I came back but the world is still a fantasy!? – School Field Trip Arc – Act 1: This Is What Happens When I Go on a Trip – 04-83-06: The Unreasonable Palm III (2/4)

That irritating and cheerful smile of his as he thanked Gulde looked sarcastic to anyone here.

Were he from the church that treated the undead as an act of blasphemy toward the living and was hostile toward him, were this an act of vengeance because Gulde had hurt him in some way, were this an act of justice on his part, then Gulde might have been able to come to terms with it.

Killing an enemy, killing someone you hate, killing someone for committing an unforgivable act… These were all understandable motives.

But…

The boy just happened to see him.

The boy just happened to be frustrated.

The boy just happened to know a convenient place nearby where he could let loose.

The boy just happened to have an S rank at Skill.

What would lead to Gulde’s demise was not some normal comprehensible motive but a series of such absurd coincidences.

“What… is… this…? Ha, ahh… To think… Something like this… Would…”

For what reason did he decide to throw himself in the darkness of the forbidden that day?

For what reason did he spend his days researching for 300 years?

For what reason did he keep such a low profile?

The answer to all of that was being given to him now by a calamity seemingly less than 20 years old.

“That’s right, Gulde-kun. You’re going to disappear from this world because of a reason like that. Well? How does it feel? To be crushed like a bug by a great power?”

He was here today just so he could experience that.

But the voice that mercilessly declared that was for some reason void of warmth despite being seemingly amused.

Indeed, the existence that stood before him was just a child that saw his death as nothing more than him crushing a bug.

“Ah, ahh────────!!!”

As a scream-like voice resounded, the swelling of his soul accelerated all at once.

The fear of death, the anger at the irrationality of it all… They stirred his heart, and oddly enough, that was enough to break the last of his defenses.

The boy calmly smiled and clapped his hands.

“Oh, right. I’ve always wanted to say this at least once, but… Hey, how how does it fell? How does it feel? Hey, can you tell me how it feels?”

With a mercilessly cheerful tone, the boy asked the soul he’d driven into despair how it was feeling.

That was an act so cruel and innocent that even Gulde, who turned himself undead out of his mad pursuit of knowledge, was pushed past the critical point.

“Ah─────”

A crack ran through the immaterial spiritual skull.

Already, his soul had gone past all of its limits from the overconsumption of resentment.

“Fu fu, goodbye, Gulde-kun. Were you still human, your death might have had meaning(an influence)…”

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhh!!!!!!”

With a voice feigning pity, the boy mocked Gulde-kun’s three-hundred years, and the identity that was starting to crumble incomprehensibly screamed in its unwillingness.

But that was akin to grabbing the water weed upon falling into a raging stream.

Especially, when there was a third party here brimming with ill intent.

“Bye bye.”

That dying soul desperately reached out its hand, but the boy just cheerfully and carelessly jabbed his finger into the soul’s crack.

“───Ah.”

In the next moment, a bursting sound resounded, and the soul that had encroached into the forbidden vanished, unable to transcend even into the afterlife.

For a moment, the fragments of that soul that scattered in the black of the night showed some beauty and grief, but the boy simply cleared them away as though they were garbage, and they vanished into the ‘darkness’. In the end, not even a trace of Gulde was left in the world.

──The Lich Lord, the Undead King, a human by the name of Gulde Tolpunte.

A man whose life held no meaning, held no value, left nothing behind, and of which, in the end, nothing remained.

A pitiful bug crushed by a calamity that could not even leave a trace behind to say that it once existed, not knowing that that was exactly the punishment that the boy(calamity) chose for him.

The girls that witnessed everything from start to finish cowered with a twitching expression on them.

Since the boy had a Skill of S Rank, he should have had plenty of simpler ways to subjugate the lich.

Yet the boy chose to grind his existence down, break his heart, and humiliate him to ensure that not a trace of him was left. It was true that the lich was an enemy of all of the living and the dead.

Just the fact that Gulde became a lich meant that his actions were unforgivable, and he was surely an evil of great magnitude that has birthed countless victims, but just how were they supposed to describe the boy that enjoyed tormenting that evil?

Just how were they suppose to feel about his terrible treatment of the lich that was even worse than his attitude toward them?

They had already stopped trembling, but the fear of that made them tremble again.

“…What a bonehead. There was no way he couldn’t have had any influence after killing so much.”

It was then that the boy’s mocking voice resounded, and the girls were taken aback.

Indeed, no matter how worthless the boy called the lich lord, there was no way he could have had no influence whatsoever. After all, to have killed so many was in itself a negative influence.

Was the lich lord foolish to have failed to notice that? Or was the boy simply too sly for having been able to push the lich to that extent?

“!”

The girls gulped.

The boy was standing calmly amidst the wraiths that yet remained.

His black hair was proof that he was an otherworlder, but with his target gone, the amused expression on him vanished, and the way he looked around him so listlessly resembled that of a dead man.

One of his hands dragged the insane princess, while the other dripped with the blood that got onto him when he touched Stella.

It was an appearance more fitting of a king than the lich lord from before.

However…

“H-Huh?”

A change occurred among the wraiths.

The shape of their skulls filled with grudge and hate crumbled, while their spiritual body and equipment scattered into the wind and vanished.

“The wraiths are… disappearing?”

“No, something is happening to them from inside!”

In the end, what was left behind were the silhouettes of several people.

Humanoids clad in pale light stood there in the same number as there were wraiths before.

It was hard to tell how many of them there were all in all.

They were an empty existence, so it was hard for the living to see them without a special pair of eyes.

However, from their presence, the girls could tell that these were the souls of people, most likely the victims of the lich lord.

Considering how angry those wraiths had been, that must indeed be the case, but…

“…Why do they all look so peaceful?”

Though it was hard to see their appearance completely, the expression on them seemed faint.

Just where did all that anger from before go?

“So that’s how it is.”

“Head maid!?”

Stella seemed to come to an understanding all on her own.

It was curious if the maids were just too preoccupied with the boy, or if the head maid was just that much better at hiding her presence, but regardless, they failed to notice her.

Above all, her outfit and wounds had recovered to the point where she looked her usual self.

“His objective must have been the normalization of the souls… It was a really roundabout way, though.”