Chapter 193: After Death Part 1

“Chirp-chirp-chirp! Chiirp! Chiirp!”

Mastema, who’d taken the form of a bluebird, chattered loudly and then casually settled on my shoulder.

What the… did I get chosen again?

How many things did I mess up in life to have demons piling onto me like this?

“Chirp?”

“Hey, speak up.”

It had a perfectly fine conversation with Tillis back in the void, but here it won’t stop squawking.

Anyway, besides this weird thing that was a bird or demon perched in front of me, I’ve got far too many other things to worry about.

Monia who was now indisputably a criminal needed handling, and that World Tree sapling that’s sprouted in front of me is another problem.

With all that going on, Mastema being a nuisance on top of everything was enough to make my head explode.

“First…”

I looked over the countless problems scattered before me and thought.

“Let’s start by destroying the evidence.”

Saying that made me sound like a villain, but that’s not it.

This was all for world peace.

I drew my sword at once.

It’ll probably be the most useful thing I do with this blade today.

***

I uprooted the World Tree sapling.

But how am I supposed to move this? Even as a sapling it reaches about waist height.

Trying to move something like this will obviously attract attention.

And on top of that, there were a lot of witnesses sprawled around here.

“Monia.”

“…….”

“You awake? Answer me.”

“Yeah.”

Monia answered my annoyed call in a voice that sounded resigned.

I don’t know why this kid always looks so deflated.

“Did you finish digging my grave or something?”

“You really aren’t sane, are you.”

Turns out she’d been awake for a while. She must’ve thought I was digging a grave for her when I uprooted the World Tree sapling.

What a creepy thing to imagine.

Putting the misunderstanding aside, her way of thinking is scary. The kid’s clearly asking for help.

She’s badly hurt.

Besides, this was private property. How could she even make a grave here?

“Can you move?”

“Yeah… I’m part of the Cradle too.”

“What even is the Cradle?”

Apparently I was far from matching whatever Monia meant by the Cradle standard.

After a bit of work, every sore spot in my body was screaming. To be honest, a few ribs got cracked, so being like this wasn’t exactly normal by my standards.

“Anyway, now that you’re conscious, come over here and help me for a moment.”

The other students probably thought it was all over and were just lying there. In a little while they’ll get up like nothing happened and walk over.

They’ll pat themselves on the back like they just had breakfast and say good job.

Only Monia and I haven’t wrapped things up yet.

Lobelia might’ve noticed something, but she was badly injured even by the Cradle’s standards, so we didn’t need to worry about her for now.

“We have to move this. For a while, hold onto it for me.”

“…What is it?”

“You don’t need to know. Not knowing will be better for you.”

“Okay.”

“And…”

I searched through my pockets for a moment.

I looked for something I could use as proof, but there wasn’t anything suitable.

“If you take this to the Andvaranaut Merchant Guild and give my name, they’ll hide it for a while.”

So I just handed her my sword.

I’d already worn myself out digging up the ground, so I figured I might as well buy a new one while I was at it.

Haah, it would’ve been nice if I could get my hands on some kind of amazing divine weapon or something, too.

“You got it? I’ll come find you later, so don’t cause trouble and stay quiet.”

“…Okay.”

“Good.”

Still, maybe because she’d been beaten up and rolled around so much, she seemed a lot less rough around the edges now.

Compared to how she used to argue with me, curse at me, and reject anything I said, she was downright tame.

“Then get lost.”

“…….”

I had a lot to think about.

Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about Monia.

For the moment, I’d pushed off dealing with two ticking time bombs, the World Tree and Monia, but the problems weren’t over yet.

“Ah, wait a second.”

“…….?”

“Do you see this?”

“See what? What’s there?”

“If you can’t see it, that’s fine. Go.”

I had pointed to Mastema who was perched on my shoulder and asked Monia about it, but she only frowned at me like I was talking nonsense.

Apparently, Mastema wasn’t visible to anyone else.

Which meant she or it was showing herself only to me…

“Mephistopheles.”

For this kind of thing, I had no choice but to seek an expert’s advice.

“Answer me.”

I called his name several times, but no response came back.

That bastard was always gone when it mattered most.

Or maybe, this time… he really was dead?

When Tillis awakened as the Demon King, it might have set off some chain reaction that caused certain things to happen.

“Haaah…”

I sat down on a piece of rubble of a convenient height and exhaled.

Tillis’s business was settled.

But, how should I put it….there was just so much cleanup left to do, and it was all complicated.

“I honestly wanted to quit everything.”

Why did all this stuff keep happening to me alone?

***

I was hospitalized.

The Cradle’s doctor clicked her tongue when she saw my condition, but what could I do?

This hospitalization was by order of the imperial family.

To be exact, Lobelia had recommended hospitalization and rest for every student who had aided in the battle against the Judge.

Honestly, the others would try to move even with fairly severe injuries.

“They’ve all gone mad, haven’t they?”

“They have, Your Highness.”

So when a truly big disaster swept through, measures like this were taken to force them to rest.

“But Your Highness.”

“What is it? Johan.”

“Why are you here, Your Highness?”

“Do I look like I came to pay a visit? Unfortunately for you, I’m badly injured too.”

“No, I know that.”

Given that she’d painted the imperial capital with her own blood, it wasn’t surprising.

It was remarkable she was alive after bleeding that much.

That wasn’t what I was asking.

“Why are you in the same ward as me?”

“Because I ordered it.”

“At this point I’m genuinely curious Your Highness, do you actually harbor some dark desire toward me?”

“You insolent… You are incredibly rude.”

Then why make such a foolish move as being hospitalized in the same ward?

You know what kind of backlash there would be if this got out, don’t you?

“Well, that’s nothing to worry about. I’ve taken care of things in my own way. So no pointless rumors will spread.”

“You should’ve done that sooner.”

“……Didn’t you cause trouble before I even had the chance to take such measures?”

“I’ve always been the victim, though.”

Anyone overhearing us would think I was the one causing incidents. But I’d always been the victim. Every single time.

“Well, in any case, isn’t this a rare opportunity? I thought we might finally have that long-overdue conversation.”

“Hmm.”

Honestly, this whole situation had been a bit sudden even for me.

So I sent Lobelia a written outline of the plan.

Because of that, Lobelia ended up facing Tillis with only Stan by her side, without even her imperial guard, and was utterly defeated.

By deciding it was better not to reveal Tillis’s true identity, I’d ended up setting a trap for myself instead.

“What happened to Tillis?”

“She’s dead.”

“Who killed her? You?”

“Do you really think I did?”

“You never know.”

“……It wasn’t me.”

Lobelia didn’t know nearly as much as I’d expected.

Well, from anyone else’s point of view, the situation would’ve seemed completely incomprehensible.

“Then who killed her?”

“Why do you assume someone killed her at all?”

It’s not as if I thought highly of Tillis. She was a terrorist of the highest order. A ridiculously ruthless butcher.

But I didn’t hate her enough to slander her or twist her intentions.

It was more that, despite how deeply we’d been entangled, she still felt like a stranger to me.

So I decided to answer without any embellishment or excuse.

“She took her own life.”

“……”

That was why I didn’t bother saying anything like she’d repented or sought forgiveness.

“What a mystery. Truly, it’s impossible to understand. Back during the Kult incident, at least we could talk and try to grasp each other’s motives. But this time, I didn’t even know who I was dealing with.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Tillis had always hidden behind a thick mask. Lobelia probably never once suspected her.

“What kind of person was she?”

Lobelia asked.

What kind of person was Tillis?

I wasn’t sure that question really mattered to her, but at the very least, she seemed to be trying to understand.

Well, perhaps that was only natural.

She was an imperial member, after all.

She might have wanted to know what the leader of terrorists born of the Empire’s own making had been thinking.

She didn’t seem to view the incident in a one-dimensional way but rather tried to see it from multiple angles.

That was probably for the best, if only to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

Since it wasn’t me who had to wrestle with the aftermath, I figured I might as well explain simply.

“She was a fool.”

After much consideration, that was the word I chose.

Tillis was a fool.

“She knew nothing. She wasn’t born evil, but she was ignorant….so ignorant she couldn’t grasp the weight of the evil she committed.”

“The worst kind, then.”

“Exactly.”

An undeniable, irredeemable villain.

At the very least, I could understand the justice Kult had claimed to uphold.

But Tillis’s goals and ideals were clumsy, simplistic, and hollow.

“She was stubborn, too. She could never admit she was wrong.”

“Ignorant and stubborn? Sounds like an exhausting kind of person.”

“She was, practically speaking, no different from a child wielding a dangerous blade.”

But precisely because of that—

“She was someone who could have changed. She had plenty of chances.”

“……”

“Both the chance to change on her own and the chance for someone else to help her change.”

A child, no matter how ignorant or obstinate, can eventually grow into an adult.

Tillis could have grown up. She truly had many chances.

But she didn’t know how to take them, and no one around her ever taught her how.

“She may have been ignorant and stubborn, but she never treated learning lightly.”

And because of that, Tillis died.

She learned the weight of the sins she had committed, and because of that realization, she abandoned her goal.

Her dream had been built on a lifetime of buried hatred.

Honestly, it wouldn’t have been strange if she’d kept trying to destroy the world.

Even if she’d regained her emotions, things might not have changed.

But in the end, she acknowledged and accepted her own suffering.

“I feel like I’m defending her, somehow.”

Tillis, whether for better or worse, had been pure.

“Everyone has the right to dream of a happy ending, don’t they?”

There had been a time when she’d walked around with a fairy tale book tucked at her waist, spouting her misguided ideas with a bright, innocent smile.

“That’s all I meant.”

The bluebird was never far away.

Not many people were able to notice that fact.

***

That night.

I decided to step out of the hospital room for a short walk.

A moonlit stroll.

Today had been exhausting.

To be precise, it was Lobelia who wore me out.

We had spent far too much time alone together in the same space.

Seeing the always-perfect Lobelia in comfortable patient clothes, completely absorbed in paperwork, was somehow tiring to watch.

I kept worrying she’d suddenly order me to do this or that, but thankfully, no such power play happened.

Geez, even while she’s supposed to be resting, she’s working. I’m never going to live like that.

“Well then.”

Under the pretense of taking a walk, I leaned back on a nearby bench and tried to gather my thoughts.

After everything that had happened, I definitely needed a bit of a breather.

“Mephistopheles.”

And so, I called out once again to the one who might be able to answer my questions.

“You called?”

“You bastard. You always go silent when it matters most, don’t you?”

“That’s unfair. I’m just as confused as you are about what happened. One moment I was out cold, and the next I woke up feeling totally refreshed!”

“Demons sleep now?”

“I didn’t know either, but apparently so.”

“So basically, you just passed out.”

“Ahem…”

Sleeping while someone else was out there working their ass off, huh?

What a truly competent demon.

Still, what can I do? He’s the only demon around who can actually hold a conversation.

“I have something I want to ask you.”

“Speak.”

“Have there been… any changes in me?”

“……”

Something definitely feels off.

Recognizing the World Tree instantly, being the only one who can see Mastema. None of that is normal.

The remnants of the Demon King that once existed inside me…

If that’s what caused these changes, then I need to know exactly what those changes are.

“Hmm.”

Mephistopheles went silent.

The atmosphere felt unusually serious, so I decided not to press him and waited for his answer.

Maybe he needed time to collect his thoughts, too.

After groaning for a while, Mephistopheles finally spoke cautiously.

“D-Did you get a haircut?”

“Right. I’m the idiot for expecting anything.”

This freaking idiot.

What can you actually do?