Chapter 47: Memories of the Last True Hero - Seiya Amane

Absolute, crushing silence returned to the ruined garden.

Only one demon remained alive.

The Orc General commanding the siege was not charging. Unlike his slaughtered brethren, he stood at the edge of the property, heavily wounded, bleeding thick black blood onto the mud, simply watching Kōya.

Kōya slowly lowered his glowing sword and looked across the yard at him.

"You."

The General’s red eyes widened in sheer, helpless terror.

Kōya walked slowly across the mud toward him. "I have questions for you."

The Orc General roared, raising his enormous weapon weakly in a desperate final stand.

Kōya moved infinitely faster. He didn’t use the sword. He simply stepped inside the guard, violently struck the heavy iron weapon aside with the back of his hand, and drove his boot squarely into the General’s knee, shattering it.

The beast collapsed. Kōya stepped forward, driving the General flat onto its back in the mud.

The massive Orc desperately tried to resist, clawing at the boy’s legs.

Kōya ignored the flailing. He leaned down and placed his bare right hand flat against the center of the General’s broad chest.

Suffocating, violently dark energy began flowing directly from Kōya’s palm into the creature’s nervous system.

The General screamed, a horrific, tearing sound of absolute psychic agony.

Kōya’s dark eyes shifted, the pupils dilating until they were completely black. The physical world of the ruined village, the rain, and the mud instantly dissolved around him.

He tore his way directly into the creature’s mind.

Memories flooded aggressively into his consciousness in a chaotic, bloody stream.

Blood. Fire. A vast, torn battlefield. And Seiya.

The Hero stood alone in the absolute center of a ravaged battlefield. His legendary sword was completely coated in black blood. All around him lay the shattered corpses of countless low-level demons and vanguard soldiers.

But the battle was not over. Several massively powerful, distinct figures remained standing in a loose perimeter around him.

Demon Peers. The absolute apex of the hierarchy.

One stood to the left, casually carrying a stolen weapon crackling violently with stolen blue-white thunder and lightning.

Another stood to the right, wielding a massive, jagged greatsword.

Another lurked in the shadows behind them, observing.

The battle was brutal, fought at a speed that blurred the air. Seiya moved through the catastrophic magic and heavy steel without a single microsecond of hesitation.

He parried a lightning strike, stepped inside the guard, and severed the arm of a Demon Peer. Another lunged; Seiya shattered its ribs with a concussive blast of holy aura.

Suddenly, the tactical dynamic shifted. Two of the heavily wounded Demon Peers began rapidly retreating, creating distance.

The Demon Peer wielding the stolen lightning sword raised his voice, shouting over the roar of the battle:

"Four of our underlings have finally captured the package!"

Another voice answered from the dark:

"I will return to the Lord with the prize."

Seiya didn’t pause to process the chatter. He charged, a blur of golden light. His sword struck true, entirely decapitating one of the retreating Demon Peers. Without breaking stride, Seiya smoothly caught the fallen enemy’s heavy, cursed sword out of the air.

Now, the Hero held two weapons—one of holy light, one of demonic steel.

The remaining elite demons immediately swarmed him, abandoning their perimeter. They attacked simultaneously from every conceivable direction, a localized storm of absolute lethality.

Seiya fought them all. One after another. Deflecting, parrying, striking. His armor was shattered. His body was covered in catastrophic, bleeding wounds. But he simply continued, an unstoppable, furious engine of survival.

Then, a cold, arrogant voice echoed clearly from the darkness at the edge of the battlefield.

"We have her."

Seiya stopped dead. His golden aura violently flickered. His exhausted eyes widened in pure, sudden terror.

"What?"

The Demon Peer holding the lightning sword smiled, a cruel, mocking stretching of his lips.

"Either you drop your guard and stop moving..." The monster let the silence stretch for a torturous second. "...or we kill her right now."

Seiya’s unstoppable forward momentum completely disappeared. His fierce, combative expression shattered into absolute despair.

The Demon Peer laughed, a hollow, victorious sound.

Seiya’s scarred hands tightened agonizingly around the hilts of his two swords.

Then, something deep inside the Hero violently, irreparably snapped.

He didn’t drop his weapons. He charged.

He abandoned all defense, fully embracing the slaughter. He killed absolutely everything in his direct path. One elite demon was bisected. Another was crushed by a point-blank holy blast. Another was decapitated.

The Demon Peer with the lightning sword barely avoided the next furious, suicidal strike. Seiya’s holy blade cut a massive, deep gouge across the Peer’s body. Black blood erupted across the ash.

The wounded Demon Peer frantically retreated, his confidence shattered by the sheer ferocity of the dying man. Seiya ruthlessly pursued him. The battle devolved from a tactical engagement into an absolute, bloody massacre.

Then, another, vastly more oppressive presence appeared at the edge of the field.

A tall, commanding silhouette stepped out of the smoke. The physical features of the face were impossible to perceive through the memory, obscured by a dense, suffocating aura of absolute authority.

Only the cold, echoing voice remained perfectly clear.

"Fall back."

The surviving demons instantly halted their attacks and obeyed without question.

"Regroup the forces," the silhouette commanded, turning away from the carnage. "Then, kill that bastard Hero."

The memory shifted violently, skipping forward in time.

Seiya was still fighting, but it was over.

He was drowning in a sea of enemies. Black blood completely covered his broken body. The corpses of demons lay piled high around his boots.

Generals. Elite soldiers. Everything that had dared to step into his path.

He was barely standing, relying entirely on his swords to keep him upright. Yet, he continued to swing, refusing to die on his knees.

Eventually, the endless wave of monsters broke.

Seiya slowly, painfully turned his back on the carnage and looked toward the distant, dark forest. He staggered forward, dragging his boots through the mud.

The battlefield behind him was a monument to his wrath. It was filled with hundreds of corpses. A Demon Peer was dead. Multiple Generals were dead. The surviving, terrified demonic army was actively retreating from a single, dying man.

And Seiya... bleeding from a hundred fatal wounds... simply walked slowly toward the forest, trying to find his way back home.

The memory shattered into a million pieces of white static.

Kōya opened his eyes.

The physical world rushed back in. The pouring rain. The ruined garden. The bleeding Orc General was still pinned firmly beneath his hand, gasping for breath.

Kōya’s breathing was incredibly slow, perfectly measured. But his expression was completely, fundamentally different. The grief was gone, burned away by absolute, glacial wrath.

"Where is that bastard?" Kōya asked, his voice a terrifyingly calm whisper.

The Orc General struggled weakly, trying to break the grip.

Kōya tightened his hand, pouring a sliver of dark fire into the creature’s chest. "Where?"

The General finally broke. Trembling violently in agony, he raised a massive, scarred hand and pointed a trembling finger toward the distant, black forest in the east.

"The closest..." The Orc’s voice was barely a wet, rattling gasp. "The one..." He swallowed a mouthful of his own blood, his red eyes rolling back. "The one... with the lightning sword..."

Kōya slowly turned his head, looking toward the eastern forest.

Far in the distance, a massive, unnatural silhouette could barely be seen towering above the tree line beneath the pale moonlight. A heavily fortified structure.

His dark eyes narrowed into slits of pure murder.

So, that was one of them. That was the stronghold of the Demon Peer who had stolen Yuna’s sword. One of the architects connected directly to his father’s tragic, final battle. One of the bastards who had taken his mother in chains.

Kōya looked slowly back down at the broken Orc General beneath his hand.

"That is all the intelligence I needed from you."

The General’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute panic.

Kōya’s right hand moved in a blur.

His demonic fingers pierced directly, effortlessly through the Orc’s thick iron armor, shattering the ribs, and burying themselves deep into the creature’s massive chest cavity.

Hot, black blood erupted violently across Kōya’s forearm.

He grabbed the demon’s furiously beating heart.

The General gasped, its massive body arching off the mud.

Kōya crushed it completely in his grip.

The massive body instantly went limp, collapsing heavily back into the mud.

Kōya slowly withdrew his hand from the chest cavity. Thick, black blood dripped steadily from his scarred fingers, pattering against the wet earth.

For several long, heavy seconds, he remained completely still, crouching over the corpse in the moonlight.

Then, he stood up. He reached down and picked up the heavy Hero’s Sword from the mud. He effortlessly swung the massive weapon up and placed it securely across his back.

The battlefield was dead silent. The pale moonlight illuminated the absolute carnage scattered across the ruined village.

The small wooden house directly behind him miraculously remained standing. The dining room, the sacred place where he had shared his final, quiet meal with his father, was still mostly intact despite the destruction.

Kōya slowly turned his back on it.

His suffocating demonic aura returned in full force, a heavy, violet-black fog of dark energy violently flowing around the right side of his body.

But on his left side, a faint, pure golden radiance stubbornly remained. It was barely visible beneath the roaring darkness, but it was undeniably there.

His Heroic power had not been depleted. It had not disappeared.

His borrowed adventurer’s dagger rested securely at his right hip.

Kōya looked up. His right eye began to aggressively glow.

Violet. Black. Deep, swirling, and entirely unnatural. The terrifying gaze of an apex predator.

He turned his face slightly toward the right, the moonlight catching his features. The violent, violet-black light filled almost the entirety of his visible right eye, radiating absolute malice and destruction.

But on the exact opposite side, in his left eye...

A faint, pure, unyielding trace of golden light remained, staring forward with absolute, heroic resolve.

Kōya locked his dual gaze toward the distant, dark forest and the looming stronghold beyond it.

His father’s final, desperate words echoed loudly inside his mind, a holy vow carved into his soul.

I leave Mizuki to you, my son.

Kōya’s blood-stained hand tightened into a fist at his side.

Then, he began walking.

Toward the dark forest. Toward his captive mother. Toward the arrogant Demon Peer waiting in his fortress. Toward the bloody truth of the invasion.

And toward the people who had foolishly chosen to take absolutely everything from him.

The Hero’s son walked calmly beneath the pale moon.

The Demon Lord’s eyes burned fiercely in the darkness.

And for the very first time in the history of the fractured world...

Both terrible powers walked forward together, entirely unified in their wrath.