At my confident assertion, Samuel made a peculiar expression.
“You trust my sword.”
His lips, twisted ambiguously, soon formed a lopsided smile.
“You never trusted me before, but now, of all times…”
At a glance, those words seemed like resentment, or perhaps a complaint.
“And of all places, here, where I betrayed you.”
“Sir Samuel.”
With the tip of his sword still dragging on the ground, Sir Samuel slowly approached me.
For a brief moment, Xenon’s shoulders, which had been slumped, tensed up again. He hid me behind him, ready at any moment to block Samuel’s sword.
Samuel’s gaze passed over Xenon indifferently.
“You asked about my rest.”
Xenon, holding me tightly, slowly began moving his steps toward the castle. In contrast, Samuel was walking toward the cliff edge where we had been standing just moments before.
“I never thought you would ask about that.”
A hollow voice flowed from Samuel, who stood staring out beyond the cliff.
“My rest, you say.”
As if he had heard something ridiculous, he mulled over the word ‘rest’ several times. Then, he glanced back at me.
“If I asked for it, would you grant it?”
Behind Samuel, the setting sun was visible. I had clearly thought the blue hue was stronger just a moment ago, but in the few words we exchanged, the twilight glow was steadily intensifying.
With that sky at his back, Samuel turned fully toward me and spoke in a dry voice.
“In the past, you would have. But I know the you of now would not.”
Samuel’s gaze moved to my hand. The hand that had always shimmered with a green light whenever I granted rest to the knights of the round table.
But now, not even a speck of light flowed from it.
It wasn’t that I lacked the power. I still had strength left. It’s just…
I simply didn’t think I should use this power on Samuel.
Confirming my plain hand, Samuel smiled bitterly and muttered.
“I’ve been checking, to a sickening degree all the way here, that I am not within your fence.”
* * *
Not everyone desired freedom.
Some found comfort in the fact that they walked the path exactly as the gods dictated. So, they even resented the proxy who severed the threads of fate for them.
The knights of the round table, who unanimously called them foolish, worried whether the proxy might have suffered some emotional wound.
Thus, they praised ceaselessly. How sublime the goddess’s proxy was, how great their cause was.
「Even if some refuse, in the end, we will liberate this world.」
The proxy smiled as she said that to her knights. It was an undeniable truth.
Because this liberation was not merely for all living beings in the world.
It was not simply a righteous task of granting free will to the playthings of the gods.
At the end of this journey, the goddess would finally be able to cast off her heavy authority and fall into eternal slumber.
「Because that is the goddess’s will.」
The goddess’s proxy now understood. The reason she had to reach the end of this path.
Since she was a fragment of the goddess, since she was liberated by the goddess, since she wielded the authority of death…
The goddess’s wish was her path.
「Death is merciful to all, but to one person, it is utterly cruel.」
But, O goddess, can the rest you desire truly be said to be the same as my rest?
「Hmm?」
「Truly contradictory, isn’t it, Sir Samuel?」
The First Knight looked puzzled, as if he didn’t understand her words. He showed no sign of thinking there was any hidden meaning in her words.
He always took her words at face value.
His consistent, simple honesty made the proxy feel at ease. Perhaps that was why. She kept revealing her true feelings in front of him.
「Do you think forcing unwanted freedom upon them truly makes them free? In their eyes, I too will appear as a puppet of death. They will ask how I am any different from them.」
「You say that because you haven’t experienced it.」
「You don’t agree with their thoughts?」
「Of course not.」
Whenever she conversed with the First Knight, the proxy always felt a strange sensation. As if peering into a person’s heart, he always said the words she wanted to hear.
「I know that you possess free will.」
How much comfort those words brought her.
The proxy smiled brightly and swallowed the truth down her throat.
Her knight’s words were wrong. She had never been free from the beginning.
She was the sole puppet the goddess held and manipulated in her palm, and she would become the sole existence unable to receive that mercy at the end of this path.
* * *
“Do you know? Death is merciful to all, but to one person, it is utterly cruel.”
It was a familiar phrase. Where had I heard that before?
After pondering for a long while, I recalled that it was a sound I had heard in the vision Deiris showed me.
It was what Samuel said when he pointed his sword at Deiris. Along with the statement that the Captain’s soul was needed to complete the final authority.
“And death has always been cruel to you. In the past when it tried to annihilate your soul, and now when it resurrected you who did not wish to return.”
Samuel slowly continued.
“This is the atonement I have chosen, and the single opportunity I begged the goddess for and received.”
Samuel’s words were too vague and didn’t connect smoothly.
Stepping forward from behind Xenon, I retorted.
“Samuel, I wish you would speak in a way that’s easier to understand.”
In response to my words, Samuel, instead of answering, raised the sword he had been dragging all along.
Is he perhaps about to point that sword at me?
The momentary suspicion vanished immediately. It was true that Samuel reached his hand toward me, but he wasn’t pointing the sword.
“The method to perform the final authority is simple.”
He was offering me the sword’s hilt.
“Fill this sword with your authority and strike me down.”
Speechless, I stared at the sword extended toward me.
The sword, shimmering with white divine power, looked like a large white feather.
“After that, pour all your power into performing the final rest. Just as you have done for the knights until now.”
The rest I had granted the knights until now wasn’t some grand technique. I simply released the power I possessed, imbued with the desire to grant their wishes.
So, is Samuel now asking me for rest?
“……Are you asking me to kill you and grant you rest?”
Even as I spat it out, I wondered what on earth this meant. I looked at Samuel’s sword with a suspicious expression, but Samuel denied it in a rather firm voice.
“My share of rest was not granted to me.”
Then to whom am I supposed to grant rest? Still not understanding, I asked again.
“If I don’t kill you, I can’t complete the final authority?”
So, did the final authority require a sacrifice after all?
“To be precise, all of my divine power must be exhausted. Because…”
Samuel, trailing off, spoke in a slightly lower tone.
“That is the price.”
“The price?”
“Yes.”
Samuel, who had been arrogantly facing me, slowly lowered his gaze.
“The price for granting you rest.”
* * *
「You are my final mission.」
The proxy occasionally said such things to her knights. That statement was a truth without an inch of falsehood.
The twelve knights were those who assisted the proxy, led the way, and shared the heavy duty. Their sacrifice would be recognized for its value before the final authority.
Unlike the others who were merely liberated, the twelve knights had the right to obtain rest.
In the form they desired, whatever it may be.
「I will never turn my back on your devotion.」
At the time when the followers of Birth were losing momentum, when the Temple serving Birth burned, and countless threads of fate bound in the skein were severed and fluttered away.
The proxy finally sensed that the time had come. She traveled all over the world severing the threads of fate, and the handful of remaining followers couldn’t even trace her movements.
Birth’s excellent proxies had all fallen.
The proxy’s final duty was to grant rest to her knights and then even abandon the authority that had created her own soul.
In that sense, Veladia Castle held a very excellent position. The river flowing here would stretch to all corners of the continent and would embrace even the smallest lives the proxy had failed to see.
If she vanished here, perhaps the authority of death she abandoned could spread to all corners of the world.
By then, everything would have been let go. Since it was a body resurrected by authority anyway, it was only natural that this body would also die when the authority disappeared.
Although the disappearance of even the soul was sad, since it originally belonged to the goddess, what would be strange about returning to her?
「……It’s all over. There are no knights left to block your path, and you can lay down the heavy burden the goddess placed upon you.」
If only her knight had not said the words she so longed to hear.
Looking at the traitor’s sword soaked in blood, the proxy lamented.
Why do you, until the very end, say the words I want to hear?
While despairing that all her long-prepared plans had gone awry, the proxy faintly felt a sense of relief, as if a weight was lifted.
As the price of failure, all power surged back, the goddess despaired, and Birth struggled in its death throes.
Amidst the world collapsing into chaos, the proxy slowly moved her lips.
「For now, I want to rest.」
Finally, she made a choice with genuine free will.
It was the first time in her life.
Since the proxy’s memory ended there, she had no way of knowing.
The state of mind of the First Knight, who witnessed her first act of will.