"Nobody can defeat you—someone I created."
That was what the
In real time, it was nearly twenty years ago. In perceived time, it was far more than that.
He remembered how many times he'd challenged a single situation, but he couldn't recall the total number of attempts, let alone all the time he'd spent—too daunting to even consider. But he'd certainly spent far longer than it would take to live a normal life and die just once.
That said, just because Aldebaran had spent that much time, it didn't mean his mind had reached the same state as an elf who'd lived for hundreds of years without aging.
If the human mind matures from immaturity, and eventually grows old and reaches a state of serene acceptance, it's because through the passage of time it has experienced both the bitter and the sweet, leaving room for the spirit to grow.
But the time Aldebaran spent outside of real time was, so to speak, a succession of frozen moments—all in service of overcoming the obstacle before him. In reality, it was just a few seconds to, at most, a few minutes, repeated countless times. No amount of that could produce growth in a human.
Therefore, Aldebaran believed that the accumulation of time repeated through his Authority did nothing but wear his mind thin—it was time spent in vain, producing no growth.
Even so, no matter how many times—hundreds, thousands, millions, billions—those futile moments were repeated, the brain naturally organized memories and tried to strip Aldebaran of what were real recollections.
And yet there were memories that could not fade—recollections seemingly carved not into the brain but into the soul itself. That opening statement was precisely one of them.
Mind you, if Aldebaran were to say he didn't remember all that time and didn't want to remember it either, he could picture the Witch—that incarnation of insatiable curiosity who wanted to know everything—murmuring, "Is that so? What a shame."
The Witch, who claimed she couldn't understand emotions, was remarkably skilled at performing to bend others to her will. Knowing this, Aldebaran still couldn't defy the Witch's words or attitude.
If one were to say he'd been raised that way—reshaped—perhaps it would rival what he'd glimpsed once from Yae about the inhuman nature of the shinobi village.
In that case, either the shinobi village was equally warped to be compared to the Witch on equal terms, or the Witch was the dangerous one for going head-to-head with the shinobi village's history single-handedly. Either way, it was a toss-up.
—In any case, the Aldebaran of now was something the Witch had created.
"Even so, you have the right to live your own life. That is one domain that even a creator must not unilaterally infringe upon. So if you ever feel in your heart that you cannot follow me, you are free to leave the plan at any time. That is your freedom."
From time to time, the Witch would say something like this, testing Aldebaran's resolve.
It was unusual care from the Witch. Her usual strategy was, once she'd obtained someone's consent, to maneuver so they couldn't take back their word.
In fact, among the lessons and tasks the Witch had assigned Aldebaran, there were many nightmarish ones that required him to promise in advance that he wouldn't give up partway through. When making him do those, the Witch would get his nod once and never ask again if he wanted to stop.
And yet, on the most fundamental, the most foundational, the very first resolve—she questioned him again and again.
Aldebaran interpreted this as a kind of guilt or conflict on the Witch's part, but he wasn't sure.
The Witch, who called herself unable to understand emotions, still couldn't have been ignorant of anger, sadness, or joy. If she could express such emotions, couldn't she also feel guilt and fear for the future?
At the very least, during all the time Aldebaran had spent with the Witch, he might have thought her someone who didn't understand the human heart, but he never thought her someone who had no heart at all.
There was a vast difference between "doesn't have" and "doesn't understand."
Perhaps that was what manifested itself in the form of the Witch's questions. If so, then for every question she'd asked, had she also struggled with doubt?
Had she agonized over the brutal path she was leading Aldebaran down, and tried to respect his own will, to let him choose his own life?
If—by some infinitesimal chance—the Witch truly harbored such feelings—then ironically, that was precisely the reason Aldebaran never wavered in his resolve.
So— "—I see."
Aldebaran's answer, always the same, always drew the same response from the Witch.
Perhaps he was being deceived.
From the day Aldebaran was born to that day, the Witch may have taken ample time to brainwash him. The Witch may have possessed none of the guilt or hesitation Aldebaran had expected.
She may have been a wicked Witch, after all.
But even when confronted head-on with that possibility, the Witch would only show her beautiful smile in black and white, and say— "Of course. —I'm a wicked mage, you know."
And with that answer—impossible to tell whether sincere or a lie—she would keep Aldebaran off balance.
△▼△▼△▼△ Aldebaran was hurtling through the air at tremendous speed, buffeted by roaring wind.
Spread wide behind him were wings fashioned from stone, and he used them to catch the wind and fly. He imagined the sight must look absurd, but he couldn't afford to worry about appearances.
He needed to buy as much distance as possible while Yae held them off, and eliminate the altitude difference.
"Can't say I expected someone to snipe my Domain, though."
Aldebaran muttered this, but most of his concentration was consumed with forming and controlling the stone wings at his back.
Crafting the stone wings required an exquisite balance—size and hardness both demanded delicate adjustment. Too large, and they'd be caught by the wind too much; too small, and they'd fail their purpose entirely. The degree of hardness and density affected the weight as well—too much shaved off, or not enough, and a crash was inevitable.
"I have nothing but respect for Icarus for pulling this off in one go…!"
When one spoke of flying with artificial wings, the great predecessor Icarus came to mind with his wings of wax. Setting aside how that ended, Aldebaran was genuinely astonished that Icarus had not merely glided on artificial wings, but had even flapped his way close to the sun.
Aldebaran himself had crashed any number of times due to poorly made wings. —Those crashes only played into the enemy's hands, and after countless reattempts, the current stone wings were the best he'd managed.
Even these required extreme concentration and meticulous care to maintain—they were a crude feat at best—but— "I couldn't just keep falling forever."
That reality and that sense of urgency were the biggest reasons Aldebaran had frantically leveled his stone wings from Level 1 to a functional state. For all that he prided himself on being the bearer of an invincible Authority, his Domain was not without weaknesses.
This time, the enemy's ambush had, almost by coincidence, struck two weaknesses simultaneously. Or more precisely, attacked the same weakness from two angles.
Aldebaran's Authority—the Domain—had a range of effect.
The teleportation brought about by the ambush had expelled Aldebaran from the area of his set Domain. On top of that, the teleport destination involved a fall from extreme altitude—which became the second blow against his Domain—while Aldebaran was attacked head-on.
As a result, Aldebaran fell at tremendous speed, repeatedly killing himself before he was flung outside his Domain, then restarting from mid-fall, over and over. During those repetitions, he determined it was impossible to turn the situation around while falling from a height where he had no freedom of movement. After trying various other strategies, he arrived at attempting escape via stone wings.
At least this way, the change in altitude would be gradual, and maintaining the Domain would be comparatively easier. Just as Aldebaran had finally managed to untangle one of the snarled knots— "—Al!"
A silver-bell voice cut through the air, calling to Aldebaran, who was desperately trying to stabilize himself.
He turned his head just slightly, and there—clearly visible—was an angel soaring through the sky in the same direction, though from a considerably lower altitude than Aldebaran. No—it was
She bore wings of ice on her narrow back, and though she employed the same method as Aldebaran, the sheer elegance of her execution created an overwhelming gap as she rapidly closed the distance.
"I can't believe it."
The dumbfounded murmur that slipped out—now tinged with genuine admiration—was entirely understandable.
Aldebaran had labored enormously to complete his stone wings, clumsy as they were, as described earlier. It was precisely because of that effort that he held his respect for Icarus and his wax wings.
But Emilia, who possessed a talent that allowed her to succeed with artificial wings on her very first try—to achieve the same result that had cost Aldebaran countless failures—inspired not respect but a sense of the decisive gap between them, even a feeling of defeat.
"The fact that I'm the one who's incompetent after crashing over six hundred times, rather than her being a genius—that's not much of a consolation."
Aldebaran's strength in his Domain lay in its endurance: through infinite trial and error, he could persist until even the sliverest chance of victory appeared. Being able to keep cycling through his options until the opponent made a mistake and the situation turned in his favor was his greatest advantage.
But as his fight with Reinhard had demonstrated, there were rare beings in this world who always drew the correct answer. That "correct answer" varied depending on individual abilities and victory conditions, but what they shared—unlike Aldebaran—was being loved by fate.
—Aldebaran was hated by fate.
Whether Aldebaran had hated fate first, or fate had hated him first, he could no longer say—but that much was an unshakable truth. Whatever else he was loved or hated for, fate was Aldebaran's absolute enemy.
Therefore, he had to kill it. —He would make himself fate's enemy if it meant killing fate.
And because fate didn't want that, it kept sending its favored ones as assassins one after another. Here and now, those were Emilia and
"—What a cruel twist."
Who had been the one to suggest Rem as the ambush role in the first place?
Whoever it was, Rem was the perfect candidate to create an opening against Aldebaran. When she had been a victim of the Gluttony Authority, Aldebaran—under its influence—had been unable to perceive the strangeness of Rem's existence, and had built a genuine relationship with her without realizing it.
Therefore, when Priscilla died and it was revealed that Rem too had been freed from Gluttony's collar, the memory-flash grenade of that moment had carved out a larger void in Aldebaran than in anyone else.
—Because he had encountered someone who shouldn't have been here, someone who by all rights should have been dead.
"————"
How she had been drawn here—by what means—was beyond debate.
Without question,
And yet—Priscilla Barrielle had not been saved.
"If you're going to do that, then I won't hold back either."
The tears shed, the fists turned against himself, the tender care he'd tried to offer—all of it was meaningless.
What he wanted wasn't tears, or wounds, or consolation. It was a single life.
"———"
Biting down hard enough to taste blood behind his helmet, Aldebaran turned behind him. Simultaneously, he shifted the angle and thickness of his wings, minimizing the loss of speed and maneuverability, and locked eyes in midair with Emilia, who was pursuing him relentlessly.
Beautiful Emilia with her striking ice wings—no matter how angelically lovely she appeared, she couldn't generate speed or altitude by flapping artificial feathers. Her initial burst had come from the recoil of Rem striking the ice platform, but her subsequent pursuit relied on a different method— "Ya! Ta! Tei!"
As with her attacks, Emilia's kiai were disarmingly cute, but with each shout, her speed and altitude climbed another notch. The method was simple and straightforward—she created ice pillars in midair with her magic, then kicked off them to gain acceleration and momentum.
The ice pillars would hang in place for a moment before being kicked downward into the depths by the force of Emilia's legs, but they quickly dispersed back into mana, returning to the atmosphere, and were reborn as new footholds. She kicked those and gained more momentum. That was how she had been chasing Aldebaran down.
"This is insane…"
This was a feat only possible thanks to her extraordinary magical talent and her ability to expend vast quantities of mana.
Thanks to the path shared with "Aldebaran," he could draw on the power of the "Divine Dragon" as an external mana tank. But even if asked to do what Emilia was doing, he couldn't.
It wasn't a matter of mana capacity—it was the vast difference in talent and physical ability. Talent could be compensated for through infinite trial and error, but the gap in physical capability could not.
The gorge stretched long and wide, and the rock walls flanking the two fliers continued just as far in either direction. As long as they headed the same way, Emilia's pursuit would not cease.
Spotting this, Emilia kicked another ice pillar, and though some distance remained, she matched Aldebaran's altitude. Then, balancing on her ice wings— "—Al! Please, let's talk! I'll listen properly!"
"You talk a big game. Going on about no mercy, about freezing me solid—and you say that while trying to send me plummeting to the bottom? If I'd kept falling, you would've frozen the whole river along with me, wouldn't you?"
"But! That plan already failed!"
"Being too trusting is something to think about, Royal candidate!"
Standing by and doing nothing while falling to the depths below was exactly the pattern of falling into the enemy's trap.
To escape that, he'd gambled on dodging the ice platform's falling trajectory—at worst, he'd only managed to separate Emilia and Rem, but that should count as something, shouldn't it?
His answer— "I'll show you now. —My attitude hasn't changed since the
Thrusting out his hand, Aldebaran created stone projectiles in midair, unleashing a barrage of flying rocks at the pursuing Emilia.
Almost like an actual shooting game, Emilia closed in through the storm of stone, ice wings gleaming— "And I'll say it as many times as I need to! I don't want to cry anymore wondering why everyone who disappeared had to be gone!!"
With that loud declaration, Emilia charged into the barrage, and the shrieks of shattering ice and freezing atmosphere echoed piercingly through the Aguzad Gorge.
△▼△▼△▼△ —Aldebaran had never worried much about his own significance as the "Follower Star."
Everyone apparently went through a phase in adolescence wondering why they were born, where life comes from and where it goes, or feeling an inexplicable rebelliousness toward their parents. But for Aldebaran, all of those were rather remote questions.
In Aldebaran's case, it was difficult to decide who to cast as the parent to rebel against. And by the nature of his Authority, he could never truly feel the reality of a life being lost. He had been given a clear answer as to what he was born for, and as for why—he supposed "love" was an acceptable enough answer.
Therefore, Aldebaran had never confronted the questions one ought to face in adolescence.
He didn't consider that a failure, nor did he regret missing out.
There were apparently people who believed one should court hardship in youth, but there was no value in experiences that only become embarrassing dark histories later in life. Experiences that need not happen need not happen. —Just as dying should happen only once, at the very end of one's life.
"I see. So I can't expect any adolescent emotions or impulses from you. That's a bit disappointing. I'd been thinking about how to handle your rebellious phase—had all sorts of plans ready."
This was the lament of the Witch, who repeatedly made heartless comments—though Aldebaran didn't think she lacked a heart—to the smoothly raised and trouble-free Aldebaran.
For Aldebaran, the Witch was the being he'd spent the longest time with since birth. She had a terrible habit of wanting to witness all of a human's choices and emotions, all of their myriad possibilities.
And in most cases, the Witch's nature meant there was no holding back that desire.
Aldebaran had met other Witches besides her, and each of them—to varying degrees—seemed utterly incapable of defying that nature. It felt profoundly blasphemous.
Therefore, the Witch's somewhat unsatisfied attitude as she awaited Aldebaran's adolescence—if one considered it the product of an irresistible nature—was, in a sense, unavoidable. But even so, performing an adolescence just to please the Witch was meaningless. —In a way, that very resistance felt like an adolescent emotion itself.
"Perhaps it's too convenient for someone like me, who isn't even your parent, to merely trace the surface of parental experience. …If I'd created
The sense of loneliness Aldebaran felt at the Witch murmuring to herself like that was, I think, something unrelated to adolescence—something else entirely. But it was difficult to pin down what exactly that was, and seeking it in concrete form was complicated given the nature of their relationship.
So, as the Witch had defined it, Aldebaran's relationship with her was— "—Sensei."
When Aldebaran addressed her that way, the Witch—who had been enjoying her exploration of the labyrinth of thought—looked up.
Every time he saw those black eyes reflecting him, the head tilting with a "What is it?" as jet-black hair cascaded down, he couldn't help but think how unfair the Witch was.
She was forever absorbed in her own concerns, honest about her own desires, never once bothering to consider another's feelings—and yet, whenever Aldebaran called out to her, she always met his gaze.
For such a Witch, it was only natural that no adolescent rebellion would arise.
The motivation was thin to begin with, and his mind and body had long since been broken to the reality that opposing the Witch was futile. Under the guise of performance testing for his Authority, the Witch had inflicted deaths numbering in the millions on Aldebaran, and the ranking was already complete.
Of course, no matter how many times he brought it up, the Witch herself would say, "It's not in my memory even once, so you can hardly expect me to feel guilty about it," and toss the matter aside like a pear stone.
But he understood why the Witch went to such lengths.
After all, among all the Witches who still survived, aside from the one before him, only one had been the direct or indirect cause of death for the others. The connection Aldebaran had with those Witches was not with their living selves.
He could only meet them in the limited space the Witch prepared. The selves he met there were already dead—mere collections of souls.
And Aldebaran, under the Witch's tutelage, had to— "—Be made to kill each and every one of them."
That was the purpose of existence bestowed upon the "Follower Star" Aldebaran, a life's mandate he had to fulfill even if it cost him a million deaths—before he'd even reached adolescence.
The Witch had endured condemnation from the other Witches and even severed ties with her own companions for the sake of creating Aldebaran for this purpose. Her resolve was absolute.
"Nobody can defeat you—someone I created."
Being told that was both Aldebaran's pride and the foundation of his existence.
Honestly, he thought the Witch's personality was the worst, and there was much he wanted to say about her methods of discipline and the way she set out her plans—but even so, he never hesitated to answer the Witch's expectations.
He believed he could do it.
The Aldebaran of that time—who still had his left arm—knew death but did not know true defeat. That was why he could believe it.
He'd never had his adolescence—but it was, without question, an irredeemably foolish dark history.
△▼△▼△▼△ "Tch—!"
Emilia plunged headlong into the cascading hail of stone projectiles, and Aldebaran suppressed the hesitation in his heart, unleashing his full, merciless firepower.
It had been the same during their clash in the Royal Capital—Aldebaran was instinctively weak against Emilia.
This was already a fundamental, innate vulnerability of his being, and it was partly why he hadn't been able to take the bold measures he could against other opponents back at the Royal Capital.
That time, he'd borrowed Aldebaran's power to drop a massive boulder, forcing the city's defense and halting Emilia's pursuit. But here, there was nothing to use as collateral.
In that sense, dropping her into this massive gorge showed he'd properly reflected on the previous battle.
"Don't expect me to be grateful for your growth when I've got no room to spare!"
Alas, Aldebaran's heart was not generous enough to celebrate the growth of himself or his enemy. For an instant, he felt resistance to defining Emilia as an enemy, but he squeezed his eyes shut against that.
After all, that resolve—the resolve to do this—was something he'd held for a long time, long before he ever met Priscilla.
Strictly speaking, the resolve Aldebaran had set wasn't for Emilia standing before him— "Even a reused resolve, even a paper-mâché one, ought to serve some purpose."
Holding up that resolve—aware of its hollowness—Aldebaran moved to sever Emilia's pursuit.
Emilia flew straight into the storm of fist-sized rock fragments, her ice wings shining brilliantly.
The attack had been designed to hope she'd at least slow down by assuming a defensive or deflecting posture, but true to his misgivings, Emilia chose a direct, head-on confrontation at the shortest distance—using her ice wings as footholds, ice pillars as platforms, and even firing ice stakes to counter the barrage. Against the flying stones that broke through, she deflected them with twin ice swords gripped in both hands.
The Witch had taught him that simultaneous casting of multiple magics was difficult even for seasoned mages.
Even with the same attribute, it was like holding a pen in each hand—the right writing prose while the left drew illustrations. With different attributes, it was like installing additional brains, a feat of sheer audacity. Aldebaran had seen the Witch handle five attributes simultaneously, and he genuinely wondered whether her slightly smaller-than-human head held five tiny brains.
Setting aside such extraordinary cases, even with the same fire attribute, simultaneously wielding wings, ice pillars, ice stakes, and twin swords—four types of magic at once—was a considerable feat.
And on top of that, she employed an extraordinary pursuit technique, performing at the level of an Olympic athlete—Aldebaran felt he'd used up all his surprise for today.
"So I'm greeting you with minimal shaking!"
Against the storm of stone, Emilia chose to break through with courage and brute strength. But what if he prepared a threat that brute strength alone couldn't overcome?
"————"
The next development caught Emilia off guard, and her cheeks stiffened as she tried to close the distance.
Before her eyes, spreading out with nowhere to retreat, was an encirclement of gravel—smaller than the stone projectiles and easy to overlook. It was tantamount to plunging into a torrential downpour; without the extraordinary ability to dodge rain in midair, taking zero hits was impossible.
Of course, he hadn't scattered the sand merely to obstruct her vision— "—Heavy!?"
Emilia cried out in surprise, swinging her arms to shake off the clinging sand.
The grains that touched her limbs and white clothing clumped with surrounding sand, growing in weight and hardness, hindering her movement. A debuff attack he'd once deployed against Reinhard in the sand sea—Reinhard, who exceeded the speed of sound, had torn free through sheer momentum, but that method was unavailable to Emilia.
Furthermore— "My wings—"
The gravel's primary target was the ice wings that sustained Emilia's flight.
The ice wings, infiltrated by sand, were corroded and couldn't perform their wind-catching function. Emilia was about to lose her balance and plunge headlong to the ground—so to avoid that, she abandoned her cumbersome wings, reverting from angel to angel-like girl to escape the danger.
"She purged them!"
But making her do exactly that was Aldebaran's main plan.
Even if forced to abandon her ice wings once, Emilia would redeploy the same ones almost immediately, able to restart without losing her upward and forward momentum. However, no matter how extraordinary her physical abilities, she couldn't keep up with an improvised hang glider moving at over a hundred kilometers per hour.
Therefore, Aldebaran pressed the attack to prevent Emilia from redeploying her wings.
With a thunderous roar, stone arms extended from the rock walls—gigantic limbs of stone attempting to seize Emilia as she flew through the gorge. If they sapped her momentum, even if Emilia gained a second set of wings, she couldn't catch Aldebaran, whose speed wouldn't die.
Moreover, the arms blocking Emilia's path were not one or two—the stone arms jutting from the rock walls numbered in the hundreds.
"Respect for the Thousand-Armed Kannon… though it's more like the back side of a haunted house."
It was reminiscent of the haunted house classic—dozens of arms bursting through sliding doors all at once. But unlike those meant to startle, these giant arms were serious about capturing Emilia.
If even one caught her leg, the chase was over and Aldebaran's escape would be a success—the moment of truth— "To think that—"
But the words were swallowed by Emilia's fierce determination.
"—I'll do my best!!"
He'd been about to say "can she really make it?" but her spirit overwrote the sentence.
Emilia's terrifying quality was precisely that, even though trying hard shouldn't be enough, she might very well manage it through sheer effort.
Having lost her wings, Emilia demonstrated this quality to the fullest—she spun the ice sword in her hand, sliced off the fingers of the first giant arm, used the now-harmless stump as a launching pad, and leaped high into the air.
Her momentum was far from dead. She was reclaiming significant altitude.
But the arms—though they fell short of a thousand—still numbered over a hundred, waiting— "—Soldiers, lend me your strength!"
At Emilia's call, the hideous-looking ice soldiers appeared once more.
The ice soldiers—supposedly shattered without recourse during the falling ice platform—now stood valiantly against the stone arms that swarmed toward Emilia, using their own bodies: some blocking, some punching arms off course, and others holding poses as they were destroyed. They showed a variety of bravery.
Among them, what infuriated Aldebaran most was the individual that took Emilia's hand, helped her escape the arms' clutches, and practically threw her forward to aid her progress.
A total of seven ice Natsuki Subarus fulfilled their roles, shattered, were reborn to support Emilia, were shattered again, and rose once more—never breaking the seven-unit maximum—guarding Emilia and helping her against the hundreds of stone arms closing in.
—Magic, the Witch had said, was the act of giving shape to one's wishes and desires.
Aldebaran had thought that surprisingly romantic of the Witch. But considering that she could also turn her desire to carve someone to pieces into wind-blades, or birth crimson flames to burn everything away in fury, one couldn't entirely rule out that it was all a manifestation of wishes and desires.
If so, then the sight before him now—ice soldiers shaped like Natsuki Subaru helping Emilia—what kind of wish could that possibly represent?
His stomach churned. Not metaphorically—in the truest, most literal sense.
Aldebaran channeled that rising wave of negative emotion into his next attack.
It was— "Sorry about the ten-don, but the trump card's making a comeback."
As Aldebaran said this, above them—spanning the full width of the Aguzad Gorge—a colossal, immense mass of rock hurtled down, inverted.
An inescapable, crushing weight—this was the revival of the trap he'd sprung at the Royal Capital.
△▼△▼△▼△ What he'd wanted—no, what he'd needed—was a single victory in his entire lifetime.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Aldebaran's life existed solely for that victory.
Everything given to him, poured into him, bestowed upon him since his birth—all of it was a signpost laid out to obtain, seize, and wrest that victory.
Aldebaran understood the weight of that meaning—or so he thought.
But when the moment came to be held accountable for it, the resolve he should have possessed, the plan that should have been prepared, the soul he should have polished—all of it became meaningless.
"Nobody can defeat you—someone I created."
That statement, given by the Witch, had been the benchmark of Aldebaran's life.
As long as he could believe it, no matter what obstacles stood in his way, nothing could stop him. And that he might one day be unable to believe in the Witch—that was something he would never tell her, never let her hear, because he'd thought it impossible.
Therefore, he'd been thoroughly convinced that, as the Witch said, no one could defeat him.
—When that faith was shattered, Aldebaran must have truly died once.
Deaths—counting them had long since become absurd.
He'd thought it absurd, but he'd been told to count, so he'd counted, and even recording the actual number hadn't diminished the absurdity one bit.
But he believed that the "death" in the truest sense was what he tasted that day, at that moment.
The Witch's deepest wish—for which she had forged Aldebaran himself, preparing for him a single, once-in-a-lifetime battle he absolutely must not lose.
And yet— "—And you lost the battle you must not lose."
The Witch—seated at a white table on the familiar grassy plain, savoring the fragrance of tea at her tea party—confronted Aldebaran with the enormity of what he had done, crushing him in despair.
The Witch, whose beauty could be expressed in just two colors—white and black—her maddeningly beautiful face unmarred by a single scratch. That was proof that this place was a dream.
Because the Witch had shielded Aldebaran—who had failed to win the battle he should have won—losing all four of her limbs and reduced to a wretched form, waiting only for death.
Staring dazedly at that figure, Aldebaran had been thinking hazily that even this Witch had once bled red blood—that terribly obvious thing.
The heat of that blood, the smell, the texture—there was no way they were lies.
If so, then this world—where all of that had been lost and reality had been painted over with fiction—was a block of lies so obvious it was practically screaming.
"The word 'fiction' is one I don't particularly like. Even knowing it's technically a different word, it reminds me of someone I despise."
Whether that was the Witch's idea of a joke or simply her genuine desire to say something inappropriate, Aldebaran never did learn the Witch's true feelings in the end.
He felt he was hated. Or that she'd been disappointed, and had written him off entirely.
But— "I'm afraid your arm isn't coming back."
The Witch's gaze fell on Aldebaran's left arm, lost to shadow from the shoulder down.
There was no pain. That, too, was proof that this was the Witch's dream castle—in reality, pain beyond imagination would be searing his brain. And not the kind of pain that could be erased through death—the real kind, the kind that would never fade.
"You lost one arm, and you lost a battle you must not lose. It seems my plan has ended in failure. I can already see the others lecturing me. —In the end, it'll fall to those who would inherit Flügel's will. How vexing."
That his defeat had stripped the Witch of everything—that was unbearably sad.
She who had sought no understanding from anyone, who had separated from the Witches who were her kindred and the companions who had traveled with her, who had gone to such lengths to fulfill her wish—and Aldebaran had ruined it all.
And the most pathetic thing was that, even knowing this, the resolve and passion he'd held before his defeat refused to return to his hollowed soul.
Having lost the battle he must not lose, Aldebaran's spirit had been broken.
His first and only battle in his lifetime—one where defeat was unforgivable—had shattered his heart to pieces.
It was the wound that would truly make him irreparable—inflicted by witnessing the unavoidable death of the being closest to him, the Witch.
"Nobody can defeat you—someone I created."
So why the Witch said those words again—he couldn't understand.
"I can't afford to stand on ceremony any longer. Let's change the victory conditions. Leave her to …… and we'll focus on preventing the secondary damage."
The Witch was clever, and selfish.
She ignored Aldebaran—who was drowning in confusion and guilt, his mind unable to function properly—reaching her own conclusions and pressing forward without allowing him to object.
Changed victory conditions, a newly proposed goal of preventing secondary damage—but even that, he couldn't believe he could achieve. Because Aldebaran had already failed.
And yet— "Nobody can defeat you—someone I created."
What had made the Witch say that—Aldebaran didn't understand.
The Witch, who had stood without saying more to the stunned Aldebaran, slowly walked over and stood before him, facing him head-on.
The face of the Witch—the one he'd seen more of, longer than any other in his life—and on it was an expression he'd never seen before.
"—The stars were against you."
That was what it meant—that it wasn't Aldebaran's fault.
Unable to reach a conclusion about the emotions welling up inside him, the dream castle ended abruptly.
It was a violent ending—like tearing apart the stage of a picture show—and what appeared beyond it was a cruel reality. In an instant, pain and loss seized his brain, and noise and fresh blood corroded his comprehension. Sky and earth were dyed so black he lost all sense of time, and Aldebaran's wailing was smothered by the screams of the crumbling world, unable to even reach his own ears.
But in that world where everything had fallen apart, drowned in noise so loud he couldn't even hear his own voice—he did hear it. Hoarse, faint, barely holding on.
The Witch's last incantation, which he could not afford to miss— "—Or Shamak."
× × × The next time Aldebaran's consciousness returned, everything was over—or rather, it had ended and begun again, begun and ended, over and over many times—this was a world where no trace of the Witch remained.
Whether it was due to different premises, or because of the immense power of the Witch, Aldebaran was stunned to find the magic behaving differently from when he cast it— "—Who are you? Where did you come from?"
The question came from a voice belonging to someone he'd never met.
The man, dressed in tattered, ragged clothing, looked no worse—and no better—than Aldebaran's own disheveled appearance. He gazed at Aldebaran with eyes mixing fear and wariness.
Aldebaran understood the language. His experience with people was limited, but in a sense, that didn't matter.
What mattered was where this was and when this was.
"
At the man's baffled response—as though he'd been asked something absurd—Aldebaran exhaled. Seeing that, the man's expression shifted from bewilderment to shock.
Because the breath Aldebaran exhaled turned into a sob, and he collapsed, weeping profusely.
—Nobody can defeat you—someone I created.
The Witch's words from hundreds of years ago clung to his soul and would not let go.
For the sin of making that woman a liar, Aldebaran had wanted to die.
He couldn't.