The battlefield was a wasteland.
The barrage Isagi had unleashed had cratered the surrounding land beyond recognition — no trace remained of what had once been farmland.
Not far away, Zard stood motionless.
The jet-black armor that had encased him was almost entirely shattered now, exposing the marble-sculpted bulk of the body beneath — a body crosshatched everywhere with savage scars, and coated in... viscous toxin.
The blue-violet pignt had long since dried, clotting in patches across his skin, criss-crossing him in jagged lines like centipedes that had crawled over every inch of him and stiffened in place.
Zard looked like a stone statue that had weathered untold centuries — crumbling, slowly, on the verge of collapsing into dust.
"Hgh——"
A heavy, labored breath escaped the man.
And then.
In the next instant, he had already closed the distance — right in front of Isagi.
"!!!"
BOOM!
Greatsword t greatsword. The violent crash of the impact shattered the already-ravaged ground beneath them once more, splitting and cratering it further.
From where Zard stood.
The boy gripping the [Moonlight Greatsword] remained a swaying, swimming blur — near one mont, far the next — impossible to pin down, impossible to say with any certainty where he truly was.
Even now, as their weapons locked, Zard felt nothing.
His body had gone completely numb.
It wasn't only Isagi's perception-warping ability — Zard himself had reached his absolute limit.
From his throat ca only ragged sounds, barely human.
He was running almost entirely on instinct now.
Zard swung his greatsword like a man wringing out the very last drop of life left in him — spending it all, holding nothing back.
From the mont he had exhaled that Behemoth toxin mist, his life had begun its final countdown.
No.
Death had actually co for him long before that.
From the instant he swallowed the Behemoth's flesh and blood, this day had been inevitable.
In a way, that was a rcy.
In the last monts of his life, Zard fixed his gaze on the wavering silhouette of the boy before him.
He thought he finally understood what Erebus had ant when he spoke of the future — that a city like this still had an adventurer like that in it.
It seed the god had been right. A [Hero] would appear. Just... not him.
"Heh."
Zard laughed.
The greatsword in his hand — for the first ti in his life — felt impossibly, unbearably heavy.
So heavy.
It was beyond rely being unable to swing. Even holding it had beco impossible. It slipped from his grasp and fell, crashing down into the ravaged earth below.
Zard opened his mouth.
He still wanted to say sothing — last words, perhaps, or so final remark.
What drifted past his eyes, for no reason he could na, was that vast, boundless black desert — a land of death where nothing existed but stars, a crescent moon, and the howl of the wind.
He should have died there.
After the battle to bring down the [Land-King], he should have died.
So——
Zard's body gave out completely.
Isagi, still bracing against the weight of the man's heavy blade, suddenly felt the resistance vanish. Then he saw it — that massive, pitch-black greatsword dropped to the earth, and alongside it, the man's towering fra ca to rest. Still upright. Still in the posture of a warrior in the middle of battle, standing before him.
Except.
All light had left his eyes. The fight had burned away the very last flicker of life left in him.
Zard was dead.
Like the black greatsword that had fallen from his hands.
It was over.
Isagi was silent for a mont. He stowed his own weapon, then reached down and picked up Zard's fallen black greatsword as well.
This weapon — a Tier One armant that had once slain the [Land-King] — was now in the sa state as its master: on the verge of shattering, riddled with dense networks of cracks from end to end.
It could never be used again.
A single look was enough to know that.
Everything had settled. Starlight and moonlight spilled across the scene. The silence that fell was almost eerie in its completeness. Isagi stood there for a while, looking at Zard's dead form without a word. Then, after a long mont, he took up the black greatsword and prepared to carry out the man's final wish.
To take the weapon to the distant death-desert beyond the city.
No one had told him. Isagi had once read it in the "journal" an adventurer had written down — that this was Zard's wish.
Though.
By rights, the tiline had already changed the mont he made this journey back. The adventurer's journal that had recorded this wish should have "changed" too — altered by Isagi's battle with Zard.
The fight had lasted roughly an hour and a bit.
The ti remaining, Isagi and Ryuu-senpai and Adi would naturally spend returning to the city. Every ti-travel trip had a hard limit of twenty-four hours — he hadn't co all this way just to waste it.
Of course, the original plan had included challenging Alfia as well — after all, the whole point had been to stop her and Zard from heading to the city and triggering the [Great Dispute].
But because Isagi and Ryuu-senpai's arrival seed to have already altered the tiline sohow, the two of them had never been going to the city in the first place.
Which ant the original plan — fighting to stop them from returning to the city — had beco unnecessary.
The earlier battle with Zard had happened purely because Zard had asked for it himself. Nothing more.
Still.
Before leaving, Isagi looked toward the woman who remained quietly by the farmhouse window — watching Zard's death with no expression on her face, cool and detached as ever.
A rather significant question had taken root in his mind.
Now that the tiline had changed, Alfia truly would not be going to Orario anymore.
Which ant she would not die in the Dungeon either. In that case — would the "Alfia" he had once encountered in the Dungeon still exist?
Beneath the night sky, heavy with stars.
Isagi spread his golden wings and carried Ryuu-senpai and Adi back toward Orario.
A certain dark god had tried to hitch a ride, but there simply wasn't room — and besides, there was no reason to bother with him right now, so Isagi left him to find his own carriage back to the city.
Then, midway through the flight, another question occurred to him.
If the [Great Dispute] no longer existed — would Erebus still be put on trial as the "leader" of the Dark Familias?
He hadn't thought about that before going back. He hadn't thought to ask Goddess Astrea — the one who had carried out that judgnt — what had ultimately beco of things.
Or perhaps.
She had never returned to the heavens at all, and was still sowhere down here in the mortal world?
It seed that by traveling back into the past, the world had beco incomparably more tangled and complicated——
Well. As long as the end result was good, that was all that mattered.
That was what Isagi believed. Just as he believed now — with Adi lying across his back alongside Ryuu-senpai — that whatever else might be uncertain, he had saved the girl's life. And the lives of countless citizens and adventurers in the city. That much was beyond dispute.
And now, the task ahead of him was to save even more.
That was Ryuu-senpai's plan for the next step.
It was also the final stage of the "three-step plan" she had laid out after traveling back — naly, to deal as quickly as possible with the Dark Familias currently entrenched in the city, and bring the so-called "Dark Era" to an early end.
And beyond that — to prevent the [Nightmare of the 27th Floor] and the annihilation of the [Astrea Familia] from ever coming to pass.
At that rate, maybe even...
No.
They might even be able to deal with the Dionysus and [Artificial Labyrinth] problem ahead of ti — and the "corrupted Spirit" that was still developing deep in the Dungeon's lower reaches——
There was so much they could do.
And though all of these events had ultimately been resolved in the future, nipping them in the bud now would an far fewer sacrifices.
On the way back.
Isagi and Ryuu-senpai talked through topics like these. She had clearly been thinking along the sa lines — and had spent the past month turning it all over deeply in her mind.
What surprised him, though.
Was that Adi was thinking the sa way. She had ntioned wanting to help a close friend — and this was what she had ant.
As the younger sister of the Ganesha Familia captain, the girl was no fool.
Quite the opposite.
She was sharp — because during that stretch of ti, the two girls had apparently put their heads together on this constantly, and had already worked out a complete, thoroughly viable plan of action.
"From here on, Isagi just needs to follow what we say. If we can manage it in two or three trips..."
Ryuu said it with complete conviction, her voice firm and unwavering.
"Then let us create the most perfect future and ending possible!"
____
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