TSMMT SS 2

In the Ruins, the Two of Them (2)

The Calamity was at rest, lying right before him. Adelheit looked down at the corpse. An unmistakable peace settled between the two figures, a serenity that had never existed in their lifetimes.

[Knight] "What in the world happened here?"

[Adelheit] "I wonder the same."

Why had this Calamity chosen self-destruction?

Why had his corpse been pulled down here?

And why did they look so tenderly devoted to each other in death?

His mind drifted back to that snowy day. On the day he carried the collapsed Dianna, Guiscard glared at him before snatching her into his own arms.

Before the King could interrogate him, Adelheit spoke first.

[Adelheit] "I merely happened upon her."

[Guiscard] "By chance? Near the Queen's Palace?"

His voice dripped with explicit malice. Adelheit replied coldly.

[Adelheit] "Yes. Quite by chance."

It had not been an accident. He had deliberately walked past the Queen's quarters. The King, unnaturally sensitive about the oddest things, appeared to have noticed.

[Adelheit] "Perhaps you should attend to Her Majesty before questioning me."

He snapped back, annoyed by a man who prioritized jealousy over concern for his unconscious wife.

Guiscard looked down at Dianna cradled in his arms, and Adelheit’s gaze followed.

Why did a woman who held the title of Queen stand outside without a single attendant, dressed in such thin clothes? He wanted to demand an explanation. Anger boiled inside him, but Adelheit deliberately suppressed it. This fury was unreasonable and unjustified. He had to hide it.

A chilling conviction seized him: if he failed to conceal his rage, the King would find a way to eliminate him. Perhaps that was why no word of thanks ever came from the Queen's Palace.

Adelheit waited in vain, disappointed, and tried to erase Dianna from his mind. Even so, his eyes continually strayed back toward her quarters.

Occasionally, Dianna sat there, looking completely distraught. Though a gorgeously dressed maid stood beside her, Adelheit's gaze kept wandering to the Queen, a fragile soul suffocating, unable to bestow her affection on anything. He had wanted to save her.

Yet fate forced him to witness another encounter between Dianna and Guiscard. Before the King even noticed her, she was already gazing at him. The sight struck Adelheit like a physical blow.

Come to think of it, every garment the King bestowed upon her, despite claiming to hate her, was expensive Panborough silk. The flowers blooming around her palace were imported from Panborough as well, just like her food.

The King had quietly permitted her to cling to and pine for the fallen homeland he destroyed. And the Queen, despite her desperate expression, never rejected the King’s touch.

What kind of love were they sharing? Could that even be called love?

If they ever realized each other's true feelings, would they find happiness?

Bitter, as though he suffered a broken heart, Adelheit turned a blind eye to Dianna's anguish, even as he watched her waste away. Who would risk their life for someone they had never spoken to? He focused his energy on gathering mages and establishing the Mage Tower.

His bystander's silence toward one woman's tragedy ultimately escalated into catastrophe.

Adelheit still remembered the aftermath of the Queen’s suicide. The King wept bitterly for three days over his wife's death, executed the Prime Minister, and forced every noble, except Adelheit, to kiss her corpse.

Amidst that madness, Guiscard commanded Adelheit to preserve her body with magic. Though he considered it sheer insanity, Adelheit cast the spell out of a final lingering guilt toward Dianna, pitying their twisted love.

Guiscard’s frenzy escalated after that. He spoke to her corpse, descended into madness, slaughtered his own subordinates, and butchered everyone of royal blood, staining the palace crimson.

Everyone had overlooked that Guiscard Lodbrog was born with the thick, potent blood of a dragon. Having slain a dragon, he became immortal, and his martial prowess was unmatched across the continent. With no one left to stop him, Lodbrog fell in an instant.

As if exacting vengeance on those who drove Dianna to her end, and as if intending to consume himself in the process, the Mad King sacrificed his own life, reducing himself to a living disaster.

The ducal houses that formed the bedrock of the kingdom were annihilated. The allied forces were wiped out, leaving Adelheit to defend the land alone. He led the surviving mages and launched an assault on Guiscard.

He cast spells to freeze time and magic to slow immortality, but every effort failed. Guiscard harvested human lives like a farmer reaping crops.

Adelheit could still recall that monster. The creature had long abandoned its humanity.

Adelheit looked into the eyes of that butcher, a face stripped of human reason, and experienced terror for the first time in his life.

With one eye closed from a wound Adelheit had inflicted, the King raised his relentless blade toward him, the last survivor, only to freeze abruptly.

By some unknown whim of the Mad King, Adelheit barely survived.

As the sole survivor carrying royal blood, Adelheit gathered the remaining refugees and marched toward Panborough. Yet Panborough had also lost its central authority under the Calamity's assault.

Before long, the survivors rallied around Adelheit, hailing him as their king. Thus, he ascended the throne and organized an effective resistance against the Calamity.

Upon hearing news that the monster had ceased its rampage, Adelheit assembled a search party of knights and headed toward the locus of lingering malevolent mana.

And there, they found these two corpses. The two of them.

[Boy] "Huh? Who are you all?"

A young boy's voice made him turn around. The child stood there holding an armful of vibrant flowers.

[Adelheit] "What is a child doing here?"

A knight stepped forward to answer.

[Knight] "Ah, he's a local boy who lived nearby, Your Majesty. They say he kept bringing flowers here. We brought him along, thinking he might have seen something."

[Adelheit] "..."

He looked down at the child, taking in his filthy, unwashed appearance.

[Adelheit] "Did you bring these flowers?"

[Boy] "Yes!"

[Adelheit] "For those two?"

[Boy] "No, just for one of them! The princess over there!"

Adelheit glanced at Dianna’s corpse before speaking softly.

[Adelheit] "I see... That makes sense. Then what about the man?"

[Boy] "The mister came later."

[Adelheit] "..."

[Boy] "I think he was hiding the princess. Am I right?"

Adelheit offered a faint nod. Even a cold-blooded monster who slaughtered countless people had hidden the woman he loved in this quiet place, planting flowers where the sun shone brightly so his exhausted wife could rest in peace.

[Boy] "Why did the mister die after the princess opened her eyes?"

[Adelheit] "What did you say? Opened her eyes?"

Adelheit’s eyes widened in shock.

[Boy] "The princess woke up from her sleep and hugged the mister."

[Adelheit] "What are you talking about?"

[Boy] "I saw it with my own eyes!"

It had seemed strange at first, but now, emerging from his deep thoughts, Adelheit noticed the subtle anomaly he had previously missed. Dianna’s hand rested gently atop the dead Mad King’s body.

It meant that after the Mad King killed himself, her body moved to place her hand upon him. Her corpse had momentarily returned to life.

A blank, stunned expression washed over his face as realization struck. Adelheit turned to his men and spoke.

[Adelheit] "Everyone... step outside for a moment."

Left alone with the two corpses, he stood silently, gazing at the man and woman sleeping peacefully before him.

[Adelheit] "In the end... was that why you spared only me?"

He had always wondered, but the truth was absurdly trivial.

Her body needed to be preserved as if she were still alive for her to awaken again. A rotting corpse wouldn't do.

His face contorted with sudden rage.

[Adelheit] "You wretched bastard... Do you have any idea how many people died for your selfish love?!"

He recalled the bodies of the fallen. Most were pierced through vital points, spared from lingering physical pain. Yet they were not spared the terror. They were not spared the agony.

[Adelheit] "A million people died! All so that woman could open her eyes for a few fleeting minutes! You absolute beast!"

Yet his shouting echoed hollowly through the empty chamber.

[Adelheit] "Selfish to the end! Just to bring that one woman back to life, you... you did all this!"

He opened his mouth to hurl more curses, but the faces of his fallen friends and students flashed before his eyes in an instant.

The Mad King's love had ultimately destroyed a nation and slaughtered countless innocents.

Could a more horrific love even exist? No amount of curses could ever be enough.

Yet no further words came out. Adelheit knew he had been nothing more than a passive bystander to their misaligned love.

Of course, Adelheit held no obligation toward them. An obligation to help them fulfill their love? To hell with that. How could such a duty exist?

[Adelheit] "You should have treated her right from the very beginning."

To think that this horrific, mass slaughter was the Mad King’s ultimate act of atonement offered to Dianna.

Tears spilled from his eyes as he looked upon this selfish redemption. Adelheit could never understand a love like this. He would never surrender himself to such self-destructive, self-sacrificing devotion.

To stake his entire life and become a living calamity out of regret and atonement for a lost lover, all to bring her back, was something he could never do.

Despite his curses and accusations, the dead couple seemed to smile peacefully. While those left behind suffered in agony, the departed rested in blissful contentment.

In the end, Guiscard's atonement had been rewarded. It was absurdly, infuriatingly selfish.

[Adelheit] "If there is a next life, please... don't cross paths in tragedy again."

Yet Adelheit couldn't remain trapped in hatred and curses forever. Staring at the grotesquely warped love, he had no choice but to forge ahead. He was a survivor, and his future still lay before him.

Unable to bring himself to pray for their peaceful rest, he invoked a hypothetical next life to break free from the shadow of their mad devotion.

[Adelheit] "Ah, and one more thing."

He looked down at Dianna.

[Adelheit] "If I happen to meet you in the next life, I will dedicate myself to helping you."

He bowed his head, tears still streaming down his face.

[Adelheit] "So... I am sorry."

With that brief apology, the man turned and stepped out of the beautiful yet hideous tomb.

Only the deceased couple remained behind in the flower-filled sanctuary.

From that day forth, no one ever visited that place again.