Chapter 451

The midday sun in the South Pacific was almost unbearably bright against Elias’s blue eyes. At least, that was how it felt to him. The heat pouring down on his head was heavy enough to make him stagger. The sunlight flashing across the beach like a flashbang was still vivid in his mind, while the heat haze rising from the sand made his thoughts hazy. That was why he kept squinting.

“Ready!”

Click.

The sound of metal shifting.

“Fire!”

Bang—!

The old Mauser Gewehr kicked upward. Six shots rang out one after another, slightly out of sync. The large hand gripping Elias’s chin tightened, forcing him to keep his head still. The person kneeling before them, his arms tied behind his back, staggered as though caught in the wind. Blood burst from him. He collapsed sideways.

Thud.

Only then did the hand leave his chin. A dry voice came from above.

“This is the last one. From now on, no one will dare insult Your Highness or our Prussia again.”

A police officer called out, “Your Excellency.”

“Yes. You may return.”

Only then did Elias look up at the officers. They were pale. They turned away. Elias pulled the governor’s hand away and followed them. He picked up a stone, kicked off the ground, and ran. Mana sharpened his senses.

“As for the person who was just executed,” said the palest of them, twisting his lips as he spoke. “Apparently, refusing forced labor for an entire week wasn’t enough. He even refused the Easter supper by himself last night. If only he’d known he was going to die today…”

The warden answered in a distinct Berlin accent.

“He probably would’ve wolfed it down like a starving dog after ten days without food! Someone who can’t see even an inch ahead of himself deserves to die.”

Silence followed. Then they laughed. They laughed as though they had no choice but to. Their faces twisted as they tried to forget what they had lost, laughing without even knowing why.

The moment Elias looked at their faces, the strength drained from his hand. Even at that age, he vaguely understood that he had no right to condemn them once the double violence of it all had become so painfully clear. The governor’s people seized both his arms. Their pale hands felt like blades.

Unser Preuß’n.

Our Prussia. Even years later, Elias still spoke with a Berlin accent. It had been decided from the moment he was born and raised in the Hohenzollern imperial palace. From now on, no one will dare insult our Prussia again. He said it in his Berlin accent. A thick clot of blood slid over his tongue.

Berlin winters were bitterly cold, cold enough to ache in the bones. On the day Elias had just grown past one meter seventy, he stood in the square beneath the falling snow. The Old Human sentry guarding the city gate carried a new-model Mauser rifle in his hands—the same kind Elias had used during military training.

“Your final words?”

A Berlin accent.

Elias raised his head. A citizen in a shabby brown suit stood with a noose around his neck, his face flushed red as he spoke.

“Very well. Is this what ‘our Empire’ does to its subjects? Is this how you insult them?”

His father stood behind the executioner, in an arched corridor that resembled a tunnel. He stood perfectly straight, his face expressionless beneath the slanting sunlight that barely reached the square.

The citizen shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Kill me!”

“…….”

“Even if you kill me, what you have done will remain in history forever!”

His father slowly raised a hand. The executioner pulled the lever of the gallows.

Bang—

“Restore Frankfurt’s honor—!”

Bang—

The people sank into the black opening beneath them. Elias never knew what charges they had been executed for. Naturally, he had no way of knowing. What he did learn was that heat haze could shimmer even in the dead of winter.

That evening, at a dinner held in a chamber covered in golden ornamentation, Elias met His Majesty. His much taller cousin, the Venerable One. His cousin’s younger sibling, who smiled with absolute confidence in everything he did. His father. And all the others who shared his blood.

His father, the person who had given Elias his blood, smiled and began to pray.

“Our Father in Heaven.”

“…….”

“Thank You for allowing us this bountiful feast today. Help us remember Your love as we eat this food.”

“…….”

“We pray that Your peace may come upon the world.”

Amen.

Elias wanted to laugh. He did not. When the prayer ended, his uncle raised his wineglass. Red Burgundy gleamed like the sun beneath the chandelier light. Elias did not pick up his glass. His father urged him with anxious eyes. His uncle, gracious enough to wait, simply smiled benevolently until Elias finally raised it.

He felt himself die.

The moment he twisted his fingers and lifted the wineglass from the table, his uncle raised his own like holding a chalice. He smiled gently, with the serene dignity of one of exalted lineage. The Berlin accent reached Elias’s ears.

“For the Empire.”

Freedom.

Not for a single moment had he ever been free. The blood and pus that had blocked his throat with bitter guilt every time he ate, the dinner table where he had been forced to think of his final words whenever he raised a glass, the bullets that had stiffened his tongue whenever he spoke his mother tongue at the very core of his identity—the bullets that had pierced the heart of the world—and the days when the blood flowing through every corner of his veins seemed to cling to his feet and follow him whenever he tried to walk. All of it was over now. The guilt that had cut so deeply. The love, too. All of it was over.

Freedom. At last.

“Hah…”

He must have briefly drifted off before waking again. His ragged breathing carried the smell of blood.

“…You know what you said earlier about going up the bell tower…”

The wind cut across him. It was damp.

“…You wanted to rest, didn’t you?”

Moonlight streamed through the cathedral’s tall windows, slipping past his eyelids. A warm embrace pulled him close, burying his face against a warm chest. And then Luka cried.

Luka.

Perhaps he couldn’t hear him because his vocal cords no longer moved. Luka was climbing the narrow staircase, each step barely wide enough for one or two people, gasping for breath. Dragging his legs behind him, collapsing onto the steps and crawling upward with his whole body.

Elias knew where Luka had brought him. The place where, as a child and again several years ago, he had looked out over Munich. He had come back here again, now that he was dying.

A trembling voice asked him, “What were you trying to do at the end?”

He should sing, shouldn’t he?

With what he had been waiting for finally before him, Elias answered with a smile. Hadn’t he spent all this time reading books for a moment like this? There were plenty of songs he could sing. He tried to make light of it, but Luka didn’t smile. The words didn’t reach him. A tear fell onto Elias’s cheek.

“What song?”

Percy Shelley. Prometheus Unbound. The way it unfolds is incredible. Elias didn’t know whether Luka had read it, but—

“That’s not a song.”

Elias laughed. That was so like Luka.

Luka, your hands are cold. The words wouldn’t come out this time either. Luka was crying. There was more blood than tears. Somehow, all that blood felt like tears. Luka was dying too. Elias somehow managed to move his hand and lay it over Luka’s.

Why are you crying, on such a beautiful night? The moon is clear. The sky must be clear too. Yes. He could hear the words Luka wanted to say as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud. If he had known this would happen, he should have written Luka a letter. He didn’t even know whether Luka would make it out alive.

Ah. Before things had come to this, he should have gone to Italy with him. Only at the very end did all the things he wanted to say finally gather in his chest. He laughed. How had he ever come to meet someone like Luka? To have met a friend who allowed him to remain himself until the very end of his life—he truly was blessed. How could he feel otherwise, when the end he met in Luka’s embrace was this blissful…?

“……I know.”

The voice seemed to spread through the darkness as though it were sinking into the deep sea. Cold arms cradled his head.

“…even if this is the only way—…”

“…….”

The world was silent, as though buried beneath snow. It was the end. Elias could feel his breathing slowly fading into sleep. But—

There was one thing. Only one. Something held him back. It kept his dying life from slipping away. If he could save Luka with the breath he had left… if, just once, because this was the end, he could do that for him—

— …Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.

How wonderful that would be. God had never listened to him before, yet even knowing he would be ignored, Elias still held on to that futile hope.

Whooooosh―

— And I will give you rest.

His eyes opened. There was light. White light, burning like flame, engulfed both him and Luka. Warmth was returning to his body. Luka was holding him close, frantically chanting spell after spell.

— Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

The cold, stabbing pain that had filled every inch of his veins began to recede. His half-shattered core settled back into place and sent mana surging through his entire body, as though he had been born anew. It was impossible. Luka…

Elias looked at him through vision that had returned as clear as new. Luka was drenched in blood. He lifted Elias’s hand and drank the blood pooled there. His throat moved. The tips of his fingers were stained pitch-black.

He smiled as he looked at Elias, but there was something strange about his expression. It was the face of someone who had lost something. Perhaps he was even crying. If someone was to look at that face and say it was one of pure joy—

Then perhaps Elias’s eyes had failed him.

Luka slowly pressed two fingers against his heart.

— Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Elias must have looked as though he couldn’t believe what was happening before his eyes. At last, his vocal cords moved the way he wanted them to.

“Luka.”

Luka had drunk his blood, and the life force that had been collapsing within him had returned. His core had been restored as though it had never been damaged. How? Luka had been dying. He shouldn’t have been able to protect Elias’s core, much less take away every trace of his pain like this. He couldn’t have…

Luka asked with an unreadable expression, “How does it feel to be alive again?”

“…….”

How did it feel to be alive again? That was hardly something Luka should be asking right now. He had taken all of Elias’s remaining pain away. There was no way Elias could have failed to notice. And yet, Luka himself was radiating divine power, looking as though he too had been born anew.

“Just now, you definitely…”

“Eli.”

Luka called his name softly. Furrowing his brows, he forced the corners of his mouth upward and managed to say, “I drank your blood.”

“…….”

“That’s how I did it. By drinking your blood.”

For a moment, it felt as though time no longer belonged to them. Elias stared blankly at his friend’s face. What was he saying? Elias couldn’t make sense of it at all. Surely… Luka, right now…

Luka didn’t look away. Slowly, he forced the words out one by one.

“I can finally tell you now. My ability is to absorb and amplify mana by drinking blood.”

Countless rumors surrounding Luka flashed through Elias’s mind. Since when? How? Why…? The moment those questions crossed his mind, Elias fell silent. There were so many things he wanted to know, yet he didn’t want to ask any of them. Words were blades. Even if he hadn’t meant to hurt Luka in the slightest, his questions could still tear his heart apart. Elias didn’t think he could bear that.

Perhaps Luka understood what was going through his mind from the moment he fell silent. He gave Elias an empty smile and continued.

“It started on the day of the Ash Wednesday Eucharist. Leo is the only one who’s known until now. I wondered if it was something my brother had done, but… it’s more likely that this is simply part of my nature. The rumors really were true, after all. At least, to a small extent.”

“…….”

“I wasn’t trying to deceive you. Even on the day we first became friends, I already had this nature—”

“No.”

Elias cut him off before he even realized he was speaking. Luka looked startled.

“Don’t say that. I…”

Elias didn’t care what kind of nature Luka had. Would he still have become close to him? No. There was no point wondering about that now. What mattered was not the past, when he had no way of knowing whether they would become friends, but—

The words he wanted to tell Luka tangled together in his mind. Because of that, he couldn’t say any of them. In the end, Luka spoke first.

“I’m sorry.”

“…….”

What on earth could Luka possibly be sorry to him for? Elias couldn’t understand it at all. There was nothing Luka needed to apologize to him for.

“I didn’t keep it from you because I didn’t trust you. You would accept anything about me, so…”

“…….”

“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you to carry the burdens I was supposed to deal with myself.”

“Luka.”

Luka paused, drawing in a slow breath before letting it out. A bitter smile crossed his face.

“I didn’t want to admit any of it with my own lips. Even while I was drinking blood, I kept telling myself that none of it was truly my choice. That I was still the same. That nothing had changed.”

Luka lowered his gaze to the ground. Then he raised his head again and smiled with an expression of resignation.

“I was wrong. There’s no way I could have stayed the same. This is what I’ve become, Eli.”

“…….”

Elias slowly pulled Luka closer by the shoulder. Luka followed his lead and let himself be held. Elias rested his chin on Luka’s right shoulder and closed his eyes. The steady sound of Luka’s heartbeat was strangely comforting. In the middle of that peace, he murmured something that made no sense.

“Give some to me. I want that ability too.”

“What? Huh…”

Luka sounded utterly baffled. Elias burst out laughing and patted his back. Luka let out a small laugh as well. When Elias’s laughter finally faded, he spoke again.

“For the first time, I thought God had actually answered my prayer.”

“…….”

Elias had thought that it would be wonderful if he could use the breath he had left to keep Luka alive. He knew it made no sense. Perhaps when people were nearing the end, they started thinking thoughts that defied reason. He wanted to tell Luka how he had felt when that impossible wish actually came true.

Luka seemed to understand anyway. He rubbed the back of his head. When Elias kept grinning, Luka looked utterly exasperated and pulled him away. He listened quietly to the footsteps drawing closer on the stairs before getting to his feet.

“Well, we still have something to do.”

They still had to deal with the rest. The Rampagers were making their way up here. Thunderous crashes kept coming from below, perhaps because they were running into one another on the narrow staircase. Even so, they were steadily getting closer.

Luka continued.

“The Rampagers gathered in this cathedral are a problem, and so are the ones still appearing throughout the city. First, we need to deal with the ones here. And I need you to buy me twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes.

Elias remembered what Luka had said earlier. Luka looked straight into his eyes.

“If you can buy me twenty minutes, I might be able to find a way out of here.”

“And if you put yourself in danger doing that?”

“That won’t happen.”

Luka answered firmly. His certainty caught Elias off guard, and his eyes widened slightly.

“So please, wait here for me. I did restore your core with divine power, but this is… about as stable as putting glue on broken pottery.”

“I feel like I’ve been completely reborn. What are you talking about? No—are you seriously going alone?!”

Elias started to stand, but Luka caught him by the shoulder and pushed him back down.

“I can handle it myself. Thanks to you.”

“…….”

Elias knew the mana seeping into his shoulders was far from ordinary. Just how much had it been amplified? Hidden beneath the stigma of Pleroma, this was the kind of power anyone in the world would have wanted.

Luka glanced down from the observation deck.

“You’ll have to buy me twenty minutes later anyway, Eli. Fight for me then.”

“…All right.”

Then he would support Luka from above. He would keep watch from the observation deck and rush down the moment something seemed wrong. More than anything, Elias did not want to refuse Luka. Luka was the sort of person who said exactly what he meant. If he really needed Elias’s help, he would have asked sooner.

Luka straightened his blood-soaked coat and smiled at him.

“I’ll take care of things and come right back. Twenty minutes. No, thirty. Let’s meet then.”

Creak—

Elias answered with a smile, and the observation deck door closed behind Luka. The Rampagers’ screams grew louder, then faded again. Somewhere below, mana exploded with a heavy boom. Elias staggered to his feet and rolled his hand. A blue bow and arrow took shape.

‘Hoo…’

He drew in the clear divine power covering his core and focused his mana through it. Mana spread into the air around him.

Crack—

The world turned blue. At the same time, the observation deck windows turned white and scattered like falling snow. Elias inhaled, pulled the bowstring taut, and lowered the bow toward the ground. He aimed for the hearts of the Rampagers gathering around the cathedral. His fingers released the string.

Boom—

“Aaaaaagh! Aaaaaah!”

‘Another one.’

Boom—

“Aah—….”

The final sound of life faded into the night. Elias slowly moved across the observation deck, aiming his arrows toward the empty ground. Far away. Farther still.

— In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea.

Boom—!!

The arrow split into four and plunged into the ground. Blue light spread across the road. The Rampagers who had entered the cathedral sensed the mana and rushed back outside.

Whoosh—! Boom—!

The sharp sound of something tearing through the air rang in his ears.

How much time had passed?

After the screams tearing through the ground and air, the world soon fell silent. Elias waited for quite a while, but Luka still hadn’t returned. He had said he would come back as soon as he was done, so perhaps there was a reason he was taking this long. In the meantime, Elias decided to deal with any other Rampagers that might have gathered here. Luka had said he could handle it, but Elias had no idea what condition he would be in when he returned.

He opened the door to the observation deck. The countless stairs spiraling downward made his vision swim as they seemed to pull him in. These were the cathedral stairs in Munich that he had once climbed while drunk and whistling, the day after visiting the execution grounds. Now, in the early hours of the morning, they were covered in blood.

Unlike when he had been carried up here, he was now descending on his own two feet. As he went down, he took in the blood one stain at a time. It wasn’t hard to imagine Luka falling here, getting back up, and dragging himself along the stairs.

When he finally stepped onto the wooden floor at ground level, he saw a statue of the Virgin Mary in the distance, bathed in starlight. Though he wasn’t even Catholic, Elias made the sign of the cross. It wasn’t a confession to Mary, nor was it a confession to God.

He simply wanted to.

Elias slowly walked into the nave. Moonlight still streamed through the tall windows, illuminating the passage. There was mud, and a little blood. The moment he nudged the spot where the blood had been with his shoe—

BOOM!

A mass of mud that had once been human lunged at him. Elias immediately ducked out of the way and stamped his foot. Blue mana engulfed it, and the mud collapsed almost instantly. There was still one that hadn’t been dealt with. Coming down first had been the right choice. He slammed his hand down, gathering mana, and flung the door wide open.

CRAAASH!

Vitriol flying in from somewhere struck his barrier and dissolved. Just as he thought. There were still others hiding among the bushes and along the cloister. Elias formed a sword from mana and charged at the Rampager. Or, he was about to.

BOOOOOOM!

“…!”

Blue mana came rushing from somewhere and engulfed the Rampager. Their scream of pain reached his ears, but that wasn’t important right now. There was no way human mana could exist here. For such mana to suddenly appear in a place where there should have been none—

Again…?

“…….”

Elias could hardly believe his eyes. In a place where there shouldn’t have been any people, two figures stood in the distance. His gaze settled on the mage standing slightly ahead of the other.

An Asian.

No—someone with mixed East Asian and Western features. Someone who, for some reason, looked strikingly like Luka stood before Elias.