“…World Tree?”
The child called out, placing his hand on the World Tree’s trunk.
“That’s right.”
Magnus said, gently pushing Serena behind him.
“Not just me, but the world is overflowing with humans who don’t believe in gods and such. And someday……”
A dark red aura began to frost over Magnus’s sword. The child whirled around to look at Magnus.
“What are you doing!!!”
The boy screamed like a shriek.
A black storm blew, violently striking and passing through them.
“Someday, a world will come where the likes of you can’t even set foot. In the days when there was nothing, closing your eyes and praying was all there was. There’s no place for you anymore.”
Magnus took his stance. The moment the boy swung his hand to block him, the World Tree’s roots extended and wrapped around the boy’s waist.
“World Tree! What are you doing?! Let go right now, I’ll die!”
“You’ve done well taking care of it all this time.”
No sooner had the words ended than Magnus’s body lunged forward.
Magnus swung his sword horizontally, which was gathered with pitch-black sword energy.
“Stop it!”
The boy screamed, but the World Tree’s roots did not release him.
Slash–
Magnus’s sword cut through the World Tree’s trunk.
The huge white tree made a cracking sound as it split, and then its massive body slowly began to tilt.
“No, no……”
The boy hurriedly placed his hands on the World Tree’s trunk, but a tree whose trunk had already been cut couldn’t reattach itself.
The boy shook his head with a blank expression. Something like pitch-black fog rose wildly around the boy.
“Ah, aah, n-no, no…. Nooooo!!!”
As he screamed, the darkness all around began to squirm and be absorbed into him, then finally burst out as if exploding.
“Serena!”
Magnus quickly rushed in and pulled Serena into his arms.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Serena?”
“……”
Tears gushed from Serena’s eyes as she looked at the boy.
The World Tree fell very slowly, as massive as it was.
It seemed that even Magnus’s sword couldn’t cut it completely, as there was a sound of the base of the trunk gradually tearing, crack by crack.
“Serena, why are you crying? Is something wrong? Serena?”
“Sad……”
Serena opened her mouth, stumbling over her words.
“Because it’s sad……”
The darkness, the emotions the boy was feeling, were transmitted to Serena intact.
It was an emotion so immense that it was unbearable for a human, to the point where Serena thought she wanted to tear out her own heart.
She dug her nails into her clothes near her chest, gripping tightly. That’s how intense and sad the emotion was.
Among the emotions she was assimilating, sadness was the largest, followed by anger.
“Serena, are you alright?”
“I… I….. Magnus, I hate you……”
Serena mumbled with a blank expression. The tears pouring down showed no signs of stopping, and the ground quickly began to be stained with her tears.
“No, no……”
The boy cried like a child. As if the sadness was too great to express anger.
Pitch-black tears streamed down the boy’s cheeks. Not tears of blood, but pitch-black tears.
Tears that seemed to have burned and rotted completely.
And Serena shuddered as she felt those emotions intact. She knew they weren’t her own emotions, but she couldn’t shake them off at all.
She had no way to stop the flowing tears, nor could she comfort herself.
“…I hate you.”
Even while knowing she shouldn’t say such things, even while feeling a sense of security in his embrace, she couldn’t help but think that she hated that embrace.
“Serena.”
“……”
“It’s okay to hate me. But I don’t intend to let you go.”
Serena’s eyes widened.
Magnus, still holding Serena in his arms, kissed her forehead and then lightly kissed her eyes.
As if to soothe the flowing tears, he licked them gently, then lightly bit her lips before releasing them.
“I didn’t know you were sharing emotions with that thing.”
“Why……”
Creeeeak–
The World Tree finally tilted more than halfway.
That massive tree, under the force of gravity, fell as if it had never been standing firmly.
The inside of the broken World Tree’s trunk was completely stained black.
It wasn’t some cute story about darkness seeping in. It would be more correct to say it had rotted.
Yes, it had rotted.
As if something pitch-black had been constantly gnawing at the inside, like maggots swarming over a corpse.
From inside that hollow tree, human bones of unknown origin rolled out.
The boy’s eyes, which had been shaking his head, widened.
“…Why.”
The boy, who had muttered softly, sat down, was staring blankly at the tree as if he couldn’t believe the state of the World Tree.
A light emanated from deep within the fallen tree trunk. It was a very faint light.
Step, step–
At the sound of someone approaching, the boy flinched and turned his head.
“…Am I late?”
“Drukan.”
Magnus, who had been comforting Serena as she poured out tears, raised his head to look at the figure emerging from the darkness.
“I’m late, Your Grace.”
Drukan answered calmly and then infused power into the holy sword in his hand.
He plunged the brightly shining holy sword right into the middle of the fallen tree.
Magnus narrowed his eyes.
The white light that had been gathered on the holy sword began to be absorbed into the tree.
Eventually, the white light that had been gathered inside the World Tree and the white light flowing from the holy sword merged into one, then stretched out to take on a human form.
“…World Tree.”
The boy quickly tried to get up but then approached the World Tree, almost crawling.
Finally, the white light took shape.
A girl with white hair flowing down to the floor appeared.
Only her eyes, as blue as the sky on a clear day, were vivid against her pale skin that showed no signs of life.
“……”
“Why on earth……”
The boy muttered, looking up at the girl with a distorted face.
The girl silently looked down at the boy.
“Why on earth did you do this! You…!”
“I……”
If a bell making a clear sound could speak, would it sound like that?
Serena’s eyes widened.
The emotions swallowed by sadness still hadn’t returned, but Serena blankly fixed her gaze on the white girl before her.
“I didn’t want to live like this, you idiot!”
The girl who had been speaking in an elegant voice suddenly shouted and brought her fist down on the boy’s head.
The boy’s head drooped.
The boy, with eyes wide open, raised his head with a confused look and touched his head with his hand, then contorted his face and opened his mouth.
“Ow, that hurts! What are you doing, you stupid tree!”
“I just liked this world! I didn’t want to live using human corpses as fertilizer!”
“Huh? If it wasn’t for that, you would have died long ago. You should be grateful, you old tree!”
The boy jumped up and shouted, growling.
Serena and Magnus blinked once. It was because they couldn’t adapt to the suddenly changed atmosphere.
“O-old?! You greenhorn who was born not long ago, not even dry from the earth’s smell…! How dare you……”
“Heh, that’s what the world calls a boomer. You wouldn’t know, stuck in this backwater. You’re like a senile old lady.”
“…You ill-mannered brat!”
Regardless, the boy and girl, who seemed to be about waist-high, raised their voices arguing with each other and finally grabbed each other’s collars.
It was extremely childish that they were having a fistfight without using their abilities, which seemed unbefitting for a battle between the World Tree and darkness, but Serena soon realized…
That maintaining this form was the most the World Tree could do right now.
She didn’t know how she knew. It just occurred to her.
That’s why darkness was still sad, and Serena was still crying.
“Ouch! That hurts!”
“I hurt more, you old geezer!”
Finally, the two children who had been rolling on the ground, grabbing each other’s hair, stopped moving.
The boy, panting and wiping the scratch on his cheek with the back of his hand, shook his head.
“Why are you interfering?! If I’m gone, everything will be solved!!”
“You’re too self-conscious, you brat!”
The girl picked up a skull lying on the ground and threw it right at the boy.
- ianthe
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