There's a genre of game called a death game.
It's called a death game because the difficulty is so punishing you die and learn from it.
That death game had a ton of weapons.
Swords, axes, and spears came in all kinds of varieties, and there were also whips, clubs, staves, scythes, knuckle dusters, and more.
With that many weapons available, I wanted to try out different ones.
I'd pick whichever weapon matched my mood.
Against the trash mobs, it worked just fine. It was fun.
But against the bosses, it didn't work.
No matter how many times I tried, no matter how many times, no matter how many times—I couldn't beat them.
So I reluctantly picked up the weapon I always used.
And beat them with that.
With that, I could win.
That's why I could win.
That was the only way to beat them.
I remember feeling so frustrated, realizing I was bad at games.
Right now, I remembered that feeling.
The Black Knight moved for the first time. It was heading straight toward me.
Banish hit, and part of its body vanished.
Even so, the Black Knight didn't flinch, didn't fear—it raised its sword and closed the distance.
I used my sixth Relic.
"The
Arm
of
the
Cosmos......"
The cosmos wrapped around my arm. The Black Knight's sword locked onto me with unerring precision.
I tracked it with my eyes and caught it with the
Arm
of
the
Cosmos."
With Banish, the Black Knight was already falling apart.
Even so, the Black Knight displayed terrifying swordwork.
I was certain.
This Black Knight was a lower-rank Treasure-class monster.
The lowest rank of the highest tier of monster.
Lower rank, but with the power to destroy a country all on its own.
"…I just hate admitting that this is all I've got."
[
With the
arm of the
universe
I punched the Black Knight.
The Black Knight burst apart and fell.
Its limbs bent at odd angles, half of them gone.
It was over.
That's when our eyes met.
It wasn't ghost-fire. It had beautiful, clear blue eyes.
(............My gratitude...to you............)
"Huh?"
That voice just now—?
The Black Knight slowly crumbled, its ashes scattering like flower petals.
"............"
Ash blossoms.
It was so frustrating I nearly cried, but I held back at least that.
"I lose."
That much I could manage.
The sound of a flute rang out. Beyond the bridge was an abandoned village.
No one was there. Most of the houses had collapsed.
The only thing left standing was the church. The flute came from inside.
The building was a dull bronze color, its stained glass faded.
The door groaned as I opened it, and the flute grew a little louder.
Inside was a worship hall, and I was standing directly beneath a statue of the Holy Mother Goddess.
A cup sat on the altar, caked thick with red dust. The flute sound came from there.
"..."
Several skeletal remains lay on the pews.
Some of them were children.
"..."
Something had happened here once. That was probably the cause of everything.
I didn't know what. But it must have been terrible. Horrific.
"..."
Right in front of me. A single cup on the dust-covered, reddened altar.
A small cup, sized for a child. Smooth and silver.
The cup was filled with a deep red liquid.
Thick and viscous, the red was almost black.
"..."
I didn't know what it was. I didn't want to know.
From somewhere deep within that red liquid, the flute sound echoed.
It was cheerful, yet somehow dark and dissonant — this was no flute.
"......Was that... a human voice?"
Many screams and cries. Wailing, shrieking, and furious shouts.
They overlapped and echoed, sounding like that discordant flute.
Why was it like that?
Why were the screams of so many people rising from the bottom of the cup?
"......"
One thing I knew for certain. This cup was legendary.
Nothing else I could say.
But I did know one thing I absolutely had to do.
I couldn't leave this cup as it was.
I held my hand toward the cup.
"...No."
I started to Banish it, then stopped.
Somehow, I felt like that wouldn't save anyone.
That was an execution.
That wouldn't save them.
Save... save them?
"...Right."
I wanted to save them.
I wanted to save all these screams — their grief, their pain.
I took out an egg-shaped container from the depths of the pouch.
I opened the lid and poured the contents into a small cup.
The moment the elixir touched the thick red liquid — no, the instant it touched the cup.
The cup dissolved into countless particles of light and vanished.
And the sound stopped.
"…………"
What had happened once, and how it all came to this.
I don't know.
But whatever began from that would never happen again.
The cries of resentment would no longer echo like the sound of a flute.
It's over.
I left the church and walked away from the abandoned village.
I got home around evening.
Ah, I'm tired. Really tired.