The Young Princess Kills Everyone: Re
“It’s my fault.”
Perhaps a direct encounter with misfortune is when a human being’s character becomes most evident.
“Everyone got hurt because of me.”
Blame someone.
Plan revenge.
Blame yourself.
Wait for punishment from others.
‘Escape’ appeared in many forms.
“I should have just chosen death before I got to meet Luno.”
While possessed by Mitis, Stella convinced herself that this was her punishment and tried to keep her mind intact.
However, contained within her, Mitis had other ideas.
“It’s not really your fault, Stella. It’s okay if you just want to hate me. Because this really is an absurd happening.”
Resting her chin on her hands over the desk in the president’s room of Pupa’s offices, she muttered to herself.
Then, she suddenly grabbed her left shoulder with her right hand and tore her arm off.
A lot of blood spilled and stained the carpet.
Mitis threw the arm to the other side of the desk.
The wound quickly healed, and her arm was back to normal.
The fragment of Mitis that was thrown away started to bubble and finally turned into a form same as hers.
Then, Stella opened her eyes.
She sat up and looked at Mitis, who had the same face as her.
“W-Wha…… Did you cut me off?”
“I simply used the scraps of your personality to recreate the human being named Stella.”
“No, I can tell. This is me. I thought you’d never let me out again. So what’s the joke this time, Mitis?”
“Again……? Ah, are you talking about when you made contact with Mary?”
“You did not even let me use any proper words back then.”
Stella was talking about what happened in the village of Mytis after Mary and Ox fought.
Stella appeared before Mary in the form of an angel, or a monster, to protect that place she used to live with Luno in, and to protect those memories.
However, Mitis interfered with her speaking and she could not have a proper conversation.
“That was before the story got spoiled, wasn’t it? Come on, I couldn’t let her realize that I was what you really contained within you.”
“So you’re saying…… that there’s no need to bind me any more now that it’s too late to do anything?”
“That’s right. I’m tired of you making all that noise inside me.”
“……Why didn’t you erase it?”
“Erase what?”
“You could easily erase my personality if you wanted to. I know you hate me for having the relationship I did with Luno. You were always watching from inside Luno. You wanted to kill me so badly, did you not?”
Mitis could not hold her laughter back after Stella’s words.
“It does not matter. I don’t care about what you and Luno had.”
Stella’s eyes opened wide after this surprising reply.
“That can’t be-!”
“No, perhaps that would be a lie. Yeah, I do care. I did hate you, and I did wish that it was me who touched that girl’s body first. Yet, it is all so distant…… too distant for the anger to resonate within me.”
“Too distant? Why?”
“Because it’s trivial compared to Luno grasping some human-like happiness.”
Even for Stella who still could not understand Mitis, these words rang true and were clearly Mitis’s true feelings.
“I watched Luno lament her loneliness for hundreds of millions of years. When she chose death, I was convinced. Of course, I thought. No matter how much a human being can love another one, love is a trivial thing in comparison to the ‘death’ desired by someone who lived in loneliness for hundreds of millions of years, is it not? So I did not care who her partner was if Luno could die happy. That’s right Stella, I’m grateful to you.”
“Then……. why did you do all this!?”
“You mean the possession? Or the homunculi? Or perhaps you mean how I’m destroying the world?”
“All of it! It makes no sense!”
If there was no hatred, then what the hell was this revenge all about?
That was Stella’s biggest question, but she had greatly misunderstood things.
“First, possessing you was not something I did intentionally. The arcana of World can’t be contained with a trifling level of talent. A vessel equal to Mary is necessary to stabilize it. That’s why when an irregularity occurred and you ended up housing me, your personality automatically got eaten away and your body changed.”
“But you still didn’t have to-”
“Are you saying I should have lived a normal human life with my immortal body while possessing you? In this world, where Luno died?”
The days Stella spent with Luno were irreplaceable.
For Mitis however, that time was probably the same length as one short moment.
And losing even that short moment was enough to make Stella fall into the depths of despair.
“16 years ago, I wanted to disappear. It was my last opportunity to just vanish. But now that I’m free, that changes things.”
The darkness losing Luno caused Mitis was incomparable to what Stella felt.
It boiled and expanded inside Luno, and no longer held its original shape.
“I mean, this world is trash, is it not?”
So she could easily say it was ‘worthless’.
Without any hesitation.
“Do you need a reason to throw away the trash? You wouldn’t want to live in a room full of garbage, would you? In other words, I have to be the one to take the trash out. I’m doing this because that’s what this world is to me.”
“But so many people are doing their best to live in this world!”
“That’s even worse. I can’t love creatures who cling onto trash. You’re the same, are you not? Can you ignore disgusting, unknown insects and live in the same room with them? Can you endure maggots crawling inside your body just because ‘they’re alive too’?”
For Mitis, the lives on this world had no value.
They were simply the things that took Luno away.
“I get that you’re trying to converse with me, but you can’t change how I feel. I will destroy this world no matter what anyone says, and I won’t stop hating after it’s gone either. The thing that was taken from me will never come back, and my degenerated heart will never go back to what it was.”
She spoke calmly, almost as if warning Stella.
She really did not seem to hold any hostile feelings towards Stella.
“……Then why did you cut me off? If you have no intention of changing, why?”
“Mary is fighting right now. Against Shaiti.”
“No. That girl isn’t Shaiti, her name is Angie!”
“Ah, that was her name. Anyway, they’re fighting to the death in the royal capital.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Just for some coloration…… maybe a reduction of some regret. I do not feel a speck of attachment to any life in this world. But, Stella, I do have some thoughts about you. My heart aches just a little bit when I watch the person who gave Luno salvation just rotting away in regret.”
“You say that after you turned Angie into that thing…… after you changed her name, body, and even personality!”
“There is no need for me to feel any guilt about that. But you don’t like it, do you? So why don’t you at least try to say goodbye to Ange?”
“That girl’s name is Angie!”
“Ahaha, right.”
Stella sensed how abnormal Mitis’s value system was.
Perhaps as a result of being broken.
Or perhaps it was always like this, but Stella was sure that even Mitis did not know any more.
“Well, the end is near. It’s just a little sentimentality.”
Giving up in the face of someone talking with a half smile, Stella ran out of the room.
It was too late for this world.
Running now was not going to change anything.
But still-
“I’m not gonna be happy again. But if I can end things in a slightly better way……. then both me, and that girl……!”
Everyone wanted it.
World wanted it.
They wanted the ending world to end in a beautiful way.
◇◇◇
Mary and Shaiti’s battle still continued.
No, rather than a battle, it was more like one-sided violence now.
“Stop running around!”
Mary’s arms no longer resembled their original shape.
Countless cables of flesh extending from them were connected to gatling guns.
Dozens of autocannons had also grown from her back, and were showering Shaiti in a barrage of bullets surpassing ten thousand shots per second.
“Kahh…… Ahh, hih, I can…… I can still keep going!”
Shaiti was focused on running away.
Her body no longer held its original form, and even if she regenerated with her angel powers, new holes opened up immediately.
Enough power to blow rubble away just by grazing them.
A normal human being would instantly die just by being close to it.
She was quite tough to endure hundreds, or thousands of such shots, but-
“If you’re not dying yet, then I’ll just keep going even harder!”
What was making Shaiti so tenacious?
Mary shouted angrily, and a few bone giants emerged from the ground after splitting the earth.
She did this when she fought Cutie as well.
“I won’t die, not yet, not because of this!”
Shaiti jumped to dodge a fist coming down on her head.
The fist broke the ground and the flying boulders opened big holes in her abdomen.
Then, Mary’s machine guns mercilessly continued piercing her body.
“Why are you trying so hard to stay alive while looking so unsightly like that?”
“Because of my sentiments as an editor, and……”
“If the end of the world and everything else is a story created by Mitis, then you have no real part to play in this! There’s no meaning to prolonging this meaningless battle!”
“That’s-”
She could not answer.
Why was she fighting?
In truth, she was simply imprinted with the idea that this was what she had to do, and she had no motives of her own.
She now realized that she lacked the ability to color this story.
The only reason she was utilized as a pawn was also just to surprise Mary.
Her part was already over.
To put it bluntly, she was useless.
So she would be killed.
There was no need for Mitis to save her.
Shaiti was simply going to fulfill her part as Devil, and be consumed by Mary and have her powers taken away.
With no conflict, no climax; just a one-sided trample.
In the face of this reality, she had only one feeling in her heart.
“……I don’t want to die a pointless death.”
It was a primitive desire as a human being.
She did not find it inside ‘Shaiti’s heart’.
The words came from across the pierced mask, from the instincts of ‘Angie’.
And at the same time, it was a universal desire held by everyone.
However, Shaiti’s mutterings were overshadowed by the sounds of the bullets exploding on her body and smashing her bones.
A moment of relaxation was fatal.
If the fist of the giant above her crushed her, even as an angel, she would probably die without even having time to activate her Reverse.
She hated the idea of this trivial end with nothing left behind.
So her body continued to dodge.
Just one thing, searching for a chance to carve just a single meaningful thing into this world.
“You’re not alone in that. But I don’t have time to waste in a place like this!”
Mary’s anger swelled even further.
Shaiti was not even showing any signs of an intent to attack any more; she only dodged and dodged.
But a transformation occurred in her body as she continued dodging the giants and their fists.
(My body feels heavy? I can’t move my legs like I want to……!)
Shaiti’s legs were already in the process of petrification.
Hierophant’s precept was imposed over this area.
The precept was to ‘dodge a giant’s fist’.
Each time, her body petrified more and more.
Then, she could finally no longer jump and doge, and-
“Now, I’m going to crush you into pieces!”
A lot of bullets shot through Shaiti at the same time and a fist coming down on her turned her into minced meat.
The giant scrupulously rubbed its fist against the ground and erased any possibility of regeneration.