An indescribable atmosphere hung in the air.
A bizarre presence, as if every organic thing in existence had been mixed together and left to decay—a sensation too unsettling to put into words.
—The atmosphere drifted from everywhere.
A fatal premonition that something terrible was about to happen welled up ceaselessly from within, yet even with that conviction taking root, there was nothing to be done.
(What... is happening?)
The surroundings were wrapped in silence.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
But the frantic tolling of warning bells and the sudden loss of contact with her lord had plunged Isla into an unprecedented sea of anxiety.
"...Huh?"
"Um, where are we?"
A delicate voice, utterly out of place and entirely unwelcome, spoke up.
"—!? You two! Why are you here?!"
"Don't know—"
"We were supposed to be with the king... Wh-why?"
The ones present were the Elful sisters.
They were the Dark Elf attendants who looked after Takuto, and whom Isla trusted the most—two girls with tragic pasts.
They should have been evacuating in one of Mynoghra's cities with the other non-combatants right now.
They had no business being here.
For a moment, Isla suspected an illusion or imposters, but the information her superhuman senses conveyed confirmed that the two were real.
Suddenly—by some unknown law, they had been forcibly summoned to this place.
There was no denying that a critical abnormality was currently in progress.
Isla's next action was swift upon reaching that conclusion.
"My children! Gather here at once! Guard those twins immediately!"
She would summon the child insects that might be nearby, or the reserve long-legged insects. She would even force the unhatched eggs, which had yet to emerge from their shells, to awaken, bypassing the lingering effects of the fierce battle.
But nothing happened.
"Gears! And warriors of the Dark Elf! Is anyone on reconnaissance? Come here immediately!"
She raised her head toward the sky, her thunderous shout directed at the Dark Elf warrior corps—those who had likely observed the earlier combat, or those who had retreated to places where her voice might reach.
But nothing happened.
"Great King! Our leader, Takuto Ira! Please answer me! Respond to my voice!"
She sent a mental voice to her most trusted king, the only one present who might reveal a way out.
—But nothing happened.
"What... why! Why can't I make contact?"
"Are you okay?"
"What... what do we do about the carriers...?"
"Come here. Do not stray from me, no matter what."
It was as if this entire location had been cut away spatially. Every action ended in futility.
She had thought to pull the twins close and escape, but the moment she moved her arms, an invisible force erased the action entirely, as if it had never begun.
Her sense of mounting desperation grew stronger by the second.
She didn't understand what was happening, yet she was absolutely certain that if this situation continued to progress unchecked, she would undoubtedly regret it.
Essentially, she was rendered unable to act. Forced into a state of waiting.
The twin girls looked up at her with anxious faces. As Isla reached out with her tail to pat their heads in reassurance, that was when it happened.
"Squee! Kuh-ha-ha-ha! GYAH-HA-HA-HA!"
What shattered the stagnant silence was a piercing, grating laughter.
The source was ahead. The voice was chillingly familiar, one she had heard just moments before.
Assessing the situation in an instant, Isla moved with a speed that belied her massive form—with the swift, precise lethality of a mantis striking its prey—and impaled the source of the laughter, Fremain.
"Sorry, tough luck. Ain't dead yet, see?"
The man who should have been dead answered.
In truth, his torso had already been cleaved in two, and the follow-up attack had completely shattered his skull.
Yet, even now, Fremain spoke with unnerving calm.
At this impossible sight, Isla instinctively recoiled.
"Why... I am certain I killed you!"
Overcome with shock, her composure fractured.
With no orders from Takuto and no clear course of action, she wasted precious moments in a state of flustered panic.
This was the fragility of a unit born from the Eternal Nations, now starkly revealed when left isolated and without support.
"Yeah, I died. Sure, I died. Without a shadow of a doubt, I died, you monster."
The corpse of Fremain began to narrate.
His skull was split open, brains spilling out, his eyes protruding as they stared vacantly into the void.
No creature, no matter what it was, could escape death. Not even an undead could avoid the cessation of its activity.
Yet even so, the man spoke his words with unnatural calm.
"No way... Just like he said. This world is shit. A lump of shit that believes it's alive, walking through a shitty life in a shitty world."
Ignoring the monologue, Isla again moved with agile motion, stabbing Fremain's corpse.
But this time a bizarre force field manifested, blocking the attack as if further destruction of the corpse was unacceptable.
"Ha ha! Can't kill me... well, I'm dead already! Ha ha ha!"
Fremain laughed. The corpse laughed.
For the first time since coming to this world—or rather, an event not even experienced in the Eternal Nations—Isla couldn't grasp its true nature.
Perhaps, had it been Takuto, his insight might have allowed him to hypothesize the reason for the phenomenon occurring now, but with the means of seeking instructions from her own king sealed off, there wasn't much she could do.
"Mother..."
"W-What should we do? If there's anything we can help with..."
The Dark Elf twins clung to Isla uneasily.
These two were noncombatants.
They didn't possess the extraordinary defensive power Isla had, nor an excessive healing ability.
Wounded easily by trivial things, dying without fuss. Such fragile life forms.
That fact made Isla anxious in a way she hadn't felt before.
But as a mother, she suppressed that anxiety and spoke gently to the two.
"Oh my, what worriers you two are. It's alright. You're safe here. I won't let anyone lay a finger on you..."
But reality is always cruel.
No—or rather, stories always demand tragedy, and epics use horror as an accent—that might be more accurate to say.
The situation was undeniably reaching a crisis point.
"Oh my, it's heartbreaking! How beautiful! It's love! Alright, I've decided! It has to be those two! That's the best choice, isn't it? Right, you monster."
At first, I couldn't grasp the meaning of those words.
But then I understood them as the phenomenon unfolded.
For some reason, the two girls were drifting away from Isla's chest, heading unsteadily toward Fremain's corpse.
Their movements were unnaturally fluid, almost casual, so much so that even Isla, who had her entire nervous system braced for alertness, was forced into a momentary blank thought.
"What are you doing! Stay hidden! Why are you coming out!?"
"Huh, wait, no!"
"W-What! My feet are moving on their own!"
Isla shouted, reaching out her hand.
The twins strained, trying to force their feet back, to retreat.
It was all in vain.
Fremain, her eye sockets now empty hollows, caught sight of the twins approaching. She twisted her broken jaw into a mocking grin.
"You can't fight it, can you? You can't defy it, right? Listen up, I'm gonna teach you something good right now. Someone precious to you is going to die. They'll definitely die. No matter how strong they are, no matter how great, no matter how important—they will die. Oh yeah, that's right, they're gonna die. Understand? If you understand, then say 'Yes, I understand' with a smile on your face."
At this point, Isla was certain this stemmed from some kind of game system.
The characters of Mynoghra were influenced by the system of Eternal Nations.
Just as it had allowed the Dark Elves to be incorporated into their faction and rewritten their spirits with an evil attribute, it could affect entities outside the game.
If that was the case, then the reverse was also true.
The system of Brave Questus, from which Fremain originated, was clearly dominating this place according to some set of rules.
However—
"Impossible! Why is this happening! This can't be! Such a thing—impossible!"
Such lawlessness was utterly unacceptable to Isra.
In their world, power was everything.
That encompassed not only raw physical or military strength, but also intangible forms like intellect and wealth.
The one and only law was a merciless one: those who possessed power could claim everything and impose their will, while those without could only be stripped bare. It was absolute precisely because it was so simple.
That was precisely why she could not tolerate the phenomenon unfolding before her.
It was easy to deduce that Fremain's death had triggered this.
But the victor in combat had been Isra. If she, who should have demonstrated her power, was now forced into such a dire situation, then what meaning did power truly hold?
If fate had been predetermined from the start, then what exactly was victory?
"Well, y'know, I feel the same way. No matter how you struggle, sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it. But if making that ugly face of yours twist up is what it takes, then hey, I guess this works."
Isra paid no mind to the mocking words spat from the shattered face of the man before her.
This was no time for that.
With no way to contact Takuto, their king and leader, only Isra herself could save the two girls now teetering on the brink of death.
To fight against the invisible force binding her, she pushed her muscles to their absolute limit, thrashing violently.
But it was impossible.
"Guh! Gah! Gaaaaaaaah! Don't you think something like this can hold me— Isra!"
"Listen up, monster. I'll tell you one last thing. Listen close— I am calling this... damn setup..."
In this world, there exist principles that no amount of struggling can ever overturn.
That very thing was...
A "forced event."
It was the true nature of the desperate situation now progressing, step by inevitable step.
"...I don't know what kind of world you came from. But I can tell it was freer than mine."
The man's voice held a strange detachment.
Even amidst intense urgency and emotion, that voice carried an unexpected note of sympathy, clearly audible even at close range, making Isla find herself listening despite herself.
"But hey, did you know? The world has certain events that simply cannot be avoided no matter how hard you try. We puppets can never escape that fate. The only thing we can do is one thing--just give up."
She didn't know what he had seen.
And she couldn't know how he had struggled before eventually resigning himself.
But to have that resignation thrust upon her and be expected to accept it was utterly impossible for Isla.
She could never nod along to fate as though it were inevitable.
"Mother... w-what do we do?"
"Isra Mother! P-please, help us!"
With these two in front of her, giving up was simply not an option.
She was their mother, and the one crying for help was her beloved daughter.
"Aaaaaaaaagh!"
Muscles creaked and groaned.
With nowhere to go, the power rampaged within her body, cracking the carapace of her exoskeleton--an armor surpassing steel in strength--and green blood spilled forth.
Yet even so, Isla did not relent.
"Yeah! That's right! It's precious, isn't it! You want to protect it, don't you! You can't look away! Keep going! Keep going! Maybe a miracle will happen! Not that I've ever seen anything like that before!"
The corpse of Fremain, and the twins.
The distance spreading between them seemed like the hourglass of a death sentence, each step the girls took stoking her sense of crisis as if marking the final ticks of time.
"It's impossible. It's truly impossible... We come here, there's a big boom, and it's over. Normally, I'd be the hero slipping through the gaps, but well, I guess the details are meant to be handled roughly."
The two girls turned their faces toward Isla, and their eyes met.
Was that a scripted event, or was it the last act of defiance from two people who had realized only their upper bodies could move……?
But Isla offered the two frightened girls the gentlest smile she could muster.
"It's all right... I will help you, I swear I will."
She strained her paralyzed body with everything she had, testing every power at her disposal.
Her mind raced desperately for some way to break through, but no answer came, and her frustration only mounted.
"Ah, every last one of you! Nothing but fools! You all think you have will, you have convictions, that you're moving of your own accord!"
One step.
"The Hero too! The Demon Lord! All of it! Not one of you has ever considered that you're being deceived! In the end, you're just pieces on a game board—ready to be discarded the moment someone tires of you!"
One step.
"That's enough, isn't it? Can't I just rest now? I've done enough! I fulfilled my role!"
Another step.
"Son of a bitch! What even is a mid-boss?! What even is a player?! How far are you going to mock me?! So what—is my job to die for the Hero's story?! Don't you dare laugh at me!"
The end drew ever closer.
There was no longer anyone to hear Fremain's monologue.
Isla, the Elful sisters, and even Takuto Ira—who had detected the abnormality—were all devoting everything they had to preventing the tragedy that was about to unfold.
Whether he understood that no one was listening, or whether rage had stripped him of all rational thought, Fremain's curses were directed at something that was not present.
"You too! You're listening, aren't you?! You're watching, aren't you?! What was that—'If you kill every last game, you will be free'?! You never had any intention of that from the start!"
Of course, no one present had the luxury of hearing those words.
Or perhaps—just one person was listening.
But there was no way to confirm it.
At the very least, it was an impossible tale for the participants who had stepped onto this stage.
"So, this is the final chapter! I'm dragging you damn lot down into this forsaken hell. Your precious little brats are coming with me! You hear me, Takuto? You're a player too, right? Just like him, were you reading our story somewhere out there? While watching me fight desperately against the hero, were you thinking things like, 'Once I beat this boss, I'll need to get new gear'?"
There was no one to answer.
"Don't screw with me! I'm here! I'm living right here! So, listen up! This is my ultimate harassment! I'm going to kill your favorite little things right here! This is just that kind of event, you know!!"
Fremain was laughing. Just rolling around, laughing like a madman.
Gone was any trace of the man once called cunning and ruthless. Only the sorrow of a wretched soul, cursing his own fate and utterly despairing of his life, remained.
It was no longer even clear if this action truly stemmed from his will.
The only thing known was the fact that events were unfolding exactly as he desired.
Eventually, the two young girls arrived before the corpses.
Their faces were twisted with the terror of death, tears spilling from their eyes in ragged streams.
Not just the normally stoic career soldier, but even Mearia—who rarely showed much emotion—was reduced to this state.
These girls, who had cursed their own fates and always longed for death, now froze in terror when facing it head-on.
No... it was precisely because they had come to know the warmth of a new family, and the kindness of a new mother.
That was why dying had become so terrifying.
It stood in stark contrast to the man before them, who also cursed his fate but had never once found a kindred spirit.
Click. The sound of some flag engaging was heard.
It went unheard by anyone, understood by no one, simply heralding the arrival of the finale and the locking of fates.
Death visits all beings equally.
Despair visits all beings equally.
They treated everything equally, even if the target was a monster beyond the scope of imagination.
There was no escape.
"Wait — please wait! Just wait!"
Isla screamed, a sound akin to a wail, clinging to the last thread of hope.
"No way! Absolutely not! Not you! I hate you! I hate all of you! So here's my final gift — you'd better accept it with gratitude, hyahahahahahaha!!!"
But reality was merciless.
"Mothe—"
Fremain blazed to life for an instant, and moments later an explosion of unfathomable heat and destructive force engulfed everything.
The entire area was reduced to ash, and a scorching wind rose into a storm that blew it all away.
The already-plowed earth was torn open once more, and the rising dust blotted out the sun, plunging the world into a darkness as deep as midnight.
Fragments of wood rained down upon the ground like a deluge, and the scorched air shimmered and wavered in eerie silence.
At last, true silence descended, leaving no victors in its wake...
The ordained fate wove its story to completion, exactly as destined, without the slightest deviation.