted.

But why? There were three potential reasons.

One: She was abducted to act as a lure for Ryner Lute.

Two: She was abducted to act as a lure for Luke Stokkart.

Three: She was abducted to act as a lure for Rahel Miller, head of the
Taboo Hunters organization.

Now he just had to decide which reason.

The least likely out of the lot was the third possibility - one would not
normally think of doing this to lure him out, and besides, Luke knew
how great Miller was most of all. A plan to lure him out with this
would certainly fail.

The worst case scenario was the first option. Because it was possible
for it to all take place somewhere that Luke couldn’t reach.

That was why…

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Luke turned around to look at the plain… no, that was too kind… the
dirty inn that Ryner Lute had stayed at. He’d come here to examine
the possibility that the people who had kidnapped Chief Milk might
attempted to ambush him here…

“…Maybe they did have business with me after all,” Luke said, the
relief evident in his voice.

If their goal had been to get to Ryner Lute, then Lear Rinkal, who
Luke had instructed to watch Ryner, would have ended up
confronting the kidnappers himself.

However.

“……”

Luke’s eyes returned to the men. Their combined power would be a

little tough for Lear to fight against alone. No matter how capable he
may be, they were a tough enemy to face unexpectedly.

They were strong, had a perfect stance, and weren’t arrogant

enough to make mistakes.

They’d kill Luke instantly in a straightforward fight. They all knew

that perfectly well. That was why they began to approach him.
“Come with us, Luke Stokkart. Resistance is fu—”

He stopped. Looked down.

“…Wh-what? This is bullshit…”

Luke smiled, as calm and collected as ever. “It’s a magic trap. Do me

a favor and stand still, okay? Otherwise you’ll lose your legs and just
be pre-separated cuts of meat.”

“I-impossible. You shouldn’t have this…”

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Luke turned his back on them, tuning out the rest. He took a knife
he’d hidden in the inn, then turned back to point it at them. “Hey,
you guys in the back! I said don’t move! If you do, the inn’s roof will
blow right off.”

“Wha…”

They all stopped, unable to do anything but stare at Luke in shock.

Luke nodded and smiled. “Good, you stopped just in time. It appears
that no one is staying on the second floor right now, but… I’m sure
they’d get fewer guests if their roof blew up, so I’m glad it didn’t.
You’d have to pay for the damages, you know? But…”

Luke looked back to the man who was stuck in his magic trap.

“I’m sure you guys would have it covered,” Luke said. “After all,
we’ve both entrusted ourselves been trained in Roland…”

The man shivered. “H-how did you…”

Luke shook his head. “No one told me or anything. But it’s a simple
conclusion to arrive at, knowing that you are strong enough to
kidnap Milk Callaud and make contact with me - now, who might
have a private army strong enough for you?” Luke wondered out
loud.

Several possibilities came to mind - four nobles and two people

among the military’s higher ups. Among them…

Luke sighed softly.

“…Miran Froaude?

Fear instantly rose to the men’s faces.

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Luke smiled. “Bullseye, huh? I see. Marquess Froaude’s son. He’s
awfully flashy, to the point where his movements become
transparent… well, I do understand what he wants to do, though…”

But to think that Froaude could capture Chief Milk…

Luke tilted his head as he thought.

“So His Excellency Lieutenant General Miran Froaude is calling me, is

he? Not Major Rahel Miller, but me? He does know that Miller is my
boss, doesn’t he? What could he possibly want with me?”

“…We were ordered to bring Luke Stokkart.”

“I see.”

Luke considered the possibilities for why he might have been called
instead of Miller.

“…It doesn’t seem like we’ll have a productive conversation,” Luke

mumbled and sighed. “By the way, the magic traps are fake, so you
guys can go ahead and move. I planned on going with you from the
beginning. I just wanted to clarify a few things first. So thanks for
helping me with that.”

The men moved their legs experimentally. The magic circle below
them didn’t do a thing. Having realized that it was indeed a dummy,
they looked back up at Luke with obvious hatred.

Luke smiled mischievously. “By the way, can you guys keep this a
secret from Froaude? It’d make me feel a lot better.”

With that, Luke was captured and put into a jail cell.

A month passed.

---

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A light lit up the dark, making the cell dazzlingly bright. Well… cell
might be pushing it. Honestly, it was far too nice to be a cell. It had a
table, bed, and a bookshelf with a fairly interesting selection of
books.

It was actually more like a respectable hotel than anything.

There was even something of a kitchen system - he could order

however much of whatever he wanted to eat or drink for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, and he could have anything else he needed, too…
The service was more than satisfactory.

But the doors didn’t open.

There were two doors - one was fixed with metal bars, and the other
was the one he’d come in through. It was a thick iron plate of a door,
with seven locks on it. It was impossible to open from the inside. The
security was too rigid to even bother making a fuss trying to escape.

So in the end, it was a jail cell…

The door opened to show a lone man.

“…I wonder if it makes any difference if this light is on or off?” He

wondered in a cold, detached tone.

Luke looked up. He was a peculiar man. He had pretty and long black
hair, delicate limbs, and a model-thin build. He wore an unusual
black ring on one of his long fingers. His eyes were like a demon’s -
they were dark blue and cold as ice.

“……”

Ah, they were just amazing.

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They were eyes filled with despair for the whole world. Eyes that had
lost all ability to hope or look forward to anything. Luke had seen him
from a distance before, but never this close.

“…You must be His Excellency Lieutenant General Miran Froaude?”

Froaude nodded, then looked at him with cutting, cold eyes that
seemed to look down on the rest of the world. “I apologize for
coming so late, Sergeant Luke Stokkart. My hands were a bit tied in
moving a piece of mine.”

A piece…

Luke tilted his head. “A piece, huh… Might you mean Ryner Lute?”

Froaude’s eyes widened a bit in surprise. He smiled. “My, my… I

should expect no less of you. Conversing with intelligent individuals
is always so pleasantly simple. Might you also know the reason I have
called you here, then…?”

The reason.

The reason that he had called Luke rather than Rahel Miller.

Luke didn’t even have to think about it. That was easy.

“To have me kill Ryner Lute?”

Froaude smiled happily. “You are truly amazing.”

So he was right. Froaude had called him here to kill Ryner Lute.

Luke’s expression clouded over as he recalled the orders Sion had

given him.

1. Find any Heroic Relics that the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute
overlooks and fails to collect.

2. Monitor the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute.

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3. Should the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute go berserk outside of
Roland or show signs of betraying Roland, exterminate him.

Those orders were the reason he’d been observing Ryner Lute. The
three orders were his formal duty. There was also an additional
order that he understood to be true in the moment he was given the
first three: Take measures to prevent Ryner Lute’s existence as an
Alpha Stigma bearer, a feared and loathed monster, in Roland’s
service from being exposed.

Eventually, Luke realized that Sion had no desire to kill Ryner Lute in
any scenario, no matter how disadvantageous it may be. And now
Froaude was telling him to kill Ryner Lute. Luke understood why.

“…You don’t think he’s very good taste.”

“Personal taste is in no way are capable of making the country

move,” Froaude said.

“That may indeed be so… but who says that the lives of the many are
always more important than the few who might be sacrificed for
their sakes?” Luke asked.

“I cannot see the worth in allowing the single life of Ryner Lute to
cause so much pain. His life has been devoid of worth since the very
beginning.”

Luke grimaced. “The way you speak is a bit—”

“A bit… what?” Froaude interrupted. “Sergeant Stokkart, do you truly

believe that Ryner Lute is better off alive?”

“……”

What could Luke possibly say to that?

“His life has been devoid of worth since the very beginning.”

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In other words…

“Because Ryner Lute is a dangerous Alpha Stigma bearer, feared and

loathed by all, his life has been devoid of worth since the very
beginning.”

Froaude didn’t mean it as commonplace discrimination. He

acknowledged Ryner Lute’s worth more than anyone, after all. That
was why he was so fixated on him. If he wasn’t obsessed, then he
wouldn’t have gone out of his way to call Luke in an elaborate plan
to exterminate Ryner.

So he wasn’t being discriminatory. He was speaking the truth - that

Ryner Lute’s life was intrinsically worthless.

Luke gazed up at Froaude. “Have you thought of the great effect that
Ryner Lute’s death would have?”

Froaude stared at him with those cold, dead eyes of his, seeing right
through him. “Has the thought truly never crossed your mind?”

Luke was silent.

Froaude continued. “You are not the only one who has thought of it.
Major Rahel Miller and I are all of the same inclination… are you
telling me that you have come to a different conclusion than us?”

Luke didn’t answer.

His thoughts were racing for a different direction altogether.

He wasn’t in the best situation right now.

Miran Froaude was far more upfront than he’d expected. He’d
expected to have to feel around for his intentions, but… The fact that
he had been so honest from the beginning…

“…I see,” Luke said. “So that’s where Roland stands now…”

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Froaude nodded. “If we should leave things as they are now…”

His voice trailed off. But Luke understood.

Roland would be destroyed. Another country would swallow it

whole.

Froaude had approached him sincerely in order to avoid that.

“……”

Sincere…… was he.

“I refuse,” Luke said.

Froaude’s deep blue eyes met his own. “You should know best of all
that you cannot refuse.”

“Enlighten me.”

“We have taken Milk Callaud hostage, and can only guarantee her
safety if you listen to what I ask—”

“That is not true,” Luke said and shook his head. “You intend to kill
Milk Callaud after I have killed Ryner Lute anyway, don’t you?”

Froaude didn’t answer. He just stared with those cold eyes of his.

“You believe that is what would give you the best effect, don’t you?”
Luke asked. “You have decided that the best way to crush the
foundation of Sir Sion’s heart and nativity is to kill both Ryner Lute
and Milk Callaud at once. Am I wrong?”

Froaude was quiet once more.

Luke stared right into his eyes. “You need to guarantee Milk Callaud’s
safety. I won’t listen to anything you say before you do.”

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Froaude looked a bit troubled, his eyebrows furrowing. “Hmph. I
see… I understand what you are trying to say. Fine, then. I promise to
not kill Milk Callaud.”

Luke smiled bitterly. “But you’re just lying, aren’t you?”

Froaude didn’t hesitate to nod. “Yes. Of course that was a lie. I might
kill her, or I might not… but you have no choice but to take my word
for it. The card called Milk Callaud is in my hand, after all. Not yours.”
His eyebrows furrowed deeper, contrary to his words. “But… you
aren’t such a fool that you wouldn’t already know that… so tell me.
How might you take Milk Callaud from me?”

“How about… I trade your life for hers?”

Luke glanced around the room. He was currently standing by the

bed. Froaude was on the other side of the room, standing in the
entrance. They were six steps away from each other. That was close
enough for Luke to jump forward and kill Froaude in one swoop.

Froaude’s expression became even more troubled. “You are saying

that you will kill me if I do not guarantee Milk Callaud’s safety…?”

Luke nodded. “I suppose that’s what it has come to, yes.”

Froaude smiled faintly. But his smile seemed to ice his expression
over altogether - it was even colder now than it had been before,
when Luke first saw him today. His left hand moved over his right
hand so that his fingers could caress his peculiar black ring. “Sergeant
Luke Stokkart… I am well aware of how powerful you are… as well as
the fact that your power rivaled Crimson-Fingered Claugh Klom’s
during the rebellion.”

Luke shook his head. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong. I’d die in seconds
if I challenged Claugh to a fight.”

And that was the truth.

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He was inferior to Claugh when it came to magic, hand-to-hand, and
reflexes.

Luke had tried to fight Claugh honestly once, and…

“……”

It was such a pitiful memory that he didn’t even want to remember

it.

Anyway, Luke really didn’t feel like he could win against Claugh in a
fight. Because Claugh was a genius when it came to battlefields. In
comparison, Luke was only a little more capable than the average
person.

However.

“…You are a different type of genius,” Froaude said. “Your ability to

understand situations towers far above the rest… no, those words
alone are not suitable to express it. The documents that I pulled on
you detail twelve battles of yours, all twelve of which you won. And
they were not equal matches. You were horribly disadvantaged in
each and every case… One could call it miraculous. You have earned
the right to be called a genius of tactics…”

“…Enough praise. But I do appreciate that you did your research,”

Luke said. “My real name isn’t what’s listed for most of my battles,
but you managed to find me anyway… Won’t you accept my original
offer for a trade, knowing that?”

Froaude shook his head.

“You cannot kill me… no matter how much of a genius you may be,”
Froaude said. He continued to stroke that black ring of his as he
spoke. “You are, at your core, human… and therefore no match for
me.”

26
“Oh? You make it sound like you’re not… ah, you aren’t?” Luke said.
Come to think of it, the look in his eyes was awfully inhuman. But
maybe that was a rude thing to think.

“No, no, I am human. But you are unable to kill me, being human
yourself.”

“…You say some pretty peculiar things… A human who can’t be killed
by humans, huh…” Luke said, then drifted off into thought for a
moment. “Well, enough chit-chat. I see now that our conversation
won’t go anywhere until I prove that I can kill you.”

“I am telling you that you cannot.”

“I wonder. Why don’t we fight for a minute to see—”

Luke didn’t get to finish his sentence.

Froaude smiled and raised his right hand. The hand that bore that
strange ring.

“…O darkness…”

An oppressive feeling spread out from Froaude as he spoke. Call it a

murderous aura, or call it dread itself - it didn’t matter. What
mattered was that it was unmistakably dangerous. It wasn’t Froaude
himself, either. It was the presence of something else. No, several
something elses. One, two, three, four… they just kept coming.

Luke’s eyes flicked across the room, towards the presences that had
appeared. But there was nothing there. They were shapeless,
formless.

“…Appear.”

Shadows sprung up from the ground, each hurling itself into the air
and taking the shape of a beast.

27
“……”

Luke watched the beasts, but he didn’t move.

He grasped the situation with ease.

Black beasts made of shadows appeared to be Froaude’s power - to

be more precise, it was probably his ring’s power. He could cause the
beasts to spring up and then manipulate them freely, from the looks
of it. So he could probably also manipulate the form that they took.

“…Better get some distance between us,” Luke said to himself and
took a step back.

“It’s too late for that,” Froaude said. He moved his fingers just so as
he spoke.

That little movement appeared to be an order to his beasts - they

responded to it, leaping up and shooting at Luke…

It was over.

Something bright and sparkling fell from the ceiling and crashed with
an incomprehensible sound. The shadow beasts were cut up and
destroyed.

“Wha…”

That was Froaude.

Luke took the opportunity to run right for Froaude.

Froaude scowled. “Shit. O darkness—”

A little whirring sound accompanied by a light that wrapped its way

around his raised hand.

“Move that finger of yours another inch and I’ll rip your whole arm
off,” Luke said.

28
Froaude looked at his arm. His scowl deepened. “A… string…? But—”

Luke tugged, wrapping Froaude’s chest up, too. Then he used the
strings to throw him forcefully against the iron barred door.

“Gaha…”

Luke didn’t stop even at the sound of Froaude groaning. He pulled a

knife from his pocket, then pressed it against Froaude’s neck. He
spoke in a deeper and darker voice compared to his normal cheery
tone. “Just try and touch Milk Callaud with any one of your dirty
fingers. I can kill someone like you without looking back.”

Froaude’s eyes met Luke from his place pressed up against iron bars.
“Hm. You are usually so calm and collected, and yet… Is this an act to
portray the fact that killing Milk Callaud would result in you killing
me?”

Luke smiled, perfectly composed. The knife dug deeper into

Froaude’s neck. Blood began to pour from the wound. But that didn’t
stop Luke from pressing the knife in deeper, deep enough to have hit
an artery if Froaude hadn’t tilted his head just so to avoid it.

“…It’s not a fucking act,” Luke said, that same smile plastered on his
face. “We don’t forgive people who hurt our family. Don’t even think
about hurting them without a death wish. Blink once if you
understand. If you don’t, then we’ll fight this out. In other words,
you’ll die.”

“……”

Froaude blinked once. So Luke removed the blade from his throat.

“…So sorry about that,” Luke said. “Did it hurt?”

Luke might not have hit an artery, but there was still enough blood
dripping from Froaude’s neck for him to press his fingers to it just to

29
make sure that the damage wasn’t too major. “I see… yes, if you are
this powerful, then of course your trade becomes a meaningful
offer… You can kill me, so you would like me to hand over Milk
Callaud in exchange for my life… is that correct?”

Luke nodded. “Yes, that is indeed correct.”

Froaude’s eyes looked around the room. “So…. the weapon you used
earlier was… a string?”

“It was.”

“Is it one of the Heroic Relics, the likes of which Ryner Lute authored
a report on?”

Luke nodded. “I was granted permission to use one of the relics that
he failed to retrieve.”

“What is your relic’s ability?”

Luke dipped his hand into his pocket to pull out a tiny needle, so thin
that it was hard to see. He held it up for Froaude to see as he
explained. “It doesn’t… exactly have an ‘ability.’ But it can’t be cut,
despite how thin it is. This needle can fire an endless amount of
unbreakable string. That’s its ‘ability,’ so to speak. It doesn’t do
anything else.”

Luke didn’t think it was originally made to be a weapon. It was

probably intended to be used for sewing.

“That may be its only ability… but it becomes quite powerful

depending on its user,” Froaude said. He glanced up at the ceiling,
then to the room’s light. “You made it so that you could activate your
trap on the ceiling by stepping back, and when you did, it shocked
my shadow beasts… that is what happened, is it not?”

30
Luke looked like he found this all a bit tedious. “I don’t expect the
same thing to happen twice.”

Froaude’s expression didn’t budge in the slightest. It remained dark

and cold. “Relics can become very dangerous depending on their
user… so we don’t have much time.”

“…Are you referring to Gastark?” Luke asked.

Froaude didn’t respond. But he was making a face that said ‘you
should know without me saying it.’

True, there was no real need for him to say it at this point. Luke was
well aware of their current situation. It sucked.

Gastark already had countless relics and was using them to conquer
the continent. They were still in the far north, seperated from Roland
by an entire continent… It might look like it was all too far to have
anything to do with Roland, but it really wasn’t. The truth was that it
mattered a lot, even now.

Only one country needed to move to change the world. And the
world was currently moving towards war. A war that would affect
even Roland.

Roland had annexed the Kingdom of Estabul after a long history of

war. Now it was time for it to start looking at uniting the rest of the
Southern Continent in order to amass enough power to defend
against the north, even if their king didn’t will it. Even if the other
Southern COntinent countries, Runa and Nelpha, didn’t want it.

They needed to start preparing for what the rest of the world would
do.

They had to form alliances with Runa and Nelpha before it was too
late. They had to do something before it was too late, because the

31
gears moving Gastark to conquer them were already moving too fast
to be stopped. They needed to get to perfecting their own gears.

Luke recalled something that Froaude had said earlier, when he’d
just entered the room.

“My hands were a bit tied in moving a piece of mine.”

And that meant…

“So you had Ryner Lute leave the country?” Luke asked.

Froaude smiled happily. “No… something occurred that exceeded my

expectations. Ryner Lute was taken out of the country by a new
Alpha Stigma bearer, betraying Roland in the process.”

“……”

So that was why Froaude took so long to get to Luke. But that didn’t
matter now. What mattered was that Ryner had betrayed Roland,
putting one of Sion’s orders in effect - to exterminate him.

“His Majesty will likely return in a week,” Froaude said. “Please leave
the country to take care of Ryner before His Majesty has the time to
withdraw his order.”

Luke nodded.

If he was going to kill Ryner, it had to be before Sion returned.

Luke recalled a page of Ryner’s report that Sion had showed him
some time ago.

I hate it when people die.

I also hate killing.

I hate crying and I hate being made to cry.

32
What’s the feeling called when you know you can’t choose your life?
When your family dies? What about when the person you love dies?

Nobody wants those things to happen, and yet this world wishes for
pointless sadness, laughing all the while.

I’ve never wanted to change things. I know it’s futile. But I’ll keep
being sad if things don’t change, and I don’t want to lose anything
else…

This is a pain to write, but… I think it’s about time to move forward.
I’ve averted my eyes from the past until now, but if it’s necessary, I’ll
look at it. For the sake of making a world where nobody will lose
anything anymore.

A world where that kid and Kiefer don’t have to cry, where Tyle,
Tony, and Fahle don’t have to die, where Sion doesn’t have to
torment himself over the state of things.

To a world where everyone smiles and it’s okay if all we do is nap.

Ryner Lute

Luke thought it was wonderful. Truly wonderful.

A word where no one lost anything, one where everyone grows up

smiling. He’d gladly lend his power to creating such a world.
Everyone would be happy, and he’d be able to protect Milk’s smile…

He’d really offer his life for the cause… if only such a world could
exist.

But it couldn’t. It was incompatible with reality; an illusion, one that

everyone dreamed of at one point in their lives.

33
The more powerful someone was, the father away that dream
became. They all wanted to chase after that illusion, no matter how
far it was. To the point where they killed people.

As for Ryner Lute…

“…He… is quite capable of breaking Sion’s heart,” Luke said.

Froaude smiled, satisfied. “It is so reassuring to me that people like

you are here in Roland.”

Luke’s expression turned a bit sad. “I understand… I will kill Ryner

Lute,” he whispered.

34
Chapter 2: A Worthless God, A Boring
Goddess

He felt like he was dreaming.

Some time had passed since that incident, where Sion wouldn’t smile
at him meanly and Ferris wouldn’t bully him.

Ryner mumbled to himself as he recalled those events.

“…Seriously, what was I even thinking…”

He had sloppy, bedhead-ridden black hair, and a lanky, slouched

figure. His eyes were the same black as his hair, but a red pentagram
floated in them…

He closed his eyes, then pressed at them with his fingers. Hard. Hard
enough to smash them, if they’d been normal eyes… But his eyes
didn’t give. Of course they didn’t. He’d tried cutting them out with a
knife before, but even that didn’t work. So he already knew his
fingers were useless. He didn’t think it was possible for him to rip
them out. The Alpha Stigma wouldn’t let him off that easily…

The scarlet brand in his eyes was feared and loathed by all, and if he
went berserk, he’d massacre everyone around him. It didn’t matter if
he didn’t want it or if they meant a lot to him. He’d still kill them. So
he didn’t think it was strange that people called them the devil’s eyes
or said that he was a monster. Even Ryner felt that his eyes were
truly cursed.

“……”

If only he didn’t have those eyes. Then he might…

35
“…This is dumb,” Ryner mumbled and shook his head. It was so
dumb. He’d already given up, after all.

He was a cursed monster. He brought unhappiness to everyone

around him just by living. He already knew that perfectly well. And
yet… he’d come to love people again. He knew it was stupid of him,
but he still did it.

For Sion’s smile. For the fact that Ferris was by his side.

He’d even come to think that he might be able to just live, like the
normal people around him could…

“……”

His dreams led him there… and let him hurt people again.

He thought of Sion’s face the last time they met. He’d been making a
horribly pained expression.

Sion had ordered someone to kill Ryner to deal with him if need be.
But that was obvious. Because Ryner was a human killing monster.
He had to be killed if he went berserk.

It was a natural order for a king to give.

But… what expression was Sion making back when he gave it? He’d
even thought about that.

And then there was Ferris.

She…

“……”

Ryner stopped there.

There was no point in thinking about it. They’d never meet again.

36
But… he still recalled those words she’d said to him.

“You’re not a monster.”

She’d said that when he’d gone berserk and was trying to kill her.

“You’re not a monster.”

She’d said that for his sake. And it made him happy.

“You’re my ally, my slave, and my friend who I drink tea with. You’re
nothing like a monster. Can you hear me, Ryner?”

He’d seriously wanted to believe in those words then. But it wasn’t

like that. Reality just wasn’t like that. He was a monster. He didn’t
know when he’d kill Sion and Ferris. He’d hurt those two just by
being around them. He’d hurt the people who meant a lot to him just
by being there. So he couldn’t be with them. So…

“Hey, Ryner. Are you hungry?”

“Hm?”

Ryner looked to his side. To the man walking beside him.

Tiir Rumibul.

His clothes were reminiscent of a priest’s, but they were pitch black
from his neck to his shoes. He even had the same black hair and eyes
as Ryner… and a scarlet brand faintly visible on his eyes, much like
Ryner’s… Tiir’s were a different shape, though. They were crosses,
not pentagrams. Because he didn’t have the Alpha Stigma. He said
his was called Iino Doue.

Tiir hadn’t explained it yet, but from what Ryner had seen, Iino Doue
had different powers.

37
Ryner’s Alpha Stigma could copy and replicate any spell he saw,
unless he was berserk. But Tiir’s Iino Doue was different. His eyes
could eat both magic and people. Well, to be precise, it wasn’t eating
‘people.’ It was eating the life force capable of creating magic within
them - their spirit, as magic scholars called it. Devouring magic,
people, and spirits gave him an abnormally fast recovery rate and
physical ability. It let him move even faster than Ferris, who boasted
incredible physical ability, and Ryner when he used magic to
accelerate himself.

Honestly, it was past the point of being able to compare his strength
to that of other people’s. He had the destructive power to take an
army. He devoured people, then used the power that gave him to kill
even more people.

Alpha Stigma’s monstrousness couldn’t even hold a candle to Iino

Doue’s.

“I was just thinking that you might have gotten hungry since we’ve
been walking all this time without stopping to eat,” the monster said.
He seemed awfully cheerful…

“Whoa, wait, you’re not thinking of eating more people, are you!?”

Tiir’s eyes, branded with scarlet crosses, widened. Then he looked at

Ryner. “Of course I wouldn’t make you eat humans. You won’t them,
will you?”

“O-obviously. Why would I be able to eat a human being of all

things!?”

Tiir smiled happily. “Oh, you’ve said something good. You’re right.
Humans are a lower life form. They’re not even worthy of being our
food!”

“…No, that’s really not how I meant that.”

38
Tiir tilted his head. “Then how did you mean it? Why can’t you eat
people?”

“W-well…”

Ryner’s words trailed off. Why couldn’t they eat people? That was
simple. Even a small child understood why they couldn’t. They were
humans… so they couldn’t eat other humans. It was seriously that
easy. But…

“Hm. I guess I need to correct your misunderstanding first,” Tiir said.

“Ryner, the humans brainwashed you and gave you the wrong idea
entirely. The truth is that we bear God’s eyes. We’re a superior
species, not inferior.”

Ryner grimaced. “So you’re saying we’re not even human?”

Tiir smiled, sad. “Right… Most Alpha Stigma bearers make that same
face when I try to convey that we’re not human. But that belief is the
root of your unhappiness…”

“Mm? Our unhappiness?”

Tiir nodded. “It starts when you’re born. You’re born as a human
child and raised as one for the first few years of your life. You’re
brainwashed in that time period. Brainwashed and told that you can
live as a human and be happy as a human. You love humans, believe
in them, devote yourself to them… but in the end, they betray you.
They curse you, call you a monster, fear you as a demon… and then
they kill you. Am I wrong?”

“……”

No, he wasn’t. Tiir was right.

The vast majority of humans feared, loathed, and threatened to kill

Alpha Stigma bearers. Ryner might have been different, but he didn’t

39
know either way because he didn’t have any memories of the first
few years of his life. But Arua… Arua had that exact thing happen to
him. Both his parents were killed and he was taken in by the military
for research just because he had the Alpha Stigma. Ryner had also
been taken in by the military…

But…

“…That didn’t happen to you?” Ryner asked. “What about before

your scarlet cross appeared—”

“No,” Tiir said and shook his head. “I have never loved a human
before. I have never felt that I was the same as humans before. Since
the very beginning, my eyes…” Tiir pointed to the scarlet pentagrams
in Ryner’s eyes, then back at his own crosses. “Iino Doue appears at a
different time from the Alpha Stigma. The Alpha Stigma generally
appears when you’re five or six years old. That’s about when yours
did, right?”

Even if Tiir said so, Ryner didn’t have the memories to confirm or
deny it with. He had no idea when the pentagram had first risen in
his eyes… He knew when he first used their power, but he didn’t
know for sure if the pentagrams had been there before then or not…
After all, they weren’t all that visible as long as he wasn’t using his
power. The people around him probably wouldn’t have looked for it,
and therefore not noticed it even if it had already activated. So he
really had no idea if his eyes already bore the Alpha Stigma or not
when he came to and began to remember things…

But if Tiir said that it generally happened at age five or six, then that
was probably the case with him too. Arua was at that age, too.

“……”

In any case, he’d never heard about this stuff before.

40
Ryner looked to Tiir.

He was glad that he’d come with him.

He didn’t like the logic a guy who calmly killed and ate human beings
followed, but… he was still a wealth of knowledge. There was value
in them sticking together.

“So when does Iino Doue, um… activate? You said the timing’s
different from Alpha Stigma?”

“Yeah. Iino Doue activates when we’re still in the womb.”

“Whoa, really?”

Tiir nodded. “Mm.”

That answer left Ryner with a certain doubt. “But even if your eyes
activated in the womb, you still had a human mother, right? Would
she not raise you? If she did, don’t you think you would have thought
of yourself as human?”

Tiir smiled. “I don’t think that could have happened. I mean, I don’t
even know the face of the woman who carried me.”

“Huh? Then… do you not have any memories of your childhood

either?”

Tiir looked puzzled. “Hm? You don’t have any memories of then,
Ryner?”

Tiir turned the question back on him…

Ryner recalled his very first memory. It was a memory of the world,
dyed red to its edges… the world he suddenly woke up to. It was a
wide-open savanna, red from the sunset… and from the bodies and
blood of hundreds. No matter which way he looked, all he saw were
bodies, bodies, bodies…

41
That was his first memories. All he knew at the time was his own
name. He didn’t know who he was, why he was there, or what he
was doing. He couldn’t remember any of it.

So Ryner nodded. “Yeah… I don’t have any memories from before I

was five or so. All I knew was my name. Does that kind of thing
happen often to Alpha Stigma bearers?”

“…Hm. I wonder.” Tiir folded his arms and seriously considered it for
a moment before continuing. “No, I’ve not heard that from any of
the Alpha Stigma bearers I’ve found. All the Alpha Stigma bearers I
know… were either persecuted along with their parents, or were
persecuted by their parents…”

Arua fell into that first category. So most of them were like him,
then… but what about Ryner?

Tiir gazed at Ryner with pitying eyes. “Something psychologically

unbearable might’ve happened to you. The humans must have done
something so horrible that you had to suppress your memories of it
to survive. They say they love you but then discriminate, and kill
people who are supposed to be the same as them with perfect
composure… That’s why I think they’re lesser beings. They’re the
monsters, not us…”

“…I can’t deny that,” Ryner said.

Tiir smiled. “That’s why you don’t need to make such a sad face.
You’re not human, see? What they do has nothing to do with you.
You’re different from them.”

Even if he said that… it just made Ryner’s feelings on the matter even
more complicated. Tiir was praising him with a big smile, full of
fondness. But…

42
“…You’re just praising me for not being a human, though, aren’t
you?” Ryner mumbled to himself and scowled.

It wasn’t like he’d gone this long without considering that he might
not be human. He had thought of it before. But was that really the
case? Yes, he had the eyes of a monster. But…

Ryner looked down at his hands. They looked the exact same as a
human’s would - his skin, his nails, even down to his faintly visible
veins. Everything about them looked perfectly human. Everything
about him was like that… except for his eyes. That’s what he thought.
That’s how he’d always thought of it. He always, always thought that.
Yes, he was a monster. But only because of his eyes…

If it weren’t for those eyes…

“……”

It looked like… he was thinking himself in circles again. His mind

always got wrapped up in the same train of thought, following it
around and around…

And then… those words resounded through his mind. The thing
Ferris’ brother Lucile said.

“What kind of impossible dreams do you ugly monsters have?”

He was… a monster. He knew that.

“You should already know. Monsters’ hands are already covered in

blood. They can’t grasp anything… and they can’t make it anywhere.”

Of course he knew that. But… but even so, if maybe… just…

Tiir looked at him like he could see right into his thoughts, then
spoke. “By the way… there’s more to the story about the woman
who was pregnant with me.”

43
“…Huh?”

“See, before she reached full-term, I opened up my eyes inside of

her, and my Iino Doue activated. What do you think happened
next?”

Ryner. Looked at Tiir. And forced himself to speak. “Y, you can’t
have.” He shivered.

The information he had let him to theorize a certain conclusion. But..

that shouldn’t…

Tiir was made like any human child, but he didn’t know his mother’s
face. Why? Why…?

“…You can’t have… devoured your mother from the inside out?”

Tiir wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t call that thing my mother,
okay?”

“You…”

Ryner’s voice trailed off. He couldn’t really continue, could he? It’d
become a conversation that they definitely couldn’t have. It was
stupid. Ridiculous. So… so…

Tiir looked him over and smiled. “Yes. You’ve finally realized. A fetus
inside of a womb shouldn’t have a consciousness or will of its own
yet. And yet, I ate the woman who carried me from within her
stomach. What do you think that means?”

Ryner shivered. He was at a loss for words.

What did it mean? It meant… that Tiir, that Iino Doue, weren’t the
same as people from the beginning. It was like how everyone knew
that birds would eventually fly. Iino Doue would eventually eat their
mothers.

44
He wasn’t human, then. He was…

“Y-you’ve got to be kidding!” Ryner said.

But Tiir continued, calmly pleased. “Are you… insulting me? Are you
trying to say that something that is born by eating its ‘mother’ alive
can only be a monster?”

“…Ah, ughh…”

Tiir remained in good spirits, and almost appeared to be worried for

Ryner’s sake. “It’s probably best if you don’t speak too ill of me.
You’ll just turn it back on yourself in the end, after all. It’s going to be
alright. You don’t need to be afraid anymore. You aren’t alone. You
aren’t human, so all of us will be there for you.”

Tiir reached out to hold him, but…

“D, don’t touch me,” Ryner said and batted his arms away.

Tiir watched him, eyes full of sympathy. “This is the root of the Alpha
Stigma bearer’s… this is the root of your unhappiness. I was given my
decree when I was still just a fetus, but your decree never came…”

“…Decree? What are you talking about?”

Tiir pointed to the sky. “Of course I mean God’s divine orders. See,
from the second I opened my eyes, I began to hear a voice
descending from the heavens. Only I can hear it. It said, ‘Kill the
original prey. Devour those lowly humans,’ see?”

“…What?” Ryner asked. His shivering stopped. “It descends on you

from the sky?”

Tiir was a bit surprised. “Hm? This is the first time an Alpha Stigma
bearer has ever reacted to that.”

45
“Just answer me. You’re saying the voice descends from the sky,
right?”

Tiir nodded. “Yes. In reality, it’s spoken directly into my mind, but I’m
not sure that fact is all that relevant… um, yeah. It leaves me with the
sensation that it’s descended on me. All Iino Doue bearers say the
same thing. Will Heim bearers tend to say they started hearing it
about two months after birth, but they seem to hear it in the end…”

“Will Heim…? You mentioned them before too, right? They’re Cursed
Eyes too, right?”

Tiir was fast to chide him. “I told you, we’re not Cursed Eyes. That’s a
discriminatory term that humans use for us. We’re God’s Eyes.”

…Yeah, Ryner really didn’t give a shit about that. “So, Cursed Eyes…
er, I mean, definitely not that. God’s Eyes. There’s Alpha Stigma, Iino
Doue, and Will Heim, so that makes three kinds, right…?”

“No, there are two more - Torch Curse and Ebra Crypt.”

“There’s so many…”

It was starting to get exhausting keeping up with it all. There were

five types of Cursed Eyes… no, maybe he should say God’s Eyes after
all. But he’d never met any of them. He’d been reading up on it, too.
In Roland, Nelpha, Runa, Iyet… he read up on the subject everywhere
he went, but he’d never heard of any of them except for Alpha
Stigmas. That meant…

“So there’s probably the most Alpha Stigma bearers out of all of the
Cursed… I mean God’s Eyes…” Ryner trailed off. No, that wasn’t
important now. There was something else they had to discuss. “Um,
let me change my question here. Can we go back to what we were
talking about before?”

“Earlier? Which thing? Oh, are you hungry?”

46
“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“…But really, you must be hungry by now, right? We’ve talked about
it a few times now, after all.”

Well, that was true…

Ryner looked around.

They were currently travelling the main road from Roland to Nelpha.
They weren’t far at all from the Nelphan border now. This road had
teahouses spread here and there along it…

Ryner scowled. He’d been to a teahouse on this road, in fact. When

he first met Ferris. They’d been headed to Nelpha to search for the
Heroic Relics on Sion’s orders when Ferris poked her head into a
teahouse. It wasn’t long before she was back out. “Eat this,” she’d
said and expressionlessly handed Ryner some dango.

He’d wondered why she disliked him so much then. But the dango
she gave him was surprisingly tasty… though he lost his appetite for
it when he watched Ferris eating it. Because she was just so
expressionless as she ate. He hadn’t known the extent of her love for
dango yet at that point.

“……”

The teahouse in front of them now… didn’t have Ferris in it.

“See, we can eat dango here before we go to Nelpha,” Tiir said,

bright and chipper.

Ryner shook his head. “No, nope, I’m actually not hungry at all…”

“Hm? Ryner, do you not like dango?”

“Huh?” Ryner thought about it for a moment. Dango. Dango…

“…Yeah. I’m not a fan.”

47
“Oh, okay. How about we just eat the humans working th—”

“I’m not gonna do that!!” Ryner yelled.

Tiir put his hands on his hips. “It’s not healthy to be so picky about
food!” He said in a preachy tone.

“…Come on, my only choices here are dango and humans…”

He felt the joke fall flat between them.

Tiir looked worried. “Are you really okay with not eating here? You
won’t get another chance for food until we’ve crossed the border
into Nelpha!”

He was awfully persistent. “Ugh, what are you, my mom? I’m not
hungry if I say I’m not. What about you? Are you okay leaving
without eating any dango yourself?”

Tiir looked past the teahouse, far along the path in front of them.
“My meal’s waiting for me over there—”

“You mean the guards at the border!? Don’t go eating people in front
of me!”

“I know better. Besides, I already said it, but humans are inferior life
forms. They’re no better than shit. I’m going to eat their magic, not
their bodies. They’ll definitely fire some at us when we try to cross
the border, right?”

Ryner eyed Tiir suspiciously. “You better not be tellin’ lies.”

Tiir met his eyes. “I won’t lie to you. Humans are the ones who can
lie with a straight face, not us. We’d never lie to our allies.”

He was serious. Anyone could tell that he was telling the truth. Not
because he seemed like an honest, upstanding guy or anything… but
because he despised humans from the depths of his heart.

48
Humans told lies, and God’s Eyes didn’t. They were different from
humans. Humans were inferior and they were superior. But…

“……”

Was that really true?

Ryner gazed at Tiir. At his eyes. At the scarlet cross in them. Was it
actually a certificate? Proof that their abilities surpassed what
humans could do, something that meant that they were superior?

It was true that they could do things humans couldn’t, but… it wasn’t
something they’d chosen. It was something that was forced upon
them.

For example. There were a number of people in Roland with magic

circles tattooed on their bodies to increase their war potential. But
that wasn’t something they’d chosen to have happen. It happened
because human experimentation was such a hot topic of research
under the last king. Many, many people died because of it. Many
people were sacrificed. But the result was a country filled with
people with extraordinary abilities.

Ryner had met people like that in the Hidden Elites, an organization
affiliated with the orphanage he came from. They’d been human.
Everyone knew that. They might have had abilities that made them
stronger than others, but they were still human. What else would
they be? They were humans with magic circles on them. Nothing
more and nothing less…

So what about Cursed Eyes? Were they any different? Weren’t they
just humans with weird marks on their eyes?

“……”

Ryner looked back to Tiir again. At his eyes that held faint crosses.
That was the only off thing about him. The only proof that he was

49
different from others. That was the only reason they were cursed,
feared, loathed, called monsters, and abused.

And maybe they were monsters. Monsters who killed humans.

But if they killed humans, wasn’t that proof that they were above
them, in a way?

Or rather…

“…Gh, ahh…”

Those thoughts just appeared in his head on their own. He couldn’t

help but react to it.

“Hm? What’s wrong?” Tiir asked. “Did you decide to have some
dango while we can after all?”

Ryner didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.

The fog that had clouded his mind until now was clearing. He looked
back to Tiir. To the red crosses in his black eyes.

Tiir tilted his head, concerned. “What’s gotten into you?”

Ryner didn’t answer. He just stared at Tiir’s eyes. His black eyes. And
scarlet crosses.

“…Shit. How am I so dumb? How’d it take me so long to notice

something so obvious?” Ryner spat.

Tiir looked troubled. “What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

He recalled something he himself had said as he stared at Tiir’s eyes.

Something about the Runa Empire, back from when he went to save
Arua from abuse and experimentation that was happening for the
sole reason of him being an Alpha Stigma bearer.

50
“Let the demon go. It’s our research subject. If you don’t let it go,
God will bestow punishment upon you, as an ally of demons…”

And Ryner had replied, “You guys just said… god’s punishment, right?
That we’d be punished for having these eyes…? You guys have done
unspeakable atrocities and won’t be punished for squat, but we’ll be
punished just because of our eyes?”

He hadn’t been offended, or even angry. Just sad. Sad because he

was watching the same tragedies repeat time and time again. So
seeing them made him emotional. And it made him overlook
something. The most important part of it all.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit… What the hell. What the hell was that? God will
punish us? Then why did he make us? God, answer me if you exist.
Why did you make us? You went out of the way for us to be born…
was it just so you could punish us when you’re done playing with us?
Don’t fuck with me! We aren’t your toys. We’re just… living. We
didn’t want to be like this… we didn’t want to be born monsters. We
don’t like having these eyes…”

That was it.

They didn’t like having those eyes. Why, then, were their eyes
branded? Why did they have them at all?

Ryner stared at Tiir’s eyes. His black eyes with a scarlet brand. The
brand that Tiir said was proof of them being a superior existence.

“……”

But what if he couldn’t accept that?

What if Tiir was just a normal human. Even his black eyes were the
same as a normal human’s eyes. And the cross…

“……”

51
The cross was just… engraved in them from behind. Then what? It
was no different from the human experimentation that went on
inside Roland. It was the same as when people were tattooed with
magic circles.

That left one question.

Who had engraved their brands…?

He recalled what he said one more time.

“Why did you make us? You went out of the way for us to be born…
was it just so you could punish us when you’re done playing with
us?”

“…I’m so fucking dumb…”

There was no way that was true. There was no way they were made
for that dumbass reason. It’d be meaningless.

So who did it? And why?

“Tiir.”

Relief washed over Tiir’s face. “I’m so glad you feel like having a
normal convers—”

“Earlier,” Ryner interrupted, “You said that you hear god’s voice
descend from the sky… right?”

“Ahh, yeah. But you shouldn’t fuss over that too much, Ryner.
Normal Alpha Stigma bearers can’t hear the voice of God, so they
typically don’t have too much interest in the topic anyway.”

Even his rebuttal had a few interesting things in it.

One: Normal Alpha Stigma bearers couldn’t hear that voice

descending on them. Ryner already sort of knew that, though,

52
because of something the Gastark spies Sui and Kuu said. They
hunted Cursed Eyes so they knew a lot about the topic. They said
something interesting when Ryner went berserk.

“Wh-what’s with him? He isn’t a normal Alpha Stigma bearer, is he?

That power… and that voice. What in the world was talking!? It was
like it was someone else entirely…”

Apparently… it wasn’t normal. Apparently that shouldn’t happen to a

normal Alpha Stigma bearer. But he already knew he wasn’t like
normal Alpha Stigma bearers. Because normal ones couldn’t go back
to how they were after going berserk. They’d stay that way until they
were killed. Ryner, on the other hand, would regain his sense of self.
That was why Roland’s military decided to keep him like a pet.
Because he was unusual.

Another point that proved him to be different from normal Alpha

Stigma bearers came up at Ferris’ house. He could see something
that Arua couldn’t.

So… where did the differences start, and what were they? Did it have
something to do with that voice?

“……”

A voice from the sky.

What was it?

Tiir, an Iino Doue bearer, said that he could hear it too. While he was
still in the womb, no less.

Then there was the second interesting thing Tiir said: that Tiir
believed the voice was god. Ryner didn’t think it was, though. He
didn’t believe in god in the first place. Like, what was god even
supposed to be? Religion really wasn’t all that big in Roland, so he

53
wasn’t sure… but a god was supposed to protect the peace and be all
powerful and all knowing and stuff, right?

Would war and discrimination really exist if there were a god like
that?

There was no way such a convenient thing could exist. At least, not
one who’d help humans out with divine intervention. There was no
doubt about that.

So, with that in mind, what was that voice?

Tiir said that it gave him an order when he was still in the womb.
That it told him, ‘Kill the original prey. Devour those lowly humans.’

Was god someone who’d say that? There was just no way.
Absolutely none. No way in hell that was a god. What was it, then?

A fuzzy memory popped into his mind. A memory of something that

happened after the Alpha Stigma crushed his conscious mind.

It was a voice. A voice descending upon him.

What did it say?

“A god. A demon. An evil god. A hero. A monster. What did you guys
call me? What was I called? Hahahah.”

“You mean to kill me? Kill me with your current power? With items
such as Elemio’s? You are nothing but a worm crawling on the
ground. Ha, hahaha, hahahahaha. Disappear. disappear. DISAPPEAR.
Everything is nothing. Idle. Return to nothing.”

“In the beginning, there was destruction. We didn’t create, bless, or

save. We just erased until everything was pure white.”

“…Elemio,” Ryner whispered. That was a clue. A clue that he’d

overlooked until now that could lead him ever closer to the truth.

54
“Hm? Ele… what? What’s that?” Tiir asked, puzzled.

Ryner shook his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s continue our conversation.”

Tiir smiled bitterly. “That’s fine, but if you’re not going to eat any
dango, don’t you think we should get a move on? Standing like this
will tire our feet out, and besides, everyone’s waiting for us, so I
want to go home as soon as possible.”

“Oh, uh… yeah. Okay,” Ryner said. He walked forward on the road
that stretched out before them. They’d soon cross the border soon
and be somewhere that wasn’t Roland. But for now, they were still
standing on Rolandic ground.

“……”

Ryner turned around.

Of course the path behind him hadn’t changed. They’d only just been
there. And if he walked back along it, he’d reach Roland’s royal
capital in about five days. And yet Roland felt so far away right now.

He hadn’t felt like this when he left Roland and went to Nelpha and
Runa with Ferris. But now… it seemed so, so far away…

Tiir had walked about ten steps ahead of him in the time he took to
stop and stare. He turned back to Ryner, exasperated. “Are you
reluctant…?”

Ryner shook his head. “I’m fine. It’s not like I’m particularly fond of
this country or anything—”

“That’s not it,” Tiir interrupted. “That’s not what I was asking.”

“Hm? Then what did you mean?”

55
Tiir smiled, a little sad. Like he was worried about Ryner from the
bottom of his heart. “I was asking if you were reluctant to leave your
time as a human here in Roland behind.”

Ryner looked at Tiir, whose face was full of pity. He didn’t want to
see it. He didn’t want to see Tiir making that face at him.

But Tiir continued. His tone was, at its core, kind. “I can imagine what
you might be feeling right now. Alpha Stigma bearers all feel like that
at first… because they can’t hear that voice. But you don’t need to
feel like that. Because we’re not human. We’re superior. Ah, if you
don’t like me calling us ‘superior,’ then I can use different vocabulary
for it,” Tiir said, then thought for a moment before continuing. “Even
if we were human instead of something superior… we still wouldn’t
be able to coexist with them.”

“……”

“You understand that most of all, don’t you? Remember everything

that’s happened to you. No matter how much you wanted to be
saved, no one would save you. The closer they get, the more it
hurts… right?”

“……”

Tiir held a hand out for him. “That’s why you took my hand. Isn’t it?”

“……”

“Things have been tough, haven’t they? But it’s okay now. You don’t
need to worry anymore. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone in
this world. You aren’t someone who only hurts the people around
you. You’re not a demon.”

“……”

56
“Come on. Our friends are waiting for us. No one will ever betray you
again.”

Ryner didn’t say anything. He just turned back one last time to look
at the road behind them. At Roland behind them.

It was… far away. Horribly far away. Overwhelmingly far away.

“…You’re the ‘human’ of our side,” Tiir said.

“…Yeah… you’re right…”

Ryner didn’t turn back again after that.

---

Ferris stood on a road near Imperial Nelpha, but still within the
borders of Roland.

“……Mgh.”

She was deeply, deeply troubled, her clear blue eyes focused on the
scene before her. She was an absolute beauty, with needlessly shiny
golden hair and porcelain limbs. Anyone and everyone called her
beautiful. It didn’t matter if they were old or young, men or women.
She caught everyone’s eye as she travelled.

But no one talked to her as she stood there. Not a single person.
Because right after they noticed how beautiful she was, they noticed
the massive longsword strapped to her waist. Then they noticed the
six full backpacks she was somehow managing to carry. To top it all
off, her expression was completely, unchangingly blank. It was
impossible to tell if it was blankness from displeasure or a calm
blankness as she stared fixedly at the two teahouses before her…

“……Mghmghmmgh.”

57
Everyone who saw her thought the same thing - she was thinking
about something serious. They didn’t know what, but it had to be
serious…

So they all kept their distance. Though Ferris was completely

unaware of all that. Because she was horribly torn.

There were two teahouses before her.

She’d been to the one on the left before. They had a reputation for
having delicious dango, so there was no way that Ferris could have
left the area without checking it out. The bigger problem here was
the one on the right. It was one that she couldn’t recall ever seeing
before. It was most likely a new one that had been built over the
course of her travels.

“……”

Ferris stared right at it.

The signs were dirtier than she’d expect, though. The wooden
building didn’t have that fresh and new look, either. It definitely
looked like some time had passed since it appeared. Also, she’d
never received information about a new store around here where
she could eat tasty dango. Eight or nine times out of ten, a store
she’d never heard about would only have so-so dango.

She shook her head.

“No, no. Wait, Ferris. Think about this for a second. How, from a
business perspective, would it manage to run right here next to the
famous dango shop…? Maybe, just maybe… mghmgh…”

This was a seriously tough problem.

People seldom came here unless they had business in Nelpha. So on

the rare cases that people came all this way due to business abroad,

58
they’d surely fill their stomaches with the famous dango while they
were here. Of course, one could also trial the new store while they
were here and then take some of the famous dango to go.

She’d brought seven backpacks full of dango from Roland’s capital,

and she’d just finished eating everything in the first one. Yes, she
could eat her fill of the new dango and take the famed dango with
her… but those were two completely different experiences. And
what if? What if, no matter how small the chance, it was delicious…?
She might miss out on eating more of an absolutely splendid new
recipe…

“Kgh… I always knew it in my heart, but mastering the way of dango

is no easy feat…”

She was torn.

“Mgh.”

Very torn.

“Mghmgh.”

Ferris was very very torn.

And then it dissipated entirely.

“Alright, let’s go with this one.”

She walked to the new store, sat down, and ordered tea and dango.

She picked the dango up by its skewer, lifted it to her mouth, and
chewed. Her eyes widened.

“…Mm, this is…”

The flavor of dango spread through her mouth.

59
If she had to describe it, she’d say the texture was crinkley and the
flexibility was hollowy. It wasn’t sweet or savory, and it reeked of old
flour.

It was horrible… unbelievably horrible…

Ferris shivered.

It was terrible. So terrible that she couldn’t stand it.

It was absolutely enraging.

Where should she direct her anger?

“…At that bastard, Ryner!!” Ferris shouted.

Apparently she was taking it out on Ryner.

She didn’t even care about how bad the dango was anymore. Ryner
just made her more and more angry the longer this went on. She
punched the air in front of her as she recalled that goth guy and
Ryner, whose whereabouts were currently unknown…

“……”

She thought of Ryner’s face then. The last expression she’d seen him
make. He’d looked like he’d given up on everything and was ready to
cry. Like he thought that Ferris was far, far away…

She didn’t… want to see him making that face. She hadn’t chased
after him so she could see that face. She didn’t know why she did it,
but she did know that it wasn’t to see what had ended up
happening.

Ferris sighed quietly. She took another bite of the horrible dango. No
matter how terrible it was, she’d long since pledged to never waste
any dango. She looked out at the sky as she endured the horrid taste
in her mouth. She watched the clouds drift into Nelpha from Roland.

60
“…Geez. Where is he?”

She didn’t have much to go off of. The biggest clue she had was what
that goth cannibal and Ryner had talked about before they left
together.

“Ahh… so I need to explain all the way from the beginning… I heard
that there were few God’s Eyes bearers in the south, but I didn’t
think it was this bad… well, there’s nothing I can do about that now.
I’ll explain. Come on, let’s go.”

“Huh? Where?”

“To where my friends are. I came here specifically to pick you up.”

And so on.

Apparently the goth had friends, and not in the Southern Continent.
They were either in the Central or Northern Continent.

Roland was the southernmost country on the continent now, so she

figured that she should at least head north for the time being, which
was why she was heading to Nelpha now…

Ferris looked down from the sky and over to the teahouse next door.
The one that was famous for its dango. She came to check it out
soon after she heard the rumors. The dango was indeed delicious,
and she’d left satisfied. Then she came back a second time on Sion’s
orders along with that man of doubtful origins, Ryner Lute, an
endlessly apathetic super perverted sex manic.

She’d bought him dango from there and had him try it while he
loitered.

When he did, his eyes had widened.

“Whoa, this is good!” He said.

61
“Hehe.”

“It’s like, better flour than most? Maybe?”

“Hehhehehheh.”

“Hey, you. You’ve gotta know the secret, laughing like that.”

“Naturally.”

“Spill it then.”

“Heheh, you want me to explain it to you?” Ferris asked.

“Well… oh, wait. Is it a long explanation?”

“Hm. I can give you a summary in two hours—”

“I’ll pass.”

“No passing.”

“Whaa? Guess I’ll sleep while you explain… whoa, why’d you get
your sword out?”

“Mm? Did you not read the rules before entering school? Nodding
off equals death in dango class.”

“What kind of rule is that!? Also, when the hell did I sign up for this
school!?”

“Forget about that… And give it up. You said it yourself, did you not?
‘Whoa, this is good! Please let me enroll in your dango schoo—’”

“I never said thaaaaatttt!!!”

In the end, Ryner cried and listened to the whole lecture on dango
history.

62
It had been fun. Ryner said the same thing she thought was good
was, in fact, good. It was much more enjoyable than just eating
dango by herself. Surprisingly, the dango had tasted better then than
it did the previous time she ate there, too.

“……”

And now, the third time she was here…

Ferris looked down at the dango she wanted to do nothing more

than throw away. She’d have Ryner be her human garbage disposal if
he were here, and yet he wasn’t here in this crucial time.

What a good-for-nothing. Useless. Lazy bones…

“……Being alone… is kind of boring.”

She couldn’t place the emotion she was feeling. She’d already spent
so much time alone. She spend every day since birth into the Eris
family training to be suitably strong. She had always been alone. But
she never thought it was tough. It was just normal to her. So she’d
never once thought that being alone was boring before.

And if he’d never been here at all…

“……”

She recalled something that guy had said to Ryner.

“Let’s go. Our friends are waiting.”

The hand that held her dango shook.

Friends? Friends?

Stupid. What was he, crazy?

Why did he look at her with that expression?

63
At her… at his…

“…We’re friends, aren’t we?” She whispered weakly.

She put her half-eaten dango back on the plate. This was the first
time she was ever leaving dango uneaten. But she really didn’t have
an appetite right now. She really didn’t feel well.

Perhaps the dango was so awful that it caused her health to

deteriorate.

Just how old was the flour they used to make it…?

It was hard to breathe and her stomach hurt.

She shook her arms and dug some coins out of her pocket. “I’ll just
leave the money for it here…”

With that, she stood and continued on her way.

The owner ran out to call to her, flustered. “M-ma’am! You’ve left
your backpacks here! Six of them!”

Ferris turned back to face her. “I won’t be taking them. I might be

travelling for a long while now. Do you think you could take them off
my hands?”

“W-won’t you need luggage on a long trip…? Being asked to take

care of all this is trouble for me, too…”

Ferris ignored her and continued to walk. But then she turned back
one more time. “Uu…”

She hurried back to the backpacks to grab two skewers of dango.

“A, alright.”

She set out one more time, determined not to look back anymore.
She could never catch up to Ryner with all that baggage.

64
“That damned Ryner. He’ll pay dearly when I find him.”

And so she left Roland.

65
Chapter 3: The Northern Key, The
Southern Gate

---

For some reason, time was passing awful slowly.

It was a quiet village out in the countryside. Everyone here was kind.
They were always smiling. Warmth seemed to radiate from them. It
was the kind of place where one could end up forgetting all about
their hatred, anger, and other dirty emotions. They just felt stupid to
have here…

It was Grensled Village. In the Gastark Empire. It was kind of an odd

name. She wasn’t really sure what it meant.

Kiefer Knolles was currently looking at herself in a mirror in said

village.

“…Uwah, I’ve been tricked,” she groaned.

She had straightforward red eyes and hair. She had a thin body, but a
little bit of weight to her limb, and right now she was wearing the
fanciest dress in all of Gastark.

She scowled at her reflection. “Th-that bastard Riphal… he said he

had something he needed me to do so he needed me to change into
Gastark’s military uniform and gave me this, but isn’t it just a normal
dress…?”

The older lady who helped her change spoke. “Aww, Kiefer, stylish
clothes look so good on you! You get a big thumbs up from me!”

“Ah, n, no, I…”

66
“It’ll be alright, don’t worry about a thing! You’ll have that Edea boy
smitten!”

“No, I… augh.” Kiefer sighed.

By the way, ‘that Edea boy’ was referring to the man who’d
conquered the whole Northern Continent, king of the Gastark
Empire, Riphal Edea… Nobody called him the king in this town. They
called him the Edea brat, the Edea lad, or the Edea youngster…
Apparently that was just how things were here.

“What the hell,” Kiefer muttered to herself, scrunching up her face.

The old lady seemed to misunderstand that, too. “Really, you don’t
need to look so worried. I’m sure you’ll shock that Riphal guy with
your beauty!”

“I don’t actually care what King Edea thi—”

The old lady ignored her and set to double checking her outfit. “Got
the ribbon. Got the sash, too. You have nice skin so your make up’s
perfect like this. Alright, my job here’s done. Have fun, won’t you?”
She said as she gave Kiefer’s back a firm pat. Firm enough that Kiefer
let out a strangled noise.

Kiefer looked back to the lady to see what the hit was for, but when
she did, the old lady’s eyes were glistening with tears. “Huh? Wh-
what?”

The old lady wiped her tears. She looked happy. “I’m so glad you’ve
come… I can finally relax.”

“…Whaat?” Kiefer said. It came out pretty dumb, but she really had
no idea what was going on. She shouldn’t have anything to do with
this lady.

67
“See, that dumbass kid’s gone and become king, and do you know
what he says? He says it’s for our village… for the world… He’s always
dreaming big and doing his very best, and I’ve gotten to be so
worried about him. But…”

She turned her teary eyes to Kiefer and continued.

“I’m sure he’ll stop getting into so much trouble now that he’s got a
cute girl like you to be his wife, Kiefer…”

“Wh-what are you talking about!?” Kiefer yelled.

The old lady’s eyes widened. “Huh? Aren’t you two getting married?”

“Huh? Wha? Since when?”

“Well… Yesterday Riphal said that he was going to marry you today,
so I needed to get you in the prettiest dress possible…”

“That fuckeeeeerrrrrrr!!” Kiefer yelled. She picked her dress off from
the ground and made a run for it, out of the civilian house she was
currently in. Once she was outside, she glared up at the castle next
door where the king lived.

“……”

Okay, ‘castle’ was a major stretch.

It was a bigger house than the other ones. By a little. That was it. It
was a big, wooden house. Even the townspeople just called the place
‘the Edea house.’ Only Riphal called it the castle…

Kiefer stomped on over, then pushed the door open without

knocking. Doing so put her in a pretty big room with a massive table.
There was a raised platform on the other side of the table for the
throne. Though Riphal was, again, the only one who called it that. It

68
was literally just a cheap looking chair made from a wooden desk he
bought and then repurposed.

A man was sitting in it backwards. He had the same peculiar brown…

no, pink hair as everyone here, loosely curling down his back. His left
eye was gone, so he kept it closed. It made him look nice and calm,
but the other eye… seemed to suck Kiefer in the moment it focused
on her. And not just her. Anyone would feel the same. His eyes
shone with childish innocence, the belief that he could do anything…
and the strong ambition to truly accomplish whatever he set out to
do.

Riphal Edea, the dictator of the north.

He was Gastark’s young king. He was looking around at his retainers

sitting around the table with a sharp gaze. “Alright, let’s end this
discussion. There’s another, more important conversation that we
should be having right now - a conversation about Gastark’s biggest
issue.”

The man sitting closest to Riphal nodded. “Yes. Yes, you’re right!” He
said, his voice strained.

Kiefer shrunk back. This was actually her first time seeing so many
people here at the round table. Honestly, in the few days she’d been
stuck here with him, he’d done nothing but wander around and
loiter like free time was all he had. When Kiefer went to the library to
research the Cursed Eyes, he’d get in her way.

“How about I tell you about them?” He’d offer. Then a few hours
would pass and he’d end with, “So, as you can see, I’m actually a
really earnest guy. Did you know that?”

“I don’t care about that!” Kiefer would yell back. “Don’t you talk
about anything but your own ‘good’ qualities!?”

69
“Huh? Well, I thought you wanted to know about them.”

Then he’d go back to the Edea house in a good mood. That was the
kind of life he led. To be frank, Kiefer had never seen him work like a
king before. But now, for the first time, he looked very king-like.

The man next to Riphal sounded upset with him. “Just what are you
doing with all of this, King Edea!”

It was rare to hear someone address Riphal so politely here. This

subordinate in particular looked like he had his head on right, too. He
seemed like a smart, rational guy. He was about the same age as
Riphal - twenty-two or twenty-three years old. He had the same
characteristically pink hair as everyone in Gastark and sharp,
intelligent blue eyes. He wasn’t really wearing Gastark’s military
uniform - it was a bit different, formal and blue. Kiefer didn’t know
what his uniform was exactly, but judging by his position right next
to the king, it was likely one that signified a high ranking.

The man to his other side was dressed formally. He had a noble air
about him - a member of Gastark’s nobility, perhaps…? He was a bit
different from nobles in Roland, though. Decidedly less refined.

Aside from Riphal and his closest retainer, those at the table got
younger the closer they were to Kiefer’s side. Everyone appeared
tense, like they were seriously ready to get some work done.

It wasn’t the kind of atmosphere that Kiefer could rush in to yell ‘the
hell do you mean you want to marry me!?’ so she stood soundlessly,
then took a step back to leave.

But then the man in the blue uniform spoke.

“Your Majesty, who is that woman you’ve taken in!?”

Kiefer froze. Th-the biggest problem… was her? W, well, yeah, that
was certainly a problem. She was someone with an unknown

70
background from another country. The first thing anyone would
think was that she was an assassin or a spy. There was no way she
could pass as some tourist. There was no way that Riphal would take
a liking to her just like that and have her join up with them.

She looked to Riphal. She couldn’t understand why he’d reached out
to her in the first place, why he’d outstretched his hand and asked
her to come along with him.

He would have killed her if she hadn’t taken his hand - she’d already
seen proof of it. He’d kill her if she betrayed him, too. That was
where they stood now. That was the deal she’d agreed to so she
could read the books in Grensled Village’s library to her heart’s
content, something that was worth the risk to her. They had
information here that no other country had, fairy tales and
mythology that had a deeply realistic feel to it. There were accounts
of Cursed Eyes, too.

She’d heard that it was a unique place. One that had a deep heritage,
inheriting countless relics and stories from the olden days, though
she didn’t know the details yet… But she’d heard about the black
sword that Riphal used to fight Stohl. Its name was Glowvelle, and at
the cost of a piece of the user’s own body, it could obliterate as
many as one hundred thousand soldiers with ease…

Its destructive power wasn’t the problem. What Kiefer was curious
about was the voice she’d heard back when she saw it used. No,
maybe ‘heard’ wasn’t accurate. It was more like a voice had
descended upon her, like it was making direct contact with her mind.

It was just like what had happened when Ryner went berserk. A voice
rang out, descended. It froze her with its solumness, its
overwhelming power.

Thein lie what Kiefer was always, always searching for.

71
“I shall answer you. I shall answer you. Now, offer your sacrifice.
Doing so will release my power.”

Then the sword devoured Riphal’s eye and massacred Stohl’s army.

“……”

It was a strange power. It was Gastark’s secret. They killed all who
knew about it to avoid letting it get out, because it was something
the rest of the world could never know about. Holy swords, Cursed
Eyes, contracts, heroes. And… gods. Riphal said that those were
clues, and the library might hold them.

She needed leads on the Alpha Stigma. Clues that might help her
save Ryner…

That’s why Kiefer took Riphal’s hand. She did it with the full intention
to betray him. She’d get what she needed, learn what she needed,
then return to Roland. That’s what she thought, but…

“…Looks like I won’t be able to return so easily after all…”

Hindsight was twenty-twenty…

The man in blue was glaring at the king with unabashed disapproval.
It was an awfully strong expression for someone who was just trying
to childe his king about a woman. It was more like he’d already
looked into Kiefer and was now aiming to dispose of her…

Kiefer shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself. The blue
guy had just asked who she was. They didn’t know who she was yet,
but this guy’s tone suggested that he was willing to torture her to
find out.

She couldn’t stay here…

“……”

72
Kiefer looked down at herself and scowled. She was wearing a long,
flowing dress that’d hinder her movements as well as tall heels.
Escaping like this would be impossible. Even just getting away from
here quietly would be difficult due to the click of her heels…

The man in blue suddenly pointed towards her. “What do you see in
that woman who’s been stooped over there suspiciously for a while
now?

So he did notice her!!

Kiefer cursed internally.

Everyone at the table turned to look at her.

“Owah, Kiefer, you’re here!” Riphal said. He sounded happy despite

the situation.

Kiefer stood up straight, powering through the discomfort of it all.

“N-no, um, I didn’t want to interrupt your conference—”

“Whoa, you look stunning!” Riphal interrupted. “Just like I was

picturing. I knew the dress would look great with your red hair, and
damn if it doesn’t. Look, everyone, that’s Kiefer. Total babe, right?
This isn’t even an issue once you see her. See? See? Get a good
eyeful.”

Everyone stared…

“She’s pretty, but that’s about it…”

“How’s her lineage?”

“Huh? Uh, what?” Kiefer said.

Riphal grinned. “They’re asking because of our marriage—”

“Seriously, where’d that come from—”

73
She was interrupted again. Apparently people from Gastark took
pride in their ability to interrupt others. This time it was the man in
blue, who shouted, “I absolutely refuse to acknowledge her!”

“Now, now, have a good look at her before shouting that you object,
Riz,” Riphal said. “She’s a real beauty, right? I’m marrying a beauty.
Isn’t that every man’s dream? Is there really something wrong with—
”

The man in blue - Riz, apparently, interrupted again. “Beauties are a

dime a dozen in these parts. You’re this country’s king! It’s all-you-
can eat beauties as far as the eye can see!”

“Yeah, but I already told you. That’s boring so I don’t wanna. I need
something a little more stimulating, you know? I long for an exciting
romanc—”

“You’d aim for a woman of unknown origins who might be a spy or

an assassin for that!?”

Riphal grinned. “It’s exciting, am I right?”

“I won’t let you get away with that as an excuse! You never looked at
any of the beauties I chose for you, and now this!”

Riphal grimaced. “You only picked out women who already have the
hots for you!”

“Because you said you wanted something more stimulating! I

thought you’d enjoy stealing women from me! I thought maybe
you’d enjoy the thought of a wife if you could just steal her from
another man—”

“You fucking moron!! I don’t need your leftovers!!!”

“M-moron!? You, our ‘stupid Edea brat,’ dare to call me, Gastark’s
greatest protegy, Rigwaltz Pintest a moron!? I’ve reached the end of

74
my rope with you. I will now reveal the contents of your very first
love letter, written when you were twelve years old, from memory—
”

“Y, you little… How come you’re always trying to pick fights with
me!!”

“Hehehehh. Very well. I will now begin. ‘Oh, my beloved—’”

“I-I’m gonna end youuuuu!!” Riphal yelled, leaping up.

“Ha! Then kill me,” Riz said. “Reach over and kill me instantly. The
moment you do, traps I’ve set all over Gastark will activate, releasing
millions of copies of your love letters into the air. You know that,
right?”

“…Ugh, ghh…”

Riphal was on the verge of tears…

It was the kind of fight children would have. Everyone else at the
table was standing, too, goading them into it…

In the end, it was the same as everything here. This country was
always, always like this. The retainers didn’t see their king as a king
and the king didn’t act like a king.

“……”

Was someone like Riphal really the dictator of the north?

Riz turned around, his expression triumphant. “Once again - for the
421st time… no, 422nd time now, in fact - our king has forgotten the
power I hold over him. How pitiful! My name is Rigwaltz, but if you
don’t have the braincells for it, you may call me Riz just as he does.
And knowing his short memory… he will soon forget your face, too,

75
my lady. If you think becoming his plaything is sad, then I offer you a
trade—”

Riphal interrupted him from behind. “Seriously, don’t go deciding

that stuff on your o—”

Now it was Riz’s turn to interrupt again. “I have to work hard since
our king can’t quite figure out how to use his own head—”

Then Riphal interrupted again… and it devolved into another petty

fight. Kiefer didn’t bother to listen to it. This whole meeting was
weird. She sighed loudly. “Could you guys please give me a second!”
She yelled over them.

The fighting stopped. Everyone looked at her.

“So I never agreed to marry Riph… I mean, King Edea—”

Just then, another interruption came, this time from outside of the
room. It was a girl, her voice raised. “Riphal!!”

Kiefer put her head in her hands. People in this country seriously
didn’t give a shit about letting someone finish…

“Riphal, help!!” The girl yelled again. No, screamed. Like she was in
pain, on the verge of tears. Like she was full of despair.

Kiefer turned to look back towards the door. Riphal jumped out past
her, rushing outside. Kiefer followed.

There was a man collapsed in the clearing, a girl holding onto him
and wailing. She looked about thirteen, and was wearing a black
dress with good maneuverability, but it was covered in dirt and mud.
Her hair was all messed up, too, and even her gracefully pretty face
was streaked with mud…

“Riphal! Riphal!! M, my brother!!”

76
Kiefer looked at the man collapsed under the girl.

“…This is horrible,” she said. She had the urge to look away. His skin
was open from his shoulder to his heart, like a beast had ripped into
his flesh… and the wound itself was surrounded with ice, somehow.

“Kuu! How long have you been icing his wounds!?”

Kuu shook her head. “I, I dunno. I just—”

The dying man opened his mouth to speak. “R-Riphal. I’m okay… m,
more importantly, get Kuu some rest… she’s been using her s, scythe
the whole time… until we got here…”

“Are you conscious, Sui!? That means you’ve been taking care of
your wounds, right? Then…”

Riz came out by Kiefer. He inhaled sharply at the sight of the man
called Sui. Three men with black hoods appeared to stand by him.
“Prepare for the ceremony,” Riz said. “We’ll use the Sacred Hollow.”

“Yes, sir!” The men said, then dispersed.

Riz looked down at Sui. “Just who—”

“Who cares about that now!” Riphal yelled. “Don’t talk, Sui. We’re
definitely going to save you, so I need you to focus on preserving
your warmth.”

“N, no… I can… talk,” Sui said. “This might be my… last chance to…”

“No, you idiot! Don’t even start. I’ll definitely save you! Shit, aren’t
they ready yet!?” Riphal yelled, frantic. The sight even brought Kiefer
to the verge of tears.

Because it was clear. They were just too late. Sui was fatally
wounded. And yet Riphal kept yelling.

77
Sui smiled gently. “You never change, Riphal… You’re so loud…”

“I told you not to talk! We’ll get you the Sacred Hollow soon, and…”

Sui shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something, but
all he ended up doing was sighing. Then he looked up at Riz.
“Rigwaltz… I don’t have the strength… to chit-chat. Persuade the
king… for me…”

Riz was quiet for a moment, deep in thought. And then, “Your
Majesty. Your decision.” His tone was sharp, far removed from the
frivolous tone he’d been joking around with just a few minutes ago.
He even said Your Majesty.

And the king…

“……”

Riphal grimaced. It was the expression of someone who was bearing

a terrible burden - the true face of a king. Kiefer had seen him use it
before, back when he swung his sword and ended many, many
Stohlian lives at once to protect the secret of his country, to move
forward on a road paved with sacrifices.

He had to decide now. What was most important now? What was
the most correct course of action?

Riphal narrowed his eyes, then looked to Riz. “Kuu.”

That was all he needed to say to Riz. He moved a hand to Kuu, who
was still clinging to Sui, and swung it against a pressure point in her
neck.

“Ah…”

78
That’s the only sound she made as she lost consciousness. Riz picked
her up gently. “You’ve worked hard. Have a good rest, now,” he
whispered.

Riphal watched them, then looked back to Sui. Calm had washed
over his face. He looked at ease.

“Th, thanks,” Sui forced out. “I guess I won’t see her again before I
die…”

“…We don’t know if you’ll die yet. The Sacred Hollow should be
ready soon. You might make it if we get you in there as soon as
possible.” Riphal’s face warped with sadness. “But… the odds aren’t
with us. It’s more likely that you’ll die…”

Sui smiled. “I’m in a bit of trouble, aren’t I…?”

The hooded men appeared again. “The preparations for the Sacred
Hollow are complete.”

The Sacred Hollow…

Kiefer hadn’t a clue what that was. But it sounded like fatal wounds
at this level might even be cured there.

“It’s ready, but we can’t bring you there now,” Riphal said. “Because
you might just die anyway…”

That was his decision. His decision as king.

He hadn’t wavered. He made his decision as soon as Riz asked for it.

A kind who didn’t hesitate… and people who believed in him. Sui and
Riz accepted his words as if they were the most natural thing in the
world.

“…I’m glad you said so, Your Majesty… I’m not confident that I’d live
either…”

79
Sui smiled.

Unbelievable, Kiefer thought. So the king’s subordinates could throw

away their lives for him this calmly. He wasn’t ordered to. No
hostages were taken to force him to. He simply threw his life away
like it was the natural thing to do.

That was this country’s true power. The fact that the people would
throw their lives away with ease for the king’s sake. The fact that the
king would offer himself up as sacrifice to move forward. They didn’t
stop, either. After the north, they moved towards the center of the
continent. Someday they’d even reach Roland…

“The monster of a Cursed Eye we’ve been looking for,” Sui said. “It’s
in the Southern Continent…”

“……”

The Southern… Continent?

The monster of a Cursed Eye they were looking for?

Wh-what?

They c, couldn’t mean Ryner…

“Then that monster is the one who did this to you?” Riphal asked.

“N-no… It wasn’t Tiir Rumibul. Riphal… you know it just as well as I

do… right? We can’t beat him…”

“…Tiir Rumibul?” Kiefer repeated, quietly, so no one would hear. Tiir

Rumibul? Never heard of it. Sounded like the name of a Cursed Eye
bearer they were after, though.

“But… he’s dangerous,” Sui continued. “Somehow… he’s finding the

Cursed Eyes everywhere, and… gathering them up…”

80
“Ah, shit,” Riphal said. “We can’t stand up to them if they’re
together. What scale are we talking?”

“I don’t know… but I heard there were some in Nelpha… from my

brother.”

“…Lir. He was supposed to be in Roland, though…”

Kiefer nearly gasped.

“…It’s probably fine if we leave the Iino Doue to Lir. But if it wasn’t
them, then who did this to you…?”

“An assassin from another country… who used a Rule Fragment like
Lir’s lightning beast ring…”

Riphal’s expression changed to one of despair. “Which country?

Nelpha? Runa?”

“…It seems like… more than one country, now…”

Riphal’s grimace deepened. “I knew it. The south’s… where that gate
is located.”

“…I don’t know… but, one most likely is…”

The conversation became incomprehensible. Kiefer didn’t have the

context to follow, and came out of it without understanding much of
anything. Rule Fragments, lightning beast ring, gates… she didn’t
understand a lick of it. But she still understood that something was
happening in the south. Something big.

“And… in Roland, a monster called Ryner Lute is using a certain

power…”

Kiefer’s mind went blank.

81
D-did he just say… Ryner Lute? Why would Ryner’s name end up in
this guy’s mouth?

“…Ryner Lute?” Riphal repeated. “What’s that?”

What were these people saying? Kiefer couldn’t comprehend it. It

was too sudden. What’s Ryner? Kiefer had come here to figure that
out. So why…? What was he? Was there a way to save him? She’d
left the south and come here to the far north to find answers… but to
think that she’d hear his name all the way up here.

Kiefer shivered.

What if the answer she’d been searching for all this time really was
here…?

“He isn’t your average Alpha Stigma bearer… he might not look like
it, but we’ve seen how much of a monster he is…”

Riphal seemed like he understood it all with just that.

Sui looked relieved to see it. “Ahh… Riphal, you know…”

Riphal nodded.

He knew. The thing that Kiefer most wanted to know.

Riphal really knew that!?

And just as he was about to open his mouth again…

“…Ah.”

Kiefer noticed Riz’s sharp blue gaze on her.

“Your Majesty,” Riz said before Riphal could speak. “This is a

conversation we shouldn’t be having around outsiders.”

This… was bad.

82
It wasn’t just Riz. Riphal and Sui were glaring at her, too.

Since when…?

She soon got her answer. “You turned white as a sheet the second
the Southern Continent came up,” Riz said.

Kiefer felt like she was going to cry. So they’d been watching her for
a reaction since the beginning, even now, when one of their allies
was on his deathbed…

“Then you reacted again at Roland. A third time at Ryner Lute…” Riz
smiled. “This has become quite the interesting affair, hasn’t it?
Somebody get Sui to the Sacred Hollow at once. We can hear the
rest from this here lady…”

She had to act now. Kiefer flung her heels off and ran. She had to
find a way to escape. But… Riz grabbed her by the hair, then pulled
her just close enough to punch her stomach to knock her down.

“Guah!”

Kiefer wasn’t the one to let out a pained yelp. That was Riz, who
Riphal had just punched in the face.

“What’re you doing, you bastard!?”

“I should be the one askin’ you! Don’t go punching the womb of a

woman who might bear my children!!”

“Wh-whaat!? Are you serious!?”

Riphal grinned. The same innocent and childish grin as always. “I

already said so before, didn’t I? I need love to be at least this
stimulating.” Then he glanced over at Kiefer. “I don’t wanna be the
boor who asks a girl about her past, but… I’m in a pinch, here, ‘cause
that’s what I’m going to need to do.” He looked disappointed. “But

83
don’t worry. I don’t care about your past, even if you were a spy or
an assassin sent to kill me, as long as you truly come to my side. Then
you’ll have nothing to worry about…”

He looked at her kindly. But his tone was sharp enough to kill.

“…So?” Riphal asked. “What will you do?”

She had two choices. She could sell Ryner out or die.

“……”

Kiefer sighed, then looked up at the sky. Was this far off northern sky
really connected to the sky that Ryner was under now?

She had regrets.

“…Aww, I’m gonna cry. You’re too far away, Ryner…”

Her choice was…

84
Chapter 4: The Heart That Won’t Drown
in Despair

They were walking an uncharted path.

They left Roland for Nelpha, then continued along the main road
towards the north for a while. Then they veered pretty far off on side
roads and continued to progress to the west. Then they left even
those to push through weeds even taller than they were.

“…Hmgh.” Ryner’s arms were crossed and he was deep in thought.

Tiir was in front of him, pushing the weeds aside for them to walk
through. “What have you been thinking so hard about these past few
days?”

“Mmmmm.”

“What, you’re ignoring me? Er, I mean, look. Ryner, I know that
you’ve had to mull over a lot of shocking truths since we’ve met, like
you not being human and all. But I don’t think it’s a good thing for
you to still be that worried about it.”

Ryner just looked up at the sky. “Hm hm hmm.”

Tiir sighed, then continued timidly. “Um… could you at least help me
get through these weeds? We might make it there a little faster if
you did… I guess we’re almost there, though…”

Ryner finally looked up and met Tiir’s eyes.

Relief washed through Tiir. “Ah, you’re finally going to talk to me—”

Ryner didn’t hear the rest. He was too focused on staring into Tiir’s
eyes. His scarlet crosses. “Elemio…”

85
Tiir scowled. “That again? I don’t know what Elemio is. You’ve said it
again and again, but… ah, is it the name of your lover?”

“Lover?”

Tiir looked like he’d finally been saved from the endless loop they’d
been stuck in. “Finally! A reaction! I’m right then, aren’t I? So that’s
your lover’s name…”

Ryner ignored Tiir again. He just stared back up at the sky. “Elemio…
a lover… Yeah, it does kinda sound like a girly name.”

“Wait, it’s not your lover’s name? Then what… ugh, you’re just going
to look back up at the sk—”

“Tiir.”

“Yes! Yes, let’s tal—”

“I’m kind of busy thinking things over, so can you be quiet for a
while…?”

“What!?” Tiir said, but started to sulk once it set in. “Well, that’s
okay… We’re going to be with the others soon anyway…”

They’d meet the others soon, huh? The other Alpha Stigma bearers…
no, all the other Cursed Eye bearers. But if that was the case, then he
really had to think about this now - the truth that he’d missed until
now, the truth that’d finally fallen into the palm of his hands.

What were his eyes?

Ryner pressed an eyelid up with his fingers.

He was finally getting an idea of what they were.

He thought of the words that voice had spoken when he went

berserk.

86
“You mean to kill me? Kill me with your current power? With items
such as Elemio’s? You are nothing but a worm crawling on the
ground. Ha, hahaha, hahahahaha. Disappear. disappear. DISAPPEAR.
Everything is nothing. Idle. Return to nothing.”

“Elemio…”

“That again…? If it’s not a woman, then I suppose it’s a man. Are you
gay, then?” Tiir asked. He sounded tired of the topic altogether.

But it wasn’t a human’s name. At least, Ryner didn’t think so.

He believed it was part of the name of one of those spies from

Gastark’s weapon’s. Sui’s. He’d called it Elemio’s Comb. He didn’t
know what it did, though, since Ryner’s berserk powers had
destroyed it without him ever getting to use it… It was probably a
Heroic Relic, though.

“You mean to kill me? Kill me with your current power? With items
such as Elemio’s?”

The monster in his Alpha Stigma seemed to know. Not just the name
Elemio, but what it did, too.

It made him think. What if his eyes were a kind of relic too?

“……”

Ryner’s expression clouded over. He crossed his arms.

“…That’d just deepen the mystery…”

“I think you’re the mystery here, Ryner…”

Ryner ignored Tiir’s exhausted voice. He had something far more

important to worry about - that voice.

“With items such as Elemio’s?”

87
What about that part?

The voice had been referring to the comb. Or the power inside the
comb. That or… maybe there was someone inside the comb.
Someone who went by the name Elemio.

“…Is there a minor god in there or something? Man, if that isn’t

straight out of a fairy tale…”

His two possible conclusions were very different - the comb simply
had a strange power, or it held a minor god which gave it its power.

The same went for his eyes.

He might be the monster… or it might be something, someone inside

of him that sometimes woke to kill.

Its voice descended.

“A god. A demon. An evil god. A hero. A monster. What did you guys
call me? What was I called? Hahahah.”

It fell into him.

“In the beginning, there was destruction. We didn’t create, bless, or

save. We just erased until everything was pure white.”

It echoed in his head even though he didn’t want to hear it.

That’s why he’d thought it was his own voice. The voice of a monster
gone mad. But Tiir said he heard it, too. The voice wasn’t just
Ryner’s.

It had echoed through Tiir’s mind while he was still in the womb.

“Kill the original prey. Devour those lowly humans.”

Tiir took it as divine orders.

88
Kill the humans. Kill your precious, beloved people. Destroy
everything.

But…

“Who are you…?”

Who was ordering them?

Tiir whipped around, shocked. “Huh? I’m Tiir Rumibul. I introduced

myself a while ago…”

“No no no, I’m not talking to you,” Ryner said, flustered.

“You’re not…? Then…” Tiir looked around, restless. No one else was
with them. After confirming that, he suddenly thought of another
possibility. “R-Ryner, you aren’t on drugs, are you?”

“I don’t do that stuff. Seriously.”

“Then your hallucinations are—”

“I’m not hallucinating.”

“Ryner, you shouldn’t do this stuff. Drugs are something those

inferior humans do, not us—”

“I just told you that I don’t do drugs!” Ryner yelled.

Tiir still seemed worried. “Well, if you say so. Because if you did,
we’d need to wait for all the drugs to leave your system before
seeing the others.” He turned back to the weeds to push through
some more. “We’re almost there. We’re almost to the others.”

Ryner looked up, over the weeds. They’d been walking through them
without a path for the past two days. Now there was finally a sight of
life through the weeds - a little cabin had come into view. “Mh? All

89
the Cursed… I mean, God’s Eye bearers fit nice and snug in one
cabin?”

Tiir looked deeply moved by happiness. “Finally… finally, you’ve

asked me a normal question…!”

“Just answer me, okay?”

“Of course. I’ll answer anything as long as you have a real

conversation with me. Uh, what was your question again?”

“From here, it kinda looks like all the world’s God’s Eyes bearers live
inside one shabby cabin?”

“Oh, no. This is a temp house.”

“So the real place is somewhere else?”

“Yeah. In the Central Continent…”

So that’s how it was. “So is this your southern branch office or

something?”

“No, we’re not interested in the Southern Continent,” Tiir said.

“We’ll move out in the next few days.”

“Huh, really? Why?” Ryner asked.

“Because my job will have finished. We’ve pretty much gathered up

all the God’s Eye bearers in the south… so now we need to take
everyone and go home.”

“…Hm. So that’s how it works,” Ryner said with a nod.

Tiir smiled sincerely once again. Like he was truly happy that Ryner
was acknowledging him.

“……”

90
But Ryner had mixed feelings about that smile.

“Those inferior humans.”

He felt like a different person now, but he’d spat those words just a
moment ago. What made Tiir feel that they were so different? It
wasn’t that he couldn’t understand why Tiir hated humans, knowing
how they treated Cursed Eye bearers, but…

“…….”

Ryner looked up at the cabin. It was a little wooden thing, completely

isolated from human society. Would all the Cursed Eye bearers here
think the same as Tiir? Would they all believe that they were
superior and humans were inferior? Were they all alright with every
human in the world dying? Did the leaders of this organization
pressure or force the others into thinking that way?

Either way, it sounded like a difficult place to get along with others
in. Ryner scrunched up his nose at the thought.

“We have to stay together. We’re persecuted by the inferior

majority, after all,” Tiir said. “So I’ve kind of been acting as
everyone’s mentor and gathering us all up.”

Ryner narrowed his eyes. “So you’re in charge here?”

“Yeah?” Tiir said with ease, nodding.

“So?”

“Huh? So what?” Tiir said, tilting his head in confusion.

“Don’t ‘so what?’ me. You just lied, right? You’re not really in
charge.”

Tiir’s eyes widened. “Uwah, you noticed? That’s amazing, Ryner.

When did you realize that?”

91
“That doesn’t really matter,” Ryner said, tired. But he ended up
repeating what Tiir said anyway. “…’Because my job will have
finished.’”

“Ah, my bad,” Tiir said. Job… yeah. That’s right, I’m doing this
because someone told me to. I’m not really in charge.”

“Hold up,” Ryner said. “Doesn’t that go against what you said before,
though…? You said, ‘

I’d never lie to my allies,’ or somethin’. And now you’re lying.”

Tiir smiled, calm as could be. “But it wasn’t really a lie. I’m our public
leader.”

Public leader… so Tiir played the part to cover the fact that someone
else was there, then.

Then that meant…

“…You guys have enemies?” There wouldn’t be any reason to go out

of their way to hide this if they didn’t. Of course one could say that
all of humanity was their enemy. But the average person shouldn’t
pose a threat to someone as strong as Tiir. So there had to be
something out there that did threaten them. Enough to hide their
true leader. “Is it Gastark?” Ryner asked.

Tiir’s expression changed instantly. Apparently Ryner hit the bull’s

eye, as Tiir was stuck somewhere between shocked and happy.
“Amazing… I’ve noticed over the past few days that you’re really
pretty impressive, but I didn’t realize you were this capable. I’m sure
our leader will be happy, too, if smart people like you keep joining
us.”

Ryner wanted to hold his head in his hands. Because Tiir’s

organization was fighting Gastark. Honestly, it was really obvious
that that was the case if he just thought about it for a few seconds.

92
Because Gastark had people roaming the continent to hunt Cursed
Eye bearers. Tiir was searching the continent for them, too. They’d
naturally collide before long.

And when they did collide… the Cursed Eyes would probably lose
without much of a fight. Because no matter how much everyone said
Tiir was invincible, that was only against regular humans.

Ryner recalled the weapons Sui and Kuu used. They were Heroic
Relics, though they called them Rule Fragments… One was the Scythe
of Ailuchrono, capable of giving its user super reflexes and freezing
anything it touched. Another was a dagger that, when stabbed into
an arm or other body part, could become a fire-breathing dragon…

“……”

The fire dragon wasn’t one they had to begin with, either. Ryner had
thrown it away because he didn’t know how to use it, and they were
the ones who picked it up…

Gastark’s weapons held power that couldn’t feasibly be recreated

with modern magic.

In comparison, the Cursed Eyes…

Take Ryner. His Alpha Stigma could be used to understand and

replicate magic. Tiir’s Iino Doue operated differently, but it had the
same effect as Ryner’s, in the end - he could devour the opponent’s
magic, then use it against them by increasing his physical abilities.
Both of their powers used their opponent’s magic.

But the Heroic Relics weren’t magic. Their power came from
something else entirely.

Even if Ryner looked at them with his Alpha Stigma, he still wouldn’t
understand how they were made or how they used fire or ice.

93
Basically, Cursed Eyes were really incompatible with the Heroic
Relics.

Tiir might seem invincible against a normal opponent, but his hands
were tied the second he fought an opponent who wouldn’t use
magic.

It was much easier for a Cursed Eye bearer to fight opponents with
relics by using magic normally instead of relying on their eyes.
Although Ryner and Ferris usually chose to run when faced with Sui
and Kuu… it was still possible for Ryner to fight with magic.

Tiir couldn’t do that, though. His eyes were always active, sucking the
spirit from the air. As useful as that ability was, it also meant that he
couldn’t fire that energy in magic. It’d just get sucked back in even if
he tried. So he was completely incapable of using magic. How should
he fight Gastark, then?

“…By the way, have you ever fought anyone from Gastark before?”
Ryner asked.

“……”

Tiir didn’t answer. But that in itself was an answer of sorts.

Ryner was seriously glad he didn’t bring Arua here. Because Gastark
had already painted a big, fat target on this organization. He couldn’t
bring Arua somewhere dangerous like that.

Come to think of it…

“…So this is kind of an anti-Gastark organization, right?” Ryner asked.

But just then, he heard a noise.

“What’s that?” Ryner said and looked towards the sound. The door
to the cabin had opened and a young boy stood in the entrance. He

94
had black hair down to his shoulders and black eyes, and he was still
really little - probably only about four or five years old. He looked
around the weeds intently.

And then he saw Ryner and Tiir. His face instantly filled to the brim
with happiness. “Ah, ah, ah, ahh!! T-Tiir!!” He yelled and burst out in
a run towards them.

Four more children jumped out of the cabin thanks to the

commotion, looked over at them, and then ran towards them with
the same excitement. It wouldn’t be strange if they tripped—

“Gyah!!”

“Ow!”

And there two of them went…

They were fine, though. They stood themselves back up in no time to

continue their sprints over.

The kids jumped up and latched onto Tiir one after another.

“Were you waiting for me?” Tiir asked with a gentle smile as he pet
their little heads.

A little girl who was on the verge of tears answered. “Y-you’re late!”

“Yeah! Even though I was waiting the whole time!” Another one of
the boys said.

Tiir pet their heads one by one as they yelled. “I see. Were you all
good kids while I was gone?”

They all nodded at once.

“I, I was a good kid…”

“I was a better kid!!”

95
“But y-you ate my cake!”

And so on and so on.

Ryner was actually more surprised about Tiir than how loud the kids
were. He felt a kindness radiating off of him - his gaze, his tone,
everything - that Ryner had never felt from him before.

Then Tiir turned that kind expression towards Ryner. “You asked if
I’ve ever fought Gastark before, right?”

“Yeah.”

Tiir kept petting the children’s heads as he spoke. The fact that they
were dear to him was unmistakable. “Of course I have. And I ran
away, as my friends were killed and killed in front of my eyes. Every
now and then I cross paths with them when the only ones with me
are kids like this. And… then there’s nothing I can do. Thirty-eight…
all murdered. Their eyes were harvested… and there was nothing I
could do about it.”

The memory brought pain to Tiir’s face.

“Is that why you hate humans so much?” Ryner asked.

Tiir shook his head. “No… I’ve hated humans since I was born. Iino
Doue and Will Heim enter this world hearing God’s voice and
knowing the truth - that we’re fundamentally incompatible with
humans. But Alpha Stigma, Torch Curse, and Ebra Crypt are different.
You God’s Eyes who can’t hear God’s voice are raised by humans,
scorned by them, and abused by them… and yet you still say that you
love them. You’re the same way, aren’t you? You still love humans.
Am I wrong?”

“You’re right.”

Tiir smiled. “Thank you for being honest.”

96
“Mm? You aren’t gonna try and correct me?”

“There’s no need.”

“Why?” Ryner asked.

“Because you’ll soon give up that naive way of thinking anyway.”

“Will I really?”

Tiir’s smile didn’t falter. “They killed children in front of my eyes so

they could steal their eyes. And they were happy about it… they
cheered about ‘exterminating the monsters.’ They stole seventy-six
eyes. And they laughed.”

Tiir tore his eyes from Ryner to look back at the kids. He resumed
petting their heads. “I can’t let that happen to these kids,” Tiir said. “I
can’t let them hear that ugly laughter. They’ve been through so
much already… They’ve been called monsters, demons, things… By
the time I get to them, some of them won’t raise their heads or
speak anymore. And they all say the same thing once they do - ‘I’m a
monster, but I don’t want to hurt the people I love.’ But…”

Tiir raised his saddened face to look at Ryner. “Who’s really the
monster?” He spat.

“……”

Ryner couldn’t say anything to that. Because he was the same as

them.

They called him a monster. Feared him. Loathed him. Abused him.

He hated it. He didn’t want people to call him a monster. He didn’t

want to hurt others. He didn’t want to kill anyone.

So please… please, no one touch him.

97
“……”

So he averted his eyes. He wouldn’t look at the world. He stayed

neutral, like he had no interest in anything. He acted like nothing had
anything to do with him. He closed himself off inside a shell.

He wouldn’t touch anyone so he couldn’t hurt them.

He’d shake their hands off so he couldn’t hurt them.

And he ran. And ran. And ran.

He ran until his act became the truth.

He didn’t feel anything. He didn’t have anything to do with anyone.

He didn’t care what happened to the world.

He was just tired, day in and day out.

He did nothing. He had no purpose. He just let time pass around him.

“……”

Ryner watched the kids play with Tiir for a moment. Then Tiir caught
his gaze.

“…I want to protect these kids,” Tiir said. “I want to create a world
where they can smile… so I’m really happy when strong people like
you join us.” Tiir smiled. “Welcome, Ryner Lu—”

“Strong? And he’s joining?” One of the boys asked. “Ah, are you
gonna be our friend!?”

“Well?” One of the other boys asked. “What kind of eyes do you
have? Do you have the Alpha Stigma like we d—”

“Who cares about that!” A girl interrupted. “Tell us your specialty

instead!”

98
Ryner was overwhelmed by their rapid-fire questions. “Uh, um, my
specialty? Uh… can you give me an example?”

The girl scowled, annoyed. “Geez. I’m talking about stuff like tag and
hide-and-seek and that kind of stuff!”

“O-oh, that kind of specialty…”

“By the way, um, Tiir’s specialty is playing house!”

“Y-you’re kidding, right!?” Ryner asked, shocked to the core. But Tiir
just laughed at his questioning look.

“So what’s your specialty?” A kid asked again. “Answer meee.”

Ryner took a minute to think. A long minute. “N, napping,” was the
answer he finally settled on.

The kids exchanged a look. And then, “You’re useless to usss!!!” They
yelled in unison.

“But even if you yell at me…”

“Napping, huh? I like that,” someone said from behind the kids. “I
like napping too.”

Ryner turned to look. It was a boy… no, teenager - about fifteen or

sixteen years old - with the same black hair and eyes that Ryner had
been seeing a lot lately.

“Lafra,” Tiir said. “You were right. I found Ryner in the inn in Estabul
that you said he’d be in.”

“The inn in Estabul?” Ryner repeated. He scowled. That was where

he’d met Tiir, who killed the inn’s owners… and who he betrayed
Sion and Ferris for. “What do you mean, just like he said? How did
you know I was there? Was it an eye power?”

99
Lafra smiled, then closed his eyes. He soon reopened them. When he
did, there were two scarlet dots on top of each other in each eye. It
was a different sort of symbol than the Alpha Stigma’s pentagram
and Iino Doue’s cross.

“Well, you definitely don’t have the Alpha Stigma,” Ryner said.

“Yes. That’s right. My eyes are the Ebra Crypt. I can alter people’s
dreams.”

“Alter dreams…? So you can change people’s dreams up?”

“Yes,” Lafra said and nodded.

Ryner tilted his head. “You mean the dreams people have when
they’re sleeping, right?”

“Yes, those dreams.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Hm… but that’s, like… what can you even do with that?” Ryner
asked.

Lafra looked up at the sky as he seemed to recall something. And

then he spoke. “What kind of impossible dreams do you ugly
monsters have?”

“…Wha…”

That was… what Lucile had said to him…

“H, how do you know that?” Ryner asked.

“…Sorry. About your dreams…”

“You’ve been peeking!?” Ryner yelled.

100
“…Y, yes,” Lafra said, a little flustered. “To be precise, I fiddled with
your dream in my mind… b-but please don’t worry. I can hardly tell
what dreams are about from so far away. I really only know bits and
pieces.”

“……”

Ryner was fed up with this guy just by looking at his expression. He
had a weak sort of look on his face that screamed that he was easy
to hurt. It was the exact kind of expression that Ryner used to make.
So Ryner didn’t have to guess what Lafra had been through. Because
it was already written all over his face.

Lafra had the ability to see into people’s dreams. Into their desires.
He could see everything that people wanted to keep secret. And he
didn’t want that power. He thought it was gross.

Don’t come near. Don’t come near, monster. He must’ve heard that
lots.

Everyone here was like that.

“…Well, whatever,” Ryner mumbled. He lowered his gaze to the

children. They were running around excitedly and playing with Tiir
even while Ryner talked to Lafra. Apparently they were all Alpha
Stigma bearers.

Everyone here was a Cursed Eyes bearer.

And the looks on their faces, the look on Lafra’s face, probably ever
the look on Ryner’s face… they were all the same.

“……”

They were right. Everyone here was on the same side. Even if their
eyes were a little different, they’d all thought the same things
before. They wanted to be close to people because they loved them,

101
but they also wanted to stay away from people. Because they loved
them.

“…You’re just as kind as I knew you’d be, Ryner,” Lafra said.

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryner asked and scrunched

up his nose.

Lafra smiled. “When I said that I can alter your dreams, your first
reaction was that you didn’t like that. That it made you mad. But you
soon thought of my side of things and sympathized with me instead.
You’re very kind…”

Listening to that was honestly kind of irritating. “I’m really not.”

“You are.”

“Why do you even—”

“You may have already realized it,” Lafra interrupted. “But Ebra Crypt
bearers such as myself are searching for the God’s Eyes bearers
scattered across the world.”

Ryner had no idea what that had to do with if he was kind or not…
but at the same time, he was relieved from the change in
conversation. He doubted that there was anyone who was
comfortable with being called kind right to their face. It was
embarrassing!

And…

“……”

If he were actually kind, he would’ve killed himself before he ever

hurt anyone else. But he didn’t. Because he was someone who killed
those he held special, but wouldn’t die.

102
Ryner forced himself to stop thinking about that and go back to what
Lafra was talking about.

“So you’re finding us Cursed Eyes bearers through our dreams, right?
But can you really find us just like that?”

Lafra smiled bitterly. “No, not exactly. Dozens of Ebra Crypt bearers
search the dreams of different people day after day. Then once we
find information on a God’s Eyes bearer, we focus on the dreams of
that region and look through them all… over and over again. But it’s
very difficult when they’re far away. Because we only see scattered
fragments then.”

“I see,” Ryner said with a nod. Basically, Lafra looked through his
dreams until he found out that Ryner was in that inn in Estabul… no,
he probably got that Ryner was leaving Roland and heading for
Estabul, where he’d stay in an inn and was able to figure out his path
from there. Then Tiir came to find him in person.

“……”

But something was off, then.

Lafra said that he and the other Ebra Crypt bearers looked through
dreams until they found out about a Cursed Eyes bearer, then took a
closer look at everyone’s dreams to figure out where they were. So
why didn’t they know about Arua, then? It wouldn’t have been
strange if they’d come to get him at about the same time Ryner did.

Although… if the fragments they saw from afar were truly

nonsensically vague, then it was possible that they caught Ryner
from time to time but totally missed Arua.

In the first place, dreams depicted people’s minds. They weren’t

reality. So they probably couldn’t get much concrete info from
them… So…

103
“Hey, you… how long were you listening in on my dreams, anyway?”

Lafra just smiled. “Ryner, you sure are kind.”

“That again? Conversations are supposed to be sequential. You’re

going out of order here.”

“No, I’m going in perfect sequence. You’re very kind…”

“Stop calling me that already!” Ryner said. “I get embarrassed just

hearing it!”

Lafra laughed. The sound caught Tiir’s attention, so he turned to

them. “Lafra, don’t bully Ryner too much!” Tiir said, but he was
laughing too.

“But I was so touched by Ryner’s kindness. I wanted to convey that

to him no matter what… Ah, maybe if I whisper it to him so no one
else hears, he won’t be embarrassed anymore…”

“That’s even more embarrassing!” Ryner said. “Ugh, you’re so

troublesome!”

Lafra smiled innocently as he came closer. Oh, he was serious.

Tiir smiled. “I’m glad you guys are getting along so well already.
Anyway, the kids and I are going to head in now. I need to start
dinner, after all. Why don’t the two of you stay out here a little
longer and deepen your b—”

“No way in hell!” Ryner yelled.

“Come on, there’s no need to be like that,” Lafra said, that same
smile still on his face. He gripped Ryner’s shirt, tugging at him…

“H-hey, don’t be weird…”

“So, you’re very kind when people die—”

104
“Please, just stop!” Ryner said.

Lafra just smiled. Looked over to make sure that Tiir had gone back
inside. And continued. “So, shall we talk now?”

“I told you, I don’t wanna—”

“About the reason I didn’t call Arua here…”

Ah. “Y-you,” Ryner started, but that was all he could find to say. So
he settled for glaring at the adolescent clinging to his sleeve. So he
did know about Arua. He knew that Arua existed from watching
Ryner’s dreams.

But he didn’t call him here.

“……”

Ryner looked back at the cabin. The door was shut, and he could
hardly hear the kids through it anymore, even though he knew they
were in there being loudmouths.

Lafra had said that he was speaking sequentially. Ryner was starting
to understand what that meant now. He looked back to Lafra.

“…You wanted to keep this secret from Tiir,” he said.

Lafra smiled. “Keep secret the fact that I became your biggest fan
after seeing how kind you were through your dreams?”

Ryner felt a headache coming on. He pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Ugh, shit. I really hate that, but you’re just going in sequence,
right?”

“Hehe, that’s right,” Lafra said. He looked happy.

Ryner sighed. “Can we at least keep the part where you praise me
short?”

105
“Huh!? But that’s the main point!”

“Then let’s cut the main story out and make this conversation about
the spin-off.”

“Aww,” Lafra whined. He crossed his arms and was quiet for a
moment as he thought something over. “The truth is, I found you a
while ago. But I didn’t tell the others.”

“…Oh? Why not?”

“Because you’re special. You’re the first of your type that I’ve ever
seen. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty talented even among the
Ebra Crypt bearers… I’ve found lots of God’s Eyes. You are an Alpha
Stigma bearer, of course… but you’re still different. So I’ve become
interested in you.”

“What do you mean by different?” Ryner asked.

Lafra grinned. “You’re really kind.”

Ryner scowled. “Seriously, you can drop that.”

“But it’s important,” Lafra said seriously. “You’re kind… and I know
you’re going to hate this, but I’ve always been watching your
dreams. You’ve been far away so I haven’t seen more than
fragments, and I know that fragments alone can only convey a
fragment of it all. But… even so, they’ve conveyed your feelings. To
the point where it makes me want to cry.

“Anger, sadness, hatred, despair… your abuse, the fact that people
are scared of you, your loneliness that only ever got worse,” Lafra
continued. “You’re afraid of hurting others. Afraid of being hurt.
You’d rather die, if you could. You’d rather go mad, if you could. I felt
your feelings like they were mine.”

“…And what’s so kind about that?”

106
Lafra smiled kindly as he gazed at Ryner. “Even after everything, your
heart is screaming that it loves people down to its core. That’s the
feeling that dominates you most of all.”

“……”

“You’re always thinking most about how you want to protect the
people who are important to you. That you’re sick of being so
isolated. That you love people. That you love everyone. That you
might be a monster, but… you still want to be closer to the people
you love. You still want them in your life…”

“You can’t seriously think I’m that charming,” Ryner spat.

Lafra just smiled. “I do. You’re very charming. Because you’re as kind
as you are sad.”

“…Seriously, I’m getting real sick of—”

“You’ve been screaming, weak and lonely as you are. ‘I hate being
alone. I hate it. I’m lonely. Someone save me. Please, save me—’”

“Cut it out!”

Lafra stopped. But he was still smiling sweetly. Smiling like he was
enjoying this.

“……”

What could Ryner say to that smile? Lafra just kept smiling and
smiling, like he could see right through him. He wanted to avert his
eyes. Because that smile knew him.

The truth was that Lafra was sad. He wanted to cry. But he smiled.
Because the only thing he could do was smile and hope that things
would be better…

107
“Hey, you… you don’t have to talk when you’re on the verge of tears
like that,” Ryner said.

“Ahaha.” That laughter was sad, too. He was smiling, but his voice
was so close to tears… “You’re a lonely person.”

Ryner scrunched his nose up. “I wonder who you’re really talking
about. ‘You hate being alone. You want to protect those who are
important to you. You love humans.’ You’re really talking about
yourself, aren’t you?”

Lafra nodded, admitting to it easily. “Both you and I. That’s why I

called you here. To save someone important to me.”

“Who?” Ryner asked.

Lafra looked over at the cabin. “Tiir.”

Ryner looked back at the cabin, too. When he did, the door opened
and a girl a year or two younger than Lafra popped her head out.
“Lafra, Tiir says dinner’s ready!” She yelled.

Lafra smiled and waved to her. “I want to save her, too. And the kids
inside. All of our friends in the Central Continent. You too, Ryner…”

Lafra turned back to Ryner. He looked at him with his cursed eyes.
The scarlet brand that made everyone fear, loathe, and abuse him
was plainly visible in his black eyes.

“We Cursed Eye bearers who have fallen into despair at the hands of
humans, who live our lives in sadness… we all want you to save us,”
Lafra said with the same sad smile as always.

---

108
It was awfully quiet. Maybe it was because it was so isolated from
civilization. All he could hear was the wind against the cabin and the
wind against the tall grass outside. That and the kids’ light snores.

“……”

It was the dead of night. Everyone else was asleep. Tiir, Lafra, and all
of the kids. Ryner got up as quietly as he could to avoid waking any
of them.

He left the cabin to step into a wide open night free of artificial
lights. But it wasn’t pitch black. There weren’t many clouds out, and
the moon and stars were shining down on him. So it was actually
pretty bright, all things considered. He looked up at the sky.

“…Maybe I just can’t sleep ‘cause I changed pillows?”

He knew that probably wasn’t true, though. Because he was always

the kind of person who was asleep the second he snuggled up in bed.
Today was different, though. He couldn’t sleep at all. Because when
he closed his eyes, Lafra’s words repeated again and again in his
mind…

“We Cursed Eye bearers who have fallen into despair at the hands of
humans, who live our lives in sadness… we all want you to save us.”

He thought of that again and again.

“Damn you, Lafra. You’ve got some nerve…”

Ryner looked back at the shabby cabin. There had been four more
Alpha Stigma bearers inside. Girls, boys, even people around Ryner’s
age. They all ate dinner like a big family of eleven sitting around the
same table eating food that Tiir made for them. It was pretty tasty…
and everyone was smiling as they ate. And they all welcomed Ryner
with their smiles, too. They included him. They all laughed at
everyone’s jokes.

109
It was a worry-free sight. Nothing was wrong with it. It was the kind
of place that it was okay to call home.

And yet…

“We Cursed Eye bearers who have fallen into despair at the hands of
humans, who live our lives in sadness… we all want you to save us.”

Lafra’s words ran through his mind once again.

“…You want me to save the Cursed Eyes?”

He’d never thought of doing that. Instead, he’d spent his time
thinking that monsters like himself who hurt people shouldn’t be
saved. Because he hated it when people were hurt. So he didn’t think
there was any worth in him being saved…

“……”

Ryner thought of the kids. They’d been so, so lively during dinner.
Endless little balls of energy.

Lafra would joke around, and the girl who’d told them dinner was
ready would watch him with her full attention… a fact that the kids
soon commented on.

“Come on, Pueka, you’re staring at Lafra again…”

“A-a-am not!”

“Gyaah!! Pueka punched Lafra!”

It was normal. Happy. Even though everyone there was cursed…

“…I guess I shouldn’t say that saving a monster like me would be

worthless anymore, huh,” Ryner said to himself. Because if he did,
then that’d mean that saving all those kids was worthless, too.

“……”

110
But he did want to save them. They were such loud-mouthed brats,
and… he wanted to save them.

“Uwah, give me a break. At this rate I’ll go just as soft as Lafra said I
was…”

Ryner looked back to the cabin where the kids were sleeping.

“…This is getting to be such a pain,” Ryner said with a sigh. Things

were supposed to get easier from here on out.

He’d always been the only Alpha Stigma bearing monster. He’d
always wondered why he had to have feelings, too. If only he didn’t
have those eyes, he’d thought. If only he could exist without his
cursed eyes. Why was he the only one who had to think that?

“……”

Ryner’s thoughts faded.

The wind was blowing against the grass. And past that…

Ryner looked into the grass. “Who’s there?”

“My, I’ve hid my presence but you still ended up finding me so

easily… People they called geniuses back in the old Roland are pretty
different from the rest, huh?”

Ryner recognized that voice. “You’re… Milk’s subordinate…”

A man appeared in the grass. He had a calm and familiar face. He

was taller than Ryner and just as lanky. He was only about twenty-
four or twenty-five years old, but he had peculiar white hair like an
old person might. He wore a Roland military uniform, too.

“Luke,” he offered, seeing that Ryner couldn’t recall his name. “Luke
Stokkart. I’m affiliated with the Taboo Hunters, and I serve
Lieutenant Milk Callaud—”

111
“You’re Sion’s direct subordinate. The one who accepted the order
to exterminate the Alpha Stigma bearing monster, Ryner Lute?”

“…Ah, so you knew that…”

Ryner overcame the urge to let his emotions show on his face. Luke’s
sad expression said it all. It was the truth.

Sion Astal gave Luke Stokkart three orders.

1. Find any Heroic Relics that the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute
overlooks and fails to collect.

2. Monitor the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute.

3. Should the Alpha Stigma bearer Ryner Lute go berserk outside of

Roland or show signs of betraying Roland, exterminate him.

So those were really orders that Sion had given Luke. It wasn’t some
plot to push Ryner and Sion away from each other. It was the truth.

“…Did it hurt you?” Luke asked.

Ryner shrugged. “Not really. I mean, it’s only natural. Sion hasn’t
done anything wrong.”

Luke smiled sadly. “Yeah. He hasn’t done anything wrong… so since

you understand that, please just die.”

“What if I said that I don’t wanna?”

“How troublesome… I was worried that you’d say that.” Luke’s eyes
flicked to the cabin behind Ryner. “God’s Eyes… was it? There are
many more here than just yourself. More than my sources led me to
expect, honestly…” Luke trailed off for a moment. “Ah, well, that
aside.”

112
Ryner glared at Luke. God’s Eyes. God’s Eyes, he said. “You bastard…
How long have you been following me?”

“…For quite a while,” Luke admitted openly. “Since approximately

thirty hours after you crossed the border from Roland to Nelpha, I
believe…”

“……”

Ryner’s whole body was tense. Five days had passed since he and Tiir
entered Nelpha. That meant that Luke had been watching them for
about three days now. But Ryner hadn’t noticed him at all.

He’d been watching their every move for three whole days. And
Ryner and Tiir hadn’t noticed at all. Which meant…

“You’ve been keeping your true power a secret from me all this
time,” Ryner said.

Luke just shrugged.

“Ugh… this is such a pain,” Ryner said. He clicked his tongue, then
took a battle stance.

Luke didn’t do the same. “You can’t win against me even if we fight.”

“…Hmm. You’re pretty different from usual. You’re way more

confident now,” Ryner said. “So you think you’re stronger than me?”

“Oh, not in the slightest,” Luke said easily. “I’m far weaker. You know
that as well as I do. I mean, you were once a legend known as the
greatest magician in all of Roland. I can’t hold a candle to you with
my physical or magical ability.”

Ryner snorted. “But you’re using tactics even now. You’re trying to
make me underestimate you.”

“I don’t need to. I’d win even without you underestimating me.”

113
“…There’s no way you can.”

Luke smiled. It looked like he was mocking Ryner with it. “Harsh. But
the results of a battle are pretty much always decided before they
even start… well, whatever. Shall we?”

Right then, Ryner noticed the magic circles camouflaged in the grass
in front of Luke. Now that he was looking, there were too many to
count. It was a magic trap. A skilled one, at that. He wouldn’t have
noticed it at all in normal circumstances… but Luke was being really
talkative and he’d gotten distracted.

‘The results of a battle are pretty much always decided before they
even start,’ huh?

In other words, Luke had already prepared himself to win before

approaching Ryner with this magic trap.

Ryner smiled. “You better not regret that overconfidence of yours.”

He ran and jumped up above Luke’s magic trap.

“Ah, uwah, he saw through it,” Luke said. He scowled and took a step
back like he wanted to run.

Ryner didn’t intend on giving him the chance to run. He kept bursting
forward to close the distance between them, but—

“Just kidding,” Luke said with a smile. “Hey. Kill him.”

Someone grasped Ryner’s legs.

“What!?” Ryner yelled. “There were others…?”

He turned to see. But that marked the end.

The only thing there was a single, horribly old-fashioned trap, and he
stepped right into it. Now it was holding him in place… He was stuck.

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Luke didn’t have any allies waiting to jump him. It was just this trap,
and he stepped right into it.

“Checkmate,” Luke said. He pressed a knife to Ryner’s neck…

“……Kgh.” Ryner couldn’t say any more than that. Luke’s strategy was
too brilliant to argue against.

It was only because he was so talkative? Better not regret his

overconfidence?

God, Ryner was stupid.

Everything that Luke said and did was done was strategy. For the
express purpose of getting his knife to Ryner’s throat. He meant to
sound overconfident. He meant for Ryner to see through his magic
trap. Ryner could never…

“You could never win… that’s what you’re thinking, right? I could win
with such a simple trap in the grass… I’m way too strong for you to
win against… you thought that too, right? But that’s not true. The
truth is that you’re stronger. I’ve only been acting to make you feel
that I’m overwhelmingly strong. See, if you wanted, you’re plenty
strong enough to take this knife from me and kill me instead. Do you
want to?”

He said that, but.

“……”

It just gave Ryner the unnecessary need to try.

Say he was telling the truth and Ryner really could steal the knife
away. Luke wasn’t moving like someone who was far out of Ryner’s
league, fighting wise. That much was true. He might really be able to
steal the knife if he just tried.

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But the fact that Luke said he could do it so easily… meant that Ryner
couldn’t move. He couldn’t tell what was a lie and what was the
truth… That was another kind of trap, he supposed.

“…Alright. It’s over,” Luke said. He squeezed the knife in his hand.
But he didn’t move.

Ryner was too focused on what Luke was saying. His reflexes were
slower. His body wasn’t as ready for a fight as it should be. And in the
instant that he wavered… the knife began to dig into his throat.

“Gagh…”

Ryner twisted his body. He had to get out of the way. But it didn’t
look like he’d make it.

He felt death approaching.

It was hopeless—

“……”

And then he saw it, on the brink of death. It was like an angel cutting
through the dark, with flowing golden-blonde hair. Blue eyes. An
eerily beautiful face. She was pretty, he thought. Prettier than
anything he’d ever seen before. Prettier than anything anyone had
seen before.

But the angel wasn’t smiling. She was completely expressionless as

she raised her sword up.

“Huh? Hey, why’re you aiming that at meeeeeee!!!”

Seeing her was nostalgic and all, yeah, but he was face down on the
ground before he could register any more than that. He hurt too
much to stand. “Are you trying to kill me, Ferris!?” Ryner yelled.

Ferris stepped on him in response. “Mm? Oh, you were there.”

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“…U, uwah. Even this is nostalgic. Makes me remember how much
you always step on m—gyaah!!”

She stepped on his head this time. “Mm? Oh, you were there.”

“Seriously, one day I’m gonna fucking k—gukyagh!!”

“Mm? Oh, you were there.”

“Wh, why are you—goukyau!!”

“Mm? Oh, you were there.”

“No, no, wait—bowaguhagha!!”

“Mm? Oh, you were there.”

Ryner was on the verge of tears. “S-sorry. You’re mad at me, right?
Of course you’d be. Um, I-I’ll apologize for everything, so can you
wait a minute? You could eat some dango or something. So? What
do you say? I’ll die if you keep doing thiisssss gyakyaaahhhhh!!”

He was seriously gonna die this time. That’s what Ryner thought.

But Ferris seemed satisfied when she stopped. “So what’s the
situation?” She asked. “Why’s this guy trying to kill you?”

“…So you finally caught up to me, Ferris,” Luke said. “You followed
me here, didn’t you?”

“Wha… So you noticed me tailing you—”

“Kyghaaaaaa!!”

Ferris was cut off by a pained scream a ways away.

“What’s that?” Ferris and Ryner both said.

“Mm?”

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They all turned towards the sound.

Towards the cabin.

It sounded like Pueka. The girl who fancied Lafra.

Ryner stood. “That’s… too loud to just be sleeptalking, right?”

Ferris’ eyes widened like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
She shivered. “Y-you… Don’t tell me you’ve kidnapped girls and taken
them to this secluded cabin—”

“Ah, I’ve not heard of that,” Luke said. “Don’t tell me you’re using
magic to exploit them—”

“Are you two stupid!? There’s no way I’d—”

The cabin door opened. Some kids ran out towards them. Everyone
was crying. There were three young boys and girls, and they were
soon followed by Pueka and Lafra.

“Hey, Lafra, what’s going on?” Ryner asked.

“R-Ryner… R, run! We have to run or we’ll be killed!” Lafra yelled.

“Killed? By wh—”

Ryner couldn’t finish. Because once he saw the monster leaping out
after Lafra and the others, he was at a loss for words. It was a beast
made of light… no, made of thunder. And it was aiming for Pueka.

“Shit!”

Ryner broke out in a run. But he couldn’t make it. She was too far
away. The beast opened its mouth wide…

“Get out of the waaay!!” Ryner yelled.

118
But just then, Lafra kicked Pueka out of the way. When he did, the
beast turned its attention to him.

Ryner could make it this time! He just needed a little more. “Lafra,
over here!”

Lafra turned to look at him… but he didn’t move. He just smiled. It

was the same sad smile from before. A smile that showed he’d given
up on everything and fallen completely into despair. It was the exact
same look that Ryner always used to make.

“…Promise me, Ry…”

“That doesn’t matter now! Just hurry up and take my hand—”

“…I’m glad I could make it. I know you’ll honor our promis…”

Lafra never got to finish that sentence. Because the beast ran
towards him far faster than Ryner could. It wrapped its big fangs
around Lafra’s head and bit… leaving the rest of his body to fall to
the ground like a toy after playtime had ended. His head soon fell
down beside him.

And Ryner’s outstretched hand… gripped the empty air. He looked

down.

Lafra.

Lafra was… still smiling up at him sadly. And he’d never stop, now.

“……Ah…”

Ryner suddenly didn’t understand anything. His vision went dark. But
he could still hear screaming. The screams of children. They
screamed and screamed and screamed over the picture of Lafra’s
smile that was burned into his mind.

119
“We Cursed Eye bearers who have fallen into despair at the hands of
humans, who live our lives in sadness… we all want you to save us.”

Those words were burned into his mind next to his smile. It was like
a curse haunting his mind.

“Because you’re kind.”

“I… I don’t…”

He didn’t get it. He didn’t get it!

What was… what…

Pueka, who Lafra had kicked out of the way of an attack, looked
towards him. She looked… at Lafra, below a beast whose mouth was
dripping with blood.

“…N, no…”

Her black eyes widened. And at their center… a cursed glimmer lit
up.

“Ahh, ahhhh…”

The red pentagram in her eyes lit up, brighter and brighter… like
they’d make her go mad…

“S, stop! Just w-wait! Please, wait!” Ryner yelled.

But he couldn’t stop her anymore.

“Aaaaaahh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh! Aaaaaahahahhaa!”

Her mad laughter had already begun.

Ryner ran to her. He could still make it. He just had to knock her out
now. He could still save her.

For some reason, he heard Lucile’s voice.

120
“What kind of impossible dreams do you ugly monsters have?”

Shut up.

“You should already know. Monsters’ hands are already covered in

blood. They can’t grasp anything… and they can’t make it anywhere.”

Shut up!

Ryner held his hand out to Pueka.

He could still make it. He should still make it. He could still save her.
Because even his hand could save someone, even if it was the
bloodied hand of a monster—

“Whoa there, I can’t have you getting in the way when I’m so close
to crystallizing this.”

A man appeared before him. He had a muscular body, and he was

overflowing with confidence. But more than anything, what stood
out about him was his unusual pink hair. He swatted Ryner’s hand
away with his right hand. His left hand held an odd green orb. He
pushed it up close to Pueka’s face.

“Gouge them out and crystalize it, Spanquel.”

Pueka’s laughing abruptly stopped. She collapsed to the ground.

Ryner watched her to see if she’d get up. But she didn’t move at all.

“…No…”

She didn’t move at all. Because she was the same as Lafra. Dead.

“……”

The whole world was trembling like it was cold. No, Ryner was. Of
course.

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His body was shivering. From anger, sadness, hatred, pain…

Why. Why did this always happen.

“……”

Why could he never save anyone.

He looked down at his hands that he’d tried to reach the others with.
They were shaking.

“You should already know. Monsters’ hands are already covered in

blood. They can’t grasp anything… and they can’t make it anywhere.”

They couldn’t make it anywhere. They couldn’t reach anyone.

How could he expect himself to be able to save anyone? How could

he expect his monstrous hands to save anyone?

There was only one thing his hands could do.

They could…

“…kill you.”

They could only hurt people.

“I’m going to kill you all.”

The man in front of him laughed. “Haha, the hell? I’m going to kill all
of you Cursed Eye monsters—”

“Gastaaaaarrrkkk!!”

Ryner’s hands danced in the air. His magic circle was complete in a
flash.

“Whoa, you’re ultra fast,” the other man said. “But…”

122
He moved his fingers, one of which was adorned with a gold ring.
When he did, the thunder beasts moved.

Ryner had seen something similar in the past. A guy called Froaude
used the same kind of relic. His had shadow beasts and this one had
thunder beasts. Thunder beasts that killed Lafra.

If this guy’s ring was just as strong as Froaude’s, then Ryner didn’t
have a chance. Because he couldn’t even follow Froaude’s beasts
with his eyes. They were too fast, too sharp. He couldn’t fight them
alone.

But that didn’t matter now.

“Come to me, o beasts—”

Ryner’s magic circle was complete. “I wish for—”

“Too late,” the pink haired man jived, “You won’t be able to dodge if
you cast magic. You’ll just die. You know that, right? Appear!”

Light appeared before Ryner. It turned to a lightning beast. But Ryner

didn’t dodge. It was whatever. Everything was whatever now. He
was a cursed monster. He couldn’t save anyone. Whether he lived or
died didn’t matter anymore.

If he could just…

“—Thunder—”

Kill this guy…!!

But just then, Ferris jumped between Ryner and the beast.

“Huh!? Why?” Ryner said. “I can’t stop my spell now…”

Luke grabbed Ryner by the hair, flustered, and pushed him head first
into the ground.

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“…Uough!?”

That stopped his spell.

The beasts jumped at Ferris. She swung her sword at them to get
them to disperse.

“A-are you some kind of idiot!?” Ryner yelled. “Don’t jump in front of
my mag—”

“You’re the idiot!” Ferris yelled back. Then she turned around. Her
expression was just as blank as always. And yet, inside that
blankness… was something very, very faint…

“…If you… if you really want to die on your own that badly, then
that’s okay.”

…And that very faint emotion was something sad. Sad like she
wanted to cry.

Ryner was at a loss for words.

Ferris averted her eyes. “If you’re really a monster and not really my
friend… then it’s okay if you disappear. If you don’t think that we’re
partners in crime, don’t believe that you’re my slave, and don’t want
to drink tea with me as my friend… then you can do whatever you
want.”

Ferris pointed her sword at the man from Gastark. “But I don’t think
that, Ryner. No matter how much you think you’re a monster… I
don’t think you are at all. Even if you feel like it’s just you, like you’re
all alone now… even if you don’t think that’s lonely… I don’t think
that at all.”

The Gastarki man smiled. “Well, isn’t this wonderful… If this were a
fairy tale, the monster would become a human at the end and you’d
live happily ever after. Unfortunately, this is real life. That monster

124
will never stop being a monster.” He turned to Ryner. “A monster
whose mere existence harms the world.”

“……”

Ryner was used to hearing that sort of thing. People always said it.

They said he was a monster. That he only ever hurt people. That he
only ever killed people. His bloodstained hands couldn’t reach
anybody. They couldn’t save anybody…

He couldn’t deny any of that. If he was a monster who only hurt

others, then he should just die. He always, always believed that. He’d
acknowledged it as the truth.

And yet.

Ferris glared at the man before him. “So what? What if he is a

monster, then? I don’t care if he’s a monster or not.”

“I, interesting,” the man from Gastark said. “No, even if you don’t
care… Are you saying you’d let a dangerous monster li—”

“I don’t care about that stuff,” Ferris interrupted. She said it easily.
Way too easily.

Ryner felt like he’d been punched in the face.

So what? What if he was a monster? And saying that she didn’t even
care if he was dangerous or not…

He really felt like he’d been hit. She didn’t even have to think about
it. She just thought it was stupid, didn’t she?

And Ryner, stupid as he was, began to speak. “I, I,” he said. He was
crying for some reason. “Is it really okay… if I live…?”

His voice was shaking. Please, forgive him. That’s all he wanted.

125
He was letting Ferris see him cry. What would she turn this into
later…? No, that didn’t matter now. Because now, shameful as it
was, he was crying and wanting to die.

Ugh. Terrible. He was seriously going to die of embarrassment if she

turned around—

And of course she took that moment to turn around. Because that
was the kind of person she was. She was contrary, violent, and a
bully. And above all…

She looked at him. Watched him crying himself to exhaustion… and

smiled. She looked like she wanted to cry, too. “Idiot. I’d get lonely if
you died…”

Ryner was at a loss for words. He heard screaming - his heart

screaming in his mind. It said that he was sick of being alone. That it
was sick of being lonely.

Even if they hated him, even if they were afraid of him, Ryner didn’t
want to be alone anymore. Because he loved people. So no matter
how much they hurt him…

“I…”

The Gastarki man spoke over him. “Well, I guess you’re gonna get
pretty lonely then, ‘cause he’s going to die right here.” He raised the
green orb over his head. It glittered like a jewel.

Ryner had seen something like it before. Sui and Kuu had used one
when they fought. It was the crystalized eyes of a Cursed Eye bearer.
Most likely Pueka’s Alpha Stigma.

“Th, this is bad!” Ryner yelled. Because that thing would make all the
surrounding Alpha Stigma bearers go berserk. He looked around. The
Alpha Stigma kids were watching, unable to do anything but cry.

126
“I’m going to collect all your Cursed Eyes up.”

“R-run!!” Ryner screamed.

But the kids didn’t run. They were frozen in place by their tears.

Ryner wouldn’t be able to reach them in time. He wasn’t fast

enough. Luke wouldn’t be able to either, then. So he turned to Ferris.
She was already running.

But…

“Come to me, o beasts - appear!” The man said and waved his
fingers. One beast appeared in front of the children. Two appeared
to chase after Ferris.

Ferris swung her sword through the mouth of one beast to kill it. The
other caught her from behind with a low growl.

“…Gagh!”

Ferris was flung away, then knocked into the ground, unconscious.

The man grinned. “See, what’d I say? I’m not letting these Cursed
Eye monsters get me.” Then he raised the gem up again.

Ryner couldn’t do anything about. He couldn’t save anyone…

“…No!” Ryner yelled.

He was giving up on himself. His heart that said that he was useless
and that he should give up.

But he shouldn’t do that. He really shouldn’t do that.

The world wasn’t supposed to be buried in its own despair. If he gave

up on trying to save anyone now, then what about Lafra’s death? It’d
be in vain, right?

127
No. It shouldn’t be in vain.

“What can my hand…”

He had to think. Think. Think about what he could still do to save

someone here. Because he wasn’t going to give up. He had to try
harder.

He needed something to show him the way forward. It didn’t matter

if it was a god or a demon. Anything, as long as it’d show him what
he had to do!

At the end of this despair ridden path, there surely lay a world where
no one would lose anything anymore. That kid and Kiefer wouldn’t
have to cry anymore. Tyle, Tony, and Fahle wouldn’t have to die.
Sion would be able to smile. Ferris and Lafra, too. Everyone,
everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone!

Ryner suddenly heard Lafra’s voice. He couldn’t say why. But he saw
his face, smiling even to his death in this despair-ridden world.

“That’s why I called you here. To save someone important to me.”

He definitely heard that voice. “Who?” Ryner asked.

Lafra smiled sadly. “Tiir.”

“……”

Ryner looked to the cabin. He saw Tiir at the door. He hadn’t been
there earlier. His right arm and left leg had been torn off… but he still
managed to crawl to the door. But that was as far as he could make
it. He didn’t move. He didn’t even twitch. His blood loss would be
fatal. In fact, he almost looked dead now.

“……”

128
Still, Ryner smiled. His hands danced in the air. He drew a magic
circle faster and more skillfully than anyone else could. It was
complete faster than one would expect to see such a complex circle.

“Give it up already,” the pink-haired man said. “Though I guess you

won’t have long for that. Resonate!”

Ryner’s hands stopped. The speed they’d had while drawing his
magic circle left them completely, leaving him paralyzed. The world
brightened and clouded over. His mind went blank. He felt his eyes
widen. A burning pain shot through them.

“…Uuh… y, you…”

His consciousness was fading. Fleeing.

Life. Death. Joy. Sadness. He stopped caring about them all…

Shut it, you.

Don’t fight me. This is what you want. It doesn’t matter how much
despair exists in the world. That doesn’t matter to you—

I, I said to shut it.

It doesn’t matter if it was dear to you. Nothing matters to you now.

That’s wrong.

You don’t care about anything.

That’s wrong!

He heard voices from afar. The voices of children.

“Aa, aaaaah, aaaaaahhhhh!!”

I want to save—

You don’t care.

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Can it.

You don’t care.

Can it already!

You don’t care who dies.

Shi… t…

Ha, hahaha.

It’ll disappear anyway. Everything will. And you won’t care.

S, stop…

Look, you’re hardly even conscious.

Ah…

It’ll get easier. You won’t care about anything. The world will be a
blank slate. A blank, empty world with nothing at all inside it. Clarity
is all that you’ll feel. Your mind will become clearer and clearer.

Everything that existed, the entire organization of the world spread

before him. In numbers, graphs, and patterns. He understood it all.
And he heard a voice.

End it, it said. End everything, make it just how you’d like it. Release
everything. Open everything. Kill everything.

Until everything you can see is no more—

“…Ah… ahhhh…”

Ryner’s whole body shivered.

“Aaaahhh, you fuckerrr!!”

130
His head hurt like crazy. His body was spazzing like mad. Even so…
the world wasn’t blank anymore. He was back. The magic circle he’d
just drawn was still here waiting for him.

“Th, this is insane,” the man from Gastark said. “You stopped it?
That’s crazy. I can’t believe that. What are you?”

“…A monster,” Ryner said and smiled. He returned to his magic

circle.

“I won’t let you!” The man said and tried to raise his arm to use his
ring. But he couldn’t. It was held in place by countless strings of light.
He scowled. “Lastel’s Thread?”

“Hm. So that’s its name,” Luke said from behind Ryner. “This is…
well. I assume if you know its name, you also know its effects.”

“It’s just for sewing.”

“Ah. Thought so. But this sewing needle can kill you. Then I can send
your head in a neat little box back to Gastark,” Luke said. He laughed
in a low, dangerous tone.

“…So you even know of Gastark… I guess I better make sure you
Rolanders know what kind of a fight you’re asking for,” Gastark’s
assassin said. He laughed too, then retrieved that green orb again.
“Dumbass. A low level Rule Fragment can’t kill me. Spanquel, cut it
up.”

The green orb lit up on his orders. The threads surrounding him were
cut.

Ryner smiled. Because he’d seen this before. This was the same
game Luke had played with him earlier - he used his words to make
his opponent forget the most critical information. That caused
Gastark’s assassin to forget the most important thing here. He
shouldn’t have wasted time worrying about Luke. Beating Ryner was

131
his priority. If he would’ve done that, then everything would have
ended.

But he didn’t.

Ryner put the finishing touches on his magic circle. “I wish for
thunder - Lightning Flash!”

Light gathered in the center of his magic circle, then turned to

thunder. He shot it towards Tiir.

He heard a voice. It was weak as could be, but it was there.

“I devour power…”

The magic Ryner fired disappeared. Tiir’s eyes swallowed it up.

Tiir’s whole body began to pulsate. Then his arm and leg started to
regenerate.

Tiir sprang up. He jumped to the roof of the cabin and glared at the
man from Gastark. “How dare you… H, human… You damned
human… I’ll kill—”

“It’s not the time for that, Tiir!” Ryner yelled.

Tiir looked over at him. “Huh? R-Ryner…? What’s going on…?”

“The kids! Stop the kids! Their Alpha Stigma’s going to go berserk!”

Tiir stared for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Don’t you understand the situation!?” Ryner yelled.

Tiir dashed to where the kids were laughing madly. So fast that Ryner
couldn’t even see him move. He pressed his hands against the three
kids’ pressure points to make them lose consciousness.

But Ryner couldn’t relax yet. “There are kids in the cabin, too—”

132
“Already killed,” the man from Gastark said.

“What!?” Ryner said. “You…”

“But this time was a real bummer. I went through the effort to come
here. But Tiir got in the way, and I killed them before I could harvest
them… so I only got one harvest out of all this, in the end.” He raised
the crystal from before up again. The crystal with Pueka’s eyes.

Only one harvest, he said. That crying and screaming girl was just
‘one harvest’ to him.

“……”

What was he saying? He killed someone for that, didn’t he? So why
was he smiling like that?

Anger washed through Ryner’s mind. Dark, dark anger. He forced

himself to overcome it. Because anger couldn’t save anyone…

“……”

Ryner looked at the man. The man who said Pueka’s eyes were ‘only
one harvest.’ Wasn’t he saying that they had to be alive for their
eyes to be harvestable?

Ryner had to think about this rationally. What was the best course of
action in this scenario? He forced himself to breathe deeply and
looked around. He needed to figure out how to save the most people
here…

“……”

He noticed Tiir’s bitter expression. He’d probably fought this man in

the past, and knew that he couldn’t win even if he fought him again
now. Because he’d be attacking him now if he had a chance.

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It would be easy for the man from Gastark to win if all he had to do
was kill everyone else.

So how could Ryner do this? How should they do this? He thought

about it for a moment before speaking. “Tiir… I want you to take the
kids and run.”

The man from Gastark laughed. “Like I’ll let—”

“They’ll be able to get away,” Ryner interrupted. “And you’ll get me

in their place.”

“…You? Don’t really need you, though. I can’t go home with one
measly Alpha Stigma bearer…”

Ryner snorted. “Liar. You’ve already realized that I’m not some
‘measly Alpha Stigma bearer’ by now. Your country’s starved for
information on me.”

The man looked at the pentagram in Ryner’s eyes, then moved his
eyes around suspiciously, like some kind of signal - he looked to Tiir,
then to Luke pointedly. Ryner didn’t understand why. But the man
soon spoke. “I don’t need you. Honestly, it’s probably better if I just
killed an Alpha Stigma bearing monster like you.” He raised the green
orb again.

Ryner finally understood what he meant to do. “Tiir, hurry! Take the
kids and go!”

“But you—”

“Don’t worry about me! Just go! Or would you prefer us all to die!?”

“Kgh…”

Tiir picked the kids up, and once he had them all, he ran and
disappeared into the tall grass.

134
“I won’t let you,” the man from Gastark said. “Spanquel… gh. Let me
go. Ugh! Fine. I’ll kill you and your friends, then.” He looked to Luke.

Luke was full of smiles despite the situation.

“So did you figure our shitty acting out?” The man asked.

“No, no, your acting was very realistic,” Luke said. “That’s why that
Tiir fellow quietly left for us.”

So that’s what the man’s signal had meant. He was willing to make
that trade, but not with Tiir and Luke listening. So he wanted Ryner
to get the two of them to go away. But Luke was the one who caught
that signal, not Ryner.

“So what are you going to do?” The Gastarki assassin asked Luke.

“…I don’t have any option but to leave, do I? Unless you intend on
letting me participate in your discussion as well…”

“Nope.”

“Then I’ll take my leave,” Luke said. “I don’t think I’d be able to win
even if we fought, after all. Well, maybe if I cut one or both of your
arms off first…” He smiled, carefree as ever. Then turned sharply on
his heel. “I’ll leave that opportunity for another day, though.”

The man from Gastark pointed his golden ring bearing hand at Luke’s
defenseless back as if to attack him. But then he scowled. Because he
realized the faint strings around him. “I wonder if we’ll meet next on
the battlefield. Send my regards to Roland’s king for me.”

Luke waved without turning back around. “And mine to Gastark’s

king.” Then he left through the grasses.

The man turned back to Ryner once Luke was gone. “Man, what’s up
with you guys. Roland’s nothing but monsters. There’s even

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someone who appears and disappears like some kind of ghost
hanging around your king…”

“Wha… you met Lucile…?” Ryner asked, dumbfounded, then sighed.

Because he suddenly recalled his old title of Roland’s strongest
magician. “Me, the strongest…?” He wondered to himself with a self-
deprecating tone.

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing. Let’s get to the point.”

“Hmm? Well, whatever… right, so… actually, let me introduce myself

first. I’m Lir Orla. You can just call me Lir, okay, Ryner?”

“Don’t say my name so casually.”

Lir scowled. “Ahh? Have you forgotten your place? I’m the one with
the hostage, aren’t I?” Lir asked. He moved his fingers. A lightning
beast appeared over by where Ferris lie unconscious. It bared its
massive fangs—

“Ah, uh, I was just joking! Wait!” Ryner said quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t
mean that.”

“I thought so. Come on, call me Master Lir.”

“What!? You literally just said ‘just call me Lir—’” Lir moved his
fingers again, “—No, sorry sorry sorry! Yes, Master! Master Lir! Shit!”

“Soo, setting these jokes aside… Talk, you Alpha Stigma monster,” Lir
said. But then he seemed to think better of it. “No… perhaps I should
call you the Solver of All Formulas…”

The Solver of All Formulas.

Ryner hadn’t heard of that before. His eyes narrowed. “Is that the
name of my eyes?”

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Lir’s eyes widened. “Huh? You mean you don’t know about
yourself?”

Ryner took a second to think of how he should answer. But if he said

it like that, then what choice did Ryner have but to say no? Ryner
had followed Tiir so he’d get some clue as to who he was. And Lir
called him the The Solver of All Formulas. Not an Alpha Stigma
bearer.

“What… am I?” Ryner asked. It sounded like an awfully dumb

question to his ears.

Lir grinned. “Aren’t you a work of art. You seriously don’t know,
huh?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”

Lir’s grin widened. “How about the gate, then?”

“Gate?” Ryner repeated.

“…The key?”

“……”

Ryner didn’t answer that time. But it was already too late. The
damage was done.

“Ha… hahaha. So Roland’s only made it that far,” Lir said. With that,
he turned to leave.

“H, hey… Weren’t you gonna bring me to Gastark?”

Lir shook his head. “No need. Actually, it’s better for you to stay here
no matter how far ahead I think…” He turned back for a moment.
“Well, do your best to not become a traitor, then, you crazy
monster.” Then Lir left stepped into the weeds.

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“Wait,” Ryner said. “What are you talking about…”

Ryner took a few steps forward to try to pursue, but then he

stopped. His voice trailed off.

“……”

He was the only one standing there, now. The sky was starting to
lighten around the edges. But it was for the most part still dark. Dark
and very, very quiet.

All he could hear was the sound of the wind… and the wind on the
grass.

“……”

The last time he’d thought about that, there were kids snoring lightly
next to him, too. But there weren’t now.

He looked down at the bodies on the ground. Lafra and Pueka.

He recalled Lafra’s sad smile. Pueka’s happy expression as she

watched him.

There should’ve been four others inside, too.

They’d been so, so happy just yesterday. And now they couldn’t even
twitch.

“…I should at least make them some graves,” Ryner whispered.

The Solver of All Riddles didn’t matter now. Ryner walked over to
Ferris, who was still collapsed on the ground, unconscious. He
crouched down to check her over. Thankfully, she was breathing fine
and didn’t seem too hurt. Didn’t seem like any bones were broken.
He felt a little better knowing that.

“……”

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He felt a bit dumbfounded knowing that she’d gotten between him
and that lightning beast despite her thin body. What would he have
done if she’d died like that…?

He suddenly realized what she’d been feeling then, when she looked
back at him with a face that wanted to cry.

“Idiot. I’d get lonely if you died…”

“Yeah… you’re right,” Ryner said. “I’d get lonely if you died, too.” He
reached a hand out to pet her dirty head, but…

“…Don’t touch me, sex maniac,” Ferris managed to say with a pained
voice.

“You were awake?”

“…No, I just woke up,” Ferris said. She grimaced as she pulled herself
up. “What happened?” She asked and looked around.

Ryner shrugged. “Nothing good. Lir… the guy from Gastark, I mean,
got away…”

Ferris looked past Ryner to where Lafra and Pueka were. Though her
face was typically emotionless, right now she looked a bit uneasy.
“So what will you do now?”

So that’s what she wanted to know after everything. Ryner couldn’t

help but smile wryly and wonder what she was feeling uneasy about.
Wonder why she was feeling uneasy about someone like him. “I’m
an idiot,” Ryner mumbled.

“Mm. You’re only just now realizing that?”

Her voice sounded a little uneasy, too. He wanted to cry again.

Seriously, he was an idiot.

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He’d been the one pushing others away, not the other way around.
Because he was scared of hurting them. Because he was scared of
being hurt. So he ran away to be alone. But he never really got used
to being alone.

It didn’t matter how depressing the world was. It didn’t matter how
depressed he was. No matter how sad his heart was… he wouldn’t
let it drown in despair.

If Sion smiled, if Ferris would smile… then he’d be happy again.

Seeing them smile made his eyes fill with tears. Because he wasn’t
alone anymore.

“…I’ll do it, Lafra. I’ll keep our promise.”

Ryner recalled Lafra’s sad expression and the promise he entrusted

to Ryner, who hadn’t quite fallen into despair.

“We Cursed Eye bearers who have fallen into despair at the hands of
humans, who live our lives in sadness… we all want you to save us.”

Ryner met Ferris’ eyes. “I’ll go back to Roland,” he said. “Because I’ve
found something I’ve gotta do. But before that, I want you to
promise me something.”

“…What kind of promise?”

“I want you to promise that you’ll lend me the strength to fight

instead of just running away.”

Ferris tilted her head. “What are you saying—”

“I’ve… always ran away,” Ryner interrupted. “Always ran from the
truth: that I’m a monster. I don’t know when I’ll hurt the people who
are important to me. I don’t know when I’ll… I could kill Sion, you,
anyone… so I left Roland. I thought you guys didn’t need me
anyway.”

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“…Have you changed your mind?”

Ryner pulled a face, then shrugged. “Well… seriously changing how I

think is gonna be hard. I’m too scared for that now. I mean, just
standing here next to you means I could kill you whenever… and that
scares me. So… I want you to lend me your courage.”

“…My courage?”

Ryner nodded.

It was the worst promise ever. It’d only cause Ferris trouble. Even so,
he’d decided that he wasn’t going to run away anymore.

“…I want you to kill me,” Ryner said. “Kill me the next time I go
berserk. Don’t hesitate like last time…”

Ferris’ expression changed. Faint as it was, as impossible for others

to see as it was, it changed.

But Ryner could tell. He knew what she was thinking now.

“…If you come home,” Ferris said. As usual, her voice didn’t convey
her emotions at all.

But that was okay. It was a promise.

“…Let’s go back together,” Ryner said.

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Epilogue II: The System Drowned in
Despair

It was the darkest of darkness. And yet what spoke was even deeper
of a darkness than that.

“You will walk only the correct path. You will have the strength to
step on everything that’s important to you if you must. Your friends.
Those who you love. Everyone, everything. That’s your most
important quality. Now, show it to me. Show me the correct path,”
the malice itself said. “Try to show me the path you’ll walk.”

“……”

Sion exhaled. Then he tried to bring air back in, but he couldn’t. He
couldn’t breathe the air that he needed. He could only breathe in
this darkness.

“……”

Sion’s eyes fell to the documents lying in a mess on the floor. Luke
Stokkart had given them to him. They were about Ryner. About him
making contact with a Gastarki spy. But he didn’t go to Gastark with
him. Instead he was returning to Roland. Luke proposed that Ryner’s
purpose in doing so was to use himself as a bridge to the Cursed Eye
bearers to give them more power. If they joined hands, then they’d
have a more favorable outcome in a fight against Gastark.

“……”

But there was no point in that.

There was no point in wondering how useful or useless Ryner was.

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His eyes were the only part of him that mattered. His… Solver of All
Formulas.

Sion knew that.

“…I…”

That was why he gave the order to kill Ryner. It was necessary. But…

“…I… can’t kill Ryner…”

As soon as he said that, the malice lurking in the darkness showed

itself to him. He had golden-blond hair, closed eyes, and an unreal
sort of beauty.

Lucile Eris.

“…Is that the path you’ll show me?” Lucile asked.

“Yes.”

“You won’t kill Ryner Lute?”

Sion nodded. “I won’t.”

Lucile smiled meanly. “Heh, heheheh… Amazing, Sion… I see. So the

path you’ll choose is the cruellest one.”

Sion didn’t respond. So Lucile continued.

“…You think of Ryner as your precious friend, so I personally think

it’d be better for you to kill him sooner than later, but… instead you
chose to walk on his thorny path, counterproductive as it is.”

Sion didn’t respond.

“But is that really okay? If you kill that, it’ll soon be reborn. Just like
you. You’re gears of this world. So even if you don’t sacrifice him…”

Sion didn’t respond.

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Perhaps Lucile was satisfied, as a small smile rose to his face. “Heh,
hehe, it’s fine, then. Whatever. I wish for you to do only things you
won’t regret, my… my hero.”

With that, Lucile disappeared. Returned back to the darkness of the

world. Sion looked into the darkness…

“……”

But he didn’t say anything to it.

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