Nirva’s face showed a trace of dismay.
Of all things, he had run into the one he should never have faced here.
“What are you doing here?”
“Did you forget what I said? I declared war. Of course I came to keep my word.”
With that, Suruna lightly drew the sword that had been driven into the ground.
It was the very sword that had pierced Nirva’s wing and brought him down.
The ornate blade slipped free far too easily.
Nirva instantly sensed the sword was no ordinary weapon.
But more baffling was why Suruna was here at all.
“What is the meaning of this. Weren’t you watching the situation from outside?”
At least until he had spread the Infinite Prison, Nirva had felt no sign of Suruna in the Depths.
So did that mean Suruna had noticed only afterward and entered the Depths then?
What did he think would happen?
‘Besides, the very moment the Infinite Prison ended, the Goddess awakened. There’s no way he could have come out unscathed from that....’
Suddenly—
Nirva realized.
From the timing of Suruna’s appearance to the way he had shown up clearly targeting him—
Wasn’t it all too convenient?
Suruna noticed the change in his eyes and grinned, as if to say that Nirva’s suspicion was correct.
From that smile, Nirva knew his unease had become reality.
“You planned this all along?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t deny it! You mean you had already drawn up the blueprint for this entire situation!”
“Haha. Me? Aren’t you giving me too much credit? You’re the one who said I was nothing but a greenhorn.”
“True. Back then you were. But you’ve changed.”
Suruna nodded casually.
“Right. I’ve changed. And so have you.”
“I’ve... changed?”
“Nirva. Do you not understand why Goddess Noxanna went back to sleep?”
“What are you....”
“Someone who loved humans more than anyone else would never have drowned them in slumber by her own will. You, her Apostle, didn’t even know that?”
Suruna’s words struck Nirva’s sorest nerve.
“Silence!”
Nirva flared one wing, sending out a violent wind, but it never reached Suruna.
An intangible aura scattered it all around him.
‘Impossible. Even if it was a wingbeat, it carried the power of dreams—yet it was blocked so easily?’
Had Suruna truly grown this powerful?
Just how strong had he become in the past centuries?
‘I can’t tell.’
Nirva gathered knowledge through dreams to discern his opponents, but that authority did not work on another Apostle like Suruna.
He should have been able to learn indirectly through the dreams of those around him.
‘But there’s nothing. Not a single trace.’
Not even Suruna’s closest associates knew his true strength.
Nothing about him was exposed.
And yet, having easily brushed aside Nirva’s attack, Suruna wore a strangely pained expression.
“What’s that look for?”
“Just... even though we weren’t on good terms, we were still fellow Apostles, and I acknowledged your strength.”
Suruna let out a small sigh.
Not to provoke, but out of genuine regret.
“The way you are now... you’re far too broken.”
“I’m... broken?”
“The old you was wiser. Even with your cautious nature, you never hesitated to make bold decisions. Now you’ve become too cautious, lost your sharpness, and grown stubborn.”
Suruna’s eyes turned to Noxanna’s body sealed within the Obelisk.
“Yes. It all changed after the Goddess was sealed.”
“Lies! Lies! I haven’t changed! I’m the same as before!”
“If only your link to the deity you serve had been cut off like ours, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. But that half-baked hope only pressed you deeper into despair.”
There was no way to revive a dead god.
But there was a way to awaken one who slept.
Nirva had done all this to awaken Noxanna once more.
That blind devotion, condensed over ages, had twisted into a deranged delusion.
“You were brilliant. Even now, though you’ve lost your edge, you can still make rational judgments. Back then, even I, who disliked your temperament, had to admit you shone. But now...”
“You...”
Nirva’s lips trembled.
He should have refuted Suruna’s words, but strangely, no words came.
The Suruna Nirva remembered had lost his god and possessed only a frail power.
He had hardly shown emotion, seemed like a lifeless doll, and even when his god had died, he had not raged at Lumenis.
Nirva had despised that.
Looking at Suruna had been like staring at a puppet without a soul.
At that time, Suruna had seemed so worthless that treating him as a fellow Apostle had felt like charity.
But the Suruna before him now—
‘He’s enormous.’
Even standing still, he pressed down on Nirva with crushing pressure.
An Apostle, feeling oppressed by another Apostle?
Such a thing should be impossible.
‘Am I really that weakened?’
Nirva realized his own pitiful state far too late.
It was irony itself.
The Apostle who lost his god had grown stronger over time, while the Apostle who still served his god had fallen apart.
“You said it yourself once. The path of an Apostle should be from despair to hope.”
“That was something I said long ago....”
From Suruna’s lips came the very words Nirva had once spoken to the other Apostles—directed then at Suruna himself.
“From falsehood to truth. From misfortune to happiness. From a fleeting life to one eternal.”
It was Nirva’s philosophy of dreams—and Noxanna’s favorite phrase.
“From the world of darkness to the world of light. From the world of delusion to the world of peace. From the world of affliction to the world of enlightenment.”
And what awaited at the end of that was the immortal self.
Transcending the vicious cycle of suffering in reality, seizing true freedom at last.
“Wasn’t that the dream you longed for?”
“......”
“But what have you done now? Under the guise of a false paradise, you tried to harvest human lives.”
From truth to falsehood.
From happiness to misfortune.
From fleeting life to meaningless life.
From the world of light to the world of darkness.
From the world of peace to the world of delusion.
From enlightenment—
to affliction.
“Something long festering inside you has gradually corrupted you into something else.”
“I’ve... changed?”
“Yes. That’s why you danced blindly upon the stage I had set.”
“...Fine. Suppose you’re right that I’ve changed. Then how do you explain the Goddess’s actions?”
“I already told you. She was always a god for humans. She would never make a choice that harmed them. You, of all people, should have known.”
“You calculated even that and came here for me?”
“You’re an obstacle to what comes next. Better to cut the danger at its root.”
“...So your goal from the beginning was to eliminate me.”
Nirva spoke in self-mockery and lowered his head.
“Only now, at the end, do you recover a little of your old insight. But it’s too late.”
“...Even your right-hand man, you used as bait?”
“You might see it as bait, but Franz volunteered. I only provided a useful tool to help him.”
“So that’s how it was.”
“Of course, I did nudge him in that direction. It was a long and grueling effort.”
The sudden confession left Nirva’s eyes wide.
“...What did you just say?”
He stared at Suruna, demanding an explanation.
Suruna only shrugged, laughing.
“It was exhausting. For ages I made contact with Dreamwalkers, subtly brainwashing them to believe relic fragments had to be hidden in Dreamland. It took tremendous patience.”
“What... what are you saying? Don’t tell me you orchestrated this from the very beginning? Even the day that greenhorn fell into the Depths decades ago?”
Suruna gave no answer, only smiled.
But seeing that smile, Nirva trembled.
From Suruna he read an indescribable madness.
“Don’t tell me... even that event five hundred years ago....”
Nirva recalled the dream of five hundred years past, when Basara had invaded a kingdom.
Why had Basara attacked there?
Why had a Dreamwalker been in that kingdom?
And was it really coincidence that the Dreamwalker’s descendants had reached this place now?
“You mean you’ve been working beneath the surface for centuries, using humans as puppets?”
Nirva’s lips quivered with shock.
“I... I misjudged you. You haven’t just grown more cunning. You’ve grown more evil.”
“I know. That’s why they called me the Great Demon.”
“No. This isn’t mere evil! There’s madness in you that defies comprehension! You—those events five hundred years ago—”
“Yes.”
Suruna accepted without hesitation.
“I did it.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t supposed to happen then. Not the way I wanted. Wrong place, wrong time. So I overturned the whole board.”
“By using your fellow Apostle Basara?”
“Persuading a creature of blind rage was easy. He was a time bomb, liable to explode anytime. I couldn’t leave him loose.”
“So you decided to take him out with the situation.”
“He wasn’t useful to me.”
“And waking me—that was your doing too.”
By rights, Nirva should have remained asleep for ages, like life {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} hibernating through a long winter before emerging in spring.
But Suruna had deliberately provoked him to wake.
Saying it was spring already.
“Yes. From the moment you briefly stirred decades ago, I began sending down canaries regularly. That’s how you came to awaken now.”
“My awakening, and even the Goddess opening her eyes, all of it....”
“They would have woken someday anyway. But if they appeared after everything was finished, that wouldn’t do. I needed to settle it beforehand.”
Nirva felt his head spin.
“What on earth... what happened between you and Saintess Arkenis...”
“That’s not what matters now.”
Suruna cut him off.
Nirva gave a bitter laugh at his own plight.
“You’ve been waiting for this moment from the start. You’ve danced perfectly upon the stage you spent centuries preparing. Thinking back, even that dagger was strange. The weapon Franz used was far beyond human craft. To hurt me at all, it had to have your touch.”
His gaze fell to the sword in Suruna’s right hand.
“And this longsword... that’s the main piece. The dagger was just a by-product for forging the original.”
“Oh dear. You suddenly catch on, and it’s quite startling.”
“You mock me to the end. Well, a loser has no right to protest.”
The rage that had dominated Nirva’s face faded into calm.
In his eyes shone the clarity once praised as the sharpest among Apostles.
“But that sword isn’t meant to kill me. Its power is far too great for that. One does not use an ox-cleaver to kill a chicken. And that doesn’t even look like an ox-cleaver—it’s meant for something greater. Suruna, just what are you aiming to kill?”
“Our purpose has always been the same, hasn’t it?”
At those words, Nirva nodded quietly.
“Yes. Then go ahead.”
“I intended to anyway.”
“But you know—you won’t give me a gentle death.”
“That...”
Suruna’s expression, for the first time, shed all smiles and grew cold.
It was his true face, never before shown.
“I was prepared for that from the start.”
Suruna’s sword severed Nirva’s neck.
The head scattered like sand in the wind, and so too did the bird’s body.
Suruna looked down for a moment at the dissolving remains, then raised his gaze to [Nursery Rhyme] floating high above.
“Franz. You will surely receive the Goddess’s blessing.”
He sheathed his sword at his hip and turned away.
Leaving behind only these final words:
“So on the promised day—fulfill the contract.”