(This chapter is from Artoria’s first-person perspective.)
Dead.
Everyone is dead.
In this place called “Camlann,” those who were loyal, those who rebelled, the subjects who supported me, the subjects who resisted me, those who deserved to die, those who didn’t, all died.
They, who were originally friends and family, regarded each other as unforgivable enemies, slaughtering each other as if mad.
I defeated Vortigern, I became Vortigern, killed by everything I protected, leaving behind only the name of a tyrant—exactly the same as the ramblings I uttered before Kiritsugu Emiya, without the slightest difference.
This was the prophecy I made for myself, and I have followed this prophecy to this day, swallowing the bitter fruit of failure, becoming an existence that is hated and loathed.
Death is painful, painful to the extreme, so painful that I can no longer feel the existence of pain.
A sharp sword sliced open my helmet, shaving off my skull.
Blood flowed along the helmet, dripping onto the ground.
At this moment, I am like a candle in the wind; if someone treats me, I will die, and if no one treats me, I will also die.
Just like this island, just like the Britons living on the island, just like the knights and soldiers who fought in “Camlann,” no matter what, they will all die.
“…Why?
Why!
Why, why, why!!!”
In my blurred vision, through the visor of my helmet, I caught sight of a knight.
Her roar was like a scream.
Even through my helmet, and hers, a wave of profound sorrow washed over me.
“Why didn’t you dodge!
Why didn’t you pierce me with the Holy Spear!
Why…
why!
Father!!!”
Her petite frame seemed to lose all strength, collapsing to the ground, unable to find the energy to rise again.
Even though she was the victor, and even though I was the one still barely standing, she was the one who had lost all will to fight.
It was as if her spirit had suffered a devastating blow; even if her body remained intact, her soul was dying.
“…As expected, it’s still no good, Mordred.” The words tumbled from my mouth.
Hoarse, low, and weak.
“This strike…
why did it miss?
You were aiming for my neck, weren’t you?
If it had hit, my head would have been severed from my body.
Or is it…
Mordred, even at this point, you still refuse to let me die a painless death?”
“Aaaaaaah—!!!!”
The cracking scream, like the roar of a dragon, echoed across the entire battlefield.
For a moment, the battling knights and soldiers all came to a halt, as if time itself had frozen.
The knight, weeping on the ground, grabbed a stone and crushed it ruthlessly.
Her gauntleted fist hammered the ground with all her might, yet it felt limp and powerless, utterly unworthy of the title of’Strongest Knight’.
“Since you didn’t want to dodge, why didn’t you give me the throne!
Why did there have to be a civil war!
Even though…
even though things have already come to this…
if only you had nodded!
Why wouldn’t you…
why wouldn’t you let me become King, Father!!”
She didn’t answer my question.
She didn’t know how to answer.
And I didn’t intend to answer hers.
Because the truth was too cruel for her, and she was already on the verge of collapse.
Furthermore, things had escalated to such a point, with so many lives lost, that I could no longer bring myself to say it.
At eight years old, I became Artoria.
At seventeen, I pulled out the sword of selection.
At twenty-two, I ascended the throne.
At twenty-seven, I conquered all of Gaul.
Now, at thirty, I have returned from an expedition to Rome, having brought half of Europa to its knees.
Throughout these twenty-two years, I have been playing the role of Artoria Pendragon.
I followed the script strictly, giving it my all, never overacting, and never letting my own emotions or feelings seep into the character—even though this Artoria was fundamentally different from the original.
Acting is an exhausting endeavor.
The character one portrays is ultimately not oneself.
A few hours of opera can leave an actor drained; twenty-two years of non-stop performance had long since overdrawn my mental reserves, even breeding a sense of weariness toward the character and the script.
I knew how the script was written—’Because you do not have the capacity to be King.’ With just that answer, my performance would be nearly over.
By saying those words, my life as Artoria would come to a complete end.
Perhaps the original King Arthur truly could have said that.
But I…
am ultimately just an actor.
In the end, I couldn’t say it.
Such a perfunctory excuse, such a wretched reason…
I truly had no desire or will to say it anymore.
“Father…
say it!
Say it!
Why won’t you say it!
Why on earth?
I want to know the answer, everyone wants to know the answer, we’re going mad wanting to know!
But you’ve never said it…
why!!”
The raspy voice exerted every ounce of strength; not a single syllable was normal, all of them broken sounds from a ruined throat.
These broken sounds were like knives, stabbing into my chest, making me feel pain, making me feel sorrow.
Ever since I sat on that incredibly uncomfortable stone chair, this was the first time I felt such pain and sorrow.
But no matter how much it hurt or how sad I was, I still couldn’t say it.
Precisely because it was so painful and sorrowful, I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Whether it was the words from the script or the truth in my heart, none of it would come out.
As a result, I could only remain silent.
In that silence, blood continued to pour from my wound.
My consciousness began to fade, and my body swayed involuntarily.
I had reached my limit, both physically and mentally; I could no longer hold on.
“Fine…
fine!
Since you won’t say it, Father…
then don’t!
I didn’t plan on living anyway…
let it be this way, Father…
let it be this way!!!”
The knight suddenly lunged forward, gripping my right wrist tightly while her other hand seized the head of the Holy Spear.
Through the gaps in the helmet, I saw a pair of frenzied golden eyes.
In those eyes, I saw a soul on the verge of shattering.
And then…
“Puchi—!”
The Holy Spear pierced through
Like a toothpick piercing through a block of tofu.
Blood gushed out, and the knight instinctively coughed up blood.
The sound of armor clashing against the ground rang out simultaneously with the sound of a sword falling.
I never imagined that the child before me had reached such an extreme.
But strangely, there was neither sorrow nor resentment in my heart, only a sense of relief, as if I had been liberated.
This is actually quite good, isn’t it?
House Pendragon craves death; everyone does, even Morgan.
To die here like this, to finish this tragedy once and for all—isn’t that quite good?
However, my body began to move uncontrollably.
“Ah…”
My voice was hoarse to the extreme.
My eyes, already painful from the blood, grew even more sore as liquid poured from them uncontrollably.
“!” My legs could no longer support my weight, and I stumbled, falling to the ground.
I lay there with the knight on the blood-stained battlefield, gazing up at the sky dyed red by the setting sun, silent and in pain, waiting for death to arrive, waiting for our respective fates to reach their end in this silent wasteland.
My consciousness grew more and more blurred, and hazy memories surfaced uncontrollably in my mind.
I thought of Vortigern, my true mother and father.
She, too, had her chest pierced by the Holy Spear and reached the end of her fate.
Before she turned to ash and vanished, I vaguely remember her smiling—but why did she smile?
What kind of emotion was in her heart at that moment?
Was she laughing at me, at Uther, or at herself?
I don’t understand…
and now, I never will.
I am different from Vortigern; with the script having reached this stage, I truly cannot smile even a little bit.
“…Mordred, do you hate me?”
The voice came from my throat, but the will that produced it did not originate from me.
The knight did not answer.
But I heard the sound of metal scraping the ground and something being crushed.
Then…
she probably doesn’t hate me, right?
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have asked me that before, and she wouldn’t be reacting this way now.
“…Mordred, does everyone hate me?”
The knight did not answer.
My ears could not pick up any distinct sound.
This made me hesitant—if everyone truly didn’t hate me, why did they want me to leave the throne so badly?
I must have done something wrong, right?
And something unforgivable.
But what exactly did I do wrong?
The wars weren’t meaningless; they all brought practical benefits.
Everyone was kept from famine, gained land, acquired wealth, and earned respect.
And there were few casualties; of an army of thirty thousand, I brought back over twenty-eight thousand—everyone should have been happy, so why were they so unhappy?
Why did they insist I leave the throne?
I don’t know.
I can’t figure it out.
The reality is that when this uprising occurred, the rebels saw the loyalists as treacherous sycophants, and the loyalists saw the rebels as bandits.
Some were brothers, some were fathers and sons, and some were lifelong friends.
But on this battlefield of Camlann, they saw each other as mortal enemies.
No matter how the lines shifted, as long as they wore a different colored cloak, they had to kill the other, as if there were some blood feud between them.
Even the loyalists completely ignored my orders and took action on their own, causing this civil war to explode—it was as if everyone had gone mad.
This was enough to prove that I had indeed done wrong, and quite a lot of it…
“As expected, everyone still hates me…
A tyrant who constantly wages war is truly unloved by all…”
What a failed performance.
What a failed life.
A tyrant dying in an uprising without even knowing why they were hated at the end.
The civil war tore this country apart, leading to its complete destruction, to the point where the vast majority of the land would have to be ceded to foreign tribes in the future.
Looking at it this way, my level is probably even worse than Shakespeare’s King Lear.
“…I truly am a foolish and incompetent King…”
“No!
That’s not it!
It’s absolutely not like that!” As if struck by an electric shock, the knight spoke up urgently.
“No one hates Father!
They really don’t!
Everyone loves and respects Father just as they do the sun!
Not a single person doesn’t!
It’s just…
it’s just that everyone felt Father shouldn’t have to go on suffering like this…
so…
so I…”
“So, Mordred started this…
rebellion?”
“It wasn’t a rebellion!
It really wasn’t!
Everyone had discussed it…
as long as Father compromised even a little bit, things wouldn’t have to be so painful anymore…
it’s just, it’s just as we were discussing it…
things spiraled out of control…
everyone thought someone was coercing Father…
that’s why…
that’s why…”
To be honest, I couldn’t understand what the knight was saying at all.
She was very agitated, and her thoughts were so chaotic that her words were incoherent.
Perhaps the reasons for this uprising were actually very complex, and it evolved into the current civil war through various coincidences.
I didn’t understand, I couldn’t comprehend, and I truly couldn’t figure out what was going on.
It all felt bizarre, like a low-quality Greek tragedy where everything felt forced and devoid of logic.
Unfortunately, I no longer had any time left to sort out exactly what had happened…
“I see…
I’m sorry, Mordred…
I’m sorry, everyone…”
The reason didn’t really matter anymore.
The tyrant was overthrown by the rebel army and killed at Camlann; knowing that fact was enough.
Whether everyone hated me or not, whether Mordred hated me or not, it had happened.
I died here, Mordred died here, everyone died here…
because of inexplicable hatred, because of all sorts of strange reasons.
It was absurd from beginning to end…
but it had happened nonetheless.
I truly didn’t understand it at all.
It seems Tristan was right—’King Arthur does not understand the human heart.’
For the original Artoria, those were words spoken in the heat of the moment.
Because the original rebellion had a clear logic: it was simply that people couldn’t keep giving infinitely for the sake of justice and reason, couldn’t keep fighting wars without reward, and couldn’t accept sacrificing everything for ethereal things like ideals and chivalry.
For me, this Artoria, it must have been a fact concluded after careful consideration.
I didn’t seem to understand what the Knights of the Round Table were thinking, what the soldiers were thinking, what the nobles were thinking, or what the common people were thinking—I couldn’t even clearly figure out what I had done wrong to make everyone go so mad.
Perhaps…
this is just fate.
No matter how well I treated Mordred, the tradition of House Pendragon still took place.
No matter how good a life I provided for the people, the same great rebellion as in the original ‘history’ still occurred.
“…Since it’s come to this, then let it be…”
It’s just a bit melancholy, a bit regrettable.
Mordred didn’t plan to live on alone, and Morgan was unwilling to continue living as a human.
Merlin had sealed himself in Avalon, and of the Knights of the Round Table, some died in this civil war, while others went into seclusion.
But on second thought, I don’t seem to have much to regret.
I am a useless person, merely an actor with a superficial appearance.
I gave it my all, poured in every effort, and walked a path of hegemony opposite to the original King Arthur, only to end up with the same conclusion.
I have no complaints; I even feel a bit of joy and honor at this moment, as if the play I performed was truly recognized by everyone, to the point where, in my fading state, I can hear applause, whistling, and cheering from the audience…
Wait…
I seem to really hear it…
Or is it just a hallucination in my delirium?
My eyelids felt as heavy as lead, and the feeling of drowsiness grew stronger and stronger.
Finally, I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry…
Mordred…
I’m sorry…
everyone…”
Then, the pain gradually faded, the regrets slowly dissipated, and the cheering voices drifted away.
I accepted my fate and embraced my death.
I wanted to end it all here at Camlann, rather than being sent to Avalon to heal my wounds and gain eternal life—because I was no noble King of Knights; I was merely a tyrant like Vortigern.
I felt I had no right to enter that pure land belonging to the fae.
To die without a grave, just like Vortigern, was a more fitting end for a tyrant.
With these thoughts, my will slackened, and my soul was liberated from pain and obsession.
Then, I fell into darkness…
I found eternal peace…