Manus? Who Is He? (3)

When Fabrice returned to the mansion, he met me outside with Talis and Bioss. Seated in the study, I asked about that day’s events.

“I said that? Huh… I’m insane.”

That was Fabrice’s answer. He couldn’t quite believe he’d said those things; his face hardened as if stunned by his own words.

“You said I asked for a Latens Cube…? What did I say I’d give? A transcendent-grade weapon? A manual? Crazy…”

“But do you actually have such a weapon or manual?”

I wasn’t exactly greedy—well, I was—but I asked anyway. A wry smile crossed Fabrice’s face.

“I do. You’ve seen it too, haven’t you?”

“Me? I haven’t seen it.”

“You said it’s a transcendent-grade weapon? My three horns. That is a transcendent-grade weapon. And a manual? There are manuals too. Here.”

Fabrice tapped his own head. “If I took what’s here out and disposed of it somehow, you’d get about two volumes. Of course after that I’d completely lose my sanity and become a beast. I’d probably have most of my strength drained and wouldn’t be an Ancient Prime Beast but maybe a named beast. Ha, hahaha.”

Fabrice’s hollow laugh settled low in the study.

Talis suddenly asked how it had come to be, but Fabrice couldn’t remember.

“Then when did you last meet Manus?”

“Manus, Manus… Ah, the last time I saw Manus was in the early days of the Battlefield of the Gods. It was the day Mr. Kim Han first entered Exorsus and visited the divine realm. I asked each god to manage their representatives, so that day was the last.”

“Anything strange?”

“Strange… hmm. Oh! Now that you mention it, Manus didn’t show up that day, so we waited at his mansion for a long time. I think we waited about three hours.”

“Hmm…”

Bioss and Talis fell into their own thoughts, and Fabrice looked weary.

Then Fabrice suddenly seemed to think of something and looked at me.

“Hey. But you just let me say that kind of bullshit? You’re surprisingly kind, huh?”

“You lunatic. Let you be…? You were almost torn apart that day, you idiot.”

Fabrice blinked at Talis’s rebuke and asked what he meant.

Talis explained how I had treated him that day, what was said, and how the Rebound Legion responded.

While listening, Fabrice’s face flushed, and as soon as Talis finished speaking he burst into loud laughter and rolled on the floor.

“…Hahaha! Ha, you’re really an entertaining bastard! Well done. Heh heh. If I go mad again next time, just draw your sword and swing. Maybe that’ll knock some sense into me.”

After that, we moved to the terrace and passed the time with light chatter.

Meanwhile Fabrice contacted the guards, told them he’d be resting for a few months, and returned to Shio’s library.

According to Talis, he had hurriedly withdrawn his physical form and was undergoing a metamorphosis, needing time to recover.

“Oh right. Kim Han, ask your patron god. If your patron’s power is weak, ask those ignorant Creator fangirls in there. The Latens Cube is that serious.”

After warning about the Latens Cube, Fabrice went straight to Shio’s library and could not be seen for some time.

After seeing Fabrice off as he left the mansion and returning, two people remained in the same spot, staring blankly into the air without moving, as if exhausted.

Are they feeling this same inexplicable emptiness that I feel?

What am I — or rather, what are we — to beings called gods?

Or is Manus’s action so shocking because Talis and Bioss had cheered him on and interacted with him back when they were superhumans, during the first Battlefield of the Gods?

“Shall we at least eat?”

I asked just in case, but neither answered.

The truth is I don’t know what kind of relationship the two had with Manus. From what I’ve heard, they supported Manus and felt pity for him being forced into a situation where he had to kill his lover.

And when they talked about Manus, they sounded somehow both sympathetic and proud.

‘Like me…?’

I rose from the terrace table where the two were dazed, then sat back down.

“Exactly what was your relationship with Manus?”

“Manus? What kind of relationship…”

I asked Talis, who always explained things logically, but unexpectedly Bioss answered.

He stared at the sky as if lost in thought for a long time.

I didn’t hurry them, waiting for either of them to speak.

Lee Hyo-ju came by in the meantime, but seeing the mood, she left again.

Only after three or four hours had flown by did Bioss finally open his tightly closed lips.

“Now that I think about it, perhaps he and we had no relationship at all. Maybe I’m the only one mistaken. Haha. Yes, maybe that’s it…”

Bioss began to speak with a self-deprecating sigh.

Back when gods began to spring up like weeds, there were those who, though not gods, were strong enough to rival them. Bioss and Talis were among them.

So when news first came that the Battlefield of the Gods would open, they were naturally approached with offers.

They refused all the gods’ offers. Occasionally a god overconfident in their power would attack, but since the two were always together, the attackers often ended up beaten and fleeing.

Back then, the gap in power between gods and transcendants, or superhumans, wasn’t that great, so it was even more so.

Then a goddess came to them. She introduced herself as Serpens.

Unlike other gods, she didn’t ask or threaten them to become representatives. She asked them to train one person until the Battlefield of the Gods began.

Of course the two refused Serpens’s request; they had no interest in the gods’ slave games and were deep into training.

Serpens was furious that they refused, but at that time she was merely one of the goddesses of pain, not yet known by the grand title of demon god, so she couldn’t do anything and withdrew.

But unexpectedly, a representative himself came to find them.

He introduced himself as Manus, and from then on quietly watched the two train.

He didn’t ask to be taught anything; he simply waited on them and followed them silently.

A warm smile lingered on Bioss’s lips as he told the story.

After a week, when Bioss and Talis were, by their own judgment, still so innocent, they taught Manus some techniques and learned about his circumstances.

“Yes, the guy was like that. Love—what is love? He endured our grueling training silently for the woman he loved. Disciple, you know how brutal our training is. Even a tough student like you would have struggled to endure it if it wasn’t during training season.”

“Yes.”

Of course I would have undergone that level of training even outside training season. In my previous life, my best talent was ‘adaptation’—endure and adapt.

Perhaps embarrassed at having praised Manus unintentionally, Bioss hesitated and couldn’t continue. Talis took over instead.

“Tch. That’s right. As for me, magic is my main thing, so all I could teach Manus were tricks to fight mages and some basic spells, but that old Bioss taught him many arts he knew. He cherished Manus so much he lamented the lack of time.”

I looked at Bioss blankly. He had a vacant expression, either feeling no need to elaborate on Talis’s words or lacking the strength to speak.

“Did you consider him a disciple?”

“I wonder, was he?”

Bioss wasn’t sure. But Talis’s face was filled with resentment and anger.

Even so, even if he was a disciple, did it justify the depth of their desolation and emotional wounds? I couldn’t understand.

“We watched that kid fight every time — sometimes with anxiety, sometimes with satisfaction. Do you know how long the first Battlefield of the Gods lasted? A full forty-eight years. Representatives don’t age like we transcendants do, so Manus’s appearance stayed the same. Not just his looks, but the way he silently practiced what we taught and threw himself into protecting his lover.”

“…Yes.”

“You know we held a grudge against Serpens, so you must know we fought her, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the reason?”

“…Wasn’t it just that you wanted to have a go at her?”

Talis let out a weak snort and shook his head.

Muttering “madman” under his breath, Talis continued his explanation.

“So… that was after Manus had become a god. It was just when he was beginning to grasp Deicide and Destruction. Right after the Battlefield of the Gods began, he realized that breaker and Demon were insufficient. After that, we trained intensely for quite a long time and were beginning to find a clue.”

Manus, who suddenly appeared, slowly explained how he had been and what was in his heart, like a child telling all his secrets to his parents.

Especially when speaking about his lover, he sobbed loudly for a long while.

He insisted he didn’t want to kill his lover.

Manus thought that if it were just the two of them left, it wouldn’t be bad for them to live like that — happy together in the Battlefield of the Gods.

But Amor and Serpens did not want that. No — not just them, all the gods watching the Battlefield of the Gods did not want that.

The patron god of Manus they met in the Garden of Gods, Serpens, said this:

“There’s much talk among the gods. So the two of you have exactly 300 days left to live. From today, 300 days. If one of you dies within that time, the remaining person’s remaining life is erased.”

“What?!”

“Of course, given your nature you’d die first for that woman, right? Here, take this. You’ve suffered enough. You know I’m the god who oversees pain, right? You will die without lingering pain, as if falling asleep.”

Serpens offered a red pill. Manus carefully tucked it away and thanked Serpens repeatedly before leaving the Garden of Gods.

But did his lover share that intent? The next day after leaving the Garden of Gods, Manus’s lover attempted suicide.

Whether fortunate or not, Manus discovered and saved them, and while his lover slept, Manus took the pill Serpens had given.

And that day, a demon descended on a city in the western continent of the Battlefield of the Gods, where the Dark Empire now stands.

A man who smashed everything without distinguishing friend from foe.

When the man came to, he found at his feet the body of a woman with her neck grotesquely broken and arms and legs torn off, scattered around.

With a sinister foreboding weighing on him, he forced himself to look down and discovered the corpse of the woman he had loved,

the woman who had been his reason for living,

he found her dead in a horrific state.

Before the shocked Manus could regain his senses, a radiance descended around him and he was proclaimed the first champion of the Battlefield of the Gods.

That day, Serpens — the mastermind behind all of this — appeared and asked Manus.

How do you feel?

Manus, who had not yet recovered his wits, lifted his head at Serpens’s words.

As his bowed head lifted, Manus’s pupils on the broadcast screen had lost their light. A hoarse voice, evoking cracked earth, barely escaped his lips.

“…I just wanted to go home…”

After the Battlefield of the Gods ended and time had passed, Manus composed himself and sought out Serpens.

Serpens greeted Manus warmly, and Manus abruptly demanded of her:

“Why did you do it!”

Even with Manus speaking informally instead of politely, Serpens’s smile remained.

“What?”

“Why did you do that to me!! Why!!”

“Ah? Ah… what do you mean. You like it too, don’t you? Who do you think is responsible for you enjoying the status of a god and this level of popularity? Hmm?”

Enraged by Serpens’s cruel words, Manus attacked her.

The two gods were each penalized for violating the one-hundred-year truce after the Battlefield of the Gods ended.

In that process Manus received some leniency, but Serpens was given an excessive punishment.

Serpens claimed she had acted purely in defense, but opposed by Amor and the current Heavenly God faction, she was punished with a hundred-year ban on using her powers.

Of course, a hundred years is a blink for a god, and no god could harm Serpens during that period, but for Serpens— who was expanding her power under the title of the god who produced the inaugural Battlefield of the Gods champion — it was too harsh a penalty.

Manus received a relatively light sentence of ten years, but he still couldn’t lift his head.

Afterward he fled the divine realm and came to find Talis and Bioss.

“Back then that kid Manus had a look like he’d do anything. We thought a hundred years was plenty of time and we persuaded Manus. Looking back, Manus turned so easily at our words. Heh.”

At Bioss’s comment, Talis’s expression soured instantly.

“You bastard, what do you mean ‘turned easily’! You beat him into changing his mind. That Manus then and the Manus now are different. Understand it that way. It’s neither your fault nor mine; we weren’t manipulated by someone, we made our choice!”

Talis finished and turned his back.

The two transcendants who had always seemed immense — Talis’s back felt so small.

“What followed is the story you know. We couldn’t stand to see that childlike disciple be annihilated. As Serpens’s punishment came to an end, Talis and my Deicide and Destruction had also matured. I’m at fault. I shouldn’t have dragged that old woman into it.”

“Hmph! I egged you on, you stupid old fool.”

Talis’s retort followed Bioss’s lament.

In my previous life, Shio taught and Lee Hyo-ju investigated; I thought he had attacked the demon god to test his strength, but was that not the case?

“It’s fortunate that we’ve realized, even now, that it was all futile.”

Bioss’s self-mocking voice.

I silently took liquor from my inventory and set out bottles—everything from the ones I’d taken before to premium spirits, totaling fewer than a hundred.

I used a communication crystal to order a simple snack and silently poured drinks.

We drank that non-intoxicating liquor through the night.