"We can't win! They'll break through our defenses! This is nothing but the last echo before the apocalypse. Our future selves will be dragged into an abyss of death!"
"He's nothing but a King hiding behind grand words! He only wants to use this apocalypse to establish his own rule!! He knows himself that final victory is impossible. He's been deceiving us with lies from the very beginning! Everyone will die! We'll all die!!"
"I don't care about any apocalypse! It's already been more than twenty years. How many twenty-year stretches do we have left to live? Rather than go to war for that so-called hope, I'd rather enjoy the rest of my life!"
"No, perhaps there won't be any apocalypse! It's all propaganda from those people. They only want to frighten us all so we'll have no choice but to accept their rule. Perhaps death is another kind of rebirth, and those nightmares will bring us another kind of salvation!"
"O Lord of Boundless Darkness, we beg your forgiveness! We are willing to help you overthrow that false King's rule! Please grant us, your faithful, the humblest place in the New World!"
Countless voices and countless stray thoughts mingled with that vast tide of faith, surging toward him like hideous devils.
That confusion and uncertainty, that malice and those curses.
They were like blades, madly piercing his mind.
It was pain unlike anything he had ever known.
It was as though, in an instant, his entire will had been torn into countless billions of separate beings, dismembering him and dragging him into that abyss of madness.
He wanted to make a sound.
But in that moment, he realized that even speaking had become almost impossible. He opened his mouth, but only those boundless echoes remained.
He fell.
He kept