White and Grey, the Genealogy of History 〔Part Three〕

— No. I'm…

Serius had been about to take the last step toward Merea, and stopped.

He felt as if someone had pushed in straight to the one place he least wanted spoken of, the one place he least wanted touched.

He had been on the verge of standing his combat down. The line, arriving in that gap, slid into him more cleanly than it should have.

And, more than that —

— that exact line was, word for word, identical to a line he had once been told before. That was what shook him.

Garbage from someone beneath him, he could ignore.

But the man who had said that line to him, in the past, had been a man who'd beaten him.

— Why do you —

Less than an hour into meeting this man —

"Why do you say the same line as that man—!!"

A man, once, had admonished him with words very like these. A man with clean aqua-blue eyes. The same age as Serius.

And the man in front of him now was saying the same things. Red eyes — the colour-opposite of those blue ones — set in his face. The second such man.

"Why are you looking at me with those eyes—!"

Serius Brad Mūzeg, too, had aimed at being a hero.

Merea, Hasim, Serius.

The three of them aimed at separate heroes.

But of those three — the hero Serius aimed at —

— was the most childlike.

---

And precisely because Serius's clean head knew that, he had tried to hide it.

The thing he had most feared was being touched on it.

For a great kingdom's prince, with the dignity to maintain — it was, almost certainly, a dream he should not have been carrying.

"You — aim at the heroes from the heroic tales, don't you."

Merea kept going.

Reading Serius's reaction, Merea's internal conviction had hardened.

And once it had — the words held back behind his suspicion came pouring out of his head in a torrent.

"What are you —"

"One of my comrades told me. The hero in the heroic tales is the most beautified hero."

The hero in the heroic tales is beautiful. Clean.

"They suffer a little, certainly — but at the end, they always succeed, walk a clean broad road, and are received in triumph. They keep their eyes raised so the bloody scene at their feet doesn't enter the frame. The dagger in their left hand stays hidden inside their robes. The head and the mouth get filled with fine words, and they sing fluent love. Most heroic tales end there. — Yes. Beautiful stories. I won't deny it. I like stories like that."

But —

"How many examples of that are there really? Is that in fact what a hero looks like? In the heroic tales of this world, is that what a hero actually is?"

That it was not — Serius, of all people, knew best.

Of course he did.

The country that had not allowed it — was his own.

"—"

"And yet that's the hero you aim at? — I'm starting to see it. Why you couldn't answer me about what you'd aim at after victory. As I said — you have no thought beyond it. Your dream and your longing end at the win."

"Th- that's not —"

"But you yourself — because you're a Mūzeg prince — know that's not where it actually ends. A royal, by duty, has to look to what comes after, to lead the people. That's the gap. And the gap — you haven't been able to repair, by yourself."

Merea, though strung up in midair, was looking at Serius with a gaze that carried something close to pity.

"What put you here."

"— !"

Serius had his fists clenched.

And then —

"Everything went off-key from that moment. If that man hadn't — done what he did —!"

"Who. Who did what."

Say it.

A line that pulled, in Merea, on something he himself was carrying.

---

"〈Flander Crow Mūzeg〉! If he hadn't betrayed his motherland—!!"

---

In the same beat, something inside Merea also moved.

〈Flander Crow Mūzeg.〉

Flander Crow had been —

— Mūzeg royalty.

---

"That face. — Don't tell me. You hold those eyes and yet you didn't know?"

"—"

"— Hah! So that's it! — Hahaha! Magnificent. Flander didn't tell you. — No, of course not! If what was on the summit of Lindholm was Flander Crow's ghost, of course he wouldn't volunteer that name. He's the man who, in his bitterness, threw down the Mūzeg name itself!"

Reading Merea's wrong-footed beat as an opening, Serius pushed his attack-tempo back.

A childlike attack-tempo, not the kind he ever showed his subordinates.

"Flander Crow was a prince of Mūzeg! And — historically — the prince acclaimed as the strongest! For Mūzeg, which has been pursuing power since the ancient era, Flander was long-awaited. As a formula-caster he had the kind of strength that lands in history easily; on top of that, he manifested those eyes!"

Serius spread his hands and let his voice ring.

"But after he killed the great Demon Lord of his age, he sought seclusion. Just as nation-versus-nation war was about to become the central form of conflict, he chose to step off the field —!"

"…What's wrong with that."

Merea finally answered him.

His pupils had widened a touch; the corners of his eyes carried plain anger now.

"If he had truly carried his country in him, he should have given his body to the field."

"That's the country's —"

"That's right. The country's argument. — But Flander Crow was a prince. In a sense, he himself was the future of the country."

"Tch. Where are the human rights of the man himself in that?"

"There are none. Being born a prince was his fate."

"You as well?"

"I happen to like this fate. I will pursue victory for Mūzeg. Greedily."

"A prince is, by your definition, an existence that exists only to fight for the country?"

"Combat takes many forms. But Flander had absolute strength. In the act of killing."

"And so you would have bent the man's will — to make him kill — against his own intention. — That is wrong."

"It is not wrong. The age demanded power."

"An age is made by people. Don't talk as if an age were a god-given rule —!"

"Even so, people cannot oppose the age."

"Did you even try to oppose it!"

Merea roared.

The voice rode the shimmer of the 〈Pleasure King's Vocal Cords (Yurun Yura)〉 and carried.

To the Mūzeg cavalry. To the Lemusan cavalry. To the Demon Lords.

Merea's roar alone reached every ear on the field.

"Don't shout. — Oppose? There is no need. This age suits Mūzeg."

"Your words are unnervingly mixed with the scent of someone else. — Don't tell me — were you raised on this stuff."

"My father is irrelevant."

He had meant to say it evenly. A small ripple of unevenness in the sound — Merea's ear caught it.

"Where are you, Serius."

"Where there is combat, I am there."

"You're not right in the head. You're not right, Serius. You're nothing more than a combat-mad."

"Be silent, Merea."

The two used each other's names.

Their gazes crossed.

"If Flander Crow Mūzeg had not been seduced by the Lemusan witch in that age, everything would have moved without complication. Mūzeg's ascendancy would have come, and the world would have been pacified."

"You mean Leilas."

"That's right. Leilas Lif Lemuse. That witch — to Mūzeg — was the Demon Lord."

"Flander loved Leilas."

"He was seduced."

"How can you possibly say that with conviction. You never met them —"

The gap of eras.

Perhaps if Serius had been able to sit down with Flander and Leilas, his thinking might have shifted, even slightly.

But that was not on the table.

The eras were too far apart.

"Why on earth —"

Even so — Serius had probably hunted down every account of Flander's life he could find in Mūzeg's historical records and the public literature.

A kind of fixation on Flander showed in his eyes.

Merea read it. Came to the conclusion.

Probably, Serius —

---

— had admired Flander.

---

"Flander Crow Mūzeg was the hero I wanted to aim at. — Up until that point."

"…So that's how it is."

"Flander left no children, so I'm not a direct descendant. But some of his blood does run in the wider house. I was proud to be related to the Flander in those records."

The light in Serius's eyes there was a child's — innocent.

In that moment Merea had the answer to all of it.

He no longer had anything more to ask.

He didn't want to hear any more.

If he heard one more line, the anger he had been holding down, by pure rationality, was going to break out from under his control.

"But Flander failed. He wasn't a real hero. After that, this kinship became, on the contrary, a thing I disliked."

"No. Flander was a hero."

"He threw Mūzeg away."

"Flander put the great old Demon Lord down for Mūzeg's sake. Are you going to forget that too."

"I'm not forgetting it. Flander was a hero up to that point. — But he wasn't a hero through to the end. So Flander was, in the final accounting — a failed hero."

"That's not yours to decide."

"Nor yours. There is no answer to this subject."

The intellectual light came back into Serius's eyes.

"To you, Flander was a hero — and a Demon Lord, then."

Rather, Merea felt — pity for Serius.

Perhaps Serius, under the impassive shell, was actually a deeply sentimental man.

The cold-headed surface — false hide for that.

For a prince — who had to maintain dignity — perhaps it was necessary.

Thinking about Serius, in the same beat, Merea hated the age, and hated the country called Mūzeg.

Even so, Merea —

"But — I, on my end, have things I will not give up. I —"

— lifted his face, and said it to Serius.

The expression on his face was, for the first time —

— the face of a demon.

The Merea who had, by sheer rationality, held his fury down to this point — was about to let it out.

He had hit his limit.

"You — who would not let Flander die as a hero —"

---

— I will never forgive.

---

The conversation was over.

There was nothing more to ask.

The Mūzeg system, the temper of the current Mūzeg king, and the interior of the man who would carry future Mūzeg on his back — he had seen all of it.

"Forgive us, don't forgive us — you die here, regardless. — That resolve has no meaning!"

Serius — almost on impulse — drove the demon-spear in his hand at the chest of the crucified Merea.

The spear-blade keened a low metallic cry as it punched through Merea's clothes —

— through flesh —

— and through his body.

"— I win."

Serius said it short.

What exactly he had won against was, even inside Serius himself, hazy.

That killing him might leave the Demon Lord arts unrecoverable — that consideration was, by this point, fully gone from Serius's head.