First, I had to take care of the things Mari had asked of me. The first was activating the Roundtable Hold, meant to select a king.
Mari had already made most of it, so all I had to do was activate it, then let the Finger Maidens of the Tarnished know such a place existed and put it to use.
After activating it, I went to see the Two Fingers for the first time in a while. That bastard was still afraid of me. Seeing that, the Finger Reader Crone ordered me to leave. Why does everyone hate only me?
As time passed, countless Tarnished gathered at the Roundtable Hold. While the strong and weak alike assembled, a Tarnished named Vyke appeared.
Was it finally over?
He was the first to gather two Great Runes and befriend an ancient dragon, so I had high hopes for him. Then some dog bastard like Shabriri appeared while I let my guard down and led him astray.
Does that bastard keep coming back no matter how many times I kill him, like a lizard?
Now I had to wait all over again.
Though, he did have a problem.
A king needed to bear a suitable burden, but he could not concern himself with too many things.
Time passed again. I waited for the next king to appear, painting landscapes as a hobby, when a problem arose. Had these Tarnished lost their minds? They started attacking me.
What the hell are these things?
Did they hear something from the Fingers?
After I cut off their heads dozens, thousands of times, they became less frequent. Then I met a strange one.
"What? Isn't that Farnam's Armor? Why is that armor here? Did it get patched? Either way, I can target him, so he must be a mob, right?"
He spoke in some strange language I could not understand—or perhaps could not remember. Either way, when he approached in a fighting stance, I had no choice but to cut off his head just like the others.
I had been wondering where I had seen that armor before. It belonged to Vargram, so why was this guy wearing it? Vargram had been a king candidate too. Had he given up as well?
Leaving behind another disappointment, just like Vyke, I found that more and more Tarnished were speaking strangely, starting with this fellow. Before long, individuals who had gathered two Great Runes began appearing one by one.
There were three in total: the one whose head I had cut off before, one wearing the Night's Cavalry Set, and the last one... Was that even clothing?
Why was he wearing rags?
But the one in the Night's Cavalry Set would not do.
Looking inside him, I saw that Shabriri had already gotten to him.
Unlike Vyke, this one had accepted it completely.
I would kill him as soon as the Rune of Death spread.
And the first one who had spoken strangely—the head... Right. I'd just call him Head from now on.
Head was wearing a ring.
Judging by its shape, was that the Dark Moon Ring?
It seemed Ranni had taken quite a liking to him.
Come to think of it, Godfrey was late.
Had Mari set his guidance on a different path?
Fine by me.
I happened to have something to do.
Mari had asked me to deal with the remnant of the old age, so I followed the guidance to Farum Azula, where she had told me to kill the Dragonlord. I leaped directly into the time storm at its center, and there he was.
His wounds had not healed, and his heads were still torn off. It really was him.
Perhaps sensing my arrival, he descended to the ground and roared, unleashing hundreds of bolts of lightning. But I was already protected by [Golden Lightning Fortification], so even when they hit me, they did no damage.
As I charged through lightning that did not even itch, he finally drew upon the power of storm clouds. He rose into the air and vanished in an instant. It was the storm form he had used before.
The moment I saw it, I made my decision. I gripped [Golden Lightning Spear] in my hand and drove it into my own body. [Golden Lightning Fortification] was canceled, golden lightning wrapped around me, and bolts stretched from my back, flickering like wings.
This was my personal trump card, created by adapting the Dragonbolt Blessing. The instant I drove my own [Golden Lightning Spear] into myself, nearly every attack would be repelled, and my limits would disappear.
The drawback, if you could call it that, was that so much lightning concentrated around me that it drew even more bolts into the area, and the duration was short. It was absolutely not because my memory was poor.
As he charged at me, I pulled out the greatshield with the solar eclipse motif from my back and used it to soften the impact. I rolled backward once, regained my stance, and watched my surroundings. When he appeared behind me, I blocked with the shield again and deflected him away.
With that enormous body, every one of his physical attacks was lethal. Blocking or deflecting them one after another in such a short span wore even me down. This lizard had clearly held a grudge over losing to me before.
"The pain that cannot kill me becomes strength." Perhaps he was like me, because he only grew more desperate and relentless.
As our exchange continued, Placidusax appeared in an instant, raised his entire body, and held an enormous lightning spear in both hands.
He intended to crush me with it, but his opening was far too great. The moment had come for us to deliver our final blows.
I discarded my shield as I deflected [Placidusax's Great Lightning Spear] into the ground. Wherever the shield touched, it evaporated. As he brought his palm down upon the lightning spear embedded in the earth, I drew a brass dagger from my side and used [Raptor of the Mists].
An Ash of War that predicted the exact timing of an opponent's attack, pretended to take the blow, and launched a surprise attack from midair.
It had originally been something close to a trick, but Mari and I modified the Ash of War to briefly erase that moment of time before the attack actually hit. Unfortunately, using it destroyed equipment that Mari had personally blessed. I only had four weapons left now.
Setting that regret aside, I activated the Great Lightning Spear at the exact moment. Time vanished for an instant, and as I fell from the air, I compressed [Golden Lightning Spear] as tightly as possible into my beloved longsword—the sword that represented my ordinariness—until its blade shone gold.
The golden longsword looked ready to burst apart at any moment. But I had already reinforced it with the Dragonlord's scales, trophies from an earlier battle. It had become nearly impossible to destroy, refusing to break.
Thrust.
Then, gripping the longsword in a reverse hold, I drove it straight into Placidusax's torso without resistance. The old me, who could not even leave a scratch on him, was nowhere to be seen.
"Burst."
Golden lightning erupted from within his torso. One final lightning strike, larger than the great spear the Dragonlord had created, shot out in every direction.
As that final blow slowly turned his body to ash, one of his heads turned toward me and, perhaps with its final dying breath, tried to unleash [Placidusax's Ruin].
Just as I thought. I could not let my guard down around him.
I immediately swung my sword and severed his two remaining heads. Even at the end, his eyes stared at me, filled with hatred.
When I killed the Dragonlord, I received his Remembrance in my hand. I shattered it, and the massive amount of runes it released accumulated not in me, but in my sword. Apparently, they suited the sword better.
While I rested briefly at a Site of Grace, the Rune of Death—Destined Death—spread throughout the Lands Between. At last, death had spread through this world, and I was able to enter the Erdtree.
Mari would be waiting inside, but there was an order to things. I used all my strength to refuse the Beast that was keeping me in check. That meant a king candidate had to draw its attention elsewhere before I could enter.
So I moved at once, heading for Leyndell, now reduced to ash, and swiftly began searching for the one in the Night's Cavalry Set.
"Ahhh, you are the enemy of chaos!!!!!!"
When I found him, I saw that he was traveling with another strange fellow wearing an iron kasa that covered his eyes. I immediately drew the Bastard Sword from my back to cut off his head, but he shouted and blocked it. I failed to cut him down, instead cleaving his long sword and torso in two.
So it was that rat bastard.
He still was not dead?
The Night's Cavalry fellow finally took a combat stance, facing me with a lance and the sacred seal of the Frenzied Flame in hand. I wanted to rush in immediately, but he was the Lord of Frenzied Flame, one who had fully embraced the Frenzied Flame. He was not someone I could take lightly.
I swiftly brought the Bastard Sword down on him in an overhead slash with one hand, but he raised the lance overhead with both hands to block it. The ground beneath his feet caved in. The instant he stopped the blow, he slightly lowered the lance to his left and deflected it away. Then, covering his eyes with his left hand, he spewed Frenzied Flame in an instant.
But I had seen that trick plenty of times. Rather than resist as my weapon was deflected, I stepped forward with my left foot and spun around it, evading the continuing torrent of Frenzied Flame. Carried by that spin, I kicked his head with my right foot, striking him at the wrist. The moment my foot touched the ground, I slashed diagonally upward from the lower left.
A line passed through his arm. Before it could fall away, I stepped into him, seized his left arm, drove my sword deep into his torso, and twisted the hilt.
"Sorry, Milli—"
Ignoring his words, I released his left arm and shoved him away. At the same time, I pulled out my sword, cut off his head, and flicked the blood from the blade.
I cut away the helmet from his falling head to inspect his face. The light of the Frenzied Flame in his eyes was already about to die out. Now that the flame in his eyes had gone out and the Rune of Death had spread, the Lord of Frenzied Flame met his eternal death.
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