Chapter 59

The old priest was right about one thing.

We, before him, are the greatest evil in this world.

That was true before I opened my eyes to the world as Rain Gray, and it was no different after.

No, maybe it could be different. Maybe I had a chance to make things right.

But I didn't.

I vowed to take up the mantle of Rain Gray of my own free will, and to live my life as the leader of the Black Snake as I had always done.

At first, I acted out of fear. Having woken up as the leader of a group of vicious villains, I was determined to avoid suspicion.

Even though I wasn't exactly a kidnapped hostage, it suddenly occurred to me that it was similar to Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe it would have been the same if it wasn't the Black Snake, but someone else.

But it just so happened to be them.

"I won't let them touch you."

It was her.

Aria, her eyes shielded by black bandages, gripped the hilt of her black sword and spoke.

"Yes, not a hair on your head!"

Alice exclaims, grinning like a child.

"Hmm, Rain's hair…"

"...."

Scarlett's line was not heard.

"You're in front of the chief. Please be polite."

"Hoo-hoo. Forgive my rudeness, sir."

Scarlett laughed, her voice sounding impervious. I didn't answer.

They had stood by me as I wandered aimlessly through this world.

And in that time, I've come to value the few evildoers I've known more than the lives of countless others I don't even know.

"Fight as best you can!"

Whether he realized it or not, the old priest, a muscular man who looked like he was about to explode, shouted.

The boys and girls rushed forward as if drawn by the shout, grabbing the blades in their hands. Like moths to a flame.

I performed no spells or actions; I simply remained silent.

Instead, Aria, by my side, performed a sword dance. A black circle of energy swirled around me like a shroud, crushing everything that tried to reach me.

"Even when you know you're going to lose, even when you know you're going to be defeated, you still clench your fists, you don't give up, you fight!"

But the boys and girls didn't hesitate.

As each person was trained and educated, most of them rushed at us while treating us like prey.

"To fight, even if it's a fight with a 0% chance of victory, to challenge an unbeatable opponent, that's the true martyrdom of the revolution!"

The words were more than just a rhetorical flourish.

Boom!

Suddenly, the old priest himself moved his muscular bulk and the ground vibrated with each step he took.

Beneath each step, an endless sea of shadows stretched out.

Like walking on the beach and plunging into a steep drop, his absurdly muscular legs plunge into the inky darkness. And with them, the predator beneath the black surface opens its mouth.

It lunges.

But the muscular old priest didn't stop. He takes another step on his severed leg, even as his foot is torn to shreds, leaving only the bone above the knee.

"Stop, Alice."

"Yes, sir!"

I say, looking at her and Alice nodded and laughed without a hint of hesitation.

"."

I stretch out my arm, and a stream of magic flashes from my fingertips.

Intermediate-level lightning magic, and the current from his fingertips engulfed the muscular behemoth, making it convulse and burn.

"Ik, crush, crush, crush!"

The power would have killed a normal person on the spot, but the old priest was merely convulsing.

"Aggghhhhhh!!!"

He emits light repeatedly as the electric current continues to run through his body, but that's it. The leg that had been eaten by Alice underwent rapid regeneration and was reconstructed to a relatively good shape.

It was all that remained.

"Even when you know you're going to lose, even when you know you're going to lose...."

I said, ignoring him as he convulsed in the pain of the endless electric shocks.

"And yet you clench your fists, and you fight, and you don't give up."

"...I changed my mind."

I've changed my mind.

"Your revolution will fail."

I meant it literally.

"In the most horrific way imaginable."

"─"

"That's the price you pay for challenging the Black Snake even though you knew you'd lose."

Even as he twitched endlessly, he could feel his muscles stiffen and stiffen in another sense.

"Did you think that the act of confronting an unbeatable foe would give you the satisfaction of knowing?"

But now I was sick of it.

I'm tired of those who glorify fighting us, as if it were a badge of honor, and who take their satisfaction in getting fucked over.

I'm tired of their expediency, of their righteous killing.

If that's the case, I'd rather make sure the world knows it.

What a "fight you can't win" truly is.

I will not allow you to insult the Black Snake and end up with a miserable triumph of the mind. I will not allow a single shred of sanity, a single shred of thought, to triumph.

"I, myself and my men, will trample and uproot every blade of revolutionary grass."

-Kwajik!

With a flick of his eye, the old priest's limbs explode, and the rest of his body collapses like a ragdoll, but he doesn't die. It's an absurd level of vitality.

"That's the price you pay for not giving up in the face of an 'unbeatable enemy'."

Eventually, the convulsions stop. But his expression, once filled with unwavering conviction, is now, for the first time, one of panicked defeat.

"And you, you will live to see it all."

The full extent of the aftermath of a moment's folly.

"Gwyn, I'll leave him to you."

"Hic, hic, hic."

At that, the laughing man, bent grotesquely over, stops laughing. His body still twisted like a circus clown, only the laughter had stopped.

"I don't care what you do, as long as it keeps him alive."

In the eerie silence, the laughing man bursts into laughter once more amidst the now shapeless remains of the moths.

*

When I left the church, the sky was red.

"...."

It wasn't magic, like the blood moon Scarlet had shown me earlier. The red sky was purely the sooty blood of a city engulfed in flames and burning.

The heart of the Holy Kingdom was burning.

"All the people of the capital city of Lutecia rise up!"

"Let us march on the palace! The royal family that betrayed the Holy Maiden is an enemy of the goddess, an enemy of the stars!"

"The iron cavalry is with us!"

The barely holding gates of the capital were thrown wide open, and the combined forces of the revolutionary forces from the provinces and the lords who had succumbed to them poured in.

They had only one destination.

And the proudest army of the country, the one that should have stopped them, was no more.

There are only knights, whose rhetoric is as empty as the stars in the night sky.

*

~At that time, in the palace of the capital of the Holy Kingdom~

The throne room.

"…..What an elegance."

Sir Astolfo, the Knight of Flowers, murmured.

There are no more Twelve Knights of the Honorable Charlemagne. They were now the Twelve Knights of Charles, but the number had long since fallen from twelve.

Not only Sir Roland, who was defeated by 'that man' at the World Military Exhibition that day, or Sir Monteux, who brought his death with his own hands.

The Royal Family's campaign against the Holy Maiden was enough to turn even the country's most loyal court knights against them.

So only the staunchest, and therefore stupidest, knights remained.

"Oh, how the citizens, who not so long ago praised the splendor of this body, have turned against it."

"I suppose your head is still a field of flowers after all this ...."

Sir Bridamante, the brightest of the dumbest knights left in the room, snapped.

"Alas, did I not advise you long ago to pack up and flee, Sir Quixote!"

"Ho, ho, ho, Sancho! Who are we! Were we not Charlemagne's twelve knights, men granted such honor, and to think that we should try to slip away because the situation is a little unfavorable!"

"I am no longer Charlemagne, my lord, and certainly not the Twelfth Knight! I am the fourth knight of Charles!"

"Oooh, I'm even more excited to be the 4th Knight of the Apocalypse!"

As the two knights exchanged words, Bridamante expression took on a new color.

"A man with a head of flowers, and two fools from La Mancha."

She turned away after the last word.

"...Failed.

If her lord hadn't been there, the words would have come out naturally.

"It's not too late, Your Majesty."

Desperate and nervous, Lord Bridamante was no exception.

"The revolutionary army will be here soon, and I'll disguise myself as your Majesty to draw attention to our escape, and in the meantime, you'll be able to slip out of the palace as a maid...."

But it was the woman in the throne room that rotted her insides even more than the knights, who were such prideful idiots.

"You have nothing to worry about, Sir Bridamante."

Lady Bridamante knew that her new lord was, at least as far as she knew, the wisest queen in the world.

Still, there must be a reason she remained silent.

She's not just willing to die for some nominal pride.

A reason she herself can't tell.

"Because He, He will come to my rescue."

At the same time, the eyes of the wise queen, Charlotte, were filled with the blind light of faith.