Chương 85: Chapter 79: And Then...
After we'd defeated the witch, a plethora of— Uh, I mean, a bunch of things happened.
Jeez, I can't stop being overly polite even inside my head now!
I'd thrown the noble feelings that had come pouring into me at the witch as quickly as possible, but it seemed like they'd still managed to contaminate—or rather, cleanse (?)—my rotten psyche somewhat.
Still, as the worst piece of shit in the world, a little purification was hardly enough to turn me into a real saint. I'd just gotten a little bit closer to being a regular person. Besides, I was pretty sure that the feeling would fade soon enough, and I'd return to my true trashy nature.
Anyway, after the battle, a state funeral had been held for Profeta.
She'd sacrificed herself so that I could continue a carefree life. While I would've normally felt bad, her satisfied smile at the end had convinced me that everything was all right. I was almost envious of her serenity.
Alfrea had known her for a very long time, so I'd figured she'd probably be devastated. To my surprise, though, she looked perfectly fine. I'd asked her about it, and she'd told me that, while she was a little sad, Profeta had lived a long and full life. She was even slightly pissed off that the turtle had found such a satisfying way to die.
The guardians had somehow got wind of Profeta's passing, so they'd rushed over to her funeral. They'd been mistaken for monsters and almost killed before I'd cleared up the situation, so now they liked me even more. I still didn't really know what to do about it—I didn't particularly like monkeys, after all—but that was that.
With the witch finally defeated once and for all, a big parade spanning several days had been organized. It was like a never-ending festival.
The fact that I was never the real saint had spread through the land before I'd even come back to life, but I'd apparently earned a new title in my absence. I was now the Great Saint.
Who's the idiot who came up with that title?! I'm a fake, guys! A fake!
There were two actual saints around, so couldn't they just focus on them for a change?
Oh, by the way—as the turtle's successor, I'd obtained her powers. If I focused my senses enough, I could see places far, far away from where my physical body was, as if watching a movie! It even came with sound!
Naturally, my brain couldn't process everything everywhere all at once, but if I focused on a specific place, I could see and hear anything I wanted.
You know what that meant, right? If I decided to peep on Eterna in the bath, I totally could! I hadn't, though. I was a gentleman, so I'd never even consider doing something like that! Seriously, I hadn't! For real!
Anyway, we'd finally reached a truly happy ending. Well, about as happy as we could get given Profeta had died in the process, but you know... I was kind of on the fence. I felt like recognizing that we'd reached this ending thanks to her sacrifice was the best way to honor her.
Leaving that aside, I only had one last thing to do: step down from my position as the saint and skip town overnight!
Having a lazy fake in such an important position forever was no good. I'd asked Aiz to give Eterna her rightful spot back again and again, but he kept refusing. This left me with only one option: I'd disappear so that he wouldn't have a choice.
If I left Layla behind, she'd probably spend the rest of her days crying, so I'd take her with me.
There was just one little thing I wanted to take care of before I left.
Although I'd never agreed to Dias's request—in fact, he'd pushed it onto me without even asking for my opinion—I still remembered that he'd begged me to save Alexia. And so, I made my way to the church's basement where the crystal Alexia had been sealed into remained.
"Lady Ellize... Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Layla asked, not bothering to try to conceal her disapproval.
I understood her feelings. By now, everyone knew that the witches were also victims. However, there was a world of difference between knowing it and accepting it. Reason and emotions didn't always mesh well together.
Everyone from her generation abhorred Alexia for what she'd done to them, and there was no way those feelings could disappear so easily. Besides, I wasn't exactly a fan of Alexia either—I'd also been tempted to leave her in that crystal forever.
Now that everything had ended, though, there was no point in doing that. Plus, I found it difficult to get over that face of hers... Right before she'd been sealed, her face had contorted in terror. Leaving her like that wouldn't be very nice, I figured. Poor Alexia would be doomed to expose that shameful expression to future generations forever. Even though I wasn't fond of her, she was just too pitiful.
"The darkness that turned her into a witch has already disappeared," I told Layla. "She's back to being a regular person now."
I looked at Alfrea to signal it was time.
Last time, I'd broken through Alfrea's seal with sheer force, but since I had the spellcaster right here with me, I could just ask her to undo it. Unlike the others, Alfrea was unbiased toward Alexia. If Verner had been the one to cast the seal, he probably wouldn't have agreed to undo it.
"Roger," Alfrea said, her expression calm. "I know how hard it is to be trapped like that, your soul unable to pass on even in death... I can see why you want to free her."
Alexia's soul was still right there, in that crystal. The spell had been invented for that very purpose, after all. Eve had wanted to put Alfrea in a temporary state of suspended animation while making sure she wouldn't die. To do so, the space inside the crystal was entirely frozen and hermetic—nothing could escape it, not even souls.
Without that specificity, Alfrea's soul would've long departed for the other side. Fudou Niito, for instance, had only been dead for a couple of minutes, but that had been enough for half of his soul to transmigrate into Ellize.
While Verner had inadvertently killed her, the crystal had preserved her perfectly. Neither her brain nor her organs had started necrotizing. In other words, it wasn't too late for me to resuscitate her!
"Here I go, Ellize!" Alfrea exclaimed, holding up her hands. "Seal Removal!"
The crystal that had been holding Alexia captive vanished. I used wind magic to keep her body from falling to the ground and pressed my palm against her chest.
First, I had to patch her heart up. With that done, I moved on to using thunder magic to shock it. I also placed my other palm on her mouth and conjured wind into her lungs to get her to breathe.
"Lady Ellize? What are you...?"
If I told Layla what I was doing, I was pretty sure she'd pull her sword out to slay Alexia on the spot, so I kept my mouth shut. After a few moments, Alexia coughed, and her chest started rising and falling naturally.
All clear, resuscitation complete!
Just as I'd expected, I'd made it in time.
"Lady Ellize... Why?"
"She's not a witch anymore, Layla... That's why."
Now that everyone knew that the previous saints were, in fact, the witches, there was no way Alexia could return to being a saint. However, she ought to have the right to live the remainder of her life peacefully in some remote place.
I didn't used to think like that, but I supposed all the niceness from the fight was still affecting me.
That also reminded me that a part of her soul was still stuck in Verner. It was probably time for that bit to go back to her as well.
"Verner," I said. "There's something I haven't told you. The darkness you had inside of you belonged to Alexia."
"I know... She told me during that battle."
"She must have torn away this part of her before she fully turned into a witch in the hope that it would stop her. That's how that piece of her soul found her way into you."
"Yes, I know that too."
Verner had ended up becoming the protagonist because Alexia had left a piece of her soul in him. I was surprised to hear that he already knew, though. Come to think of it, I'd seen him and Alexia fight together in front of my crystal in the game, so they'd probably patched things up or something. Either way, Verner was truly protagonist-coded. The people who'd created the game—Ijuuin-san's team and Yamoto-san—had most likely chosen him as the main character for that very reason.
Speaking of Ijuuin-san, I hoped his memories had come back after Niito (me)'s death. I'd inconvenienced him so much, and yet I hadn't been able to apologize.
"If it's all right with you...would you mind giving Alexia that part of her soul back?" I asked Verner.
"Gladly."
That was fast!
Once he went through with it, Verner wouldn't be able to use darkness magic ever again. He was agreeing to become weaker, yet he hadn't hesitated for one second.
Yep. Handsome guys are beautiful inside out. That's just how it works.
He must've changed his views after going through joint struggles with Alexia.
I took Verner's hand in my own and held the other against Alexia's. Just as I had done in the past to steal—um, I mean, borrow—part of Verner's powers of darkness, I sucked out Alexia's soul. This time, I immediately transferred it to Alexia. I didn't return her powers to her, though. She was better off without them. Instead, I scattered them into the air—including the small part that I still had left inside me from before. Then, I gathered some positive feelings drifting around and hurled them at the darkness, making them vanish for good.
While I'd taken the powers of darkness inside me, I'd ejected them back out almost instantly. I'd only lost a couple of weeks' worth of my life at worst. I felt a little stupid for shortening the life I'd received from the turtle, but hey—she'd given me almost a hundred years! What were a few weeks in the face of that?
A hundred years is way too much, you stupid turtle!
Anyway, Verner and I were now both entirely darkness magic-free. That wouldn't bring back the years of life I'd lost, but now that witches no longer existed, there was no need for this magic either.
Besides, even without my powers of darkness, I was still super-duper strong. I even had a new killer technique in my arsenal—it involved hurling a blast of light magic at my enemies. All in all, I had no need for darkness magic.
"Um..." Alexia whimpered.
Oh. Look who's awake.
She looked utterly confused. She probably didn't understand how she was alive. The second she saw me, though, she leaped back in fear.
"E-E-Ellize! What's going on?! Why is my seal— No, why am I alive?!"
Although she was no longer a witch, her personality obviously hadn't changed one bit. To be fair, I was pretty sure she was just as annoying when she'd been the saint. I remembered her being haughty in the game too.
"Please calm down," I said. "We broke your seal because you're not the witch any longer, and you're alive because I just resuscitated you."
"I'm...not the witch anymore? Now that you mention it, the urge to destroy everything around me has vanished. It feels like...the thick fog that surrounded my heart has finally lifted. Still, I don't understand—why would you bring me back to life? You didn't stand to gain anything from it."
In addition to inheriting the first witch's grudge, saints were forced to look the ugliness of people's souls in the face. That was how they became witches. Now that the grudge had disappeared, Alexia had also lost her aggressiveness. However, that didn't mean that her faith in humanity had magically been restored. She probably couldn't fathom why I'd saved her.
"Am I not allowed to save people unless I profit from it?" I asked.
Alexia wasn't wrong. I didn't stand to gain anything. If I really had to give a reason, I guess it was because leaving Alexia like that would've left a bad taste in my mouth. I just wanted to do the right thing and feel good about it. Somewhere along the way, I'd gotten kinda addicted to the feeling—it was essentially spiritual masturbation.
"If you must know, the previous headmaster, Dias, asked me to save you. That's my reason," I concluded.
"You're..." Alexia paused to stare at me in disbelief. She let out a deep, exasperated sigh, but the corners of her lips curled. "...such a weirdo. There's a limit to how much of a goody-two-shoes one can be. I've...never thought about things that way. I was the saint, but that position brought me nothing but anguish. All I could do was think about how pitiful I was for being forced into that situation. I'd think to myself, 'Why do I have to help people when no one ever helps me?' If I'd been even half as noble as you... I probably wouldn't have ended up like this. I don't resent you anymore, Ellize—I'm just envious of you. You're a true saint, down to the purity of your heart."
Uh, you couldn't be morewrong.
The only reason I'd settled so easily into the role of the saint was because I'd gotten hooked on the pleasure helping others gave me. I'd just been enjoying watching myself pretend to be a good guy from the outside and praising myself for being so cool. I hadn't faced any anguish or stress. Besides, I was already a piece of trash from the get-go, so I couldn't fall any lower!
The other saints had ended up joining the dark side because they'd spent their entire lives working for the good of others. They'd put their satisfaction aside. That's why they hadn't been able to keep it up forever. In fact, I was already impressed that they'd managed to keep it up as long as they had.
Your soul darkened because you were so much nobler than me in the first place, I thought. I couldn't exactly tell her that though, so I just smiled awkwardly. Don't forget rule number one of adulting: when you don't know what to say, smile! Careful not to overuse that technique, though!
Afterward, King Aiz and his soldiers took Alexia away. While she wasn't the witch anymore, it wasn't advisable for her to appear in front of people ever again. I knew Aiz would treat her right, though. I could tell that he felt guilty about what he'd done to her. When I'd tried to put in a good word for her, he'd immediately told me I didn't need to bother—he already knew that she deserved to live out her days in peace.
Obviously, since he couldn't let too many people know about her, she'd be confined. Apparently, Aiz intended to build a mansion with a nice garden for her in a remote place where she could live with Dias. There'd be guards around her property at all times, but she'd still be able to go out and enjoy the garden. As long as she didn't stray too far away or commit any further crime, she'd be left in peace.
I'm so damn jealous. I wanna live like that too!
(2.6k word count)
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