Author's Preface
“Remember this, Derrick.”
Within the annals of a distant memory, a familiar scenery emerged. The young Derrick, around 9 years old, stood in the Garden of Eden : the royal garden of House Foster. It was a warm, sunny day, the blades of grass underfoot shimmering with a verdant green. Atop the countless flower petals, butterflies darted, feeding on the nectar before fluttering through the air with their purple wings, resembling the heath flower.
It was a beautiful day, a day in which nothing could go wrong. And yet, the young Derrick felt an odd foreboding. A terrible premonition.
“You must always hate evil.”
The blade fell, and with it, the head of a man convicted of murder. The boy had no knowledge of this crime, of course—no one would tell a 9-year-old boy about legal proceedings—yet in his mind emerged an instinctual realization: “That man must have been a bad guy.”
Crimson blood dyed the holy garden deep. Red. Red. Red, and more red. It came without end. Flowing. Flooding. Derrick had never known that a man could spill so much blood.
It was putrid beyond belief, a stench brewed in the belly of the beast.
“Revile it. Purge it. Exsanguinate its flesh as crushed harvest pulp.”
This memory…it always came back to me at the worst times. When I couldn’t control myself, when I couldn’t subdue my anger, I found myself once again standing atop a hill of blood and viscera. That idyllic little garden.
Derrick hated killing more than anything in the world. It was disturbing, vile, revolting, and utterly grotesque in nature; and yet, a part of him refused to abandon the ideals of his older brother, the hero of his older brother.
Even if we’re murderers, we’ll repent for our crimes by saving as many innocents as we can. 1000 lives taken, and 1001 lives saved!
The lives of the fallen could be justified by the lives of those saved. Villains must be slayed, and the innocent must be protected.
Perhaps then he could bear the guilt of that day, the day in which tragedy struck.
And so, he tightened his grip and unleashed a flurry of blows, each burdened with more resentment than the last. Just how many lives must he save before this misery subsides? 1000? 10,000? Was any amount sufficient to pay off his sins?
No. He could not be so arrogant. His crime could not be paid off so easily. He would receive no reward for his acts of service.
He must only fight. He must only kill.
“UUUAH!”
Despite Derrick’s intense torrent of strikes, Skadhi Bhattacharya seemed no more frightened than a child on an afternoon stroll through a candy shop. He had no need to defend, yet engaged in evasive maneuvers out of boredom.
“Hatred between alignments ain’t uncommon. Humans hate shura, and shura hate humans, but this is an entirely different level! Do you have something personal against me? Were those rebels I killed your allies?”
“Stop talking!”
This exchange could hardly be considered a battle. The difference in strength was obvious even to a layman, and yet, Derrick could only push forward, scaling the unscalable mountain of talent.
“Hey, boy,” Skadhi said in a jovial tone. “Don’t die from this.”
He pulled back his middle finger with his thumb and released the tension in a single point. A finger-flick. A childish attack. Its force alone sent Derrick flying through the empty white buildings in the terrain.
“Gh—!”
Unbearable pain surged within the core. Like the flaying of skin. Like the shredding of meat. His insides tore about with the intensity of a hurricane.
“N-Not yet!” He regained his equilibrium, resisting the backward flow with all his might. Footing was the most important aspect of swordsmanship. Derrick possessed no special ability. He could not fly or teleport long distances. If any word could describe his style, it would be “honest.”
Honesty, however, was not enough on the battlefield.
“Hey.”
“—!”
Skadhi used his high-speed movement technique once more, closing the gap between himself and Derrick instantly.
“Why are you so weak?”
Derrick would not deign to reply. With all his might, he unleashed the countless techniques etched within his body. As a former member of House Foster, he could not afford to turn back here. It was do or die.
Jugular veins. Wrists. Genitals. Eyes. Solar Plexus. Inner thigh.
He attacked every weakness, every vital point he had memorized over his years of training. And yet, the fruits of his labor had resulted in nothing. The man before, Apostle Skadhi Bhattacharya of Urr, had yet to sustain a single cut.
“Strange, really. You may look physically weak, but I can tell that you are hiding something. No ordinary dullard could achieve such swordsmanship.”
Skadhi grabbed the young man by his throat, applying the lightest pressure he could.
“So, what are you going to do now? You can clearly see that I’m the one with the advantage here. Slicing me won’t work, but you keep trying anyway. That anger got the best of you! Don’t you have something more creative up your sleeve? Like that…Atre…Atreides! Yes! That Atreides fellow! He looks like quite the fun human to play with.”
Derrick’s oxygen supply had been cut off. His limbs were weakening, his brain was shutting down. Despite this, he continued to rage, even as his consciousness faded.
Fight! He thought. I have…to…fight!
One punch. Two punches. Three. Each blow had lost its power.
Figh…
Fi….
F…
…
“Hm, turns out you were boring all along.” Skadhi tossed the unconscious boy aside with visible annoyance. “Angels, take care of him.”
An army of angels arrived at the utterance of the command. They marched forward, spears poised to kill. In mere moments, Derrick Foster would die a fool, a loser with nothing to show for himself.
———
Derrick could feel the familiar summer heat beating against his skin, the shimmering sunlight bathing the world in light. He needed no introduction. He needed no inquiry. He had returned once again to this childhood memory, the Garden of Eden.
“...”
He lost. Derrick Foster had lost against his sworn enemy, and he had nothing to show for it?
Did he at least act as a valuable distraction like Keresaspa? Not at all. He only held Skadhi off for a minute at best.
Did he sabotage enemy infrastructure, as Atreides did? A few busted-up buildings could hardly count.
He had achieved nothing, despite all of his effort. That was an undeniable fact.
“...?”
From the corner of his eye stood a man, hair as white as snow.
“What is your name…boy?”
He was kind, as kind as a saint. The warmth that radiated from that man was something akin to an angel sent from god, a messenger of love and protection.
“Indeed, your sin is grave, but that does not mean you cannot be forgiven.”
“The sword is not merely a tool to kill, but a tool to save.”
“Mercy is what separates humans from shura. We must never stoop so low as to murder!”
Those words…they could only belong to one person: Aevus of the Sixth Seat .
Following the tragedy of House Foster, Aevus had taken in Derrick as an adoptive son. Despite their lack of blood relation, the priest had treated Derrick with kindness that far surpassed that of anyone else he had known. After some time, Derrick had truly come to consider the man his father.
Even so…the boy could not discard his lingering disgust for the man.
How self-indulgent, he thought. You believe me, a murderer, to be worthy of forgiveness? Disgusting. What of the dead? What of their wishes? Their vengeance? Their lives? What of the good I have slain? They are gone. Vanished. Erased. By my own hands. By my own whims. I killed them all. I need not your forgiveness. I need not your justification.
He tried his hardest to follow his father’s ideals, yet the disgust—the hate—would never truly disappear.
“You must always hate evil.”
The words of his older brother were carved into his soul, and no amount of prayer could erase that.
“Ah…I see. So it’s like that.” Once more, he gazed at the sun overhead with blade in hand, the garden now tainted with the rot of corpses.
“You killed us!” The ghastly fiends wailed.
“Traitor!”
“Murderer!”
“Killer!”
“Failure!”
What need he self-pity? What need he shame or regret? The voices of the dead would soothe him with an endless monsoon of curses, washing him away to the shores of hell.
"1000 lives taken, and 1001 lives saved."
That was the oath Derrick had proclaimed to Ereth. Those were his words, yet their farcical nature was plain to see. Did he think that morality could be weighed on a scale? Does simply saving more people resolve anything?
No, of course not. He was just saying that to feel better about himself, to spare him from his sin.
“So, Derrick,” said the corpse of his brother. “You know what to do, right?”
“Yeah…”
If one takes life, then they must bear the weight of their sin alone. Let him seek neither salvation nor justification.
“I alone will bear this shame.”
With a single strike of his blade, he cuts down the apparition of his older brother. Blood sprays, tainting the boy’s blonde hair red. This was what he chose. This was what he desired.
“ Invocation…Release .”