In the Crystal Palace of the Imperial Capital
"So it's finally stopped moving. Seriously, you're making this old man feel way too depressed."
Orbalt gave a slow, weary shrug and sighed. Lying before his eyes were the remains of the abomination that had thoroughly exhausted the shinobi elder—a form grotesquely twisted into something so foul, so fundamentally wrong that calling it a mere zombie would be generous beyond measure. It was the残骸 of a being whose very appearance had been warped beyond recognition.
Orbalt regarded his treatment of that aberrant thing as a mercy killing.
The dead rose with their memories intact. Moreover, reviving them consumed the mana of the "stones" that supported the Empire's land. —Therefore, killing the dead was the minimum directive he'd been given.
"Still, they're better off dead. For a situation to make this old man feel that way… that's just too damn twisted."
The luxury of respecting human life, of showing mercy to the weak—only those with room in their hearts could afford such sentiments. Orbalt, whose remaining years were few and whose capacity for such luxuries had long since evaporated, had cast them aside ages ago.
And yet even Orbalt found that the audience hall—or rather, this laboratory of the "soul"—had gone far beyond acceptable limits.
"This method of doing things—they're trying to remind me of the people who made Araki. Doing shit like this when it's neither play nor revenge—that's what makes them impossible to deal with. Not that I haven't dealt with them."
As he muttered this, a particular group of extremists he had dealt with in the past surfaced in Orbalt's mind.
The perpetrators who had sought to create Araki—a perfected "Spirit Eater"—had sacrificed countless victims, claiming their motivation was duty, or the future of the Empire.
The horror of this audience hall—the souls of the reanimated dead assembled in vessels of earth, souls that had been tampered with, fused together, or twisted into something new. This wasn't done to win the war. It was an atrocity committed for purposes that disregarded the outcome of the battle before them. And in the chain of events that had produced those aberrant creations, Orbalt could sense the same thing he had felt from those extremists: a drive to seek results severed from all emotion.
And he could understand the purpose of that pursuit, because Orbalt himself had once brushed against its edges.
"—They're trying to tamper with the soul."
Orbalt could use shinobi techniques to manipulate the souls of others—the art of rolling and compressing od. Chisha had stolen that technique from him as well, but it only ever skimmed the surface.
But this seeker was after something far greater.
What exactly that was, Orbalt had no way of knowing without knowing the seeker personally—but— "I've got a real bad feeling about this, Your Excellency.—As expected, there's no room left for me to betray you, is there?"
△▼△▼△▼△ —The defeat of the Demi-Human Alliance in the "Demi-Human War," and
Sphinx had few words to offer regarding that defeat.
Having lived for over three hundred and fifty years—most of which she had spent hiding, fleeing, simply surviving—Sphinx had been unable to defeat the opponent who had been trained specifically to kill her.
If one were to narrate the events that transpired, that was all there was to it.
Truthfully, even as the
She had virtually no attachment to life. She had spent those longest years prioritizing survival above all else because she considered it the most rational course toward fulfilling her purpose of creation.
And even at the moment when she was about to vanish without fulfilling that purpose, the only thing that remained was an instinctive aversion to relinquishing her creative mandate.
That was why, when she had fled into the underground of the Lugunica Royal Castle—the site of the decisive battle—and briefly shaken off the Witch of Greed's apprentice, she had been acting on that instinct alone.
But that flight, devoid of any attachment to life, changed Sphinx's fate.
"—You have a use. I will put you to work, to fulfill my wish."
In that man's turbid eyes, the fierce flame of ambition flickered.
△▼△▼△▼△ —The flames of the "Yang Sword" Volachia burned away what they had decided to destroy.
Vincent Volachia and
As a result, after a brutal battle of wits and life, Sphinx—defeated in their war of deception—was consumed by flame.
The blade of the "Yang Sword" reached the Witch—Sphinx—and delivered its crimson blaze to the soul of the reanimated carrier of the "Great Calamity." It set ablaze, all at once: the multiple Sphinxes arrayed against Vincent's forces, the Sphinxes stationed in the Crystal Palace, the Sphinxes observing the capital's battlefields, and the countless Sphinxes that were poised to launch attacks across the entire Empire.
"—Countermeasures are needed."
Sphinx uttered these words as she was engulfed in blazing red flames. But even exploiting the advantage of the dead—their diminished capacity for pain—she could not keep her burning body intact for long.
So then, should she abandon the multiple bodies already consumed by fire and carry out her plan with new Sphinxes born from this "death"? —No. That was impossible.
The flames of the Yang Sword were burning Sphinx's soul.
As long as the soul—the very foundation from which new reanimated Sphinxes would be born—was ablaze, there was no avoiding the earthen bodies being consumed by flames even as they were created.
"————"
There was no countermeasure. With that sense of utter finality, this Sphinx's body crumbled.
She would burn to death, learn from this "death," and move on to the next iteration—but the reconstructed Sphinx body would ignite once more, and she would reach the same conclusion: there was no countermeasure. And then she would end.
It was over. It was over. The journey of Sphinx's pursuit—a flawed creation of the Witch of Greed, wanderer of the world for so many ages—came to its close here.
She had exhausted every option, laid every trap, and it was not enough.
It was the same defeat she had tasted during the "Demi-Human War." Back then, too, Sphinx had exhausted her options and fallen short, leaving her no choice but defeat and death.
The only reason that hadn't been the end was not due to anything Sphinx herself had done, but because of interference from an outside party.
And this time, she could not hope for the same.
Because the man who held those ambitions—the one who had saved Sphinx back then—was gone.
Leip Bariel was dead. And so, no longer— "—Analysis is required."
Suddenly, even as she allowed herself to be consumed, even as she should have been meeting her end, Sphinx moved.
With the flames of the Yang Sword still blazing across her entire body, Sphinx pressed a finger to her own chin and blew her head off—core insect and all—triggering "death."
And that was executed, in chain succession, by every Sphinx on the battlefield, in the capital, and across the Empire.
"—Analysis is required."
This was not an act of despair. She was not consumed by a death wish.
It was simply that through death, Sphinx could integrate her memories into her soul. The countless Sphinxes dying all at once, integrating countless memories into one—that was how she built up the collective consciousness that was herself.
Of course, the soul collecting those memories was itself burning, and it was only a matter of time before it was consumed entirely.
However, in the time remaining before she burned away, Sphinx could continue creating new burning versions of herself from scratch, stacking countless assessments, considerations, and deliberations of the situation and possible countermeasures.
Once, she had felt no particular emotion toward "death." But now, it was different.
"—Resistance is required."
Resisting, resisting, resisting—Sphinx gathered every possibility she could find, scrutinizing each one.
The outcomes at each apex. The soul experiments in the Crystal Palace. The history of the Volachia royal family. The "Spirit Eater." The foreign objects from the kingdom. The "Star Reader." The Great Spirit. The "Great Calamity." Every possibility, every fragment of all things.
—And then, △▼△▼△▼△ —Chained in her cell, Priscilla witnessed with her crimson eyes the entirety of what had unfolded before the Witch.
The Witch of Greed—her entire body suddenly set ablaze by red flames—and Priscilla recognized at a glance that this was the crimson blaze of the "Yang Sword" passed down through the Volachia Empire.
That it was Vincent Volachia who had delivered that crimson blaze to the Witch—she knew that as well.
"So you've finally played your hidden card. Truly, you are an insatiable brother."
That Vincent had not drawn the "Yang Sword" and had kept it in reserve as his trump card was self-evident to Priscilla, who was likewise of the Volachia bloodline. Naturally, given the troublesome nature of the "Yang Sword," it made sense that Vincent could not have relied on it lightly.
In any case, the deception had succeeded, and the Witch was supposed to have been destroyed by the flames— "What have you done?"
"—Analysis is required."
The flames of the Yang Sword burn what they wish to burn. The blade of the Yang Sword cuts what it wishes to cut.
This principle could not be bent. And yet, the Witch, who should have been swallowed by the blazing red flames before Priscilla's eyes, slowly emerged from that crimson blaze.
The flames had stopped burning the Witch.
The flames of the Yang Sword burn what they wish to burn. The blade of the Yang Sword cuts what it wishes to cut.
Therefore, the fate of the Witch—burned and cut by Vincent's Yang Sword—could not be changed.
However— "What are you?"
If what the flames had decided to burn, and what the blade had been directed to cut, turned out to be something different entirely—then that changed everything.
Vincent had killed the Witch—Sphinx—with the Yang Sword.
But the figure that emerged from the flames was not the Witch as Priscilla knew her.
The cracked, pale-blue skin. The black eyes with their gold pupils. The childlike, youthful appearance—all of it had been shed, and a different being now stood before Priscilla.
Long white hair reaching down her back, and black eyes that held a transparent, intellectual curiosity.—White and black: if one were to try to paint that existence, those two colors alone would suffice.
"What are you?"
"—The Witch of Greed."
To Priscilla's repeated question, there came a quiet answer brimming with certainty.
The being who, at the end of a long passage of time, had fulfilled her purpose of creation and remade the very nature of her soul—the true embodiment of the Witch of Greed—having shed the fate of being consumed by flames, declared: "My purpose of creation has been fulfilled.—I shall go to fulfill my purpose of living."