Vol 4 Chapter 78: “The Fate of Righteousness” (Vol 4: The Otherworldly Battlefield Arc)

“O… flowers…”

Sukui was walking alone down the street.

To be precise, it might be more accurate to say that he had been walking until just a moment ago.

Now, he had stopped in his tracks, his gaze fixed on a single young girl.

And because Sukui’s awareness began at this very moment, it was as though he hadn’t been walking at all.

“A dream, huh?” 

He immediately understood the situation.

The real Sukui was currently being exiled from the city and traveling toward Polivity.

And this place was not the world after the transference.

It was the country Sukui had ended up in after killing his parents and everyone connected to them.

A world that displayed nothing but cruelty—a consequence of relentless wars with neighboring nations, internal conflicts, and the poverty they had wrought.

A dream, and yet, it was a past that had actually happened.

One of Sukui’s formative landscapes.

“I’m sorry…” 

How long had it been since he’d last had a dream?

Thinking back, Sukui realized he’d hardly ever dreamed since the time he had saved his parents.

Suffering from a tendency toward insomnia, he rarely got a proper night’s sleep.

And with his mind too consumed by madness, even dreaming had become a rarity.

As he processed his current circumstances, Sukui began to walk toward the girl.

A normal girl.

She appeared to be about 12 or 13 years old.

Her dark brown skin, unique to this region, was marked all over with bruises, and her tattered clothes were hardly distinguishable from scraps of cloth.

Her unkempt, long hair showed signs of having been crudely hacked at its ends.

Clutching withered weeds that could barely be called flowers, she muttered quietly, selling them in a voice so faint it was almost swallowed by the wind.

When Sukui spoke to her, her shoulders flinched with a start.

“May I have one of your flowers?” Sukui asked gently.

It was just like in the past. His body moved as if this past scene was playing out again, beyond his control.

Though the calmness of his voice seemed to slightly ease her wariness, the frightened look in her eyes remained unchanged.

Still, after hearing his words, she glanced cautiously around her surroundings.

In a place like this, her guarded behavior was hardly strange.

After all, a girl selling flowers on the street here didn’t necessarily mean just that.

“I’ll take this one,” Sukui said.

Before the girl could start guiding him somewhere, Sukui plucked a single flower from the bundle she held.

“Huh…?”

The girl stared at him in puzzlement as he handed her a small pouch.

Inside were paper notes—likely more than she could earn in an entire month.

“Um…” she began hesitantly.

“It’s a good flower,” Sukui replied.

He crouched down, gazing into her eyes as he spoke with a smile.

“I’ll come back to buy more.”

He told her that, gently patting her head, and began to walk away.

This was something that had actually happened in the past.

A fragment of it.

“No.”

This wouldn’t do.

This wasn’t right.

Sukui could feel his body acting out the same motions it had in the past, yet he struggled to resist.

But his body, bound by the past, turned its back on the girl and started to leave.

That wasn’t how it should have been.

Sukui knew how this story ended.

He knew what came after giving the flower girl money and promising to return.

Even though he would pass through this area many more times, looking for her on every occasion, he would never find her again.

A sickening, viscous sensation crawled over Sukui’s entire body, as if something grotesque were brushing against him.

Turning back was not allowed.

“You never saved me, did you?” 

This is a dream.

In reality, the girl had softly said, “Thank you,” to Sukui as he walked away.

She had never uttered words filled with such resentment.

A few days later, Sukui learned that the girl’s lifeless body had been discarded on the roadside.

It was a simple, tragic story. The girl had honestly handed over the money Sukui had given her to her father as her day’s earnings.

Her father, pleased with the unexpected sum, used the money to buy alcohol. Drunk and intoxicated, he ended up abusing and killing his daughter by the roadside as he forced her to carry his belongings.

It was not an uncommon tale in this world.

The day Sukui learned of this, he tracked down the father’s whereabouts and killed him.

Did that act accomplish anything? Sukui wondered.

“Or was that ending the only salvation for her?”

No.

Sukui tried to deny it, but no words came out.

Death is not salvation.

But he didn’t intend to use that as an excuse.

He had failed.

Sukui forced his unmoving body to turn around, desperate to convey this truth.

“What are you doing?”

The weather was bright and clear, a beautiful day.

The girl was no longer in front of him, and neither was the filthy street.

Instead, Sukui found himself surrounded by dense trees, where a group of children stood, staring curiously at him.

The scene had shifted.

It was a dream, after all. Such things were to be expected.

Sukui smiled at the children who were looking at him quizzically.

“I just felt a little light-headed. It’s this heat, you know,” Sukui said with a smile.

“Eh? Sukui, you’re so good at soccer, but your body’s weak, huh?”

One of the children teased him with a playful grin. In their hands was a dirtied ball—their only toy.

When the children asked if he needed to rest, Sukui shook his head.

“No, let’s keep playing soccer instead.”

Yes, that was right. At this time, Sukui was working as a hired hand for a mafia group.

It wasn’t unusual. In fact, before he left the country to become a mercenary, Sukui often had ties with some mafia group or another.

He would immerse himself in the darkest corners, gather information, and use it to help rescue those who needed saving.

Often, he would dismantle the mafia organization he had joined, using that success as a stepping stone to infiltrate another.

That day, Sukui had been visiting a cacao plantation owned by the mafia group he was working for.

He had mentioned to the boss that he’d never seen a cacao plantation, and the boss had told him to go take a look. Sukui, understanding the importance of relationships, decided to visit on a day when he had no pressing tasks. That was how he had met the children who worked there and had grown close to them.

“Yeah! Teach us that trick again—the one where you spin around and kick the ball!” one of the kids said excitedly.

“An overhead kick, huh? It’s pretty tough to pull off,” Sukui replied with a chuckle.

Despite his words, he spent the time juggling the ball, showing off tricks, and playing soccer with the children in a match of Sukui versus the kids.

The children were captivated by Sukui’s athleticism and cheered louder than usual, brimming with excitement.

Nothing had changed from the past. After spending the day playing, they enjoyed themselves until sunset, and then Sukui would leave.

“Sukui! Next time, I won’t lose!” one of the kids shouted, waving energetically.

Sukui waved back with a smile.

“Alright, I’ll come by again. Make sure to practice!” he said.

“Yeah! And don’t forget your promise!”

Sukui nodded at that, still smiling.

These children didn’t know what chocolate was.

Even when Sukui explained that the cacao they harvested would be turned into a sweet treat, they refused to believe him.

Though the children harvested the cacao, they didn’t know what it was used for, nor did they care to know.

To ask why they didn’t wonder or seek answers was arrogance, Sukui understood.

“I’ll bring so much you won’t be able to finish it all,” he told them.

Then, once again, Sukui turned his back on them.

He could not stop himself from moving. Sukui could not intervene in this dream.

It unfolded exactly as it had in the past.

And Sukui knew how this story would end.

Later, Sukui requested the mafia to prepare a large amount of high-quality chocolate.

Sukui was highly valued in the organization, and his unusual request made the boss laugh, finding it amusing as he arranged for a mountain of expensive chocolate.

“Liar.”

A voice echoed behind Sukui.

This, too, was not something that had happened in reality.

Yet the unfamiliar words refused to leave Sukui’s ears.

When he brought a large bag filled with chocolate back to the cacao plantation, the children were gone.

Only the harvested plantation remained.

Perplexed, Sukui waited for a while, thinking they might return after the day’s work. But when they didn’t, he went back and asked the boss about the children the next day.

“Oh, those kids? I sold them off,” the boss replied, seemingly puzzled by Sukui’s inquiry.

It wasn’t an unusual story.

Even after the harvest was done, the children could still be used as labor elsewhere. They had other uses—plenty of them.

However, in this world, normal logic and reasoning did not apply.

“Oh, and their organs were in high demand. It was always part of the plan anyway,” the boss added casually.

A story devoid of logic.

But such things were commonplace.

Such events were unimaginable, yet they occurred as part of daily life.

Upon hearing the boss’s words, Sukui killed him.

It was the worst possible move tactically, but even after narrowly surviving, Sukui slaughtered the organization’s members and escaped.

And once again, he was alone.

“Liar.”

The voices of the children behind him were not singular. Sukui could hear the overlapping voices of the children accusing him, relentlessly echoing in his ears.

“Yes.”

That was true.

Without even attempting to turn back, he answered them.

This was but a fragment of Sukui’s memories. A single piece of his recollections of children he couldn’t save.

Once again, he had failed to save them.

The boy who had fallen ill.

The girl who had lost her parents.

The boy soldiers conscripted into war.

Sukui’s memories were filled with countless children. Children he couldn’t help but reach out to when they cried.

Perhaps because they reminded him of his own past.

He understood that. That’s why Sukui continued to reach out his hand to the children.

And each time, it always ended in tragedy.

The boy whose illness was cured only to die from something else.
The girl who could never have anyone truly replace her parents.
The boy soldiers who, even after returning home, were sent back to the battlefield.

The world was unjust, unreasonable, and its logic had long since collapsed.

Every time, Sukui would feel momentarily dazed, only to recover and murmur to himself:

“Death alone is the only true equality in this world.”

There is no such thing as equality.

The pain of living is unfairly distributed, people die without ever being able to choose how they live.

There is no world where everyone can be happy. For someone to find happiness, someone else must inevitably suffer.

Equality is nothing more than the delusion of the powerless.

“In that case, I will create it.”

If equality doesn’t exist, if a world where no one is hurt cannot exist—

“I will bring the salvation of death, the only true equal concept.”

He would bestow death.

Because death alone was fair.

If so, and only if so—

“To make the sum of all positives and negatives zero. A world without suffering, where equality reigns.”

A voice came from behind Sukui.

It was not the voices of the children from the cacao plantation.

The scenery had changed again.

This was no longer the world Sukui had once lived in.

“It’s no surprise, really,” said the voice, “that someone like you, who has experienced all forms of inequality and death, would long for such a thing.”

Sukui found himself on the first floor of an inn.

Before he realized it, he was seated on a chair, and the voice was coming from the girl in front of him.

But Sukui could not see her face.

It was blurred, as though shrouded in mist. Yet the voice was one he knew all too well.

“But in that world, there is no happiness.”

Sukui did not say it was unnecessary.

“Even the angels said it—despite worshiping death, you only kill the wicked. If death is truly the ultimate salvation, why not kill everyone? Instead, you save people.”

“You know, deep down, that it’s better for people to live and find happiness.”

Sukui could tell the girl was smiling.

And that smile irritated him.

This was a dream.

The girl was no longer here.

“Is your faith in death an act of atonement for the children you couldn’t save?”

Or perhaps an excuse?

This entity, taking her form and speaking to him, felt to Sukui like a desecration of her death.

And yet—

“Because I cannot.”

Living and finding happiness—it was, of course, the ideal outcome.

But not everyone could achieve it.

“That’s why happiness is just another piece of the mechanism that creates the pain of life.”

“Hmm, I see.”

Perhaps realizing that the debate was meaningless, the girl murmured as though concluding the conversation.

At that moment, the mist covering her face cleared.

“Were you happy when I died?”

Her tear-filled expression pierced Sukui. He tried to respond, to say something—

“Master?”

Suddenly, he regained consciousness.

Sukui shifted from the dream back to reality.

When he opened his eyes, he was inside a vehicle.

Horo was peering curiously at him, her face filled with concern.

“Is something wrong?” 

Horo averted her gaze, seeming flustered.

“Um, I was just checking on the luggage… I’m sorry if I made noise and disturbed you,” she said hesitantly.

“No, it’s fine,” Sukui replied.

He didn’t voice his suspicion at Horo’s awkward behavior and simply watched as she left for another compartment.

There was no need to make noise to check the luggage, nor was there any urgent reason to do so now.

While Sukui wasn’t so narrow-minded as to be upset about being woken, he wiped at his eyes absentmindedly.

“Oh?”

He felt his hand grow damp and let out a small sound of surprise.

Tears.

Sukui pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Horo hadn’t woken him intentionally. She had seen Sukui crying and had reflexively called out to him.

“I made her worry unnecessarily,” Sukui murmured, waiting for Horo to return.

A short while later, Horo came back and climbed into Sukui’s bedding.

“What kind of dream were you having?” 

Though she thought she shouldn’t ask, her desire to understand Sukui compelled her.

Sukui gently stroked Horo’s hair, offering her his usual reassuring smile, as though it was nothing.

“A dream of certainty in righteousness.”

The Sukui in the dream was not the same as the Sukui in reality.

The Sukui in the dream still struggled to grasp what equality truly meant.

But now, Sukui had experienced everything and was certain.

And belief—any belief—always carried the potential for madness.

Understanding this, Sukui closed his eyes once more, thinking of the world as he drifted off to sleep.