Chapter 120
Humans are extremely useful material.
For example, magically recreating ‘the digestive organs of a living creature’ requires enough money to build a respectable mansion.
However, if one brings in the ‘real thing’ and uses it, the problem can be solved with no more than a few coins.
The poor are everywhere, and quite a few are willing to sell even their own children to keep themselves alive.
The Sage was one of those children who had been sold.
The mage who purchased the Sage had realized that using humans as material was useful for solving the various problems unique to golems—and he was so narrow-minded that he could not understand that the other mages did not ‘fail to do’ such things, but simply ‘chose not to.’
There were many people at the mage’s base.
Some were children who had been sold by their parents like the Sage, some were beggars lured in by the promise of being fed to their fill, and others had their hands and feet tightly bound, as though they had been kidnapped from somewhere.
And among them, the Sage was treated somewhat specially.
While the others were fed something resembling slime with the worst taste and smell imaginable, the Sage was given proper bread and soup.
While the others were confined to cramped cages where they repeatedly ate and defecated, the Sage was given at least a space that could be called a ‘room,’ along with freedom.
While the others had their limbs and organs removed as research materials for the mage and were forcibly kept alive, the Sage alone was allowed to retain a whole body.
Naturally, the Sage became the object of the others’ hatred and jealousy.
The Sage desperately defended himself.
And with good reason, for he had done nothing to contribute to this situation.
Being born, being sold, and being treated specially had all been things those around him had done on their own. The Sage had demanded none of it.
But no one listened to the Sage’s excuses.
Everyone resented, condemned, and cursed the Sage.
And in the end, even those voices disappeared.
All the material except the Sage had been used up.
In the silence-filled space, the Sage asked the mage,
Why was he being treated specially?
Why was he not being used as material?
It was not a question asked in expectation of an answer.
The Sage had asked the mage many things before, but never once had he received a proper answer.
「Child, suppose you were a jeweler. If a precious rough gemstone that would be difficult to obtain again came into your hands, would you process it immediately, or would you first hone your skills sufficiently using ordinary worthless stones before working on it?」
Having grown up in poverty, the Sage did not know what a jeweler was, but he understood the meaning through the context of the sentence.
And he became terrified.
He had realized from the mage’s attitude that the man had finished enough practice.
There was now no material left except the Sage.
The mage had already finished enough practice.
Yet realizing what would happen to him and resisting it were entirely different matters.
The mage effortlessly subdued the Sage’s struggles, then created a biological golem using him as material and rejoiced at its perfection.
「Hahahaha! Good! Excellent! What splendid mana! What magnificent computational ability! This is the perfect new body!」
Many people dream of eternal life, and there are various means of achieving it.
The method the mage chose was exchanging bodies.
If an old body was troublesome, one could simply create a fresh, powerful body and move into it.
The mage’s research was an overwhelming success, and he laughed maniacally in delight at the immortality that had finally arrived.
Crack!
There was one thing he had not anticipated.
The Sage’s talent had been far greater than he had imagined, and as a result, the ego that should originally have disappeared remained.
The careless mage’s head exploded and he died, while the Sage inherited the mage’s entire legacy.
Years passed while the Sage remained shut away in the mage’s workshop.
The first thing the Sage, who had grown into a full-fledged mage, attempted was to reclaim his original body.
He lacked neither skill nor knowledge. Unlike the mage, he also had enough ingenuity that he did not need to use living humans as material.
But the Sage could not fulfill his wish.
He could not remember what he had looked like.
No matter how many times he tried, every biological golem the Sage created looked the same.
Harsh, sharp, and irritable.
A middle-aged man who seemed to embody the image of an eccentric mage.
The appearance of the mage who had been both the Sage’s enemy and teacher.
After making inquiries, the Sage sought out the people who had once been his parents.
Then, concealing his identity, he gave them money and asked them questions.
What the Sage had looked like in the past, what he had liked, and what kind of voice he had possessed.
They could not answer properly.
They did not realize that the person before them was their child, nor could they even recall that he resembled the person who had once purchased their child.
The Sage came to hate humanity.
He was no exception—not even himself.
There were times when necessity forced him to interact with others, but even then, he always stayed wary of those around him, suspected them, and kept his distance.
「Hmm, that’s an unlucky-looking face. You’re not wearing a mask, are you?」
That was how things were until he met a certain idiot.
Until he met a fool who seemed like the exact opposite of the humans the Sage had hated.
The Sage came to think that there might be more decent people among humans than he had expected, and he learned that even someone possessing the qualities he disliked could change for the better with time and experience.
If their adventure had ended in a true happy ending, the Sage might have been able to break the hateful shackles he had carried.
However, their ending was not a happy one.
The companions whom the Sage could not bring himself to hate.
No, to be honest, his companions, whom he had loved and cherished, met their deaths.
And vermin crawled in as though coveting their dazzling glory.
「I wish to offer you my heartfelt thanks for your devotion and contributions to humanity.」
What was truthful about that?
What was there to be grateful for?
Those who had watched from the sidelines or made only token gestures while the others fought desperately now reached out with shameless expressions as the time to enjoy the war’s sweet fruits drew near.
The Sage wanted to kill them all, but that was impossible.
Dealing with one country alone might have been possible, but handling several by himself was too much—and the vermin held the families of those who had fought alongside the Sage in their hands.
More importantly, the Demon King had not been completely annihilated.
The helmet left behind by the Demon King still contained immense power, and if there was no one to protect and seal it, all their struggles would be reduced to nothing once more.
Therefore, the Sage took the vermin’s outstretched hand.
He watched them divide the ‘ownerless land’ among themselves through their respective justifications and schemes, and watched them alter the Hero’s adventure to suit their own tastes ‘to prevent confusion among the public.’
A woman who claimed to have spent a night with the Hero in a village he had saved even came to the Sage with a young child, but to be honest, the Sage did not know whether it was true.
He could have found out if he tried, but he could not bring himself to do so.
If even that proved to be a lie, he would want to wipe out everything, responsibilities left behind and all.
Cut off from the world, the Sage devoted himself to his research.
He researched again and again, seeking a way to completely annihilate the Demon King’s helmet and bring their struggle to an end.
Yet in a corner of his heart, an endless inferno continued to burn.
Why was the world so unreasonable?
Those who worked hard did not receive results proportionate to their efforts, those who devoted themselves did not receive compensation worthy of their devotion, and the noble hesitated to sully themselves precisely because of their nobility.
Why were those who watched for opportunities, pursued profit, and used others the ones who reaped the rewards, rather than those who had suffered, agonized, and vomited blood?
There was no answer.
He did not even know whether an answer existed.
Then, suddenly, the Sage found himself wondering.
Was it truly right to annihilate this helmet?
There was more than one Demon King.
In their world, there were many beings equal to the owner of this helmet.
If they invaded again, would the same thing happen then?
Would the noble sacrifice themselves while the ugly claimed the fruits?
The Sage’s reason noticed that his train of thought was abnormal.
He guessed that it was the influence of the helmet he possessed, and that it was the result of the Demon King’s will tempting him.
But the resentment and anger in the Sage’s heart ignored the voice of reason.
No, he erased even the fact that such a voice had existed.
The moment the Sage donned the black helmet, he felt as though everything had become clear.
If it was the law of the world that those who worked hard could not be rewarded, then he only needed to create a system in which they could be rewarded.
If the ugly once again tried to save their own skins, their resources could be placed in the hands of those who could put them to more ‘useful’ ends.
If he himself was loathsome, then even this wretched body could be offered as a sacrifice.
Then, and only then, the Hero would be able to defeat the Demon King.
This time, they would succeed.
This time, they would reach the proper ending.
The Sage realized that he had reached the realm of transcendence.
He did not realize that this transcendence had been distorted and corrupted by outside interference.
Nor did he perceive the contradiction of wearing the very ‘Demon King’ he was supposed to defeat.
The Demon King and the Sage intermingle and become one.
The lofty realm, distorted though it was, inscribed a new law upon the world.
A Transcendent, 『Sage of the Firmament』, was born.
And.
《─Wake up, contractor.》
Pina Valestia opened her eyes.
***
“Ugh…!”
Pina, who had been lying on the floor, opened her eyes with a groan.
It was a spacious hall bearing traces of battle here and there.
It took her quite some time to realize that this was the summit of the tower she had once conquered.
There was no other way.
The memories of traveling as the Hero with the Sage, the saintess, and their other companions.
And even the memories of reliving that life from the Sage’s perspective.
Though it was not a complete experience because portions were skipped here and there, hundreds of years’ worth of memories had suddenly surged into her mind. How could her mind possibly remain intact?
“Miss Pina, are you all right!?”
Seeing Pina like that, Kailen asked anxiously whether she was okay.
“I was worried because you lost consciousness and wouldn’t answer no matter how many times I called out to you!!”
“Uh, um, I-I’m sorry. But how long was I out?”
“About ten minutes!”
It was a long time in one sense, but compared to what Pina had felt subjectively, it had been an absurdly short moment.
To be honest, she still had not fully regained her sense of reality, but unfortunately, she was given no chance to calmly adjust to the situation.
Crack!
The sound of stone splitting.
When Pina and Kailen turned their gazes toward the source, they saw cracks forming in various places across the Sage’s statue.
The cracks continued growing until they completely shattered the statue, and something sprang out from within and rose into the air.
A pitch-black helmet.
Pina knew what it was.
The remnant of the Demon King once called 『Slaughter』 glared at something, emitting a sinister light from its eyes.
At first, Pina thought she was the target of that gaze, but she soon realized the truth.
It was not her.
The true target it was glaring at was…
《Did you really dislike my meddling with the contents here and there?》
The Demonic Sword Forte jeered at that opponent as though mocking it.
《If you tried to forcibly overwrite someone else’s life, you should at least have been prepared to have your own life watched in turn. A play that repeats the exact same content endlessly would be unable to escape harsh criticism, no matter how excellent the material.》
Only then did Pina realize that the strange memories she had experienced differed from the system’s original intention.
Perhaps the system had intended to let Pina experience only the life of ‘Hero Fernando.’
Again and again, repeating death.
So that she would directly experience the ending the Hero had reached, along with its grief and regret, and come to empathize with it.
But Forte’s intervention had changed what was being shown, exposing the Sage’s memories that had never been intended for her to see.
And that was something the system—or rather,
something the Sage, who had transformed into the entity known as the system, would find unbearably unpleasant.
As if to prove it, the system no longer displayed any messages.
As though taking its place, something resembling plant stalks grew from the underside of the black helmet and formed the shape of a person.
At the same time, the darkness that escaped from the helmet intertwined with the plants and became one body.
What was eventually completed was a dark knight that had taken human form, yet was not human.
When the dark knight extended his hand, the darkness compressed and formed a sword.
He swung it.
Crunch.
Cracks appeared in Forte’s blade.
The blade of Forte cracked.