Chapter 63

Hotus.

An ancient country ruled by the Eight Primordial Gods.

Having become gods from humans, they knew the principles of the heavens and could hear the voices of the earth.

Thus, there was no war on the continent, and peace lasted long.

Even after a thousand years, Hotus was remembered as a paradise.

The end of the paradise was the beginning of the Empire.

As always, humans were not content with paradise and desired their own empire.

It is unknown whether the Eight Primordial Gods willingly withdrew or were defeated.

Only that they disappeared from history simultaneously with the rise of the Empire was clear.

The name of the Empire was Cordis.

The human empire came.

The Eight Primordial Gods disappeared.

It was a thousand years ago.

However, the gods had merely disappeared.

It was different from death.

I knew.

My master, the Last Magician.

A woman who had lost both her country and her worship and had been forgotten by the world, but brazenly lived on as if that was no reason to die, changing her name to Sen Sorti and Beluchian Pollinglight, enjoying a thousand years, a woman who was once a goddess.

“Is there something on my face?”

This man, the Last Clown Beila Beile, must have been the same as my master.

He must have once been a worshiped Primordial God.

“I'm embarrassed if you stare like that. Especially you, jade-eyed friend, why are you looking so seriously?”

“The Last, Clown……? You are……?”

Amethus took a step forward.

He was a man who disliked showing his emotions, but now his face was greatly contorted.

Bewilderment, anger, all sorts of things that couldn't be named were mixed within him and showed on his face.

He shouted in disbelief.

“Absurd!”

He gripped his double-edged sword tightly.

He had no intention of swinging it, but his emotions were so agitated that it happened without him realizing it.

“Absurd-!”

“What's the problem with me saying I'm me?”

“…Even if I concede a hundred steps, no, a thousand steps, and say you're real……!”

Amethus got angry.

I clicked my tongue.

His aura intensified once more.

The floor was out of sight.

At this rate, the Ten Great Generals wouldn't be far off.

Even while exuding such power, Beila Beile's smile did not waver.

“…There is no place for you on this land. This is Cordis! An Empire built by human hands over a thousand years!”

“Huh? Why are you getting angry?”

Beila Beile wiped his face.

He looked annoyed.

The face his hand had swept over had changed.

Several times, his face also changed several times.

Eventually, his hand dropped, and his face stopped changing.

“A-an old-friend-lost-.”

“……!”

Sshh, a sound.

Amethus flinched.

It was because Beila Beile's head had turned into that of a horned white snake.

The Last Clown, with a snake's head on a human body, hissed with its tongue.

White scales glinted.

“-Shouldn't I-be the-one-to get-angry-?”

He glanced at the dismembered snake's body rolling around, at the fresh blood splattered everywhere.

Beila Beile's face contorted again and then changed back to a human's.

It was the face of the strange man he had first shown.

Amethus couldn't help but swing his sword.

There was no hostility.

It was closer to an unconscious reflexive action.

Beila Beile's gaze itself was a great threat.

Amethus's already sensitive soul was seized with compulsive anxiety, and his trained body reacted faster than he thought.

“Hmm?”

The jade-eyed man could do many things with his sword.

Things like defeating Marina Debius or dismembering Lacrosha.

However, reaching Beila Beile was impossible.

It was a story of a different dimension from the sharpness of the sword or the skill of its owner.

“Hmm, quite agile.”

Beila Beile dodged the sword, taking strange poses with a strange face.

He hopped on one leg, did a handstand, or juggled.

He even dodged the sword strikes while juggling upside down in mid-air.

Amethus was sweating profusely, but he paid it no mind.

“Since it's getting troublesome……”

Beila Beile turned his gaze.

The sword stopped moving.

“Stop there.”

***

Amethus could not swing his sword.

Because it had stopped.

He didn't even feel that it was strange.

This too, because it had stopped.

The sword, Amethus, the blood flowing from the dismembered body, the scattering fog, the poisonous snakes and insects and rustling grasses in various parts of the valley, even the distant bright moon and the flowing clouds, all stopped moving.

Everything stopped.

Because the Last Clown told it to stop.

“It's a bit quiet now.”

Only two did not stop, me and the Last Clown.

Beila Beile felt a gaze and turned his head.

“Oh. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“…Did you stop time?”

“I just stretched for a moment. Oh my, don't look at me like that. It's embarrassing. It's not that big of a deal, you know.”

Beila Beile waved his hand.

“It's nothing compared to my super-skillful juggling of twenty-two items, twenty-two sets simultaneously… huh?”

The clown touched his cheek.

A thick white liquid was on his fingers.

A grayish-white, as if it were to be spread on the other side of the world, oozed from his cheek.

Beila Beile tilted his head.

“You're hurt?”

It was a scratch that wasn't even a superficial wound.

But there was clearly a trace of a sword on the Last Clown's cheek.

The Last Clown, delighted by what Amethus's double-edged sword had achieved, jumped up and down excitedly.

“Shion. What kind of friend is this jade-eyed friend of yours? He's no ordinary fellow!”

A wound, a wound indeed!

The Last Clown willingly decided to call this mark a wound.

It was only natural, as it was the first time he had been wounded in a thousand years.

No, well, he might be mistaken since he often forgot things, but at least looking back now, it was definitely the first time.

“Look at this! I'm wounded! Oh, oh… it's healed already.”

Beila Beile's face melted away in disappointment.

It really melted and dripped onto the floor.

His melted head disappeared and then popped out from the floor, reattaching to his neck.

He still looked disappointed.

“But Shion, why does your face look like that again?”

“…Because my head is complicated.”

The clown snickered.

“You're alive anyway. Isn't that enough?”

He was right.

Amethus's sword tip had reached my throat, but I had been saved thanks to Beila Beile.

“Now, regressed prince, you must have something to say to me, don't you?”

“…Thank you. I owe you my life.”

“Hmm, what a trivial matter!”

Following the snickering laughter, applause was heard.

He didn't know from where, but whistles mixed with applause were everywhere, very abundant in this stopped moment.

“I won't point out that you're speaking informally even though I'm friends with your master. It was like that before your regression too.”

“That's also appreciated. By the way, how do you remember me?”

A question popped out.

It had been bothering me all along.

“My master, who sent me back, said she would forget me.”

“Aha. Are you anxious? Afraid that there might be others who remember your regression?”

“…Yes.”

I admitted it readily.

Secrets and lies were useless in front of the clown.

Beila Beile waved his head.

“You worry too much. It's because it's me that I haven't forgotten. A clown is just like that, you see.”

Beila Beile became two.

One was a clown, and the other was a pot-bellied man in a swallow-tail coat.

The clown performed tricks on stage, and the pot-bellied man stood beside him, clapping.

“Outside the stage, yet inside, and inside, yet outside. No one can say anything even if I traverse both sides.”

Soon, a curtain fell in front of the clown.

A curtain that had appeared from somewhere disappeared somewhere.

Both the clown and the stage were no longer visible, but the pot-bellied man remained and winked at me.

“As long as you keep your manners, that is.”

The clown stretched his lips wide.

“So no matter how much it's the Last Magician's request, my role ends here.”

If he interfered too much outside the stage, he would be dragged off by the audience.

At the small mutter, I asked.

“Outside?”

“There is such a thing, Shion. It's a story you don't need to know.”

It was clear that he wouldn't answer if I asked any further, so I fell silent.

“I want to talk more, but I feel like I need to make a quick exit! I have to disappear with my old friend.”

“…Lacrosha?”

I expressed my confusion.

The Last Clown's gaze was directed at the horned white snake.

That giant snake was still dead and dismembered, and even colder than before.

The clown did not stop smiling even while looking at his friend's corpse.

“His soul hasn't left. It's still worth trying to wake him up. He'll lose a lot of power and his appearance will be different, but so what? It's enough that he's not dead!”

Beila Beile was suddenly next to the horned white snake's head.

He plunged his hand into the white snake's eye.

Then he rummaged around in its eyeball as if searching for something.

No matter how I looked at it, it was not something one would do to a friend's corpse.

Especially while grinning from ear to ear.

“Actually, I'm more affectionate than I seem.”

Grunt.

The Last Clown exerted force.

He seemed to have found what he wanted from beyond the giant snake's eyeball.

Something sticky pierced through the eyeball and shot out from the snake's head.

“If Lacrosha had really died, that jade-eyed friend would have definitely died too. Manners or not… Hyaaah!”

What had fully emerged was in human form.

As the Last Clown breathed life into it, it began to move.

The shape of its body drew curves.

From within the mucus, blood and stench, a snake-scaled girl began to quicken.

She was Lacrosha.

She had revived from within her own severed head.

Horns grew from her twitching head.

As snake scales peeled off in various places and white human skin was revealed, those horns would be the only thing proving that she had once been the owner of the Rubeko Valley.

“Good. She'll open her eyes in half a day.”

The clown raised his head.

The moon, the clouds, the fleeting moment, all remained stopped.

He tapped his empty wrist as if counting something.

“I'll make it so that my presence is completely removed from the jade-eyed friend's memory, and that you escape by the skin of your teeth. In half a day, he'll wake up and chase your tracks.”

“Half a day?”

“Did I give too much?”

“No. It's appropriate.”

It didn't seem like there was any more room to get anything.

And there was no reason to get anything more.

Saving my life once was more than enough.

“Go, Shion, as if nothing happened.”

He had already interfered a lot.

He would not be allowed to interfere any more, nor did he want to.

My story was my own.

Even gifts had a limit.

“This time is very special. Interfering outside the stage, this is the first and last time.”

The chase would begin again.

A terrifyingly strong and intuitive swordsman would chase you, and you would flee towards the West.

“Forget about a strange clown like me.”

Beila Beile was the clown of the Juet Acrobat Troupe and the hidden captain.

He had manipulated the memories of the original captain, Helen Pel and the members and had taken that position.

But surprisingly, he liked it so much that he planned to settle down for a while.

With his thousand-year-old friend, the snake-scaled girl.

“Now, what are you doing, regressed prince? You have secrets, so you have a lot to do, don't you? Didn't you say you would reach your destiny?”

I gritted my teeth.

The wound I had received from Amethus was so painful that it made me stagger.

But I moved my feet.

The clown's question, the secret I held, pushed me forward.

“Hurry up and run!”

The Last Clown, exiting here.

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