Demon Realm War (4)
Fssss—
The power that had gathered densely in one place and taken shape began to slowly scatter.
Hella, intoxicated by the lingering sensation, silently looked down at her hand.
The hand that, until just moments ago, had grasped this entire world—the “Demon Realm”—and wielded it. ‘This is… truly incredible.’ Because she had handled the power herself, she understood.
This power had only been usable because she had become the representative of the Demon Realm, because the subordinates belonging to her, and the countless karmic ties entwined with them, had spread out in a chain like a net and covered the entire Demon Realm.
It was, in every sense, a kind of authority permitted only to a god. ‘…I suppose it’s possible in the first place because demons are magical life-forms similar to spirits.’ Perhaps the reason the Demon Realm’s overall level was higher than that of ordinary life-forms on the continent was for the sake of this system.
If one could use this power as one pleased, reigning like the god of the Demon Realm would not be particularly difficult. ‘Of course, that’s utterly impossible.’ A hollow chuckle slipped out.
Naturally, no matter how much of a Demon King one was, there was no way they could use such power however they liked.
To begin with, this was power entrusted to them in order to smoothly manage the Demon Realm in the Demon God’s stead. ‘As if anyone could swing something like that around without restriction.’ To put it simply, it was an authority burdened with all sorts of restrictions and limitations, but once activated, it allowed one to exercise power in the Demon Realm that was practically absolute.
Krushaire, and of course the being that had tried to descend through him, had been excluded simply because they directly violated those standards.
“Ugh, my whole body’s stiff. As expected, the strain on my body is no joke.”
Hella grumbled softly, pouting as she rolled her shoulders in circles.
Considering the rank possessed by her body, one could guess just how excessive the burden placed upon it had been.
Of course, looking at the scene spread out before her, it merely seemed like needless exaggeration.
The abandoned wasteland was riddled with enormous craters here and there, as though it had been bombarded. …In truth, it was also because an actual photon bombardment had rained down upon it, but that was not what mattered.
“Mm, did I overdo it a little after all?”
A single thin groove began at one point in the earth and stretched all the way beyond the horizon.
And seeing the scar that continued upward from that line, cutting across the sky, Hella awkwardly rubbed her chin. ‘But it was my first time, so I didn’t have the leeway to control my strength…’ Besides, since the descent had been nearly complete, it was questionable whether she could have afforded to regulate her power at all.
If she had made one wrong move, she might have missed the timing and made things far more troublesome.
“…Well, it’s prettier now, so I guess it doesn’t matter?”
After blankly admiring the cross-shaped scar etched into the violet sky for a while, Hella spoke brightly and shrugged.
It was not something she said for no reason.
With the newly added mark, the scar had widened even further, making the sparkling Milky Way within it much easier to see—and it was undeniably true that the sight had become even more magnificent than before.
So much so that even she, who had often looked up at the sky all this time, lost herself in its beauty for a moment. ‘Now then, I need to clean up.’ She glanced around briefly and smacked her lips.
In truth, there was nothing to clean up.
This had been an abandoned land with nothing in it to begin with, and Krushaire, the target of the hunt, had been cleanly vaporized after taking the final blow that split the sky. ‘Since he’d already offered up everything he had as a sacrifice, even if a corpse had been left behind, there wouldn’t have been anything to salvage.’ Her gaze turned toward those who had helped her.
A dark mage wrapped in a pitch-black robe, a vampire wearing an opera mask, a three-headed hound scratching the scruff of its neck with a hind leg, and a blond child coughing and then blowing his nose.
And even the man in the metal suit still hovering high above, looking down below.
“Still, you know…”
Watching as those who had finished their tasks began to disappear one by one, Hella slowly licked her lips.
Her focus shifted to the perspective of the one remaining person who had come all the way to the Demon Realm, yet had not taken part in this fight.
“If a dog you raised causes harm to others, it’s only natural for the owner to compensate them in its stead, isn’t it?”
You can leave if you must, but pay the damages before you go.
Where do you think you’re going, trying to wipe your mouth clean and pretend you know nothing?
Lifting her head once more, she looked at one star among the Milky Way that shone especially bright, raised the corner of her mouth, and turned on her heel.
The remaining balance would be collected by another friend on her behalf.
What she had to do now was return to her own seat as quickly as possible.
Because from now on, she would truly be busy beyond belief.
As the sole ruler of this Demon Realm.
As the 16th Demon King.
***
“…Found it.”
Heinrich, flapping his wings of radiance, murmured softly.
Fwoooosh—
Like a lantern shining in the darkness—
The sacred aura pouring from his entire body, preventing the energy of the Demon Realm from daring to come close, was more than enough to draw attention. However, he did not care about that in the slightest.
The place he was in now was not only somewhere no ordinary being could easily reach, but also a location difficult to properly observe with any mediocre ability.
“So this is where it was hidden.”
This was far above the sky, several times higher than the position from which Hesperon had carried out the aerial bombardment.
It was the end of this world, with the Milky Way right before his eyes. ‘Without 「Great Blessing: Wings of Radiance」, it would have been difficult to pierce through the magical storm and come all the way here.’ To begin with, the Demon Realm was a dimension no different from a branch derived from Outerica.
It was a world where things such as outer space and the Milky Way could not exist from the start. ‘…Still, seeing it up close makes it even more astounding. All of that is…’ The territory granted to this world called the Demon Realm extended only this far.
The Milky Way visible beyond the barrier that could not be crossed any further was the trace of the Main God scattered during the process of creation.
Because it could not be properly observed due to the torrent of magic power covering the sky, those things sparkling in the space of nothingness merely looked like stars when seen from the ground.
“I’ll have to acknowledge his trickiness, at least. If it hadn’t been me, we could have searched the surface forever and never found it.”
And at the boundary of that world, “it” was there.
The thing that had suddenly disappeared from the underground ritual site of Dark Nest.
The door leading to the temple of the imprisoned god. ‘Right, there’s no way he could give up so easily after staking a claim on the Demon Realm like this.’ Immediately after joining the effort to track Krushaire’s location,
Heinrich had not joined the hunt, instead continuing to focus on searching for something.
Unlike the tracking results of the other avatars, there had been a response that only he could sense.
In the first place, even without him joining in, the force assembled was more than excessive. ‘I wondered if it might have disappeared together with Krushaire.’ The Demon Realm was, strictly speaking, a territory under another god’s jurisdiction.
There was no way it could have been easy to install a door connected to one’s own temple in a place like this!
He must have had to pay some kind of price, and even now that his schemes in the Demon Realm had ended in failure, it must have been at a level difficult for him to give up.
That must be why he had hidden it away in a place no one could discover. ‘Now then.’ Heinrich approached the firmly shut door and gripped the handle tightly.
Bzzzzzt—
At that, the door began to fiercely resist…
But at this point, there was no way something of that level could block his path.
Baaang!
Opening the door roughly, almost as if tearing it off, he naturally flew inside.
Perhaps because the temple’s location had been moved and the internal space itself had been completely overturned, all the coordinates he had recorded when it had been underground had been reset.
If it moved somewhere else again, the coordinates set this time would likely all become useless as well.
However, now that he had entered it directly like this, it would never be able to escape again.
———!
Through the wavering flow inside, he felt the anger the temple was pouring out.
As if demanding to know where he thought he was going with those filthy feet.
“Yes, yes. I’ll finish this quickly, so stay still.”
Naturally, Heinrich paid it no mind.
He merely flew swiftly and calmly proceeded further inside. ‘Its reaction is intense. My whole body is tingling.’ A temple was a special place even to a god.
No matter how fallen he might be, grasping the beings that entered inside was nothing difficult.
Was that not why he himself had hesitated to summon Hans, his greatest fighting force, inside, so as not to expose information about him?
“…Found it. The center of this temple.”
But what if the intruder was the follower of the Main God, who clearly stood above him?
What if it was Heinrich, the champion of the Main God—the creator of this world, the judge who had sanctioned the god now imprisoned in the abyss, and also the parent of all gods? ‘In the first place, the foundation of the power I possess is based on the blessings bestowed upon me by the Main God.’ Moreover, the fellow had just been expelled from the Demon Realm while being together with Krushaire.
No matter how much this place was his territory, it would be difficult for him to make a move immediately after being driven out.
In other words, unlike before, this temple was now no different from an empty mountain without its owner present.
Crackle! Bzzzt!
Creeeeak—
The door that had refused to open no matter how hard he had tried when he examined it last time was forcibly opened.
And beyond a vast hall that was absolutely not suited to human size, but rather seemed fit for a giant,
He saw the altar of a chapel where a heavily damaged holy symbol was enshrined.
“So that’s it. The core maintaining this temple.”
———!
As if affirming his mutter, the internal flow surged violently.
With the momentum of something that, had it been able to speak, would already have been spewing every kind of curse at him.
But insults heard from an enemy were no different from praise.
Feeling even more pleased, he moved his wings and descended before the holy symbol, which was enormous enough to match the scale of the temple. ‘Is this his symbol?’ It was a large structure damaged so thoroughly that one could not even tell what shape it had originally been.
Not only was it scorched and melted as if burned by fire, but it was also twisted all over, to the point that it looked like the face of a person screaming with a distorted expression. ‘…As expected, a divine fragment is lodged here as well. Well, if he’d been plotting this for thousands of years, an investment of this level might be only natural. From the looks of it, this also seems to serve as a relay station to the Demon Realm.’ He should have examined it more closely when he first encountered the temple.
Since he had missed it once after leisurely deciding to investigate slowly, this time he intended to settle the matter no matter what.
Well, to be honest, the reason he had stopped investigating back then was because he had not found a way to open the chapel door. ‘I may not be able to directly absorb the divine fragment like the other avatars… but I’m also a clergyman. There’s a better method.’ Wasn’t there a set way for a clergyman to grow stronger?
Heinrich quietly looked up at the holy symbol for a moment, then placed both hands on the structure that seemed several times taller than he was.
Then, ignoring the ominous energy he felt against his palms, he gently closed his eyes.
Wooooong—
Then he raised his divine power and began offering a prayer to the Main God.
By offering as tribute this structure touched by his hands—the symbol of an irreverent one who dared defy the Main God’s will.
Whoosh!
Immediately afterward,
Divine power blazing like fierce flame enveloped Heinrich’s body and the holy symbol in its entirety.
———!
The temple began to scream.
It was on an entirely different level from the unstable sight it had shown when the barrier of the Demonic Dragon Duke had been destroyed before.
The gigantic temple warped and twisted in every direction as though the world itself were ending, then gradually began to disappear.
Sssss—!
“Kh!”
At the same time, burning smoke rose from both of Heinrich’s hands, which had been in contact with the holy symbol and bore stigmata.
The sacred light pouring from his fully spread wings had also already far surpassed the limits of his usual output.
The passage connected to the Main God expanded to its fullest, and an enormous amount of divine power surged in.
Then, at some point,
All the noise that had been echoing around him abruptly ceased.
No, it was not only sound that had vanished.
A space where nothing existed—
Where he could not even perceive whether it was reality or illusion.
Amid his confusion, his mind began to soar upward.
And there,
He came face to face with it.
The great and holy existence of which he had previously seen only the tiniest fragment.
‘This might be… a little… troublesome…!’
The immense will that composed and maintained this world.
He had not even properly faced it, merely dimly perceived it, and yet its presence was so overwhelming that the load placed upon 「Mind Hub」 and 「Soul Firewall」 instantly soared to their limits.
At last, the gaze of that existence—the Main God—turned toward Heinrich…
“Huuup!”
His eyes flew open at the sensation of endlessly falling.
Whoooooong— …It was not his imagination.
The fierce sound of wind brushing past his ears, the ice-cold air cooling the cold sweat covering his entire body, and even the powerful wind pressure pushing against his face.
He really was falling downward.
From the lofty sky that reached the end of the world, toward the distant ground far below.
The Milky Way shining beyond the cross-shaped scar etched into the violet sky grew farther and farther away.
“Ugh, this time it’s a bit severe…”
Even when he had received audiences with the Main God several times before, it had never been to this extent.
His body was in freefall in real time, yet not even enough strength to twitch a finger remained in his utterly limp flesh. ‘So this is what a creator god is… He’s on a completely different level from the other gods I’ve experienced so far.’ Heinrich let out a deep sigh.
To think he would end up skydiving in a place like this, in a manner like this.
And while paralyzed from head to toe, without even a single parachute!
“Can’t be helped…”
But to some extent, he could understand it.
After all…
《The individual’s racial value has been changed to “Angel.” You have acquired the special skill 「God’s Messenger」.》
《You have gained enlightenment by facing a supreme existence. You have acquired the special skill 「Great Mind」.》
His very race itself had changed, so it would have been stranger if he had been fine.
Though he had not expected to truly become an angel.
And not long afterward,
The newly appointed angel who had abruptly been falling from the sky of the Demon Realm vanished cleanly.
As though he had never existed in this world from the very beginning.