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Sion Note 2
Jan. 23rd, 2026 03:30 pmSion Note 2
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When Sion regained consciousness, he saw that he’d been brought to a bed.
“……”
He stared at the ceiling.
Just by the color, by the shape, he understood that he was in the infirmary. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. By now, he’d collapsed and been brought here more times than he could count.
He looked to his side. Ryner was there.
He looked like he was about to fall over asleep, but he spoke instead. “You’re awake?”
“Yeah. I’m awake. I’d better get back to work…”
Ryner poised his hand like a knife and bopped Sion’s head. “You’re not. Do you know what happened?”
Of course he did. He understood very well. Sion had fought and won control of his body from the monster known as the Fallen Black Hero, Aslude Roland. If the hero had won, Sion’s sense of self—his very being—would have been erased. He would have stopped being ‘human’ entirely.
Though fainting may not have looked like a good outcome, he was still here, fighting the monster inside of himself.
He did lose consciousness from time to time. The hero’s memories cluttered his brain, and he sometimes fainted during his efforts to absorb them. That was what had happened. But when?
“You weren’t waking up,” Ryner said, breaking through his thoughts.
“I wasn’t?”
“You just laid there. You weren’t waking up even when I tried to get you to.”
So that was what had happened.
He had been brought here to this bed, but even so, it wasn’t enough to wake him up from his so-called nap. His memory was hazy. He felt as though the hero had shown him a nightmare through his memories, but right now Sion couldn’t recall them clearly.
Sion showed Ryner a smile. “Well, I was having a good dream. I didn’t want to wake up.”
Ryner was dumbfounded. “Like something erotic?”
“Yeah. Wanna hear?”
“Nope. More importantly—”
Sion interrupted him. “Here I thought you’d have insatiable interest in my erotic dreams—”
“You’re so noisy,” Ryner said and bopped him upside the head again.
He rubbed his head. “Owww.”
“I hit you five times stronger than that and you still didn’t wake up,” Ryner said.
Sion made a serious expression. “That’s just how erotic it was.”
“……”
Ryner stared for a long moment. His expression was depressing. “You’re not hiding anything, are you? Like some sort of illness.”
Sion stared back as if to deflect his worries. If he averted his gaze, Ryner could interrogate him further. “Like what?” he asked, then looked to the doctor who stood behind Ryner. “What did the doctor say?”
So he asked, but it was a meaningless question. Sion had already instructed the doctor to not tell anyone anything about his body. He wouldn’t talk.
There wasn’t any way for anyone, even a modern magical scholar, to come to a conclusion about Sion’s body. The fact of the matter was that his body held a magical item inside that betrayed all common sense. No matter how much they researched him, they’d never be able to understand.
But even so, Sion continued. “You must’ve asked while I was asleep, right? So what did the doctor say?”
Ryner shrugged. “Said that you just overdid it.”
Sion made a face like he was surprised. “Wow, I can’t believe it! To think that I’d have a disease like that!”
“……”
“I’m done. I’m done for, Ryner. Wanna hear my dying wish?”
“What?”
“Do all my work in my place…”
“Nope.”
“That was fast,” Sion said with a bitter smile. He began to rise. He felt the same pain as always shooting through his body. His skin was burning, and he was sore everywhere. His chest, his organs, and he had the strange sensation that his body didn’t belong to himself—that there was something else that he couldn’t place in it.
All he could do was laugh. Laugh as though he were happy.
“There’s nothing to worry about if I just overdid it,” Sion said. He got off of the bed and stood.
Ryner looked up at him from where he sat on the chair opposing the bed. “What I’m saying is that overdoing it is bad too, though.”
“But I was out for a while.”
“Not long enough.”
“You think so?” Sion asked. He thought for a moment. “How long was I asleep?”
“I think I found you just about twenty-four hours ago?”
“An entire day ago?”
“Yup. That’s right.”
“Then I slept plenty. I actually overslept,” Sion said and began to walk away. His mind fled towards the work that he should have been doing while he was asleep.
“You know you could die if you keep being that reckless,” Ryner said from behind.
Sion turned back with a laugh. “Are you that worried about me?”
Ryner made a sour face at that. “Huh?”
It put Sion in a good mood. “Then I’ll make you king if I die, okay?”
“Don’t wanna.”
“The lady doth protest too much—”
“Die.”
“Haha. I’m going to get back to work, okay?”
Ryner nodded, then got into the bed that Sion had been sleeping in up until just a moment ago and tugged the blanket up over himself. “Alright, work hard!”
“Hey, you…”
So Sion said, but Ryner’s eyes were closed. He was already asleep.
He thought about waking him up, but…
“……”
He decided against it.
Because he didn’t know if Ryner had been sleeping this past day, or if he’d been awake at Sion’s side the whole time.
“Well, it’s fine,” Sion said to himself. He turned back again, then left the infirmary.
A man stood at the other side of the hallway.
Lieutenant General Miran Froaude.
He was tall and thin with long, pitch black hair. His cold eyes seemed to look down on everyone. He fixed those eyes on Sion.
“…I’ve heard that you collapsed.”
Sion answered as he walked away. “The usual.”
“Is it due to the power inside of Your Highness’ body?”
“That’s it.”
“Is there a problem?” Frouade asked.
Sion smiled faintly. A problem? He had all sorts. Right now, at this exact moment, he was being driven mad by the intense pain that roamed freely inside of him. But he couldn’t stop walking just because of that. Because the world was awakening. It was opening its eyes to darkness.
Gastark had been collecting Heroic Relics and was already using them as weapons of war.
The Hero inside of Sion almost seemed to be responding to that. It was taking him to every conceivable incomprehensible place where fantastical beings were beginning to move.
They didn’t have any time.
They didn’t have time to stop and take breaks.
“…No problems. We’ll continue as planned,” Sion said as he passed Froaude.
Froaude smiled and lowered his head just so, then followed behind Sion. “The experiments are progressing favorably.”
By ‘experiments,’ he meant the experiments to create a stronger army—to crush their minds, their bodies, and their hearts to create enhanced soldiers.
To put it bluntly, it was human experimentation.
Froaude continued. “They are offering their bodies for your sake, Your Majesty.”
“……”
“Of course there have been countless casualties, but as a result of their sacrifice, we have been creating results faster than expected.”
“…….”
“As a result of their choices, our country’s future is sa—”
“Stop trying to console me,” Sion interrupted. “Your words are meaningless. I only need the facts.”
Froaude bowed again. “I apologize for my rudeness.”
“When will we be seeing real results?”
“Within the next three months.”
“Then we will wait three months before beginning military preparations against Imperial Nelpha.”
“Understood.”
“Make those preparations. From now on, Roland will advance towards dominating the world.”
“Understood.”
“Okay. Then go.”
“…I am relieved,” Miran said. He sounded happy. “That Ryner Lute man… I had thought of him as Your Majesty’s shackles, but…”
Sion turned back to look at him. “I told you to go.”
Froaude opened his pure red, devil-like lips and laughed low as he bowed deeply. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he whispered.
After confirming that Froaude actually left, Sion continued walking, away from the facility they’d set up for magical medicine research that he’d been in and towards the throne room.
The sky was clearing up, and the sun’s rays shone undisturbed by clouds. He walked through the light, passing people who bowed to him with awe in their expressions, as though he were some kind of saint.
Sion smiled at them as he passed. Nodded to them, as if to say that they’d all be okay if only they just followed him.
“……”
It was always like that.
Even though the people who followed him were actually dipping their feet into darkness in doing so. They stepped deeper and deeper into it… even though the sun was shining so unburdened.
The sunlight was so bright and yet this country, this place called Roland—was incapable of lifting itself out of the impossible depths of its own darkness. It was most likely the darkest place in all of Menoris. One could search forever and find no worse.
He looked up at the dazzlingly bright sky. He stared into the light as it burned his eyes.
And he thought that it’d be so nice if that light could burn the darkness inside of him.
But it couldn’t. The darkness inside him was far stronger. It wriggled inside of him as if in protest to the brightly shining light. It squirmed. And as it did, he began to remember, vague as it was.
It was surely the same as the dream he’d seen before - the dream that he’d forgotten. It was an awful dream; the strange result of the Hero’s memories and his muddling together. He didn’t want it, yet even so it suddenly returned to his chest and he began to see again the dream that he’d been unable to recall.
And that dream.
That… dream…
“…Ah, right,” Sion mumbled and smiled sadly as he gripped his chest to keep himself from screaming for it to just stop. “I guess… I have no choice but to kill Ryner…”
The sun was shining so brightly.
Even so, it was dark. It was the darkness of nothingness itself. And in that darkness… those memories began to dance. They weren’t his. They belonged to the ‘thing’ that had made a home inside himself. The ‘things’ that had created this world.
He followed them. Followed those memories.
And the memories began—
—in the midst of darkness, of course.
---
Chapter 1: The Story of the Waking Hero
I am conscious.
A small consciousness.
There was a day where I was born into the mind of a boy.
I was born as a pitch-black consciousness inside of a boy who had been living happily until that day.
I was born to make him fall.
I was born to ruin him.
And the moment I was born, I began to devour his mind.
He had been living so happily. Even so, I took his mind over, and became the boy himself.
For what sake?
Why?
I wondered.
And in wondering, I knew.
I learned the reason for my existence when I became the boy and looked at the world through his eyes.
I am destruction. Destruction itself.
“……”
I opened my eyes. The boy’s eyelashes moved, and I peered past them to the world I was seeing for the first time since my birth.
I didn’t understand what I saw. I devoured the boy’s mind so that I could gain his knowledge.
When I did, I was able to understand why I was there. Why I had been placed there. For what sake I was there.
But in the end, I really existed for one thing: destruction.
I was destruction.
Destruction, destruction, destruction.
It was for that reason that I existed. That I stood there.
In order to correct the world’s madness, my consciousness—
“……”
I heard my name.
“Hey, Aslude.”
That was my—no, the boy who I’d taken over—that was his name.
I devoured more of the boy’s mind. When I did, I recalled my name.
Aslude.
Aslude Roland.
That was my name. My name.
I looked to where someone had called my name.
A beautiful girl. She was fourteen or fifteen, and had flaxen hair and a youthful face. Her captivating smile didn’t suit her. Her eyes were moist.
Words spilled from her pink lips. They were mesmerizing, somehow, as though she was bewitching him with her magic. “Hey, Aslude. What’s wrong?” she asked. “If you don’t eat soon, there won’t be anything left!”
She lowered her gaze to the ground. Her thin and pretty legs were stepping something into the ground, and she seemed to be absorbing it through her legs.
Glug, glug—the ‘thing’ on the ground was absorbed in gulps. Her expression turned to one of unadulterated joy.
He looked down, too. But what he saw was not the ground. It was the back of a massive God—a God once known as ‘Menoris.’
But now he was just a corpse, having been eaten by the Goddesses as they multiplied. And the Goddesses ate even their leftover husks.
The Goddesses devoured Gods one after another with joy.
There were countless Goddesses surrounding him.
Pretty ones, ugly ones, strong ones, weak ones.
Goddesses were everywhere, devouring Gods as they overflowed.
Even I am a type of Goddess, it seems.
Or was, at least. Things are different now.
A person among the many Goddesses—the flaxen-haired girl—spoke as she watched him. “Why aren’t you eating?”
He met her eyes. “I’m just not hungry.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. She laughed. “You’re full of jokes, aren’t you? We aren’t capable of being satisfied like that. We will always be hungry. That’s how we were made.”
“I’m just not hungry,” he repeated.
She lifted her leg from the corpse. In doing so, she stopped eating. “Hmm. If that’s true, then you’re a really interesting guy.”
She watched him. She really had a captivating face. Her eyes were looking at me like she was in love.
“…A Goddess that isn’t hungry,” she said. “How interesting…”
“You think so?”
“Uh-huh. You aren’t the Aslude that you were up until a moment ago, are you?”
“……”
“I wonder who you are. And I wonder what happened.”
“……”
“But, well, it doesn’t really matter. You’re just so interesting. And you look so delicious. So you’re mine. I’ll eat you up before the other Goddesses realize that anything happened,” she said with a laugh. She sounded so happy.
I too laughed. “You aren’t capable of doing so.”
“Ha, who do you think I am?”
The Goddesses could have been grouping together, but I didn’t care. I stood before them and called her name. “You weren’t chosen, so you can’t win against me, Milk—Milk Efilet, the Goddess of Circular Destiny.”
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