Chapter 81 - Meeting the Family (2)

Einar dragged Ivan off to Vasilisa Orphanage, insisting he wouldn't be satisfied until he'd seen where his little brother lived.

“An orphanage! Now this is fantastic!”

Einar roamed the grounds, laughing constantly. The children screamed and fled at the sight of his vicious face.

“You really spared no expense!”

“Mm.”

“War orphans looking better fed and dressed than the noble brats in my palace. Ha! What's the world coming to?”

Despite his words, Einar clapped Ivan on the back with evident pride.

“You little bastard. You're a better man than me.”

“Mm.”

Since that was objectively true, Ivan saw no need to argue. Einar burst into hearty laughter and slung an arm around his shoulders. With those horrifically developed muscles wrapped around his neck, Ivan had to suppress a shudder.

“Right, let's see your place now.”

* * *

Einar looked around the director's office and nodded.

“A very spartan office. So, where do you sleep?”

“Here.”

“What...?”

“On that sofa.”

“Oh...”

Einar hesitantly surveyed the room. One old sofa. One old coffee table. One wardrobe and one desk. The weapons on the wall gleamed, meticulously maintained.

Why was this bastard still living in the war all by himself?

Einar narrowed his eyes. Eating and sleeping in his office was one thing, but...

'He's been ready to leave at any moment.'

He was a king, Droan's finest field commander, and a man who had personally fought alongside his soldiers on the front lines. He saw through Ivan's condition at once. This office had been carelessly furnished with necessities, not things its occupant wanted, so he could leave without regret at any time, under any circumstances.

Take away the weapons on the wall, and anyone could sit behind that desk without looking out of place. That was how little “color” the room possessed. The color that personal belongings, collections, and individual tastes lent a space was entirely absent. This room was utterly monochrome. Colorless and transparent, without the slightest sense of belonging.

“Ivan. Sit.”

Einar gestured, his gaze heavy and somber. The moment he sat on the sofa, Huscarls rushed over to set bottles and glasses before him.

“Let's hear your story first. How did you kill one of the Seven Dragon Generals and come back alive?”

Ready to disappear at any moment, in a state where vanishing this very instant would come as no surprise. Einar had known someone like that.

Maximilien. The hero of mankind.

The bastard had been exactly like this just before he disappeared.

* * *

An accidental mistake by the god who created a race; the culmination of thousands upon tens of thousands of years of evolution; the finest creation of some destiny at work in the world.

The single strongest, greatest individual in an entire race.

During the war, humans had called them the “Seven Dragon Generals.”

Beings who had earned the name of gods in mortal flesh. Concepts manifested in the world. Representatives of each race that made up the demons.

The human equivalent might be the hero. No, not quite. Even the hero was not the strongest human individual. These beings could represent their entire species alone. They had become, quite literally, “racial gods.”

Seven such beings, and one who ruled those seven. A multiracial coalition army pouring forth under their command. Humanity, which had lost half the world within ten years of the war's outbreak.

Such had been the cause and history of the last war.

“How in the world did you come back alive?”

Einar asked Ivan as though beholding a miracle. He had faced the Seven Dragon Generals himself. He was one of the very few people in this world who had faced them and lived to return. Naturally, he had questions.

Even the Hero's Party had felt despair against the Seven Dragon Generals. They had known fear and pain. Learned defeat. Only with every member fighting together had they barely managed to defeat them one at a time.

And Ivan had faced one with only a handful of “well-trained” soldiers, killed it, and returned alive?

“The one you killed... Aviditas, was it? I think that's what I heard.”

“That's right.”

“The Lord of Death Dragons? Didn't that bastard even live on Ipera's Sky Isle? How the hell did you kill him? How did you make it back alive?”

Reasonable questions. Einar propped his feet on the table and cocked his head, drinking the liquor his Huscarls poured for him. Sitting opposite him, Ivan tilted his head slightly.

Uncomfortable.

Ivan struggled to understand why this man was in the city, why he was meeting with him privately, and, on top of that, why they were having this conversation.

He was simply uncomfortable. Especially with this conversation itself, which brought back those days.

[“Lieutenant Colonel. Did you see that? Wow, I was fucking amazing. Wasn't I? That was one of the Seven Dragon Generals, and I blocked everything.”]

[“Ahaha, I think I could do it again if I had to. What a shame.”]

[“If I had, maybe I could've saved Sasha, that idiot, too. It's such a shame. It really is, Lieutenant Colonel.”]

[“Still, we won't be lonely.”]

[“We've got plenty of connections in heaven and hell, haven't we?”]

[“Live a long life, Lieutenant Colonel. Take as long as you can getting here.”]

[“Come too soon, and I'm rebelling against you.”]

Ivan clenched his teeth at the voice battering his ears like an auditory hallucination. The blood Cherenovika had coughed up that day still soaked his neck, hot against his skin. And that was not all. He remembered the names of every subordinate who had died then.

Killing just one of the Seven Dragon Generals had cost the lives of 156 Extermination Unit agents. With five Dragon Generals still active at the time, it was fair to say that the Extermination Unit's entire force of some seven hundred agents had perished on the same day, at the same hour.

Kill the Seven Dragon Generals. That had been the Extermination Unit's final order.

So Ivan did not want to remember that day.

“Let's talk about something else.”

“No. We can't.”

Einar's green eyes blazed like flames. He stared at Ivan with that burning gaze, as if seeing straight through him.

“Guilt? Or fear? I understand. I can see why. I heard Enrique and Patricia were in this city too. Didn't they tell you? Though... neither of them actually struck the killing blow. They might not know.”

“... What are you trying to say?”

“I'm saying a man who personally kills one of the Seven Dragon Generals—a man drenched in its blood—can't come out of it unscathed.”

Einar flicked his hand. His glass filled again with viscous spirits. He tossed it back and swallowed roughly, then let out a deep sigh and continued with a languid air.

“The first time I realized... let's see. Was it when we killed Tumor? When we killed that bastard Tumor of the Great Mountain, Maximilien acted strange for a while.”

Einar closed his eyes, recalling the distant past.

“He went back to normal after a few days, but... the others might not have noticed, but I could see it. The rage buried deep beneath his eyes. He'd always been a good-natured bastard, but afterward he became unnaturally kind.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. After that, we took down another Dragon General, and he insisted on killing it himself, even with his arm blown off. Strange thing. He'd never cared about glory or any of that, but there he was, shouting that he had to be the one to take its head.”

At the time, he had thought little of it. Those days had been cruel to everyone. Even the Hero's Party had grown increasingly quiet and volatile. They had not seen their families in a long time, and seldom even spoke with other humans. Demons were everywhere they stepped, and both earth and sky sought their lives.

Those were days when they had to tear open the heavens to glimpse hope.

So the hero's eccentricity was something they could accept. They had chosen to think of it that way. What did it matter who personally cut off the head? What mattered was that they had killed a Dragon General.

“And at the Demon King's castle... Hmm. It wouldn't do for anyone else to hear this. Boys, wait outside.”

“Yes, Boss!!”

At Einar's gesture, the Huscarls filed out of the director's office. Alone with Ivan, he slowly reached out and filled his own glass. He pushed the full glass toward Ivan, then beckoned with the bottle still in his hand.

“Drink. Your big brother's getting thirsty.”

Ivan picked up the glass. Einar raised the bottle and knocked it audibly against it. Both men drank at once. Heavy, bitter liquid, burning like a ball of fire, flowed down Ivan's throat.

After a moment's silence, Einar set down the bottle and spoke.

“Maximilien personally cut off the Demon King's head. He couldn't even move by then. Even with Patricia's healing, he should have needed over a week of bed rest.”

And yet the hero had walked over and brought his blade down on the Demon King's neck, bearing injuries so severe that anyone else would have been unable to lift a finger. He had already lost a lethal amount of blood through the gaps in his armor. Patricia had poured healing miracles into him until she fainted.

Gilles Vert had passed out on his feet. Einar was gathering their fallen companions and preparing to flee, while Enrique and Veolgrin held off the troops swarming toward the castle's highest floor.

In the midst of it all, Maximilien had kept hacking at the already dead Demon King's neck. Over and over, until they retreated. Even after he had fainted, even unconscious, he had not stopped.

Only Veolgrin and Einar had found it “strange.” Veolgrin through intellect, Einar through instinct. They had noticed something wrong with the hero that their companions had missed.

“That bastard dared... take the curse in our place.”

“... A curse.”

“Yes, a curse. The defilement that pours down on mortals who kill a god. The curse laid upon godslayers drenched in divine blood.”

Dense killing intent seeped from Einar's body.

“He dared—dared to bear that sin in my place. Thinking we couldn't endure it. So fucking full of himself, taking it all on alone...!!”

To Ivan, it looked like guilt masquerading as rage. Grief and guilt—feelings he had no way to express—finding their only outlet in anger.

Ivan silently ran his fingers over his glass.

“When he killed that first Dragon General, he realized. This was a curse no human could bear. Then he must have thought...”

If someone would inevitably have to bear the same curse later, wouldn't it be most efficient for him, already cursed, to take it himself?

“That moron. He took everything on himself without even thinking to talk to the rest of us...”

Einar tilted the bottle and gulped down the liquor. Only after letting out a deep, rough breath did he open his eyes to slits.

“Kill one of the Seven Dragon Generals, and your soul is tainted. Then what must it have been like after killing the Demon King? The others thought Maximilien's disappearance was strange. Not me. He'd finally reached the point where he couldn't bear it anymore.”

Einar set down the empty bottle and fixed Ivan with a heavy stare, as if determined to peer into his soul.

“The concept Aviditas embodied was greed. You've lost your desires, Ivan Petrovich. For all the world's riches, for honor and fame, for companionship and love.”

He had poured every bit of the wealth he'd earned through war into founding an orphanage, yet slept on a sofa himself. While the nobles and senior generals across society still held their positions, he alone had vanished to live as though dead. Having rejected the marriage proposals of every sort of society lady back then, he was growing old alone.

Einar quietly steadied his breathing and swallowed his anger. Swallowed his sorrow, his guilt, his grief.

“How are you still alive? These past four years—what in the world has kept you here?”

“...”

Ivan raised his head at Einar's words.

“Duty.”

Then he continued, his voice heavy.

“Respect, faith, responsibility, hope.”

Respect for the former King.

Faith in the ending page.

Responsibility on behalf of everyone who had died in his place.

Hope that he could return once more.

And if he were to add one final thing—

“Survival.”

Not searching for a reason to live, but a blind determination that made living its own reason.

It would be no exaggeration to call that the entirety of Ivan's being.

After saying that, Ivan thought for a moment, then took a small box from inside his clothes.

“And I haven't lost all my desires, Einar.”

“Big brother.”

“Einar.”

“I said, big brother.”

“... Big Brother Einar.”

“That's right.”

Einar chuckled and jerked his chin toward the box.

“Well, what is it? This desire you haven't lost. Let me see it too.”

“Don't be surprised.”

Ivan slowly opened the box and carefully lifted out a gleaming metal comb, lovingly maintained.

He snapped the comb fully open.

CLICK!

Then he spoke softly.

“It can also be used as a dagger.”

“That's fucking awesome, you bastard!!”

Einar roared and leaped to his feet.