11

“Darius, your worth is something you should build up yourself. If you have that, you can establish yourself as yourself. I will spare no effort in helping you do that.”

Frightened by Ains’s right arm, Darius asked,

“What in the world is that?”

“It is sorcery. Knowledge, and power. Not money, not pedigree, but your power, for your sake, yours alone. As an apology, I will offer you the power that can establish you.”

Sorcery.

The power that had overwhelmed Rubelmel standing beside the seated Darius. The power that surpassed even the woman who had overpowered Seidel, Kirishiya’s attendant and one of the kingdom’s top-class mages.

And now the Ains before Darius’s eyes was saying he would give that to him. It was terrifying, yet there was also a part of him that wanted it. A saving hand from the very enemy who had driven him into this situation. It was unpleasant, and yet—

“…I am finished anyway. No matter what becomes of me, if I can die easily, then anything is fine.”

At that feeble murmur, Ains laughed.

“You will not die, you will not die. Why are you saying such frightening things? Did I look like the Grim Reaper to you? I have been called a Demon God before, but this is the first time anyone has called me the Grim Reaper.”

“…Demon God?”

From within Ains’s light remark, a word flew in that shook Rubelmel’s mind.

“It will only take an instant, Darius. I judged that the desire you carry was enough to reach it.”

Ains placed his right hand on Darius’s head.

Though there was a glove between them, Darius’s body gave a small shudder at the sensation of that warm-less, inorganic, abnormal right hand being placed on him.

“What in the world are you? Are you not just an ordinary attendant?”

Darius peered up at Ains. At those two eyes, one blue and one red.

“I am the sorcerer Ains Silvetas. …It seems people call me the ‘Demon God.’”

A volume low enough for Darius to hear. It reached Rubelmel as well, but not Kirishiya or Seidel standing behind them.

And words that made Rubelmel’s brain go numb.

“Ains-sama! You cannot mean—”

Rubelmel’s words went no further.

And then power—knowledge—was bestowed upon Darius.

Sorcerous knowledge flashed through Darius’s mind like a lantern procession of memories. It ran through his entire body and adapted itself to him.

As naturally as moving an arm, moving a leg, moving the body, Darius accepted it as an ordinary sensation.

“…It is finished, Darius. You understand how to use sorcery, do you not?”

Ains withdrew the right hand he had placed on Darius’s head.

Darius had been sitting weakly on the floor, but he brushed the soot from his trousers with his hand and stood up.

Vitality now dwelled in his eyes.

“Kirishiya-san, do you understand the meaning of justice now?”

Ains turned to face Kirishiya.

Kirishiya’s gaze wavered as she looked into those twin eyes, blue and white.

“…I do not understand what you are trying to say, Ains-san. Nor what is wrong with me…”

Kirishiya lowered her head and turned her eyes away from Ains.

“Justice is nothing more than a convenient cause used only to preserve oneself. It has no more glorious meaning than that.”

“No meaning…”

Kirishiya did not understand what he meant.

“Justice is evil, and evil is also justice. The justice for Kirishiya-san is evil to Darius and Rubelmel-san. The justice of Darius and Rubelmel-san is evil to Kirishiya.”

Ains continued.

“To carry out justice is to carry out evil for someone else. I will give you an easy-to-understand example. The blood a hero sheds on the battlefield and the blood a bandit sheds by forcing his way into a house are equally acts of ‘killing a person.’”

“No, they are not! There is a difference in whether there is nobility in it. There is a difference in whether there is honor. There is the greatness of protecting someone, of protecting the nation. What belongs to a bandit can never be the same as a hero’s!”

Kirishiya spoke fervently. The heroes who had fallen long ago for the continued survival of the Santia Kingdom could never be said to have acted in the same way as bandits. That had to be denied. For their sake as well.

“Bandits may also have had someone they needed to protect, or someone they loved. The same is true of heroes, and the same is true of you and Seidel-san. No one lives alone. To say it is acceptable to kill because there is nobility in it is a one-sided rationalization. What exists in pure form is simply the one who kills and the one who is killed. There is no difference there; both are evil, and both are justice.”

Kirishiya could not properly look Ains in the eye.

“If you are going to brandish justice, then you must be prepared to become the vilest of villains to someone. You must not gloss it over, and you must not look away. It is not justice that punishes. It is your own hands, stained with blood, that punish.”

Ains continued as he walked toward Kirishiya.

“To punish them as criminals in accordance with the kingdom’s laws. You must not avoid that reality by numbing yourself with the word justice. Shielding yourselves behind convenient laws that you humans established for the smooth governance of your country, merely borrowing the name of justice, humans just like them will punish them with their own hands.”

Ains’s right arm had not been released.

“Kirishiya-san, did they look like criminals and arrogant people to you?”

Was the Ains walking toward Kirishiya truly the same person she had always been looking at?

The feelings and emotions she had held until now crumbled away as Ains approached and as he wove his words.

That abnormal appearance, that well-formed beautiful face. His gentle voice remained the same, and yet something was different.

Perhaps this had always been his true nature, and she simply had not known it.

“If that is how they looked to you, then Kirishiya-san, you are the same as they are. It is only the side being seen that is different.”

A decisive and absolute justice loved by all people did not exist.

Whether something was justice or evil was, in the end, nothing more than whether it was oneself or someone other than oneself.

“If you are going to look at such an illusion that exists only in a utopia, then it is better to see, touch, and drown in the evil clinging all around you. Compared to the cloud-like justice you speak of, the evil around you at least forms a firm justice from one direction, do you not think?”

After all, even evil is justice from another angle, Ains concluded with a smile.

Kirishiya’s convictions wavered.

To defeat evil for the sake of the good subjects living in the kingdom, to protect them. That was the duty born of the nobility that Kirishiya, born as royalty of the Santia Kingdom, believed in—noblesse oblige. And it was the justice Kirishiya believed in.

That wavered at Ains’s words. Violently.

“I…”

She wanted to deny it. Without even having her thoughts in order on what she wanted to say, Kirishiya opened her mouth.

It was then.

“Do not listen any further, Kirishiya.”

A voice came from behind Kirishiya.