Chapter 216 : Chapter 216
Chapter 216
The woman had three heads.
One was rotten, one was only bones, and one was unsurpassed in beauty.
Her name was Lefren.
She was once a member of the high places, once resided in the lowest universe, and once was torn to shreds and wandered the cosmos, but she had finally become the Undying Demon Queen again.
She is the last demon remaining in the silent universe.
The Demon Queen from outside the stars stood with a noble figure.
She had pushed her way through the rift of spacetime from the boundary of life and death.
Many were in this place, but only a few could see her moving in the rift.
I write the names of those who saw her slender fingers.
For instance, Belrsasal, the six-star mage who summoned her.
For instance, Shion and Amethus.
For instance, the Widow Queen Aida.
Because they stood at the pinnacle of humanity, they were barely able to witness the traces of the Undying Demon Queen Lefren.
However, they only witnessed; within the rift of spacetime, they were powerless.
All they could do was follow Lefren's words and gestures with their eyes.
Even if it was Shion Pollinglight.
The clamor and the roar were cut away, and silence was made.
Between rift and rift, between moment and moment, the Undying Demon Queen took a step.
She was larger than a human.
No, she was human-sized.
No, no, she was small enough to fit on a palm.
No, no, no, she was all three and none of the three.
Her size could not be gauged, yet she had a definite size.
Only that she had three heads and one was terribly beautiful remained unchanged.
With every step, a lotus bloomed.
When the Demon Queen's bare foot stepped, the rift sprouted a bud and wrapped around her foot.
Thus, a lotus bloomed. It bloomed everywhere the eye could see, yet it bloomed nowhere.
Though it twisted spacetime and causality differently than they were, there was no sense of incongruity.
As if dancing a wild dance, it was unpredictable, yet pleasing to see.
[O little mage of a little star.]
The demon spoke.
It was a terribly beautiful voice.
Feeling his own heart shake, Belrsasal slowly opened his mouth.
“…Undying Demon Queen…….”
[Yes. I am the Undying Demon Queen Lefren.]
The beautiful lips spoke.
She had three heads and thus three mouths, but only the beautiful lips spoke.
One was rotten and one was only bones, so it was only natural.
[You invited me, and I have answered your invitation.]
Belrsasal, filled with awe, bowed his head.
A being from outside the stars, a true demon, had answered his call; it was the greatest honor he could enjoy as a mage.
Even more so considering she was the last remaining demon in all the universes.
Lefren gestured gently toward Belrsasal.
[I was one who was dead. But I live again. This means one who did not ask has now become one who asks. Therefore, I ask you.]
Her words were close to a Zen riddle.
[What do you desire from the demon who does not die?]
“Look at my soul.”
Belrsasal bared his teeth and laughed.
In the rift, he looked even more like a goat.
It was proof that his soul had already drawn closer to a profane goat than to a human.
The goat-like mage answered the Demon Queen's riddle with a very joyful heart.
“It should have six holes. The passages we call stars.”
[That means you are an outstanding mage.]
“My wish is humble. I wish for one more hole, that is, one more star, to be added to my soul!”
[You should know the meaning of that.]
Lefren asked quietly.
[A human soul cannot contain seven stars. This is because the last star, not yet open, is the last of your humanity. You are saying that you were born human but do not wish to remain human, that you want a soul that is not human.]
“That is exactly it, Undying Demon Queen.”
[…For what do you seek power?]
As if there was no need to think, Belrsasal immediately raised his voice.
“For power itself.”
[…….]
The demon fell silent.
She trembled her long eyelashes, then slowly raised her hand.
Her slender fingers formed a shape as if politely refusing.
Lefren was a strange existence.
She was a demon, yet mercy exuded from her fingertips; it could not be but strange.
[I warn you.]
The three faces spoke simultaneously.
[I repeat the same warning I gave to your ancestors a thousand years ago.]
The woman whose size could not be gauged took form.
Until now, she had spoken from within the rift, but this was proof that she had now begun to cross the boundary and invade their world.
Lefren, having crossed the boundary, was incomparably immense.
More so than the mountain-range-like Hunchback, more so than the Black Light that had made the sky its face, she was so colossal that nothing could be found to compare, covering the entire world with a single eye.
[You are small. Even your world is smaller than mine.]
She looks down on the star.
This is because she is large enough to roll the star, which embraces such long ages, history, and many, many lives, in her hand.
It is not strange. Her origin lies in the beginning.
[But that is why you are beautiful.]
With lips that held an inhuman beauty, she said so.
[You must know. Your meaning does not lie in size. I admire your smallness, and therefore, your true beauty.]
“I am admiring your largeness.”
[That is because I was originally born large. See what is as it is. The path lies there. I advise you to choose the truth.]
“Ha.”
Belrsasal let out a hollow laugh.
The goat-headed mage suddenly felt a deep displeasure.
“There were those who spoke like you. Accept your fate, live as you are, life is then truly beautiful…….”
[Will you accept my counsel, little mage?]
“It sounds very nice just hearing the words, but when I hear such things, I always thought this.”
Belrsasal dares to assert.
He spits out the truth he had realized over five centuries of life, a fact that, at least in his life, could not be denied.
“This is the nonsense of those who do not know pain. How can one who knows dog-like agony and sorrow speak thus? How can one who has been butchered by a life they cannot escape accept life as it is-!”
[…Little mage…….]
“I heard the name Behemoth-!!!”
The mage raised his voice.
Lefren's eyebrow twitched.
She showed emotion for the first time at the name Behemoth.
“They say it was the name you were called when you once became a corpse. I heard you died and came back to life, did that make you talkative, Lefren?”
[…Do not discuss the stories between stars. It is unanswered. A story you do not know and cannot handle.]
“No! I, Belrsasal, know that the circle is broken! Just as the Hotus Eight Gods knew a thousand years ago!”
Six lights flickered behind the goat-headed mage's head. Even before the Demon Queen was larger than a star, he was not intimidated and bared his fangs.
“So answer me, Demon Queen! Was it not you who made the Hotus Eight Gods into gods?”
[That is correct, it was I.]
“Fulfill the contract from that time! I have already paid the price!”
[……You are more foolish than the Eight Gods.]
Lefren reached out and grasped the black mass.
It was the ‘Black Light of the Abyss’ that Belrsasal had offered as a sacrifice.
She kneaded the Ancient God as if it were clay, then placed it on her tongue.
The Black Light melted away, disappearing as the Demon Queen's snack.
Belrsasal had offered the Black Light as a sacrifice according to the proper procedure, so she could not refuse.
[Very well. I am the dead, yet the living. I shall grant your wish.]
The Demon Queen who swallowed the Black Light slowly opened her palm. Upon it, a jet-black lotus bloomed.
[Take what is yours.]
***
“…Oh…….”
The black lotus flew slowly.
As it had bloomed in the hand of the Demon Queen larger than a star, it was incomparably immense.
It was large enough to swallow the entire region of Schmeizen.
Belrsasal, as if possessed, moved his body and flew into the very center of the lotus.
When Belrsasal stood in the center of the flower, the bud closed.
The bud that swallowed the mage began to gradually shrink.
Smaller, and smaller still, the flower that seemed large enough to swallow a nation became smaller than a cloud, and finally, just barely large enough for a single person to enter…….
“…Ooooh…….”
A groan leaked from within the bud.
Trapped, Belrsasal felt his soul transform.
Six stars into seven stars, human into non-human.
“…So it was, so it was…….”
Time stopped.
Shion, Amethus, and Aida could also do nothing but watch.
Belrsasal's cackling shook the entire black flower bud.
“…So the Hotus Eight Gods stood in a place like this. If so, it's no wonder they looked down on it, yes, no wonder they saw the world like a toy box…….”
The flower bud opened.
From it, a mage was born.
“Now I can see it too.”
He was a goat-like mage, just as when he entered.
But he soon split into three.
Like the Demon Queen who had given him power, he gained three heads, and then even his body split into three.
However, their backs were attached as one, making the three a single mass.
“Like them, whom I so envied and admired, no, from a place even higher than those bastards… I can look down.”
Three figures, attached at the back.
Three mages in one body.
One was a woman with bared breasts.
One was a man with the face of a demon.
One was a headless old man.
The woman with bared breasts was covered in gold ornaments.
Adorned with precious and expensive things, she laughed, covering her mouth with a coquettish gesture.
Her curving eye-smile even held a demonic aura, attempting to bewitch the world.
The man with the face of a demon had veins and sinews bulging all over his body.
It was as if rage and hatred were leaping beneath his skin.
He looked as if he wanted to spew a roar and flames at any moment, but his tightly shut lips stopped it.
However, fury boiled in his glaring eyes.
The headless old man was holding his own head in his arms.
That head was a goat's.
An unholy sigil was carved on its brow, and its horns were covered in ancient, profane words.
The emaciated, decapitated body, as if finding something so amusing, trembled and seemed to laugh.
“I am Greed.”
“I am Anger.”
“I am Ignorance.”
The woman, the man, and the old man spoke in turn.
“Or, I am Ma-aya.”
“Or, I am Karkarsso.”
“Or, I am Belrsasal.”
The three evils spoke as one mass.
The human soul, unable to endure five hundred years of a wicked life, had ended up splitting into three.
The Undying Demon Queen's touch was added to that, and in the end, the last remaining humanity was extinguished.
The human soul that cast off its humanity spewed only malice in an incomparably twisted form.
“““Therefore, I am Pāpīyān.”””
Ma-aya, Karkarsso, and Belrsasal.
The Ars of the filthy soul, split into three yet still one mass,
‘Three-Faced Three-Poison Demon King Pāpīyān’