Isayama Yomina flew into a rage and angrily drew the Divine Blade Lion King, slashing it toward the Heavenly Curtain.
—Whoosh!
A dazzling blade aura like a crimson lotus flower cut through the sky, flying straight toward the Heavenly Curtain.
Without any follow-up spiritual power to sustain it, it quickly dissipated.
Still, it let her vent a little of her anger.
Hoori Town, shrine.
The divine blade embedded in the stone platform hummed as a green-haired loli ghost flew out of Muramasa, stomping her feet in annoyance.
"Berserker falling into the hands of someone like him is truly a pearl cast before swine. He's aiding evil!"
Tokyo, "Lord of Demons." The great yokai Nura Hyō frowned deeply.
"What a naturally evil little mage."
"What a pity we were born in different worlds. Otherwise, this old man would personally..."
Amid the furious condemnation of the people.
The Heavenly Curtain slowly shifted its view, revealing the true face of the brutal King of Purge.
"Berserker really is useful..."
At the edge of a pool of blood, the man spoke indifferently, dressed in black from head to toe.
His unkempt hair hung in messy strands, and dark circles covered his eyelids. He looked as though he had not slept in years. His left eyelid drooped while his right eye was wide and deep, leaving one eye large and the other small, both hollow and devoid of light.
He gave off an exhausted air, with a faint despair clinging to his entire body.
Not far away, two pink-and-blue artificial maid girls pressed chest to chest and held hands as they cried out.
"Rem, Rem, Lord Subaru is tormenting Berserker again. How pitiful."
"Sister, Sister, Lord Subaru is bullying Berserker again. How inhumane."
Their tones were remarkably synchronized, like two pink-and-blue radios freshly produced on the same assembly line.
The King of Purge fell silent and cast the pair a gloomy glance.
In an instant.
The two adorable maids tensed up and retreated hand in hand into the corner.
"I'm scared. It feels like Lord Subaru is going to chop off our heads, Rem."
"Terrifying. It feels like Lord Subaru is going to split us in two with one stroke, Sister."
Although they were artificial humans from the Einzbern family, they seemed no different from cute middle school girls.
Young and lively as they were, they were inevitably a little noisy.
Until he calmly placed a finger against his lips and blew out a breath.
"Shh~"
In an instant, the entire ruins of the Einzbern castle fell deathly silent.
Even the birds flying overhead did not dare make the slightest sound.
—That was the authority of the King of Purge.
He was the current head of the Einzbern family. Under his command was a well-trained army of artificial humans, invincible in attack and victorious in every battle, having dealt devastating blows to Japan's four great financial conglomerates.
He killed purely on a whim. A total of 127,602 people had already died by his hand.
His vicious reputation was known far and wide. He was the undisputed "Tyrant of the Magecraft World"!
His name was—Natsuki Subaru.
"I'm a tyrant...?!"
In the Heavenly Curtain World, a shut-in otaku was completely stunned.
What the hell had happened for his Parallel World self to become such a vicious monster?!
He commanded an extraordinary army, could wipe out financial conglomerates with a flick of his hand, and was a monstrously evil criminal who had killed more than a hundred thousand people...
Did your parents die or something?
Other people got ten times stronger after going dark. You got ten thousand times stronger?
Sin-Stained Haruno, a 4A Status Panel Shocks the World, Hercules Heracles!
A faint sorrow permeated the atmosphere beneath the Heavenly Curtain, while oppressive orchestral music rose and fell.
It was as though one could hear a cuckoo crying tears of blood, turning into an inescapable, profound grief.
It was a lost loneliness. His heart had gone cold, and no one knew.
"Ten years... and you still haven't returned."
The King of Purge murmured. He took out a photograph he carried with him, sneering at it coldly.
Then he carefully placed it back against his chest.
The photograph showed Haruno in her youth, one hand resting on a child's head.
He had been nine years old then. He possessed a special magecraft constitution that could enhance Heroic Spirits and magecraft, so the Einzbern family had taken him in to use him... for inhumane experiments.
Under Einzbern's torment, he had gradually become indifferent and numb.
Then one day, a woman came to the Einzbern family.
Within that castle perpetually shrouded in ice and snow...
A precious ray of sunlight shone in.
She was a mysterious woman who pursued justice, free-spirited and always smiling.
Only later did he learn that her name was Yukino Yukino, one of the participants in the Fourth Holy Grail War.
Haruno had originally promised to save him. She had been serious about it, but in the end, she vanished without a trace... while he continued being experimented on.
He sometimes wondered whether Haruno had already died in the Fourth Holy Grail War, or whether she had some unspeakable hardship that prevented her from returning.
In that freezing castle, day after day, he would lie by the window and look out, hoping... that one day, he could wait for that woman to return to Einzbern.
It did not matter if his face froze stiff.
It did not matter if his hands became covered in chilblains.
Even if he caught a cold or ran a fever, he would still go.
Until he underwent Einzbern's surgery. Seventy percent of his body was implanted with magic circuits. The corpses of children like him piled up into mountains. Everyone had died... but he was still alive.
Later, Subaru no longer needed Haruno to save him. By himself, he turned the entire Einzbern family against itself.
No one could point fingers at him anymore, and no one could look down on him from above.
The "King of Purge" was the ruler of Einzbern, and even hundreds of thousands of its subordinates.
Later still, he learned.
Although Haruno had died, before her death, she had spent five years living alongside another child.
...In that traitor's eyes, perhaps he had always been someone expendable.
That oath made beneath the falling snow had long become empty. Once broken, a promise was cheaper than yellowed rice paper.
He understood it deeply now. The human world was hell: endless betrayal, endless hatred.
The instinct to survive drove every person to slaughter, scheme, and plot. Oaths could not enter people's hearts, affection could not withstand the years, devotion was no more than one person's delusion, and in the end... everything became nothing.
He staggered onward as the world in his eyes gradually lost its color, becoming a monotonous black and white.
All living things were vile deceivers. Nothing was worth trusting.
Everyone fell silent.
All people struggled in a sea of suffering. Love was like snow, hatred like a blade. Beautiful memories did not fade with the passage of time; instead, they fermented in its flow, becoming an indescribable dream deeply branded into one's heart.
"Yukino Yukino, you truly are a woman burdened with grave sins."
Someone muttered blankly to himself.
It was precisely because she had heartlessly abandoned him that a child full of hope had fallen into hell.
She had created the tyrant of the magecraft world, the King of Purge whose countless killings struck terror into people's hearts.
"Yes. For the King of Purge, this wait has already lasted too long—so long that it became a regret..."
Someone sighed wistfully.
After seeing what the King of Purge had endured, he suddenly recalled a classic exchange.
How do you create a hero?
Give him an utterly terrible life, and a little bit of love.
Then how do you create a demon?
Take away that little bit of love.
"Yukino Yukino..."
Someone silently lit a cigarette and sighed softly. "You entrusted someone else to care for a little girl during the Fifth Holy Grail War. You spent five years accompanying someone else before your death. Yet you alone failed to fulfill your promise and save the King of Purge..."
In the Heavenly Curtain World, Haruno stared dumbfoundedly at the countless comments condemning her.
Damn.
Was her Parallel World self really that useless?
She made a promise but could not keep it, making her catch flak while lying down.
"Big Sister really is trash."
Yukino calmly took a sip of tea and said disdainfully.
The woman instantly froze, her face turning ashen.
—The Haruno had sunk!
"It's fine."
Upon his throne, the King of Purge stared coldly toward distant Fuyuki City. "Once I claim the Holy Grail, I will personally question... your betrayal back then."
At the same time, grand and majestic background music suddenly began to play.
The view gradually pulled back.
Further back.
What appeared before everyone was the supreme tyrant amid the icy wilderness!
The cold man stood at the pinnacle, while the great hero of Ancient Greek mythology, "Hercules" Heracles, guarded his side and let out a ferocious growl.
As though there were only one such figure in all existence, peerless beneath the heavens, he had completed the final struggle for supremacy!
A wordless shock!
The whole world fell silent, as though even the sound of air flowing was deafening.
The view shifted to that brutal figure, and his true status panel rose once more...
Name: Heracles Class: Berserker Class Height / Weight: 253 cm · 311 kg Alignment: Chaotic · Mad "Berserker is the strongest!!" Origin: Mythology Region: Ancient Greece
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