4. The Jet-Black Hero.
At Flamme's grave, where Oun Gol bloomed in beautiful abundance, Frieren asked, "Ainz, how long are you going to stay here?"
"Hard to say. I haven't decided yet. Since things have turned out this way, I suppose I'll take my time and think about it."
To one who would live for eternity, any time spent here would amount to no more than an instant.
Ever since he had become this sort of being, time was the one thing he had in excess. There was no reason he could not spend a little of it watching over Flamme's grave.
He wanted to linger a little longer over this faint emotion he could barely feel.
"I see. Then I'll be going first."
But the elf chose to move forward.
A funeral is what comes after one has put death in order—so that one may then begin to imagine the future beyond it.
Frieren's clock, the one that would greet the next generation, was flowing not within herself but in the world outside, and her master's teachings remained in her heart, always with her. She could no longer stay bound to this place.
"Frieren, what will you do from here on?"
"For now, training, I guess. I've studied magic all this time in order to eliminate demons."
"So not much different from usual."
"Live without drawing attention. That was one of the things Master told me."
So Flamme had said something like that.
*She wasn't wrong.*
What Frieren had learned was, by nature, magic for killing demons, and deception meant to exploit the gaps in the way demons think.
There was the Super-Tier Magic she had learned through him, but those spells were far too difficult to use in actual combat. Outside of special circumstances, she likely would never be able to use them.
"So you'll only step onto the stage of the world when it's time to kill the Demon King."
At those words, Frieren stopped just as she was about to leave the gravesite and asked one last question.
"I feel like I'd regret it if I left without saying this after all."
With her staff tucked under one arm across her back, Frieren asked, "Want to come with me?"
"I'm surprised you're the one bringing that up."
"The time I spent living with you wasn't bad."
She looked at Ainz's back as he sat on a rock, gazing at the gravestone.
Frieren was blunt and rarely showed emotion, but what she said was always sincere.
In truth, her words were surely not empty politeness, but genuine feeling.
But not now.
"I refuse."
"Yeah, I figured."
Even Frieren nodded at the firm answer.
It was the look of someone who had asked anyway, despite already knowing.
*She's learned only the bad things from Flamme.*
"If you need companions, aren't there the goblins? Where did those fellows go?"
There were nineteen inscriptions carved into the gravestone.
The letters, scratched into stone, were crooked and uneven, but their meaning was immediately clear.
They were the names the goblins had each given themselves.
"They became independent."
"What? Explain."
"I don't know the details either, but after Master left with the goblins, the flute she always carried was gone."
*Seeing the gravestone, I had wondered if perhaps that was what happened. So the ownership was transferred.*
The Horn of the Goblin General was closer in nature to a summoning effect.
If it could be passed on to another person, then maintaining the summon should have been possible.
Whether she had created some magic to transfer ownership or not did not matter.
What mattered was simply that those fellows had mourned Flamme's death and come here.
In Yggdrasil, if a summon was taken away, its loyalty would transfer as well, making the whole thing feel rather hollow.
Even so, the fact that they had come here meant the time they had spent together had not been meaningless.
He did not know into whose hands it had been passed, but if Flamme had entrusted it to them, then it must have been the right decision.
"Someday, let's meet again."
"Yes. Someday."
He did not know when that would be.
It might come sooner than expected, or after the Demon King had fallen, or perhaps in a future even farther away than that.
After seeing Frieren off beyond the barrier, he sensed a new presence.
"...So you've come."
It was a flow of mana so familiar that he recognized it without even looking.
The flower field rose toward the sky, and the figure of a girl appeared behind him.
"Serie."
"Yes. Have you calmed down now?"
"That sort of feeling blew away long ago."
Serie walked over to Ainz, crouched down, and looked at the grave.
"I know. I know you're dried up inside. But if you treat the emotion you felt then as though it never existed, then it truly will disappear."
Serie opened her hand and wove light.
"Maybe when you were younger. But after becoming an adult, you never showed it even once."
Within that light, a flower bud took shape and leaves unfurled.
"I thought it was only a trivial spell that did nothing but make flowers. It was only natural."
With delicate control of mana, she shaped the flowers into a crown and placed it atop the gravestone.
"You should have shown her. Though even thinking that now is a trivial thing."
Serie rose from her crouch.
"Have you come to like magic?"
"I still don't really know. But if I ever do come to like it, then the magic that makes a flower field will probably be one of them."
"You say the same thing she did. You truly are alike."
The time he had spent with Flamme was very short, and in truth he had spent far longer with Serie.
And yet that brief span with Flamme had shaken his inner self far more deeply.
"Serie, I..."
"I know."
Serie cut him off before the words could even leave his mouth, as though she had already predicted them.
"Flamme's death is only a beginning. After this, the world will enter an age of upheaval."
A time when flowers danced.
When leaves journeyed to distant lands.
They would become countless seeds of magic, and bloom beautifully.
"Countless forms of magic will overflow—enough to surpass even the time you spent with me."
An age when anyone could use magic.
The era Flamme had dreamed of, and the one she had brought about.
"One thousand years."
Serie spoke.
"That is how long it will be before you meet me again."
It was also a promise to one who was about to depart.
The end of a meeting is always parting, but for elves, it is not the end.
If one lives forever, then after enough circling, one will return to that same place again.
If memories are sent onward into the future, then nothing is truly over.
"It won't take that long. Time is eternity to us."
So let us go on an adventure.
Let us go on a journey where small things become a grand adventure that ends with the fall of the Demon King.
Let us drink with the rain in some nameless tavern and speak of those days with companions, or become the kind of adventure a bard from the city would sing to children in the countryside.
That grand heroic epic may one day even reach heaven.
This is the long epilogue of those who live through eternity.
*
And so, a long time passed after Flamme died.
The fires of the city, now in an age of upheaval, burned with lively vigor.
A tavern.
In the kitchen, where the lights never went out at night, a man was busily working his knife.
"Reka, is the food not ready yet? At this rate, it won't be done in time for the customers' meal."
"Wait, Blund. This genius of cooking is in the middle of turning this worthless meat into a masterpiece."
"Fuehrer is so hungry his stomach's growling. Even when I wave his paw like this, he doesn't have any energy."
The girl Blund, moving the front legs of the large white dog Fuehrer up and down, pestered the cook, Reka.
"My cooking isn't dog food!"
"But the food you make suits Fuehrer's taste the best, Reka. Right, Fuehrer?"
"Woof!"
"Didn't you just say he was too hungry to bark, Blund? He seems to be barking just fine!"
At Reka's shout, she whispered softly, "Oh dear, Fuehrer. We got caught."
"Whine."
Blund tapped the table and said, "The merchant cheated you in the first place, so it wasn't good meat anyway. How about compromising a little?"
"You think it makes sense to serve a dish like this to customers?"
"That's because you have that strange conviction that if you don't like the dish, you won't take money for it."
"Sell delicious food. Don't sell bad food. Is that strange?"
"That's why you're poor even though you're a good cook. It's a miracle the madam still lets us stay here... Hm?"
At that moment, Blund's ears perked toward the distant doorway.
Fuehrer barked a beat later as well.
"Woof!"
"I know, Fuehrer. Let's go."
Blund rose from her chair to go greet the visitor, but stumbled as she walked.
"Ugh."
"Hey, be careful! You can barely see as it is!"
"Oh, come on. What can I do if I can't smell well because you're making such delicious food? Come here, Fuehrer. Will you guide me?"
With the help of Fuehrer, her clever guide dog, Blund approached the door and cheerfully called his name.
"Mr. Momon! Welcome back!"
"Were you waiting for me?"
A man in full black armor, carrying a greatsword on his back.
The weapon of the man called Momon was too large to simply be called a sword.
"Not really. Reka was the only one complaining and grumbling."
"Really?"
"I was not!"
Ignoring the shout from the kitchen, Blund reached out and felt along Momon's arm.
It was a gesture to confirm that he was truly there.
Standing across the boundary between outside and in, Momon reached out with his gauntleted hand and stroked Blund's head.
The hand was thick, and perhaps because its presence felt so solid and certain, her head tilted after its movement.
When Blund lifted her eyes, they looked somewhat clouded white.
Carrying the sack slung over his back, Momon walked into the kitchen and set his load on the floor.
"It's the meat you requested for the job. I'll go upstairs and rest now."
"Thanks, Momon. You're my hero!"
He gave a small wave and headed straight up the stairs.
Reka smiled as he pulled the ingredients from the sack.
"Now I can make the dish I'd been thinking of."
Seeing him grin to himself, Blund spoke as if disgusted.
"You're really hopeless when it comes to cooking. The people in this tavern don't even care that much."
"But you eat it so happily."
"Woof!"
"Right, and Fuehrer too."
As Reka briskly prepared the food, his skill was worthy of a first-rate chef.
"It'd be nice if Mr. Momon would eat with us too."
"He says he can't share a meal for religious reasons, so it can't be helped. Why, Blund? Curious about the face under the helmet?"
"I don't really care."
She ruffled her hair, hiding cheeks that had gone a little red.
"It's just... I've thought this ever since he saved me from that monster. How should I put it? He felt faint somehow. Like a person with no scent."
"Is there such a thing as a person with no smell?"
"Right? Even you, Reka, reek of cooking. Um... though it's not that he smells like nothing at all."
"Then what is it? What are you trying to say?"
It was something left behind after death, a remnant of the dead.
"Um... maybe he smelled a little like the bones we give Fuehrer?"
"Woof!"
"No, no! Calm down."
She soothed Fuehrer, who had barked reflexively at the word "bones."
Bringing out the food, Reka said in disbelief, "Bones? What, am I supposed to boil soup with them? Stop talking nonsense and go take the food up. And don't forget Fuehrer's share. I trust you because of the time we've spent together, but don't you dare spill it."
"I know already."
With Fuehrer beside her, she climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to Momon's room.
"I've brought your food."
"Come in."
She opened the door, entered, and set the meal on the table.
"Since you brought the ingredients this time, you get served first. I also put in extra solids."
The smiling girl's grin turned toward Momon.
His helmet had been placed atop a drawer, and his face was fully exposed.
"Impressive. You don't waver at all."
"The first thing I did when I came here was memorize where everything was and learn the layout of the building. And if Fuehrer guides me, it's even more perfect."
Inside that stifling armor was the form of a skeleton, but Blund showed no sign of noticing.
Because the girl could not see.
"Since you're here, you may eat some if you like."
"Hehe, really?"
"I had some snacks outside, so I'm not very hungry."
The man currently staying at the tavern, an active adventurer known as the Jet-Black Momon.
His name was Ainz.
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