Mephistopheles.
I could say I’ve known this girl for quite a long time.
If you count only the number of times I’ve actually seen her face, it might even be more than Ariel.
Because of that, I thought I knew her fairly well…
But thinking about it, there wasn’t a single thing I actually knew about her personally.
“Where do you keep wandering off to? It’s not like you have any friends to meet.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing that from someone who didn’t have any friends until recently.”
Mephi gasped in shock.
But now I know this is just an act. That evil demon must have been deceiving everyone.
“I was wondering anyway. Why do you keep sticking around me.”
The reason demons make contracts with humans is to fill the emptiness in their souls.
But Mephi made it sound like she was trying to collect my soul.
Is that really the case? For a great demon, one or two souls are meaningless.
Their souls are enormous, befitting their rank, and the emptiness within them is so vast that even devouring a human soul whole wouldn’t be enough to fill it.
Still, they also tempt humans in order to fill that emptiness.
The only difference is that they need far more of them, and they desire souls that are more special.
Then am I someone who possesses a soul so special that Mephi would set everything aside and devote her time to me?
“If it were just demonic instinct, there’d be no reason to put so much effort into just one person like me. Even if I have memories of a past life, that alone isn’t enough to consider my soul special.”
Before, I was fooled.
I thought that must be the reason.
Deep down, I wondered if maybe I was special after all.
But there’s something Mephi overlooked.
I’ve dug far deeper into myself than she thinks, and I’ve also dug deeply into the world.
“Didn’t you say it’s because you possess the special ability to remember your past life?”
“The reason I could remember my past life is probably because of the Demon King’s influence.”
Then is it because the Demon King’s soul is special?
Well, if you ask whether it’s special, I suppose it is.
However, the Demon King shattered his own soul. The seventy-two ranked demons could all be called fragments of the Demon King’s soul.
What was left to me isn’t even one of those fragments but merely the leftover residue.
Could a soul like that really be special enough to catch the eye of a Great Demon?
No, no matter how you look at it, it probably isn’t that special. But it must still be special in some sense.
The meaning of that “special”.
“Don’t think you’ll be able to brush this aside so easily this time.”
Now that the outline has become this clear, I can’t just let it slide.
***
There’s a saying that a position shapes the person. In fact, after becoming a guillotine knight, I’ve changed quite a bit.
Maybe it’s because of this dull uniform.
I feel like I’ve become as cold-hearted as the Guillotine Knights themselves.
Even resorting to violence against Mephi who was pretending to be pitiful with tears welling in her eyes wasn’t that difficult.
“You evil bastard! You actually flicked my forehead five times!”
“Does it hurt a lot, Mephi? But don’t worry! They say pain helps people grow!”
“Shut up, World Tree.”
Even after all that, Mephi still answered that it was simply because I was special.
I brought up various things like how she guided the Great Sage, but the result was the same.
Mephi fumed in anger, and eventually her eyes filled with tears as she complained about the unfairness of it all.
Did I really get it wrong?
Did I fall for some trick of the Great Sage? But would the Great Sage even have a reason to do that?
On the other hand, Mephi has plenty of reasons. There are also many suspicious points.
Even this time. When I went looking for her right when I needed her, she had vanished like a ghost.
The theory that this brat is actually the one pulling the strings behind the scenes is starting to sound convincing.
“Haah, do you want a piece of candy or something?”
“Give it to me.”
Of course, seeing her like this does make the story a bit less convincing… but I must never forget that she is a Great Demon who has lived for hundreds of years.
“Apologize to me, Johan!”
“Fine, if I have to.”
Mephi shouted with one cheek puffed out from the candy stuffed inside her mouth.
The more I look at her, the more trivial she seems.
But when you consider that all that triviality might be an act, it becomes unsettling instead.
From the beginning, I never expected Mephi to admit anything so easily.
What matters is pushing her into a situation where she has no choice but to admit it.
“Now you may come out.”
“I’m pretty sure I was told this was an invitation. Was I actually invited to a disciplinary session?”
“Uh…”
I called for someone involved in this matter. Of course, it wasn’t the Great Sage.
If I knew where the Great Sage was, I wouldn’t be going through all this.
But thinking about it, there was one more person involved in the story between the Great Sage and Mephistopheles.
“Your Highness Lapis.”
The reason the Great Sage came into contact with dark magic. The being from beyond death that he summoned.
“Your Highness, could you take a look at this one? There’s something strange about her.”
“Hmm? Now that you mention it, I did feel something odd the last time too.”
Lapis lowered her head, trying to meet Mephi’s eyes.
But Mephi avoided her gaze.
I knew it. There had to be something with this one. She’s been hiding it well all this time.
“So this child guided Faust into summoning me, is that it?”
“That’s pure speculation. He’s been spouting nonsense this whole time.”
“This cute little thing?”
Mephi shuddered, while Lapis who was completely unfazed poked and prodded at Mephi’s cheeks.
Gulp.
Mephi who had been moving the candy around in her mouth suddenly swallowed the candy she had been carefully dissolving.
“Keh! Keh! Urgh—ggh! Ptoo!”
After coughing and gagging in distress for a while, Mephi spat out the candy that had been stuck in her throat, making a tearful face.
Her gaze refused to leave the candy that fell onto the ground.
“That’s dirty now. Dirty.”
Like someone soothing a small child, Lapis held Mephi’s cheeks and made her look directly at her.
“Hmm? Hmmm? Hmmmm?”
And then, after looking around here and there and making a puzzled sound for a moment—
“Ah! I get it.”
Lapis clapped her hands, finally releasing Mephi.
Mephi had been flailing for quite a while while caught in Lapis’s grasp, and though she was finally freed, she remained on the ground, unable to stand, with one hand braced against the floor.
“This child was my younger sister!”
Flinch!
Mephi’s body trembled.
I knew it. I knew it would be like this. You’ve been deceiving everyone all this time!
“But that’s strange. This child doesn’t have a name.”
“I heard it was Mephistopheles.”
“Not that kind of name. Hmm, how should I put it?”
Lapis who had been twisting her hair around her fingers while pondering casually pointed a finger at me.
“End.”
Then that finger turned back toward herself.
“Hell.”
No matter how many times I heard it, that identity was something I could never get used to.
It sounded like the kind of thing someone would say while going through a chuunibyou phase, but unfortunately, the being before us possessed the power to use such titles without it sounding ridiculous.
“Nameless.”
Finally, Lapis pointed at Mephi who was lying face down on the floor.
Only then did I understand what she meant when she said the child had no name.
“To begin with, even the form is strange. A demon….was there really any reason for it to take this kind of form? A form this incomplete? I really can’t understand what Father is thinking.”
“……”
Lapis grabbed Mephi by the waist and lifted her up from where she lay.
Curious about what kind of expression Mephi would have, it turned out to be an unexpectedly sullen one.
Her true identity had just been exposed. I thought she might be wearing a wicked smile or look flustered, but instead she looked strangely dissatisfied.
“Do you even hear yourself?”
But her voice was different.
A fragment of the true body I had seen in that wonderland created by Mephistopheles.
A deep, heavy voice strongly reflecting that influence.
“The reason I look like this…it’s all because of you!”
But the content was different.
At that voice, which sounded as if it were pouring out pent-up resentment, Lapis and I looked at each other.
Man, this really does make us seem like siblings.
Now I feel uncomfortable.
“Why…? Why aren’t you doing your job? You’re supposed to faithfully carry out the duty you were given!”
Even as we stood there, Mephistopheles continued to vent her grievances.
I don’t know the details, but doesn’t this mean this brat is the root of all evil?
***
Mephistopheles.
A being born as a Great Demon.
With no trace of her footsteps anywhere in recorded history, Mephi had suddenly been born a Great Demon, and she realized that she was an incomplete lifeform.
“Father?”
Mephi raised her head and looked at her father. Their father, who had no mouth, no face, and no way to speak.
A phenomenon called “End”.
Mephi knew why she had been born. To spread the end of the entire world and make her father’s name widely known.
All of her siblings were carrying out such tasks.
The Demon King who declares the end.
Hell who declares the end after the end.
Then what was the meaning of her own existence?
“Leave it to me, Father.”
Just by looking at her father, Mephi could understand.
From that pitch-black hole like a bottomless abyss, she felt a will.
“I’ll declare the end of the world in that idiot’s place!”
Mephistopheles.
That incomplete demon had been born to fill the vacant seat of the Demon King.
***
The first world.
The first mission.
Born as a Great Demon, Mephistopheles decided to achieve her goal in the way of demons.
In truth, there was nothing else she could do. Because of the limitations of being a demon, she could not directly interfere with the world.
Compared to the previous Demon Kings, who would determine the end of a world the moment they descended, it could be called pitiful…
However, Mephi believed that once she fulfilled her contracts and manifested in the world, she would at least be able to do that much with her own hands.
The first contract. She granted the wish of some nameless idiot, took their soul, and used it to interfere with the world.
“Th-This is all there is?”
But she still had very little power she could exert upon the world.
At most, she could only produce enough firepower to burn down a single house.
“H-Ha, haha, it must be because my true body is far too powerful!”
Mephi declared a mental victory.
She decided that her true body was simply so overwhelmingly powerful that even after forming a contract, this was the most she could interfere with the world.
She boldly brushed aside her first failure.
Come to think of it, she was a child of the End. Trying to bring about the end of the world through such a demonic method had been the mistake.
“At this rate, if I just do this 55,821 more times!”
She would be able to descend her true body.
And so, while leading the world toward its end, when Mephi had granted the wishes of her 325th human and obtained enough power to burn down a large mansion—
The world ended.
Without her needing to do anything, it naturally reached its end.
During that process, since Mephistopheles merely granted people’s wishes and never brought about disasters, she ended up being mistaken for an angel rather than a demon.
“…….”
A miserable failure with no room for excuses.
“But in the end, it still reached its end. Well, for a first attempt, that’s not so bad.”
Even so, Mephi declared another mental victory.
However, since it had taken so long, she did intend to do better next time.
Yet after repeated failures, Mephi was finally forced to admit it.
“This method won’t work.”
Mephi acknowledged it.
The method of infiltrating the world with her true body was impossible.
But could she destroy a world with only a fragment of her power? That too was impossible.
The closer a world is to its end, the stronger the lifeforms living within it become.
Whether that strength comes from technological advancement or from the beings themselves.
Faced with such power, Mephi was defeated again and again.
Completely unlike her predecessor, whose mere descent would bring about the end of the world.
“As long as the world is led to its end, that’s what matters, isn’t it? In that case, getting a little help should be fine.”
Mephi eventually decided to summon Hell before End.
If Hell arrived, the world would be destroyed sooner rather than later, so wouldn’t that solve the problem either way?
“Fufu, a perfect plan.”
Mephi acted with meticulous care.
She gave knowledge to Great Sage Faust, granted him power, and practically poured out every ability she possessed.
And when the Great Sage had finally reached the very brink of ruin, Mephi at last made someone from that world summon Hell of their own accord.
But then…
“Oh my, a living person! How fascinating!”
The sister she had long awaited walked a path completely opposite to her expectations.
The Hell that Mephi believed would plunge the world into despair instead began to blend into the world and live within it.
Mephistopheles was confused.
So confused that she stopped eating and drinking for several hundred years.
No matter what she did, nothing worked.
For a moment, she even began to sink into that kind of self-destructive resignation.
“I see… so that’s how it was!”
Mephi discovered it.
A fragment left behind by the Demon King, Johan Dumas.
“Even though the soul was shattered, its origin still remained!”
The child of the End had disappeared.
But the word “End” was still bound to that being.
Even though the soul had been shattered into pieces, that word still belonged solely to the Demon King.
For the sake of that very thing, Mephi had been born as a demonic phenomenon. In order to steal, in its entirety, the power of that word bound together with the soul through the form of a contract.
And so, to be reborn as the true child of End.
Mephi approached Johan.
The Demon King’s self-awareness was almost nonexistent anyway. Trapped within the frame of a human, he had even forgotten who he was. He was nothing more than a fool.
Persuading a single human?
For her, it was a simple task.
“Fufu, tremble in fear.”
…At least, that was what she once thought.
***
“I hate all of this! Why am I always the only one who has to work seriously?!”
“Funny thing to say, considering you were living it up and slacking off until recently.”
“That’s right. Once you actually tried living in a human body, it wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Shut up, you unemployed bum!”
“Oh my, how hurtful……”
Mephi burst into loud sobs.
“I didn’t even do anything, and I got five flicks on the forehead just because I seemed suspicious! I can never be happy like this!”
“But in the end, you hid the reason you approached me, didn’t you?”
“Does that even matter? You weren’t going to make a contract with me anyway! I don’t need any of this anymore. You evil bastard!”
Anyone listening would think that brat was the one being wronged.
Still, she did lie in the end.
“Then what was all that running away from me until now?”
“When did I ever run away! Since when were you so interested in me anyway?! I just went to line up early at that new bakery opening today!”
“Oh, I know that place. I went there today too…it was pretty good. So our youngest was in line there as well?”
“Shut up! You shameless brat who doesn’t even have to stand in line just because you’re an imperial member!”
“That’s harsh.”
What should I even call this?
It was true that Mephi had deceived me. But she wasn’t some mastermind scheming in the shadows.
“Right now, I just want to slack off and live comfortably too! I don’t want to work!”
The thing here….more specifically, the one sprawled on the floor throwing a tantrum was simply something utterly pathetic.
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