Ellen could not stay long at the imperial palace.
She had to be redeployed immediately after completing her mission. This was due both to the situation of the empire and to Ellen's own will.
After briefly conversing with Bertus, Ellen headed to the Spring Palace as she always did.
Ordinary people could not even approach the Spring Palace. Of course, Ellen was not bound by such constraints.
Upon arriving at the Spring Palace, specifically Charlotte's bedroom, Ellen saw the exact same scene Bertus had witnessed before.
The princess, sitting on her bed, hugging her knees and staring blankly out the window.
Charlotte de Gardias, in the form of a demon.
Fused with the soul of the Demon King, it was because of this soul that she had become this way. Despite almost severing her connection to evil, Charlotte had become weaker but did not die.
"Charlotte."
"..."
At Ellen's gentle call, Charlotte slowly turned her head and stared at Ellen.
Her red eyes with vertically slit pupils.
Those eyes would give anyone an eerie feeling, but Ellen could only read sadness and regret in them.
Charlotte buried her face between her knees.
Tears that could hardly fall due to her emaciated state dampened the camisole she was wearing. Ellen watched silently.
Even though they knew regret would not change anything, they could not help but feel it.
If only they had trusted Reinhardt.
That single phrase was the cause of countless tragedies that unfolded upon humanity, a series of brutal events.
Reinhardt had disappeared, and humanity faced ruin.
That's why whenever they met like this, they could not help but reaffirm each other's guilt.
Ellen could still do something, like saving people.
But for Charlotte, who could not even show her face to the masses, there was nothing she could do other than remain confined in the Spring Palace.
Ellen slowly approached Charlotte and sat by her bed.
Then, she carefully embraced the frail Charlotte.
"Soon, we'll be able to destroy all the warp gates on the continent."
"..."
"And once we slowly eliminate all the monsters on the continent, this situation will end."
"..."
Ellen spoke softly, hoping that somehow Charlotte could lessen her guilt, even though she could not comfort herself.
"Then the people who lost their homes will be able to find them again."
The dead cannot return.
"Everyone will find their own territories... and live like they used to."
Lost homelands cannot be restored.
"It'll take time, but little by little... everything will return to the way it was, just like before."
Broken relationships cannot be mended forever.
"So let's hang in there a little longer. Just a little more... a little more..."
As she spoke, Ellen could not help but bite her lip, remembering the many things her words were ignoring.
Bitter blood seeped through her torn lips.
"..."
"..."
"Can we..."
Ellen's voice trembled in the end.
"Ever be forgiven...?"
By Reinhardt.
By the whole world.
Knowing that they wanted to be forgiven but couldn't be.
Charlotte cried.
And Ellen, she couldn't even cry.
—---
Every time Ellen faced Charlotte, she could only feel a sense of misery.
Although they were not originally on good terms, after the situation had come to this, Ellen and Charlotte had gone beyond the relationship of a knight and her lord, and had become bound by a strange bond of shared guilt.
A relationship tied together by sorrow and guilt.
They projected the same emotions onto each other.
And so, Ellen could not turn her back on Charlotte. Even though she knew that she could not improve Charlotte's condition, even though she knew she would receive no response, Ellen visited the Spring Palace after returning to the imperial city following the grueling days of battle.
"The situation is improving."
She always said that.
Technically, it wasn't a lie.
One could only say the situation had improved from the worst to slightly less terrible.
"Today, we saved a few people," she said.
That wasn't a lie either.
She simply didn't mention how many had died.
She also said that they had driven the monsters out of the ruined city.
That wasn't a lie either.
She just didn't mention that not a single living person was left in the ruins.
She didn't lie, but she didn't tell the miserable truth.
Even though she knew Charlotte could read between the lines.
With Charlotte, who had not changed at all, behind her, Ellen left the Spring Palace and the imperial palace.
From the hill at the entrance to the imperial palace, Ellen could see the temple beyond the Imperial Capital.
The temple, which had been in shambles due to the meteor, had already been restored.
The cradle of talent that once gathered the world's best talents had now transformed into a military base, training warriors.
With the connections between continents severed, the temple was now conscripting and training those who showed even a hint of talent in combat from among the refugees.
The temple, which once carefully selected and charged a hefty tuition fee, now provided weapons to those who wanted to fight, taught them how to battle, and then deployed them to the field.
No matter how many talented individuals they had, most of them were sent to the battlefield as soldiers without even awakening their Magic Body Strengthening and died in countless numbers.
Although the original students of the temple, selected through careful screening, were making a difference in battle, the majority of the new conscripts were merely amateurs driven by vengeance.
Even such amateurs were necessary given the current state of the empire.
Ellen knew that there were countless people who volunteered as combatants, idolizing the hero who had saved them, only to die like mayflies.
The temple, once a cradle for talent, now raised moths drawn to the flame.
Among the Royal Class, fortunately, none of Ellen's classmates had died yet.
It was horrifying to express it as fortunate.
And the fact that she had to use the term "yet" felt eerie to Ellen.
It was nighttime.
There was still some time left before she had to set out for the next operation.
Afraid of being recognized, Ellen pulled up her hood.
Ellen was now not only tired of her fame but also scared of it.
As she walked quietly down the streets of the Imperial City, Ellen felt someone's presence behind her.
There were many people around, but it felt like someone was watching her.
That kind of presence.
When she turned her head, no one was there.
"…?"
She was sure something had been watching her.
Feeling a strange sensation, Ellen continued to walk down the street.
—---
I hadn't expected to see Ellen while waiting.
I was sure she would be as busy as I was, with hardly any time to spare.
However, as soon as I arrived in the imperial city, I heard people on the street talking about the hero returning.
Ellen was in the imperial city.
Just in case, I stood idly near the entrance of the Imperial Palace.
I waited for quite a while.
That's why I was able to see her.
Though she was wearing her hood, I could see her face.
I saw Ellen, her expression colder and more detached than before. And there was an unmistakable weariness etched on her face.
Perhaps I should have tried talking to her.
If I had, maybe we could have had a surprisingly ordinary conversation.
But a considerable amount of time had passed.
I didn't know what Ellen was thinking.
Ellen had played a decisive role in my escape, but now I couldn't tell what was on her mind.
She might resent me, or perhaps she felt sorry for me.
It wasn't a time when we could exchange pleasantries, but I wondered if we could share some sort of conversation.
I wanted to reach out and talk to her.
But this Ellen was not the Ellen from my days as a student at the Royal Class of Temple.
Ellen Artorius.
The hope of humanity and the one to confront the Demon King.
Just as Ellen could no longer be a Royal Class student, I was no longer Reinhardt, a Royal Class student myself.
Divided by the duality of hero and demon king.
We were not meant to meet.
Sharing conversations, things we shouldn't do.
I didn't know when our impending fate would unfold before me, but talking would only bring us more pain.
So I was content to watch from afar.
No.
I was not content.
After not seeing her for two years.
I couldn't be satisfied with just that.
I wanted to watch her more.
But since I couldn't, seeing that she wasn't doing well but was still somehow getting by was enough.
I walked along the Imperial City.
Death, decay, and suffering were all that could be read on the faces of the people.
Even the residents of the Imperial Capital hadn't escaped unscathed from the gate incident.
Most of them had lost their parents, siblings, children, or other family members.
Despairing, yet determined to survive, people were heading somewhere.
Amid those faces of despair, there were certainly those who wore hopeful expressions.
“The hero has returned!”
“It seems she's slain a great number of monsters this time.”
“She'll defeat the Demon King eventually, right?”
I could read hope in the faces of those discussing Ellen.
Hatred and anger towards the Demon King.
A being that transforms such negative emotions into hope.
The hero.
In this Imperial Capital, overflowing with depression, anger, and hatred, Ellen was a presence that brought a glimmer of hope to the people.
Swathed in fear and hatred, they continuously produced stories and rumors.
“The Demon King is gathering monsters from the gates in the Darklands…”
“The roaming monsters on the continent are nothing compared to the Demon King's main force…”
“Even though she's a hero…”
Among the crowds on the Imperial Capital, it seemed widely believed that I not only controlled the monsters from the gates but also had completed my reconstruction.
Darklands?
I never visited them after absorbing the forces of the Demon Clan during my tour.
“The hero has two sacred relics, but the Demon King also has two…”
“If the hero had fallen for the Demon King's ruse at the Temple... It's too terrifying to even imagine.”
“The hero revealed the Demon King's identity long ago. She knows everything. She's not someone who would fall for the Demon King's tricks.”
It was known that my infiltration of the Temple was an attempt to capture the hero, Ellen Artorius.
What a crowd.
They share their own imagined tales like snacks, and before they know it, they come to believe them.
The origin of the false truth had long vanished; no one knew who started to spread it.
I had become the ruler of the rebuilt Darklands, the strongest in history.
People freely imagined, feared, and hated as they pleased.
They said no such country existed.
Beyond your sight, far to the south across the sea, there was a nation in the Edina Archipelago, inhabited not by monsters of the Gate, but by humans and demons.
In retrospect, reality was harder to believe.
The Demon King living alongside humans.
If I were not the Demon King, but one of them, I would have yelled at the one spreading such nonsense to stop spouting rubbish.
First of all, the fact that I could control and command the monsters of the Gate was a common theme among various absurd claims.
They seemed to imagine that since I caused this situation, the Demon King must naturally be able to control the monsters of the Gate.
Why couldn't they imagine that if that were possible and I truly hated humanity, I would have invaded the empire long ago and wiped them all out?
If someone raised such an opinion, another baseless rumor would be created to refute it, rendering the truth always meaningless.
And the targets of these baseless rumors were not just me.
“Was the Emperor really being controlled by the Princess?”
“Yeah, otherwise there would be no reason to leave the Princess alone.”
“No matter how important the Princess is, it's suspicious that they don't expose her despite her being cursed by the Demon King.”
“If the Princess is fine, they should at least show her, but that never happens, right?”
It went as far as to say that the reason the Empire didn't execute Charlotte was because the Emperor was being controlled by the Princess.
“Well, if that were really the case, the Hero wouldn't have stayed silent…”
“That's true, but…”
In the end, Ellen served as a brake on this issue.
People believed in the omnipotence and omniscience of the Demon King, but at the same time, they also believed in Ellen's omnipotence and omniscience as his counterpart.
If the Princess was truly corrupted, why would her guardian knight Ellen remain silent?
Thus, the atmosphere and talk of executing the Princess never reached an extreme, maintaining a precarious balance.
“Well, let's say the Princess is fine, but what about the three enemies?”
“Those damn traitors…”
Liana de Grantz.
Olivia Lanze.
Harriet de Saint Owan.
The three students who had sided with me and fled the temple together.
They were known as the three enemies in the human world, betrayers of mankind.
Perhaps, as humans, they were even more potent symbols of hatred than I was.
There were refugee camps in both the Edina Archipelago and the Empire.
However, the Edina Archipelago could indiscriminately expand its territory throughout, as there were no monsters to worry about.
The Empire could not do that.
They could not freely increase their residential areas, and even if they did, they could not protect them. They never knew when monsters roaming the continent would attack.
So, while the Empire didn't interfere with the expansion of refugee camps, people continued to pour in.
As I entered the vast refugee camp filled with hastily built shacks, I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of welcome.
When I first arrived in the Empire, I entered Eleris's shop, and a few days later, I saw a group of beggars under the Bronze Gate bell tower.
The beggars, sprawled about amidst the haphazardly built shacks, reeking of alcohol.
The Rotary Club.
The landscape of the past, where those now dead and gone had once lived, stretched out to the horizon.
As soon as he crossed the border of the capital's outskirts, he was met with an expansive land of poverty.
This was the reality of the glorious and magnificent capital of the Gladius Empire, Gradium.
The hastily built shacks not only lacked soundproofing and insulation, but they were also not built to any standard, allowing for the sight of people lying inside.
The smell of waste and the stench of decay were overwhelming, while flies and other insects swarmed so much they'd hit one's face.
Although the refugee camp in Edina couldn't be considered much better, it wasn't as dreadful as this.
Approaching smoke that seemed to indicate a group kitchen, he soon discovered it was something else entirely.
It was the smoke from burning corpses.
Could it be an outbreak of some infectious disease? The clergy should have measures against diseases, so the situation shouldn't be this dire.
Or perhaps they had simply starved to death.
Near the smoke from the burning corpses, scrawny children played, their faces gaunt.
The sight of the children laughing innocently, juxtaposed with the misery of those burning the bodies, felt strikingly contrasting.
It was something beyond hell.
It felt like watching a life that had been forcibly adapted to hell.
He resolved not to think about such things.
If only he wasn't there.
If only he wasn't involved.
He couldn't help but be overwhelmed by such thoughts.
"..."
The Imperial Capital was truly hellish.
