Chapter 190: Blue Bird Part 9

A narrow gap. Barely wide enough for a single dagger to slip through.

A finely honed dagger slipping into that narrow space.

It was hard to aim for a vital point from any angle. But for her, the only thing that mattered was that a gap existed.

“Got you.”

Slash!

A wave rose.

Riding the current, the dagger curved in a graceful arc.

Crunch!

A chilling slicing sound.

Yuna’s thrown dagger had definitely cut through something.

Flinch!

A moment later, Mastema’s pile of wings twitched violently.

Flinch! Flinch! Flinch!

The wings writhed strangely, as if in pain.

“Whoop.”

Yuna landed near where I’d been knocked back before flashing a bright smile.

Looking at that smile, I asked,

“Did you kill her?”

“Pierced the heart and took the head. I threw two at the same time.”

“You can take off a head with a dagger?”

“If you’re good enough, sure.”

“I see.”

How do you even do that?

More than that, she must’ve thrown another dagger faster than I could even see.

Anyway, Yuna really was something else.

While I was satisfied just slashing Molech’s throat, she went ahead and properly pierced the heart and severed the head.

She had enough experience to make sure there’d be no loose ends, so she made sure to kill the target thoroughly.

“Johan, your acting’s really improved.”

“I was mostly serious, though…”

I had truly given it my all.

Yuna’s appearance had only been considered a one-in-a-million chance.

Even if she hadn’t shown up, I would’ve had a follow-up plan ready.

“Well, it just would’ve been a shame, then.”

Anyway, things turned out well.

And in a way, it was a chance I had opened up for her.

“All right, let’s pull Monia out—”

Thump!

A sound pierced through my ears in that instant.

A heartbeat-like thud made both Yuna and me immediately snap our heads around.

“No way.”

Thump!

Mastema, which had been writhing in pain, began to change.

The layered wings fused together, leaving no gaps behind.

No, this couldn’t be called wings anymore.

It was a white heart.

“…There’s no way anything could survive having both the head and heart severed.”

Yuna muttered in a daze. There was nothing else she could do.

The pure white heart had begun to pulse and it was terrifying.

So terrifying, in fact, that we didn’t even dare consider trying anything.

“No… if the Demon King wasn’t just a title but a being from an entirely different realm…”

Killing Tillis wasn’t the end.

The biggest mistake was equating Tillis and the Demon King as one and the same.

They had to be treated as entirely separate entities.

It wasn’t enough to be relieved after killing Tillis. We should have torn through Mastema’s pile of wings and dragged Monia and Shax out, no matter what.

Because we didn’t…

“…We should never have thought of that thing as something within the bounds of living beings.”

The Demon King was born.

Thump!

The pure white heart spewed darkness.

Thump!

With each pulse, like it was draining the world of color, shadows spread far and wide.

Slowly, like firewood losing its flame, the light faded.

Thump!

We couldn’t do anything.

Overwhelmed, Yuna and I could only watch as the world sank into shadow.

Thump…

Slowly drowning.

In the soundless darkness, my vision began to blur.

Thu… mp.

Even the heartbeat that had echoed in my ears now felt distant.

I wasn’t afraid.

If anything, this darkness felt like a warm blanket.

And so, I was about to close my eyes within that comfort.

Flap!

But then—

“……”

I saw a blue feather before my eyes.

***

A mind awakened in the dark.

But I still couldn’t see even an inch ahead, so I had no choice but to move forward.

There was only one thing to guide me—

The single blue feather that had been in sight from before.

I didn’t know the reason.

I didn’t know the cause.

But I could guess one thing.

“…The Demon King.”

From the start, Tillis had gathered the 72 demons as part of a ritual meant to recreate the image of the Demon King.

By filling the symbolic number of seventy-two, the ritual would transform her into the Demon King.

I didn’t know the exact structure of the ritual, but perhaps Shax, the one who had once truly held the rank of 72, had triggered some kind of phenomenon.

Well, I wouldn’t know exactly what had happened until I saw for myself.

“Where are you trying to take me?”

I walked toward the faintly glowing blue feather in the distance.

And the moment I grasped it—

“Ugh!”

My vision flickered.

For eyes that had fully adapted to the dark, the sudden burst of light was blinding.

I lifted my arm to shield myself and squeezed my eyes shut.

After a moment, I lowered my arm, drawn by the sound of cheerful giggling by my ear.

“……”

What unfolded before me was an interior scene.

A warm family, sitting together on a bed.

A mother and father, a nanny, and a child.

The parents were reading a book to the child, who sat between them with a smile that never left her face.

As if she had seized all the happiness in the world.

The child, Tillis, was smiling.

It felt… different.

“Was this how she used to smile?”

I had seen Tillis smile plenty of times until now, but the smile of her younger self looked somehow different.

It was hard to pin down the exact difference, but this smile felt like her true one.

I turned my gaze from the family to the surroundings.

“Is this Tillis’s memory?”

Tillis appeared there as well.

Though the people standing around her occasionally changed, Tillis was always smiling in those memories.

When she was with the nanny.

When she was with the servants.

When she got caught sneaking into the kitchen to steal snacks.

She looked happy.

Truly.

“Ah.”

As I briefly skimmed through Tillis’s memories, a blue feather appeared before my eyes once again.

I took a step forward.

Leaving behind the memories Tillis had left in the past, I moved on.

And the moment I held the second feather in my hand, my vision flickered once more.

Crackle! Crackle!

A sound completely different from before rang in my ears.

The sound of something burning and screams and cries filled with despair and sorrow.

“War.”

The day the land of the elves fell.

The horrifying moments of that time remained here.

And Tillis was here too. I saw countless people protecting her as they fled.

Young Tillis, watching people die to protect her, was desperately reaching out with trembling hands that could reach no one.

A sorrowful cry echoed.

“Fine. Let’s see how far this goes. What are you trying to show me? What do you want from me? Well, if I keep going through this, I’ll figure it out.”

I took another step forward.

I still didn’t know what those blue feathers were trying to tell me, but I had no intention of avoiding them.

There was nothing I could do anyway except move forward.

“What now?”

The next memory I saw was once again the peaceful land of the elves.

The timeline was all over the place. I had no idea what it was trying to say.

But if you asked whether this was the same as the first memory—

It wasn’t.

“Ugly.”

I saw the ugliness hidden beneath the peace.

Just because they were elves didn’t mean they were pure.

In the beautiful forest, I heard elves plotting in secret.

It seemed they were planning to strike at the Empire from behind.

Well, considering the Empire’s actions at the time, maybe it was better than sitting around waiting to be hit.

In the end, they were the ones who got hit first without warning and were destroyed…

If you want to call it foresight, then I suppose you could.

“Next.”

Once again, I followed the feathers as markers and moved on to the next scene.

This time, an unexpected place appeared. I knew the timeline was jumbled, but still…

“This was just recently.”

I was standing in a cemetery.

More precisely, it was from the time we drifted into the Under Chain’s headquarters.

Was it when we met Faust?

Or perhaps…

“So it was this moment.”

Before long, I found the answer. This place was, after all, tied to Tillis’s memories.

If there was a part of her memory I didn’t know from that time, it could only be from before she joined us.

“……”

Tillis was standing in front of a gravestone.

The gravestone looked familiar. Of course it did. It was her parents’ grave.

A gravestone with only names engraved on it.

What kind of expression did Tillis have as she stood before it?

Was she tilting her head as if nothing was wrong, just like she always did?

Curious, I stared at her back for a while, then finally stepped closer to see her face.

But the moment I drew near—

Flutter!

Countless feathers rained down.

Not the usual feathers that had guided me until now, but pure white ones.

At that, I looked up.

“…Mastema.”

The demon with countless wings was once again shedding tears of blood.

As if in pain, as if in agony, it wept endlessly behind Tillis’s back.

“Ah.”

And amidst those countless white feathers, I saw a single blue feather.

Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed it, and in that moment, I was faced with a scene completely unlike anything I’d seen before.

It felt like a message. That what I had been watching until now was not just Tillis’s past.

“This… is what you wanted to show me, even if it meant going through all this trouble?”

Tillis was there.

A grown version of her, together with her family.

A chapter from a future that could never be.

A world with no sorrow, no pain, and only happiness.

It was a childish dream Tillis had hidden deep within her heart.

A dream that should have been shattered long ago, once faced with the cold reality—

And yet, it still remained here.

“You were so young.”

As always, I asked the demon standing behind Tillis.

I looked at the only being shedding tears in this happy moment.

– That woman probably made a contract, something like “bearing the burden in her place”.

The contract between Tillis and Mastema, like Mephistopheles had mentioned.

That demon bore the burden in Tillis’s place. It carried all of her pain.

Tillis was able to assimilate the other demons because of that contract.

I had assumed Mastema had taken on the recoil of the contract for her.

But that wasn’t all.

What Mastema took on was everything that caused Tillis pain.

“You thought it would be enough to carry the source of her suffering.”

Mastema chose to bear Tillis’s pain and sorrow.

But all of that had also originated from the emotion called happiness.

It’s because there were happy moments that sorrow and pain could feel so much heavier.

And so, Mastema took it all on. Not just Tillis’s pain and sorrow, but every emotion, including her happiness.

“That’s……”

Mastema was always crying. Ever since the incident with Coran Lekias, it’s been like this.

It had been hiding itself, weeping tears of blood behind its grand wings.

And all of that wasn’t…

“That’s not what salvation looks like.”

It was Tillis’s true feelings as well.

She must have wanted to cry in every moment.

She must have hated the Emperor, hated Lanius more than anyone.

But the Tillis of now doesn’t even know that.

Not once did her heart waver, so she had no time to realize she was in pain, that she was sad, or even that she hated someone.

Destroying the world—

Her entire life had been a sprint toward burying everything in shadow.

Even the goal she unconsciously chased had a reason she herself didn’t know.

“But now, at last, I know what I need to do.”

The Demon King’s appearance, the bluebird, and the contract between Tillis and Mastema—

Everything up to now was leading to a single conclusion.

“Let’s return to the beginning.”

The Demon King was cruel enough to bury the entire world in shadow.

Why was that?

At the very least, he must have hated the world enough to want to destroy it.

And that means… there must have been a time when he was truly happy.

The moment that happiness was shattered, he must have wanted to break everything.

I don’t know what the Demon King is thinking.

Whether he regrets what he’s done or whether he stands by it.

But there’s one thing I do know.

“To a child who doesn’t even know they’re hurting, I’ll show them the truth.”

He remembers his happy moments.

He’s someone who led the world to ruin, all while carrying those memories.

That kind of resolve and conviction, no matter how evil the person is, it’s not something to take lightly.

“Only by knowing pain can you begin to understand how not to hurt anymore.”

Mastema had tried to bear all of Tillis’s pain.

Because of that, Tillis became a twisted being.

She ran toward her goal without even realizing that she hated the world enough to want it dead.

Hardship and adversity probably meant nothing to her.

Mastema had carried all of it in her place.

That’s why she feels so light—

Her state of mind couldn’t be anything but lighter than a feather.

“I’ll start by giving her happiness back.”

Let’s break the contract with Mastema and bring Tillis back to being human.

Only then will we finally be able to speak to each other.

As one person to another.