Monologue
At the deepest depths of the cave, a researcher who had lost everything stared into the darkness as he approached death.
In the eyes where even madness had dried up, there was the faintest trace of… regret.
"Li…sten…ing… is… not──… nee…ded, yes?… The… sain─t… certainly… had an… abnor─mal… con─sti…tution…… I… apolo──… gize…"
Baldo muttered such fragmented words. And he remembered what the man had spat out just before he left.
"…Ha…ha… who… are you… even… supposed to tell… this to…"
The god I sought, perhaps? No, if he meant the Saint, then the one to speak to would be God, or perhaps… a Saintess?
I lowered my eyes and recalled the time when I lived as a person.
Thinking back, I suppose I had been blessed.
My birth, my talent, my surroundings, and the one I held dear.
But I lost all of it. I failed to protect it.
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One hundred and fifty-two years ago, in the Kingdom of Iraitol.
"Why did you kill my wife, Rifa…!!! If only I hadn’t existed! If only you had gotten rid of me…!"
"To think you would show yourself after running away just to say that… how foolish. Why did I kill her? Obviously because she was a nuisance."
"… What?"
"That woman was working with you on that research. If she had lived, it would have become known that those results were not mine. So she had to die."
"F… for something like that… then my daughter… Riko…"
"… Ah, she was annoying. I hadn’t intended to touch her, but she cried and screamed so much that one of my subordinates killed her. I had intended to use her as an experimental subject… hmm, thinking about it now makes me angry. I should punish him…"
That man denied my entire existence.
… In a fit of rage, I beat him to death.
Killing him had been simple. My research focused on human evolution—drawing out mana to its fullest and removing the body’s limiters to strengthen it. After injecting myself with the perfected drug, I slaughtered every soldier and servant present.
Then I fled. With nowhere to go, I wandered endlessly… and before I knew it, I was back home, crying in front of my daughter’s cold body.
Eventually my tears dried. Carrying her body, I stumbled out, wandering aimlessly until I arrived at an old abandoned church and… realized something.
There was no way to bring back the dead except through a divine miracle.
After that, I continued my research.
What is the soul? How is it defined? What is a divine miracle?
It didn’t matter whether they were good or evil, even Saintesses fell by my hand.
"──May God’s salvation someday reach you."
Pure, innocent, noble, a girl of unsullied white prayed not for herself, but for me until the very end. Even though she was the one who would die, and the one killing her was the very man she prayed for.
How foolish I was. But back then, I could not see it—no, I turned away, reaching for a salvation that existed nowhere.
Even though I had killed that very hand of salvation with my own hands.
And only at the moment of death did I finally understand.
It had all been meaningless.
There was no such thing as God.
Isn’t it obvious? If God existed… my daughter would not have died.
And that Saintess would not have died.
That man had been right.
The ending I arrived at was exactly the worthless conclusion he had spoken of…
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"──………How…… was it………a… worth……less……… story… is… it… not……"
At some point, without realizing it, his monologue spilled out, disappearing into the darkness unheard by anyone.
"It’s not worthless!!!"
"───"
Someone’s light brightly pierced the world that had been nothing but darkness.
"───Why…?"
"Don’t say it’s worthless!!"
From the shadows appeared the small golden-haired girl who should have been taken away earlier by the elf youth.
A young child, about the same age as his daughter.
"I don’t get it, I don’t understand what you’re saying at all… but I know it’s different!"
With nothing but emotion, like a selfish child throwing a tantrum, she continued to insist he was wrong.
The girl could not grasp his story. But she understood one thing.
He had denied everything he had built up until now with the words "worthless."
"Your precious place, the people you loved, your memories, all of them were important!! There’s no way they were worthless!! They can’t be worthless!!!"
As the flame of life flickered out, she was the only thing his eyes could see.
"You took away something precious, but that doesn’t mean you get to decide it was worthless!!"
His "worthless" denied the lives he had stolen, the feelings of those who had lived there, and even the things precious to himself—all dismissed with a single word.
She could not forgive that.
Unable to do anything, sitting beside the man who had kidnapped her and become a monster, crying over her own powerlessness, unable to save even one person before her…
"That’s why… don’t lie… about what was precious…!"
"──────ah"
She looked just like that true light he had once stolen.
□
"How is it? Feels awful, doesn’t it?"
"……Quite… a… dista─…steful… sense of… humor…"
"I didn’t want her to hear any of that, but she woke up and resisted."
Holding the girl who had cried herself to sleep, the youth spoke.
"… What you stole was this light. No matter what reason you had, it won’t be forgiven. Even if someone forgives you, even if the dead forgive you, even if God forgives you… it shouldn’t be allowed. More importantly, I won’t forgive you."
"……… Heh."
Pointing his finger at the man in the lab coat, the youth declared:
"… Repent in your next life. Spend your whole life doing it."
In the darkness, a small light shone.
What do you think about this chapter?
