"Alus the Star Runner's getting lured away by Shalk the Sound Slicer. Honestly don't know how long that'll last, though."
"…Is that so?"
The two were sitting down beside each other on debris of the city now turned to ruins.
Harghent the Still and Kuze the Passing Disaster. He was a run-down and sullen man.
"Might be best…to fortify the airborne defenses in the Jikiegee Mercantile District. If Horizon's Roar's air superiority is waning, then the easiest path for a wyvern to take to the royal palace is bound to pass through one spot in that district… Erm, so did Hidow say anything along those lines?"
"Bweh-heh-heh. Look, they only give me the bare minimum of what I need to know. Heck, I don't even know how to find Alus."
"...I see…" The sky was blue.
The loud thunderclaps of Mele's arrows from a few moments ago had stopped, and the quiet made it seem like it had never happened at all.
However, somewhere in the second borough here, Alus was battling with Shalk, and the slightest tremor from the aftershocks would have been enough to blast away Harghent where he sat.
He could hear far off in the distance what sounded like an explosion and something collapsing.
Far away. Harghent unconsciously rose to his feet, but it was definitely not a distance he could hope to run on foot.
"W-well then."
Harghent asked, his voice cracking, "You're going…to kill me?"
"Pretty much. Also, there was something I had wanted to ask you once we met. See, I'm still technically a clergyman and all… I thought that if you had anything to confess, I'd hear you out."
"What do you want to ask?" "About Curte of the Fair Skies."
Harghent gulped. The truth behind the sense of shame he felt toward Kuze was his guilt about his own actions during the Lithia War.
"R-right. I remember. That girl…she was a civilian. She shouldn't have been a casualty. If I was better put together…she could've come back from that tragedy and so much more…"
Curte had faced off against Harghent of her own volition.
She had formed a true bond with a wyvern, which was precisely why she tried fighting Harghent, who killed them. The white-haired young girl he saw that day seemed to be almost a mirror image of Harghent himself.
"I-if by any chance—" "It's okay. Calm down."
"…Right. Excuse me. I've thought before that, if there had been some way to save her…then that would have been the right thing to do. She must have wanted to be happy. Curte, the citizens of Lithia, the Mage City soldiers…even all the wyvern fighters, too."
"I was the one at her side when she died… So you talked with the girl, did you?"
"Th-that's right. I…I killed her. That's what I've always…how I've always seen it…"
"Well, I…so this is just my own thinking here. But I think that girl chose her fate to go together with the wyverns. If she had chosen a path as a minia, then… she might've recovered and even still be alive, too. The thing is, no one's decided that's what happiness means or anything. Even the Wordmaker's never said anything about what's right between minia or wyverns."
Those who chose a minia's path didn't necessarily find happiness.
That was exactly it. Harghent had continued to battle as a minia, became a general, and yet this was how he had ended up.
"…I've always regretted it all. The whole time."
Was he talking about Curte's death or about the life he had led for himself?
Likely both.
"I'm the same way, General Harghent." Kuze's big hand touched Harghent's back. "Hey. What d'ya think you're doing there?"
There came a voice from the opposite side of the collapsed alleyway.
Soujirou the Willow-Sword was looking their way, his sword hanging in one hand.
"Try anything stupid, and I'll slice that arm right off."
"…Sorry to say, but you're not able to kill me, Soujirou the Willow-Sword." Harghent watched the exchange as if it didn't concern him in the slightest,
but it took him a moment to recognize the hard, sharp sensation he felt on his back through his clothes.
A blade—most likely a kitchen knife he had picked up from the charred ruins
—was being pressed into Harghent's back by Kuze.
This man had come to kill him.
"Let me go ahead and explain the situation. A little bit before I arrived, I got a notice from Hidow the Clamp."
"H-Hidow…?!"
"Told me, if Harghent managed to make it this far, to do him a favor and kill him."
"Ha. That's, well…ha-ha." Harghent couldn't help but laugh.
Too stunned even to fall to his knees, he cried as he laughed. "I—I guess…that makes sense."
An incompetent like him had been forsaken by Aureatia a long time ago.
Harghent's incompetence was so hopeless, it had driven the brilliant Hidow to hand down such an order. While driving the automobile here, he had continued to pointlessly ponder the meaning in coming to a place like this, but the problem was far more fundamental than that.
"R-right. Ha-ha. What a worthless life. I can't come up with anything to say back, even right before I'm killed. I—I never…had the right to find my resolve or choose my own path…from the very start…"
"…Cut the crap, you asshole," Soujirou said, irritated.
Even from this distance, he was likely capable of unleashing sword skills that could instantly end Kuze's life. However, they wouldn't reach him. Kuze the Passing Disaster's abilities were already common knowledge to a majority of the Twenty-Nine Officials.
The ability to immediately slay his enemy first, the instant he faced a risk of death.
Even Soujirou the Willow-Sword was sure to intuitively sense the threat Kuze posed.
Harghent, possessing nothing at all, had no way to avoid such a death.
"The fact you haven't come at me yet means that you can actually see your fate, can't you…Soujirou?"
Kuze placed his hand on his own left breast. He was terribly quiet, and
ominous, like death itself. " "
"Harghent the Still. I know exactly how Curte of the Fair Skies died. There's one other thing I realized from that girl's final moments…"
"Alus…"
Harghent called his friend's name.
Kuze wasn't looking up at the sky. He hadn't noticed.
"That's right. There was no need to search. That's because Alus the Star Runner…"
Those wings, in the narrow patch of sky Harghent saw when he looked upward. A familiar three-armed silhouette.
The figure, tragically transformed entirely from who he once was, had his musket raised.
The mumble, as if whispered into the sky, rang loud and clear in Harghent's ears.
"…My friend…"
He went to pull the trigger.
Kuze the Passing Disaster looked up into the sky as if he understood how everything was going to end.
"…will try to protect you."
A star fell.
I like to talk to minia.
That's why I made sure to talk to any of them I spotted who had strayed from their flock.
What sort of tools were being invented in minian towns? What sort of dungeon rumors were there, and what sort of people returned from them? What sort of magic items were used in recent wars and battles?
That was the sort of stuff I would ask them.
What I truly wanted to ask more than anything was what Harghent was currently up to, and how important he had gotten, but I didn't.
If my friendliness with Harghent got exposed, while it wouldn't bother me any, it would cause trouble for him. Since that wouldn't be fair, I tried not to do
that as much as I could.
That was why when I first heard about Harghent after I began my journey, it made me really, really happy.
I think I heard his name come up as a commander of a wyvern subjugation squad somewhere along the border between the Northern Kingdom and the Central Kingdom. There were the names of three others, but I was so happy to hear Harghent's name pop up, I totally forgot about the other commanders' names.
Harghent was doing exactly what he told me he would do, after all.
Once I knew he was still giving it his all, I went out on more and more adventures of my own.
If Harghent was moving forward, then I had to grow, too, and catch up with him.
We didn't see each other for a long time, but I was always racing around to see new worlds to make sure I could boast about it all to him when we did.
The continent was far more vast than the map used by minia in the kingdoms I had seen.
I thought there was nothing beyond the four corners of the map, so this was like I was being told I could still fly out even farther, way beyond the horizon, with their own civilizations, dungeons, and treasures, too, and the excitement kept me awake for several days.
There were times I'd worry, too—since wyverns could be found anywhere, I thought Harghent might have been in these far-off places as well. And given that if he was, he'd be there to fight wyverns. It mean that Harghent might never show up to places where there weren't any of them at all.
My treasure stash grew more and more. I also defeated incredible enemies, whom I myself couldn't even believe I'd bested.
The occasions where I would skillfully use my treasure to obtain my next piece of treasure increased as well.
This was because I had trained in the seaside shack to grip pebbles in my hands.
It was thanks to Harghent that I became able to move my arms well.
…There were also occasionally years when I'd get really worried that Harghent might have died. In times like that, I'd often talk with minia who seemed to know a lot about anti-wyvern campaigns. I'd anxiously wait for his
name to crop up, so that was probably when I most often brought up my own adventures to others.
But Harghent was always off fighting somewhere, even if it was unbeknownst to everyone else. He had been a kingdom soldier at one point, and there were other times he was fighting off in some land with a name I'd never heard of before.
Each time I heard this, it made me happy.
I was happy to hear that Harghent hadn't stopped his adventure.
I continued such adventures for several decades.
The treasure I had amassed to show off to Harghent had swelled to an innumerable amount.
Harghent really was an incredible guy, but he didn't do the sort of stuff I did, like defeating dragons, or conquering labyrinths and dungeons, which nearly proved fatal.
Harghent wasn't going to grow stronger than a dragon, and he even lost sometimes to other minia as well.
I had known all about that for a long time.
When I'd be talking and Harghent's name came up, there were some who would make fun of him for that sort of stuff, but I always wondered why they didn't praise him.
Harghent had continued advancing onward without stopping for several decades.
I had never heard about Harghent stopping his wyvern hunt while I was continuing my own journey, not even once.
The fact that he didn't stop his adventuring or fighting, become a normal minia whose name wasn't known to anyone, and give it all up for good was the most incredible thing of all.
So even when I met with Harghent again, I thought I'd try not to flaunt all the treasure I'd amassed on my adventures as much as possible.
Since I'm still a wyvern, I could never create anything on my own. My treasure and my prestige were all stolen from someone else.
Someday when I met Harghent, I wanted to bring something I could really brag to him about.
Like how Horizon's Roar held Sine Riverstead so precious, something of my own.
It wasn't that Harghent started my adventure for me. It wasn't that Harghent was my only friend.
No matter the terrible things someone may have said about him, I was always able to say it with total confidence—
Harghent was an incredible guy. Unlike me, he never stole anything.
Eastern Outer Ward, second borough.
Amid the bizarre stillness after the tempest of destruction halted, there were some who witnessed the conclusion.
Half of them were the Aureatia soldiers under Sabfom's command who had been engaged in rescuing civilians. The remaining half were the residents they had saved from the gaps between houses and canals.
Unlike the back-and-forth clash from earlier, Star Runner had appeared at lower altitudes, visible to many of the residents.
Then, without any warning, he crashed down.
The din of destruction, of battle, showed no signs of continuing. "Alus, he's…," one of the Aureatia soldiers said.
"Who felled him?"
"A wyvern. That must've been Alus."
"It wasn't from that light attack that was flying around a few moments ago?"
Each one was a quiet murmur, but in the townscape, now silent after being entirely consumed in flames, their voices resounded far.
Harghent the Still and Kuze the Passing Disaster heard this commotion as well.
"Alus! Alus! Wait for me…!"
Escaping Kuze's grasp, Harghent ran with tottering steps. Forward ahead. To where Alus fell to the ground.
"…There's no point in trying," Kuze murmured as he watched the small figure depart.
No matter how invincible Alus the Star Runner's body may have become, there was only one fate for those stabbed by Death's Fang.
"He's going to die."
He hadn't any had intention of killing Harghent from the beginning. The brief pantomime was a tactic dictated to him by Hidow.
He had made use of the most unnecessary piece on the battlefield, Harghent, to take down the strongest of all adventurers.
Kuze looked up to the heavens. A fair afternoon sky.
Both Curte and Alus had hearts that cared for someone of a completely different species.
Which was why they had lost.
"Bweh-heh-heh."
Beginning to walk off toward where Alus had crash-landed, Kuze then turned back around to look at the other side of the road.
Soujirou was still lingering there. "You're not gonna go after him?" "Nah. From here…"
His sword was sheathed. There wasn't any life here that he was supposed to cut down.
"From here, the rest's up to Old Man Harghent."
He nearly tripped over himself as he ran.
To the spot where Alus had fallen.
The place could no longer be described as a "building."
It was some mass of stacked debris, collapsing in the blaze, piled up in a heap.
The metal staircase leaning diagonally must have been a vestige of the construction that had once stood.
"I'm coming…!"
Harghent forcibly continued forward as he put his foot through the now brittle staircase.
Falling over so much that he wasn't even sure if he could stand again, he grabbed the rubble with his hand and crawled his way up the hill.
Blood seeped from the fresh wounds all over his body. He didn't even know where or how he had gotten any of them, so numerous were his awkward trips and falls.
It was as if they were representing Harghent's life itself.
Recklessly jumping forward, fighting haphazardly, he was beginning to lose
sight of his goal; and by the time he saw his friend's back, he had used up absolutely everything, leaving himself completely exhausted.
"Alus…I, haah, I… Alus… We haven't settled…" He had continued fighting for over forty years.
The child who told a deformed wyvern about his ambitions that fateful day was now an old man.
He lost his breath every time he ran, and his knee joints had hurt him from long before he even sortied from the hospital.
Each time he took a step up the rubble, it felt like his heart was going to give out.
He hadn't even been able to become the madman he was supposed to be. Which was why he couldn't move on while ignoring the intense pain he was
in.
He had never once been able to mentally maintain control over his physical
body.
However.
He couldn't break. He couldn't stop.
Because he was sure it had been far more than this.
The journey the strongest rogue of all had raced through had included far more hardship than what he was experiencing now.
"Hah…hah… Hargent io kouto." (From Harghent to Aureatia steel.)
He had gone on a long journey himself. A journey to catch up to his only wyvern friend whom he could never possibly reach.
The sixth wyvern cleanup campaign. The eighth wyvern cleanup campaign.
The twenty-second wyvern cleanup campaign.
Like the champions who had been defeated throughout history, he had even challenged Vikeon the Smoldering.
He had confronted Lucnoca the Winter, whom no one had ever seen before, and made her acknowledge his proposal.
Praise me.
Someone, say that I did a good job.
"Haml nanta. Sainmec." (Approaching waves. Tower of shadow.)
He incanted fragmented Craft Arts with breaths nearly lacking any oxygen. Twisting the staircase iron, he began to create a colossal crossbow.
A weapon for battle. That was what he had come here for and nothing else.
"Meaoi nam tell! Laivoine!" (Revolving firmament! Nock this arrow!)
He was Aureatia's Sixth General. His second name was Harghent the Still.
His Craft Arts wove together a mounted mechanical bow, its mass on par with a carriage.
It had a name, as well.
The sort of name a child would come up with, shameless and far grander than it deserved.
Dragon Slayer.
"Alus. You… This time, I've come to kill you for good… Alus…" "..."
Alus the Star Runner lay at the top of the rubble.
The strongest adventurer of all, who had traversed across all legends and grabbed all imaginable glory in his own hands.
A champion who'd carried out his sole selfhood to whatever lengths, even slaying dragons in the process.
He had lost all the treasure he had amassed. His enchanted swords had been taken to hell.
Both Ground Runner and Rotting Soil Sun were lost.
He had dropped the musket he carried until the end, and the Greatshield of the Dead, and even Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine, now fused with his body, were unable to preserve his fading life.
Defeated, and lying nearly covered by rubble, that life was beginning to run out.
"You're…"
"Incredible" was what he wanted to say.
When Harghent had first met him, he wasn't even able to move his third arm. He hadn't seemed capable of learning proper language, either.
Harghent had belittled him, thinking he probably wouldn't last long. He hadn't thought that they'd be able to become friends.
That same three-armed wyvern had done all of this.
Alus the Star Runner had become a mighty champion known to everyone throughout the land.
The true story, much bigger than anything else he had accomplished, was known only to Harghent.
"…Harghent." "D-don't die."
That wasn't it. That was unnecessary.
That wasn't what he had come all this way to say. "I… Thinking back…about Toroa the Awful…"
Right now, Alus had nothing.
He was losing the memories of his glory and his very ego.
"Why didn't he finish me off…? Maybe he understood…what I wanted." "Can you hear me? Alus…Alus!"
What had Alus the Star Runner wanted? Harghent had known the answer from the start.
He desperately yelled to make sure Alus could hear him from the grips of death.
"Alus… You're…awesome! It's true! I've always thought so! There weren't any other wyverns like you! You were strong, faster than any one of them… stronger…"
These childish words were the only ones that came to Harghent. He had thought Alus was incredible.
Just like Alus would always laud Harghent with praise no matter what, the truth was Harghent wanted to acknowledge Alus and praise him, too.
"You're…you're the most incredible guy in the world! Alus!" "…Really?"
Alus tried to raise up his arm.
He didn't have any strength left. He didn't have a single weapon on him. However, Harghent knew what he wanted to do.
Alus was trying to aim his gun.
Until the very end, the moment his life was exhausted.
He was trying to duel a foolish, stunted minia who had never seized any glory of his own.
"I…did nothing but…steal, however…"
It doesn't make me happy at all to get complimented by a wyvern like you!
That was all a lie.
It had made him the happiest of all. "…Now I'm finally…able to give back…" "Sniff… Hngaaaaaugh!"
Harghent loosed the projectile.
The massive arrow pierced through Alus's skull, and with it, Wing-Plucker killed the lone wyvern.
His strength began to drain from him, but he couldn't let himself collapse.
He understood what he needed to do.
Harghent the Still staggered as he walked to Alus the Star Runner's carcass. Then he looked down below him from atop the rubble.
There was ruined city. Residents menaced by fear.
The citizens who got left behind. The soldiers who went through the do-or- die battle. They were waiting for him to speak.
"Al…Alus. Alus the Star Runner! Has just been slain!" A wave of whispers spread through the silence.
"W-we are—"
There wasn't a single person among them who was expecting Harghent the Still to achieve something.
He was an outdated, powerless military officer who never once paid any heed to the people, fully absorbed in his own self-preservation.
He had never once seized true glory for himself.
"We are victorious! N-no longer…will you all be threatened by this self- proclaimed demon king! The citizens who endured, the soldiers who supported them…have conquered this terror! Here is the proof! I, Sixth General, Harghent the Still! Proclaim that Alus the Star Runner has been put down!"
To ensure that everyone there could see—to convey a conclusion to a bitter struggle.
A new champion held aloft his friend's pitiful corpse. "He's…he's dead!"
"It's over! General Harghent got him!" "I saw it for myself, Harghent!"
"Lord Harghent!"
"Ahhh… I can finally go home!" "Harghent!"
"Harghent!" "General Harghent!"
"Sixth General Harghent!"
Among the cheers of the citizens extolling his grand achievement, Harghent crouched down.
I'll become a hero.
Praised and recognized by so many more people, not just the people of the village.
"Sniff… Nhauuugh…!"
Two hundred and nineteen dead or missing. Seven hundred and forty injured. The second to fifth boroughs of the Eastern Outer Ward annihilated.
The battle Aureatia had dedicated all its efforts to, against a self-proclaimed demon king, was over.