Chapter 16 - Morning Star (6)

"Do you think sparing me will make me betray my own?!"

That was what Ivan heard as he pinned Eiphellos's shoulder with his knee and exposed the wound.

"Ha! Going to torture me? Go on, then! I am Eiphellos, Centurion of His Excellency the Sixth Dragon General's Guard Infantry Division!"

That was what he said as Ivan pressed around the wound, spreading it open and parting the torn flesh of his chest.

The moment Ivan began tipping the healing potion, that defiant voice began to falter.

"Hydrochloric acid...! You vicious... Ghhh...!! Damn... you... humans...!"

Ivan did not correct his misunderstanding. But inwardly, he was impressed. The wound had torn one lung apart. Merely imagining how it would feel to have healing potion poured over it made his heart sink.

Fortunately, he had no memory of entrusting himself to a healing potion with an injury that severe. He had been unconscious when he sustained his worst wounds. He had heard they had practically bathed him in the stuff; even if he had been conscious, that would have knocked him out.

"Ghhh... Ugh... It's... no use..."

At this point, Ivan could not help admiring him. As the shredded lung knitted itself roughly together, residual healing potion must have pooled inside it. Simply enduring that was astonishing.

But a moment later, he let out a dry chuckle.

"Remember me... I won't forget you either. Not even in the afterlife!"

CRUNCH!

His eyes blazing with grim resolve, the demon bit his tongue. Horrible crunching sounds followed. Ivan stopped pouring the potion and sighed.

"Is it because you fought on the front lines? You still believe this superstition."

"Mmph...?"

"Biting off your tongue won't kill you. People aren't built that frail. The only way someone who can't move can kill themselves is through cardiac arrest."

For some reason, the superstition that one could die a heroic death by biting one's tongue was widespread throughout the world.

Remarkable. Had they ever seen someone accidentally kill themselves while eating?

Professional agents like Ivan had always wondered about that.

The more "valiant" the warriors, knights, and generals who rampaged across battlefields, the more susceptible they were to such superstitions. Presumably because a grand, heroic death was their idea of "romance."

Ivan stared down at Eiphellos for a long while, looking at him as though he were pathetic, then sighed heavily and checked how much healing potion remained. This was his last bottle, and now less than a third was left.

"You're only prolonging the pain. I'm not trying to torment you, centurion. This is medical treatment, and this liquid is a healing potion."

"Mmph... Ghh...!"

"Stop. You'll open the wound further."

Ivan pried his mouth open, dumped in every last drop, and clamped it shut. The demon seemed desperate to spit it out, but soon his eyes glazed over.

His half-severed tongue steeped in healing potion, which went down his esophagus in gulps and spread through his body.

Healing potions treated only physical injuries. Drinking one would offer little particular benefit unless there was a perforation in the stomach or esophagus.

Of course, if someone had esophagitis, it would clear right up while making their entire esophagus feel as though it were on fire, but that was beside the point.

"Mmmph..."

"Have the strength to talk now?"

"Petrovich... the Venomous Spider..."

"Hmm...?"

Eiphellos began murmuring blankly, his eyes unfocused. His gaze shifted to the bushy beard covering everything below Ivan's nose, then rose to examine his eyes and forehead.

"I heard... you were dead... This method... Ghh... Ugh... Extermination... Unit... I see... So that's it..."

Had this fellow seen action during the war?

Ivan narrowed his eyes.

"Why come yourself? Your people can't be doing well enough to throw someone of your caliber away like a disposable tool."

A centurion was merely a commander of the lowest rank. In other words, common manpower they had once had in abundance. Certainly not anyone important.

But that had been during the war, when the demons' full strength was still intact.

The Demon King and most of the Seven Dragon Generals had died, and the remnants had splintered and been driven beyond the bounds of the world. For years now, they had been locked in a contest of competing ambitions where might made right.

A centurion from those days was now an exceedingly precious "serving officer," with proven strength and command ability.

"Not... Cough! Not anymore."

"What?"

"Did you think... we'd keep insisting on operations bound to fail...? United Kingdoms... Your complacency... Ghhh... makes me... sick..."

When they attacked Esidisi, the demons had concealed their identities and hired mercenaries. Their remaining followers within the United Kingdoms had probably helped. And that had ended in spectacular failure.

Afterward, they had realized the operation had been doomed before it even began. Someone had already been on their trail before they put the plan into action.

'We can't rely on our followers alone. There's a spy among us.'

Believing they had lost the intelligence war, they now needed to send someone trustworthy. They had to succeed.

Whatever happened to the others, there was one person they absolutely had to kill: the hero's daughter.

Yet they also had to allow for failure. If they sent someone too important and failed, the damage would be uncontrollable.

And so Eiphellos was their test.

'A commander good enough to succeed at most operations, but not so valuable that losing him would hurt much. Exactly the right level.'

Ivan looked down at Eiphellos with bitterness in his eyes. This man had volunteered despite knowing precisely how they valued him.

Even if the operation succeeded, he could not return alive—not if they meant to erase their tracks.

However many years of peace had passed since the war, there was no way to commit a terrorist attack near Prizhenkaya and make it home alive without leaving a trail.

The fact that Eiphellos had walked into certain danger prepared to die from the outset stirred a powerful sense of kinship in Ivan. He sighed deeply.

"There won't be another attack now. Not after your failure."

"..."

"I'm talking to myself. No need to answer."

Ivan sat beside him and looked up at the sky. Eiphellos's ragged breathing sounded at his side.

"Once you've failed and been discarded, they can call it nothing more than a terrorist attack by 'a handful of extremists.' That's how your superiors will explain it to the United Kingdoms."

"..."

"Your presence alone will already have put the United Kingdoms on the highest alert. Naturally, they won't be stupid enough to plot another attack."

"..."

"Is there anything you want?"

"What... are you going to do with me...?"

"You have three choices left."

Remain a prisoner and be taken to Prizhenkaya.

There he would enjoy the kind hospitality of Krasilof's Counterintelligence Command, charged with attempting to assassinate a person of national importance.

The Command would then fabricate a connection to the "Crown Prince's Faction" as his backers and launch a political offensive. Naturally, brutal torture and magical restraints would follow.

Or be released and return home.

Krasilof's Counterintelligence Command would put a tail on him. However quickly he fled, there was no way to make it from the outskirts of Prizhenkaya back to his military camp unscathed.

Thus, even if he returned alive, he would face the suspicion that he was a "traitor who sided with the enemy to save his own skin."

He would inevitably be shunned by the demons, or interrogated and executed by them.

But finally, there was one last option.

"Do you understand your situation?"

"Kill me."

"Your own people have abandoned you. You can neither go back nor move forward. The afterlife is all you have left."

Ivan gripped his axe and raised it. Slowly, he took a firm hold of the demon's horn.

Eiphellos squeezed his eyes shut and murmured quietly.

"Though you wander through the valley of death."

"Fear not. For I am your comfort."

The Demon King's prayer. One Ivan had heard so very often.

When the Demon King had lived, nearly every demon's last words had been the same. They died yearning for him. Fanatically.

And so Ivan, too, knew the verses that followed.

"I am the star of the cross in the darkest night."

"I am the lighthouse upon the storm-tossed sea."

"I am your cradle and your fortress."

Fear not. For I am your comfort.

Still holding Eiphellos's horn, Ivan whispered.

"Are your parents still alive?"

"... What?"

"If not, I run an orphanage."

"What on earth are you talking about...?"

"I take in war orphans with nowhere to go. Regardless of nationality or race."

Four years ago, when the Demon King died and Ivan decided to retire, his superiors had issued the following order.

["Kill the Seven Dragon Generals before you return."]

It meant go and die. The order had been issued to every member of the Extermination Unit.

Of its eight strike teams, only one had survived that order.

When he returned successful, Elizaveta had wept as she stamped his retirement application. She had told him never to let himself be seen again. To live as though he were dead.

She was sorry she had been unable to stop the order. She was grateful simply that he had returned alive.

Even when the names of all who had gone before were forgotten, their honor would endure forever.

And so.

"If all you want is to survive, you can abandon who you are and live forgotten, as though you were dead."

"I don't deserve that."

"Everyone deserves that. Loyalty and faith do not define your life."

If you wish, I will break your horns. They will be the last chains that bound you.

But if you prefer, I will lower the axe a little further.

That is your final choice: to live with human dignity, or to die with it.

At Ivan's words, Eiphellos closed his eyes. He let out a deep sigh, then drew another short, ragged breath.

"I want... to live."

"A wise choice."

CRACK!

One more person was added to the register of St. Vasilisa Orphanage.

Orphan. In his fifties. Of demon origin.

* * *

After the failed assassination of Esidisi, the threat posed by the demons had increased dramatically.

In other words, Isabelle's tutorial had been designed to be this difficult because of Ivan's own actions.

Which meant...

'The tutorials don't happen simultaneously.'

This was not a game in which every character handled their respective incident at the same point following character creation. The timing of the events differed depending on which character one began the game with.

Ivan stroked his chin, lost in thought.

The demons were not merely AI following a predetermined script. Like everyone else in this world, not one of them was an NPC.

Even events that unfolded according to clichés could reach different endings depending on the variables.

If so, what could he predict? What should he do?

Ivan turned toward Isabelle. She was watching the survivors with sorrowful eyes.

'Keep these kids alive until graduation.'

Because this other world was an academy story. Because it had to be. Even if there were no players, no characters, no NPCs, that one thing could not change.

There would be time enough for other thoughts afterward.

"Mister."

"Mm."

"If I hadn't boarded this train today, their families... The people aboard would still be alive, wouldn't they?"

The dead, too, were no mere NPCs sacrificed in a cutscene.

Probably, yes.

Ivan answered as he looked up at the faintly brightening night sky.

"Do you know how many people the hero killed?"

"... What?"

"Including indirect casualties, the estimate comes to at least thirty thousand a year. People forced into battles they were certain to lose, killed to draw the attention of the Demon King's army and support the hero's operations."

The Hero's Party was, fundamentally, an assassination squad. Its purpose was to kill the Seven Dragon Generals and the Demon King.

Which meant that to lull them into complacency, they had to be handed effortless victories elsewhere.

It was the basic grand strategy of feinting in one direction and striking in another. There had been a time when other fronts were forced to suffer defeat to support the Hero's Party's infiltration.

"Everyone there at the time knew it. The hero, me, even the soldiers on the front lines."

"..."

"But even then, the hero smiled."

Because if he did not—if he imagined his own failure, lamented his shortcomings, or let his burden crush him—all those people who had died for him alone would have given their lives in vain.

And so the hero chose to smile. Even when hope was so scarce that he had to split the sky in search of the Morning Star.

He himself had to appear as hope to everyone.

The moment he crumbled, the United Kingdoms would be finished.

"Look."

Ivan raised a hand and pointed at the sky.

Dawn was breaking in the east, coloring the sky a vivid blue.

In the west, the moon had already hidden its face. Yet even there, at the farthest edge...

The Morning Star shone even in the brightest hours.

Just as it had continued to shine through the darkest night.

"Ah..."

"That is the star your father bore in those days, and the star you have now inherited. A hero is not the strongest of all."

"The... bravest..."

"Yes. Someone who kneels beneath no burden, who never loses their smile, whatever the moment—that is whom we called a hero. And now you must become their hero."

Looking at the survivors huddled together in grief, Ivan pressed his hand firmly atop her head.

"Isabelle, daughter of Maximilien. Lift your head and stand straight. The sorrowful receive pity, but those who always smile inspire admiration. Rise with hope in your heart, and live a life in which another's sacrifice brings gratitude to mind before guilt. Live to prove to everyone that those sacrifices were not in vain."

Like the Morning Star. Never losing its own light even beside the moon, shining largest in the sky.

Shining unmistakably beside the rising sun.

As a symbol of hope. Just so.

Isabelle stared blankly at Ivan, then suddenly came to her senses and spoke.

"Would you ever consider shaving that beard?"

"No."

Ivan answered in horror.