Chapter 262: 248

Cracks in space appeared all around us and countless pale-skinned tentacles emerged from them.

「What?」

The tentacles wrapped themselves around the prince's limbs, restraining him. He tried to resist with his abnormal strength, but the tentacles appeared to be just a bit stronger than him.

「Hahahaha! Did you say Grizunas?! Foreigner, so you're an apostle of the sea witch, huh?! So it seems that you have a connection with that slut just like my father the king did!」

The prince's voice sounds so distant.

I'm a dead man. By summoning Grizunas, I've truly reached my limit. I can't move a single finger anymore. My heavy eyelids are closing.

I'm cold.

It's so cold that it feels like I'm surrounded by ice.

My blood freezing, I heard the sounds of a blizzard. Amid it, the faint howls of wolves.

『Hey』

Who's there?

Mixed in with the sounds of the blizzard and the howling was the sound of someone's voice――――――

『Hey, dumbass』

Aahh?

That bastard's voice pissed me off somewhat, making me come back to my senses a little.

『Hurry up and use it. Then make your decision. Don't let an evil god of the ocean kill a hero of those who live on land. You'll upset the balance between the different faiths. You must make the decision and put an end to it all』

Shut the hell up. Rather than showing up here, go to Tyutyu instead.

I felt something hard inside my clenched fist.

In my hand was a large fang that I had acquired in the nightmare world and had vanished somehow without my realizing it.

Get up.

Get up.

Get up!

I don't care what kind of miracle it is. Give me the strength I need!

I coughed up blood.

My heart pounded harder and my eyes shot open. My cells were reborn, my blood regenerated.

Right now, I couldn’t care less which miracle has granted me strength.

The prince is trying to tear himself free from the restraints of tentacles that can make a human explode with a simple touch.

There’s still an opening. There’s still a glimmer of an opening.

Like a revenant, I got up and ran forward.

Lowering myself to the ground like a beast, I raised my fist, a fragment of the nightmare clenched inside it.

Noticing me, the prince frowned. I saw in his eyes a man with white hair and a horn growing out above his left eye.

The prince freed his right arm and gripped the silver sword in his hand.

I have no intention of dodging.

I don't have the strength for that.

I'm going to sink my teeth into him with the intention of taking him down with me.

The silver blade closed in on my head―――――――and for some reason, I ignored it with a profound sense of confidence.

The blade did not reach me. The sword sailed through the air along with the prince's right arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw His Majesty.

I saw someone I could still recognize as His Majesty.

He was bleeding all over and in a worse state than I was, but he had planted both feet on the ground and swung his beloved great-sword.

Taking advantage of the perfect opportunity, I thrust the fang into the prince's heart.

「What's this?」

The prince sent His Majesty flying with his regenerated right arm, grabbed me by the neck, and lifted me up. The sound of flesh being mangled and bones being crushed made me think that with a little more force, my head would be ripped off.

「After summoning the harbingers of the sea witch and growing that grand-looking horn, you end it off with a pinprick like this? How truly―――――」

The moronic prince was slow to notice the anomaly.

「That one is a gift from the knight you banished to this land. I invite you to join me in the nightmare world」

I felt the chill on my skin. Freezing air wafted from the fang I had thrust into him.

Tiny flakes of white snow fluttered down. Perhaps they had sensed what was going on, but Grizunas’ tentacles pulled back all at once.

The powdery snow became a powerful blizzard that swallowed me and the prince.

The landscape changed drastically.

The plain turned into a field of snow, and everything from the skies above to the earth beneath became nothing but white, with no way to tell if it was day or night.

「What the hell is this?! What did you do?!」

Seeing the rattled look on the prince's face, I thought, "Serves you right!" from the bottom of my heart.

The prince's right arm was separated from him once more. A white wolf had his arm in its mouth. More wolves just like that one appeared from all over the field of snow and attacked the prince.

「Welcome to the Neomia of Delusion. That said, this is the middle of nowhere. And we're both uninvited guests. Just bear with it and freeze to death, alright?」

「D, don't you dare look down on me!!!」

The prince rampaged like a beast, kicking aside the wolves.

He continued to kill the wolves that would spring up forever.

He looks so foolish and powerless. It's a fitting look for a beast-hunter prince to have at the end of his life.

「You can just stay here, trapped in a nightmare you will never awaken from, killing and fighting for all eternity, until your soul freezes and you become one with the snow………………」

「I can't produce flames?! Why isn't the beast, the power of curses coming out! This is ridiculous! I'm a hero who possesses many miracles! How can I be done in by this snow, much less by damned dogs like this!」

The stupid fuss the prince kicked up was a soothing BGM to me.

I'm going to go ahead and freeze to death first.

My breath is barely white. The little strength I have left is about to run out. This is really, truly the end. I've also used up all the miracles that I’ve amassed.

I feel drowsy.

I can no longer stay awake.

「I'm going to sleep first. You can do whatever you want」

I'll get some sleep in the nightmare.

It feels like I'll sleep well just from the sense of accomplishment alone. Yeah, I'll sleep for eternity.

I dropped to my knees.

But someone held me up before I collapsed onto the snow. That body usually felt cold, but it was very warm today, which made me even more sleepy.

「………Misuranika-sama, what are you doing here?」

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「I can at least stay by the side of the follower I'm contracted with. Nothing is impossible to those who put their mind to it, you fool」

Her black figure stood out in the field of snow.

「Please escape as quickly as you can. This place is already……」

I can feel it in my bones. Soon, this place will be completely closed off from the outside.

「It’s you who must escape」

「No, I can't. I need to keep that guy here」

「I'll take care of that」

What……did you say?

「Cleaning up my brother-in-law's mess is the least I can do. Besides, if the gods are the dreams of people, then I’ve been dreaming for a little too long. The time for me to awaken has probably come. No, it’s time I returned to my homeland」

「Misuranika-sama, what are……」

I tried to resist, but my body refused to listen to me.

「You’ve done well. I commend you. You've accomplished something no one among my followers has ever accomplished before. But you've sacrificed too much. Souya, you must remember my words. Even if you forget everything, remember this one thing」

The prince noticed Misuranika-sama.

「There you are, whore! You stole my mother from me! You stole my younger brother! Are you here to steal my power this time?」

The prince advanced toward us while being devoured by the wolves.

His expression was a mixture of obsession and resentment, making him look almost like an evil spirit.

「Listen carefully, ―――――――――anew. Never forget this. Engrave it in your soul. And go, continue moving forward. You still have something you must accomplish」

「Wait! Misuranika-sama!」

「Farewell, my beloved last follower, the last man I loved. ………Be well」

After a brief embrace, I was given a light push on the shoulder.

The snow I collapsed onto turned black and I fell. The last thing I saw was the sight of my god smiling and the prince closing in from behind her. The world went dark, the black and white mixing together and vanishing.

I found myself lying on a plain and looking up at a red sky.

This isn't the nightmare world. It's a plain I'm very familiar with. A red-tinted dawn I'm very familiar with.

Tears poured down my face.

I have a feeling that I’ve just had an abrupt parting. The saddest thing is that I can't remember "who it is" that I parted with. It feels like it was someone important to me. I feel like we had spent a long time together here. We must have been through many hardships and known many sorrows together.

But I can't remember a single thing about that person.

I've forgotten.

I've forgotten someone important.

The pain of that is the only thing I can be sure of.

「Souya, are you alright?」

「Your Majesty, are you alright?」

We called out to each other, but both of us looked the furthest thing from alright.

After laughing a little, we relaxed.

「What happened to him?」

「He's been defeated. In all likelihood, he will never return to this world again」

「We won, huh?」

「We won indeed」

With a look of exhaustion on his face, His Majesty rested his weight on his great-sword.

At my feet was that guy's sword. According to him, the sword was called Elysium. It looked like an ordinary sword, but it was the sword held by the one and only ruler of the world.

「Your Majesty, I don't have his head, but please take this as proof」

With trembling hands, I presented the sword to His Majesty.

His Majesty didn’t take it.

「………………Souya, I have a message from your wife. "Until everything is over, I'll be waiting for you at the place where we met for the second time. Even if it takes you a while, be sure to meet me there," she said. Don't keep a woman waiting. Go at once. This is my final………………」

「………………Your Majesty?」

Instead of answering, His Majesty closed his eyes.

As if he had fallen asleep, His Majesty died.

I had no idea what to say or do. My mind completely blanked out, I couldn't understand anything.

The only thing I could do was to thrust the sword called Elysium into the ground beside His Majesty as proof of his achievement. That was the last thing I could do for him.

After bowing to him, I turned and walked away.

If I could, I would run. To fulfill the promise with His Majesty, I wanted to return to her side as quickly as possible, even if it was by a minute or a second. However, one of my legs wasn't moving properly. It was all I could do to not lose my balance. If I tried to run regardless, I would fall and end up losing more time.

Dragging my body forward, I proceed through a world as red as spilled blood.

It felt like my heart would break if I looked back. So I made up my mind to never look back.

And that was why,

I was completely unaware of the attack looming up behind me.

I lost my balance and fell.

A crystalline spear had pierced through my left shoulder.

「Urgh」

Pain that should be distant came to me very clearly.

After making it this far, who or what on earth?

The enemy was in the sky.

Against a backdrop of crimson, an old man was looking down on me while sitting on his staff.

It was an old magician. He sported a long white beard, wore antiquated adventurer's equipment, a pointy hat, and had a long, crooked staff that he used as a seat. He had a tall and thin build, and was dressed in long robes that looked a little shabby.

Simple, plain, and magician-like. I know this guy. Because a fake has shown me his appearance before.

「Well done, O King of Beasts. You've defeated the first prince, and even my disciple has disappeared from the world. With this, you've become the only person who possesses the primordial curse」

It was the magician of betrayal from Vindoobunikuru.

The great magician Garving.

Uraghh! What a double whammy! Misuranika-sama and His Majesty!! Why?! Bye-bye, Your Majesty. Dammit, I’m going to miss our cat god so much…

But yeah, Barfuru’s life was also wrecked by the first prince so it stands to reason that he would help Souya against him like Varner did. One note though. Souya obtained TWO fangs in the nightmare world. One given to him by future Maria and another by the lady after he killed Barfuru. Just keep that in the back of your mind that there’s still one more and it’s always disappearing and reappearing as it wishes just like it did in this volume.

I have to say, I absolutely love how the author showed us that it was the power of the Horns that responded to Souya’s desperate plea. And man, the fact that Souya literally needed every single miracle/curse he had obtained to defeat the prince is just so satisfying. Everything he had gone through had meaning and was all for this. To me, as a reader, finding out that everything is tied together and none of it is filler at all is just an amazing feeling.

Well, the big bad evil guy may have been defeated, but there was always a snake pulling strings behind everyone’s back, wasn’t there? Garving, the man who set everything in motion with his evil schemes, has appeared and attacked Souya. Why? Stay tuned!

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