〈 Chapter 285 〉 Hero Galahal (4）
*
It’s a cold and light body.
A body of the dead, not the living.
Having watched countless deaths, Raniel is certain. Galahal will die. Even with the Saint present, the predetermined outcome cannot be changed.
Gulp.
Raniel bit her lips.
Blood seeps from her bitten lips.
Countless circuits flash in and out of Raniel’s mind. At this moment, she is searching for a way to save Galahal.
Of course, there is no way.
Galahal’s time has run out.
Fate points to his death. The truth that forms the world whispers of Galahal’s demise. It’s like an irreversible sentence.
All the hundreds of circuits, thousands of arcane knowledge, and tens, hundreds of thousands of tomes that Raniel has mastered over her lifetime are now utterly useless. Her tightly bitten lips trembled.
She cannot save him.
It’s impossible.
There can be no answer.
What Raniel feels at this moment is helplessness.
Even in this helplessness, she struggles to find something. The only means she arrives at is one.
‘Even if I try, it will be useless.’
While thinking so, Raniel forces herself to call upon the god. If a miracle happens, even a non-believer like her will pray at this moment.
It is then that Raniel opens her mouth.
“God(Balan···.”
“Raniel.”
Galahal interrupted her.
“I feel dizzy. The blood is rushing.”
Leaning on Raniel, Galahal smiled faintly.
Even though there was no blood to rush, Galahal joked like that and gently pushed Raniel away. Sitting against a tree, he looked at her.
“Why do you have that expression?”
Raniel couldn’t say a word.
She opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, and with a voice that she herself couldn’t be certain of, she spoke.
“Even now…”
“Don’t you know? It’s too late.”
Galahal shook his head.
“I will die soon. My time has run out.”
Blood pooled on the ground.
The cold winter wind feels exceptionally chilly, yet Galahal feels even that breeze as warm. For his body is colder than that.
“Do you know, Raniel?”
He spoke in a lighter voice.
“I defeated the Gletus. That dreadful calamity, the one who killed my comrades… I defeated him.”
His light voice is like that of a child.
Like a parent boasting about their child’s achievement, Galahal chuckled.
“I reached it. I could reach it.”
“…Yeah.”
“I’m happy about that, but what brings me even more joy is…”
Galahal shifted his gaze.
At some point, Chloe regained her senses, and Galahal met her gaze. She was staring at him with her mouth covered.
Looking at Chloe, Galahal said.
“It means I was able to save her.”
He saved that child.
He pierced the heart of the calamity that reigned for centuries, and burned down all the beasts, thousands, tens of thousands of them. But more than that, he is happier about the fact that he saved her.
“…Um, …”
Chloe swallowed her tears and said something.
Those words didn’t reach Galahal’s ears, but he could guess their meaning.
“It’s okay.”
Galahal replied.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
That’s all that mattered.
Galahal had seen and experienced many things, yet his belief never wavered.
“Save people.”
“Wield your weapon not to strike down, but to save. That is what makes a hero.”
He fought to save.
He lived to be a hero.
If this life ends with such a conclusion, he would gladly accept it. Galahal exhaled. His body became a little lighter. Plop, something spilled onto the ground.
The more he spilled, the lighter he became.
One by one, he discarded the things that were holding him to this land. As death approached, his mind was clearer than ever.
“Raniel.”
Galahal looked ahead.
In the blurred vision, deafened ears, and fading sensations, he saw his dear friend.
Raniel van Trias.
This mage known as the Wise One was a companion and an idol, a person who guided him on the path he walked. At this moment, Galahal felt gratitude towards her. Though it was a short time, the moments he spent with Raniel gave him answers.
Having found the answers he sought.
Having accomplished what he aimed to achieve.
Being able to stand tall in his own life.
In the face of death, Galahal could be serene.
“I…”
Galahal opened his mouth.
“Was I a hero?”
To that question, Raniel responds.
Though the voice doesn’t reach him, through the movements of her lips, Galahal saw what Raniel wanted to say.
…More than anyone else.
More than anyone he had seen.
He was a hero. At those words, Galahal smiled. He smiled more easily than ever, with more joy than ever before.
“Aha, indeed… that’s…”
Galahal’s voice became thin to the point of fading. No longer able to reverberate through the air, his voice was like the wind that could scatter away.
“How delightful, it is.”
Thunk.
Galahal’s head drooped.
His allotted time had already been up.
A human who had held onto a time that ended solely by willlet go of what he held.
A star fades.
2.
The faint sound of a heartbeat stopped.
No breath is heard.
It announces the death of a human.
Chloe lowered her head.
Tears flowed down and hit the ground. Chloe could not bring herself to look at Galahal’s corpse.
Why, how.
The girl who survived after drinking the blood of the hero felt doubt for the first time about what she possessed. The death of someone she admired shook her mind.
All deaths are terrible.
There can be no glorious death.
After seeing a body that bled and was torn to shreds, one cannot think it is glorious. Nevertheless, wanting to regard that death as noble, Chloe forcibly kept her head down.
As Chloe kept her head down, she heard someone’s breath in her ear.
Turning her head, she saw Rania van Trias. In his last moment, Galahal called her Raniel, but Chloe had no time to dwell on that.
She simply looked at her face.
Rania’s eyes, staring at Galahal, were sunken. It was not the usual expressionless face. Her chin trembled. Her lips quivered, and her eyes opened and closed repeatedly.
And flowing were tears.
She sobbed softly.
She bit her lip tightly, then opened her mouth as if to say something, only to close it again. The emotions uncontained in her body showed through her movements.
Frustration, sorrow, and helplessness.
Such a strange sight.
Looking at Rania, Chloe swallowed her tears and finally lifted her head. To face reality. And thus Chloe looked at Galahal’s corpse. Indeed, the corpse was horrendous. An arm was torn off, and the remaining arm… huh?
“…Huh?”
Chloe shouted, momentarily stopped her tears.
She reached out and pointed at Galahal’s corpse.
Rania also lifted her head.
The remaining arm of Galahal.
That arm was slowly moving.
*
He arrives at the end of the path he walked.
The road is cut off. He cannot go any further.
He looks around.
As he surveys the surroundings, many paths exist.
Paths that go forward in their own ways. On those paths stand the masters of those ways. Each one looks different.
Not everyone is walking the path.
There are those who have stopped, those who suffer. There are those who have crumpled to the ground. Some paths are severed, and ultimately, some lead off in entirely different directions.
He lowers his head to look at his feet.
His own path has also been cut off.
However, he does not regard it as cut off. Lifting his head, he looks ahead. The light that walked alongside his path is there.
The brilliantly shining light.
It is now trying to depart from him.
Trying to leave him, to settle on a new path.
He does not know what kind of path that will be. The light does not know either. He reaches out toward the wandering light, to share the answer he has found.
He extends his hand to point at something.
What he points at is another path.
A path that has just begun.
The moment he points at it, a distant path draws near. The end of the road he walked connects with the starting point of another path. Thus, the road does not end.
The path he walked becomes fertilizer.
It will become the cornerstone of a tower someone else will build.
That signifies the continuation of the path.
The road continues.
Next, and then the next.
*
The star fades, and the return begins.
Everything the star has held returns.
Where does the returned starlight go? No one knows. No one knows the will of the gods. Just as the starlight, which tried to find a new master, suddenly comes to a halt.
The starlight witnesses its master’s last moments.
It sees the end of a human who carried small light and achieved brilliant feats. The breath has stopped, the heart has ceased. The dead body suddenly moves.
An unimaginable event occurs.
A miracle that even stars cannot comprehend happens at this moment.
The human slowly raises an arm.
He spreads his broken fingers and points at something. The direction his finger points is toward the little girl. The girl whose light has only just begun to shine.
As if to say “Go there.”
The starlight gazes at that fingertip.
…The star calls the starlight.
The star does not leave matters that defy fate unattended. This goes against the contract. The star tries to reclaim a part of itself, but the starlight refuses the star’s call.
If there is a will behind the star’s intentions, it is surely the human’s desire and wish. The starlight follows the intentions that its master held. The brilliantly shining starlight chooses a new master.
Light surged.
3.
Raniel stared blankly ahead.
She saw the dead Galahal’s body moving. She clearly saw his fingertip pointing at Chloe. Whether that movement was just a post-mortem twitch or carried Galahal’s will, Raniel could not tell.
She couldn’t know, but.
Eventually, the surging starlight gave Raniel an answer.
It was not the starlight remaining in Galahal’s body. That light had already departed from that body. Then what is that starlight?
It is the trace left in the soul.
It is the trace of the life he lived.
The starlight, separated from his extinguished soul, does not head for the sky but comes to a stop. Then it alters its direction and flows toward Chloe. The surging starlight enters Chloe’s body. Though it is but a small amount…
It shines brighter than anything.
Raniel saw the arm of the saint hovering in the air. Around that arm, four stars orbited. One of them seemed to fall, blending into the one next to it.
It is not four stars.
It is three stars.
With three stars aligned, the orbit described by the star begins to shift. The flow that has been maintained for centuries changes. It signifies the clock hands that have remained stagnant are beginning to move.
The contract has been overturned.
Raniel looked up at the sky.
Just before the sun rises, in the dim light that barely breaks through the darkness, the flow of the constellations hanging in the night sky began to change.
A new constellation rises.
One that no one has seen, a new constellation.
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