The plan had begun.
Tillis was going to chase after me since I had the Book of Lemegeton with me.
I had already sent an invitation to Kult.
All that remained was to lead everything into Coran Lekias’s strongest domain.
The only thing I needed to be mindful of was how to draw Kult in.
But I had thought of something for that as well.
“Hello, Mr. Johan.”
“…Ah, yes. Hello.”
Deep in the mountains, far from people—
I had summoned Kult to a small cabin hidden there, and he had accepted my invitation without hesitation.
Even though it was clearly a trap, he didn’t care.
He had probably even shaken off Lobelia’s surveillance just to walk into it of his own accord.
Of course, Kult must have felt confident he could escape any trap.
And that only meant the bait I had laid was valuable enough to be worth the risk.
“So, what would you like me to do? From the look of things, it’s either the saintess or Ex Machina, right?”
“…Exactly.”
As always, Kult smiled brightly and reached out his hand to me.
He had seen right through the plan I was setting into motion.
As expected of the Prophet.
Saved me the trouble of explaining. That was good. Time was short anyway.
“Yes, there’s been a stalker following me around lately. I’d like you to take care of that.”
“Well, I suppose you’ve been feeling uneasy now that Her Highness returned to the imperial palace.”
“…Apparently so.”
Wait, so that’s why Lobelia had disappeared recently? She had gone back to the palace?
Had it already come to that?
I’d been so swept up in everything, I hadn’t realized how much time had passed.
I really needed to lay low for a while once this was all over.
“Alright. The information you’re offering is something we desperately need, after all.”
Kult gave his usual bright smile, then calmly unwrapped the bandage covering his eye.
A blue eye was revealed.
A deep blue like the open sky. And within it, the glowing pupil formed the symbol of Eden.
That was the mark of the Prophet.
A miracle granted by God, said to pierce through lies and fate itself.
“But before we get started, how about we settle the advance payment first? You promised to give me a hint about where the relic of Elysium is, didn’t you?”
Of course, Kult wasn’t going to make this easy.
He even activated his ability, just in case I was lying.
I hadn’t intended to lie, but seeing that power still sent a chill down my spine.
“If you know we’re looking for the relic, then I trust you understand just how important it is to us.”
The relic of Elysium.
It was a key requirement for fulfilling Kult’s deepest wish.
The issue, though, was that while Kult was the leader of Eden, he had no real connection to its predecessor, the Church of Elysium.
As someone who held only the title, Kult didn’t even know what the relic looked like.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded just telling him outright.
In fact, it might have even been better for him to know in advance.
“I see. However…”
Clank!
A metallic click echoed.
Bang!
The wooden shell of the chair I had been sitting on burst apart, and a complex mechanical device sprang out and bound me in place.
The entire process happened in an instant.
“Looks like we’re out of time. Let’s save the rest of this talk for if we make it out alive.”
“Huh…?”
Kult had no doubt run through every possible scenario for how I might act.
And of course, he would have come prepared. Calculating all the variables, and laying out countermeasures for each one.
But in the end, none of that mattered.
No matter how clever Kult was, there was no way he could know how a machine he’d never seen before actually worked.
You can’t predict what you don’t understand.
“Oh, I’m not trying to run. We’re seriously out of time.”
Whoosh!
The floor gave way, and the mechanical device that had bound me pulled me down with it.
A small cabin tucked away in the remote mountains….who would have guessed the cabin itself was a huge machine?
Even before making the plan, I had asked Coran Lekias to choose the optimal location.
And Coran Lekias had chosen his secret laboratory of Ex Machina for the task.
And, like with any place bearing the word “secret”, there was, of course, an emergency escape mechanism in place.
The chair I’d been bound to. That was the escape device.
“Uh…?”
Faced with something he couldn’t comprehend, Kult simply stared blankly as I disappeared.
Smart as he is, he’s got no idea how to respond to the unexpected.
Well, he was inexperienced. What could you expect?
He was always hiding in the shadows, so he made mistakes in real situations like this.
“Well then, wish me luck. Adios!”
Once Kult was out of sight, I closed my eyes.
Being strapped into a machine traveling at that speed, the physical strain was immense.
All that’s left now is to wait and see.
***
Kult stood frozen as he stared at the spot where Johan had vanished.
Did that bastard just…?
No matter what, he hadn’t expected Johan to pull something like that.
Wasn’t Johan a coward?
He never imagined he’d get hit from behind like this.
Was he not afraid of the consequences?
Creak.
But just then—
The cabin door swung open, and someone stepped inside.
“Oh my.”
“……?”
Kult stared blankly at the floor that had just closed again, while Tillis stepped through the door.
Their eyes met.
“Hello.”
“Ah, hello.”
Both smiled brightly as they looked at each other. The type to smile when faced with someone suspicious.
There was no awkwardness between them.
Anyone watching would’ve thought they already knew each other. It felt that natural.
“You must be from Eden?”
“And you’re the Saintess who’s been making headlines lately, right?”
With cheerful smiles exchanged back and forth, the mood between them was as relaxed as if they were about to sit down for tea. As they looked at each other, they both quietly reached a conclusion.
“What brings you here?”
“Oh, a friend called me out here. What about you? What brings you all the way out to a remote mountain like this?”
“Ah, I’m looking for someone. There’s something I really need to ask them, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere.”
“I see.”
Both of them were used to dealing with people, so surprisingly, they got along quite well.
The atmosphere suggested they’d just exchange pleasantries and go their separate ways.
Boom!
Kult made the first move.
With a single gesture, a dazzling radiance followed, engulfing the space where Tillis stood.
Judging by the circumstances, the enemy is definitely on my side of things.
Unlike Tillis, Kult had already clearly recognized the other as a potential threat.
Didn’t he expect Johan to dump this hassle on him in the first place?
“…I see.”
Only now did Kult understand why Johan had fled.
Wasn’t he afraid of the consequences? He probably was. But…
If that thing’s the enemy, it makes sense.
To be clear, Kult didn’t know who Tillis really was.
He just thought she was a hypocrite being praised with an absurd title.
Her actions had seemed suspicious from the start.
But then, Kult saw something…. something faint and unclear, floating in the air.
What the world knew as spirits, he stared at them with the eyes of a prophet.
“I see. I suppose I should thank Johan.”
Everything he saw through those eyes… was demonic.
The moment he realized that, Kult let out a hollow laugh.
How could someone be this brazen?
“You’re openly using a demon, and no one’s even noticed.”
She hadn’t bothered to hide the demon’s presence. She simply passed it off as a spirit…without even trying to conceal it.
That’s precisely why no one had suspected a thing.
Whoosh!
A mass of wings rose into the air, and as dozens of wings shuddered, the radiance Kult had unleashed began to fade.
The light itself was dying out.
One by one, the wings unfolded, revealing what lay hidden within.
“Mastema.”
At Tillis’s call, the demon concealed beneath the wings opened its eyes.
A massive eye soaked in blood.
The ugliness hidden behind those pure white wings made the very air tremble.
“It is time to fulfill the contract.”
Mastema shed tears of blood.
The blood ran down the pure white wings, pulsing like veins.
Droplets formed at the wing tips and began to fall.
“The balance of the world has collapsed, and evildoers thrive everywhere.”
The vague, translucent entities in the air began to take on vivid color as the blood touched them.
What had once been called spirits now returned to their true, grotesque forms. Demons.
“The elves have been wiped out, and most of the other races drowned in seas of blood.”
Drip. Drip.
As if that weren’t enough, Mastema blood soaked Tillis as well.
Her silver hair that was once glimmering like starlight was now stained a deep, dark red.
“What is good? And what is evil?”
Tillis slowly drew her sword.
The blood running down her wrist wrapped around the blade.
“When good meets good, it grows stronger. When good meets evil, they clash and wear each other down.”
Tillis was smiling.
With the certainty that she was right, she spoke:
“But evil… devours evil and grows ever stronger.”
That was what Tillis believed.
The foundation of the ideology she upheld.
“In that case, I will become the greatest evil and purify the world. I shall judge all evil myself.”
It was the method she had chosen to save the world.
Malice overflowed.
It surged like a tide, washing over not just the small cabin but the entire mountain range.
Kult was both astonished by the judge’s might and sneered as he muttered in conclusion,
“You’re crazy.”
“Aren’t we both, Prophet?”
Tillis met Kult’s sneer with a smile and raised her sword.
***
Around the time when Kult and Tillis were likely facing off…
Freed from the escape device of Coran Lekias, I threw myself into the most urgent task at hand.
“Uweeeeegh!”
Yeah. First, I puked.
The ride was absolute garbage.
At first, it felt a little like a roller coaster. It was kind of dizzying in a fun way, but halfway through, it was shaking me in every direction so violently I couldn’t even register the dizziness anymore.
I couldn’t think of the next step. I was sure I was going to die there.
After throwing up everything I had for lunch in one go and even what I’d eaten for breakfast, I was finally able to assess the situation.
“Now that’s a sight.”
Even from the base of the mountain, the explosion of red currents and radiant light was visible to the naked eye.
If there was anything unexpected, it was that Kult was putting up a better fight than I imagined.
Maybe it was the divine power. It seemed like a good matchup.
“I wonder if the others are ready by now.”
I sat on the ground for a moment, gazing up at the mountain.
I had followed the plan and set Kult and Tillis on a collision course. Even without me, those two were bound to clash; they were never going to tolerate each other’s existence. In a way, I just acted as a bridge between them.
And now, I was waiting for the one who would step into the battle between these two who were so alike, yet polar opposites.
Yes, the one who had helped me design and prepare for this entire mess.
The true protagonist of this revenge story.
Rumblleeee!!!
Coran Lekias began to move.
To be honest, I didn’t expect much. Compared to the stature of Kult and Tillis, Coran Lekias couldn’t even hold out a business card.
He wasn’t even an executive of Ex Machina. How well could he possibly fight just because he’d established a domain?
“Huh…”
But there was something I had overlooked. I hadn’t even begun to imagine the kind of synergy that could arise between Coran Lekias’s technology and Maxwell’s demon.
“This lunatic… he really left himself no way out.”
Despite all the warnings I’d given him, Coran Lekias poured everything he had into this, as if he had no intention of leaving anything behind.
The mountain began to collapse.
The mechanical device Coran Lekias had prepared wasn’t just large. It was enormous.
A colossal machine, big enough to occupy an entire section of the mountain, was rising up as it tore through the ground.
It planted hundreds of mechanical arms into the earth and opened its massive jaws.
A gigantic centipede crawled across the land.
From the moment it appeared, it began burning the entire mountain with overwhelming heat.
“The reason he chose a mountain for this… don’t tell me…”
It wasn’t just because the area was deserted.
It wasn’t some half-hearted excuse about avoiding harm to people.
Coran Lekias had planned to use the power of Maxwell’s demon to burn down an entire mountain and turn all that heat into energy.
Surprisingly, he might actually have a shot at this.
“I’ve done more than enough.”
My deal with Coran Lekias was already over the moment the battle began.
In exchange for combining the materials for me, I had provided him with the best possible environment and even added Kult as an ally.
Our transaction ended here.
It was the moment I brushed myself off and began to rise to my feet.
“……”
I felt a strange gaze from Emily who was standing behind me.
Ugh, looks like she came to greet me.
“…Okay, I get it.”
Unfortunately, my deal with Emily wasn’t over yet.
I didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if I tried to ignore that and run away.
“Damn old man. He should’ve listened when I warned him.”
I turned around.
“…Master’s always been a bit stubborn.”
“I know. He looked the type.”
Stupid old man.
If he just listened, I could’ve had it easy too. But no….he just had to make things difficult.
Leave a Reply