novelraw Chapter 236
Chapter 236
Aktion shook his head.
“I can’t tell you. To be honest, at this point it wouldn’t cause much trouble even if I did, but risks should be minimized.”
“Aktion Oscar.”
I spoke through clenched teeth.
“This is the end of the road for you. Can’t you help us just once?”
“…….”
“I’m not asking you to help us. If the Primordial Demon King wins, humanity is finished. We will live forever as bonsai plants shaped to his taste, and the moment enough negative energy gathers, we will be wiped out in an instant.”
“…….”
“A fate whose end is fixed as destruction is too sad, isn’t it. If you give us the information now, we can stop that.”
I continued, pouring sincerity into my words. “Just once. Help humanity.”
At that, his eyes began to blaze.
“Just once, you say?”
“…….”
“I helped humanity dozens of times, hundreds of times, even thousands of times! I myself killed the Demon King as a hero, and after becoming the master of the special room, I protected humanity in all kinds of ways.”
“Hoo.”
“And how did humanity repay me? By endlessly creating negative energy and summoning new Demon Kings, nothing more.”
He clenched his teeth.
Before I knew it, bloody tears had welled in his eyes.
“Humanity must be destroyed. Such foolish lifeforms must not exist on this land!”
“…….”
“Do you truly think this species deserves to prosper? That it deserves to endure?”
I realized then.
Aktion had already lost to Kaeld.
His consciousness was on the verge of being completely consumed by Kaeld.
That question was probably the last one he would ask as Aktion.
After a brief hesitation, I decided to answer him with all my heart.
“Whether it deserves to prosper or endure. The fact that you ask that is proof you are human.”
“What?”
“What plant or animal agonizes over its own value? Is there any lifeform besides humans that debates what’s right and wrong, or teaches it?”
“…….”
“They accumulate knowledge, develop technology, create systems and revise them, struggling however they can to move even a little in a better direction.”
I continued slowly.
“In reality, they might not always move forward. Sometimes they regress, whether by mistake or on purpose, and often they fall flat on their faces in stupidity.”
“…….”
“But when you look back after long ages have passed, humanity is clearly moving, little by little, in a better direction.”
“Hah. Ridiculous…….”
“You have heard how advanced humanity was 230,000 years ago, haven’t you?”
He pressed his lips tightly shut.
I let out a sigh.
“I have dismantled the hero system, so now they can develop just like back then again. No, they will soar far more brilliantly than they did then.”
“…….”
“Humanity is a being that moves forward. You may think that’s nothing special, but for me, that alone is enough to judge it as ‘having value.’”
His head drooped lower and lower.
Not because he agreed with me.
He was simply out of strength.
Just before he vanished from the world entirely, I wanted him to hear this.
“I don’t think humanity is great. But it’s a ‘decent enough’ existence.”
“…….”
“At least more so than you think.”
He collapsed to his knees.
Thud.
And the moment his upper body hit the floor, Aktion left his final words.
“You really do know how to talk, befitting the last hero…….”
And with that, Aktion died.
For a while, we could only stare at him in silence.
Then it happened.
Kugugung.
“Wh-what is it?”
“The ground is suddenly… no, the world itself is shaking?”
“Ah!”
“What is it, Neril?”
“Aktion just died. And this place is Aktion’s world.”
At those words, a chill ran down my spine.
“Bion. When the owner of a world dies, does that world disappear too?”
“It’s him.”
“Aktion destroyed his own world right before he died.”
Aktion had already wiped out the humanity inside the special room long ago.
By erasing the world itself at the end, he was trying to erase everything that had existed with him.
Whoosh.
Offense used his shadow sorcery and spoke.
“How about we get out of here for now?”
“That’s probably best. The door to the special room might disappear too.”
“What about that bastard Kaeld?”
“Right…….”
Before the words ‘we should kill him’ could even finish.
Swoosh.
Kaeld rose to his feet.
“…….”
Cracking his joints, he spoke.
“Leaving with such flair right to the end, Aktion.”
“You bastard.”
“Hold on. Let’s not fight right now. You don’t get many chances to watch a world collapse, you know?”
He clasped his hands behind his back and gazed up at the sky with ease.
“It’s a magnificent sight.”
What is this?
Something feels off.
Kaeld should have been no threat at all, barely worth a punch.
Yet his current attitude was far too relaxed, and that ease didn’t feel strange at all.
‘What did that guy do?’
Then Kaeld spoke.
“But it looks like we are being expelled.”
“Huh?”
Flash!
The next moment.
As if flung away, we were hurled somewhere.
When we regained our senses and steadied ourselves, what we saw was the red door of the special room.
“Are we inside the special room? Or outside?”
“Outside. We got thrown out.”
“Why, why?”
The one who answered was Kaeld.
“Because you and I don’t belong to Aktion’s world. It seems the world spat out its impurities before collapsing.”
Astonishingly, he was standing right behind us.
‘I didn’t sense him at all?’
Narrowing my eyes, I asked.
“…Are you really Kaeld?”
“Probably.”
“…….”
“More importantly, look over there.”
Kaeld pointed at the door to the special room.
The door was disappearing.
Its shape warped slightly, then grew hazy, like a soul Adwin had summoned.
“……!”
In the end, the red door of the special room vanished completely.
Aktion’s world had been erased.
Along with its owner.
In a heavy voice, I muttered.
“We are screwed.”
Xenia asked cautiously.
“We are screwed? How so?”
“The special room is gone.”
“Isn’t that actually a good thing……?”
“Yeah. That part alone is good news. But.”
I looked at Kaeld.
The other party members turned their heads toward him as well.
“One crazy bastard came out with us.”
“Ah.”
“If possible, I wanted to deal with him inside the special room. So it wouldn’t affect our world.”
Evacuating the capital’s citizens turned out, in the end, to be the right decision.
The current Kaeld had grown overwhelmingly powerful.
Perhaps… no, almost certainly, the ‘Primordial Demon King’ was aiding him.
Tonight.
We would fight the final battle.
Kaeld looked at our murderous glares and smiled.
“Heh.”
Unexpectedly enough, we didn’t start fighting the moment we met in the underground of the Imperial Palace.
Even though everyone had evacuated, this place was still the foundation of the capital’s people’s lives.
If I fought ‘that’ Kaeld here, the capital would undoubtedly be erased without a trace, so I suggested we settle it somewhere as unpopulated as possible.
Kaeld accepted my proposal.
Swish.
As he began walking, Kaeld opened his mouth.
“I heard everything from the Primordial Demon King.”
“……Did you really just hear it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You feel different from the Kaeld I know.”
Before and after the regression, I had never once evaluated Kaeld favorably, but even so, I had never doubted that he was fundamentally human like me.
He sided with the Demon King, sure, but at his core, he was human.
Which made him worse.
That was about how I saw him.
But now…
“Right now, you don’t seem human.”
“Hm. As sharp as ever, Mide.”
“Then that means?”
“Yes. I am the Primordial Demon King.”
He said it as calmly as if listing the morning’s menu.
But we had no choice but to stiffen.
Neril asked, her voice trembling in a way I rarely heard.
“You mean the one responsible for regressing the entire laboratory by 230,000 years?”
“That’s right. More precisely, you could say the Primordial Demon King and the human Kaeld merged. Even I find it hard to describe exactly. Either way, I can only say that it’s ‘me.’”
“…….”
“I, Kaeld, wanted to be loved, and I, the Primordial Demon King, wanted to preserve the hero system. So ‘I’ joined hands with ‘myself.’ That’s all there is to it.”
I forced myself to sound calm as I spoke.
“If that was possible, you should have done it ages ago. If you had possessed Kaeld the moment we turned back seven years, we wouldn’t even be here. I mean, thanks for that.”
“I didn’t know what kind of punishment would be imposed if the Primordial Demon King possessed a human. For me as well, this was a last resort, a method I wanted to avoid if possible.”
“Punishment?”
“……No, never mind.”
He gave a faint chuckle and changed the subject.
“In fact, 230,000 years ago, Kaeld poured 80 billion units of negative energy into himself.”
“…….”
“Even then, punishment were imposed on Kaeld. According to the original calculations, the negative energy shouldn’t have gone berserk. He should have calmly and efficiently used his energy to wipe out humanity step by step.”
“…….”
“If that had happened, a new member of my kind would surely have been born.”
A new member of his kind?
At those words, I realized something.
Aktion had said that the Primordial Demon King was a being born not from humanity, but from another civilization.
“So you have been roaming the universe searching for your own kind.”
“Yes.”
“And to that end, you interfered with countless civilizations, committing the same acts you committed against humanity.”
“That’s correct. Though I don’t consider it a crime.”
“Just how many of your kind have you created? Or to put it another way, how many civilizations have you destroyed?”
He answered with a self-mocking tone.
“For the latter question, I would say roughly ten thousand.”
We stared at him, mouths agape.
In other words, there had been at least ten thousand civilizations in this universe.
And if there were civilizations the Primordial Demon King had yet to discover, that number could be far higher.
‘Just how vast is the universe?’
Then Kaeld continued.
“But as for the former question, not a single one.”
“What?”
“There were plenty of civilizations in the universe, but… none of them developed as brilliantly as the species that birthed me, or as you humans did. They were all immature, fragile beings who neither had nor discovered the technology to separate the negative energy.”
“…….”
“In other words, you humans are an exceedingly rare and precious existence.”
Naturally, his words brought no joy.
After all, his definition of ‘precious’ was whether a species could create his kind.
“If this fails, how long will I have to wait for the next chance? A hundred million years? A billion?”
“…….”
“I’m tired now. I don’t want to wander aimlessly again in search of another species like humanity. So I will, without fail, absolutely create new members of my kind through you.”
“…….”
“Even if some punishments are imposed.”
There it was again.
Punishment.
‘A being capable of punishing the Primordial Demon King.’
……
Is he talking about laws?
Not the ‘laws of the world’ created and upheld by the hero system, but something like the ‘laws of the universe’ I once spoke of.
As I tried to extend that line of thought, Kaeld’s voice cut in.
“To do that, I need the hero system.”
“Give it up. You are too late. I have already added a new law.”
“You don’t have to see it that way.”
“……What?”
“With the law you added, all the negative energy in the world is flowing toward Idria. Isn’t that actually convenient?”
Tap.
He stopped walking.
Then he turned to face us.
“That Idria could become my first new kin.”
Neril, who had been listening in silence, twitched an eyebrow.
“She won’t join hands with you.”
“True. Because of that being called Trail, created by copying her soul.”
“……!”
“Then all we have to do is make that Trail disappear.”
I took a deep breath.
Offense growled quietly.
“That’s impossible. We have hidden Trail away very carefully. Along with Idria.”
“In the embrace of the world?”
“…….”
“Then let me ask you one thing. If ‘Mide’s world’ were shattered without leaving a trace, what do you think would happen to the embrace of the world where your laboratory resides?”
In that instant, a scene flashed through my mind.
The others were surely thinking of the same thing.
Two hundred and thirty thousand years ago.
The sight of the Primordial Demon King, carrying eighty billion units of negative energy, swallowing an entire world in one hand.
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