Magical Girl with Demonic Time Magic

Chapter 139: Final Battle – Last Part

"..." My staff piercing through the two of us releases a golden magic while emitting magical waves that cover us both. Setsuna finally realizes what’s happening and uses time magic.

My right arm begins to disintegrate into dust, but it only reaches just above the elbow before stopping. I beat my wings, keeping the two of us aloft.

"..." She looks at me as if I’ve betrayed her, even though it’s all her fault. I guess she didn’t expect that I would actually kill her.

"...This is... totally different from what I... wanted... unfair... traitor," she says while spitting blood. I hug her, beginning to descend despite the immense pain I feel from the staff piercing my body.

"...How... did you know?" she asks, doubt in her eyes, referring to the fact that I knew how to kill her.

"I have more memories than you can imagine. I knew what you represented... and I erased that... without it, you cannot live..."

"You could die now too... so... why betray me like this?" she says as I nod my head. I have a high chance of dying right now.

"..."

"I love you, Setsuna. Maybe dying with you wouldn’t be so bad... Even though I hate this situation, I still feel happy..."

"Happy?"

"Yes, I’m happy because I stopped you... I prevented you from becoming worse than you already are." We rapidly approach a building in the distance as I land on it, immediately falling to my knees with her still embraced in my arms.

"Why... are you destroying everything I fought for... you idiot," she says with tears while I hug her, stroking her back. Her body emits a faint black glow that drifts away like dust.

Her body is slowly disintegrating. In the end, this is how a fight between two powerful beings goes. It’s not something long and drawn-out; it’s a brief struggle where a single blow can bring death.

"Because everything you fought for is wrong," I say warmly with a smile. I taste the unpleasant flavor of blood in my mouth as Setsuna looks at me as if I’m irrational.

"You... ruined everything... I love you and I did everything for you... w-why did you have to ruin it all..." Her voice is filled with pain, and I sigh.

I remember how her power works. Without suicide, she cannot travel back in time, so dying by my hand is the end of this confusing cycle of madness that should never have existed.

"I love you too... but I had to..."

"You put others above this relationship... it doesn’t seem like you love me as much as I love you..." She interrupts me and keeps doing it, insisting that everything is about love.

"..." I watch her slowly becoming transparent. Her wings disintegrate completely, and her legs also turn into black dust.

"It seems even now you still don’t understand..." I look at her with sadness. She is... pitiful.

"...Don’t look at me as if I’m something miserable... stop it... stop looking at me like that!" She tries to speak firmly, but her voice comes out low, like a whisper, because she’s fading away.

"You’re not miserable... you’re just someone... sad... You sank into darkness for ’love’ and didn’t even try to climb back out..."

"Your obsession is corrosive when made manifest... Well... ironic, don’t you think, Setsuna? Because that’s what obsession truly is—a bitter, corrosive acid that destroys everything it touches."

"Unfortunately, you don’t understand that... What is destroying everything we had before is precisely this ugly feeling... Obsession and love are not the same thing, Setsuna."

"Love requires freedom, respect, and empathy... Obsession only needs control, manipulation, and falsehood... They are complete opposites." I stroke her back as she vanishes more rapidly.

She begins to cry—real tears. Not the fake ones she always cries, or tears linked to her obsession, but genuine tears from someone who has lost everything they believed in.

"...I am not your Setsuna... and I never will be... I’m sorry." Her whole body from the head down vanishes into dust, leaving only her head, which I hold. She makes a strange face.

A painful, agonized expression, as if she’s experiencing the most horrible thing of all, because she knows it’s over. What I did was destroy all the power she represents.

Setsuna will no longer "exist." The [Time Demon] can never exist again, because the magic it represented was split into two parts—one was destroyed and the other was absorbed by me.

’In the end... she was so strong I could only absorb half...’ The head moves its lips, and I watch to see what her last words will be.

"..."

"You died the same way you lived... I’m sorry for you... truly..." I say as her head disintegrates into dust, blown away by the gentle breeze passing over me.

"You loved me, huh... your last words were still that..." I collapse to the ground, curling up in pain. The wound in my body is too severe as I pull the staff out.

By wounding myself with the staff, I knew Setsuna would freeze, because she never truly wanted to see anyone but herself hurt me. That’s why seeing my body receive a "fatal" wound confused her.

Through the staff, I purified everything that demon represented—a truly mortal blow for a demon. In the end, Setsuna died by the power she gave me.

"It’s so... cold." I hug myself, tasting death. It’s unpleasant and cold, with a strange sensation of complete emptiness. I start to cry.

I really don’t want to die, but I did what I had to do, knowing the risks. I look at my arms—one of them is almost completely gone, lost to time magic, making it irrecoverable even with healing magic.

I look at my chest—a wound that won’t close, despite my attempts to use magic on it. Even though the attack was specifically made to kill demons, it was still used in direct contact with my open chest.

"H-Hahaha... Looks like I’m going to die..." I smile—a frivolous, lame smile. It’s poorly done and doesn’t seem genuine, but I still force myself to smile. Because if I’m going to die, I guess I still need a smile on my face to maintain a sense of normalcy.

In the end, I’m full of regrets. I didn’t live the life I wanted. I didn’t live a life that satisfied me, and because of me, many people died.

If I had been smarter, if I had realized everything sooner, if I hadn’t been so naive, always expecting the best from everyone in a world where humanity is full of sin.

’I guess angels were never meant to encounter humans at all...’ I suppose now I’m a fallen angel? I came into contact with humanity; I lived as a human.

I gained human perspectives and desires. I destroyed what was once a completely pure being. In the end, an angel shouldn’t have the perspective of what it means to be human, because it taints their very reason for existing.

’I wish... everything had been better...’ I close my eyes as everything seems to fade away. I don’t know if I’ll ever wake up again, but I truly wish for everything to improve.