Episode 262
“Noah…!”
Ashes swirled through the air, threatening to consume the world. Before the remnants of this apocalypse, the otherworldly hero removed his raven-black helmet.
The face of a loved one emerged, and at the same time, the sword in his hand swung with purpose.
The Peacemaker glowed with a golden light, halting time and the world’s motion in its tracks.
Tick.
Even as the second hand moved, time remained frozen. The world stood still, the clock’s hands spinning in vain.
The falling ash, like raindrops, hung suspended in mid-air.
In this frozen moment, Dale moved alone.
His body, cloaked in the avatar of the hero, wove through the suspended raindrops.
As he crossed the rain of annihilation, each droplet that touched him turned his flesh to ash.
─ …!
The end of the world loomed, yet Dale pressed forward without hesitation. He walked calmly through the rain, held at bay by the Peacemaker’s power.
Tick.
The clock’s hands moved, but the world remained still. Except for two.
“You still have the potential to be the hope that saves the world or the despair that destroys it.”
The hero spoke.
“Which path you choose is up to you.”
─ This world…
In the frozen world, Sistina spoke.
─ It has put you through unspeakable hell.
“It did.”
─ I watched as you were bound and humiliated, used as their tool, suffering.
“I don’t deny it.”
─ I remember the curses you hurled at them. Are you really willing to accept this hell for the sake of a few precious people left in this world?
Sistina’s words revealed the depth of her hatred for this world and her desire to restore the old one.
─ If you wish, you can choose a few to join us on the ark. A few, even dozens. They can return with us to our world, the one you love and must protect.
The goddess of mercy and compassion pleaded, her voice trembling.
“It’s not because I have a few loved ones here that I want to love or forgive this world.”
Yet Dale, the otherworldly hero, shook his head quietly.
─ Then why…?
“Because no matter how ugly and terrible, I want to affirm the world our hope has created.”
─ …
“The words you spoke to us when you were born.”
With those words, Dale took another step forward.
The ‘perfect peace’ the Peacemaker spread began to waver.
The rain of annihilation, which seemed frozen, started to flow slowly, like a slow-motion video. It would only take a moment for the rain to wash away Dale’s existence.
Yet Dale did not scatter the primordial darkness. He did not shield himself with the potential to become anything.
“The choice is yours.”
Tick.
The clock’s hands moved. It was the final silence.
Tick.
Still, no answer came.
Simultaneously, the clock hands, held back by the Peacemaker, began to race like an unbridled horse. The frozen world finally moved.
The falling raindrops enveloped Dale’s body.
Swoosh…
It was not a rain of ash, nor a baptism of annihilation, nor a self-replicating doomsday machine.
It was simply rain, pouring down like a shower.
The primordial darkness given to Dale by the Mother of Old Darkness held the potential to become anything. But the mana Noah scattered across the land was no exception.
Hope. The potential that blooms amidst despair, people called it that.
“Let’s change this world together.”
Dale spoke.
“Like we did before.”
─ Together again…?
Before he knew it, a blue hologram appeared before him, and the otherworldly hero nodded.
“I willingly chose to become the god of those who believe in me, and now, a true goddess stands before me.”
The hero spoke, and Noah nodded silently.
Dale was not the otherworldly hero. His existence was merely a facade, inheriting the ‘hero’s memory’ through the power of the Blue Tower Lord.
That’s what he thought. Thus, even the lies he told Charlotte, he believed to be a cruel form of truth.
But it wasn’t.
As another fallen hero once said, the only proof of truth is action.
And the actions Dale showed now were unmistakably those of a hero.
Thus, Dale turned his head. Clad in the hero’s avatar, armored as the raven knight.
Among the shadowy riders, there stood a woman, his wife, who had always been his sword.
“Charlotte.”
“Dale…?”
At the end, the lord of truth uttered the world’s most hideous lie. Charlotte was still a child unaware of the truth, and thus Dale had the duty to reveal it to her.
As the lord of shadows, both were bound to the cruel truth they could not escape.
“I told you I defeated the otherworldly hero that day.”
“Yes.”
“It was a lie.”
The hero spoke calmly.
“That being was merely my shadow.”
“Your shadow…?”
“The real otherworldly hero stands before you now.”
Charlotte gasped. The man before her, wearing the hero’s avatar, was a stranger.
“The person standing before you now is the one who defeated your father that winter night.”
“But you said you defeated the otherworldly hero with your own hands…”
Where he came from and how he existed, there was no way to know now.
Whether he was a demon born from Lady Scarlet’s ‘Ritual of the Strong Demon,’ or the real otherworldly hero who survived and vowed revenge, or something Dale couldn’t comprehend.
It no longer mattered.
He was merely a shadow of the being present here.
The only proof of truth is action, and this was Dale’s and the hero’s action.
”…I lied to you from the start.”
Dale spoke.
“When you came to Saxon Castle, knowing nothing, I already knew your name. And I did something unforgivable to you.”
”…”
“You are Charlotte Orhart, daughter of the divine sword Vardel Orhart, whom my past self defeated.”
“From the beginning…”
“I had the hero’s memory. I believed myself to be the hero. So I needed allies to take revenge on the Empire, and you were there.”
“So you took me in?”
“Yes.”
“Then when you said we should take revenge on the Empire together, when you said you’d make me your sword…”
Charlotte hesitated, unable to continue. Dale also remained silent.
At that moment.
The mana filling the area began to stir and take ‘form’ again.
It wasn’t the ascension army to execute the goddess’s will. Before they became angels of steel, the bones of humans were being resurrected.
“I can even bring back your father, with his memories intact before he died.”
”…”
“But we all know it doesn’t mean anything.”
Dale said with a bitter smile.
“Just as reviving the world and loved ones I couldn’t save is meaningless.”
”…How do you want me to think of you?”
“Think of me however you wish.”
Simultaneously, the hero’s avatar enveloping Dale disappeared. What remained was unmistakably Dale.
”…”
Charlotte didn’t respond. Silence fell.
“Take up your sword.”
After the silence, Charlotte spoke.
“With all your strength as the otherworldly hero.”
Petals began to scatter.
Petals of a blade, cruelly tinged with blood and black, bloomed.
Thus, Dale nodded silently. The vanished avatar reappeared, and the raven knight’s armor was no longer there.
Charlotte Orhart readied her sword.
Facing her father’s killer, she finally imbued the essence of her honed blade into its tip.
The blade she had endlessly sharpened, serving as Dale’s sword. That very blade plunged toward her lord.
“Every time you went to battle, you told me.”
Charging with her sword, Charlotte spoke.
“Not to die. That this battlefield wasn’t where I should die.”
”…I did.”
“You said it even before this battle.”
Dale nodded at Charlotte’s words.
“Was it just a pathetic sense of guilt? To forget your own cruelty, did you comfort yourself with such self-deception?”
”…I must have become too skilled at lying.”
Parrying Charlotte’s sword, the hero smiled wryly.
“Now, even I can’t tell what’s real anymore.”
“I see.”
Charlotte sneered again.
“Now, I don’t know either.”
The tip of her sword, still swinging, was sharpened with a deadly intent.
Dale didn’t evade.
Thud!
The blade plunged down.
But not toward Dale.
Charlotte Orhart reversed her grip on the hilt and drove it into herself.
The blade pierced her chest and protruded from her back.
“Charlotte…!”
Finally, Dale’s expression froze.
Watching him, Charlotte smiled quietly.
Dale did not smile.
In an instant, the smile vanished from Charlotte’s face. She understood all too well what it meant.
“Father…!”
Where death should have been, there was none. Only one person on this continent could make that possible.
”…It wasn’t me, my dear.”
But as Charlotte’s cry reached him, Alan quietly shook his head. It wasn’t him. Then who could it be? The answer wasn’t hard to find. There was someone who had surpassed even the man once known as the Black Duke, becoming the greatest dark sorcerer on the continent.
“Why?”
The sword that should have pierced her heart was instead resting harmlessly in her hand.
As if nothing had happened.
Even if she reversed her grip and tried to stab herself again, nothing would change.
“Are you trying to torment me with this hellish curse…?!”
“I told you.”
Charlotte cried out, her voice trembling, and Dale shook his head.
“I don’t want you to die on this battlefield.”
“Then where on earth am I supposed to die?!”
Charlotte shouted, her voice rising, and Dale replied.
“──A battlefield where I can’t protect you.”
At those words, Charlotte could no longer hold back her tears and fell to her knees.
Even after the fall of the Divine Empire, her sobs echoed faintly amidst the victory.