The Whisper of the God of Love (Part 11)

“Good afternoon, Elka. Have you eaten yet?”

“The roasted lamb you treated me to last time was delicious.”

Ewan stood on the writhing, pulsating flesh, looking down at the still-cute, and now very surprised, face of Elka.

All his killing intent was hidden, all his fury cast aside. He smiled gently, wiping a smear of blood from his face, as if he were meeting an old friend, his eyes full of a strange, sad warmth. The sun was at his back, enveloping him in a sacred, golden halo that made him look like a descending angel.

“Ah…”

Elka stared at him, her expression dazed, as if the gentle, disarming smile on his lips had soothed her monstrous rage. Her own beautiful face, still pale and lovely, became peaceful.

“Mr. Ewan,” she whispered, her voice a soft, hopeful breath, “have you finally come to accept my love?”

“I will not accept your love,” Ewan said, his voice soft but firm as a blade.

“Why? Is it because… my love is not enough?” Elka’s eyes widened in genuine, childlike confusion. “But I have already given everything. My blood, my flesh, my very soul… is all of this still not enough? All I want is for all of you to be with me forever. All I want is for you to accept my love. But why? Master, and you… why are none of you willing?”

“Of course we’re not willing,” Ewan said, his gaze dropping to the churning sea of flesh beneath his feet. “Because what you have is not love.”

“Not love…” Elka whispered the words, and then, her expression suddenly twisted in a ferocious, ugly snarl, as if she had been dealt the greatest insult imaginable. “Nonsense! Nonsense! This is love! This is love! Look! Everyone who has accepted my love is so happy!”

Around her, the hundreds of faces began to roar again, their countless, desperate cries of “I love you” merging into a tidal wave of sound that threatened to swallow everything. The limbs that had been shattered by the man’s final, defiant attack regenerated in an instant, and like the grasping tentacles of a great sea anemone, they surged toward Ewan.

“Come, Mr. Ewan! Let us be together forever! My love is endless!” Elka smiled, her gaze fixed on Ewan’s face, her expression one of pure, obsessive, and terrifying adoration.

Like a young maiden gazing at her beloved.

But how could Ewan possibly be her beloved? Her beloved was supposed to be someone else.

And love could not possibly be endless.

To love the one you love… only that could be called love.

“As I thought,” Ewan sighed softly, a profound sadness in his voice. “The naive idea of trying to wake you up with words… was impossible from the start.”

He lifted his eyes, his expression turning as cold and hard as forged steel. He no longer paid any attention to the writhing, fleshy danger behind him, because he knew, with an absolute and unshakeable certainty, that Anne, now free to act, would protect his back.

And so, Ewan gripped his short swords and, with a savage cry, plunged them deep into the flesh on either side of Elka’s head.

“Ah!”

Elka’s face twisted in a raw, agonized shriek. It seemed to be the first time she had felt real, genuine pain. The monster’s massive body began to thrash violently, the flesh beneath Ewan’s feet churning like a stormy sea, trying to throw him off.

“ANNE!”

No more words were needed. A bridge of solid, gleaming steel shot through the monster’s flesh, stabilizing itself beneath Ewan’s feet with a resounding clang.

With a firm foothold, Ewan took a deep breath and brought his twin blades down with all his might. Massive, gruesome gashes were torn open on either side of Elka’s head. The crimson flesh within writhed and churned, trying to regenerate, healing at a rate far faster than any other part of the monster.

As if… it were hiding something.

“It seems,” Ewan said, a grim, triumphant smile touching his lips, “I’ve found the right spot.”

He suddenly released his short swords and plunged his bare hands into the gaping, gruesome wounds.

The monster’s corrosive blood ate at his arms, but he paid it no mind, his hands fumbling desperately, blindly through the writhing, pulsating flesh. The monster roared, its struggles growing more and more frantic, but all of its attacks were intercepted by Anne, who, with gritted teeth, was putting everything she had into defending him. At this point, she would not allow her Young Master to be harmed again.

Finally, Ewan’s fingers closed around a hard, unyielding, and strangely cold object.

“NO, NO, NO! STOP! STOP IT!”

The moment he touched the object, a look of pure, primal terror appeared in Elka’s eyes. She screamed for him to stop, but with only her head remaining, what could she possibly do? She couldn’t even lift her beloved magic wand. And the one who had always protected her had, a short while ago, become just another one of the weeping, wailing faces that could only cry, “I love you.”

Ewan’s smile grew wider, and his eyes grew sadder.

“Finally,” he roared, his voice a triumphant, grief-stricken cry, “I’ve got you, you bastard Evil God!”

He ripped his hands from the flesh.

And in his grasp, he held a small, intricately carved statue.

It was a sculpture of a young woman, embracing a heart, as if trying to crush it into her very own chest.

Although it had just been pulled from a mass of bloody, corrupted flesh, the statue was not stained with a single drop of blood. Instead, it radiated a faint, holy, and deeply deceptive light, a light that made one feel an inexplicable urge to kneel and worship.

This was it. The source of the corruption.

Now, all he had to do was destroy it, and this nightmare would finally be over.

“ANNE!”

He didn’t even need to shout. Anne, who had been watching him intently, her entire being focused on this one, critical moment, was already prepared.

The moment Ewan threw the statue into the air, the forest of steel thorns surged forward like a fleet of stampeding, unstoppable trucks. A massive amount of steel enveloped the statue, twisting and compressing, like a giant hydraulic press, again and again, and then, with a final, vicious spin of a thousand blades, the steel, along with the statue, was shredded into fine, glittering, and utterly harmless dust.

The metal re-solidified under Anne’s control, but the dust of the statue could not reform. It was scattered by the autumn wind, vanishing without a single, solitary trace.

Not even dust remained.

“It’s over.”

Seeing this, Ewan finally let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.

It was finally over.

But the moment his mind relaxed, the accumulated, bone-deep fatigue in his body washed over him like a tidal wave. He staggered, nearly collapsing. Thankfully, he managed to catch himself on the monster’s now-still, and strangely quiet, body.

“So disgusting.”

Ewan straightened up, shaking his hands in disgust, looking for a place to wipe the monster’s foul blood and slime. And then he remembered—

He was still only wearing that damn, ridiculous animal-skin skirt.

“I can’t believe Anne managed to keep a straight face this whole time.”

A world-saving hero in an animal-skin skirt… it just didn’t have the right ring to it.

But it’s not like anyone cared. After all, the only living people here… were him and Anne.

Ewan glanced at Elka’s now-closed eyes, and at the faces that no longer cried out “I love you,” and a bitter, sad smile touched his lips. He turned and was about to wave to Anne, who was running toward him, when he suddenly froze.

Wait a minute. Something’s not right.

If the medium for the Evil God’s power is gone, why is the monster’s body still here?

This monster was clearly a grotesque, unnatural creation, stitched together by the Evil God’s power. Without that power, shouldn’t it have just collapsed into a pile of rotting flesh?

Unless…

“DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!”

Ewan roared at Anne, then quickly spun back around, a new, terrible dread coiling in his stomach.

In that instant, he heard the sound of a single, soft drop of liquid.

A single drop of pure, viscous, black liquid, appearing from nowhere, landed squarely on Elka’s forehead.

He was too late to stop it.

Elka’s eyes snapped open.

And in them, there was no white, no iris, no pupil.

Only a void. A perfect, endless, and utterly, terrifyingly terrifying expanse of pure, absolute black.