Chapter 99: A Concluded Match, and the Return to Magnolia (4)
"Mira…"
"Ciel, stop it now."
Hot, red blood runs along the sword and warms my fingertips.
I hesitated for a moment at the sight of the girl looking at me with a distressed face, but my vision was still dyed in ash-gray.
Even sound reached me as if through a haze.
"Move that arm."
"No… I won't move it. Never."
"This is your last warning. If you interfere, I'll just cut the arm off."
"Cut it! Even if Ciel cuts off my arm, I won't back down."
The girl stared at me with unwavering eyes, and that face made the hesitation in my heart grow.
Why on earth was I threatening this child?
As I thought that, my head became cluttered.
My pupils trembled and my hands began to shake.
"If I don't kill him, I can't become stronger… I need power. A single, perfect power."
"Ciel…"
"Wha—?!"
At my words, Mirajane looked up at me with a sad face, released the Satan Soul that had been strengthening her body, and returned to her original appearance.
At that moment I felt the sword press against her bones.
Only then did I realize something was wrong, and I quickly made the sword vanish.
The moment I dispelled the sword, Mirajane—without caring about her wounds—hurled herself at me and hugged me tight.
As she embraced me, color began to return to my previously ashen vision.
The surrounding noise faded and everyone's voices became clear again.
I felt oddly soothed by the warmth of her arms clinging to my trembling body.
"You don't have to become stronger. Ciel is strong enough even now."
"But I—"
"There's no one here anymore that Ciel must fight. So stop this now."
"..."
Her voice by my ear caused the impulse that had filled my head to subside, and the tension drained from me.
"Guhhk…!!"
"Ciel?!"
As my body relaxed, the mana I'd been holding scattered; the blood that had been stopped at the wound began to pour out, and—exhausted—my eyes closed.
…
It was a hazy memory from long ago.
Companions I had made in my first life.
We had met as enemies, yet somehow I became his guardian, and my resentment toward the world gradually eased.
That man and the guardians like me bickered constantly, but we nonetheless set out together with a shared goal.
There were fights, but they were not entirely unpleasant.
A sense of camaraderie toward them had slowly taken root.
When I rose to the top and bore the name of the strongest, it felt as if that moment would last forever.
Until they met a tragic end…
Just like the first one—his ancestor—the later generation, hungry for the name of "the strongest," betrayed us; everyone but me lost their lives.
Only after exacting revenge for the dead did I realize.
That everything is governed by power; that humans cannot escape the wheel of fate…
From that moment on I fought alone.
I killed and killed so many I lost count, and through the power of the awakened eye that repeated reincarnations showed me, I sought to break free from the cycle of fate, to become truly unrivaled, and to make the black world as white as a blank sheet.
But that sense of purpose faded after several cycles of reincarnation.
Only one thing remained in my memory.
Destroy this world.
Kill the god called the strongest and take that power for myself.
Each day was a succession of battles.
My emotions dried up and vanished; the world was stained gray like ash.
Why do I fight?
Why do I seek to become stronger?
I forgot even those reasons, and as I battled gods to escape the cycle of reincarnation, I became a sinner.
Even after being banished from the world we once belonged to, I still craved battle.
The only thing left to me was strength—and nothing else.
So I wanted to reclaim even that last remnant.
I wanted to fight again.
…No. Why did I want to fight?
In the pitch-black darkness where not even a sliver of light existed, I groaned in agony—until…
"Even if countless eras turn prayers back to dust~♪"
I heard a song.
"I will continue to pray~♪ Please, grant this child love~♪"
That beautiful melody soothed my pained cries.
Whenever that song reached me, the desire to fight would subside. My anxiety and torment were washed away by the clear, gentle voice that echoed through the darkness.
It was like ripples on a shaken lake growing still—calmness returning to chaos.
As my eyes closed once more in that endless darkness, I fell into the most peaceful sleep I had felt in a long time.
...
"...Where is this?"
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a ceiling made of gray brick.
I pushed away the soft, cushiony sensation behind my back and sat up.
Moonlight pouring through a wide open window told me that I was in a bedroom.
"Haah… ugh…"
"Mira…"
Hearing the faint sound of breathing, I slowly lowered my head. Mirajane was asleep beside me, her upper body resting on the bed.
The moment I saw her face, the memories before I lost consciousness came flooding back.
Right… I tried to kill the Nightwalker.
But when Mirajane appeared, the tension inside me broke, and I collapsed.
Recalling that much, I reached for my body to check the wound—yet the injuries that should have been there had vanished without a trace, as if nothing had happened at all.
"What in the world…?"
"Yo~, you're finally up?"
"…You…?"
As I groped for my wounds, a sly, unhurried voice floated in from the window.
Turning my head toward the sound, I saw a being with my exact same face—but unmistakably not me.
Ciel Nightwalker was sitting on the window ledge, swirling a drink inside his glass.
He took a slow sip, cast his gaze toward me, and spoke.
....
"You were out for three days. That girl over there stayed up all night waiting for you to wake up. What a shame. If you'd opened your eyes just a bit sooner, she would've seen it."
"…Nightwalker."
I stared at him, puzzled by his unbothered demeanor.
We had fought to reclaim the halves of our souls, driven by an instinctive urge to kill one another.
Yet here we were, in the same room again.
If this were as before, then our souls should have resonated, our instincts should have forced us into another murderous clash.
But…
"Judging by that face, I can guess your question. Why isn't there resonance? Why doesn't that instinct to kill ignite again? …It's because of that."
"...Yes. We're in the same place, just like the first time I arrived here. So why is there no resonance now?"
This is absurd.
I was certain my head had been full of the urge to kill the man before me.
So why has that impulse vanished now, and why has my hostility toward him completely disappeared?
Nightwalker looked at my unsettled face and, with a slightly softened expression, said to me, "If you don't feel the urge, that must mean you've filled your other half—just like I did."
"Filled the other half?"
"Before I tell you that, do you want me to tell you what happened during the three days you were out?" he asked.
I wanted to know what "filled the other half" meant—but I also wanted to know why I had been asleep here—so I nodded at his question.
Nightwalker took a sip from his glass and began to speak.
While I was coughing up blood and collapsing in Mirajane's arms and everyone panicked over how grave my condition was, Lucy called Mystogan, and together they treated the Nightwalker couple.
After that, under Mystogan's orders, I kept sleeping in an empty room in the palace.
The next day, Nightwalker and Mystogan summoned the people of Edolas and confessed everything that had happened.
They revealed that the magic stones obtained through Anima were being used as offerings to exploit people in other worlds who wielded magic. They also made it clear that the magical power in this world would soon vanish completely.
The people were terrified at the news that magic would disappear.
Some soldiers who had supported Edolas's king's plan even incited a riot.
Fairy Tail of Edolas stepped forward to confront them, and the remaining Faust loyalists who had caused the unrest were all arrested and taken to prison.
While everyone was in turmoil over the truth that magic would be gone, Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy improvised a skit to show that even without magic, people are still human. They accepted the changes of a world without magic and chose to recognize a new leader.
That was the story of what happened while I was asleep.
"That idiot disciple probably tried to reverse Anima to erase all the world's magic. I didn't even think he'd go that far," Nightwalker said.
"...Where are Natsu and the others?" I asked.
"Don't worry about them. The Demon King, who played dead for us, spent two days feasting with the Fairy Tail members who suppressed the riots in the castle, and now he's passed out in an empty room."
"I see… Edolas's Fairy Tail…"
"One more thing—those wizards of Edolas we said were executed? I actually took them in and they're staying in an unnamed village."
"You mean…"
"Yes. Aside from the sacrifices made in an honorable fight for Edolas's unification, the soldiers and the magic corps never slaughtered innocent wizards like we thought. They didn't kill those wizards."
And another truth came to light.
I had believed that, under orders from Edolas's king, magic had been outlawed and the wizards' guild disbanded, and that resistors had been executed—but that had been a lie fabricated by Nightwalker.
What the magic corps captains had supposedly murdered were illusions created by Nightwalker's technique, Kyoka-Suigetsu (True: Mirror Flower, Water Moon). Before the magic corps attacked, he had abducted the wizards and hidden them in a secret place only he knew.
In short, the wizards everyone believed the soldiers had killed were actually all safe.
Edolas's Erza was thought to have been killing people, but in the end she had not slain a single Fairy Tail wizard.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"Seven years ago—Jellal asked me about the Anima project—but at that time, I didn't want to see that child—my future wife—get her hands stained with blood. I was more than willing to be the one who became tainted."
"...You must have been an emotionless doll—empty inside, with only power—so you must have always felt the urge to kill. I can't understand how you came to possess feelings more human than mine."
At my question, Nightwalker snorted softly, scanned me once, then gazed gently at the sleeping Mirajane.
"I told you in prison. The one who filled my other half was Erza. When she gave me the name 'Ciel' and entrusted her whole self to me… I found the answer. The world that had been blurry suddenly regained vivid light, and the discordant, noisy voices grew clear. That's when I understood: because our souls are split in two, we're incomplete beings. And it is precisely in that incompleteness that we truly live."
"Truly live…? What on earth are you trying to say?"
"You already know the answer. Looks like that girl over there is filling your half for you."
"My… other half?"
"You probably don't realize it yet."
He wore a relaxed expression and poured another drink into his glass.
"What I mean is that there are things more precious than power for me now. And there are things you don't want to lose either. What is that girl to you?"
I thought about his question while gently stroking Mirajane's cheek as she slept.
What is Mirajane to me?
She's a child I must protect—my charge. A place I must return to.
While I was lost in thought, Nightwalker smiled with a sly expression.
"You might understand it intellectually, you might even know it, but you haven't truly recognized it yourself."
"..."
"Don't hesitate, Ciel."
The smile vanished. His face turned serious the way it did in battle as he looked at me.
"If you keep hesitating, you'll lose the precious things you carry in your hands. And only after you lose them will you be tormented and full of regret—just like you were when you lost them long ago..."
"Ciel…"
"We are not warriors who only chase power. We are human, like those here. We are incomplete beings. But that very incompleteness is the true nature of humans. People cannot live alone. That's why we form bonds, filling and supporting each other's missing parts."
"Imperfect, therefore complete…"
"In simple terms: just as I filled my missing half through Erza, you've now had your lacking half filled at this moment. The proof is the resonance between us—the murderous impulses to kill one another and the thirst for battle are gone."
As he said, I felt no impulse at all.
The instinct to kill him to reclaim power—gone.
The constant craving to become stronger and fight—gone.
What remained was peace of mind.
From the moment I reclaimed half of my power, the emptiness I had felt seemed to be filled.
"At first, when Jellal sent you to this world, I was determined. I told myself I would defeat you who crave power… Of course, that might have changed me, but I had people I wanted to protect. Still… at the last moment, when I saw you stopped by the appearance of that girl, I knew it wasn't necessary."
"So you had ample opportunities to kill me, yet you didn't."
"Isn't that true?"
His inscrutable words made my head spin and my chest tighten.
But my will to fight had already faded.
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