Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume12 Chapter6 (section)

=== Part 2 ===

Was it coincidence or not?

At about the same time that Zafar was run through with steel, Emperor Guhl Mephius, clinging to a pillar, somehow managed to stand.

''It’s useless'' – a voice whispered.

But not the kind of voice that could be heard with ears. The words were sent directly to his brain, and there was no longer anything to differentiate them from his own thoughts.

''What attachment do you still have to this realm?''

''Hasn’t it already denied you entirely? This country and this very world reject you. If you were still steering the helm as we told you, you could have become an emperor whose name would go down in history. Such a pity.''

Guhl was drenched in sweat, every muscle in his body was contorting simply from trying to stand, but, breathing raggedly, he finally succeeded in placing his two feet firmly on the ground.

His hand was convulsing as he slipped it into his breast pocket. His fingers came in touch with a hard sensation.

''It’s useless'' – the voice repeated once more.

Maybe it had realised what the emperor’s intention was.

''But go ahead. Shooting my old body won’t change anything'' – it laughed scornfully.

His hand shaking, Emperor Guhl took out a gun.

It had belonged to Simon Rodloom. Just before his death, he had sent it to Guhl. The implication was that – ''I could also have shot you with this.''

There had been only one bullet within. Guhl had used it to fire through Simon’s phantom.

Just before the audience with the crown prince, the emperor had seemed to think of something, and had likewise gotten a single bullet from a soldier to load into the magazine.

Guhl had pointed the gun at the crown prince during the audience. He had even pulled the trigger. He had known that the one before him was an impostor – that he was not his real son. But even if he had not known that, even if his opponent had brought absolute proof of his identity as his son, the emperor would not have hesitated.

Yet no bullet was fired. The emperor lost. He had lost even at a test of luck that he himself had set up on a whim.

“It’s just as you say,” said Guhl, a large vein pounding at his temple. Simply speaking was causing his wrinkled countenance to tremble from the effort, sweat was falling from his beard, and it looked as though at any moment, his entire face might be torn off.

“I’ve been toppled. You’re right when you say that the country and the world have rejected me.”

Where had he erred?

What would have been right?

“There are no answers. If you take ten people, then you’ll have ten different ideals, and if you take a hundred rulers, you’ll have a hundred different paths to the future.”

He lifted the revolver unsteadily. In front of him was the small body of an old man. Just a vacant shell that had already lost its use as a ‘vessel’.

“But – Sorcerer. Not even a toppled ruler is passive. To become just a small part of the tapestry of history is fine. Turned to ash, my body will become soil, and the blood I shed will be inherited by future generations.”

Guhl Mephius had been determined to become a titan. As a titan, he would have no connection to the feelings of ordinary men.

In the end, however, he too had been no more than human. If there was one clear mistake that he had made, perhaps it was simply that he had not been able to go beyond being the ‘vessel’ of one lone human.

This was the judgement of future historians – 

Rather than executing a single person who had opposed him, Guhl should have made an example by executing a hundred people. For example, even though he had ordered the execution of Rogue and Odyne’s families, both of whom had gone against him and joined the crown prince’s side, he used Simon Rodloom’s suicide as an excuse to halt it. Whereas if the emperor had seriously wanted to maintain both his own reign and peace within the country, he should not have stopped it.

Which meant that Guhl was too much of a fool to be a tyrant.

Regardless of future evaluations, at that moment, Guhl keenly felt that he was a single human whose existence was like that of a bubble which, from birth until its disappearance, was carried along in the great stream of time that flowed from beginning to end.

The gun muzzle was raised higher. It passed above the old man’s chest, above his head, and then changed its angle.

''Guhl!''

The voice that echoed inside him was more pleasant to Guhl’s ear than the finest musical performance given at the palace.

The muzzle was pointed firmly at the temple of Guhl Mephius’ own head.

Something red had started to mix with the sweat that was running along his face. Blood vessels had finally started to break within him.

And with it, it was now the old emperor who was smiling scornfully.

“I won’t abandon my fate to anyone. From when I was born to when I die, I will have been the emperor of Mephius himself. Playing with you was amusing. Left alone in the darkness of this world, I might have abandoned the throne long ago. In that sense, the Dragon God’s faith, and the way you lot schemed with its teachings, certainly had meaning. For me, that is.”

''Stop it, Guhl. Stop!''

With the elder’s voice inside him, and trickling blood plastered over his face, Guhl’s laughter reverberated. Then –

“To the one who will inherit Mephius, the one who will bear responsibility for it.. You who raised an invisible sword towards me, is the talent you possess truly that great? I will be watching carefully from the heavens.”

This time as well, there was no hesitation.

With a roar of delight, the bullet which had failed to kill Crown Prince Gil Mephius, pierced through from the emperor’s right temple to the left.

The ruler of Mephius lay in a pool of blood.

Emperor Guhl Mephius breathed his last not on the throne, not among fine silk hangings and gold-leaf screens, not within the protection of gallant spears, but on cold stone and in bleak darkness.

The next second, the elder staggered backwards as though startled, then blinked repeatedly. Having lost his target for invasion, he had returned to his previous vessel. Left alone in the shadows, the old man stared down impassively at the emperor’s remains. 

“Impossible…”

He whispered, as emotion gradually returned. This time, it was his face that contorted until it seemed that all of its wrinkles would split open.

“Impossible!”

At that moment, mixed in with the screams that seemed torn from his throat, somebody else’s laughter wafted through the underground of the temple.

“Has it already been settled? I had been intending to play my hand, but for all that he had grown old, he was still an emperor. Let’s show him respect for having finished things with his own hands. Thanks to that, every last piece of your diagram of fate had been destroyed.”

“What!”

The voice sounded neither young nor old, and the elder turned to behold its owner.

Who had no physical substance.

It was a semi-transparent illusion created through sorcery. Although he was better placed than anyone to be able to comprehend what he saw, the elder was still evidently shaken by this sudden apparition.

“There are supposed to be double or triple-layer barriers. How could someone other than my own subordinates have sent their ‘shadow’ in….”

“Oh my, having only just regained that body, have your eyes and senses gone dull? To not even be able to see through me… Since you just said that the barrier is ineffective against those who are close to you, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to slip in. Isn’t that right? Since I’m none other than one who inherited your blood.”

“So it’s ''you'', is it…” the elder growled. His swarthy face darkened with hatred.

“You shouldn’t pull such a face. Not at our first ‘father and son’ reunion in several decades, or even in several centuries.”

“Shut up. If you’re calling yourself my son, then why are you getting in my way? I take it that you were the one pulling the strings behind that impostor of a crown prince.”

“I can’t claim that I was pulling his strings. I simply gave him an opportunity. In imitation of you, I wanted to try working out my own diagram of fate.”

The illusion laughed. Even from close up, it was hard to distinguish who this was, since the face changed round and round every time he spoke. It was as though he was switching from one mask to another.

“With your half-completed diagram of fate right before you, you weren’t in any position to make any direct moves. Since you were afraid that if your intervention went badly, then the ‘diagram’ itself might collapse, right? Which is why you couldn’t interfere, even when a corner of it was cut off. In this case too. ''Alas'', Guhl is dead, and the crown prince has survived. Even though the opposite was originally supposed to have happened at a much earlier stage, right? I was constantly manipulating pieces and stars in the background to create an opportunity for you to get impatient and personally take action.”

“Why?” the elder asked in a half-gasp. “Why are you standing in my way? Is it because of ''that'' blood flowing through you?”

“Father, it’s not like I don’t understand your ambition. After all, the ultimate goal of sorcery is to gain control of every phenomenon that occurs in this world, to take command of the fates of humans, and to take charge of this world. In your case, you held those ideals and goals before sorcery, when you devoted yourself entirely to the study of ‘science’. And then, when you stepped down onto this planet, you became entranced with sorcery, which displayed power that not even science could achieve; and with that power, you aimed to become greater even than the Dragon Gods. I get it. I get it, but…”

Among the faces that the illusion wore were those of Herman, the sorcerer who had served Fedom, as well as Hezel, who had once belonged to Ende’s Bureau of Sorcery and was supposed to be with the former first prince, Jeremie.

“That’s boring.”

“Boring?”

“I was born for your ambition. Despite that, or rather, because of that, I came to want to oppose it. When you created a sorceress from the data obtained, both from the dragon maiden you had taken from Barbaroi and from her son – me, in other words, when you created an artificial ‘barbarian’, I performed an experiment of my own.”

“…”

“O aloof king, first sorcerer of this world. O elder of Mephius, and Garda in the western lands. If you desire the ultimate sorcery, I will desire the same thing. If you wish to replace this world with your own, I will create a world that you do not want. If you declare that you will surpass the Dragon Gods, I will, without fail, carry out the Dragon God’s last wish, and inherit this planet.”

“Damn you...”

“Do not forget this. There, in that land, the Dragon Gods await the time of their revival. Most of the gods are dead, and have lost their intelligence through failed experiments; but in that place alone, they will certainly achieve results. What will happen to this world when they are reborn and raise their first cry? Humans have yet to achieve unification. And ether is dying out. Yet those who hold the key are neither you nor I… Right, I believe that it might be those insignificant humans who repeat their foolish wars and who still weave the same ‘history’ as during the Earth era. Against all expectations, it might be humans who hold it.”

At the same moment as those words ended, the illusion vanished abruptly.

It did not even leave an after image.

And the elder knew why.

The sound of loud footsteps drew closer.

“Your Majesty,” the soldier who had called out stared in shock for a moment at the scene that was spread out before him.

''There was no one else there.''

The only thing there was a corpse, lying in a pool of dark blood, and covered in more of its own gore. The soldier stared and drew in a sharp breath. The spear he had been holding clattered to the floor, the sound echoing ominously.

“Your Majesty… Your Imperial Majesty!”

The soldier rushed up to the corpse and was about to crouch beside it, but suddenly stopped, frozen in an unnatural posture. He had felt the presence of something behind him. Yet he was not able to turn around to check what it was.

A red line ran around his neck. Once it had finished drawing a perfect circle around it, the soldier’s head drooped down. From exactly where the line was, it fell from his neck and, with a thump, rolled across the floor, while his body remained standing. The next second, a spray of blood erupted.

“Can we not even stall for time?” so saying, the shadow hovering behind the soldier promptly vanished, and, the next moment, the elder of the Dragon Gods’ faith had moved elsewhere.

A room with a long crystal table. It was here that the elders and used to hold meetings every night. The elder was practically unconscious as he stretched out his fingers to touch the torches hanging against the wall.

A hazy flame leaped up.

For a moment, in the wavering shadow, the elder’s face looked like a skull. There was no trace of emotion within his sunken eye sockets. No regret, nor anger, nor sadness. He touched the top of the table with his bony fingers. If it had been before, then just as with the torches, as soon as his fingers had brushed against it, the sight of something like constellations would have floated up. However, that strange board on which each of those pale points of light recorded a person’s fate no longer projected anything.

“That… is to be expected,” the elder muttered in a voice as dry as bone. “I shaped that figure for Mephius. At its centre was the one who could exercise the greatest influence on the country – Guhl Mephius. Which means that if Guhl’s light went out, the lights of those he influenced directly would also vanish, and the light of the stars that those persons guided would also be snuffed out. Inevitably, no one’s fate is held at hand any longer. Such a long, a very long time, and those territories great and small were finally on the verge of being complete… Right, to borrow the emperor’s words, it’s similar to when a child's sandbox, after the castles and landscapes created by them from the mud and sand, have been trampled over by adults.”

The elder’s smile was terribly hollow. Lurking within was what might be exhaustion from a passage of time that would be unfathomable to others.

''Is it over?''
A voice that was not even a mutter escaped from him.

''After transferring bodies so many times, after weaving history… Is this where it ends? Is this where I will be defeated? I wished to escape from this absurd design, in which people govern and rule over other people. My wish, my dreams, my ideals to consign the hundreds of emperors, the thousands of kings, to relics of the past, to organise a new rule, to create a perfect ‘system of humanity’ – is this where they…''

Just then – from the corner of his eye, he saw a pale light burning.

The elder fiercely turned to look in that direction. But it was only the table. It was just a flash from the reflection of the torches’ flames on the crystal surface. The elder felt like scoffing at himself.

Nonetheless, at that time, his eyes had reflected a pale light. He was not mistaken. The elder, who had once guided Mephius from the shadows, forgot all about that power and dignity, and practically crawled on his belly to stare at that light.

It was small.

A faint, fleeting light, that looked as though it would disappear with a single puff of breath. Even so, it seemed to be clinging to this world, desperately calling attention to its existence.

“That’s…”

While the elder’s murky, yellowish-looking eyes continued to reflect that light, blue will-o-the-wisps seemed to light up within them.