It was power, it was authority, it was the ladder to immortality and the supreme heights, and it was the final brand of his legendary past identity.
Lilith’s gaze changed completely. Beelzebub stopped her teasing and sat up straight.
Jiang Ming stared at the crown with a complex expression. It contained his glory and loneliness from 100 years ago, memory fragments of traversing world barriers, and power sufficient to let him stand at the top of the world once more.
With it, he might truly be able to reclaim everything faster, deal with the coming storms, and protect more people.
But…
His eyes flashed with the serious look Elvira gave him when she handed him her diary, her silent and reliable back during battle, and the crimson eyes that hid longing and regret when she last looked at him.
He remembered telling Lillian that hate would become a bad debt that couldn’t be settled. Perhaps power was the same. Relying on the Angel’s Gift would lead to getting lost—wouldn’t relying on this crown from the past, which was equally full of unknowns and costs, do the same?
What he pursued was never supreme power itself.
What he wanted was to write the story of the current Jiang Ming in his own way. To witness Poetry Has No End with those around him. To be able to protect those concrete, tiny moments of human warmth and persistence.
Elvira was part of that persistence. She had fought to the end as a human; she deserved an ending belonging to a human, won by a human.
Jiang Ming smiled. There was a sense of relief in that smile, like shedding a heavy burden, and a decisiveness akin to burning one’s bridges.
“You always talk about costs, exchanges, and rules,” he said, looking at Lilith and Beelzebub. His voice was calm but struck like metal on stone. “Then, I will use your rules to win this round.”
“I use this Crown of Creation, this Authority of Construction and Definition, this symbol representing my past supreme status and power — “
The hand holding the crown pressed it down without hesitation toward the starlit Wishing Voucher in his other hand.
” — to Exchange for Elvira’s complete life and soul, returning her to this place in her original human body!”
The moment his words fell, the crown erupted with earth-shattering light!
Countless dark-gold rune chains disintegrated and shot out from the crown, wrapping around the Wishing Voucher and igniting it into a brilliant white sun. Power of rules and conceptual authority, vast as a sea of stars, was forcibly extracted, forged, and transformed, thrown into the inscrutable law of Exchange communicated by that thin card.
The entire frozen space-time began to shake violently, as if unable to withstand a conceptual transaction of this level. Lilith and Beelzebub’s figures became blurred in the boiling light and shadow, their gazes fixed on what was happening.
The price was being paid; the Exchange was in progress.
Vast power of rules poured into the furnace of Exchange. The light of the dark-gold crown, symbolizing supreme authority and past legend, was irreversibly and rapidly dimming and dissolving.
Just as the crown was about to turn completely into nothingness and merge into the final moment of that massive price…
“Is it all worth it?”
Vaguely, Jiang Ming heard someone ask.
Jiang Ming could feel that deep within Elvira’s cold body in his arms, a spark-like warmth was struggling to recongeal.
That was the sign of the Exchange taking effect. It was hope, and the only echo he had received for paying everything.
His power was draining rapidly, and a wave of unprecedented weakness swept over him, but his arms holding Elvira remained as steady as a rock.
He looked down at his hands, his knuckles white from overexertion. Through these hands, he seemed to see the crown turning into light dust, the mountain of corpses and sea of blood from 100 years ago, and the supreme glory. He also saw the even more distant, ordinary, yet peaceful days and nights in another world.
‘Is it worth it?’
His pale lips moved slightly, giving the answer.
“…It’s worth it.”
The piercing pain and emptiness of that moment were not worth mentioning compared to the warm weight he was about to regain in his arms.
“Because after this — “
“What crowns me will no longer be this crown of thorns forged from power and sacrifice.”
“It will be everything I defended as a mortal, with a mortal heart… recognized by all.”
He paused, speaking with power:
“That… justice.”
His words fell.
The last shimmer of the dark-gold crown completely vanished.
At the same time, Elvira’s cold fingers twitched slightly in his palm.
—
Elvira was walking on a road.
There was no light, no sound, and no concept of direction.
Only endless, gentle darkness wrapped around her like the deepest sleep, like the peace of returning to the womb.
The pain from when she was alive, the struggle, the backlash of the transformation, the final decisiveness of her self-destruction… it all drifted away from her. There was only a blank space and a slowly sinking exhaustion.
‘Fading away like this doesn’t seem so bad,’ she thought vaguely. ‘At least it’s as Elvira.’
However, just as her consciousness was about to sink completely to the bottom of that eternal, quiet darkness, a point of light lit up ahead without warning.
The light wasn’t strong; it was even a bit weak, like a candle flame in a distant wind, yet it stubbornly pierced through the boundless darkness and clearly entered her gradually dissipating perception.
There was a figure in the light.
Instinctively, she walked toward that light. She quickly saw the scene within.
It was Jiang Ming.
He stood under the only halo of light, still wearing his blood-stained and damaged suit, with the familiar, gentle, yet somewhat tired smile on his face. Beside him stood a motorcycle—the sleek black motorcycle she had once used to carry him through the night in the Lower City.
The scene was absurd yet somehow real.
Elvira was stunned, stopping at the edge of the light. She looked at Jiang Ming and opened her mouth, but couldn’t make a sound. Countless questions flooded her mind: ‘Where is this? Is it a phantom after death? How can he be here? That bike…’
Jiang Ming didn’t explain. He just looked at her. Then, he nimbly straddled the motorcycle. The engine gave a low, pleasant roar, sounding exceptionally clear in this absolute silence.
He turned his head and patted the empty seat behind him.
“Let’s go,” his voice came, calm, natural, and carrying a certainty that brooked no doubt, as if they had just finished a brief adventure rather than being separated by life and death.
“It’s time to go home.”
Elvira stared at him blankly, looking at his outstretched hand, the waiting motorcycle, the boundless darkness outside the light, and his calm face within it.
‘Home…’
Which home? The Order Bureau dormitory? Or… the place where he was?
There was no answer. None was needed.
An almost choking warmth broke through her final defenses. Tears surged without warning, rolling down her cold cheeks. She nodded forcefully and took a step into that warm halo of light.
Her fingers gently met his outstretched hand.
He gripped it tightly. The curve of Jiang Ming’s lips rose as he twisted the throttle.
The motorcycle let out a cheerful roar, carrying the two of them as it charged out of this island of light into the depths of the darkness—but ahead of that darkness, the sound of the sea wind seemed to drift over. She smelled the saltiness and saw the faces of Lillian and Elvia on the deck of the Argo, their expressions gradually regaining color and turning into surprise and joy.
The light extended.
The road was beneath their feet.
And the knight had been brought back to the mortal world from the edge of eternal silence by her companion, with a mortal’s will and a supreme price.
The long night was breaking. Dawn had come.