The Young Princess Kills Everyone: Re
“You’re unhurt?”
Mitis was still fine.
She shook off even Moon and Sun, and appeared the same as she did at the start.
“Your attack was wonderful. But you’re missing the crucial point.”
Miti spoke.
Strangely, Mary could still make her words out in space with no atmosphere.
“I won’t die. I’m not immortal, the concept of ‘death’ just doesn’t apply to me. Because I’m not a living thing, I’m a system. The foundation this world is based on. As long as this world isn’t completely destroyed, I will never go away.”
This was also why from the moment Mitis was released from Luno’s seal, her only choice was to destroy the world.
She would not die.
She could not die.
And, she had enough power to destroy this world one day.
Could someone like that live without destroying the world for thousands, tens of thousands of years?
No.
With eternal life, everyone would make the choice to destroy the world eventually.
No matter how good or evil they were, they would all ‘plan’ to try it after hundreds of millions of years.
Whether that happened earlier or later was only a small issue.
Her very existence meant destruction.
That truth would never change, no matter her personality.
“In contrast, you obtained a body that is almost immortal. But you’re not completely immortal. If you continue to fight, both your body and mind will slowly degrade until you finally die. That’s why I said you can’t win. The moment you made it your goal to ‘kill’ me is the moment you failed.”
This was not even kindness.
It was an unshakable truth.
Mitis was simply saying that from the start.
“Do you understand? If you’re going to keep fighting anyway, then-”
Mitis vanished before Mary’s eyes.
Mary could not even sense where she went.
Then, she heard Mitis’s voice.
It was coming from ‘inside Mary’.
“It’ll just be me bullying the weak.”
Her arm pierced her chest from the inside.
“Gah, agh!”
She grabbed Mary’s head and slowly pulled her spinal cord out.
Then, Mitis emerged from inside her body and crushed Mary’s head.
But Mary’s flesh and body immediately began regenerating.
“You will die over and over again as you taste all kinds of pain.”
This time, Mitis’s arm transformed into a massive mouth and swallowed Mary.
She chewed Mary’s flesh with her sharp teeth and crushed it before digesting it.
“And you will regret your very birth.”
She regenerated, then a thorn grew from Mitis’s arm and pierced Mary’s body.
Mitis injected a liquid into Mary’s body.
It was poison.
Mary’s body started turning purple from the spot the thorn stabbed her, and she felt her body going cold and getting devoured by insects from the inside as her head almost exploded from the headache.
Her body started shaking and she foamed at the mouth.
Mary desperately tried to endure the anguish of the poison that was created for the sole purpose of pain.
“If you were never born, I could continue being ‘the best’ among ‘the worst’! I could have suffered inside Luno forever without getting born in a world like this!”
Mary got killed a hundred times in one second.
Ran over, burned to death, electrocuted to death, hung, drowned, death from disease, death from old age – all deaths granted by Mitis.
She could no longer even tell if she was alive or dead.
She could not freely move her body either, and death came again every time she thought it was over.
Why wasn’t she really dying?
Death assailed Mary again while she thought about that.
“You’re the one who released it, Mary. Even if you weren’t the one who wanted to be born, since you were born in this world, I have to hate you. That’s why I can’t die! That’s why I can’t live forever in this world crawling with worms! Yes, just like how you have to hate Francis’s killer!”
Then, Mitis used the maximum amount of mana possible and created a red scythe.
Perhaps because of the creation of something larger than the world could permit, the air around the scythe’s edge distorted like when Mary regenerated from embers.
And this distortion also turned into power to destroy Mary.
“Trillion Soul Nemesis Scythe!”
The slash dragged Mary down a chaotic path of even more life and death.
The attack was powerful enough to kill one trillion humans.
Mary could not even tell whether that many people died or not, as this happened in even a shorter gap of time than the inflation in space.
The number of deaths simply hurt her mind and soul.
“Ugh…… Guh, geh!…… Gah……”
Mary felt an intense vertigo after she regenerated again.
Even in her current unhuman state, she could be sent off flying somewhere if she was not careful.
But she could no longer come back again if she let her consciousness go now.
She understood this, so Mary thought for a moment that this might be peaceful.
The ‘spell’ brought her back.
“Don’t lose, Mary!”
“You can do it, sis!”
“Take our revenge, Mary.”
The malediction she had received, to ‘survive and kill Mitis’, bound her life to this world.
So Mary recovered and held her scythe.
“Aaaggggh!”
She slashed at Mitis.
It was a crude, tired strike that Mitis could easily dodge by turning her body.
“You’re still fighting?”
“I told you I won’t stop…… until I kill you!”
“You’re out of tricks. Look at my Sorcery Rating. It’s 5,000,000,000,000. I should increase it again. 50,000,000,000,000. Now you can’t even consume my life.”
“I’ll kill you! I don’t care how, I’m going to kill you!”
Mary desperately swung her scythe.
“Pathetic, Mary. Will you keep this up for hundreds of millions of years?”
Mitis was looking down on Mary with cold, scornful eyes.
(There has to be a way. That’s always been the case, so there has to be an exception for World too – not a simple ‘power’ defect, but something ‘fatal’ like the others! Because Death God sealed World in the past!)
Perhaps the same malfunction that happened when she tried to kill Luno before could happen again.
Though Mitis had taken measures to make sure that did not happen again, of course.
In the first place, interference from superior authorities could not happen after she dove and became a resident of this world.
So she was sure of her victory, or rather, she ‘knew’ that it was absolute.
Even if she got cut.
Even if she got beat up.
Even if she got smashed up.
Even if she got shot.
None of these killing methods meant anything for Mitis.
Yes, even-
“Milion Corpse…… Behemoth Scythe!”
Even if Mary tried to bite and crush her.
Mary used all her strength to hit her most powerful attack yet.
The edge stuck into Mitis, and she seemed bored as she did not even try to dodge it.
Her arm got cut off.
No problem.
Even if her body vanished, Mitis could simply create a new body.
It was not the wrong decision.
But, this was the first time Mitis had suffered an attack that ‘directly consumed her real body’.
“……Hm?”
Blood gushed out from her cut.
Mitis saw this and tilted her head.
“Did ‘my arm’ just vanish?”
Then, Mitis remembered the day she got killed by Luno.
The memory of that moment when World malfunctioned because of Death God – this reminded her of that.
“Hehe…… I see now.”
After looking at her cut, she slowly spoke and looked over at Mary.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Death God can absorb the powers of a dead enemy. But, what is ‘dead’?”
Mary noticed it too.
Because she devoured a part of something that had cultivated a massive amount of mana.
Naturally, Mary’s own mana also increased in accordance.
“If World is a management system, then this world was created a lot more scientifically than we all thought. In which case, the ‘death’ that Death God can absorb isn’t some vague concept, but a precise definition.”
“Are you saying this is…… the definition of death?”
“Yes.”
“Because Luno…… decided that it was?”
“I suppose. In other words, Luno Aplix-”
Mary spoke loudly.
“Set the definition of death as ‘when you can’t die any more’.”
These words were almost a declaration of victory.
Because Mitis had no concept of ‘death’.
According to Luno, this would be the same thing as being a corpse.
“Because now that I am a God and have acquired eternal life, I am already dead.”
That was what Luno once told Mitis in her letter.
That was the answer to everything.
“No……”
Mitis held and shook her head.
“That logic isn’t meant to kill me!”
She tousled her hair and shouted.
“But Luno only said that to tell me that she was dead, you know? So how can that suicide note kill me?”
That letter pulled the final trigger.
It was the thing that led Mitis to Luno.
Indeed, that was where everything began.
“What’s with that……? She broke her promise. She cursed me. And now, she’s going to kill me again!? Are you kidding me!?”
Mitis was clearly upset.
Mary laughed when she saw her lose her cool for the first time.
“Aah, what a relief. It seems that there are things that can bother you too.”
As someone walking the path of revenge, this moment was supreme bliss for Mary.
She suffered so much.
With only one wish in her heart.
Mitis ruined Mary’s life and arrogantly boasted about it.
Mary always seeked the moment when she could kill Mitis while watching her sink to the depths of regret and defeat.
“Goodbye, Mitis.”
Mary held her scythe and made her move.
In her disarray, the scythe cut Mitis faster than she could guard against it.
The lower half of her body got consumed, leaving only the upper half behind.
“No…… I hate this feeeling!”
Mary kept slashing and cutting Mitis up.
“I was looking forward to this. To the moment when the world would end and I would kill you!”
She screamed until the end.
Her screams did not reach any ears.
“I win.”
A sharp strike by Mary cut Mitis’s head into small pieces.
She could not even scream any more.
After that, Mary simply had to devour the remains.
Then, Mary heard a voice ‘inside’ her.
“Wrong, Mary. There are no winners in this fight.”
Mitis hated to lose.
A beast’s head grew from Mary’s body as she continued calmly collecting Mitis’s remains.
“From the very start, this fight never had any winners. The person who wins this fight…… will only lose even more……”
The world cracked when Mitis’s voice cut off.
The tear in space instantly grew even larger.
(Is this…… World’s Reverse Phenomenon?)
Mary did not know if it was correct to call it that.
World was structured differently from the other arcana.
It was this world’s control system.
So it was only natural that the world would break when it got destroyed.
(I can destroy the world any time I want. I won’t die. I won’t be defeated either. Even if by some miracle I lose, the recoil will destroy the world……)
Mitis no longer had a voice.
She could not breathe either, and Mary was also suffocating.
The temperature also went below -100 as freezing, destruction and regeneration repeated.
This pain did not mean anything for Mary.
(Yeah…… I never had a chance to win.)
No matter how much she struggled, as long as World existed on this world, its destruction could not be averted.
In other words, the end was set in stone when Dugan interfered 16 years ago.
Even further, it was set in stone the moment this world was born and took Mitis in.
(The world is breaking.)
The darkness of space crumbled and a pure white space on the other side became visible.
Perhaps this was true ‘nothingness’.
Mary could not tell if she was floating or falling.
There was no oxygen either, so she could not breathe.
She also had no voice, of course.
It was simply an empty place.
Perhaps this was where the world began.
The Gods put things on this white canvas and created the world.
(……Still, this is a surprise. I didn’t think I was going to absorb World too.)
Mary held her knees and muttered in her mind.
(Thanks to this, the concept of death has been erased for me too. Death God can’t eat itself, so…… yes, I have to stay here forever…… completely alone.)
That was the end of the story.
It ended on an empty page when the writer, Mitis, vanished.
That was how it seemed, at least.
(……Why?)
The fight finally ended.
Mary was alone.
She could not see anyone.
So she finally stopped putting on a brave front.
(Why did it have to be like this?)
She was always thinking this from the start.
She got used to the pain, but she always thought it was all so senseless.
(Why did this have to happen to me?)
She had not done anything wrong.
In fact, she was dragged into this by force.
She had failed, but she was only living, honestly and desperately.
She tried to be helpful to others.
(I did my best. Maybe I failed, but I didn’t do anything bad compared to other people. I really didn’t want to get married either. But I forced myself, didn’t I? I cooperated. I wish…… I got something in return for it all, even if something small. Because I won. I want comfort. I want to be caressed. I want someone to hug me! Anyone, anyone!)
She knew it was pointless.
Yet she could not help but wish for it.
She did not need any rewards, only to take her revenge. That was what she thought, but in the end, it was just a way to encourage herself during the fighting.
She wanted a reward.
She wanted everyone to come back to life and to live happily with them.
And if that was impossible, she wanted at least one person to survive.
She wanted at least the planet she could live on to remain intact, and to be able to fix humanity.
She could not help having such wishes.
(Is it wrong to want that? I mean, I’m only human. I’m just a normal human. I’m not a God……)
Empty, eternal time passed by.
Mary was not wishing that she never fought yet.
But, as time went by, she would certainly regret it eventually.
What if she was killed by Magrat?
What if she never met Ami, Cutie, Calaria or anyone else?
She did not want to wish that.
(I can’t… endure it…… Alone forever in this place……. No, I don’t want this……)
So Mary decided to do what she could in this world.
She closed her eyes.
Her consciousness faded.
Ah, what a relief.
She could still sleep.
(The world doesn’t need a God. I don’t need eternal life or special powers. Yes, no arcana, just a powerless failure, and my sister…… such a happy dream……)
Of course, everyone would be alive and she would not have to worry about any battles.
If there were no battles, she would not even meet anyone.
That would have been good.
If she had to leave behind the fragments of this ending world, she would rather throw it all away.
And dream of a world peaceful and calm enough to make her yawn.
Her consciousness faded even further.
Before long, she fell into a long, long slumber.
◇◇◇
She heard birds chirping.
The light shining through a window illuminated her eyelids, and her body recognized the morning.
Mary opened her eyes as her consciousness surfaced, and stared at the bed’s canopy with sleepy eyes.
(Wait…… Did I sleep here……?)
It almost made her feel nostalgic, but it had not even been two months since Mary left the castle.
The days were full of turmoil.
But such a history did not exist in this world of dreams.
Because Mary’s body was wrapped up in a loving, soft and warm embrace.
“……Sister.”
Mary buried her face in Francis’s chest, who was hugging Mary while she slept.
Mary took a deep breath, and the scent of her most beloved person, who should have been dead already at this day, filled her up.
Of course, this was only a dream, but the memories of Francis that remained inside Mary were so detailed and vivid that the recreation was flawless.
Mary enjoyed her sister’s touch for a while before an erotic voice tickled her ears: ‘Hnnn.’
Francis had woken up.
(The way she sleeps, the moment she wakes up, it’s all so wonderful……)
Mary raised her head and smiled at her sister, who had only barely opened her eyes.
“Good morning, sister.”
“Hnn…… Good morning, Mary.”
Francis smiled back and caressed Mary’s face for a while, then kissed her on the forehead.
◇◇◇
World consumed.
Number of currently possessed arcana: 21.
Remaining arcana: 0.