——It was not at anyone's urging. That Alakia stuffed it into her mouth.
「——」
The sound of blood gushing forth surged over her as pain.
Her heartbeat, faster than during the heat of battle, hammered away—each throb of her heart sent a shock through her entire body as though her soul were being driven through with a nail. Yet that, paradoxically, set Alakia's mind at ease.
The fact that her heart was pumping blood meant she still retained a human shape.
Even if it was nothing more than the faintest, most marginal comfort—a margin of error, really—it was what Alakia needed to keep herself from being thrown into confusion, to keep her soul from scattering.
——The anomalous existence known as the "Spirit Eater" did not have a single living counterpart in this world besides Alakia.
Born from the monomaniacal obsession of beings who could only be called madmen rather than scholars, the Spirit Eater was a forbidden entity—given the name Alakia, and kept alive as the one and only of its kind under a fate that could never be shared with anyone else.
Within a self that had been deliberately diluted, she clung only to the existence she deemed precious—her "Pillar"—as her anchor. Alakia devoured spirits, played the part of a being of power, and fulfilled her role.
She had believed that was enough.
But it was not enough—she learned that the moment she lost her "Pillar."
Had this been the natural conclusion of the Spirit Eater, she would have quickly succumbed to the collapse of her sense of self, been swallowed by the spirits she had absorbed, and had her soul crushed beyond recognition.
However, Alakia did not end that way. Two factors could be identified for that.
One was that the being Alakia had chosen as her "Pillar" was a figure so radiant that even separation could not dim her—like a sun too bright to lose sight of.
And the other was a reason Alakia would never willingly acknowledge—the ceaseless thunderclaps that, in the days following her separation from that "Pillar," had forced Alakia to recognize who she was, had shaken her soul again and again, had reminded her of her inferiority, and had continued to stimulate her individuality.
Bathed in the light of a dazzling sun, harangued by relentless thunder—Alakia held her soul together.
「——That is the conclusion this one has arrived at. As for you, I wonder whether you share that awareness?」
「……No.」
It had been the year Alakia's rank surpassed Olbart's, ascending to "the Second."
Chisha's theory—that he had been digging through surviving documents on the Spirit Eater—had carved an expression into Alakia's face that she had never shown this man, whom she had ended up knowing for an unexpectedly long time.
Of course. Chisha was clever, and he explained things well, but his theory was one that Alakia simply could not accept.
Alakia herself had only a visceral understanding of what she was as a Spirit Eater, but she had still wanted to believe that the whole of her was made of Prisca.
She did not want that desperate, prayer-like hope diluted with whatever ingredient Chisha was adding.
In the first place—— 「……Why did you bring that up?」
The very fact that Chisha had raised the topic was a surprise.
Prisca, Alakia's "Pillar"—the fact that she had been exceptionally spared from the "Imperial Selection Ceremony" and smuggled out of the country alive was one of the Volachia Empire's deepest secrets.
Alakia and Chisha, who had been involved in her exile at the time, naturally knew, but it was a topic they had not uttered for years, since there was no one else they could tell.
So why—why, after all this time—had Chisha brought it up now?
「I want to know whether you are an existence that will crumble and vanish like glass, or something more. Whether you can be counted among the heads I'll need for the great battle that lies ahead.」
「……That makes no sense. I'm one of the 'Nine Divine Generals.'」
That she would be dispatched to suppress rebellions and the like—as Chisha and Vincent had anticipated—was only natural.
But at Alakia's answer, Chisha's eyes softened at the corners, and he made a rare expression—a faint smile on a face that was almost always either blank or exasperated.
With that smile piercing her guard, Chisha continued.
「The battle you imagine is rather smaller than the one I foresee. I'm well aware that your loyalty to His Excellency isn't heartfelt, and that you don't consider me an ally.」
「——」
「Knowing that doesn't make the denial sting any less, I'm afraid.」
「……For Her Highness's sake, I won't vanish.」
Ignoring Chisha's hand-to-forehead reaction, Alakia stroked her eyepatch and answered.
She had an answer—a reason for being herself, the truth of the soul called Alakia. What Chisha worried about would not come to pass. Not to put his mind at ease, but she said it anyway.
「Also, Cecilus has nothing to do with that.」
「Hmph. It's merely my theory, after all. If you insist otherwise and would like me to concede, I'd very much like to have one match against Cecilus where I come out on top.」
「Oh my, my, my? Were you just talking about me? What's this, what's this—Anya and Chisha, ganging up to leave me out? That's such mean-spirited behavior! Could it be… consultation on how to extend Anya's losing streak even further, despite all her retries?」
「Cecilus, die.」
In the end, because the clash with Cecilus that immediately following threatened to involve her, Chisha fled—and Alakia never heard any more of that conversation.
After that, she had no recollection of ever picking the discussion back up with Chisha.
「——」
Still, she thought about it vaguely.
When would the great battle Chisha was worried about arrive? And when it did, would she be among the number he counted?
If the chance arose, she wanted to ask.
Alakia had known Chisha for a long time now.
Born from the circumstances of the "Imperial Selection Ceremony" that had separated Alakia from Prisca—Chisha, who was deeply entangled in the reason for that separation—Alakia still could not forgive him.
But Chisha had taught her how to read and write. She owed him for that. In balance of debts and credits, she had even thought: perhaps she could fight the battle Chisha desired.
——Or would that, too, become just another reason that had nothing to do with Prisca?
She hated Cecilus. Vincent was complicated, but the Prisca connection made him someone she couldn't quite forgive. Olbart's jokes were funny. Goz's face was funny. Groovy had a sharp tongue but was good to his people, and Moglo listened to what she had to say without making a sour face. Yorna made her uncomfortable, but she couldn't bring herself to hate her. Balroy sometimes let her ride on a wyvern, and she and Madeline seemed to mutually avoid each other's faces. Todd—she was grateful to him.
——Would all of these, too, just be reasons that had nothing to do with Prisca?
「——」
As though she might fall apart, as though she might be torn to shreds, with each memory recalled she felt herself slipping away—and so Alakia scraped together "Alakia."
Not because if she didn't, she would cease to exist—not for that reason.
「——Lo…rd.」
Because if she didn't, she would lose the ability to contain the thing inside her that was raging as though it would burst at any moment.
It was something incomprehensibly vast. Something unbelievably heavy. Something unbearably warped. Something that, left unchecked, would destroy the empire.
She had to hold it down herself—or she could not protect her Pillar. Prisca.
So Alakia—not at anyone's urging—stuffed it into her mouth. Into her own body, slender and small beyond compare, she absorbed "
She would not allow the monster who called herself the "
For that purpose—— 「It seems you've consumed something foul.—You truly are a handful.」
The raucous thunderclaps felt like someone stitching together a soul being torn in a thousand pieces.
Gnawed at by that thunderous pain and loss, Alakia scraped together "Alakia," and scraped her together again, and scraped her together once more, fighting against the dissolution of a being thrown into chaos.
She fought on, she endured. —Awaite one last possibility, the only one clinging to her crumbling soul.
△▼△▼△▼△ She had lost count and grown to hate counting, but counting had become a habit.
By deliberately reducing things to exact figures, she could shrink the reality she faced—no, she wouldn't say anything that clever. Strip away that sort of mental framing, and it was genuinely just a habit.
That habit counted. —This, it said, was the one hundred and ninety-first time.
「I'm so average it's almost offensive…」
She muttered this as heat pooled inside her, sweat soaking through the inside of her helm.
On the stage of a dissolved Second Apex, the irrelevant bit player's desperate struggle continued. The heat wave enveloping the area had warped the atmosphere, and the space had unmistakably been transformed into another dimension.
The world, being remade into hell with every passing moment, was not a place where human habitation could endure.
Trees and buildings erupted into flame; sand and debris from the streets began to melt. The palms gripping a Blue Dragon Blade were scorched with a sizzling sound, and the garments she wore could catch fire at any moment.
An environment where simply standing still could result in being a pillar of flame the next instant—or rather, that was no exaggeration; she had already become one more than once or twice.
Even in conditions this brutal— 「TATATATATATATATATA——!!」
At tremendous speed, she came thundering across the surface of bubbling, frothing magma—a star performer moving with lightning-like velocity, putting on a spectacular show.
Lashing deep, dark blue wild hair and fluttering a vivid pink kimono, racing along—this was none other than
The blazing speed to sprint across magma, the inconceivable leg strength for a child's slight frame, the seemingly inexhaustible stamina, the composure and sheer destiny to cross blades with enemies that could remake the world in the blink of an eye—every one of them was first-rate.
Proclaiming the world his stage, casting himself in the lead, and even conscious of how he appeared to an invisible audience, Cecilus lived up to his grandstanding through sheer force of existence.
Before this threat beyond all measure, who else could have made a fight of it?
「——Toh!」
With a child's high-pitched battle cry, Cecilus's body launched diagonally.
At the instant he left the ground, the earth where he had stood a heartbeat ago bulged upward and erupted from within. Even harnessing that blast wave as propulsion, the launched Cecilus twisted in midair.
And from there, a thunderous kick—powerful enough to blow aside a stone pillar as thick as a great tree's trunk—hurtled toward the silver-haired canine demi-human hovering in the sky: Alakia.
「——Ah, ugh.」
Alakia, with her exposed brown skin and blood-red, gemstone eyes now weeping blood.
Toward her torso, from which a moan escaped, the sole of Cecilus's boot—wrapped in zori—bore down straight and true, closing in, closing in, closing in—and at the moment of impact, a tremendous detonation tore through the sky.
「————!!」
In the next instant, she was slammed down even faster than she had risen, cratering into the earth. Cecilus bounded along the street, suppressing a groan as she lifted her head.
A beat later, blood spurted from beneath her white forehead, dyeing her childish face red.
「She's learned to counter perfectly now.」
Licking the blood trailing down the bridge of her straight nose, Cecilus assessed the fact of having been intercepted.
There was no surprise in it. Because this was not the first time she had been met head-on.
More than a dozen times already, Cecilus's lightning-fast attacks had been read and shot down. The balance of the fight was turning rapidly, and critically, against her.
「The Alakia girl is dangerous.」
Watching for an opening to intervene, Al squinted at Alakia as she floated through distorted space.
Alakia's form had grown even more aberrant than mere tens of seconds ago—magic crystals jutted out from inside the slender girl's body, bursting through her flesh as though trying to break free.
The protrusions from Alakia's arms and back might, from a distance, have passed for an angel's wings.
But in truth, all they were was the Great Spirit that Alakia had absorbed—far too vast for her frame—gnawing through the girl's body that confined it, threatening to overflow.
「Son of a bitch.」
At Alakia's choice—to gradually succumb to the erosion of power and deviate ever further from a human shape—Al could only spit her impotent fury as a curse.
She understood the desire to supplement insufficient strength to achieve one's goals. She could imagine that Alakia had the potential to reach heights far beyond anything Al herself could achieve, and that there were countless options within her grasp.
And yet, by consuming something that did not fit her own stature, Alakia's own brilliance would instead turn its fangs upon herself, upon those around her, upon the things she had wanted to protect.
The answer to that was so obvious it was almost insulting—and it was the reality unfolding before them.
——At the outset, it was Cecilus who had held the upper hand in the fight against Alakia.
To restrain Alakia—who had blown apart the Second Apex and now threatened to annihilate the Imperial Capital—Cecilus had deliberately directed sharp hostility at her, stimulating her instinctive sense of crisis to set the stage.
To put it bluntly, this was a clash of beings who transcended warriors not by a step or two, but by ten tiers.
Even if Al remained behind, there was almost no room for her to intervene, yet across nearly two hundred rounds of trial and error, she had twice managed to prevent Cecilus's limbs from being blown off.
During that time, Alakia had been like a cup being continuously filled to overflowing, spilling water at random and imperiling the lives of both Al and Cecilus.
But if it had remained at that, there would have been no way to ever catch Alakia—who cheated with her own domain and bounced about as a being beyond reason—not for eternity.
However, the situation had changed.
Because Alakia's aforementioned transformation had advanced, and her fighting style had shifted in an instant.
「——Incoming!」
A voice that sounded almost eager, almost cheerful, as Cecilus's blood-wiped eyes blazed.
In a flash, the space around Cecilus warped, and from all four directions twisted stone pillars surged like great serpents lunging at the boy. Crouching, leaping aside, and twisting to evade the pillars that snapped at him with furious jaws, Cecilus shot forward at top speed.
But Alakia's onslaught, blood tears streaming down her face, would not let lightning itself escape.
As Cecilus kicked off the ground to accelerate, the surface ahead peeled upward—enormous arms of stone and earth erupted from the ground, reaching to crush the boy in their grasp.
「Sorry, but touching the stage's actors is strictly off-limits!」
With a casual quip, Cecilus used the manufactured arms as stepping stones—like swatting a fly—vaulting up them as though ascending a staircase toward the sky, secured altitude, reversed, and then used the stone fist swinging at her as a springboard to launch herself back toward Alakia— But—— 「She did it——!」
The kind of boulder-fist that would reduce a normal person to a red mist just by grazing them—Cecilus caught it on the sole of her zori, absorbed the shock through every spring-loaded joint in her body, killed the lethal impact, and rode the momentum flying. She screamed the words.
Rocketing toward Alakia with ballistic-missile force, a white light was born in her flight path—with no room to dodge in midair, Cecilus dove into it of her own accord— 「OAAAAAAAA!」
Roaring, Al swung the Blue Dragon Blade overhead and drove the blade down before Cecilus could reach the light.
The next instant, the light that took the Blue Dragon Blade's direct hit flashed fiercely, swallowing Al's body—and the approaching Cecilus's body—and obliterating them— × × × 「She did it——!」
Cecilus screamed as she flew like a ballistic missile, having caught the boulder-fist on her zori and stolen its momentum.
Even before that scream left her lips, Al aimed the tip of the Blue Dragon Blade at empty air and— 「DONAAAA!!」
Compared to Alakia's power, the magic was like the moon against a speck of dust, but the pebble she generated shot across the sky and snuffed out the light of doom just as it was about to be born.
For an instant, the brilliance seared even Al's eyes through her helm, but it lacked the power to take Al's life, let alone halt Cecilus's speed.
「Al-san, that was awesome!!」
Instantly seeing through whose handiwork the explosion of light was, and swallowing the emotion of having narrowly escaped death all in one breath, Cecilus plunged toward Alakia.
Her raised right hand was cocked in a knife-hand strike—a cutting edge that would surpass any merely famous blade. It flashed through the air and struck diagonally at Alakia, whose magic-crystal wings had sprouted— 「——!」
In that instant, a thunderclap that needed no exaggeration whatsoever roared across the sky, and Al had a vision of the heavens being torn asunder.
And it was no illusion—the shockwave from Cecilus's knife-hand pierced through to the buildings on the verge of collapse behind Alakia, delivered the coup de grâce, and sent the entire block crumbling.
But—the one who actually received the knife-hand, Alakia— 「——」
Her blood-colored eyes shifted with a sickly, darting motion, peering at Cecilus who was right in front of her.
Taking that devastating strike to her forehead and yet not so much as swaying from her position in midair, Alakia raised the wings of magic crystal as though in return— 「——」
And just as her thin lips wove the faintest sound, a single blow tore through Cecilus lethally.
△▼△▼△▼△ Time flowed, elapsed, passed—and "Alakia" was disappearing.
Savoring the sensation of her existence, her soul's very location being gradually painted over, Alakia in her agony and pain tried desperately to recall the brilliance of her sun.
She had been a surplus existence. Despite being created through countless sacrifices, she had been utterly indifferent to what came after—nothing more than a walking hazard with nowhere to go.
And that terrifying existence, whose purpose and proper handling no one knew—she had calmly placed it alongside the path of her life, turned to it, and told it to follow.
How could anyone resist such completed magnificence?
Rebellion and resistance could never have taken root. She was the very embodiment of what Alakia believed to be right, and her existence was the meaning of Alakia's birth.
To keep from losing that radiance, to keep from letting slip what she found beautiful about that radiance, she had chosen to leave her side when she believed it necessary—and she had managed, somehow, to endure the feeling of being torn apart.
She endured and endured and endured, and believed that beyond it, the sun would rise once more.
——If she could protect the dawn of tomorrow, it didn't matter if she herself could never bask in the light of day again.
Raving with abandon, throwing tantrums when she couldn't have what she wanted, and finally being looked upon with disappointment by the sun itself—only then had she reached her conclusion.
She had thought the sun discarded her.
She had thought the sun would never shine on her again.
But in the final battle at the Imperial Capital, when they had faced each other—when Prisca had turned the "Sun Sword" upon the sobbing Alakia—she had not cut her down with that crimson holy blade.
And even afterward, when she was surrounded by the servants of the "Great Catastrophe," she could have escaped if she'd wanted to. But she had chosen captivity in exchange for Alakia's safety.
That heart, that radiance—nothing about them had changed.
If Prisca had not changed, then Alakia wanted to make an unchanging vow as well.
——Prisca Benedict.
The existence that was the emblem of the Volachia Empire's sun—setting, and rising once more.
When she thought of Prisca, Alakia could remain "Alakia."
Alakia's soul grew hotter, and she could stave off the limit that threatened to burst.
But though her loyalty and devotion to Prisca might be eternal, they could not stretch the breaking point to eternity.
It held back an existence on the verge of being swallowed and crushed.
While Alakia fought on against the violation of her spirit, the real world—where there was no room to spare a thought—continued to see the being borrowing Alakia's body expanding devastation.
The destruction grew more refined, the ruin swelled with greater momentum, and total collapse was only a matter of time.
The "Stone Mass"—which had existed in stagnation for centuries, indifferent to whether fragments of its power were used in human conflicts or put to work enriching human lives—had, upon entering the fragile vessel of Alakia, learned for the first time the concept of resisting annihilation.
Absorbed into Alakia, the Great Spirit had manifested a defensive instinct it would never have displayed in its natural state—and, ironically, had intensified its threat in order to protect the vessel that was Alakia.
「——」
She could feel someone—someone—fighting to stop her.
And she thought that, to whatever small extent that someone might weaken her, it would act as a brake on the loss of "Alakia."
But it wasn't enough. Weakening alone wasn't enough. Holding her back wasn't enough.
In order to obstruct the purpose of the "Great Catastrophe," Alakia had stuffed it into her mouth.
The Great Spirit—which had previously been utterly indifferent to anything done to it—now, having been absorbed into Alakia, had learned the terror of its own disappearance.
Just one more push. With one more push, the Great Spirit would understand.
In order for "Alakia" not to disappear, she needed the sun.
And in order for "Alakia" to fulfill her vow, she needed—the thunderclaps.
She could feel someone—someone—fighting to stop her.
It wasn't enough. That someone alone wasn't enough. She knew who she truly needed.
So Alakia—teetering on the edge of bursting—waited.
——For the thunderclaps. For the real thunder to resound.
△▼△▼△▼△ 「——Kill me, Cecilus.」
The instant she heard that, her thoughts, impossibly, ground to a halt.
Having driven her ultimate knife-hand strike home—and discovering, in the very next heartbeat, that it had not worked at all—the beautiful girl with blood streaming from her eyes was weeping, and in a frail voice, she was begging.
「——」
Before even that whisper could be swallowed, a devastating blow struck Cecilus square in the chest.
The girl's slender arm, bristling with razor-sharp magic crystals, was every bit a blade—and Cecilus's thin chest was torn open mercilessly. Dyeing her beloved kimono red, she plummeted.
Pain—yes. The reality of having done it—yes. Ample signs of a major crisis—absolutely.
But more than the gaping wound, more than the blood trailing through the air behind her, more than the girl's anguished eyes and face receding into the distance—she could not look away from the words that had been spoken.
『■■!!』『■■■■』『■●■●■●■』『■■■■●●■■』『●●●■■■』『——■■』『●●●●●!!』『■■■●■●●■■●●』『●●……■』『●●■■●■■●●』『●■●■●■●■』『●●■●■●●●■■●——!』
「——I would appreciate some silence, if you don't mind!!」
In that instant, Cecilus was making a fierce appeal to the voices of the audience that she heard without cease.
「————」
Under normal circumstances, Cecilus would never silence the audience's voices.
She heard them as fuel for her own motivation, letting them wash over her while maintaining her composure.
She silenced them now. She wanted silence—the kind where even pain itself would be unwelcome.
「————」
Falling, Cecilus fixed her gaze on the girl within the silence where no audience voices intruded.
Weeping blood tears, suffering, and using the destruction of the world as a vehicle for her lament, the girl had finally threaded her wish into a meaningless groan.
And that wish—that name—happened to be none other than her own. If that wasn't the fate of a leading actor, what was?
But—— 「——'Kill me' is not something I can ignore.」
More than the pain, more than the shock, the line she had woven was harder to accept, and Cecilus bit down.
In the same instant, her falling body—head toward the ground—tucked its knees, reversed, and landed nimbly. She dodged the cascade of stone pillars aimed at her landing spot—dodged, dodged, dodged—and skidded to a stop, dragging her heel across the ground.
Then she raised her face.
「Those weren't words directed at me, you know.」
In this situation, there was no other "Cecilus" who could be called.
But—that the girl had called through her tears, and placed her wish upon, was not her—Cecilus understood that perfectly. And for some reason, that made her furious beyond all reason.
A climactic moment. The crucible. The deciding scene. The showcase episode—however you wanted to put it.
A moment like that, a scene like that, a showcase like that—and the Cecilus Segmunt summoned to stand in it could not possibly be anyone but herself.
And therefore—— 「——Cecilus! Your wounds are……」
「I've made up my mind, Al-san.」
Responding to Al, who had somehow ended up holding her Blue Dragon Blade to her own neck upon seeing Cecilus's deep wound and bleeding state, Cecilus tore a strip from the torn hem of her kimono and used it to bind her wild blue hair at the back.
Then, smiling, she looked up at the weeping girl—the heroine—and declared: 「Let the Heavenly Observers bear witness as well—to what the world shall ultimately choose.」