—Humans who have undergone demonization cannot be saved.
That was a belief widely accepted as fact in the Kohonbach Empire.
When I used to play the game, I thought that line was simply symbolic.
Even if someone was lucky enough to avoid immediate execution, even if they barely resisted the overwhelming demonic power and fled while struggling to survive,
Once a person became a demon, they could never find peace again.
Probably because of guilt.
…But in reality, that wasn’t the case.
It meant exactly what it said, literally.
– Kill them!! Punishment for sin!!!!
– Make them pay for their crimes!! Justice! Burn the world with justice!!!
The shouting voices.
The voices I heard when I briefly accepted the Demon of Justice and Execution into my body tormented my ears.
The demon parasite hadn’t returned.
The voices just came back like phantom pain.
As if it were only natural for a demon to be lurking at the very bottom of every human being.
“…What a ridiculous sight.”
I said as I looked into the mirror.
I had followed the mana pipelines to the control room and successfully subdued it. The mirror was something I found there.
“Ah, ahh… ahhh….”
For a moment, I pressed down hard on the struggling movement at my feet until it stopped. After that, nothing living remained moving inside the wide room.
“…I’ve got three horns now.”
My forehead was a mess. Along with the two horns growing from my temples, another horn shaped like a seven-branched sword was piercing up through the center.
In total, three horns had grown like huge thorns.
On my shoulder blades were wings like thorny vines. My legs were still those of a beast. On my chest burned a shape like rising flames.
“..….”
At this point, it was no different from combining the forms of two demons.
That thought briefly crossed my mind from somewhere deep inside.
But only for a moment.
I simply shrugged.
After all, it wasn’t something that important.
– Punishment for sin!!
– Kill them!! Kill them!!
“Yeah. Of course.”
Red things dragged across the floor. I left the situation room, drawing a line across the ground as I went.
In the middle of the corridor, a magic elevator came into view.
However, that wasn’t the target. In this facility, there was another elevator.
I didn’t know how I knew.
Yet somehow, the entire facility was starting to feel like an extension of my own limbs.
“Passenger weight: 75 kilograms. One human male.”
Quinoron was it?
I smiled.
In that case, all the better.
If I killed him here, I could be free from countless incidents in the future.
It would bring me one step closer to a peaceful daily life.
Yes, a peaceful and quiet life.
After everything was over, I would live together with Camilla.
At first, it would probably be a little awkward. It had only been recently that we had truly become proper siblings.
We would probably stumble through quite a few mistakes. Then, someday, I would reveal that the man named Deran whom Camilla had liked was actually me.
Camilla might get angry. At the very least, it was certain she would feel embarrassed. She might even feel resentful toward the younger brother who teased her endlessly without giving her a moment’s rest.
And little by little, we would become an ordinary pair of siblings. After that, there was the family.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to develop House Bliss. After all, I knew a great deal of information about this world. Reviving a single magic family would be entirely possible as long as I had time.
Yes.
A peaceful and quiet life.
“…….!!”
For a moment, a splitting pain shot through my head.
But still, that was all.
“……Hoo.”
Even if the side effects of excessive drug consumption gnawed at my body and the forcibly awakened mana tore through every vein.
Even if hallucinated voices I had never experienced in my modern life rang inside my head.
I was still here.
“Come out.”
I forced the elevator doors open.
Then I grabbed the steel cable connected to the elevator and pulled.
Upward, higher.
I dragged the elevator up.
“I’ll erase you here, Quinoron.”
My vision turned red.
***
“…How strange.”
Quinoron muttered. While riding the magic elevator, it had begun jerking again and again.
If it were merely a malfunction in the mana drive system that happened from time to time, the frequency was far too high.
It was almost as if the energy supply kept cutting out.
“…This hardly ever happens.”
The elevator he was currently riding was the only one connected to the very lowest level of the facility.
Since the experiment was what it was, this elevator had been built as an independent structure. It could be shut down separately, and its mana source was located elsewhere.
In other words, its mana system was completely separated from the central one.
Even if a problem occurred throughout the entire facility, this means of transport was designed to continue functioning normally.
“Someone is draining the mana… how?”
As Quinoron pondered for a moment, his gaze sank. He had experienced a similar phenomenon before.
He took a small notebook out from his coat.
A two-way communication magic tool. It was connected to the control room.
“Hudson, report what’s going on.”
– ….
There was no response.
“……”
Only the elevator’s floor indicator blinked on and off.
…No way?
After grasping the situation up to that point, the face that came to Quinoron’s mind was that of a certain witch residing deep within Black Alley.
At that moment, without any warning, the elevator came to a stop.
The momentum from its ascent lingered, pushing up against his heels. The lights went out as well, plunging everything into pitch-black darkness.
The mana that had been drawn somewhere had finally reached its limit, forcing the elevator to halt.
Fzzzzzt.
Static crackled from the communicator.
Amid the huge flow of mana, even the mana embedded within this small magical device was being dragged along.
That was how fierce the current was.
“…Hmm.”
At this point, failing to notice would make one a fool.
Something had clearly happened in this place.
Quinoron took out another notebook. He was confident he could personally control most variables, but it would be foolish to jump to conclusions.
Thoroughness in all things, that was the method of the Worshipper ranked fifth, “Quinoron Schadenfreude”.
“Maria, a problem has occurred.”
Though he hated to admit it, the power of great mage Mariacalled surpassed his own. If he joined forces with her, most variables could be eliminated unless the one ranked first appeared.
But then it happened.
From the other side of the communicator, a voice rang through the elevator. It was urgent in a way utterly unlike Maria.
– Quinoron? You idiot!! Get out of there right now!!
“…Huh?”
***
The elevator shot upward. The superhuman strength of a demon dragged the metal elevator up.
Clank, clank, clank!
At every floor, something like a latch caught onto it, but it wasn’t a stimulus worth paying attention to. The sound of metal snapping echoed throughout the elevator shaft.
Before I knew it, I was already invading the elevator itself. Like some grotesque creature tearing through water, I ripped open the elevator ceiling with my three horns.
Wheeeen—wheeeen—….
– Code Red. Code Red. All mages in the research wing must evacuate immediately….
Such a voice echoed faintly. Apparently, there were still humans continuing the broadcast.
All those involved in this affair are no different from accomplices. The pitiful test subjects who exploded in the underground deserve consolation, and those responsible deserve punishment.
Aware that such thoughts were passing through my mind, I reached out toward the figure inside the elevator. From the inside of my palm, an execution blade sprang forth.
“Ghk!!”
The surprise attack was effective. In a single strike, it pierced straight through the chest of the uniform the man was wearing. I shoved him forward like a skewer and pinned him to the wall.
In the narrow space drenched entirely in red, I looked at his face.
No doubt about it. Quinoron. Rank 5 among the demon worshippers. Quinoron Schadenfreude. A mage of disguise.
“…Well now. That hurts.”
He wore a faint smile. I didn’t like that expression, so I twisted the execution blade.
The sensation transmitted through the execution blade which varies in power depending on the weight of one’s sins felt like slicing through a sponge.
That was how great his sins were.
If I possessed the “eyes that see sin” right now, Quinoron would likely appear to me as nothing but a crimson figure.
“Have you finished all your busy experiments, Quinoron?”
A low, rumbling voice slipped out. In his pupils, I saw my own reflection. No longer a human face….it was something that could only be called a grotesque creature.
At that moment, I realized I was gradually transforming into a more perfect demon.
Yet surprisingly, Quinoron seemed to notice something about my presence. A trace of confusion etched itself across his face.
“…Such a calm mana wave. I see. So it was you.”
His eyes widened. I restrained the urge to gouge them out.
“Adel Bliss. I see now… so that’s how it was. You’re the one who controlled it.”
I did not answer. I merely showed him a mocking smile. In the first place, words would not reach him.
He was a demon supremacist. Not someone who simply worshiped demons as gods, but one who believed they represented the new path humanity should follow.
Which is why he believed lesser beings should never imitate the form of demons.
And by that same logic, he truly believed the experiments that caused humans to explode were acts of benevolence.
“Now I understand. Why Irina Harunsdel suddenly entered the succession struggle… you were behind it all. Was retrieving the demon planted in Sasha Koskov also part of your plan?”
So in a way, it was only natural that he would make such strange guesses.
Because he believed that resembling the form of demons and becoming like them in nature was true evolution. Our values were fundamentally different.
His speculation meant nothing to me.
But I did not bother to deny it. There was no particular reason.
It was simply difficult for me to produce my own voice.
“…Then this is excellent, Adel Bliss. You have surpassed my expectations. No….no one in Rabid Van anticipated this. No matter how much I tried to report it, most simply dismissed it without concern!!! To think, to think you had prepared something like this!!!”
“…….”
“Join me as a colleague, Adel Bliss. You are someone who should not be bound by the Academy, by the Empire, no…by the very conventions of this world…!!!”
“Quinoron, you will die here.”
I cut off Quinoron’s words and spoke. It was an order.
“…….”
“A colleague? Go serve as a companion on the road to the innocent humans you killed.”
“…So you were concerned with something like ethics. How dare you.”
A vein bulged along the outside of his cheek. He had clenched his teeth. As if he had never been smiling to begin with, his face twisted into a vicious expression.
I paid it no mind. If anything, it felt like I had just heard something amusing.
“Let’s see if you can still call it ‘something like’ ethics when the positions are reversed.”
Amusement gives rise to ideas. Thanks to Quinoron, a good method came to mind.
◆ Available Mana: [1,091,590] → [500,000]
I began releasing the mana I had drawn from the entire facility, compressing it within this space.
It was not a wave meant for casting magic.
Just a massive lump of mana, swollen to enormous size.
Through my three horns, I began to spew it out in surging waves.
“This elevator will be your Innovation Cube from now on.”
“……!”
“How long do you think you’ll last, Quinoron Schadenfreude?”
“What are you… doing…!”
The metal doors of the elevator crumpled like sheets of paper.
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