Arna did not necessarily agree with that story.
Even if the Hero wanted to return to their original world, there was no need for them to die to do so.
No matter how they crossed over from another world, they were still young.
They deserved to enjoy everything they had achieved in this world.
At the very least, they should have received gratitude.
Unlike a foolish individual who believed they could do everything the party members could, the Hero was a being who deserved all the rewards.
And…
When it comes to determining value, it is obvious that something rare holds far more worth than something abundant.
If offering something common could protect something precious and irreplaceable, then that was a good thing.
“Arna!”
At the very last moment, as the party anticipated, the Demon King made one final, desperate attack.
The Demon King’s body had been killed by the holy sword’s power, which was stronger than ever before in history.
What remained now was a pure embodiment of “evil” without even a shred of reason.
Dana had not been able to find a way to stop it until the very end.
She didn’t think of it as a failure; there simply wasn’t enough time.
If she had a few more years, Dana could surely have discovered a solution.
Even if it couldn’t be used today, in the distant future, when the Demon King was reborn, they could fight without sacrifice.
Kalia, who had taken the attack meant for the Hero, was lying on the ground.
Her role had been sufficient; thanks to her, the Hero had been able to strike down the Demon King’s body.
With the Saint pouring divine power right beside her, Kalia would surely rise again.
Thus, it was up to Arna.
Moreover, this was something only Arna could do.
Elves could not face demons head-on because the demonic energy wielded by the demons was fundamentally opposed to their own power.
Furthermore, elves were too few in number and had the habit of taking excessive time with everything, making it challenging for them to battle demons.
However, the elves could not simply stand by and do nothing.
Over thousands of years, they devised a single solution:
Choose one exceptional elf and concentrate the World Tree’s power on them.
By uniting their collective bond, they would stake everything on one elf to confront the Demon King directly.
That was why Arna could walk unaffected on the demon-tainted lands, why she could stand before the demons without losing her mind.
And if she unleashed all that power here…
Sure, the elves might struggle for a time.
But it wouldn’t threaten their lives.
They would become lethargic for a while, and the growth of the World Tree would slow significantly, but it wouldn’t be the end for them.
One day, the World Tree would recover, and the elven lands would flourish again in a world without the Demon King.
Arna executed what she had practiced over the past few months.
Like the Hero who stood before the Demon King with the holy sword, Arna’s body radiated light.
It was a light so strong that even the Demon King’s final surge of demonic energy, meant to sweep away everything in this place, momentarily recoiled.
“Arna?”
A faint voice called from behind her.
It was the voice of Saint Pia.
Arna took a step forward.
-Just one moment.
For just one fleeting moment, the fear of death crossed Arna’s mind.
In the past 150 years, she had never feared death.
To her, the concept of death had always been infinitely distant.
As an elf who would live forever unless killed by someone else, death was never close to her.
But for the first time, she felt death looming near.
However, it was only for a moment.
This excessively brief instant wasn’t even enough to create a margin of error in her calculations.
…Or at least, it shouldn’t have been.
For just one moment.
A time so brief it could barely be described as a blink.
Because of an unyielding will beside her that refused to hesitate even in such a moment, her calculations were thrown off.
Because of that single moment of hesitation—
Arna witnessed the most brilliant and beautiful life before her burn away.
The so-called “holy sword” was not much different from other swords wrapped in divine power.
A sword used for a long time by a renowned holy knight becomes imbued with divine power.
After repeated use, the divine power infuses the sword itself.
When the knight dies, the sword is retrieved and broken into pieces.
Among those fragments, the ones imbued with the greatest divine power are gathered.
Over hundreds of years, these fragments are melted and tempered in sacred water to create the holy sword.
For an ordinary knight, it would merely be a regular sword.
While it might be slightly better at cutting through evil, the immense divine power it required made it exhausting to wield, leaving them fatigued more quickly.
Only a Hero brimming with divine power could fully wield it—a righteous sword that cuts through evil.
But ultimately, it was no different from other swords in material terms.
In their final moment, thanks to the Hero who plunged into the heart of evil, their body surrounded by divine power, all the remaining party members were able to survive.
But the Hero could not do that.
He left not even a corpse behind.
Only the holy sword, which had resisted being consumed by evil thanks to its immense divine power, fell to the ground with a metallic clang.
The holy sword, unworthy of its grand name, was melted and warped, stuck to the ground.
Its intricate carvings and the royal emblem engraved at its center were no longer visible.
Yet, despite its melted and misshapen state, the sword shone brighter than ever.
As if it were proving that the Hero had held it in his final moments.
Arna fell to her knees.
The hard floor echoed loudly as her knees struck it, and pain surged through her.
It wasn’t just her knees.
From the final battle with the Demon King, where she had fought off the hordes of beasts, her body was slashed and torn in countless places.
No one left standing in this place was unscathed.
Yet even all that physical pain was nothing compared to the shock in her heart.
With trembling hands, she crawled toward the spot where the Hero had stood just moments before.
The brilliant light that had emanated from Arna’s body was now gone.
Her spirit was no longer intact enough to gather the unity of the elves.
She crawled toward the holy sword, her trembling hands reaching out to grab it.
Despite its melted appearance, the sword was icy cold, like a lifeless corpse.
Even when she held the blunt edge of the sword, it was dull enough not to cut her.
She lifted the sword with both hands.
The divine power emanating from the sword gently enveloped her.
Every wound on her body healed one by one.
The pain in her body disappeared in an instant.
It was nothing short of a miracle.
No relic in existence could accomplish such a feat.
Without a word, she gazed weakly at the sword in her hands.
From behind her, footsteps approached.
“Arna……”
It was Pia’s voice.
Soon, something soft pressed against her back.
Pia had embraced Arna from behind.
That warmth was the most vivid sensation Arna could feel at that moment.
“Ah, ahhh……”
A sound escaped from Arna’s lips.
Dana and Kalia approached from either side of her.
Like Pia, they silently embraced Arna.
“……Aahhhhh!”
Arna cried out.
Always rational, always calculating.
She had lived as though the world were a series of equations.
But now, she abandoned herself to raw emotion, thrashing and wailing.
The others held her up.
Without them, she would have collapsed to the ground, rolling and thrashing in her grief.
She couldn’t even think about how ridiculous or foolish she must have looked.
Even in her anguish, a quiet voice whispered deep within her mind:
This is your fault.
Yes, it was her fault.
If, in that final moment, she had not felt the fear of death—
No, even if she had simply ignored it—
The Hero, not Arna, would still be here.
Unintelligible screams and shouts escaped Arna’s lips over and over.
But none of those holding her backed away.
They said nothing, simply supporting her and letting her cry to her heart’s content.
Arna clutched the half-melted holy sword tightly to her chest.
The light emanating from the sword never dimmed, gently enveloping the survivors the Hero had sacrificed himself to protect.
And so, their battle ended.
Thus, the Hero died.