Chapter 227 : Chapter 227
Chapter 227 : An Instant to Eternity
"Fine, but on one condition."
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Whoosh—!
When my vision changed again, it was that first place.
A dry wind was still blowing over the field that blazed with a golden light.
As if nothing had happened.
The Sword Demon was also standing in that spot, maintaining his current appearance.
"Thank you for listening to my story."
Everyone has a story. Although the Sword Demon's tale of loyalty and friendship was quite moving, I wasn't a soft enough human to harbor sympathy and pity for an evil spirit over just that much.
For now, Masa's death and the circumstances of Noser, who didn't know when he might draw his last breath, were more important to me.
Still, perhaps because I'd been watching for a long time, my words didn't come out as harshly as at first.
"So, is that Luke Springeus's reincarnation the Sword Saint Luke?"
"Yes. It was not as if even the timing of the reincarnation could be decided at will."
"It's fascinating. The fact that he was born into the same family again even after reincarnating. Couldn't Sword Saint Luke have been a citizen of the Empire, or been born as a merchant's son who only handled money, living his entire life without ever knowing his own talent?"
The Sword Demon let out a scoffing laugh.
"A connection is fundamentally bound to the toughest and most dreadful fetters of Karma known as bloodline. Even if the wheel of reincarnation turns thousands of times, a soul ultimately finds its way to the womb of the physical body with which it shares the deepest causality. Even if that means skipping hundreds of years of time."
"……Well, let's say that's true. Then, could it be that the members of both families suffering from Severed Meridians Syndrome was also entirely the price for Luke's reincarnation?"
The Sword Demon narrowed his eyes and soon let out a hollow chuckle.
"How did you know that? Not only is it difficult to notice the illness itself, but because the symptoms vary, it should have been even harder to pinpoint that the cause was Severed Meridians Syndrome. Remarkable."
"Stop spouting bullshit and just answer my question."
"Yes, you are correct. It can be called the passing down of the curse planted within Luke and me."
A surge of anger violently welled up in that instant. The way he prattled on so nonchalantly despite being the root of all evil was utterly detestable.
"They were fates meant to disappear anyway."
The Sword Demon spoke as if he'd read my mind.
Unable to hide my expression, I asked back.
"Fates meant to disappear?"
"They were fellows created for the balance of Karma in this land in the first place. It was a natural sequence that they would be discarded once their usefulness was exhausted. Would it not have been better for them to have their bloodline quietly end alongside a disease rather than the method of being brutally slaughtered, all of them? Well, looking at it now, it seems I might have miscalculated."
"Ha……! Are you seriously calling that an answer right now—"
"You would not understand. If that were possible, we would not have existed in the first place."
Suddenly, my hands trembled violently. Even I only realized later why I was acting like this.
The bastard's single word had touched my inverse scale.
'The ending of a bloodline…….'
My father was the same.
I was the one born from a single mistake after he'd chosen castration for himself because he didn't want to pass down the curse that the eldest son of the family had to bear on his own child.
Looking at me, my father always had to reflect upon his own failure, pouring a resentment mixed with self-reproach and guilt over me.
'How much that twisted paternal love ruined me in my past life.'
……Get a grip, Bihen. Even if that's true, every choice afterward was your own responsibility. Your past life being miserable was entirely because of you.
It was the moment I barely managed to calm down.
The faces of the Springeus family members whose pulses I'd taken suddenly came to mind. Their lives were contorted in their own respective shapes.
It felt like I'd only be satisfied if I threw in a word.
"It might be an efficient disposal to you bastards, but the people placed within it have their lives hacked to pieces while repeating hatred and pity. That agony isn't a single bit different from slaughter."
That's a bit better.
―Do you truly request this while knowing what the price for forcing the wheel of providence backward is?
……I thought it was all over, but the Heart Demon that'd squirmed once didn't quiet down easily.
The words spoken by that fellow, the Ghost Demon, whom I've seen in the final scene of the memory, suddenly flashed through my mind.
―They will not be permitted a whole body, and they will groan for their entire lives within a shattered mental world. What flows through their veins will not be life, but a dreadful curse that gnaws away and fragments them from the inside out.
A body that isn't whole.
There are too many overlaps for it to be a coincidence.
"……That fellow, the Ghost Demon, where can I meet him?"
Circumstantially, it was clear that the bastard was a member of the Eight Demons. However, right now, my desire to find him for a different reason took precedence over that.
"You saw it. He is someone even we cannot meet at will."
"……."
"Not every Outer One descends solely in a human body. Sometimes they don the skin of a beast, and other times they appear as a formless, massive disaster or a dreadful curse itself."
The Sword Demon crossed his arms and gestured with his chin toward me.
"Was that not the case for the Phantom Demon whom you annihilated as well?"
The Sword Demon raised the corners of his mouth. Despite being an evil spirit, he was acting like a transcendent being who had truly broken free from all sorts of worldly anxieties and achieved enlightenment.
I'm not the type of personality to latch onto and obsess over something that's difficult to handle right away. The Heart Demon was gradually quieting down as well.
I quickly shifted the topic.
"Is 'Outer One' the term you use to refer to yourselves?"
"Yes."
"I see."
The Sword Demon stared intently at me and asked.
"Is that the end of your questions? Surely you have quite a lot of things you are curious about."
I nodded my head and then slowly steadied my breathing. I exhaled the idle thoughts floating deep within my chest.
"It's obvious you won't tell me the locations of the remaining bastards even if I ask. And even if you talk about other things, it'll ultimately boil down to predictable words. That the sacrifice of a few is unavoidable for the salvation of the many—those kinds of absurd and disgusting pieces of bullshit. I've no interest."
"……Heh."
"For me, it's enough if the people around me are safe. You guys are the bastards who interfere with that."
……Even so.
"There's just one thing I'm curious about."
I raised my eyes and stared at the Sword Demon.
"Why did you do that to Luke Springeus?"
It was far too noble to be called simple friendship. Should I call it a relentless devotion?
"Wasn't it like your true nature to despise humans, viewing them as existences lesser than insects?"
In a single moment, Raman and Karim overlapped over the Sword Demon's face.
"What was the reason you protected him, even to the extent of denying your own existence?"
At the end of a brief silence, the Sword Demon opened his mouth.
"Well."
"……."
"Would I not be similar to you?"
Seeing the bastard's nonchalant face made me feel drained as well.
Well, as expected, it's just as I thought.
Whoosh—!
My head lifted at the gentle breeze. I quietly looked up at the sky blanketed by the sunset. It was completely red.
Just like autumn leaves.
'Autumn leaves…….'
Within the Sword Demon's memories—that is, the lengthy period of time Luke Springeus and Raman Windermere spent together—all four seasons existed.
To a transcendent being living an eternal life, that must have been nothing more than layers of time repeating themselves in an orderly fashion.
Spring was brilliant, summer was green, autumn was red, and winter was blindingly white…….
Compared to that, what about Luke, a mere human living a split second?
In Luke's memories, there probably would have been no room for the time of Mother Nature known as the four seasons to take place.
Wouldn't his memories be entirely filled with the red and intense colors of the autumn leaves of Pretoria's autumn, where he first met his close friend?
'The Flower Does Not Bloom for Ten Days.'
Just like this sky.
The Sword Demon straight ahead spoke.
"Has the most important question not been left out?"
I did not ask back on purpose. I merely kept my gaze anchored upon the sky.
"You do not ask the actual fundamental reason. Why I brought you here, why I asked you to listen to my story, things like that."
That's right. I was curious about that at first. Because it'd been out of the blue.
"……Because I think I know."
I directed my gaze straight ahead once more.
The Sword Demon was looking at me with a face noticeably more serious than before. He had even uncrossed his arms.
"It must have been a shred of anticipation."
"……."
"An anticipation that I might be the one to inform you of that question for which you yourself could not find an answer: why it was Luke Springeus."
During the brief moment when silence settled, the wind blew a couple more times between the Sword Demon and me.
The Sword Demon spoke shortly.
"I am looking forward to it."
Whoosh—!
Like golden reeds that bowed upon facing a fierce wind before standing back up.
Just as the two had always done before holding a sparring match disguised as a duel throughout the decades of time.
The Sword Demon and I also showed the manners of a swordsman to each other before slowly raising our heads.
"The Flower Does Not Bloom for Ten Days."
I pierced the redly blazing sky with my sword finger.
A hot and thick warmth was felt through my fingertips.
Right now, this is—
a memorial address dedicated to the holy knight who must be watching from beyond, and a tribute toward the master who passed down the remote logic of great swordsmanship to me.
And the unfinished story told to his arch-rival on his behalf.
"It's a flower because it blooms and withers."
The beauty of a flower is perfected not at the moment of full bloom, but in that split second when it ultimately withers after blooming.
It's an instant that someone living an eternity can never grasp—
"Much less could you possibly understand the heart that wishes to be broken before it even wilts?"
Deficiency and longing. The sorrow coming from an unbridgeable gap, and the deep sorrow originating from it.
And the pity that ultimately wells up.
'The reason the Sword Demon protected Luke's honor so desperately was because he was captivated by the sublimity of finiteness.'
Ordinary humans long for eternity. Eternal life and honor, wealth and pleasure, and even everlasting love. That endless greed was the driving force and fetter that moved humans.
However, the Sword Demon saw him. The single person who rejected all that wretched eternity.
A knight who wished to burn his life the reddest and fade away on his own at the most noble moment.
Luke Springeus was that kind of man.
The two conversed solely through the sword throughout decades of time.
Even without the incomplete and shabby tool known as words, they read the sincerity mixed within the sharp metallic noises, the scent of iron, and the exquisite moves, understanding each other's abyss deeper than anyone else.
Because they were a swordsman and an evil spirit of the sword who had surpassed a remote wall, it was a supreme communion that only they could arrive at.
Now, I intend to put a period to their story, which they hadn't managed to conclude.
It was a task that only I could do, having understood and shouldered all of their causality.
I aimed my sword finger toward the Sword Demon.
"This is the answer he prepared by dedicating his entire life."
Red and colorful petals fell like snowflakes from the red sky.
The petals formed strand by strand in the air congealed and surged bit by bit before soon beginning to rage as a violent vortex.
A wave of red petals.
It was an integrity that a mere human preserved without breaking until the end while facing two transcendent beings—the Sword Demon and the Phantom Demon—across two lifetimes.
With that will alone, it was sufficiently noble and beautiful.
"An instant to eternity."
The Sword Demon quietly spread both arms. He embraced the shower of flowers and the formless blades pouring down upon him with his entire body. As if welcoming an old friend.
Tens of thousands of falling flowers enveloped the Sword Demon.
Before long, when the petals were released once more and scattered like a haze…….
the transcendent being who had been so arrogant was already no longer there.
Right in the center of his body transforming like black mist, a single strand of faint light leaked out from the spot where his heart used to be.
The sole trace left behind by the one who lived an eternity. It was an orange-colored Remnant Orb.
Thud—
The rolling Remnant Orb caught against the tip of my foot and stopped. Like a letter that ultimately failed to reach its destination and returned in the end.
I stared at it silently before picking it up.
The Sword Demon's voice lingered in my ears like an auditory hallucination.
I watched well, Luke.