While in Babel, the specter faced defeat at the hands of the Demon King of Incarceration.
He yearned for death, yet he found himself denied even that. As the Demon King of Incarceration said, he wasn’t a deity. He was a Demon King. Instead of fulfilling the specter’s desperate wishes, he offered only mockery and scorn.
The specter stood on the brink of despair.
He wandered about aimlessly after he was cast out from Babel. He was at a loss and felt lost, not knowing what to do next. If he truly desired death instead of seeking answers, he could end his own life.
—Weren’t you seeking death?
But a hollow death was not what he sought.
—You are a lump of contradictions.
The specter had found himself unable to respond to the whispered question of the Demon King of Incarceration.
It wasn't because he didn't know the answer. Rather, he knew it too well to respond.
The specter was acutely aware of his own contradictions more than anyone else. He desired death while rejecting suicide. He loathed the idea of a meaningless demise.
To die for something, for someone.
That was the kind of death he yearned for. He despised a worthless and miserable end. Even by his own admission, it was greedy and shameless, yet he sincerely longed for such a death.
'Like Hamel?' the specter realized.
Hamel was mocked for being stupid in the fairy tale, but wasn’t his end heroic?
[...Hamel was always in conflict with his comrades. Stupid Hamel. Violent Hamel. But he loved his companions. Even when he was wounded and bleeding, he didn't flee but sacrificed himself for them.]
Hamel's death had not come as a result of his comrades’ betrayal. Instead, he had sacrificed himself for them.
[In his final moments, Hamel regretted not being honest to his comrades while in the arms of his beloved companions. Sienna, I really liked you.]
Was that really true? The specter retained all of Hamel’s previous memories.
But the memories of his dying moments were manipulated by Amelia Merwin. However, more manipulation and deletion of his memories would have resulted in a less complete formation of Hamel’s identity in the specter. In other words, it was highly likely that the memories he possessed before his ascent to Babel three hundred years ago truly belonged to Hamel.
"..." The specter continued to ponder silently.
Although the specter didn't believe he'd leave such a testament, recalling Hamel's memories led him to a conclusion.
Amid a crumbling world, camaraderie, and endless battles, Hamel had never acknowledged or expressed his feelings. However, it seemed he did harbor special feelings for Sienna.
Looking back far into the memories... he found many peculiarities with Sienna’s behavior as well. It appeared she, too, harbored and hid tender feelings for Hamel.
[Anise, pray for me.]
This testament wasn't hard to accept. In his memories, Anise was occasionally as cold as a snake, but more than any other cleric, she sought and longed for salvation, not just for herself but for everyone around. Even if it wasn’t Hamel and someone else was dying beside her, Anise would always pray sincerely.
[Molon. You're the bravest warrior of all.]
Foolishness and bravery were often separated by a thin line. Even the specter thought Molon was brave but not without foolish aspects.
[Vermouth. Be sure to defeat the Demon King.]
The specter had erased from his memory the image of Vermouth seated and chained in the Temple of Destruction. He also erased from his memory the dark power of Destruction that had become his blood, bone, and flesh. He even erased the memory of Vermouth allowing such a thing to happen.
Indeed, one thing was clear: Even at the very end, Hamel wished to kill the Demon King.
"Do I wish the same?" the specter mused while standing still.
He had fought the Demon King of Incarceration in a desperate attempt to find answers. To die. Yet, he couldn't reach him. This power, the power of Destruction, was not enough to kill the Demon King of Incarceration.
What, then, was his existence for? What did Vermouth desire by creating him to be this way? What could his living self accomplish now?
After being banished from Babel, the specter plunged into such musings for a while. He revisited Hamel's memories and pondered as himself rather than Hamel. He felt with his bones the emotions like jealousy, envy, and greed.
He realized the need for a different kind of confirmation and reality check.
So he met Noir Giabella. The emotions he felt upon facing her were not much different from before. The specter harbored hostility and murderous intent towards Noir. These negative emotions belonged to Hamel.
He couldn't easily escape these feelings. When facing Noir, the specter was Hamel.
‘But what about this time?’ he asked himself.
He ignored the churning in his mind as he raised his head to look at the sky.
The cloudy sky hung low, and the rain poured down ceaselessly without any signs of stopping.
He was in the northern kingdom of Ruhr, located far from Helmuth’s Giabella City. It was impossible to traverse such a distance as quickly as the specter, even if one was using the warp-gates.
Moreover, the specter was currently standing at the northernmost point of Ruhr. Before him lay stretches of the mountains that marked the end of the world, Lehainjar.
At first, he had struggled to leap across vast distances, but now, it was familiar to him. It was still difficult for him to pinpoint an exact location to arrive at, but he could transport himself to an approximate location. And he had brought himself to Lehainjar.
"Brave Molon," the specter said.
Molon was located somewhere in the vicinity. The thought filled the specter with a fearful anticipation, and his breath turned white and scattered in the cold. He pulled the hood of his robe tighter.
Lehainjar was vast.
Finding a single human in these enormous mountains was no easy task. It could take months of aimless wandering or even years before he found his target.
However, there was a way to draw him out deliberately. If Molon really was in these mountains, just a slight stir from the specter would bring him out.
If he was the brave or rather foolhardy Molon that Hamel remembered, he would definitely show himself as soon as he sensed any dark power stirring in his territory.
"I guess I don’t even need to draw him out," the specter murmured.
Detecting a 'familiar' dark power in this colossal mountain range, especially near the top of the Grand Hammer Canyon, was not a challenging task for the Incarnation of Destruction.
With just a single step, his surroundings changed. The specter suddenly appeared in a new place, just like a supernatural phenomenon. He took a few deep breaths and started walking slowly.
Woo woo woo….
The snow had heavily fallen where he had just been, but here, the blizzard was so fierce it was hard to stand. The specter smelled the distinct, unpleasant stench of rotting flesh and blood in the fierce snowstorm. But to him, the scent wasn’t offensive or pungent.
Rather, it was comforting, familiar, intimate, and welcoming. It was something he had missed.
He wanted to deny it, but he could not. Shaking his head, the specter chuckled softly in acceptance, “Haha.” The stench, not quite foul to him, was tinged with the dark power of Destruction. He looked up while clutching his hood to prevent the wind from ripping it off.
He saw something hurtling towards him from high above, far away in the distance.
It was the head of a monstrous creature, severed and spewing dark purple blood, flying towards the specter.
In a fleeting moment, the specter understood what this monster was. He remembered the tale from Molon’s homeland, the one regarding the legend of the Bayar Tribe that Molon had once mentioned. The monster he saw was the Nur, said to cross over from the world’s End.
"So it is," the specter murmured.
This creature was the Nur. The Nur was fundamentally different from the demons of Ravesta, like Alphiero. The Nur was a ‘true’ spawn of Destruction. However, the specter loathed the kinship he felt with the severed head of Nur.
Crash!
The head of Nur narrowly missed him and crashed behind him. The ground erupted as if a bomb had detonated, causing snow to spew high into the air. However, the specter stood unflinching and unmoved.
He didn't look back. His gaze was still fixated on the distant sky.
What expression should he wear to greet what came next?
Which of his emotions should he follow?
Suddenly, the surrounding snow evaporated into a mist, and the specter’s gaze lowered slightly amidst the dense fog.
He stood before the founder of the Ruhr Kingdom, the one who secluded himself in these mountains for over a hundred years. He stood before the one who decapitated the monster and hurled it away.
The Brave Molon. The Foolish Molon. He stood before the specter. Molon glared down at the specter, and the specter keenly observed what kind of emotions the man harbored in his eyes — perplexity and confusion — and reflected in those large eyes was a man in a hood.
What expression should he display? Which emotions should he follow? Such self-centered, arrogant, and greedy deliberations were not for the specter to make. With a bitter smile, he loosened his grasp on his hood.
The blizzard swept the hood back, causing his hair to flutter in the wind. He faced Molon with the unscarred face of Hamel.
Molon’s already wide eyes started trembling. His eyebrows twitched, and his bearded face quivered as he opened his mouth.
"How dare you!"
The emotions of confusion and perplexity that filled his eyes changed instantly.
The current Molon was an entirely different person from the Molon Ruhr in the specter's memory. The specter was unfamiliar with Molon displaying such rage, hostility, hatred, and murderous intent.
However, this unfamiliarity was, perhaps, expected. Molon had every right to feel these emotions.
“You dare!” Molon spat once again.
And so did Sienna, Eugene Lionheart, and the others. They, too, had every right to feel age, hostility, hatred, and murderous intent toward the specter. It was just as the specter feared. Facing everything related to his fake memories wasn’t what he desired.
So he had made every attempt to avoid it. He had wished for death at the hands of the Demon King of Incarceration.
However, he knew such an end wouldn’t provide the answers he sought. Only now did the specter come close to understanding who he was.
“You dare!”
Molon's boiling anger, hostility, hatred, murderous intent, distorted face, gaze, and outcry — weren't they all proof of who the specter was?
"How dare you come before me!" Molon bellowed in rage.
Rumble!
The mere act of releasing his emotions caused the snow to evaporate into clouds of fog, which was immediately blown away. However, Molon’s thunderous yell did more than just disperse the fog; it shook the very space around them.
The specter remained silent, for he had indeed come to Molon seeking answers. He realized the selfishness of his own quest.
From Molon’s perspective, he was witnessing the undead resurrection of a comrade who perished three centuries ago. The fact that Molon didn’t express other doubts or confusion indicated he might have already heard about the Death Knight from Eugene.
Thus, there was no hesitation in Molon’s actions. He screamed and extended his hand towards the specter. He tightened his grasp as his hand approached the specter.
The specter felt as if he were being grasped . As ridiculous as it sounded, Molon had twisted the very fabric of space by simply clenching the air. He had compressed the space and exerted a numbing pressure on the specter.
Most demons would be crushed by this act alone. However, the specter was not an ordinary being. Molon’s transcendent attack was born from simple, brute force, and it was possible for the specter to escape from it easily.
But he didn't. The specter stood still and faced Molon. He stared into his wide, turbulent eyes filled with anger, hostility, hatred, and murderous intent.
And sorrow.
‘I shouldn’t avoid this,’ the specter thought as Molon’s fist was almost upon him. He didn’t even try to block it.
Boom!
The explosion seemed to cause the entirety of Lehainjar to shake. Molon appeared baffled after throwing his punch wholeheartedly. He had felt some resistance when he clenched his fist, but he had felt uncertain until the moment his fist made contact. Even now, it didn't feel like his fist had connected.
“…..”
It was a strange feeling. He didn’t feel like his fist connected? What did that even mean? Molon’s fist was bloodied. He had blown away the specter’s body with his attack, and what remained of the specter’s body was only his lower half.
"Why didn’t you do anything?" Molon gritted his teeth as he spoke.
The specter's lower half stood up from the ground as he was perfectly revived.
"I felt I shouldn't avoid it,” the specter said with a hollow laugh.
"Shouldn’t, you say?" asked Molon with narrowed eyes. His hair bristled in anger as he asked, "Didn’t you think you shouldn’t come here at all?"
"I did," the specter nodded. “But I thought I had to come."
"Are you mocking me?" Molon asked, enraged.
Heat emitted from Moron’s body as he faced the specter. The longer they confronted each other, the more uncontrollable his emotions became.
Molon Ruhr had been ridiculed as a fool by his comrades since long ago. However, he never took offense to their teasing. He had crossed the line of life and death many times with his comrades. They could call him a fool, and it wouldn’t matter.
But the same didn’t hold true for this existence. Even if the entire world considered Molon a fool, this existence could not do the same.
"Do you know me?" Molon demanded.
"Molon Ruhr," the specter replied.
Molon raised his hand above his head after hearing the specter’s response.
"No. You don't know me," he declared.
A flying axe tore through space and landed in Molon’s grasp.