What is the proper end I should meet?
From a certain point onward, I had been consumed solely by this one thought.
Even when I moved the muscles of my face to smile. Even when I held serious council with other Demon Lords. Even during the most terrible of acts, when I mingled flesh with my lovers, I was occasionally gripped by this singular notion. And each time it found me, it clung to my skull like damp, cold moisture.
How should I die?
"……."
I suddenly looked back.
The area was dense with trees, so my field of vision was extremely limited. Beyond them, people were dying. Because of the war I had ignited. How many more should be added to the four hundred thousand I had already slaughtered? I decided to simply consider it an even five hundred thousand from now on.
Five hundred thousand.
How should a person who killed five hundred thousand be held accountable?
Before I directly slew Paimon with my own hands, I had a very clear plan.
To be executed as a villain at the execution ground.
It was simpler than I thought. All I had to do was publicly announce all the things I had done up to that point. The 8th Crescent Alliance Army. From the Lily War to the Puppet War. The assassination attempt at the Batavia Governor's residence was, in truth, a self-staged act. If I laid it all bare, without hiding anything, my crimes would far exceed a mere death sentence.
At first, there would surely be many who would defend me.
Intellectuals who sympathized with republicanism. Demonkin who, blinded by the Crescent Alliance Army's achievements, unconditionally applauded the nascent Demon Lord's Army. Those who gained private property through the Emancipation Edict.
But one by one, they would fall silent.
Even after hearing I was the mastermind behind the Crescent Alliance Army, many would likely protest. After all, the Crescent Alliance Army had ultimately won, hadn't it? The original conspiracy was hatched by Paimon, and Dantalion's stratagem, which leveraged it to secure victory for the Demon Lord's Army, deserved praise. Of course, hundreds of thousands had died! But sacrifice for the greater cause is always inevitable.
But one by one, they would fall silent.
Even after hearing the full truth of the Lily War, many would likely protest. It would be revealed that purging the Neutral Faction Demon Lords was nothing but pure deception, and that Dantalion had deliberately incited the coup, and yet... perhaps people would still protest.
But certainly, one by one, they were falling silent.
Eventually, someone speaks up.
Wasn't it Dantalion who killed the majority of the Demon Lords and Grand Dukes?
Now the voices grow steadily louder. More radical. The lives of soldiers who perished in successive wars are invoked. At last, the Demonkin realize that Dantalion has been toying with them quite literally, and their fury toward this unprecedented mastermind knows no bounds.
What kind of roar will echo through the square then?
"Kill him!"
A hundred thousand voices crying out in unison, with one voice and one desire.
"Kill Dantalion!"
A perfect stage.
A Demon Lord born with a nature so demonic that even the gods would curse him. He manipulated and massacred the Demonkin and the human race alike to satisfy his own selfish desires and sadistic impulses—but his crimes are finally exposed, and he faces the judgment of the people.
"Criminal. Do you have any final words of repentance?"
The executioner speaks. It could be Marbas, or it could be another Demon Lord. But the executioner I have privately marked in my mind is none other than Daisy. The person who hates me more than anyone else in the world severing my head from my body. Now that is nothing short of a flawless ending, isn't it?
"Repentance?"
Under the gaze of a hundred thousand furious spectators, I smile. The final smile of my life's last performance. I will deliver a performance of absolute perfection, brimming with boundless ecstasy as I spit upon the victims and the people.
"I have never repented, not once. Killing people was my pleasure; slaughtering ever more of them was my calling. If there is any regret, it is vanishing without even killing a million. Why couldn't I have killed more!"
In that moment, the spectacle of absolute evil being punished is etched into history.
Silence falls. The people are aghast at the blasphemy I have uttered. Then, like a bomb detonating, the citizens erupt in fury and hurl every manner of object. The execution ground descends into chaos, and only one cry is repeated with burning fervor: hurry up and kill Dantalion!
Remaining as an evil beyond all excuse or justification.
Dantalion vanishes beneath the great sword swung by his daughter.
This is the best.
The ideal ending I have always dreamed of.
"Ugh……!?"
My foot caught on a tree root and I stumbled.
I thought I'd cleared it properly, but my foot slipped. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to the new body yet. I tumbled across the ground, grimacing. Without any proper breakfall technique, my body ached terribly. Dust covered my face.
'No one should be chasing me.'
I looked behind me. The undergrowth was thick. There might have been someone I hadn't noticed, but for now I judged that there were no pursuers. That was right. No one was getting in my way. That was what mattered. This plan only had meaning if it was carried out in complete secrecy……
'I need to get out of here quickly.'
I quickened my pace. My knee was badly injured, but it didn't matter. My body could handle minor wounds like these with ease.
The turning point was after Paimon died.
I always carried the handkerchief stained with Paimon's blood close to me. Whenever my thoughts ground to a halt, whenever that inevitable wave of depression crashed over me—the kind no human could avoid—I would pull out the red handkerchief and lightly bury my nose in it. Then my sluggish melancholy would wash away as if it had never existed.
———Was death truly enough?
It was like a kind of compulsion.
I would slip alone into the imperial palace building where Paimon lay and spend five hours, seven hours, lost in thought. It wasn't enough. Something was critically missing. Whether being publicly executed at the execution ceremony was truly the best ending—doubt gnawed at me from somewhere deep inside.
A dark waiting room.
The specters of all the lives I had slaughtered reached out to me with persistent, groping hands. The apparitions deceived not just my sight but even my sense of touch. Dark fingers raked across my forearms, calves, thighs, and the nape of my neck.
'Can dying alone fulfill my responsibility?'
I murmured, as though asking the specters.
'All of these people?'
Naturally, the shadows gave no answer.
They merely repeated in mechanical fashion the sounds they had uttered when they were alive. They were clearly afterimages projected by my own memories and psyche, and they would surely be able to tell whether I was satisfied with my answer or not.
'But what more can I even do to bring this to a close?'
The thoughts had no escape and continued to wander aimlessly.
But then, as if struck by lightning, the answer surfaced the moment I realized that Daisy had been acting all along. It wasn't a thought that had initially taken the shape of an answer. No, it first rattled my skull in the form of a decisive question.
What happens to this world if I die?
This critical question had only bloomed within me after Daisy saw through my identity. It was unquestionably the question among questions—the heaviest one of all. I had been consumed by Dantalion. But wasn't Dantalion nothing more than an illusion, and a deliberate one at that?
'What if everything just... ends?'
I didn't know precisely what kind of place this world was.
Maybe people would go on living whether I died or not. If so, there was no problem. Dantalion's atrocities would be passed down through the ages until they had run their course. But what if this world itself ended along with my death?
'That can't be allowed.'
Something inside me screamed.
Killing Jack Orland would be undone as though it never happened.
The deaths of four hundred thousand lives would be undone as though they never happened.
Paimon's lofty ideals too.
Barbatos's beautiful convictions too.
All of it—wiped away as though none of it ever existed.
'That much, at least, no matter what happens...'
I bit down on my lip.
There was a one-in-a-million possibility.
There existed the possibility that if I died, this world itself might cease to exist.
Normally, death meant slipping into darkness. No images, no sounds—just complete annihilation. My personality, my memories, my voice, my nuances—all of it, gone.
Up to that point, I could accept it.
I could have endured that.
But to let my sins vanish without a trace—that was something I absolutely could not accept.
The world must know me.
It must remember what kind of author I had been.
And it must remember thoroughly just how countless lives had been shattered by my hand. Among them was a woman named Paimon. There was a girl named Barbatos.
My daughter.
Daisy would be there, too.
'…….'
To bear responsibility, I had to die.
Yet for that responsibility to hold meaning, I had to not die.
Within this contradiction, I agonized. I cannot say how long I remained lost in thought. All I know is that when I entered the chamber, the sky was dark, and when I emerged, it was blood-red. It was only later that I realized I had shut myself away in there for two full days.
I had found the answer.
All that remained was to carry it out.
'Dantalion dies.'
First, Lapis.
The companion who had always stood by my side and lent me her aid.
'However, not Dantalion's body—I will transfer my consciousness elsewhere.'
'You mean…?'
'I will use Ivar's doll.'
Lapis had already understood everything.
'You are determined to shoulder the burden endlessly, then.'
'Yes.'
My consciousness transferred into Ivar's doll, I go on living.
Not as Dantalion. As the very consciousness that fabricated the misunderstanding called Dantalion, the one who rightfully must bear the sin — I continue to survive. I remain in a state where only my bare life clings on.
'Will I… never be able to see Your Grace again?'
'Yes.'
I nodded.
I will cast away every happiness and affection Dantalion ever enjoyed. Lapis, Lauro, Ivar, and everyone else. None of them will know where I am, and even if they somehow find out, they will never be able to meet me.
This is the best outcome.
Dantalion is punished while simultaneously being forced to sustain this world for eternity.
It was the verdict I passed upon myself.
'I want you to live, Lapis. Forget me and…'
'That is impossible.'
Lapis refused.
She had refused to live in a world where she could not see me, choosing instead to meet her end alongside the Demon Lord's Castle. Just as she could not persuade me, I could not persuade her either. Lapis Lazuli faded away together with her lord, Dantalion.
Next was Ivar.
'No, I can't do it, Your Grace. I can't do it… I can't, Your Grace.'
The demand to keep Acting as Dantalion. And the notification that he would never see me again — upon hearing these, Ivar Lodbrok despaired. He begged instead to die together with Demon Lord Dantalion.
I had no choice but to grant Lapis that kind of ending, but Ivar was the exception. I needed someone who would continue playing Dantalion to the very end. There was no one besides Ivar capable of that.
'Am I the only one?'
Ivar spoke, hollowed out like a broken doll.
I felt pity for him — but I had already come too far to turn back over something as trivial as pity. Besides, Ivar knew it too. That the collapse of my forces bore his share of responsibility as well.
*'I understand, Your Grace.'*
In the end, Ivar accepted.
*'That I will never see Your Grace again... I accept that I must deny this truth, even knowing it.'*
Everything was prepared.
Daisy would never accept such an ending. That was precisely why Dantalion's true body had chosen to die alongside her. Until the very last moment, Daisy would have comforted herself with the thought that Dantalion had closed his eyes peacefully.
But.
Nothing was over yet.
Shouldering the responsibility — that was what truly began now.
So that none of it would lose its meaning.
Forever.