Elizabeth's words played back in his mind. It wasn't the first time someone had died in front of Ryuji. Although this was the first time that someone had forgiven him in their final moments.

Every other time someone had died around him, they cursed him with their last breaths.

He thought that they were undeniably right in their hatred. That these events were his fault. That they had died because they chose to be near him, and he let them be even though he knew the risks better than they did.

Elizabeth's last sentence shattered his fragile view of the world. He felt regret from the bottom of his soul for running away from the people that he just now realized truly considered him a friend.

The deluge of emotions inside him battled for control. His guilt was the foremost, but that quickly turned to anger.

Ryuji steadied his gaze at Alician. If he was too late to save them, then the only thing left to do was avenge them.

"ALICIAN!"

The murderer felt unfazed by the crazed look in his opponent's eyes or the blood-curdling scream he had just unleashed. "Are you done crying then? It's too late for you now though, or have you been too busy sobbing to notice? You're missing quite a bit of blood. I doubt you have the strength to even walk forward, let alone strike me down."

Under normal circumstances, Alician would've been right. Unfortunately for him, Ryuji was anything but normal.

He carried within him a divine blessing from one of the many gods. "Critical" The closer he got to death, the more exponentially powerful he became. The problem with it was that Ryuji would have to wait until he close to dying before his strength gain outweighed the negatives of blood loss.

Fortunately, with all Alicians pointless bolstering, the tipping point had just passed. Ryuji was feeling stronger than ever before. Fueled by anger and his blessing, Ryuji readied his sword in its sheath and charged at Alician.

"Fool! Fifty folds"

"Iai second draw."

The swords flew at him, but with an unnatural speed, he drew the blade, and with two strikes, all the swords in his way disappeared.

With his sword now drawn, he pointed it at the murderer. Time seemed to slow down as the two watched and waited. Until-

"One hundred folds!"

"Shigure Soen Ryu: torrential downpour." The weeb Ryuji, after learning that he could create his own skills, decided to use his magic to recreate what he saw in anime. The result of this was that most of his attacks were reimaginings from his favorite fictional sword styles.

Against the one hundred and one blades, Ryuji struck out with his katana. A magical aura perpetuated throughout the blade. He responded to the onslaught by swinging his sword in a flowing pattern. At first, it seemed peaceful and serene, but it soon sped up into a barrage of quick precision strikes that stopped the blades in their tracks. Alician was forced back by these blows.

"One hundred and fifty folds!"

"Shigure Soen Ryu: torrential downpour."

Without hesitation, Alician stepped it up a notch, but Ryuji held firm. The attack was stopped dead in its tracks, just like the last one.

 

Feeling cornered, Alician struck out with all his might in a desperate attempt to overpower Ryuji.

"Two hundred and fifty folds!"

"Dance of the falling cherry blossoms."

Ryuji's response to the mass of blades was his best technique for projectiles. It focused all of his senses to the max for a few seconds. As he began swatting down the legion of blades, he couldn't help but miss some as they were beginning to overwhelm him.

Sword after sword broke through his defense, tearing him to shreds. As new blood left his system, Ryuji felt stronger. With each drop that dripped out of him, he could feel his sword gaining newfound sharpness. His eyes felt like they were slowing down time itself. He felt deadly.

"Lightning God style: Thunderclap-"

As the rest of the armory barred down on him, Ryuji sheathed his blade and ran. He went diagonal and to the left of Alician. In just one second, he had run a total of one hundred feet.

"Hundred folds."

In response, Alician drew his sword back and arced the slash in the path he was heading. Ryuji then turned on a dime and ran directly at Alician.

"Thirty folds!"

Alician, who had no time to prepare a large-scale magical attack, could only muster a small response. Ryuji then sprang into the air with amazing speed while leaving a spark trail in his wake. He positioned himself midair with his blade sheathed and aimed at the source of his hatred.

"-And flash!"

With the calling of his skill, Ryuji accelerated down to Alician. He barely had time to react and lashed out with his sword.

As he rushed toward him, Ryuji just managed to dodge it by twisting his body in midair.

Drawing his sword, which had been gathering his magical power, he sliced at the head of his foe. Alician could not dodge the cut that was coming, so he protected his head by using his left arm as a shield.

A sickening crunch could be heard, and Alician's arm now only hung on by a few strings of tendon. Blood gushed forth from the limb that now faced the wrong direction and had gone permanently limp.

"FUCK!"

Alician faltered but did not surrender. With his back now turned away from his foe, Ryuji couldn't react fast enough to properly protect himself.

"Twenty folds!"

Alician didn't have enough time to conjure a great many, but the blades he could did the job. A panicked and open Ryuji could only fend off about half of them. The rest impaled and sliced him.

One drove into his right eye. A great pang of pain and agony resonated throughout his body, and he began to go limp. His consciousness began to fade as he fell toward the ground. After all, it doesn't matter how strong you become if your body is missing too much blood to function. As he fell, his one eye looked toward Elizabeth's corpse.

His mind was oddly calm, given the situation, and he began to have thoughts about her final message. She had called him a good person but-

'What does that mean? What makes a person good? I never pitched in more than I had to. I was always the first to start acting lazy the second their eyes were off me. So why did she think that?'

Ryuji wracked his brain for the answer he was seeking in his final moments.

'It's not like I was that close to them. In fact, I hated half of them and could only slightly tolerate the other half. I was in no way a good person to them. I slept in every chance I got and even snuck peeks at Elizabeth when she wasn't aware. So why did she think that?'

No matter how much he thought, he couldn't come up with an answer.

'If I had to call them friends or acquaintances, I would put them in the work buddy camp. If she did have this impression that I was a good person, she would be wrong. The fact is that they never knew the real me, and that was because I never let them. I'm not a good person. I'm a coward who hides the real me from people in an attempt to protect myself. Only in the trappings of her mind was I ever, for even a moment, a good person.'

He had come to his depressing answer that he came up within his own mind.

'She thought that because she was mistaken. She died without ever knowing who I really was. That's the only thing that could've had led her to say that.'

He found his answer and knew deep in his heart that he was right.

'So why? Why do I feel so sad? Why do I feel so empty? Is it because I'm alone again? Is it because I'm going to die again? Why?'

"That bastard Raeg LIED TO ME! Easy pickings, my ass! I HAVE HAD IT! JUST SUBMIT AND DIE! FIVE HUNDREDFOLD!"

As Ryuji contemplated in his own mind, Alician prepared his final attack. An entire armory of prismatic blades appeared around Alician as Ryuji continued his descent. They seemed to take longer than usual to manifest correctly. Perhaps it was the sheer quantity, or perhaps it was his dwindling blood supply slowing him down. Whatever the case, this gave Ryuji more time to think in this high-pitched battle.

'Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why?'

Ryuji's shameful run flashed through his mind alongside Elizabeth's final moments.

'Ah, I get it now. It's because I ran, it's because I ran, and she still believed in me. It's because I didn't save her even though I could have. Instead, I was more worried about myself, and yet, despite knowing it all, despite seeing it all, she still believed in me. Maybe the others thought the same way. I'll never know. I'll never have another opportunity to ask.'

He stopped himself before he touched the ground with an outstretched hand. Trembling, he slowly pushed himself off the ground.

'Then what do I do now? How do I move on? How can I move on? Ah, the answer is simple, I just have to become a good person. Then she wouldn't be wrong. She wouldn't be mistaken! What would a good person do right now in this situation?'

His one good eye locked in on the horrible man in front of him.

'That's easy! A good person wouldn't give up. They would fight! They would struggle until they couldn't anymore! A good person would strike down the evil in front of them at any cost!'

Ryuji planted his foot firmly on the ground as he slowly lifted his whole body up.

'How do I breakthrough that many blades? I can't react fast enough, and I only have enough strength for one real attack. What can I do?'

An idea struck Ryuji, and a devious smile plastered itself on his disfigured and bloody face.

If he couldn't react to all the blades, then he would just need to bust through with a single strike. Only one of his many styles came to mind.

He lowered himself to the ground with his hand ready on the sheathed blade and bolted forward. The many blades faced him, and Alician let loose the deadly volley.

"Die."

An entire sea of blades came crashing down upon the approaching Ryuji. As he sprinted towards certain death, he showed no hesitation. He came within an inch of Alician's face and put his left foot forward, dragging his momentum into the blade.

"Heavenly Dragon Style: Flash of the Heavenly Dragon!"

He drew with a speed that surpassed lightning and cleaved through the Armory. The swords broke apart under the massive current of energy behind the blade.

While they numbered in many and each was sharp enough to kill a man, the swords had a fatal flaw. Ryuji had learned that these swords broke rather easily.

Thus in an instant, the man known as Alician had been severed in two, and his soul left his body. As Ryuji swung, what appeared like a dragon riding on his sword had come and gone.

Ryuji couldn't, however, cut through all of the swords, and the rest bore through him. As his insides became his outsides and his life faded, he spoke one sentence.

"Sacred high heal!"

All his wounds and deformities created by the strife vanished, and the only proof of battle were the bloodstains accompanying his posh clothes.

Sacred high heal, a spell that can only be used once a day but heals any wound no matter how fatal.

He looked down upon the dead assassin and spit.

"If you had held my friends hostage instead of killing them right away, I would've wasted my spell. At least then you wouldn't have had to die alone."

He turned away from the man he never wanted to see again and walked towards his fallen friend.

"He said someone named Raeg sent him. I'll find this Raeg and bring him to the justice of my blade."

He leaned down over his inspiration. "But first..."

He picked up her limp body and began to move back towards the campsite.

He started his tumultuous trial of burying his friends. He chose a nearby hill for them to rest in. It overlooked the ruins below and made for a memorable place in his mind.

Shovel in hand, Ryuji broke the earth apart and began excavating the ground. His head focused only on the menial task before him. Soon he found a rhythm and had made five different holes.

Carefully he laid each body into their respective resting places and started to cover them over. His heart had cooled, and he began thinking that maybe he was some sort of monster. He hadn't shed a single tear during this time. The final load of dirt packed down into the earth marking the end of his chore.

The sun peeked from behind the clouds, and dawn broke on a brand new day. The light bounced into his eyes and slowly shown on the grave markers behind him. Looking at this beautiful sight, Ryuji slowly fell down and laid on his back. Now that he was done, his exhaustion caught up with him. While his spell healed all wounds, it did not heal fatigue.

As he lay on the grass and the cool summer air blew through his hair, Ryuji and his thoughts turned towards the people beside him. Suddenly he remembered that in his bag was a dagger. He took it out and unsheathed it. Sure enough, it looked just like the real thing, but as he tested it against his pants, it couldn't even cut a single loose thread. A useless trinket through and through.

That was why he had no choice but to laugh.

"Hahahahahahaha!" His laughter started out involuntarily as if he was told a funny joke, but over time it devolved into full-body sobs.

After a few minutes, he was crying his heart out. For the people, he would never meet again. For the girl, he could never thank. For the men, he could never apologize to.

On the hill where his fate started to turn, Ryuji swore an oath to himself.

"I will become a good person. Then... maybe then... this will never happen again."

He closed his eyes, and his adventure began anew.