<450 - How They Love>
Havi asked.
“Why didn’t you trust the Revolutionary Army back then?”
“Because I saw the other tragedies they caused.”
“This time was different. The Revolutionary Army could have changed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late. When the world needed help the most, the only one who stood by me was the Revolutionary.”
“…I’m sorry.”
Havi coughed violently, cough cough, as if her insides were being torn apart.
Her blood stained the hand covering her mouth.
“If you thought the Revolutionary was bad, you’re mistaken. The real bad ones are warriors like you. When those who truly need help had no choice but to rely on the Revolutionary Army, you stood by and did nothing, making excuses about the duties of a warrior, and after we sided with the revolutionaries, you lumped us together as traitors, calling it justice.”
“…”
“The Revolutionary gave opportunities. Even knowing what tragedy could befall my father, he wanted to watch. Whether the Empire was truly evil or if he himself was in the wrong.”
“…….”
“The Empire ended up being wrong. People like me are everywhere. Growing by the moment. That’s why the Revolutionary can’t stop. There are too many wronged people. The only one who will fight for us is himself.”
The Destroyer couldn’t find the words.
He could speak freely about the villains, but he didn’t have the courage to call her one.
“What happened after? It’s obvious. The story of a child who hated their parents so much but ended up becoming just like them. Repeating the same mistakes, suffering the same defeats.”
“I could have caught up with the breeds developed by my father. But the varieties grown across the Empire couldn’t maintain the same qualities.”
“Only the farm crafted from my father’s dreams could replicate the disposable magic scrolls.”
As a result, Havi’s improved generation of Demon Realm variety tulips lost their utility as weapons.
“Want to know something funny? That tulip, born from all that hard work, became a carnivorous plant in the hands of farmers exploited by landowners within a generation?”
“My father overlooked that it wasn’t just the soil or the concentration of nature mana that influenced things. The mindset of the growers also affected the tulips.”
“My father was pure, both in good and bad ways. I wasn’t, and neither were those outside. That’s why it became the Demon Realm variety tulips again.”
The tulips first massacred the farmers who grew them instead of the Empire’s powerful.
Reacting with physical synchrony to the plowing hands, not magic.
“Thanks to that, I learned a lot. The so-called carnivorous plants we now call Mandragora and Nepenthes all originated from the Demon Realm variety tulips.”
“Just as good and evil separate according to a person’s upbringing, plants also change their shape, characteristics, and survival strategies for germination.”
The purity of childhood between the Destroyer and Havi was no different.
That’s why they promised each other a future.
When they reunited as adults, they had experienced too much.
They were no longer the same.
Just as the Dryad born from absorbing its parent tree and the Alraune born from flowers were different.
Just as the Nepenthes and Mandragora born from Demon Realm variety tulips were different.
“Kill me.”
She grabbed the Destroyer’s hand.
She pressed the dagger he held against her neck.
Just as the revolutionary had once done.
“It’s too late to turn back. We all know that.”
“If I let you go…”
“Do you think anything will change? Not a chance. I’ll just continue my research. Just like that foolish father of mine, I too will do my best to create a masterpiece the revolutionary will look back on.”
Tulip Wave.
It caused a food crisis in the Empire, but even worse, it led many farmers and soldiers trying to eradicate tulips to their deaths.
If the Destroyer left Havi alive, the Empire would not forgive her.
She might be able to survive if she hid.
But Havi had no intention of hiding.
For her, revenge for her father and the Revolutionary’s acknowledgment were reasons to live.
“Kill me. End the monster your prejudice against the Revolutionary Army has created. Before more victims are made.”
The deteriorated tulip stalks sunk into her hand like veins, and the Destroyer couldn’t hold back his tears.
Crying sounds
“Crying is worth 10 points.”
“I will kill you.”
“Now that’s a bit better. I’ll give you 50 points.”
“After I kill you… the Empire, the Magic Association, the Academy… I’ll bring them all down one day with my own hands.”
“Hmph. Wouldn’t it have been better if you had done it sooner?”
100 points.
With a smiling face, she tightened her grip on the Destroyer’s arm.
In the next moment, as she experienced the physical phenomenon, the sharp thorns of the tulip pierced into Havi’s body from all sides.
Her corpse, pierced by hundreds of thorns, fell helplessly to the ground, filled with holes.
The Destroyer’s hand covered Havi’s empty eyes, staring listlessly at the ceiling, submerged in a pool of blood.
“I’m sorry. It may have ended that way for you, but… it’s not over for me.”
The Destroyer let out a final scream, raising thorns all around him, across the last tulip farm.
All the tulips chose demise along with Havi, synchronized with her in this hellish landscape, and he finally found the trace he had been searching for.
It was the [Paper of Information Transmission] that could communicate with the Revolutionary Army.
━━━━
Havi is dead. Next is your turn, Revolutionary.
━━━━
Soon after, a reply appeared in the margins of the paper.
━━━━
The seeds of revolution have already been sown. Your foolishness will change nothing.
━━━━
Upon seeing the reply, the Destroyer instinctively sensed.
The revolutionary had no feelings for Havi whatsoever.
He had only used her.
To see how the Empire would act.
To pierce how the Destroyer would respond to the Revolutionary Army’s attempts to make contact.
Yet, he allowed the leeway.
“I won’t fall for your tricks again.”
On that day, the Destroyer’s time stopped.
At the end of a long journey as a warrior, he had a hometown he would someday return to.
A childhood friend he would reunite with.
A place of peace for his heart.
Even a handful of hope had vanished.
He was no longer a mayfly living only for today.
Not even a yearling looking for a slightly longer today.
He became a past dweller, living the same day as yesterday, unable to forget the past.
*
A solemn atmosphere filled the lecture hall.
Ishtar and Hestia were lost in deep thought and couldn’t muster the words.
There was so much to think about.
Oknodie was different.
With an extremely displeased expression, he huffed.
“Oknodie. It looks like you have a lot to say.”
“Of course! The most important story was left out!”
“Oh? What story is that?”
Oknodie shouted confidently.
“Love!”
“…Love?”
“Havi fell in love with the Revolutionary. How could they pass love back and forth, huh?”
This wasn’t some girl lost in romantic feelings.
The Destroyer, about to give her a sharp response, realized that Oknodie really was a girl.
“There’s an issue with the expression of ‘passing love back and forth.’ The Revolutionary never loved Havi. He used her, fully aware of her circumstances and the consequences of her actions.”
“But Havi loved the Revolutionary, right? I want to know how a girl in love expresses her feelings!”
“Do you… perhaps like someone?”
To focus on such a trivial point in such a serious discussion was absurd.
But the Destroyer did not blame or scold her.
A moment’s prejudice may have closed the door to a possibility that existed for Havi.
“I can’t make that mistake again.”
The Destroyer answered her foolish-sounding question readily.
“Havi’s affection was also a revenge against the Empire that took away her father’s dream. She projected the feelings she had towards her father, whom she loved in a different sense, onto the Revolutionary. She wanted to fulfill the wishes of the man who supported her father’s dream instead of fulfilling her father’s dream. That was her love.”
A relieved expression appeared on Oknodie’s face as she pondered with her finger in her mouth.
“Eh, what? That’s just like me!”
“…What? Just like you?”
What on earth is this guy scheming?
As the Destroyer shot a glaring look, Oknodie smiled cheekily.
“Isn’t love helping fulfill the dreams of the person you like? That’s why I’m working hard to help Sing grow to achieve his goals!”
“If it’s Sing, isn’t he the one called the Eastern Region’s Peddler of Swords? What is his dream, anyway?”
Oknodie counted on her fingers before responding with a grin.
“Um. To kill about a hundred thousand people in the Eastern Region?”
The solemn atmosphere froze cold.
