Chapter 105 – Their Qualifications

Their Qualifications

A long time ago.

She was born with the world.

She was strong.
She wanted everything. And she had the power to obtain it.

One day, she had the world in her hands.

Perhaps because of her power, the world soon began to distort.

Was it because her power had become corrupt, or was everything destined to be twisted from the beginning? The demons, an unexpected offspring of the monsters she created out of her disdain for a world without tension, began to appear. They were strong enough to bring chaos to the world.

However, the monsters and demons did not become a significant threat.

With her help, humans could easily defeat the demons with their own strength.

That’s why she ignored the demons.
She saw no reason to be wary of demons that would scatter and lose their center with just a slight intervention.

Objectively, her judgment was correct.

Until it appeared.

One day, as she was observing the world, an entity that defied all reason emerged.
Humans called it the Demon King.
A being that would not disappear as long as the world existed was born, and this being was such that even with her intervention, victory could not be guaranteed.

Perhaps if she used all her power, she might have been able to annihilate even the Demon King.

But then, she would no longer be able to intervene in her world. With depleted power, she would be unable to interfere with the world.

To be unable to do as one pleases with one’s own possessions, wouldn’t that be unacceptable? This world is hers, and to become unable to involve herself in it? That cannot be tolerated, must not be tolerated. She would find another way, by any means necessary.

That was her thought.

Therefore, what she chose was to make use of beings from other worlds.

The plan was simple.

She would share her power with a being from another world, and with that power, they would defeat the Demon King. Once the Demon King was neutralized, she would reclaim the power she had bestowed to avoid significant loss. To reclaim the power meant to kill the being from the other world.
Maintaining the existence of a being from another world in this one already cost her half of her power. So, after achieving her goal, she had no choice but to reclaim the power.

Her actions were swift.

She preserved only enough power to bestow revelations and used all other means to bring a being from another world.

The first foreigner she brought was strong.
He was capable of killing a dragon in his first battle, so his skill was indeed remarkable.
Thus, the name given to the foreigner was Dragonslayer. As time passed, it was shortened to Hero… but to her, it hardly mattered.

Thus, she summoned the Hero to defeat the Demon King, and when it was time for him to return to his original world, she would take his life and reclaim her power. Occasionally, if a Hero decided to stay in this world, she would assess the situation and then naturally kill him to reclaim her power.
If at any point the Hero gave up fighting the Demon King, she would take control and manipulate him.
After the Demon King fell and time passed, when the next Demon King appeared, she would summon the next Hero, and so on. She would continue to bring beings from other worlds until the moment the Demon King ceased to resurrect.

It seemed like a phenomenon that would go on forever.

But that illusion was eventually shattered.

Because of a Hero whose original name she could no longer remember.

Troka.

The root of all problems.

She was subtly annoyed from the moment he failed to kill the trash she had wrongly summoned, Flan. Normally, she would have eliminated Flan and then focused on Troka, but Troka was such an unstable character that she had no choice but to ignore him.

During that journey, Flan managed to survive in the Demon Continent and eventually joined forces with Troka.

Would something have changed if she had killed Flan then? It was because of Flan that Troka acted that way.

Well, that wasn’t important in the current situation.
The most important thing was Flan’s life.
To reclaim half of her power, she had to kill Flan.
If Flan returned to his original world as he was, she would lose half of her power.

Because the Hero’s power had been transferred to him. For some reason, even though Flan touched the holy sword, he was not controlled, and Troka’s power was transferred to him. In other words, Flan had to die.

Therefore, she devised dozens of methods to corner Flan. Most of them failed… but at least she could buy time. She might not have killed him this time, but next time it would be possible. She had bought enough time with this plan to kill him at the next opportunity.

In this way, opportunities flew by, and Flan reached the final point.

There weren’t many who could be complacent at this stage.

In fact, she herself was quite cornered…

But at the last moment, she discovered a trump card, and the situation was reversed.
The swordsman of the Hero party. The person located at the place where Flan was heading.
If she could control her, she could easily kill any formidable opponent. Moreover, her way of thinking was simple, not a difficult person to manipulate.

In other words, a means to stop Flan had appeared.

Although it took a lot of time to build trust with her, the return on investment was much greater. So she invested generously. If she could raise the swordsman to defeat him, it was okay to spend a part of her power. That was her judgment.
As long as Flan was alive, she could not reclaim half of her power. Invest in the option that allows her to reclaim as much power as possible.

And on the day the swordsman met with Flan.

She leaked some information to the swordsman to ensure she felt hatred towards Flan.

The mass slaughter committed by Flan.
Upon hearing the news, the swordsman was naturally outraged.

The plan had succeeded.

All she had to do now was wait for the swordsman to kill Flan.

But then, an unforeseen variable occurred.

The swordsman’s injury.

She had ordered the swordsman to slay a wyvern. She persuaded her with talk of honor and such, but in reality, it was practice for beheading Flan. It was to decapitate him before he could introduce any variables, that was the thought.

But perhaps she had overestimated the swordsman’s abilities? Even after the swordsman met with Flan, she ordered her to slay a wyvern.

It was the final check before beheading Flan.

However, engaging with dozens of wyverns without rest is tantamount to suicide even for a first-class swordsman. Let alone fighting hundreds of wyverns without a break, even for Bella, it was an overwhelming task.

Therefore, the day before Flan and Bella were to meet again, the swordsman sustained a serious injury.

A grave wound severe enough to prevent her from properly killing Flan. A few days of dedicated rest might have sufficed, but… everything had already gone awry.

With such injuries, she couldn’t kill Flan.
The plan had failed.

She thought to herself that since the plan had failed, she should at least reclaim the small amount of power she had given to the swordsman. She would appear in the swordsman’s dream to take back the power. And then, she would quickly devise the next method to kill Flan.

At the very least, at the very end. If she could just reclaim the power she had bestowed upon the swordsman, she could aim for the moment Flan returned to his original world. It would mean she could reclaim half of her power.

That was her new plan.

Whether it succeeded or failed, it was an all-or-nothing shot. The last, targeting the moment when Flan was most off-guard. If she missed that moment, she would lose half of her power. It would even become difficult to summon the next Hero. And if she failed to reclaim the power she had given to Bella and also lost Flan, she would fall to the point where she could no longer intervene in this world.

So, this was an unavoidable gamble.
It was also a flawless last plan.

A flawless plan………, it was.

Yes,

Until Flan’s fist exploded, it was a perfect plan.

* * *

I’m on the mountain now.
The location is somewhere on a wide clearing halfway up the mountain.
Because my last journey was a failure, I’m wasting time here.

And behind me should be Bella. She’s probably watching me closely.

Why, you ask?

Because I’m precariously standing at the very edge of a cliff.

If you ask what I’m doing, I plan to say I’m going to jump. Unfortunately, it’s not a suicide attempt. I’m just going down to pick up a letter that fell below. I’m not harboring any strange thoughts.

…That’s a lie.

I want to give up on everything.

It’s been a life of nothing but hardships until the very end. I just want to end it all and be at peace.

I’ve long since lost the will to live, the reason to, and even the purpose.

And there are few I can actually talk to.
What’s the point of living a life that doesn’t feel like living?

…Of course, that’s also a lie.

How could I give up after coming this far?

My freedom, my life, it starts now. There’s no way it ends here. Giving up on everything now won’t erase the past. Even if a withered flower blooms again, it can’t give off the same scent.

Even if I atone now, the karma I’ve accumulated won’t disappear.

The dilemma was momentary, and I made my choice.
To live freely.

Once I’ve decided to live, I move forward, looking ahead. It doesn’t mean I won’t look back. It just means I won’t be crushed by the sins I’ve committed, but rather, I’ll move beyond them.

So, I’ve made up my mind.
For the first time in a while, to throw a punch.

I decided to land a big one right in the face of the bitch blocking my way. To let her taste all the pent-up anger, in a very spectacular way.

The plan is simple.
Let Bella’s guard down, then land a big one.
It’s mutual that we can’t communicate, so I’ve given up on talking long ago, to hell with negotiations, it’s a strategy. The grander the plan, the weaker it must start.

Well, I’m not even sure if a proper hit will land. Even if she’s injured, can I really land an effective blow on Bella?

Besides, the body of a half-dragon is tougher than a human’s, so it’s likely that the one throwing the punch will hurt more…

But who cares about that. It doesn’t matter at all.

Since when did I ever care about such things?

And the one who didn’t expect to get hit will probably hurt more.
Including the mental damage, they’ll be at a loss.

She must be thinking that there’s no way someone like Flan, who can’t even properly kill a wyvern, would attack her, right? Wondering what my intentions are for going all the way to the cliff edge.

That’s your downfall.

“Huff…”

Looking down at the cliff was dizzying and thrilling.

It felt like seeing the rough path of my future. Well, it’s a bit vague… but that’s the idea.

That’s just how it is.

I crossed the dagger and the holy sword inside my cloak.
This is just the beginning.
I need to stay calm. The start is as simple as the plan.

First, I throw the dagger.
Then I rush in and hit her hard to start things off.

After that, I’ll use everything I can, whether it’s the holy sword or anything else, to take that bastard down. Honor, human rights, the bare minimum lines that should be maintained as a human being—everything that can be grasped will be used to utterly destroy her, and then, when she’s on the brink of death…

“I’ll send you to Master’s Grave…”

Hmm… Is that going too far? After all, this isn’t exactly my area of expertise.

Well, anyway. I’ll have to fight with the mindset of not hesitating to do even that. How to finish things off can be thought about after I’ve taken Bella down.

Turning around, there was Bella with a blank expression.
She’s still sitting there with the same old face.

Hmm. On second thought, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Sending her to the Master’s Grave.

For a moment, the face of an old relationship flashed through my mind.
I brushed those faces out of my head and brought out the words I had prepared.
Then I threw the dagger at Bella.

The real fight starts now.

Hey, Bella.

I won’t let you off easy.