"H-Higuare…was killed."
As she scrambled up one of the charred towers, Lana the Moon Tempest moaned in terror. He was supposed to be one of the strongest of all, who the New Principality had scoured the ends of the wide world to finally find. Yet an even greater power had handled Higuare the Pelagic like a baby, snuffing him out with what seemed like no difficulty whatsoever.
From Lana's perspective, it was clear that the World Word's power had brought instant death to the mandrake.
"Ha, ha-ha…"
She looked up at the sky. The army Regnejee had boasted as unbeatable had been driven back by a single wyvern and was on the verge of total defeat. All at the hands of a champion and deviant from the wyvern race, Alus the
Star Runner.
The Lithia troops Taren had trained up herself were dead, too. The inside of the tower was nothing but miserable corpses, unable to speak of their ultimate fate.
The men of the New Principality were Lana's—and Aureatia's—enemy. She had kept her dangerous infiltration duties going in order to defeat them, believing they needed to someday be destroyed, and bring back peace. Nevertheless—
"How did it happen so easily…?"
They were enemies. However, Lana had seen up close just how powerful and fearsome Lithia's military might was. Lithia's power and their will, aiming to be the last self-proclaimed Demon King, shouldn't have been so easily trampled underfoot.
The foul stench of burned flesh and death drifted in the air. She couldn't tell if it was because of the conflagration itself or the flames of war, but sweat poured endlessly down her tiny body—and she herself couldn't even be sure if it was actually blood or a mixture of the two.
"Haaa… Ha-ha."
After crawling up the final stair, Lana grabbed hold of what she had been after. The Cold Star. The dead bombardier continued holding it tightly, despite his body having been sliced in two, but she forcefully tore it away from the clutch of fingers strengthened by rigor mortis. The magic item that spent many long years gathering sunlight in the Great Nagan Labyrinth. It was filled with enough power for one final shot. If Lana could use this—
"…Lana, what are you doing?"
A voice from behind reprimanded her. It was Elea the Red Tag.
She was responsible for bringing the wielder of almighty Word Arts, the World Word, here to Lithia.
"Elea… It's okay. I'll do it."
Lana's voice trembled as she spoke. It had to be this way.
The current scene before her was exactly what Taren had feared. It was the reason she'd decided to make the world her enemy.
The True Demon King was defeated, but the world was still filled with beings that shouldn't and couldn't continue to exist.
"I'll kill them all. This… It's just…it's so horrible. Monsters, all of them.
I'll use the Cold Star to blow them all away and the whole city with them! Someone…s-someone has to do it, or it'll never end!"
"Lana…!"
Without waiting for Elea's next words, Lana pulled the trigger on the magic tool. The crystal lens fired a bright light, like the midday sun. It radiated out directly below to blow apart the central fortress, the city streets, and Lana herself altogether.
The light, and the destruction, rushed forward. And then—
"Stop."
—it ceased.
The light from the Cold Star hung suspended in midair, gathered into a sphere.
Unable to advance any farther, the doom-bringing light stalled in the air. It was an impossible sight to bear witness to, one that twisted and bent the fabric of the world's reality.
"Scatter."
With a single word from the young girl, the city-leveling orb burst open, vanishing into thin air without destroying anything.
"No…n-no…"
Lana collapsed in despair.
How were people supposed to stand against power mighty enough to stop light itself?
Was there anyone in the land…able to kill the World Word, the embodiment of the world itself?
"Calm down, Lana. You're probably…just so scared you can't think straight. The Lana I know isn't like this at all… Right?" the incomprehensible entity asked, acting as though she were a normal young girl.
Her face had the appearance of worry.
Even though despite her elf-child nature, her existence, her unlimited omnipotent power, was a sinister divinity given form.
"It's all because there are atrocities like this…"
She looked down on the burning town visible from the tower.
The myriad calamities and tragedies scattered before her showed a merciless world, utterly unimaginable to the still-fourteen-year-old Kia.
"…Hey, Elea. You said my power was a power to bring happiness to people, right?"
"Kia!"
Lana saw Elea try to stop Kia.
As though she knew what the young girl was planning to do. "You can't, Kia! You shouldn't show your—"
"Go out."
It happened exactly as she commanded.
The inferno spreading through Lithia, the fires of war, was extinguished all at once, without so much as a breeze.
The quiet and darkness of night returned like the end of a bad dream.
This fearsome Shura, who surpassed all minia knowledge, could both cause terrible calamities and make them disappear as if they'd never happened.
"…I put out the fire, Lana. There's nothing to be scared of anymore. Um, actually…the truth is…I can do pretty much anything… Sorry for keeping it a secret. If only I could've saved your city sooner…"
"Wh-what the hell…? What the hell is with you people?!" "Lana…!"
"Lana, let's go home."
Elea embraced the frozen-stiff Lana in her arms.
The gentle and cozy body warmth traveled through her. The beating throb of a living person.
"…Elea. You…," Lana spoke, smiling through her tears. Her former intelligence agent colleague was now one of the Twenty-Nine Officials of Aureatia.
Elea had climbed to that position because she didn't hesitate to stamp out her enemies to seize power.
Thus, she knew why Elea had come up close to her. "…want to kill me, don't you?"
"..."
"I get it, though. You can't, can you?"
Her hoarse whisper sounded entirely like blackmail, but Lana didn't mind. With her voice directly in Elea's ear, too low for the World Word to hear,
Lana spit out her final, spiteful words.
"If you truly planned on killing me as soon as possible, you had plenty of chances to do so. Y-you…can't, though. You can't kill me in front of Kia, can you?"
Considering Elea the Red Tag's callousness, Lana's accusation was an absurd joke. A laughable jest, even in this nightmarish, rock-bottom situation. "Only in front of Kia…no matter how monstrous that girl may be, you
want to remain her beautiful and kind teacher, don't you?! Professor Elea!" "…Lana," Elea replied with a whisper. She looked at Kia, on the verge of
tears out of bleakness and bewilderment.
Far too many things had happened. But with this, she would end it all. She had come to kill Lana the Moon Tempest.
"A teacher…would never do something like that, would she?"
The door opened again not long after the tumult of the conflagration in the streets had reached Yuno's ears. The location of her cell, far from the northwestern area where the fire had kicked up, had saved her life.
"Get out, Yuno the Distant Talon." "…Dakai."
"What's wrong? I came back to save you, just like I said I would."
Yuno glared at the reappearance of her homeland's ruination. Dakai the Magpie was abnormally calm given the extreme circumstances, the city streets in flames, and the situation descending into chaos.
"…You're telling me this now?! Isn't that army of yours fighting right this second?! And you still have spare time to free someone like me?!"
"It's not my army," Dakai replied coolly.
"Scream and cry all you want; the results are the same. I'm simply here keeping a promise. Plus, Higuare roped you into this, and then there's the Nagan thing, too, huh. That and, hey, I'm a scoundrel, sure, but I never lie."
"Sh-shut up…! So what, being strong means you don't give a damn if your city gets destroyed?! It's not sad?! Painful?! You won't fight to the
death?!"
—While I've felt like I've been in the depths of hell dealing with just one person's death, Yuno thought.
A nation in ruins. Citizens burned alive and all bonds lost forever. If Dakai wasn't tormented by the same thing happening to him, then Yuno's vengeance for Nagan's destruction would be eternally unattainable.
"…Got a point there. By now, I don't really feel a thing. I mean, I did have a thing for Taren, but you know. Long as I'm alive, I'll meet other people, yeah?"
Yuno thought of the circumstances surrounding the Visitors—people severed from their own world, the Beyond.
Did both Soujirou and Dakai not feel a thing because of how strong they were? They were mutated deviants born among other minia, but even among their own people, they had always been strong. Isolated.
Just as Dakai was going to live on now, even if a Visitor's countries and cities were destroyed, they would always survive. Was that really the special privilege of the strong that Yuno thought it was? Was growing accustomed to ruin and death truly a comfort to them?
Dakai turned and began to depart. Yuno's vengeance was on the cusp of ending unfulfilled.
"Wait, Dakai the Magpie!"
"What? You still have something to say to me?"
"You said if I was going to get vengeance, to kill you right now, yes?" She extended both arms toward him.
She could utilize Force Arts to send the arrowheads hidden up her sleeves flying.
More so than other girls her age, she knew some botany.
She recalled the star that she and Lucelles had discovered together. Because she was the last surviving scholar of Nagan Labyrinth City,
destroyed by a colossal injustice.
They were the only things Yuno the Distant Talon happened to have at her disposal.
Face-to-face with an extreme power far beyond her reach, she was all alone.
"Fight me."