"That is all, Your Honor," the voice carried through the wide hall, and the silence that followed settled over everyone seated, watching the trial that had just concluded.
All the evidence had been presented, witnesses had been called and dismissed, and now the final decision rested with the man who held the highest authority in this room. His gaze was fixed firmly on the boy standing at the center of the student court, ether chains binding him in place, his own gaze fixed on his feet, as it had been throughout the entire trial.
"Given all evidence and witnesses presented before the court, Student Azalea is henceforth pronounced guilty of breaking code sections 45 and 54 of the Laws of Vermillion." The moment the announcement was made and the gavel came down, a wave passed through the room, and every person present responded with almost the exact same reaction.
Satisfaction.
Most, if not everyone, in that room had known this outcome was coming. Even the young man himself showed no change in posture or expression, still gazing downward, his face hidden from all the judgmental stares directed at him.
Why?
In that moment of quiet, cut off from everything around him, the only thing that came to Azalea's mind was that single word.
Why?
Why had it come to this again? Why did his life always have to be this way? WHY? Why could he not just be like everyone else?
In that moment, the only thing he could see clearly was the faces of the people he had genuinely believed, even if only briefly, actually cared about him. And now every one of those faces looked at him with nothing but disgust and contempt.
Even her.
Isabelle. The one he would have sworn, ten days ago, would stand by him no matter what happened. His best friend, someone he had known since childhood, the only person who had ever truly cared for him, and the only person he might have ever truly cared for in return.
He could not get it out of his head.
Being dragged to the courtroom, the way she had walked up to him, and then that slap. It had hurt him far more than anything he had endured over the past ten days.
It hurt so much.
Her teeth had been clenched, her expression completely cold and distant, a look he had never once seen her direct at him in all the years he had known her.
And it stopped him cold.
She had cut off their friendship as if it meant nothing. She had called him a monster.
WHY? WHY? JUST WHY?
He had already taken so much from every single person around him, and he had not broken, because he knew that the moment he let it in, it would destroy him.
But her? He had not seen that coming.
She was someone who had shared meals with him. Someone he had taken a blade for, not once, not twice, not three times, not even four. She was someone who had always stood with him.
But on that day, right in front of everyone, she had looked at him the same way his father had on the day he was cast out. No different from all the rest.
And in that moment he understood something he had refused to see before. From the very beginning, from the moment he opened his eyes in this world, he had been alone.
The signs had always been there, a truth that had waited patiently to be recognized, but he had looked away from it. He had been living a lie.
Even so, even after holding it all in, even after convincing himself he had survived worse, even after hiding everything behind a calm and indifferent face, it still hurt.
God, how much it hurt.
He had believed that even if those other people he had called friends turned on him, even if they looked at him with disgust and cursed him to his face, she at least would not abandon him when he needed her most.
When he was falling apart.
They knew him. All of them did. They knew him well enough to know what he was and was not capable of. If he had done what they accused him of, it was because there had been no other way. It meant he had been out of options, that he had been desperate and had no other choice left.
And yet not one of them had stopped to think about that for even a second.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The feeling tore through him like his heart was being pulled apart.
The Goddess was gone. The system had left him behind, and the realization hit him like cold water on a freezing morning.
All those promises. Every single one of them had been a lie.
He had been used from the start. The Goddess had known he would stray from the path that had been laid out for him, and she had known it well, so she had put him in a cage. A cage built from a system and a false promise of a better life, a promise that this would be his last run and that he would finally be free, sent to a new world, not a scripted one with a hero and a villain and a role already written for him, but a real world where he could simply live.
Peace. That had been the greatest promise of all.
Lies. Every word of it, lies.
He had been useful, and when he stopped being useful, he was discarded. The system was gone. He was left with nothing.
The final mission. That was what had led to all of this.
KILL AUSTON.
He had known it was impossible. He was nothing more than a talentless, unawakened Alchemist who could only support teammates built for combat.
But the mission had stayed. It had pressed him, made promises, and made threats.
And before he fully understood what was happening, he was standing there with a sword in hand, and it was buried in the gut of the hero.
That was his only crime.
And now, just as it had happened in the Game, he was buried under an endless list of allegations.
"Student Azalea, what say you?" the judge asked.
Azalea exhaled slowly, his eyes empty. He thought about her face, the single tear that had run down her left cheek.
He hated it. He hated her more than he hated anyone else in that room. Hypocrite.
"Just get it over with," he said, his eyes still on the floor, not bothering to look at the man.
"So be it. From this moment on, Azalea Von Nevana is hereby expelled from Vermillion, all rights as a student revoked, and permanently barred from its premises. Should he be found in violation of this ruling, he will be detained under the laws that govern Vermillion." The judgment was final.
A long silence followed, settling over the room and staying there.
So it had come to this, he thought.
He exhaled again, his blank eyes drifting to the ceiling as hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him out of the courtroom.
This was it. The end of the extra.
Azalea.