Duckie.
After the end of the world.
The Resistance had fought the demons’ invasion to the very end.
That was the codename they gave me there.
At a glance, it sounded like a good thing......
In truth, it meant half-wit.
A duck can fly, run, and even swim, making it an all-rounder, but it cannot fly as fast as a hawk, run as fast as a cheetah, or swim as fast as a fish.
Because my talents were middling.
Because I did all sorts of random crap.
In the end, I became a duck.
Whoooosh-
A cold wind brushed my cheeks. The blizzard was fierce, too. In the past, this scenery had felt desolate. But seeing it at the end of the world-
“It’s rather picturesque.”
Cough!
Blood suddenly poured from my mouth.
My organs had twisted, forcing blood back up.
Damn it.
It was not only my insides that were ruined.
My left arm was gone entirely, and a broken artificial eye filled the empty socket of my right eye. Both my legs were also prosthetics made from magic-engineering materials.
Crunch- crunch-
I walked through the snowfield on my prosthetic legs.
Blood ran down my arm and dripped from the tips of my right fingers. Bright red blood spread softly over the pure-white snow.
When I stopped for a moment and lifted my head.
I saw a single pillar towering upright.
‘How cruel fate is.’
My father, my brothers, my friends, my retainers, the grand estate that seemed as if a heavenly palace had been moved to earth, my mother’s grave...... Everything in my memory was gone without even a trace.
All that remained was simply.
A single pillar rising from ancient ruins.
Damn it.
They were not even such good memories.
It pissed me off that my chest still felt heavy.
-The half-wit third son of the Grand Duke of the North.
-The failure of a prestigious swordsmanship house.
-The worm who destroyed himself with his own inferiority complex.
All that came to mind were mockery and condemnation, gazes that looked at me as if I were a bug, and sighs deep enough to make the earth sink. So what was this feeling, after all this time?
Longing. No, was it regret?
I swallowed the grief beyond my throat.
And kept walking until I reached the pillar.
Crunch- crunch-
And finally.
I leaned my exhausted body against the pillar. I drew cold air deep into my lungs and let out lukewarm breaths a few times.
“How long are you going to keep watching?”
Then.
————THUD!
As if an ocean had fallen from the sky.
A suffocating pressure bore down on me.
“Is this the end of your flight?”
A viscous voice of darkness rang in my ears, and that bitch appeared in the air a short distance away.
The sensual body of a woman. A beautiful face. Bewitching eyes. Jet-black hair. Six horns rising above it. The Demon King and Dragon Destroyer.
And.
“You goddamn bastard.”
“Sion Karsen. What have you come here to find?”
Ptooey-
I spat out the blood filling my mouth and answered.
“To think the Demon King herself even knows my name. What an honor.”
I spoke in a deliberately sarcastic tone.
But the Demon King paid it no mind.
“Of course I know it. Had it not been for you lot, I would have cleaned out the insects five years sooner.”
By “you lot,” she meant the leadership of the Resistance, who had fought until the last of humanity’s last.
The five heroes, myself included. My comrades, whom I would never see again. The bonds that had vanished into handfuls of ash.
“Though in the end, we failed to stop you.”
“You did your best.”
“Best? You son of a bitch. Everyone is dead, and I’m about to die too. And you call that something worth saying?! If we’d weeded out the traitors to humanity who whored themselves out to the demons faster, if we’d prepared in advance, you’d be...... Cough!”
Blood poured out again.
There was so much I wanted to say.
But nothing went the way I wanted.
“Enough.”
The Demon King spoke in a tone that was starting to sound bored.
“If only this had happened, if only that had happened. I care little for the whining of losers. But surely you did not come all the way here merely to spit out such words?”
“Curious?”
“Do you intend to die without saying it?”
“I thought you gave not even a speck of interest to creatures weaker than yourself.”
“The talent you possessed was different from the insects crawling all over the earth. Though.”
The Demon King continued, a sneer hanging on her lips.
“You ended as a half-wit.”
Damn it. She was right. I had possessed a talent that even the Demon King, who destroyed the world, had to be wary of. What talent, you ask?
Fwoosh-
Flames flickered around me.
The snow around me and the pillar melted away.
Clear water trickled down.
I was a being loved by flame-aspected mana, but because I had been born in the North, which was filled with frost mana, I was an idiot who had failed to recognize my own talent.
Only after the demons’ invasion caused the North and then the Central Empire to collapse, only after I fled to the South, where flame mana boiled, did I realize my talent...... A half-wit.
That was me, Duckie, and Sion Karsen.
Whoooosh-
A cold wind blew.
The flames that had warmed my body were helplessly extinguished.
The trickling water froze solid as it was.
With an indifferent expression, the Demon King stretched out her hand.
“......A waste of time.”
Black light flickered at her fingertip. I knew that technique. Dark Breath, one of the Demon King’s techniques. A single blast of that breath had blown away half the imperial palace.
“You’re seeing me off in style.”
“Farewell, last survivor of humanity.”
As if she meant to make absolutely sure of sending me off, the Demon King narrowed the breath’s range precisely to me and fired.
—————CRAAACK!
A thunderous roar shook the very axis of the earth.
For an instant, all sound vanished.
Even the blizzard that had seemed as though it would never stop fell still.
Whoooosh-
A desolate wind entered through my belly, which had been punched wide open. But my body had already been modified with machines and magic tools. Losing everything below my chest did not kill me immediately.
Which meant.
I was still alive.
“Thanks. For not turning me to powder in one blow.”
I meant it.
Thanks to that, I had earned the time to check.
The result of the final gamble I had placed.
Of course, there was no way the Demon King could understand my gratitude, so she expressed an entirely reasonable question.
“What meaning is there in clinging to life like this?”
I did not answer.
I only turned my head slowly.
And checked the pillar behind me.
As expected, it was shattered pitifully.
“Khehehehehe.”
Laughter came out like a madman’s.
“......”
The Demon King’s relaxed expression hardened.
She raised her hand again.
This time, she truly intended to finish it.
But at that moment.
Fwoooom-
A pure-white sphere of light began to flow out from inside the shattered pillar. The hope I had barely dared believe in had become reality. The corners of my mouth curled even higher.
“Kahahahaha! It was real! Cough, khak. Haa, haa. ......I was right! I was right! I was right!!”
I was truly, madly overjoyed.
And for the first time, the Demon King’s eyes wavered.
“......No way. Is that Lumen’s Sphere of Light?!”
Lumen.
According to the myth passed down through House Karsen, a great house of the North, he was one of the chief gods of the world who had vanished more than a thousand years ago. Seeing that even the Demon King knew him made it even more certain.
I recited the prayer from myth that would become my final breath.
“O Lumen, God of the Sun. I welcome your other name, Chronos, and offer this prayer.”
“You wretch!”
The Demon King moved to stop me, but she could not approach because the brilliant sphere of light blocked her, and I poured out all my mana as I recited the rest of the prayer.
【At world’s end.
When the pillar that supports the sky collapses.
Just once.
I shall climb back against time.】
The world had already ended.
It was a decision close to a gamble......
But this was the only hope left.
Then.
“Lumen! This violates the contract!”
The Demon King spouted words I could not understand.
But the sun god’s divinity was already pouring out of the sphere of light, so I gathered every last bit of strength I had left and raised my right middle finger.
“Go fuck yourself.”
I saw the Demon King’s face contorted with fury inside the white radiance. That bastard hurriedly opened her mouth and fired Dark Breath, but she was already too late. You dragon bastard.
Shhhhh-
That was the final memory of my first life.
***
It felt like I was floating above the clouds.
A dazed sensation, as if fog had settled over my brain.
‘......Am I really alive?’
Seeing as my consciousness had continued without being severed, I did not think I was dead, but my eyes would not open easily.
《Recognizing the prophesied being. Beginning fine-tuning. Implanting Lumen’s divinity into the heart. Implantation successful. Good luck.》
An incomprehensible voice rang in my ears. A moment later, my mind began to clear. The feeling of floating settled, and the sensations in my hands and feet felt unfamiliar.
‘Am I alive......?’
Without opening my eyes, I checked my body. Both legs, which I had replaced with prosthetics long ago, felt intact. It was not the sensation of nerves connected through magic engineering, but my actual legs.
It was the same for my left shoulder, which had once been empty. The hollow sensation felt as if it had been filled in completely. Conversely, however, the places where my core and Sacred Wheel had been felt empty.
Thump- thump-
My heartbeat informed me that I was alive, and when I swallowed, I could clearly feel my esophagus. Air that was not all that cold flowed in through my nostrils.
Sniff- sniff-
The unfamiliar fragrance made the tip of my nose ache. To be precise, it was not unfamiliar, but a scent I had forgotten for a very long time.
Slide-
I slowly opened my eyes. My right field of vision was no longer dark. It was moving. Truly moving. But apart from that.
“This place is......”
Gray smoke lay over the dark, closed-off space like dawn mist, and women close to naked danced as they waved their cups of liquor.
Men filled with ecstasy panted beside the women and showed off their virility, and the temperature of pleasure, shimmering in the lamplight, glowed red-hot.
At the strange sense of déjà vu, I searched my memories.
‘Ah. The illegal pleasure house, Drunken Dream Wildflower.’
Right. When I worked as an agent of the Northern Domain Inspectorate, I had gone undercover here to catch a wanted criminal. Which meant.
‘The North hasn’t fallen yet.’
I dragged both hands up over my face.
“Ha, hahaha.”
Laughter seeped out between my fingers.
“Hahaha, hahahahahahaha.”
The gamble had succeeded. I was so moved that tears almost came to my eyes. At the same time, the faces I longed to see flickered before me.
My friends, my brothers, and...... my father.
Then.
Thud, thud.
A giant who looked to be about three times the size of an adult man approached, sat down naturally in the seat beside me, and spoke.
“Judging by your appearance, you seem like a noble. Have you come to look for something good?”
He was an uncommonly ugly man, distinguished by his protruding teeth.
‘So it’s this day.’
Smuggling, rape, murder, and more. The Hashman brothers committed crimes as routinely as eating. Among them, the younger brother was Yoen Hashman.
I had been secretly tracking this bastard.
And this was the day I met him.
Originally, I should have requested backup and received help from the Inspectorate’s agents...... But I did not.
At that time, I was consumed by my inferiority complex and ruled by the desire to monopolize the credit. So, full of bravado, I attempted to subdue him. The result was......
‘I let him get away.’
I lost to him.
Quite miserably, too.
And I was beaten until I was on the verge of death.
Afterward, when the Inspectorate agents sensed the commotion and came in, this bastard took me hostage, and he escaped using me as that hostage. The feeling of that day was truly-
‘Fucking awful.’
“Why so quiet? Didn’t you come to Drunken Dream Wildflower because you wanted something?”
Yoen Hashman rubbed his fingers together with a lecherous expression. The drunken patrons of Drunken Dream Wildflower crowded around after Hashman. They say he’s a noble. Is he a big spender? Isn’t he that guy? House Karsen’s half-wit. A sucker’s here. Heh heh.
The murmurs drifted in on the aroma of liquor.
‘Trash.’
These bastards probably did not even know I was an Inspectorate agent. Not only had I joined recently as a parachute appointee, but everything I had done until now did not suit the Inspectorate at all.
I picked up a glass of vodka.
And lightly tossed it into my mouth.
Ahh-
Iruna Noble. As expected of a famous brand, it was smooth without being harsh, and the way it went down was art. How long had it been? It tasted incredible.
I deliberately spoke loudly enough for all the spectators to hear.
“You really are ugly!”
Yoen Hashman blinked. He had an enormous complex about his appearance, and since he had suddenly been told he was ugly, he was flustered.
His expression seemed to say, What the hell is this bastard?
I grimaced as if my stomach had turned and waved my hand.
“Sorry, but if I look at you a little longer, this precious liquor might come back up. Could you move your face away... uuurp!”
When I added a retching act.
A vein bulged on Yoen’s forehead.
“I thought you were a customer, so I was going to treat you like one. Turns out you’re a moth chasing the flame, looking for a place to die. Every bastard who got cocky in front of me because he trusted his face died. Especially pretty-faced bastards like you.”
Shing-
Yoen drew a long sword and exuded killing intent. He glared at me as if he truly meant to kill me.
He did not seem to be thinking about what would happen if he killed me, the third young master of House Karsen. No, he simply did not have the depth to think that far.
He was that enraged, too.
Of course, I pretended to cover my eyes with my hand as I spoke.
“Drawing your sword right away! Ugly bastards really are something else!”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Come on! Just leave! I don’t even want to fight an ugly bastard- Uuurp! Hey! I’m really going to throw up at this rate!”
“Fuck!”
Swish!
Yoen thrust his sword.
His reason had snapped.
At that moment.
Clang!
I fired my sword like a bolt of lightning, knocked aside the flat of Yoen’s blade, and curled my lips into a nasty smile as I spoke.
“This is self-defense.”