TL/ED – Miso

“Didn’t you say you couldn’t find him when you checked with Current Sense?”

“Yes. Even now, there’s no trace of Decay in my Current Sense.”

“…?”

I nodded in agreement at Dersia’s perfectly reasonable question.

She made an expression that said she understood even less now.

“Just follow me for now.”

I took Dersia and headed back toward Bireum’s fortress. We slipped past the guards with agility and arrived at the door to her bedroom, then I pushed it open as quietly as I could.

-Creeeak, whether fortunately or unfortunately, it seemed Roan had been exhausted by the day’s events and had gone to sleep early.

I glanced back at Dersia and whispered.

“This isn’t really the time to ask, but how good is elven hearing?”

“You’re right, this really isn’t the time. Reasonably good. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I suppose it’s not quite good enough to pick up a heartbeat.”

“…”

Dersia tilted her head for a moment, then…

Slowly, she shifted her gaze toward Roan.

“Don’t tell me…”

“Yes. He’s inside her.”

Bireum was not Decay.

-He was Decay’s father.

Dersia narrowed her brow, showing a rare look of disgust.

“That creature truly is despicable in nature.”

“You can say that again.”

I frowned as I looked at Roan’s slightly swollen belly.

She had been wearing such loose-fitting clothes that I had simply thought she was heavyset, but it must have been a desperate effort to hide a pregnant belly.

Decay had been inside this fortress all along, still unborn.

Of course I couldn’t find him with Current Sense. It wasn’t as though I ran my Current Sense through every person down to the bone.

It had become a truly unpleasant matter, but it was something that had to be done.

I steeled myself and slowly reached out my hand.

“What choice do we have? Even if he’s nothing more than a residual fragment of memory, the least I can do is make sure he feels no pain.”

As I slowly raised my hand, Dersia stopped me in a hurry.

“Jern!”

“Master. I know. But this has to be…”

“No, I have no intention of giving you a lecture on morality at this point. We just need to escape this fortress as quickly as possible.”

Her expression was more urgent than I expected as she grabbed me and forcibly dragged me out of the bedroom.

“The reason I called him despicable is because I’ve realized that this entire fortress is a massive trap. Dealing with Decay now would be the worst possible move.”

“What? Wait, why all of a sudden? Isn’t he in the middle of experiencing Death’s Flashback right now?”

“This is part of that process.”

Dersia stepped outside the fortress walls and hurriedly surveyed the surrounding mountains.

Then, as if she had suddenly realized something, she raised her hand.

“…We barely made it in time. Let’s run.”

“What?”

The moment I asked back,

countless voices flooded into my Current Sense.

[C-Captain! The mountains… something, something is wrong…!]

[…What?]

A commotion of voices poured in from the direction of the north gate. Screams, terror, shock, wailing. All of it flooded through my mind at once.

Dersia sprinted toward the south gate, continuing her explanation as she ran.

“This was my oversight. I should have noticed from the fact that this Death’s Flashback consists of nothing but Snow Mountain.”

“What do you mean?”

“A person visits many places over the course of their life. Even if they were to look back on their life just before dying, a landscape consisting of nothing but endless snow mountains with a single fortress could not possibly be produced.”

Dersia paused briefly and glared back at the fortress.

“Not unless they were born in the fortress and died in the fortress.”

“Hmm, then…”

“Decay died before he was ever born. Due to some kind of incident.”

-Rrrrrumble… The ground began to shake.

Once we had passed through the south gate, she stopped running and let out a sigh, watching the small mounds of snow rolling down from the high peaks above.

“So that’s how he planned to take us down with him in Mutual Destruction. At least we’re fortunate we weren’t asleep… Wait, then wouldn’t killing Decay stop all of this?”

“It’s the opposite. If we had killed Decay, he would have set his own death as the trigger for the avalanche. That’s why I stopped you… He must have been watching us the whole time.”

It happened almost simultaneously with our escape through the south gate.

-….BOOOM-!!!!

“What the, what is that…”

“This is insane!”

-CRASH!

The unfortunate thing was that it was no ordinary avalanche.

A deluge of snow, effectively hundreds of billions of tons of mountain slammed directly onto the small fortress.

An absolutely unnatural fury of nature. There was no way to withstand it.

“…At least there was no pain.”

I looked down at the snow surging beneath my feet and spoke quietly.

Remarkably, the avalanche moved as if it had a will of its own, crushing the fortress and nothing else with pinpoint precision.

The towering walls, the child who had been coughing by the fire. All of it was flattened equally under one single face of snow.

No matter how well I understood that this was only a memory, it was a hard sight to bear.

“But now it’s over.”

Dersia murmured, rubbing the top of my head.

“It was sharp of Decay to design it so that killing him would kill us too, but since we avoided it, there should be nothing left to hide. We’ll be going back now.”

“Ah, I suppose so.”

When I thought about it, this was indeed the end of the Death’s Flashback.

Decay had died for certain. We would soon return to reality.

“You did well. You neither froze to death inside his Death’s Flashback, nor fell for his trap. All that’s left now is to take Decay down.”

“If it weren’t for you, Master, I would’ve gone through all the trouble of finding him only to die anyway. Thank you.”

No matter how strong I was, I had no confidence I could have survived that crushing torrent of snow.

Dersia shook her head and sighed.

“I simply happened to know one more thing than you. If you hadn’t figured out that Decay was inside her womb, Jern, I wouldn’t have lasted long either.”

“Didn’t you say you could hold out for six years?”

“That was my first attempt at bluffing, and judging by the way you say that, it seems it worked quite well.”

“…”

We stood there for a while, watching the mounds of snow, waiting for something to change.

…But.

“Hmm.”

Minutes passed and the world remained the same. It was still cold, and the demolished fortress lay before us.

If the Death’s Flashback had broken, we should have been sent back to reality immediately.

“Why is nothing changing?”

“It seems there’s something more. Would you try using Current Sense?”

“Ah, yes.”

I activated Current Sense and looked at the demolished fortress buried beneath the snow.

And for the first time in my life, I doubted my own Current Sense and furrowed my brow.

“It’s all gone.”

“…What did you say?”

“There’s nothing under the snow. It’s just… all gone.”

I slowly drew up Water Pressure and kept myself on edge.

My gut feeling was bad.

Very.

“Bireum. You dull-witted fool.”

-Perhaps that was why,

when the very last face I wanted to see appeared atop the avalanche, I was able to crush down on him with Water Pressure instantly.

A mild-faced, ordinary man, the kind you would never believe had made the slaughter of tens of millions his life’s purpose.

Void.

“Gkh…!”

-Crrrrunch. It was enough pressure to compress even steel into a ball, yet it barely scratched him.

It felt like pressing down on empty air. The head of the Crimson Circle, Void, having appeared as if he had been there from the very beginning, paid us no mind whatsoever. He gazed down beneath the avalanche and smiled gently.

“Not a single one of your wishes came true. You can neither save your domain, nor protect the ones you love, nor see the son your wife bore…”

“Jern, stop.”

Dersia assessed the situation immediately and held me back.

“I sense no presence of rank from that thing whatsoever, which means it’s nothing more than a phantom. We won’t be able to interfere with it.”

“-But a contract must be honored.”

-CRACK.

When Void waved his hand, something drenched in blood burst out of thin air.

At first, I couldn’t even recognize it as a person. It had been crushed so thoroughly that it barely retained a human shape.

And yet, it was still breathing. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Though it looked as if death could come at any moment.

“Rise, fragment.”

“…Wh-who…”

“Someone who received a few promises from your husband.”

Only after hearing those words could I realize that it was Roan.

The person I had been speaking with just moments ago had been reduced to something closer to a lump of meat than a human being. The sight left a deeply unpleasant feeling. Even setting that aside, anyone who saw a person in that state would feel anguish, but Void continued speaking as though nothing was wrong with her at all.

“Bireum borrowed a world from me to save this fortress. The result doesn’t seem to have turned out… particularly well.”

Void glanced at the mound of snow and smirked.

“Don’t resent him. Even after learning the full fate of the Fallen, he still offered his life. However, I have yet to collect what I’m owed.”

Saying this, Void extended his hand.

“Do you want to live? Then take hold. You are the only one who survived that avalanche. You were born with the talent to wield Extreme Ice.”

“…”

Roan reached out with a hand on the verge of death, and…

Just before grasping it, she spoke.

“I… want, to ask… something…”

“Hmm.”

Void tilted his head as though he hadn’t expected this, but allowed it.

“Go ahead. But if you don’t choose quickly, you will die.”

“That, I survived, in the fortress… is that, my qualification…”

“Yes.”

Void declared without hesitation.

“Refusing to accept death until the very end. That is the quality of one who wields a world. Unfortunately, your husband did not possess it. Nor did any others in your domain. In the agony of being crushed, they all chose death. All except you alone.”

Looking rather pleased, he smiled and added,

“With that talent, and with you having grown up in the environment of Extreme Ice, you are more than sufficient. Now, take hold.”

“…O-one.”

“…?”

“One… more… there is…”

Roan lifted lips that seemed ready to collapse at any moment and whispered words that were now barely audible.

Void leaned in close to listen.

“Oh my.”

His gaze moved to Roan’s belly.

“That’s not the most appealing proposal, but it’s worth testing.”

He stroked his chin, then looked at Roan and nodded.

“Accepted.”

The moment those words ended and I blinked without thinking, Void was gone.

Roan, the mounds of snow, and even Dersia.

All of them.

***

A sudden vanishing.

As though the world had evaporated and left me behind, I tilted my head and looked around.

“Master? Where…”

Midway through, I stopped speaking.

Someone was trudging toward me from straight ahead, and the sight made me scowl.

Of all people, it was the one responsible for everything.

“…”

This time it was no illusion. I slowly backed away while sweeping Current Sense to search for Dersia, and the other spoke casually.

“It can’t be brushed off by simply calling it luck.”

“Where did you send my Master?”

“That question again. This time, I sent her back.”

“…Are you stupid?”

What he meant was that he had sent Dersia back to reality and left only me here.

By all logic, he should have done the opposite. Sending her back meant granting her access to her magic in the real world.

Decay let out a hearty laugh and showed his hands.

“I had no choice. I never expected her to have a Reserve Personality in place.”

“…What?”

“That means I failed.”

Only then did my gaze land on the fact that Decay’s body was far from intact.

Clawed and torn flesh. A body with traces of blood, and though it was hard to tell on his originally black form, lines of black carved across him.

It looked as though he had just been fighting with Dersia, the very person who had vanished moments ago.

Seeing him like that, I asked, a suspicion forming.

“This Reserve Personality thing, is that by any chance…”

“I never imagined she’d have countermeasures prepared for even the moment she lost consciousness. Having someone like that as an enemy is nothing short of a nightmare.”

…My suspicion had been confirmed.

It suddenly made more sense why Dersia had stayed so composed the entire time. She had woven a technique that allowed her to fight even while unconscious.

It was the kind of contingency plan that almost made me feel sorry for Decay. No, in truth the tide had already all but turned in our favor.

Yet there wasn’t the slightest trace of unease in Decay’s tone.

“Of course, you’re still here. Nothing has been decided yet.”

“…What is it you want?”

It was a question loaded with meaning.

I had seen his past. He had been nothing more than a Fetal Spirit, something that couldn’t possibly harbor anything like desire.

I couldn’t fathom what purpose drove him to follow the Crimson Circle’s will.

But Decay answered without hesitation.

“I follow the will of the Crimson Circle.”

As if it were nothing at all.

“What you saw was not me. If you’re looking for the nameless child who was born… well, all I can offer is my regret.”

“…Whatever. I don’t even care.”

It was nothing more than curiosity.

Whatever past Decay might have had, right now he was merely a world wearing a human body.

A world that I had to devour.

“This Death’s Flashback, how long do you think it’ll take before my Master smashes it from the outside?”

“Death’s Flashback… you’ve even given it a name.”

In the end, it was only a matter of time. Once Dersia reverted from her Reserve Personality to her true self, she would track down Decay immediately.

When that moment came, this fight would be meaningless. I just had to hold out and buy time.

Decay, who surely knew this as well, laughed as if amused and stepped forward.

His figure grew hazy.

“Fun name. And it pierces right to the heart of the matter.”

I clenched my sweating fists and took a step back.

-When I thought about it, all Decay had ever done was run from me.

In the capital, on the mountain, inside the Death’s Flashback.

And after struggling to the very end, he had been driven out. That had seemed like the most rational course of action.

…But.

“I wonder who this world called Death’s Flashback will belong to.”

-What if,

every single one of those acts had been orchestrated for this very moment?

Arranged solely to face me alone…

That anxious hypothesis surfaced in my mind, then vanished.