Could there truly be no other way but to kill him?
My arm trembled beyond my ability to control. I tried to steady my breathing, but I had lost too much blood, and my vision kept blurring. I probably wouldn't last much longer. I made my decision at once.
One step forward.
If Father came even a single step closer, I would swing my sword without hesitation.
Father had always impressed upon me: whether you can do something or not is a secondary concern. If there is something you must do, then you can do it. Therefore, I could kill Father too…
Yes, Father.
You must secretly wish for me to be the one to kill you.
Father, who was always wandering in search of his grave. Father, who swore that if he could never find it, he would turn the entire world into a desolate graveyard. But now, you no longer need to haunt it like a specter.
"Then…"
I smiled.
Honestly, I wasn't sure whether it was a proper smile. I could feel the corners of my mouth trembling pathetically.
"I will fall into hell together with you, Father."
We looked at each other and smiled. It was the first time we had ever gazed at each other with a smile that wasn't mockery. And it would be the last. The smile Father showed me—the first and last he ever gave—was quite different from the one I had so desperately longed for in my dreams…
"I knew you'd say that."
Father slowly reached into his coat.
In his hand was a glass bottle. A glass bottle filled to the brim with a transparent liquid. The shape was familiar. It was the type of container Master Jeremy used when brewing potions for Father.
"…."
A potion of transparent color.
In alchemy, especially when dealing with various potions, color and scent were the most critical factors. If you didn't pre-sort your reagents by color, you could easily make the mistake of using the wrong substance. For instance, it was an ironclad rule that healing potions had to be manufactured with a reddish hue and the scent of rosemary.
But that one was transparent.
In other words, it was a substance that others had no need to recognize. Or rather, a substance it would be troublesome for others to identify.
"Father, that is…?"
Father did not answer my question. He simply uncorked the bottle and tipped its contents into his mouth. I watched his throat convulse as he swallowed the liquid. In moments, the bottle was empty.
Father grimaced for an instant, then forced a strained smile. From within his coat he produced another bottle, identical to the first. I watched in a daze as he drained the second potion as well.
A colorless, odorless drug.
"…!"
It was poison. That was poison!
At the very instant I realized it, Father broke into a weak cough. It was coughing up blood. Dark crimson blood spilled across the ground. It wasn't blood from the esophagus—it had been pushed up from deep within his organs. And yet Father still brought the third bottle to his lips.
I dropped my greatsword and rushed to Father's side.
"Father!"
Father staggered and his knees buckled. I hurriedly propped up his body. He was light. Far too light. Had Father always been this thin? With a body this broken, Father had carried the Demon Lord's army, an entire empire, on his shoulders.
Father's eyes were unfocused. And they were growing dimmer by the moment.
"No… tell me the type of poison, the name—please!"
"…."
Father pressed his lips shut.
I scrambled to pick up the bottle that had fallen to the ground. Without a moment's hesitation, I gulped down the few remaining drops of liquid inside it. Instantly, a searing agony lanced through my esophagus. It felt as though my gullet were melting—no, burning. And I had swallowed only a few drops.
This was no ordinary poison. It was a toxin potent enough to dissolve one's internal organs. No matter that Father was the Demon Lord—no one could survive such a lethal dose!
"A—ah… no…"
With my left arm supporting Father's body, I frantically rummaged through his coat with my right hand. Healing potions. Father always carried healing potions on him. But with so much poison already ingested, their effectiveness was uncertain. Still, anything was better than nothing. That was all I could think about.
There was nothing.
Nothing at all.
My fingertips caught on nothing. There were no healing potions.
Why? Why was there nothing?
"No, Father… no…"
My eyes burned white with tears. They flowed down my cheeks. More tears than I had shed in my entire life streamed from my eyes.
I wiped them with the back of my hand and searched Father's coat again. But I still couldn't find any medicine. My fingers merely fished endlessly, futilely through the fabric of his cloak. Eventually, the tears blinded me entirely.
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.
I kept rubbing.
It was no use. The tears wouldn't stop.
Father's face.
I couldn't see Father's face.
"I don't want this… I don't want this… ah…"
I gathered every ounce of my strength and clutched Father tightly.
Something was trembling. It was the sound of my own body screaming. The mana remaining inside me began to run wild. With a deep, groaning crack, the earth split apart. The fissure spreading across the ground radiated outward in every direction like a spider's web, with me at the center.
"…Kill! Now… stop…!"
"Can't… until… it's over…!"
Noisy voices carried from a distance. Was it the soldiers, crying out in alarm?
Soon all the noise dissolved into a dull, humming drone—a faint, indistinct murmur. The sudden explosion of mana warped the air around us. The fractured ground crumbled away and collapsed downward, like the impact site of a small comet.
Only Father and I remained.
Only the place where we two stood was still, calm as the eye of a storm. I buried my face against Father's chest. My tears soaked ceaselessly through his clothes.
It was over.
It was all over.
Father's body still held a lingering warmth. A warmth that would one day vanish. Like a shivering newborn animal, I burrowed ever deeper into his embrace. Then, gently, a warm palm came to rest upon my head.
"Ah…"
I slowly raised my gaze.
Father was looking down at me. With an infinitely tender look in his eyes. And in that moment I intuited that this was the final instant. Every word I might offer Father, every glance I might share with him—all of it was slipping away with only the briefest reprieve.
I opened my mouth.
And in that moment, Father gently pressed his lips to mine.
"————."
Everything before my eyes froze.
The deep chasm that had split open around us. The light reflecting white in every direction from the mana. The clumps of earth and stone hanging motionless in defiance of gravity. All of it—still.
A sense of eternity washed over me.
The only sensation I could feel was Father's lips.
And the poison flowing from his mouth into mine.
Ah.
So that's how it was.
Father had swallowed the first potion and the second. But he had kept the third inside his mouth. He had planned to transfer it to me the moment I drew close and wrapped my arms around him, just as I had now.
The poison passed through my esophagus and dropped into my organs.
I felt the pain of a thousand needles stitching through my insides. Death, which had seemed to linger at a distance, now seized my body in its grip. But I refused to let go.
Instead, I clung to Father's lips as though throwing a childish tantrum—to feel this sensation for even a moment longer.
The agony of the poison meant nothing compared to this. I eagerly swallowed every drop of the poison Father offered, because I understood all of his thoughts.
At last, the poison had entirely drained into me.
There was nothing more flowing from Father's mouth. Father and I, neither first nor last between us, slowly drew our lips apart.
"…."
"…."
We gazed at each other.
I smiled softly.
"It hurts, Father."
"I had Master Jeremy make it specially for me."
"It hurts… so much."
There was nothing but pain.
And yet—I was grateful. I had met Father. I was dying alongside Father. That alone was enough to make me smile. It was still a mess of a smile, but unlike before, it was genuine.
Father must have felt the same.
He was enduring the same agony I felt now. The sensation of the whole body crumbling apart, of the innards turning to rags—we shared it equally.
Even though Father and I had been born at opposite ends of the world.
As Demonkin, as a member of the human race. As one born to be king, as one born to be a commoner. As one forced to become the Demon Lord, as one forced to kill the Demon Lord.
As one who brings the winter.
As one who must only endure it.
We had bloomed from opposite sides—yet we fell, properly, together.
That was enough.
That was all I needed.
I spoke to Father. Father smiled. And we pressed our lips together once more. Everything before my eyes turned white. Like looking up at the winter sky beyond the forest when I was a child—I couldn't remember the day.
Endlessly distant.
Infinitely silent.
I'm sorry, Father.
It seems I must go just a little bit ahead of you.
Just a little bit…
I slowly closed my eyes.
Laura suddenly felt a pang of anxiety and turned around.
Her lord had asked her to command the troops. That was naturally her role, so Laura had agreed readily enough. She'd felt uneasy when she heard that Daisy von Kustos had broken through the central line, but Laura believed in her lord.
*"I will handle my own affairs. Laura, see to Laura's."*
He had said that to her.
Laura had been somewhat anxious, but she nodded. After all, it was her lord's order. Until now, her lord had almost never failed to deliver on what he'd promised. Laura trusted Dantalion more than anyone.
And now, that trust was paying off.
"You left an opening, Consul."
Laura turned her gaze forward.
On the battlefield, the Helvetica mercenaries were steadily overwhelming the Republic's forces. Consul Elisabeth had made a fatal error—she had concentrated a portion of her troops through a gap that Daisy von Kustos had temporarily created.
"It was a gap barely wide enough for one person to pass through. 'Penny wise, pound foolish'—a warning made just for you."
Laura swept her commander's baton forward with confidence.
"Surround the enemy's center! Do not let them slip past your flanks! Drive them backward!"
"Yes, Your Highness!"
The adjutants answered in unison.
The Republic's militia had been routed, and chaos erupted. When the militia attempted to retreat, the Republic's elite troops moved to block them. The militia then tried to flee to both flanks, but the Helvetica mercenaries cut them off.
In the end, the militia was trapped—unable to advance or retreat—and plunged into despair. And despair, once it seized one's allies, spread swiftly. Laura was certain of victory in this battle.
"Commander! Lord Dantalion has sent a messenger!"
"Oh? What does my lord say?"
Nothing could go wrong.
Laura suppressed the unease that had crept over her earlier and asked with deliberate cheer.
The messenger opened his mouth.
"The enemy commander, Daisy von Kustos, has fallen!"
Laura nodded. The damnable maid was finally dead. She would have liked to raise a toast, but the thing that mattered most to Laura was something else entirely. The messenger, knowing this, hurriedly delivered the next piece of news—her lord's well-being.
"Lord Dantalion is unharmed!"