The street had stopped being a street and turned into a graveyard of broken tiles, collapsed walls and pooling blood.
There were two dead bodies of players on the ground as well... these were the players that Filch was not able to save. One of them said his na was Mateo and he was trying to save Filch, but ended up dying.
During that ti, Filch had already sent Jeanne and Santiago away as they both were too injured to fight.
The Silver Moon, cold and indifferent as always threw its pale light over everything.
Filch’s back hit the wall.
He had been retreating for so ti now and the wall was the last thing behind him.
Across from him, the three demons. Velrith, Karvax and the third, brown eyed demon were still alive.
Although, the brown eyed demon had lost both its arms, he was still standing and fighting. Karvax had proven to be a real problem with his ability to store and release other people’s attacks.
"You are a persistent creature," Velrith said. His voice was even. "I have been observing you for a long ti. There is a particular subset of you that cannot stop. Cannot retreat and remain retreated. Sothing in your nature pulls you back to the fire regardless of how many tis it burns you."
"Flattering," Filch said. His voice ca out steadier even though his situation was not so much good.
He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. It was hard to admit... but he had nothing left to perform now.
He was really out of options now... well, the truth is he had been out of options long ago. When Karvax joined in the battle with Velrith, the battle turned into a massacre.
But he still didn’t want to accept reality and give up, so he fought up until now.
He took out the cigarette pack from his jacket and found that it only had one last one left... he had been reproducing them with his ability over and over again... but, this was genuinely the last one, and he lit it on the second try because his hands were no longer entirely cooperating.
He took a drag and let the smoke out slowly.
"I have one question," Velrith said.
Filch looked at him.
"When this is done. Does dying here feel like sothing to you?"
Filch thought about it.
He thought about Mateo, who had co from the wrong direction. He thought about Jeanne and Santiago, sowhere in the wreckage of this city, hopefully far away from here.
He thought about the people he had pushed toward the Inner Ring gates over the course of two hours, people who were either behind those gates now or weren’t, and he would never know which.
He thought about the cigarette, which was burning down.
"Not really," he said.
That was the honest answer — he had been in enough situations across enough ti to understand that the thing he had always been most afraid of was not dying but dying pointlessly, and this had not been pointless.
It was enough.
He felt the vines under his leg’s slowly creeping up his body and covering him in order to devour him entirely.
Filch had accepted his fate... when the notification appeared in front of his eyes.
[Congratulations, the Scenario is completed]
He read it and blinked a couple of tis thinking that he was hallucinating.
He read it again to confirm that it was real.
’It’s done! IT"S REALLY DONE!’
His lips curled upwards in the embrace of the thick wines and he laughed. He spat out a little blood, but he laughed for several seconds.
It was not a joyful laugh, exactly.
Slowly his body started glowing with the blue luminance and then broke down into several motes of light before vanishing completely.
The burning cigarette fell to the ground in front of the three demon’s who were looking at the scene is shock.
※ ※ ※
Sowhere within the Secondary ring, inside a broken house which didn’t have a ceiling... Jeanne sat with her back against the cold wall.
She had stopped bleeding soti ago and so had Santiago, who was besides her. But it was too silent, neither of them had spoken anything from fear that a nearby beast would hear them and they would die even after Filch risked his life to make them run away.
She held her bow across her knees, not daring to dismiss it. Even though she didn’t have anything left to use as projectiles, just having it in her hand made her comfortable.
"Hey, brute. Do tell what will you do after going back to Earth." Jeanne started speaking in a suppressed voice. She looked up at the sky above them, which was a void with only the Silver Moon. "I wanted to beco a Fashion Designer on the Floating Islands..."
She paused for a long mont and then chuckled. "But it doesn’t exist anymore... I hope that when we get back to Earth there is sothing else for us to do, rather than just fighting. I hate blood..."
Just then the notification appeared in front of her eyes.
[Congratulations, the Scenario is completed]
She stared at it in bewildernt.
"Santiago," she said.
Her voice ca out too loud for the quiet of the corner they were sitting in. She didn’t care anymore.
She reached over and grabbed his shoulder, in order to shake him and point at the notification, she was going to say ’look, look at this, we actually did it, you enormous—’
But she stopped when she looked at his chest... she watched it for a long ti.
It was not moving!
She looked at his face, it was peaceful. The kind of peace that ca after soone had set down every weight they ever carried and they were not going to pick them up again.
He had gone to the heavens soti ago.
She did not know when. She had been sitting beside him, watching the Silver Moon and at so point in the quiet of that he had simply gone, without announcent or the drama of a final mont.
She sat with her hand still on his shoulder.
The notification was still in front of her eyes, warm and gold.
’We did it,’ she thought. ’You didn’t make it to the notification by so minutes, you absolute—’
She stopped.
She looked at his face for a very long ti, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, gently, with both hands against his face. His face was cold and still, the face of soone who had been here and was not anymore. Her tears ran down her cheeks and so of them fell on his face and she did not stop them.
She held the kiss for a long mont.
She was not doing it for him to feel. She understood that with complete clarity and she did it anyway, because there are things that are done for the person who is doing them and not for the recipient, and this was one of those things.
She sat back and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
She looked at him one more ti.
"Idiot," she said softly. It ca out almost tender.
Then her body started glowing with the bright blue light and then she dissolved into motes of light... her hand was on his shoulder when the light took it.
※ ※ ※
In the Inner Ring, in a house that was located just three rows away from the golden castle.
Sarah sat in a corner and was counting the cracks in the wall in front of her. This was what her mind had found to do across the last hour — not as a coping chanism, but simply because the mind required occupation to remain functional.
The wall in front of her had forty-seven visible cracks of varying lengths and depths.
The candle was almost gone.
The stub of it threw a small unsteady light that barely reached the corners of the room, and the shadows it made moved in ways she had trained herself to not interpret as movent in the room itself.
Her hands were flat against her stomach.
They had been there for most of ti. It was not a conscious gesture anymore. It had stopped being conscious soti, when she had realized she was doing it without deciding to and had decided to keep doing it.
She was talking inside her head, in the register she had developed over the last fifty-sothing days for conversations that had no receiver who could confirm they were received.
She had felt strange about it at first. She had felt strange about most of it at first... but, she was past feeling strange about any of it now.
’The door is still holding, ’she said. ’The table is still against it. We’re fine.’
She paused.
’Korg would think this was very funny,’ she said. ’ He would be laughing at right now.’
She stopped and then corrected herself.
’He would have been laughing at right now, ’she said. ’But he would also have been between and the door. That was the thing about him. He complained and then he stood in front of things.’
She listened to the sounds outside.
They had changed in the last little while... people were more calm now and there was no signs of any Withering beast having breached past the gates of Inner Ring.
She pressed her hands tighter against her stomach.
’We are going to be fine, ’she said. ’Soone is going to kill the emperor and the scenario is going to end, then we would go back ho and I swear I will never let you witness sothing like this.’
She had been saying this for three hours in various forms.
She still believed it.
That was the thing she had discovered about herself across the last fifty-sothing days — she was not brave, she had no illusions about being brave now. At first she had joined the Army guards and fought the Withering beasts, but after the Outer Walls fell, that bravado had broken like glass.
She was nothing but terrified right now.
The candle flickered and her eyes suddenly went to it.
It held.
She let out a long slow breath and waited. She waited for so unknown amount of ti when finally the notification appeared in front of her eyes.
[Congratulations, the Scenario is completed]
She stared at it.
She read it once. She read it twice and then,
... she began to cry.
Not quietly, but she out loudly... It shook her chest and her shoulders and she pressed both hands harder against her stomach and she let it co because there was nothing else to do with it, there had never been anything else to do with it, you simply had to let it co and wait for it to be done.
She cried for Korg... who had not been able to make it to the end. She cried for she was finally going back to the world she could no longer quite rember the details of, which had once been ordinary and insufficient.
But now, she would give almost anything to be standing there right now.
She cried until she stopped.
It took a while.
She wiped her face and sat up straight, then put both hands flat against her stomach.
"We made it."
※ ※ ※
Her figure started glowing with the blue light and then vanished into motes of light.
The Silver Moon, sat alone in the void that consud the skies of NEXUS. Its cold and indifferent light illuminated the world, while also making the shadow’s deeper.
Under its cold gaze, Sawra — The once prosperous capital of Aethelburg, now lay in ruins.
Several Withering beasts and Three Demon’s road aimlessly in the ruins of this city, searching for any trace of humans.
But there was nothing to be found except shadows of silence.
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