"Answer me, child of the [Primordial]. Why have you fought all this time?"
Amid the scorched earth, Sovell heard a voice.
He could not tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman, but it was exceptionally clear.
Gripping the Demon Sword at his side, which had received the Flower Goddess's Blessing yet now lay nearly shattered into a thousand pieces, he propped up his ravaged body.
His sole remaining eye shifted, his gaze leaving the unrecognizable corpse before him to sweep his surroundings.
Yet...
There was no one.
Aside from the wall of storms that seemed to stand far away on the horizon, there was nothing on the scorched earth.
He could not help wondering whether he was hallucinating.
Perhaps to make his final moments a little less lonely, he forced himself to speak, his voice unbearably hoarse:
"To... protect the people of Britain."
"Heh."
The owner of the voice gave a cold laugh, yet betrayed little emotion, as though it were merely... an imitation copied by rote.
"You know perfectly well. That isn't your wish."
Then the voice asked again:
"Answer me, child of the [Primordial]. Why have you fought all this time?"
This time, Sovell did not answer directly. Instead, he frankly acknowledged the other's criticism:
"You're right. That wasn't my wish. It was only something entrusted to me by the generation before me... to put it more plainly, it was just a fake borrowed from somewhere else."
No sooner had Sovell finished speaking than those words repeated beside his ear for the third time:
"Answer me, child of the [Primordial]. Why have you fought all this time?"
"Heh... unknown being, why have you come, and why do you question me?"
Sovell shook his head, seemingly a little helpless in the face of the other's attitude.