"Rosse, Chisa, Zeei, attack!!!"
Leon commanded his companions, the nun Chisa and the mage named Zeei.
Naturally, the next scene unfolded with us fighting magnificently atop piles of corpses. It seemed those souls had already departed peacefully for the afterlife.
With every slash of a holy sword that tore through my shield and bit into my flesh, and every arrow that poured endlessly from the air by the thousands, I finally received the spectacular show I had asked for.
It was exactly like my earlier request to them.
They fulfilled it with all their hearts.
With every attack and every parry I exchanged with them, I felt as though I were dancing upon a ballroom floor filled with pure aesthetic beauty.
The difference was that we were fighting in midair.
"Damn it! Even though the shield has been completely shattered by the sacred flames, that bastard is still fighting in a position that's impossible to properly see!!!"
The voice breaking through the clash belonged to the mage. He looked overwhelmed from a distance while maintaining his long-range magic.
"My mana has been eroded by time! I can't hold it anymore!"
As his expression and eyelids darkened with each passing second from exhaustion, I occasionally glanced at him, merely observing.
His hands, desperately trying to control the countless magic circles, were now beginning to weaken.
Truly, I could no longer lie to myself.
Even while facing two sword-wielding heroes at close range, moving with the speed of electric currents, I suddenly came up with a brilliant idea to end this.
From the flow of this scene alone, it was obvious. This development had existed from the very beginning, with the purpose of manipulating the game's narrative.
Rosse, Leon, Zeei, Chisa. All of them had gathered on this battlefield.
Wasn't this a perfect opportunity to begin?
Yep. Of course it was.
"Tch…"
Clicking my tongue like a sane person, I immediately stepped back several paces and landed atop the ruined remains of the castle.
They were now positioned at a distance far beyond where I stood.
"How boring."
First of all, one must speak properly, like an absurd villain.
"Everything looks painfully monotonous. You will never be able to oppose true evil. At best, you can only bury it alive."
As the heroes stared at me sharply while gasping for breath in response, I continued.
"Because the truth is, true darkness will always exist alongside holy narratives. In fact, without anyone noticing, it can even be born within that very holiness. Well then, you are far too naïve to be entrusted as messengers of the gods."
Using slogans I had copied straight from anti-hero novels in my previous world, I immediately formed a black hole spell created from the despair of those watching this scene.
Naturally, that only made humanity's final hope shout back in defiance.
"…Nonsense!! What you're doing is nothing more than an escape!"
Ow, ow, ow…
It seemed our main hero had finally found the courage to speak, her lips trembling.
"Are you trying to erase this world with that magic!?"
Her metal-covered fingers tightened firmly around the hilt, while the other heroes' legendary weapons also prepared to rush in.
They were strong and persistent.
And me… I would break them in the most trivial way possible.
That aside, did they even know what I was creating right now?
Of course not.
Long ago, I had spread propaganda across the western continent, the land of so-called ideal beings, claiming that the Demon King could cast an SSSSSSSSSSS+ spell capable of drawing all objects into a single point, something I called black hole magic.
That information was supposed to spread quickly into human territories, to be studied as a countermeasure against my creation.
But there was one thing they did not know.
"Yes. Naturally, just as you think. I will erase everything, including myself, and bury it far away from this shallow surface."
As the black hole formed, floating above my palm, I immediately released it, allowing it to drift freely through the ever-darkening sky.
With each passing second, its gravitational pull grew stronger. Small particles like dust and debris, and eventually the revolutionary soldiers themselves, were dragged into it.
They were devoured.
This situation was nothing more than a fantastic performance I presented to the heroes in return for their efforts.
I looked over the chaos from side to side.
With my Undead forces now reduced to something that could be counted on one hand, and the revolutionary army down to only ten percent, barely alive, I immediately erased all of my remaining troops in an instant.
They simply melted into the shadows, then descended into the underworld that led to the abyss.
As for my golems and familiars, only one remained.
A massive fox with two tails.
Its body was pitch black, a coloration that could be called natural camouflage within the void.
The creature was on the brink of death. Seeing it clearly was pitiful. Momo had been crushed beneath the castle structure, which had already suffered severe damage from the earlier battles.
One could say the building now resembled nothing more than a decayed ruin.
No longer whole. Not even close to its original form.
I immediately created a small protective barrier, then forcibly pulled it out using shadows shaped like enormous black hands emerging from the ground, carrying Garb away from this place.
"…Damn it, damn it, damn it!! This is way too strong! It feels like my body is being torn apart from the inside!!!"
Then, as I looked back toward the heroes, especially the glamorous sword knight who had planted both of his swords into the ground as an anchor to avoid being pulled toward the black hole, I suddenly felt a sense of pity for him.
He looked cool. His actions perfectly matched the image of a handsome hero who would make women fawn over him.
Far from that, while they were desperately thinking up strategies to destroy my artificial creation…
My sharp eyes were instead drawn to a loser, a former revolutionary soldier who had died in a miserable state.
He sat slumped against the corpse of his horse.
His face was hollow, like someone suffering from malnutrition. Perhaps he had been forced into battle, only to die on the battlefield.
No matter how I looked at him, he was nothing more than a pitiful middle-aged man.
Or perhaps, just a random NPC, completely unimportant even to his own world.
"Haaaa… That's perfect!!!!"
This was the chance!!
This was the moment!
That meant I would finally escape this narrative!
It would truly be granted!
Oh, shit… no matter how happy I was to celebrate, I almost forgot something important.
First of all, quietly, I had to weaken the black hole spell. That would become the crucial opening that allowed them to attack me at any moment.
As for the rest, it didn't matter.
I left it to the heroes.
After all, it seemed they had already come up with an idea and an attack strategy.
"…Now!"
Just as expected.
The two sword users leaped energetically from one shattered rooftop to another, sprinting at high speed like cheetahs. Every step they took shattered the area where their feet landed.
The glamorous sword knight, Leon.
Our cool and persistent main hero, Rosse.
The nun who always supported them from the rear with holy blessings, Chisa.
And finally, the selfish mage who appeared to be using his own version of forbidden magic, Zeei.
They were going to launch one last brutal assault, right?
"…Tch. These people, seriously."
Muttering that to myself, I curled my lips into a sly smile and prepared to execute the next scenario.
Quietly, I deliberately made this battle far more extravagant than before, introducing an explosive spell into the mix.
The explosion was so overwhelming that this time, even I found myself captivated by it.
As a result…
My castle had been completely destroyed.
Seriously.
It was truly ninety-nine percent gone.
The sole tower castle where I had lived for years in tedious monotony was now nothing more than an empty stretch of land, abandoned by its owner.
This was bad.
I had destroyed the artistic beauty of the game!
Please… forgive me, dear game developers. If it were not for my own boring personal necessity, I honestly would not have done this.
But there was no other choice, right? That was the reason. So stop questioning yourself, and speak like the loudest person in the world.
Focus.
…All right.
In this climactic mode, I began exerting myself to copy the existence of that pitiful man I had observed earlier.
He would become the vessel for this exhausted version of myself, allowing me to escape this accursed narrative.
I would turn myself into a cowardly NPC.
Or perhaps, one could say a loser who was no longer needed by the world.
Huff… I was truly looking forward to that moment.
A moment where I aspired to become someone the world looked down on, rather than the center of it. Being a villain was troublesome. And so was desperately trying to become a hero who sold their reputation to the world.
It would be far better to establish myself as an NPC on the surface of the universe.
I was certain that it was a brilliant idea worthy of praise.
However, even with such intentions…
There were still important obligations I could not abandon.
From what I remembered of this game, it was filled with many evils besides the true demons. Evils born of corruption, envy, jealousy, and political strife.
All of it was aimed at killing the main character, because she was an important figure within the Dragon Cross Kingdom.
So what was the real decision?
In short, I would become part of the shadow heroes.
Or perhaps you could call it a backup hero.
I would work behind the scenes, like a mysterious protagonist who looked cool within the darkness. I would protect the main hero without her ever knowing, shielding her from her personal enemies.
Yes, everything I planned to do was nothing more than preventing a world reset.
If the main character were to die by an assassin's blade, it would be no different from erasing every effort I had made up to this point.
Keeping all of that in mind, I immediately executed the strategy at high speed.
One copy, two copies, then hundreds of copies.
Within less than a single second, I had nearly succeeded in reproducing it perfectly.
No, not quite.
Even if it was not one hundred percent complete, I believed that a half-finished result was better for avoiding the risk of the heroes being swallowed by the massive explosion. If this fierce battle dragged on any longer, it would only exhaust them until they died meaninglessly.
And the opposite would also hold true.
I quickly generated a thick black fog amid the chaos. It was so dense that it resembled black ink floating through the air, accompanied by the black hole explosion in the sky.
…What? Another explosion?
Yes. You did not hear it wrong.
I had planned this from the very beginning.
That black hole was designed to explode once it had consumed enough of its surroundings. In truth, its capacity was quite limited. More importantly, the spell was still incomplete, so it would detonate the moment it reached its limit.
As a result, those who had survived the previous explosion now found it even harder to see the world clearly.
This detonation was far more magnificent than before.
It could even be compared to a nuclear strike falling from the sky, meant to erase an entire civilization upon impact.
Everything was blown away in an instant.
Only the four heroes managed to survive up to this point, enduring the scorching radiation of the black hole. Even so, they would never be able to see the world clearly again.
Indeed.
They were using sacred barrier magic to protect themselves from disaster. But they would never realize that outside those defenses…
I had already secretly transferred my body into that middle-aged man.
The Demon King they despised had been completely incinerated by the black hole's radiation.
His body melted into ash. A piercing scream echoed like the sound of eternal defeat. The Demon King had truly vanished.
Even his ashes scattered into the wind, as if he were no longer needed by the mortal world.
From there, I could clearly see that the heroes were finally able to glimpse the scene, albeit faintly.
They stood stunned, frozen by the sight before them.
Caught between joy at their victory and sorrow over the total annihilation of their forces, they could only remain silent as the battlefield slowly calmed.
Everything became quiet.
I, now in a different form, merely pretended to be injured and gazed up at the sky, which was beginning to brighten with light.
I had no intention of escaping immediately.
That would only raise suspicion.
It was better to wait for the arrival of medical support troops, who would surely come within the next few hours.