16

The flash settled, and Noel narrowed his eyes little by little.

(What on earth was that just now…)

Rodney’s face came into view from within the white field of vision.

Rodney had been stretched out on the ground, foaming at the mouth and seeming close to losing consciousness.

“Hey, are you all right!!”

Noel hurriedly lifted Rodney into his arms. It seemed he was breathing.

No sooner had Noel felt relieved than a large shadow appeared soundlessly before the two of them.

(No man must look upon that form. No man must hear that voice.)

Its presence was like great thunder drawing near, like the calm before a tornado, and at the presence of that quiet, incomprehensibly violent, overwhelmingly mighty power, every hair on Noel’s body stood on end.

Noel remembered, word for word, the words of an ancient sage who had encountered a being called a god.

Ancient magic books had written that its form was so beautiful it would blind the eyes, and that when one heard its voice, the shock would destroy one’s ears.

Fearfully, Noel lifted his head.

Before Noel and Rodney, there was neither Nana-chan nor the eerie cocoon that had once been Nana-chan.

There, a man with large butterfly wings, long black hair, and beauty so great it could blind the eyes floated in the air, covering the two of them with a large shadow.

A great crown was set above the man’s head. From the great crown, two antennae extended. He was clad in deep red garments.

There were no whites in the eyes of that handsome face. They were eyes that shone like a black night sky, glittering as though they would draw one in. What those eyes reflected could not be read at all.

He seemed to be gazing at Noel before him, yet also seemed to be looking far away at the wisdom of the world.

This man was not human.

No matter what Noel did or how he did it, he was not an opponent Noel could prevail against. The other party was a being from the realm of gods. Even while trembling in terror after sensing the presence of an immeasurably vast power, Noel struggled to think of a way to let Rodney escape.

Even as he did so, the powerful retainers of this inhuman being appeared one after another and floated around Noel and Rodney.

With Noel’s magical power, the best he could manage was to fight one of those retainers to a mutual kill. Everything was over.

Among all the knowledge Noel possessed, only one being matched this existence with butterfly wings and a crown from which antennae extended. Trembling with both the excitement of a magician who, in his lifetime, had been able to meet that legendary being, and with the overwhelming vastness of that violent power, Noel somehow squeezed out his voice.

“Fairy King Oberon…”

“Indeed.”

The man before him smiled at Noel as though satisfied.

“Wh-wh-wh-wh-why?? Nana-chan??”

Rodney said, half on the verge of losing consciousness, with his eyes half rolled back.

“I will not harm you children of men, weak living beings that you are. There is no need to worry. It has truly been a long time since I was able to return to this form, and I feel good. It is thanks to Beth and to you. I give you my thanks.”

When Noel heard Beth’s name from the mouth of this inhuman being, he felt as if all the blood in his body had begun to flow backward.

The fear he had felt until moments ago vanished somewhere, and he tossed Rodney aside and rushed before Oberon.

The retainers noisily kept watch around Noel, and Noel felt sharp, crackling pains of electricity against his skin.

“Fairy King Oberon!”

Noel shouted.

“Why did you take the form of the ugly Nana-chan? Why did you appear here, in my greenhouse?”

Noel threw out questions in rapid succession.

Oberon slowly answered the questions.

“It was the succession of the fairy king.”

“The fairy king is born from among the ugliest and most powerless lives among the fairy retainers of the forest’s living creatures. Among the ugliest and most powerless lives, the one that manages to survive until the end of its natural lifespan inherits the memories of the previous fairy king and becomes the most beautiful, strongest, and wisest fairy king. That is the rule.”

“Beth named it Nana-chan, and allowed that life, which had been a slug, to survive until it reached the limit of its life and fulfilled its natural lifespan. The banana slug was quite a weak individual, was it not? If she had not given it wolfberries every day, then even if birds had not eaten it, Nana-chan’s body would have fallen ill and stopped moving when it had grown to about half its size, and it would have returned to the soil without fulfilling its natural lifespan. Succession is fulfilled when a life that meets the conditions has completely lived out its natural lifespan. This succession was the first in a full five hundred years.”

“…Beth made you the fairy king.”

“Indeed. At last, the succession has been fulfilled, and power is overflowing throughout my body for the first time in ages. I truly feel good.”

Wolfberries had strong nourishing and fortifying properties.

They were extremely precious berries, and even in the greenhouse, they were carefully cultivated.

Beth giving such precious berries to Nana-chan, who was technically a pest and a target for extermination, had been so amusing that Noel had merely left it alone.

“The previous fairy king was a golden earthworm cherished and kept by a witch. The forest where the witch who produced the fairy king lived became the entrance to the spirit realm, and so it remains to this day. This greenhouse was not chosen as the place where the fairy king would arise. It was simply that this greenhouse was the place where Beth cared for Nana-chan until it fulfilled its natural lifespan.”

Then Oberon laughed as though he found it truly amusing.

“To think the fairy king would arise in the middle of a human world like this. The next age of the spirit realm seems likely to become an interesting one.”

Unable to bear it, Noel screamed.

“Beth!! Just what is she!!”

The Beth Noel knew was merely a kindhearted, simple country girl. Noel did not know something tremendously important about his precious girl.

“She is, without a doubt, merely a child of man. Not a child of a king, without magical power, merely a child of man.”

“Then why?? Why can Beth hear the voices of voiceless things?? Why can she understand the hearts of plants and animals as though holding them in her hand??”

Oberon answered in a manner that seemed to say, Good grief.

“Do you foolish humans not understand? She is a human child abducted by fairies. A spirit changeling, what you call a changeling, is she not?”