Chapter 246: Qualification Part 5

Lapis couldn’t help but feel utterly bewildered by the sudden assault.

You could even say it was the most human moment she’d ever experienced.

No.

What she felt first and foremost was confusion.

It was such an unthinkable situation that her mind simply couldn’t process it.

And once that initial shock faded,

She was struck again. This time by the fact that she had felt pain.

Overwhelmed by one wave of shock after another, Lapis stood there blinking vacantly for nearly thirty seconds.

Drip.

A red trickle of blood slid down her nose.

It wasn’t particularly strange.

After all, the monster known as Naraka, called Lapis….still maintained a human shell.

She had observed human biology for a long time, and with the help of a power called Babel Gear, she had perfected her disguise.

So it made sense that a human body would bleed after being hit.

No… no, it doesn’t make sense.

She was, at least outwardly, a princess.

And he had struck her.

A sense of humiliation flooded in.

And on top of that….feeling pain in such a situation? That was enough to twist her emotions into hatred.

H-He dared…?

Hatred and fury began to fester.

For a moment, the thought of killing Johan right then and there flashed through her mind.

No, seriously… what even is this…?

And at the end of that hatred and rage came yet again…confusion.

Lost in this never-ending emotional loop, nearly a full minute had passed.

Time seemed to stand still as Johan and Lapis froze in place.

And after cycling through yet more waves of fury, loathing, and disbelief, Lapis finally realized something.

“Don’t try anything funny with me.”

A surge of emotion.

It was something she had only allowed herself to feel because she was human. But that didn’t mean she should let someone toy with her.

Lapis reached her hand into empty air and clenched her fist.

Then she yanked.

“Chirp! Chirp!”

A bluebird was forcibly yanked from the air and thrown to the ground before her eyes.

“A spirit?”

Mastema, a spirit possessing the authority to manipulate emotions.

“You still have a spirit with you?”

Lapis blinked in disbelief at the presence of a spirit she had thought extinct.

By this point, she had moved past shock and into a strange state of calm.

“Haa…”

Lapis decided to simply let Mastema go. For a moment, she had considered killing it. But realizing it was a spirit, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Spirits were similar to her.

They were beings that didn’t belong anywhere, unable to fully mix or integrate with anything.

“Tch.”

In the end, Lapis released Mastema from her grasp.

With a few flutters of its wings, Mastema vanished from sight.

“Uh, um… Princess Lapis. I’ve committed an unforgivable crime.”

It was then that Lapis noticed the handkerchief held out in front of her.

Johan Damus was offering it with a pale, anxious face.

Lapis recalled something.

What mattered now wasn’t that a spirit still existed.

What truly mattered was the fact that Johan Damus had attacked her.

Even if her physical body was that of a human, she wasn’t supposed to feel pain.

And yet, he had caused her pain.

That could only mean one thing.

He was a being on her level.

The one once called the Demon King. The child most beloved by her father.

And now, that child was rejecting her.

No….this went beyond rejection. He was standing against her.

At that, Lapis made up her mind.

“Unforgivable crime, you say?”

She would break the vessel that housed her younger brother to teach him a lesson.

***

Time had frozen.

That was how bad things were now.

It wasn’t just shock.

I had attacked a member of the imperial family.

And the imperial who had been attacked was even bleeding. This was serious enough that immediate execution wouldn’t be surprising.

It was so unfair. Seriously, who just jumps out from behind someone like that?

I felt like I might cry from the injustice.

“Uh, um… Princess Lapis. I’ve committed an unforgivable crime.”

But the one bleeding right now was Lapis. As unfair as it felt, apologizing was the right thing to do.

And besides, she was an imperial member. It wouldn’t be strange if she really did try to have me executed.

Power is truly terrifying.

“……”

Lapis stared blankly at the handkerchief I held out.

She must’ve been just as shocked. But considering the composure she usually showed, there was a good chance she’d let this slide.

At least, that’s what I thought…until she spoke.

“An unforgivable crime, you say?”

Her voice was so cold it was hard to believe it belonged to the same person. The chill in her tone was so intense, it genuinely felt like my body had frozen over.

Lapis reached out her hand.

It was pale….so pale it looked like the arm of a corpse.

I knew instinctively: if that touched me, I’d die.

It wasn’t about physical damage. Just a single touch, and my life would be gone.

She was like death itself made manifest.

A hand that harvested life.

And I couldn’t do anything in the face of the death that loomed before me.

Then, just as that hand was about to brush against my cheek—

Slice!

With a sharp cutting sound, Lapis’s hand dropped cleanly to the floor.

“……”

Not a single drop of blood spilled from the severed wrist. Only an endless void remained at the stump.

“Ha!”

With a sigh, Lapis staggered back, then bent down and picked up her fallen hand, reattaching it to her arm.

Even in the face of that surreal scene, I couldn’t say a word.

All I could feel was the terrifying reality. How close death had come, right to the base of my neck.

“Alright. Fine. I admit it. I got a little emotional. But even so, how could you just cut off someone’s hand without warning?”

It was the same bright voice as always.

With a sulky expression, Lapis pouted and glared into empty space.

“And after I even cleaned everything up so no one would notice, you get mad at me?”

It was a familiar voice.

A voice that absolutely shouldn’t have been here. Without thinking, I turned my head and hurriedly scanned the surroundings.

The space itself was rippling like a mirage, while the people walking around moved naturally, as if they didn’t even perceive this place.

And at the center of that mirage—

From the violently wavering, tangled distortion where no clear shape could be discerned, someone stepped forward.

“You were the one who followed me on your own in the first place.”

“Yes, yes, I’m reflecting on my actions.”

“As you should.”

Even as she let out a deep sigh, Lapis casually took a seat right in front of me.

At this point, shouldn’t we be leaving? She’d tried to kill me just moments ago, and now she was sitting across from me like this was nothing?

No, more importantly.

“You… you, what the hell have you been doing?! Scriptwriter!”

“My eardrums are going to burst.”

The one who had appeared before me was the Scriptwriter Deus.

And he had become a lich through dark magic. I could tell the instant I saw him. This old man had turned himself undead by his own will.

I knew because I’d already seen a precedent. Charybdis Salros.

Just look at him. Look at that old man picking at his ear with a sullen expression.

No gaps in memory. No awkwardness. He was entirely himself.

“Why? When? And how, exactly?”

“I became buddies with the Great Sage.”

“You absolute lunatic!”

Crazy.

No, seriously crazy.

There was no other word for it. I was completely at a loss for words.

“Johan, if you consider a person to be divided into body and soul, which one would you say is the true self?”

“First of all, you’re not a person. You crazy bastard!”

“It was only after I became like this that I realized….none of that really matters. As long as you perceive either side as yourself, then it is you.”

“Ha…!”

It was hard to even accept the reality in front of me. This wasn’t something that should exist…or could exist.

“I was curious, so I asked the Great Sage. If I replaced my body with mechanical parts, would I die? Or would I still be alive, just with a mechanical body?”

“So, just because you were curious… you decided to become undead?”

“Well… in the end, yes?”

“You…are you crazy, you goddamn—”

Deus responded shamelessly, as if it were nothing.

He corrupted his soul just to satisfy his curiosity.

Even for a madman, there are limits. How could anyone actually do that?

“First, hear me out. I realized my physical body had reached its limits, so I decided to discard it.”

“……”

That much, I could understand.

He’d hinted at it before, and there were signs he might go that far. I just never thought he actually would, but he did.

Fine. This is still within the realm of what I could have expected.

“I began replacing each part of my body with gears. I started with the heart, the core of the body, and implanted a completed Perfect Gear.”

“Of course you did.”

“From there, I used Worm Gears to circulate blood, and Spur Gears to eliminate the body’s rejection response.”

Using Worm Gears for the circulatory system and Spur Gears for the nervous system, he had entered the preparation phase.

“Then I replaced the skeletal system and restructured the muscles.”

He built the body’s frame using Helical Gears for the skeleton and Babel Gears for the muscular system.

“Next, I used Rack Gears to create the respiratory organs and Planetary Gears for the digestive organs. Finally, I covered the body in skin using Pinion Gears to complete the flesh.”

“You’re really proud of the fact that you transcended humanity through gears, huh?”

“No? Up until that point, I was still human. Now, what do you think I did after reconstructing my body?”

“……”

“I realized that being bound to a physical body was the real problem.”

At that moment, I remembered the mechanical device I had encountered in the Veldani Mountains.

Back then, Deus said that body was himself. I thought he was lying…

“I discarded the flesh. I abandoned the shell of individuality and came to exist as a single program.”

It really was Deus himself that I encountered. No….more accurately, it would be right to say they were Deuses.

“And that’s when I met death!”

Deus, having perfectly deduced the moment of his own death, cried out in triumph.

There was no doubt he was utterly mad… to feel joy at the fact of his own death.

“When do you think the moment comes when a person dies and their soul separates from the body?”

“I don’t care.”

“The answer is: from the very beginning! Humans have been dying from the start! They just couldn’t recognize it.”

“Ah, right. I forgot what kind of person you were.”

He doesn’t listen to others.

It was now certain. The undead standing before me was truly Deus.

“A soul isn’t a single entity. It resides in every part….arms, legs, even in each individual cell. When I replaced my heart, that heart died and the soul within it escaped.”

“……”

“My blood and flesh, bones and organs… all died in the same way. But humans can’t perceive that. Thoughts come from the brain, and once the brain dies, a person can no longer think.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“That’s right! Only when one realizes their own death can they exist in the form of a soul and see their physical body!”

“Sure. Great.”

Another useless piece of knowledge added to the pile.

Honestly, it was the kind of knowledge that wouldn’t change anything even if you knew it.

Nothing shocking, nothing worth being amazed over. Just one of those “Oh, I guess that’s how it is” kinds of facts.

That was all.

It’s not like I’m going to replace my body with machines like Deus did.

“In that way, my physical body died. But I don’t believe the person called ‘me’ died. The undead me whose soul escaped and the version of me who discarded even the mechanical body to become a single program….I see both as me.”

“That’s a very convenient answer.”

You’re dead, yet a machine bearing your name is still moving.

And you’re standing there, watching it with your own eyes.

Yeah, you could definitely call that horrifying.

“So why did you come to see me?”

“Oh, nothing big. It just seemed like the other version of me is planning to use this planet’s inner core as an energy source for his journey into space. I figured I should let you know out of courtesy, and because you have the right to know.”

Deus said casually, taking the coffee I was drinking and sipping it himself.

“The core contains my main body, and if that leaks out, everything alive is going to die.”

Lapis chimed in, agreeing with him while also snatching away the sandwich I had ordered.

“Aha.”

Unbelievable. These crazy bastards.