This "confession" was like a thunderclap, ringing in Waver's ears and in the heart of everyone who heard it.
Waver's pupils completely lost all light at that moment. He stopped struggling, like a puppet whose soul had been taken away, allowing that large hand to choke his life. The grand statue in his heart named "Iskandar" collapsed at this moment, shattering into powder that could not be put back together.
And Iskandar, after roaring this sentence, seemed to have been drained of all his strength, but his hand clutching Waver did not loosen. For that slim hope of "living," he personally strangled the bond with his master and personally... denied the meaning of his own existence.
Kanjuro watched all of this with satisfaction, his smile like an evil flower in full bloom. He had successfully turned a king into a pathetic wretch who had willingly fallen for the sake of survival. The air seemed to freeze, leaving only the faint, painful "gurgling" sound from Weber's throat as it was being throttled. However, in these final moments as his life faded, this thin youth—this master who had always been protected behind Iskandar's back—did not curse or plead.
He tilted his head back, gazing at the king of conquerors' familiar face, which was twisted by struggle and madness. In his tear-blurred eyes, a strangely transparent, pure light miraculously emerged. Using the last bit of air in his lungs, he let out a faint yet incredibly clear whisper, each word sounding like a final echo striking the soul:
"I know... you might have... deceived the world..." His voice was intermittent, yet carried a calmness and certainty beyond his years. "You might... not be... that flawless king of conquerors... in the history books..."
He struggled to twitch the corners of his mouth, seemingly trying to show a smile.
"But... in my, Waver Velvet's, eyes... you took me soaring through the sky... you told me... to hold my head high... you let me see... a vast world I had never seen before..."
His gaze began to scatter, but that conviction burned tenaciously like a final candle flame:
"You... are my... hero... Iskandar..."
This deathbed confession carried more power than any accusation. It did not condemn the king of conquerors' betrayal; instead, with an almost holy tolerance, it reaffirmed him once more. However, these sincere words from the heart failed to penetrate Iskandar's mind, which was blinded by the "desire for survival" and "self-negation."
That large hand continued to tighten. Iskandar even closed his eyes, not daring to look at Weber's clear gaze, which remained full of trust until death. His obsession with wanting to live had overwhelmed everything, including this most precious bond.
"Heh..." An undisguised sneer full of ultimate contempt came from the air. Gilgamesh stood with arms crossed, his crimson snake-like pupils looking down at this ugly drama of "master and Servant killing each other" as if watching a low-rate street farce. "Truly unsightly to the extreme, mongrel. To survive, you've even cast aside your last bit of dignity. Does a piece of trash like you deserve to be called a 'King'? You aren't even fit to carry this King's shoes!" His evaluation, like a cold blade, sliced through Iskandar's already riddled dignity.
Jeanne d'Arc silently closed her eyes and let out an almost inaudible sigh. In this sigh, there was pity for Weber, sorrow for Iskandar's fall, and perhaps... a sliver of cold dread toward Kanjuro's methods of manipulating the human heart to the extreme. The dark aura surrounding her seemed to become even more silent.
Around them, the background noise remained a hellish symphony—the shrill, desperate cries of children shook the heavens, intertwined with Uryu Ryunosuke's frantic, spell-like laughter and the sound of the butcher's knife rising and falling through flesh. In the distance, Saber's battle with the terrifying sea monster from Rlyeh continued. The golden radiance of the Holy Sword violently collided with the monster's chaotic tentacles, erupting in bursts of thunder. She was unable to pull away, forced to watch this scene of lost humanity unfold before her eyes, her heart nearly consumed by anger and powerlessness.
Kanjuro watched all of this with satisfaction. He watched Iskandar personally extinguish the only lamp that might have illuminated his dark heart, watching this former king of conquerors completely sink into self-negation and betrayal. He didn't need to act personally; he only needed to lightly pluck the string named "Desire," and these so-called heroes and kings would walk toward destruction themselves.
Just as the last spark of light in Weber's eyes was about to be completely extinguished, and his small body stopped struggling—
Iskandar's arm stiffly loosened.
Weber collapsed onto the cold sand like a puppet with its strings cut (the afterimages of Army of the King had not yet fully faded), motionless. His eyes, which had once been full of wisdom and yearning, remained wide open, gazing at the sky he ultimately failed to conquer with his King, as if still silently uttering that unfinished "You are my hero."
Iskandar stumbled back a step, looking at his hands that had just strangled the only subject who truly recognized and followed him. A rasping, beast-like sound came from his throat. He had completed Kanjuro's "test" and submitted his "letter of allegiance" stained with the most precious blood.
Now, it was his turn to demand the promise of "living on" from the demon.
He looked up, his hollow and mad gaze fixed on the man who always wore a smile and was like the abyss itself—Kanjuro. Iskandar let go, and Weber's small frame slumped to the ground like a broken doll. Those eyes that once reflected stars and dreams lost all luster, staring vacantly at the blood-misted sky. The king of conquerors stumbled back, looking down at his trembling hands that had just strangled his only true believer, his throat making sounds like a broken bellows.
He had done it. He had submitted a letter of allegiance stained with the blood of his most precious bond.
He looked up, and in those eyes that once burned with the fires of conquest, only a hollow mix of pleading and madness remained. He stared fixedly at Kanjuro, like a drowning man looking at his only piece of driftwood:
"I... I did it... Kanjuro! You said... to live... let me... live!" His voice was hoarse, carrying a humble plea, his former kingly aura completely gone.
However, what responded to him was Kanjuro's even more frantic and malicious laughter.
"Haha... Hahahaha!! Live? Of course, I certainly said that." Kanjuro laughed until physiological tears almost came out. He pointed at Weber's still-warm corpse on the ground, then at Iskandar's pathetic state. "But when did I ever say I would fulfill the promise?"
He tilted his head, showing an innocent yet cruel expression:
"I only asked if you 'wanted to,' I never guaranteed you 'definitely could.' king of conquerors, you've campaigned for many years; don't you know that... all is fair in war? Without even this basic judgment, was your empire back then really conquered through luck?"
Naked betrayal! Undisguised mockery!
Iskandar was struck as if by lightning, his entire being freezing in place. His pupils shrank to pinpoints from the extreme shock and the anger of being toyed with. But his mind, completely twisted by the "desire for survival," still clung to a sliver of unrealistic fantasy.
"No... you can't do this! You promised!!" He roared, and then with a "thud," his grand body knelt directly onto the ground defiled by blood and sand. In the most humiliating posture, he pleaded toward Kanjuro: "I beg of you! Kanjuro! Spare my life! Give me a way to live! I will do whatever you want!!"
This scene completely ignited the onlookers' fury.
"Mongrel!! You absolute piece of trash!!" Gilgamesh was beyond furious. The golden ripples behind him surged wildly as countless Noble Phantasm tips emerged, pointing straight at Kanjuro. "To toy with a King's dignity like this! This King shall tear you into ten thousand pieces!!" Although he despised Iskandar's fall, Kanjuro's bottomless breach of faith touched his bottom line even more.
"Iskandar! Wake up!!" Saber swung her sword with all her might amidst the monster's entanglement, her voice filled with grief, indignation, and urgency. "He is simply toying with you! He hasn't had a shred of integrity from the start! Stand up! Fight to the end like a true King! Don't let him trample your last bit of dignity any longer!"
However, their rebukes and calls were completely lost on the current Iskandar. He just knelt there like the most devout believer, looking up at the god who gave him despair, waiting for that illusory "grace."
Kanjuro admired Iskandar's unsightly state of completely abandoning his dignity, as if seeing the most perfect artwork in the world. His gaze swept over the mountain of children's corpses nearby from Uryu Ryunosuke's slaughter, his lips curling into a new, even darker arc.
"Fine, since you are so'sincere'..." Kanjuro's voice carried a lazy tone of charity. "I'll give you one more chance."
His finger slowly rose, pointing toward Fuyuki City down the mountain. Under the night sky, the city lights still flickered, where tens of thousands of innocent citizens lived.
"Do you see the city below?" Kanjuro's voice was like a demon's whisper, clearly entering Iskandar's ears. "Go down. Use your Noble Phantasm, use your power, to slaughter, to destroy. Kill every living thing you can see—men, women, the elderly, children... leave none alive."
He leaned down slightly, staring into Iskandar's violently contracting pupils:
"When you turn Fuyuki City into a city of the dead, soaking every inch of soil with blood... I will consider truly letting you go. How about it? This task is very clear, isn't it?"
Slaughter an entire city?! Use the lives of countless innocents to trade for a chance at his own survival?!
Iskandar's body on the ground trembled violently, his face filled with struggle and fear. This command was a hundred times more cruel than personally killing Weber! This was to make him completely fall into being an inhuman butcher, never to be redeemed!
"What? Hesitating?" Kanjuro sneered. "Weren't you quite decisive when you killed your own master just now? Now facing a group of ants, you can't bring yourself to do it? So your 'Way of the Hegemon' only dares to be used against those close to you?"
Just then, a voice twisted with excitement came from the side. Uryu Ryunosuke had just slit the throat of the last surviving child with his dagger. His face was covered in warm blood, and his eyes sparkled with a morbid ecstasy. He ran to Kanjuro's side like a child eager for praise:
"Lord Kanjuro! Lord Kanjuro! They're all dead! They died so wonderfully! Those terrified expressions... hehe..." He spoke while dancing around, then greedily looked at the kneeling Iskandar and Kanjuro, urgently requesting:
"Slaughtering a city? Such a fun thing... why not take me along?! Let me go too! I beg you, Lord Kanjuro! I will definitely kill more than this big dummy! And more artistically!!"
Uryu Ryunosuke's joining was like the final straw, adding to the suffocating despair. Evil was spreading, madness was contagious.
Kanjuro looked at the struggling Iskandar and then at the frantically excited Ryunosuke, a smile of ultimate pleasure appearing on his face. He was curious if this former king of conquerors, in the face of the final test, would completely sink, or... at the last moment, find a sliver of the bottom line of being "human" that he had already discarded.
Everyone's gaze focused on Iskandar's trembling, clenched fist. Iskandar's body on the ground shook violently. Kanjuro's command to slaughter the city was like the most vicious curse, echoing frantically in his mind, which was completely disrupted by the desire to survive and self-negation. Weber's clear and trusting gaze before death, Saber and Gilgamesh's rebukes, the city lights, the faces of countless strangers... all of this collided violently with the temptation to "live on," nearly tearing his soul apart.
Then, just when everyone—including Kanjuro—thought he would struggle for a moment longer, Iskandar suddenly raised his head!
The last spark of reason and struggle in his eyes was completely extinguished, replaced by a hollow madness of only primitive obsession. He no longer looked at anyone or responded to any calls; he was like a killing machine that had been switched on, letting out a low roar that didn't sound human:
"AAAAHHHHHHH——!!!"
Boom!!!
A majestic surge of magical energy erupted once again, but this time, it was not for the glorious Army of the King, but for that chariot symbolizing conquest and trampling—the gordius wheel! The golden divine bulls bellowed, crushing the void as they pulled the thunderous war chariot into sudden existence!
Without waiting for anyone to react, Iskandar leaped onto the chariot like a cannonball and yanked the reins!
"Moo——!!" The divine bulls let out a heaven-shaking roar, thunder exploding beneath their hooves as they turned into a golden torrent of destruction. Ignoring the enemies and monsters on the mountain peak, he charged with a resolute, self-destructive posture toward Fuyuki City below—the city lit with lights and home to hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens!!
He chose to fall. For that illusory promise of "life" casually made by the demon, he discarded his final bottom line as a King and transformed into a star of calamity bringing death and destruction, charging toward the city he might have once wanted to "conquer," but never through "slaughter."
This scene left everyone stunned.
For the first time, a violent surge of emotion appeared in Jeanne d'Arc's ice-blue eyes—a tremor mixed with disbelief and deep confusion. She suddenly turned to Kanjuro, her voice carrying a sharp edge due to her extreme lack of understanding: 'Kanjuro! Why are you doing this?! You clearly have no intention of fulfilling your promise! Time and again, you break your word, trampling on his hope and pushing him into a deeper abyss! What is this all for?! Is it just to admire the sight of him struggling in pain?!'
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