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“H-hold on! Mr. Uruto, if you touch that…”

Was it because he heard my voice? Or was it something else? At any rate, Uruto, who’d been about to reach into the haze, stopped his hand just before touching it.

“Alim… you’re truly strong, you know,” he said.
“How do you mean that…?”
“You told us yesterday, didn’t you? You said, ‘I won’t lose!’… that’s why you’re strong. It’s true. You never faltered and are still willing to fight.”

Right, back then. I really did, didn’t I?

Despite of what he’d said, Ururto’s eyes still looked, as if they were dead.

“…Alim, everyone is dead. The people in the royal capital… Parasuna… Bacchus and his friends… Gilmars… even the king and Mika.”
“That’s true, but… I can still…”

I could still bring them back to life. That was what I tried to say, but Uruto interrupted me.

“You can still… that’s right, there is hope. The hope of you defeating the demon god¹.”
“No, that’s not what I…”
“…This is the only thing I can do.”

I wonder, is he in shock?

Uruto wasn’t about to listen to my words.
It can’t be helped; he has no idea I can resurrect everyone. I tried to tell him, but…

“Please do your best, then,” he said, changing into his appearance as Lastman in an instant.

Then he erased the black haze floating around me with his hand. At the same moment, he collapsed onto the ground and stopped moving.

Wasn’t he supposed to be immortal?
There was no sign of him coming back to life.

…Should I revive him now? No, I should probably do that later when it’s safe, same as Mika.

Since Uruto had cleared the haze away, I was able to leave. I got out of there, as not to let his sacrifice be in vain.
That way… I can revive him properly afterwards.

The same moment I left the haze’s encirclement, Mephistophales came flying back. When he landed, I noticed that he was covered in wounds. He had probably been hurled away with considerable force.

“Tch… because of that nuisance… you got out of Armageddon’s net…”

Mephistophales raised his hands to the sky once again, but I deployed the Zone, lopped off his wings and absorbed his MP. It looked like he currently hadn’t turned into smoke, so my attack hit him.

I wasn’t about to miss that opportunity, so, still in the Zone, I created tons of legend grade restraints, bound Mephistophales with them and, finally, locked him up inside a cell made from orichalcum. Then, I cancelled the Zone.

“Gah… all my MP is…!? Moreover, this is…”

Great, it looks like my victory is assured. I probably should’ve defeated him more quickly, shouldn’t I?²

If I had, I could’ve ended things without Uruto sacrificing his life. This war… it’s full of stuff I need to reflect on, isn’t it? It’s a fact that everyone, I should’ve protected, died because I went easy on my opponents… If only I hadn’t kept the method to resurrect people to myself…

“It’s my win, Mephistophales. Just give up. You probably don’t have any MP left, either.”

He looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. After a short time, even though he was in such a situation, he started grinning broadly again.
I wonder, does he still have an ace up his sleeve?

“Keh… heh-heh-heh… heh-heh… Well… to think you’d be this strong~… You combined a time-stop skill with an item creation skill, didn’t you? …I can’t compete with that at all~… This is cheating, you know… You also erased my MP, so I can neither use my contract nor my smoke magic. Moreover, with the demon god’s wings being cut off, I can’t even use the instant death attack.”

Oh, so the haze came from his wings. I never noticed.

“Hah… This is… my loss. A total defeat. I was so close… so close… to going home…”

He continued to grin. It looked as if his spirit was broken.

By the way, did he just say that he wants to go home? Go home where? Is he from earth, after all? I should confirm my theory, that Mephistophales is a fellow earthling³. Let’s ask him.

“Mephistophales… you want to go home… where exactly?”

When he heard that question, he stopped smiling and fixed me with a gaze. Still, not even a moment later, he started grinning again.

“You wouldn’t understand, you see… Yes, but… well, let’s just call it… another world, right?”

He had an air of longing, as he seemed to look somewhere far away.

Another world, that’s probably… most likely the world Mika and I lived in. That’s the feeling I get.

“Say, Mephistophales.”
“…What is it?”
“That place you want to return to… Could that be… Earth?”

Mephistophales opened his mouth and eyes widely, more shocked than he’d ever been before. His face, different from his prior mysterious and unnatural clownish appearance, seemed quite human.

1. This may be a typo, or it may not be. For all intents and purposes, Uruto likely assumes that the demon god has found a new host in Mephistophales.
2. Yes, you should have. At the very latest, when everyone ended up dead!
3. The original is 同郷人 (“person from the same town/province/etc.”). I used earthling since I don’t think Alim assumes he’s from Japan.