CH 108

「Alfie, are we ready!?」

「It’s done!」

「Kazas, what about the horses!?」

「I’m pulling them back!」

「Then we must go now! We’re leaving here as fast as we can, so follow suit! We are going to the eastern end of this cave. It’s about 600 kilometers, but we can get there in a day. So be prepared for that!」

The horses kept by Aerial are not ordinary horses, but horses unique to the prairie, so their appearance is large, and their speed and endurance are unmatched by horses outside the prairie. It wouldn’t be impossible to tread 600 km in a day, but it would still be an arduous march for both the rider and the group. However, no one objected to the idea.

「Aery, about Phalanx…」

「Don’t mention it now!」

Aerial loudly interrupted Alfiris’ words. This is unusual for the always calm Aerial.

「Don’t mention it now… Don’t say it, I’m begging you.」

「…I’m sorry.」

After those words, no one said a word, and they lived there for a month—— For Aerial, she left the place where she had lived for more than seven years.

＊＊＊

Then a few hours later——

The rocky area where Dragleo and Phalanx were fighting had changed shape. The whole area was engulfed in flames, the bedrock melted like candy canes, and the ground was also reshaped by their collision, with a number of crater-like holes reminiscent of a terrible collision.

It was already starting to get dark around them, and the heavens were full of stars, despite the storm season. If the surrounding area had not been ablaze with flames, they would have seen an even more spectacular starry sky. But that will not happen.

Two shadows stand in the center of the blazing fire. Needless to say, they were Phalanx and Dragleo. The flames have been extinguished only around the two people. Apparently, a large amount of blood had extinguished the fire. And there were arms lying on the ground, five of them.

「Fuu. I don’t want to get old… I’m at the end of my rope, I guess.」

Dragleo’s arm was dug into the body of Phalanx. He pulled out the organs inside as it was. Phalanx collapses, coughing up a large amount of blood.

「FUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOHHHHH!!! I AM STRONG, I AM THE BEST, I AM THE LORD!!! URAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!」

Phalanx gazes at Dragleo, who is shouting a cry of triumph, with blurry eyes. The light gradually fades from his eyes.

「（I never thought that the person who takes my own life is a human being… is this some kind of fate? For me, who had never left the prairie, it was humans who affected my life in some way… Sister, this man… and…）」

A green-haired girl comes to Phalanx’s mind. The girl was only eight years old when they met. Young eyes that at first gazed at her with hatred. Of course, he turned back many times, there’s no way that Phalanx could be defeated by a young child, but the girl did not give up and pursued him. He once nursed a girl when she ran out of strength and collapsed. Her sleeping face was just like an angel’s, and he remember that he felt somehow comforted when he looked at her.

But he also knew that as long as he was the girl’s avenger, he would never be looked at kindly by her. In fact, every time the girl woke up and regained her strength, she turned the blade on herself with the fire of revenge in her eyes.

After spending about a year in a mysterious life of being chased by a girl, he happened to arrive at the girl’s village. There, he saw the girl’s friends who had already died. He remembered the girl crying as she collapsed on the spot. There has never been a time when her heart ached so much for Phalanx.

After that, the girl followed him, but she didn’t come to kill him so much. The girl’s eyes no longer held the flame of hatred, but she had also lost the light of the living, and she looked like a dead person. But all things are as the wind leads them—— With that in mind, Phalanx did nothing special for the girl.

The winter of that year was exceptionally cold. There was also not much food. Normally, he hunt some prey before winter and build up his reserves for the winter, but that year he had to hunt even in the middle of winter. The human girl was freezing and following along in the cold that cracked even the giant Phalanx to its core.

The fiends of the prairie were in high spirits because of the scarcity of food for them. The hunt was fierce and the girl was badly injured by it. As the wind leads, the weak are doomed to die—— That is what Phalanx should have thought, but the action he was taking was something else entirely.

Phalanx grabbed the girl in his arms and ran as fast as he could to the village where the fairies lived. It took him only a few moments to complete a journey that would have taken half a day even with his legs in their prime. He didn’t know how he did it. But thanks to his efforts, the girl survived.

Phalanx kept the girl warm in his bosom until she regained her strength. He had no idea what he would become in this way, a beast who only knew how to fight and an avenger of the girl, but he had no hesitation or regret.

The girl wandered on the line of death for nearly a week, but with the help of the fairies’ treatment, she survived. The girl’s hair color had changed to a more vivid green, indicating that she had been heavily influenced by the fairies.

Then the girl looked at her long green hair and smiled at Phalanx, as if she liked it. Phalanx was bewildered, but found his days to be full.

How to catch prey, how to walk on the prairie, where the berries grow, combat training. There was so much to teach the girl, and the days passed like arrows. There are many things that Phalanx can do as a matter of course, but the human girl can not. Frankly, Phalanx was seething at the gap, but he also felt that he didn’t dislike it. Because the smile that Aerial beams when she gets it right makes him feel heavenly.

At the moment when the runner-up’s mind was stirred up to that point, the consciousness of Phalanx, which had been disjointed and about to disappear, began to gather into one again.

「（That’s right… I must protect that smile. I can’t lie down here!）」

The light that was almost lost from the eyes of Phalanx gradually begins to return.

「（Move, my body… there’s still something I can do!?）」

He can picture the faces of the warriors who hunted him in the past. He remembered that they fought a great battle with him, even though they were supposed to be poor as a species. Phalanx, who at first found them depressing, eventually came to respect them and found himself looking forward to fighting with them.

Aerial’s parents in particular were exceptionally strong. Those were the only two people, including other creatures on the prairie, who were able to fight Phalanx in head-to-head combat all night long, later on. The two best of them wanted only one thing on their deathbeds.

「I’ll protect my/our daughter!」

It was strange to Phalanx that on their deathbeds, they would be more concerned about others than themselves. But now he understands the feeling.

「Ooogghhhhh!!!」

With a shout, Phalanx stood. But he already had only one arm, and his bleeding was beyond the limit. His internal organs were protruding and bones were broken all over the place. He wondered to himself how he had been able to stand.

「Fhhuuuuggghhh!!!」

Phalanx gathered his remaining strength and threatened Dragleo. But before that threat, Dragleo had already noticed that Phalanx had risen. Dragleo looks genuinely happy that Phalanx is up and running.

「Hahhahhahhah!!! You, you’re the best! You’re the best prey ever!」

「You, too… you’re the strongest I have fought. I wish I could have done it when I was at my strongest…… I’d like to know your name.」

「Name? The name doesn’t matter, that’s not what’s important! What matters now is which one is stronger, which one survives… that is the only natural order of things that has remained unchanged since the birth of all things!!?」

Dragleo roars. The rocky bedrock around it crumbles, made brittle by the shock wave from its roar.

「It’s a very obscene way of looking at things, but… maybe that’s what being a beast is all about. I’ve never seen a man who is more beastly than the beast I was…」

「Uuuuuoooooghhhh!!! Let’s fight!!!」

「Come…」

Phalanx leisurely waited for Dragleo’s rush. No, he had no choice but to wait. He no longer had the strength to move.

As it is, the moment Dragreo’s right fist pierces the heart of Phalanx, yet Phalanx holds Dragleo with all its strength in the one remaining arm.

「Muh!?!?」

「I can’t even know the name of the last enemy I’m going to fight… I must have behaved very badly in my previous life. But you’ll have to go along for my ride in the underworld!」

【O fire of calamity, fire of indignation, fire of redemption, fire of deadly sins against the abyss! The fire of the abyss, which burns the gods and brings an end to the everlasting world. Burn my enemies for the price of my soul.】

「Nuuuooooohhh!!!」

Dragleo, perhaps sensing the danger in Phalanx’s chanting, struggled to escape with all his might, but Phalanx’s single arm was undaunted.

The chanting initiated by Phalanx was not mere magic, but a kind of enchantment. This magic has a permanent effect on the land when used. Phalanx is going to use fire magic, but if it is used, this area will be a land where not a single plant or tree will grow for hundreds of years to come.

It was the last forbidden move for Phalanx, who was born and raised on the prairie and had no intention of using it even if it would kill him, but he has realized that one Aerial is more important than the entire prairie. He will not let this man get to his daughter at any cost. That was the only thing that governed his actions.

【Let my body be burnt to ashes, and let it roll up, and come together, and become a stream. Become a stream and make a path.】

「Let goooooooooo!!!」

As if to drown out Dragleo’s cries, the flames that were blazing around them gathered around them and began to spin around them as a single flame. The scene looks as if a giant flaming serpent is closing in on them, or a tornado of flames is engulfing them.

【With the joy of the departed, burned by the fire that comes through the path, I will turn this world into a purgatory.】

《Meltdown》

Dragleo tried to shout something, but his voice didn’t reach those around him. Then Phalanx itself began to burn, its body becoming like flames, or rather magma. At the same time, the ground on which they were standing turned into magma, and as the flames gathered around them, the entire surface of the earth melted like hot butter.

Dragleo struggled to escape, but the magma-turned-earth attacked them as if it had a will of its own and tried to push them into the magma ground. The mass of the magma is tremendous. Even Dragleo was helplessly swallowed up by the magma, which surged in like an uninterrupted wave.

Phalanx watched as Dragleo sank completely into the magma sea, but its body was already engulfed in flames, and death would no longer be inevitable. Just before his consciousness was interrupted, Phalanx’s mind was filled with the image of Aerial—— the smile of his own daughter.

「（Aerial, my precious daughter… I have not been a good father… I have not done a single fatherly thing. I have always wished I were human, ever since I met you. But even I… wish you happiness from the bottom of my heart.）」

Smiling at the thought, Phalanx’s consciousness disappeared into the flames.