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EP.482 Lac von Grace (1)
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The vision was blurry. The mind was hazy.
He couldn’t tell whether he was standing on the ground or lying sprawled on the floor. His sense of direction was in shambles. His body was hot. No, it was cold.
Thud.
Lac stared blankly at the ground.
A puddle of blood lay there. Blood. Whose blood is it? Did I shed blood? When? Looking at his body, there were countless signs of mutilation. Blood was gushing wildly from the gaping wounds.
Blink.
In an instant, his vision flickered, and when he came to, the puddle of blood was a little closer. It was not that the blood had come closer; he himself had moved closer to the blood.
“······.”
Lac realized he had knelt down. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Breathing, sensation, nothing in his body moved as he wished.
Splat.
Lac collapsed into the pool of blood.
With half of his face submerged in his own blood, Lac let his gaze wander aimlessly. The wandering gaze fixated on his arms, which were completely flayed. Lac looked at his grotesquely twisted fingers.
There, in his grip, was a sword.
It was the pride he hadn’t let go of until the very end.
His ancestor, the master of Grace. The treasured blade of the great knight Ganikalt van Galatrick. The First Holy Sword, a holy relic that traversed the chaos with the First Hero. The pride that Lac had ultimately inherited, recognized by the great knight.
“···Ah.”
Lac groaned. He sighed.
With vacant eyes, Lac looked at the sword he held. The First Holy Sword, the pride he had inherited, had shattered. Fragments of the broken blade were sinking into the blood. Lac’s expression twisted in despair.
Why? How did it come to this?
Barta’s strike had torn his arm apart. In that moment, the Holy Sword was destroyed. Lac’s envisioned path of the sword had also been shattered into pieces. The intermediary processes were omitted, and Barta had swung his sword, leaving only the result of Lac’s defeat.
‘Why······.’
Lac couldn’t understand how it had come to this.
He simply couldn’t comprehend the sword that Barta swung. Understanding and misunderstanding. Cause and effect. The gap between those words was the distance between Lac and Barta.
An unreachable domain. An unattainable realm.
Standing just a step ahead of him, Barta’s voice echoed in Lac’s ears.
“It’s your defeat.”
A sword is a knight’s pride.
Your pride is shattered; it’s your defeat.
It’s your defeat.
Barta’s voice, declaring that, echoed in layers in Lac’s ears. A voice that loudly rang against his eardrums. But the noise didn’t last long.
Everything fades, all of it.
All sense faded until it was severed.
Lac felt his body being weighed down endlessly. He had poured out so much blood, yet his body felt heavier. A body weighed down. A consciousness weighed down.
Slowly, his eyes began to close.
At the moment his eyelids fell, he instinctively realized he would never open them again. Death was approaching. The approaching death was serene. Silently grabbing Lac’s nape, it wouldn’t let go.
Move, please.
Faced with the coming death, Lac felt fear.
Death itself isn’t what frightens him. Warriors always live alongside death. But dying without achieving anything was terrifying.
‘Not yet, I haven’t done anything yet.’
He hadn’t avenged his brothers, or Oyakal’s grudge.
He hadn’t taken revenge on Barta, the King of Beasts. He hadn’t proven his life, nor had he reached the position where that beast was standing.
And most importantly, hadn’t he promised?
He promised her he would return alive. There were still mountains of things he needed to achieve, things he had to protect. He couldn’t die like this. Lac’s soul screamed in resistance against the approaching death, but his body could not.
It was already a body that had reached its limit.
Even the soul’s cries wouldn’t move the body.
Finally, Lac’s eyelids fell closed. The blurred vision completely shut down. Lac’s world turned black. Descending beneath the layer of blackened world, Lac’s consciousness settled toward the depths of the dark sea.
Please, move, please···.
The screaming of his soul also grew faint.
The black sea swallowed the soul’s wail. And so death pulled Lac down to the bottom of the sea, consuming all of him.
Fall. Downward, downward.
The closer he fell to the bottom, the more Lac realized that the tower he had built was collapsing. Death, in the end, negates ultimate life. Lac’s entire being was being dismantled, exposing nothing but emptiness.
The tower collapsed. Lac’s life crumbled.
The dismantled tower now looked stark and unsightly.
At the end of life, or the beginning of death, Lac faced the emaciated state of his own life. Death seemed bent on leaving no trace of such a tower, demolishing the emaciated structure.
The bricks, the framework, the things making up the tower.
The things Lac had built with his own life scattered in all directions. Lac watched the fragments of his life scatter helplessly. Is this it? Is this where it ends?
「In the face of death, humanity is powerless. That’s the truth. Death will dismantle all that you’ve built.」
Fragmented life. Life scattered in all directions.
「But you see.」
A brick, which had occupied a part of Lac’s life, passed by as a crumbled piece. Lac listened closely to the voice emanating from the fragments of his life.
「It’s your choice to accept it or not.」
Raniel van Trias smiled.
The one who always advised him.
The words she had shared echoed in Lac’s ears.
「Reach out.」
As Lac sank, he reached out.
「Grab hold of the crumbling things.」
He extended his hand and grasped the fragments of his life.
「Rebuild it. From the start.」
Lac twisted his body.
He faced the crumbling aspects of his life directly. Amid the ruins, something was shining. It was what had sustained Lac’s life until the end, becoming the backbone of his existence.
It was a fragment of the Holy Grail.
A fragment of the Holy Grail that had once been implanted in Lac.
The piece of starlight that bloomed and took root in Lac’s life. The vine that stretched from that piece was holding up the tower Lac had built so it wouldn’t collapse.
···So that’s it.
Lac let out a chuckle.
‘I see, I could never truly stand independent at the end.’
At the very last moment, Lac realized that what had supported his crumbling life was also a seed sown by someone else. It was the lives of heroes who had lived before.
‘Thinking back, that’s true.’
He thought he understood that he lacked self-confidence in his life. But no. Even the tower that he thought he dismantled and built up was fundamentally made of borrowed components.
Borrowed techniques. Borrowed weapons. Borrowed strength.
None of the elements that made up his life were truly his. Since those were the foundation, he was merely a child who could never become independent. Just a puppet endlessly following the path someone else had walked.
A child that could not stand alone.
A rookie who advanced only with the help of others.
How ironic it was to realize this at this point.
With a bitter smile, Lac reached for the fragment of the Holy Grail that held up his crumbling tower. He grasped the starlight that had been implanted in him. He tore it away from his tower.
Now he had to be independent.
He had to move forward with his own strength.
Boom.
The moment he ripped away the starlight, the entire tower collapsed.
Into the crumbling structure, Lac drove the fragments of the tower he held. He established the cornerstone with his own strength. On the planted cornerstone, Lac stacked the fragments of his life. Stronger. More intricately.
From the beginning.
From the beginning, again.
Now, with no one’s help, but only with his own power.
As Barta turned away, confirming that Lac, submerged in the pool of blood, would move no more, he staggered away. In this life, in this second life, he had completed all the goals he had to achieve.
Now he understood.
Why, in the past, Fortuna… that girl named Barta could not smile in the end. Why she had resented him. Why Ganikalt van Galatrick had been so noble.
Why they shone so brightly.
‘Now, finally, now…’
Now, he could understand.
Having let go of everything, only becoming Barta, he had begun to grasp humanity. Not as the King of Beasts, but as just a mere human. At the end of a long life, understanding humanity, Barta smiled.
Now he was ready to guess the answer. He wanted to talk with her, the one the Braver would resurrect. Now, he could understand her.
Just as Barta staggered forward, Kboom, a sound reverberated through the air. Barta’s steps halted. He slowly turned around.
Thud.
The human met death submerged in the pool of blood.
Thud, thud, thud.
The stopped heart of the human began to beat again.
It wasn’t just the heart that was beating. The human’s body slowly began to move. Standing up while splashing in the pool of blood, he was raising his body again with his broken fingers.
A human that should have already died.
A human that shouldn’t have moved was moving again.
A bizarre sight. An incomprehensible sight. He clearly confirmed the heart had stopped, right? Death had swallowed that human, so how? Lac, who rose up, seemed to mock Barta’s confusion as he exhaled deeply.
“———.”
After exhaling, he clenched his heart tightly.
Clenching it, he tore something out. Thud, along with the blood, what was pulled from Lac’s heart was… a brilliantly shining starlight.
Starlight left behind by heroes of the past.
Lac pulled out the fragment of the Holy Grail that had taken root in his heart with his own hands. As if to say he no longer needed their help. Clenching the plucked starlight in his hand, Lac shouted.
Heat up.
All the starlight began to burn.
The burning starlight did not bring some special effect like Raniel’s mana, or Kyle’s, or Galahal’s, or Destel’s, or Chloe’s… it simply brought heat.
A fierce heat.
A heat that wouldn’t extinguish no matter what.
Clenching the heat in his hand, Lac opened his mouth.
“···is.”
A human, not a hero.
“I am the hot fire.”
Lac shouted.
“I am unquenchable steel, tempered forever.”
As he said this, with a fist full of heat, Lac whammed down on his heart. At that moment, blood burst from Lac’s body. Wounds opened, and blood gushed out wildly.
Thud.
The sound of a heart beating.
Thud, thud, thud.
With the loud beats, heat arose from Lac’s body. Sizz! the wounds began to close as they seared from the heat.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
His white hair, dyed red with blood, fluttered.
Through the fluttering white hair, Lac’s eyes locked onto Barta. The moment their gazes met, Barta was momentarily overwhelmed.
…Even though he was in an advantageous position, Barta’s instincts sounded alarm bells.
Something was different from just a moment ago. The human standing before him was now a completely different existence. Ignoring the ringing alarm bells, Barta slowly raised his sword.
He meant to deliver one final blow to his archrival, declaring that the fight was not yet over.
And.
Lac also raised the broken sword.
The First Holy Sword, now only a hilt, no longer shone. As if it had completed its value as a holy sword, the broken blade no longer glimmered platinum.
It had lost its sanctity, its sharp blade, and the starlight.
A thing that had lost all form and value.
Thus, Lac grasped it. This would be a weapon that suited him.
