healers of the three races had analyzed the underling corpses, reproduced their poison, and passed it along to Kaito Sena to have him strengthen it further by imbuing it with mana. Not even a saint stood a chance of neutralizing it. After the battle, the beastfolk had taken the leftover poison for safekeeping. There was no restriction on demi-humans visiting the section of the World Tree that it was kept in, but getting their hands on it couldn't have been easy. Instead of asking about any of the specifics, Elisabeth merely murmured: "How very thorough." "At this stage of the game, failure would have stung the keenest, you see," Aguina replied nonchalantly. Lute gaped as he looked between Aguina and La Christoph. Eventually, though, his gaze settled on the dagger. It would seem he'd finally realized what was going on. Lute ground his fangs. "Why?" "Why what? Which part of it, might I ask?" "Why...did you fall?" The exchange was exasperatingly vague. Lute's question, in particular, was far more ambiguous than befitted a man of action like him. Yet at the same time, it got at the heart of the matter with the precision of a needle. Every relevant question had been boiled down into those four words. However, Aguina didn't answer. In the blink of an eye, Lute drew his long sword from its sheath. His red fur bristled up like a raging fire, and his eyes were brimming with hatred, anger, and remorse. Elisabeth thought back. Back when everyone else was celebrating the end of days having successfully been prevented, Lute alone had continued agonizing. His own weakness and lapse in memory filled him with a deep shame. In that moment, he'd probably sworn to himself never to lose anyone again. Yet now even though the danger was supposed to have passed, someone he was in charge of protecting had died yet again. He was literally watching it happen before his eyes. La Christoph wasn't breathing. One of mankind's vital cornerstones had been felled. Lute's roar split the air like thunder. "You would sink that low? YOU WOULD SINK THAT LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW?!" "Do you have any children?" "What?" Lute was on the verge of charging Aguina, but he couldn't help but stop in his tracks. However, Aguina didn't try to take advantage of the opening his non sequitur of a question had given him. He merely continued, as though simply making small talk. "Well, everyone knows how devoted of a husband you are, so I assumed that surely you must have a lively little ankle biter or two running around." "N-no, we've been trying, but..." "Ah, now I remember. Your wife is a goatwoman, isn't she? As I understand it, fertility rates between different subraces are low... Do forgive my discourtesy. I'll be praying for you two to be blessed with a healthy child." "What kind of sick joke are youâ€”?" "We demi-humans are the same, you know. We, too, suffer from low fertility rates." Aguina raised his voice to cut off Lute's angry cry. Lute ground his teeth. Once more, he'd missed an opportunity to charge. Aguina spoke matter-of-factly. "Unlike your Three Kings of the Forest, our Sand Queen is but one person. As such, we demi-humans don't have subraces the way you beastfolk do... My goodness, when did it get like this? You know, when the end of days was looming, I told the Mad King the same thing." Aguina gazed off into the distance. From his expression, it seemed as though he was waxing nostalgic for events a century past. Elisabeth found that fact rather strange. The end of days was long over. A foolish boy had sacrificed himself to stop it. By all rights, everyone should be celebrating their newfound peace. So why was it, then, that everyone she met seemed to yearn for those bygone days so fondly? Why did their faces look like thatâ€” â€”when they remembered that hellish nightmare? Once again, Elisabeth thought back on the same question. What exactly would proper salvation have looked like? "'Unlike the Three Kings of the Forest, our Queen has long since entered her eternal slumber. Understanding the anguish of our constant decline is beyond other races'â€”that is what I'm talking about." "What do you mean?" "What I mean is what I said." "You mean, that's it?" "What more could there be?" Lute asked. Aguina answered. Their gazes met. Then Aguina slowly spread his arms wide and elaborated. He was so composed that it seemed hard to imagine he'd just committed an act of murder. "Your late first imperial princess, Madam Valisisa Ula Forstlast, saw it as well. 'Even now, the beastfolk and demi-humans combined can't compare with humanity's numbers. If we assume the underlings will attack all three races in kind, then after Diablo's threat has passed, when we take the respective damages into account, the gap in power between humanity and the rest of ours will likely only grow.' And she was rightâ€”the chance to overcome that gap has passed us by. And to make matters worse, we demi-humans suffered an additional blow she didn't factor into her prediction." "...The slaughter in the third sector, and the attacks on the first and second, I take it?" "Exactly. Thanks to the Mad King, we avoided suffering crippling fatalities, but the women and children who perished that day were a heavy loss. If we were to suffer another calamity on that scale, we'd be unable to support pure bloodlines for more than a few more generations at most." "What, and you think this is that calamity? You yourself were the one who said your people in the temple were saved. Does that not mark the calamity's end, as far as you're concerned?" As she asked the question, though, Elisabeth got a vague inkling. There was something she'd overlooked; she was sure of it. Something that nobody but the demi-humans themselves could possibly know. "It was pointed out to us many times that the pureblood sector's defenses were lacking. As Madam Valisisa so frequently reminded us, 'the pureblood sector's defenses are designed to protect against overland invaders and mixed-blood uprisings. They didn't even consider that attacks might come from above.' However, tearing down the sector boundaries to mend that oversight was deemed infeasible. That's why long, long before the end of days, we made a backup." "...A backup?" Elisabeth raised an eyebrow, and Lute looked just as confused. Elisabeth thought for a moment. Mankind's Church had grown twisted in a similar way. When people grew blindly fixated on an ideal, it could lead them to conclusions that others wouldn't even dare imagine. That blind fixation had led the Church to sound the bugle on the end of days. What had it driven the demi-humans to do? "We gathered up a group of people devoted to the cause of preserving our blood purity and founded a settlement in the Dragons' Graveyard. That way, we wouldn't have all our proverbial eggs in one basket if anything were to happen to the pureblood sectorâ€”but the settlement fell into the rebels' clutches." "Wh...why, I've never even heard of such a settlement!" "I should think not. We've been friends with you beastfolk for many years, but we made sure never to breathe a word of it to you." Aguina gave Lute's shock a matter-of-fact response. Given that this was the case, it went without saying that they hadn't told the humans, either. After all, their view of humanity was that they were exclusionary elitists, not even aware of how human-centric their worldviews were. "How did the mixed-race folk come to learn of it, then? 'Tis nigh absurd, no, losing this backup of yours in such a manner?" "The settlement is hidden away well between the dragons' bones, so considering that and the fact that the underlings focused on attacking more populous areas, things didn't get dire during the end of days. However, those mixed-race bastards were able to locate it by spending decades tracking our supply lines. For that is how deep their fixation and hatred run." Elisabeth nodded. The demi-humans were obsessed with blood purity, so it stood to reason that the mixed-race folk would hold them in deep loathing. Plus, those of mixed race were observant and dedicated. The moment they noticed an irregularity in the demi-humans' distribution network, like a caravan traveling along a route it wasn't scheduled to, it would simply be a matter of time before they got to the bottom of it. And thus, the settlement had fallen into unexpected handsâ€”those of the worst enemy imaginable. "If they kill off the settlement, preserving our bloodlines will be extremely difficult. No...with the world as dangerous as it's become in the end of days' wake, it may well prove impossible. So when they offered to leave the settlement be in exchange for my betrayal, I complied immediately. If that was all it took, I considered it a trivial price to pay." Aguina didn't care whom he had to kill or what he had to destroy. As Lute held his sword, his hand twitched. "You craven little... Not only did you turn on us for selfish reasons, you dare boast about the act? You take pride in what you've done?!" "Of course. No amount of grieving, boasting, laughing, or crying will change who I am or what I need to do. Why not be brazen about it, then? And also, Sir Lute, back to my original topic..." "What, you think you and I still have anything to talk about?!" Aguina's words were similar to ones the Torture Princess herself had once uttered. To the dead victims, it was all the same. However, being confronted with that cruel fact would drive most people to anger. But when Lute readied his sword, Aguina merely pressed on. "My son and his family live in that settlement." Lute was visibly shaken upon hearing that. Familial love was an emotion he could easily sympathize with. Because of that, a question had no doubt sprung to his mind. What if it were his beloved wife who had been taken hostage? If that were the case, and if making that choice would simultaneously advance his people's interests, how could he possibly say no? From the demi-humans' perspective, Aguina's decision was no doubt right and proper. Yet even so, Elisabeth spoke. "I've two questions to pose to you. Why are you people so obsessed with blood purity? And also...do you truly intend to continue supporting the mixed-race fold as they move to seize control of the world?" The demi-humans had said over and over that other races could never understand the plight of their decline. But Aguina's beliefs, if nothing else, were founded on something firmer than that. His actions seemed to have concrete reasons behind them. And the second question was only natural to want to pose to someone who was in the process of betraying the world. The mixed-race folk were aiming to completely revolutionize the world. Were the demi-humans merely hoping to earn enough goodwill to be spared? Aguina let out a small sigh. He raised two gleaming claws. "Sadly, both your questions have but a single, simple answer." "Out with it, then." "The Mixed-Race Massacre." *** He was rightâ€”it was simple. They'd reached their conclusion long ago. Everything, from the very beginning to the very end, tied back to that one foolish act. Mankind had allowed that tragedy to play out, and at that rate, the power disparity between them and the rest of the world was only going to grow. The question then became, which would be betterâ€”being ruled by the mixed-race folk or being ruled by the humans? After all, those were the only two choices. And by that point, humanity had proven they couldn't be trusted. Both the other two races saw that fact as plain as day. Apparently, the humans were the only ones who'd failed to realize the implications of living in a world that had survived the