Chapter 291

Side Story 24

KAAANG!

The Morning Star and Despair clashed.

After clashing blades, Dale asked back, as if he couldn’t comprehend it.

“Even if you claimed all the mana in this world as your own, you still couldn’t defeat me. Have you forgotten that fact?”

Mikhail, clad in the armor of dawn, silently thrust his sword forward as he kicked off the ground. Once more, the Morning Star plunged toward Dale’s ‘Despair,’ enveloped in the light of the breaking dawn.

Clang!

Once the ‘Black Prince,’ he was the one who held the potential to grow into the threat that would later become Dale. That was Mikhail Lancaster.

Therefore, to the current Dale, it was neither a threat nor anything else.

Even turning all the world’s mana against him, even his own mirror and the goddess of the world could not bring him down. Not even the Winter of the End or the King of Humankind were exceptions.

Nothing can bring down Dale, who has been reborn as the Lord of Gold and Shadow, the Black Gold.

“That is true.”

Mikhail Yuris smiled impassively.

“When I once confronted you in the form of a hero, even holding all the mana of the world in my hands, I could not defeat you.”

“Then you understand that even if you devour all the mana in this world, you still cannot defeat me.”

“That may be true. No, it probably is.”

Yet in Mikhail Yuris’s grip on the morning star, there was no trace of resignation or loss of resolve.

That made it all the more incomprehensible.

“Then you must also know that my association with you now is merely my amusement.”

The god of meaninglessness held despair and sneered.

To reduce everything before him—the hope of the Morning Star, the vengeance, everything Mikhail Yuris possessed—back to nothingness.

“I understand you are not someone who can be controlled by mere mana reserves.”

The Sword of Despair plunged downward, and the pitch-black darkness spilling from it swallowed the morning star.

As Dale had said, it was nothing more than a one-sided game. Facing his old rival once more, fighting in the style of days gone by, as if recalling the memory of when the ‘Black Prince’ had once stood against Mikhail Lancaster.

The one facing Mikhail Yuris was not the Black Gold’s ruler. It was merely the ‘Black Prince’ of that era.

For a fleeting moment, he was confronting a memory buried deep in a past now distant beyond recall. It was nothing more than a game, literally.

Should Dale awaken from his slumber, the despair in his grasp shall devour the morning star and all hope.

“After the goddess Sistina, whom you call ‘Noah,’ fell into slumber, the mana of this world… the nanomachines ceased multiplying. Thus, each time we used that stagnant mana, its numbers dwindled further.”

Mikhail Yuris spoke at the end of his sword.

“I said this is not an age where magic is dying, but in a sense, that statement is not entirely false either. As long as the total amount of mana is fixed, every time that mana is used, the magic of the world is dying.”

“I don’t want to wake her from her slumber again.”

Dale answered coldly. He recalled his former partner, sleeping deep within the Fourth Empire, after fulfilling his ‘Hero’s Mission’.

“So, did the two brothers join forces to monopolize the mana left in the world?”

Dale retorted coldly, and Mikhail shook his head.

“I have no intention of using mana against you.”

Despite this, Mikhail Yuris smiled.

“Neither Ray nor I have devoured this world’s mana voraciously for any grand plan or goal. As I said, I don’t believe I can do anything to you with something like mana.”

“Then why are you devouring the world’s mana?”

“For possibility.”

Mikhail answered, gazing at the Dawn Star’s blade.

“Day after day, I swung my sword until I spat blood, absorbed mana and forged it into aura, and without fail, I sought out powerful foes to temper my blade.”

Simultaneously, within his heart, the ‘world’s mana’ he was devouring began to surge once more.

“Mikhail Lancaster possessed the potential to defeat the ‘Black Prince’. Clinging to that single, thread-thin possibility, he trained relentlessly until he had devoured all the mana in the world.”

His sword, the Morning Star, began to glow once more, holding the light of dawn within it.

“There was no grand plan to bring you down. I simply breathed in mana and accumulated aura day after day, without fail, until this moment came. I swung my sword, again and again.”

“……Possibility. Was that truly all?”

“That is all.”

“How utterly meaningless.”

“And I realized.”

Mikhail said.

“What did you realize?”

“That true possibility, as you said, lay not in light but in darkness.”

At that very moment, Mikhail’s sword ‘Morning Star’ lost its light. The same was true for the Dawn Armor. The light of dawn, which had just moments before illuminated the darkening dawn and claimed to be the light of the world, faded, and darkness descended. A pitch-black darkness, yet simultaneously a darkness holding the potential to become anything.

“This very form is the ‘Beyond the Horizon of Possibility’ that Mikhail Lancaster has reached.”

The Apostle of Fire and Light, enveloped in primordial darkness, stood there.

He grasped the ‘Morning Star,’ equally shrouded in darkness, once more.

“…Shub, was this your doing again?”

At those words, Dale opened his mouth, clearly fed up. Before long, a girl with goat horns appeared beside Dale, her cheeks puffed out in a pout.

─ No.

Facing the pitch-black knight, the ancient Mother of Darkness suddenly spoke, seemingly delighted.

─ Ah, the potential blossoming within humans is utterly adorable.

“That is a demon wearing the mask of a human.”

─ But look at that child. Just as you defeated the humans of this planet and seized the name of humanity, is it so strange that that being would overthrow you and usurp the name of humanity?

“…….”

─ Just as there are humans more demonic than demons, is it so strange that there are demons more human than humans?

“Impossible.”

The ancient Mother of Darkness spoke, and Dale sneered coldly. He was so utterly flabbergasted, laughter wouldn’t even come.

She was right. Strictly speaking, the thing standing before them was not of ‘Dale’s kind’.

And it would be no surprise if that alien entity were to strike down Dale and attempt to seize the ‘human name’ he possesses.

Mikhail Yuris, the Black Knight forged from the darkness of possibility, charged forward.

Kaang!

The pitch-black sword, shrouded in darkness, clashed with the blade of the Morning Star.

The moment they clashed, he could feel it.

Because he wielded the primordial darkness, he could finally understand.

That mass of possibilities he faced. That indescribably immense, unparalleled mass of potential writhing within the darkness.

Only one thing lay hidden within that darkness: the possibility of defeating Dale.

And while Dale was trapped within the ice of absolute zero, and even as he lost his way and wandered, ‘Michael Lancaster’ never relinquished that possibility.

Day after day, he devoted his entire being to that possibility. Without fail, he trained, accumulating aura until the world’s mana was nearly depleted, wielding his sword, and devouring the essence of the powerful.

“Can you feel it?”

“……!”

Through the primordial darkness, the memories of ‘Mikhail Yuris’ poured in, much like a mage from the Azure Magic Tower probing another’s mind.

As if the opponent’s emotions, running wild in the realm of thought, were flowing in.

The primordial darkness that constituted Mikhail Yuris began to resonate with Dale.

──A landscape appeared.

The Black Gold Sovereign, who had long since toppled the winter of doom and even the true human king, now realized himself as the child of the ancient mother.

Before him, Lady Scarlet caressed him, and he felt his mother’s touch.

‘Ah, what a truly lovely child.’

Thus, the demon of evolution was born. A flawless life form, born of a mother’s touch and love.

Afterwards, obeying his mother’s command, he disguised himself as a hero from another world and confronted Dale alongside Sistina to bring him down.

And they were defeated.

Strictly speaking, it was the Yuris family’s mistake for failing to understand the ‘ultimate life form’. For the devil of evolution, the ultimate life form, its strength never lay in the power of the individual.

“The value of a life’s existence lies in perpetuating its genetic material. As the ultimate life form, it is to preserve and sustain information (DNA) that must never be severed in history.”

That is why Mikhail Yuris spoke once more.

In other words, paradoxically, I was no match for you as an individual’s strength. Therefore, when I, who was pretending to be a hero, lost to you, that defeat wasn’t particularly surprising either.

After all, one cannot kill the demon of evolution, the ultimate creature, to that extent.

But his mother, Lady Scarlet, was different.

That sense of loss, for the first time, caused the demon pain.

Yet as the ultimate life form, he possessed no strength as an individual. Though he could preserve and perpetuate the species’ information across eons, he could never confront that black-gold monarch as an ‘individual’.

“Even so, I could not forgive you for taking my mother away.”

Mikhail Yuris tightened his grip on the jet-black shooting star and declared.

Therefore, he resolved to bring down that being for his mother’s revenge.

“It was nothing short of a pipe dream, bordering on the impossible.”

At first, it was so faint and tenuous, I dared not even look.

“But paradoxically, you taught me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even in the face of every despair that stands in your way, you never falter, believing in your own potential until the very end.”

Paradoxically, that very fact gave the demon hope.

Thus, by exploring the very limits of that potential, he finally reached the existence of Mikhail Lancaster.

He was the one who had severed the ‘Black Prince’s’ arm long ago, a being harboring the potential to grow into the worst possible threat.

Each time he felled a strong opponent and seized their blade, that potential swelled.

The demon staked everything on that possibility. Forgetting the very essence of life itself, it abandoned even the ‘rational thought’ inherent to life for the sake of vengeance, choosing ‘irrationality’.

Defeating an existence that seemed utterly impossible to overcome.

It was an act that defied the rationality of a creature whose primary purpose was the self-replication of its genes.

“How utterly foolish.”

“That is what it means to be human.”

Mikhail Yuris, the demon of evolution, replied.

“And now, it is time to prove the fruit of that choice.”

“……”

Mikhail Yuris thrust off the ground and charged forward.

A being composed solely of possibility swung its sword, driven only by the desire to defeat Dale.

─ Ah, how could it be so foolish and yet so endearing!

The ancient Mother of Darkness beamed with delight at the ‘human’ before her.

And yet…

Each time she met the desperately swung shooting star, each time she witnessed the utterly unreasonable struggle of possibility, an indescribable emotion welled up within Dale’s heart.

And without thinking, he recalled the name of the sword held in his hand.

Despair.

After recalling it, he simply smiled bitterly.