Click, click, click, click. The cogwheel wheelchair rolled smoothly across the wooden corridor. Small steps were surmounted by the cogwheels, and whenever the incline changed, the cogwheels shifted to automatically adjust the level. It had far too many functions to be called a simple wheelchair.
I muttered as I pushed the wheelchair someone had gifted me.
"These cogwheels..."
"It must be that person. Commander, Maximilien."
The regressor crumpled his face.
Military State's Six-Star General, Commander Maximilien.
And an executive of the secret society, Lord of All Creation. King of Cogwheels.
The regressor recalled an old memory and clicked his tongue.
"Lord of All Creation... Tch. It pisses me off that the place we're in happens to be the Tree of Vice."
"When have you ever been in a good mood?"
"What did you say?"
The regressor glared at me piercingly. He must have regained some energy after downing spiritual medicines by the bowlful. When you're sick, you need medicine.
"What can you do? A captured person is bound to feel bad. But Mr. Shay. Why are you going alone?"
"What? What are you talking about? You're the one pushing it. How can I, who can't use my arms, go alone?"
"I'm not pushing the wheelchair right now, though?"
"Huh? But I'm moving?"
Right. I'm not pushing, but you are moving.
I blankly watched the wheelchair getting further away, then hurriedly chased after it in surprise. The wheelchair was moving on its own without any power source!
"Mr. Shay! Slow down! If you go any faster, your life is going to leave you first!"
"I didn't do anything!"
The wheelchair carrying the regressor took curves arbitrarily and found its own way. I urgently chased behind the regressor. Chasing the rolling wheelchair around a corner and entering a door, a spacious room appeared.
[Kyaa! You're here!]
What was waiting for us there was a parrot with red feathers.
"Welcome! I've been waiting!"
And as expected, the Military State's Six-Star General, Maximilien, was there. Able to freely control cogwheels within his range, he brought the regressor's cogwheel wheelchair in front of him and looked it over from various angles.
"You're here too! I heard you lost an arm, but did you reattach it? What a waste! If you had left it to me, I could have given you a much sturdier, more systematic, and sustainable cogwheel prosthetic arm!"
"Com... mander...!"
"How about it. Won't you tear it off and reattach it even now? I'll personally teach you how to use it! Once you get used to it, it'll be much stronger than that arm!"
The Commander flipped his cloak and took out a cogwheel saw. The sharp saw blade rotated with a dreadful sound. Maximilien was similar to or worse than Navida in his arbitrary nature. With genuine goodwill, the Commander tried to carve off the regressor's arm.
Seeing the saw blade that looked ready to slice off the regressor's shoulder at any moment, I hastily thrust my hand in.
"Geez. I'm the one who fixed it, why are you trying to cut it without permission?"
Splatter. Blood splattered from the hand caught on the saw blade. For a moment, fresh blood splashed wildly, but then all the gushing blood returned into my hand, and at the same time, the saw blade stopped abruptly as if caught on something.
Stealing a Unique Demon Sword. I stole Maximilien's Unique Demon Sword and stopped the saw blade's rotation. Looking at the immobile saw blade, Maximilien smiled as if he had been expecting it.
"King of Humans. It's been a while. This is the first time since you and Director Historia tore my body apart, right?"
"If it weren't for Navida, that would have been our last meeting. What a pity."
"Thanks to that, I had to replace even more of my body with cogwheels. It was quite a struggle!"
"You wanted to replace the human body with cogwheels, didn't you? It went as you wished."
Maximilien asked back at my cold reply.
"Wished? I wanted to change the King of Humans."
"Because the King of Humans is a being that represents humans. If I change you, I can eventually change humans, and that will be achieved through my change. But changing me doesn't change humans. What you were doing was no different from manipulating a graph."
"Hahahaha! Is that how it is? Ah, I roughly understand!"
Whether he was magnanimous or just crazy. Maximilien, who laughed it off heartily, soon thrust a cogwheel at me and said.
"So what? I heard you've housed a Demon God now. By any chance, do you have any intention of testing the cogwheels while you're at it? I'm saying this purely out of curiosity!"
"No."
"You won't accept cogwheels? You're strict with me."
"And I can't. A Demon God is already housed in my body."
Having coldly brushed off Maximilien, I placed my hand on the regressor's wheelchair. Maximilien's Unique Demon Sword, Gear Maiden, controls all cogwheels within its range. In other words, it cannot control anything that isn't a cogwheel. I grabbed one cogwheel tightly and then let go. The lump of iron, once a cogwheel, turned into cards and fell with a rustle.
"Oho. What's that?"
Ignoring Maximilien, who was directing a curious gaze, I spoke to the parrot.
"I didn't hear anything about there being an auditor, Great Witch."
[I didn't either! Kyaa! It threw a fit saying it absolutely had to see you! Even though it's completely unhelpful!]
The parrot scattered its feathers and gave Maximilien a displeased look. Maximilien answered calmly.
"What does it matter? Don't be too hard on a fellow failure."
[Kyaa? Failure?]
"Aren't we both dropouts who failed to reach the Demon God? We should somehow put our heads together and combine our strengths to reach the Demon God. Why are you trying to monopolize the opportunity to converse with the King of Humans?"
[Kyaa kyaa! I'm different from you! My contribution to creating the Tree of Origin was also huge!]
"If that were truly the case, you would have become a Demon God. But in reality, wasn't it the Progenitor who became a Demon God?"
The moment Maximilien casually mentioned Tir, a bizarre scent of blood lingered in the space. The parrot creaked its neck and shot a fierce glare at Maximilien.
[In front of me... don't... bring up... Tirkanjaka...]
"Emotional responses aren't good. The Progenitor is a being who recently became a Demon God. Shouldn't we naturally analyze the case?"
Something shone between the beak that was spewing rage while puffing. It wasn't an illusion. Something crept up from deep within the parrot's esophagus. It was a pale, slender finger. The protruding index finger forcibly grabbed and pulled the beak. The parrot's beak opened wide as if it would tear.
The pale and slender finger that appeared through the gap pointed at Maximilien.
[Shut up!]
And at the end of where the finger pointed, Maximilien's chest caved in by a phalanx's length. Above the heart, blood swirled in a spiral.
Heart destruction. Black magic, and a high-level black magic that I probably couldn't even imagine. Black magic, which is originally closer to a curse, is hard to exert physical force with, but the darkest and most powerful black magic is power itself. The power of an absurd curse pierced Maximilien's heart.
A blow far too fatal to be considered a joke.
However, the fundamental principle of black magic is identity, and Maximilien's body had already transcended the ordinary.
Rattle. Dozens of minute cogwheels fell from Maximilien's chest. Maximilien frowned and said.
"What are you doing? Stop it. I just fixed it recently."
Maximilien, who had replaced a significant portion of his body with cogwheels, was fine even after receiving a fatal black magic. There was an impact, but that was it. The cogwheels still pulsed with a constant cycle.
A seemingly displeased voice flowed from the parrot.
[Did you even change your heart to a cogwheel now? Is there any part of your body that's still human?]
"I didn't replace the heart. I merely changed it so that cogwheels do the work the heart does."
[That's the same thing.]
"It's different. I merely focused more on the functional aspects of the human body. It might be unsatisfactory to you who believes in the blind watchmaker called the Tree of Origin. But in the end, isn't everything used here touched by the hands of a mechanic?"
The fallen cogwheels spun, stood up, and rolled back to Maximilien's feet. Maximilien merged the scattered parts back into his body.
"You, as the Great Witch, must also be well-versed in the Tree of Origin, but I too have seen and learned much while serving as the Lord of All Creation. As a result, I also know how sloppy and careless a blind watchmaker the Tree of Origin, the great principle that created humans, is. The Tree of Origin did not intentionally create humans. The human body has numerous limits, and is fragile and inefficient."
Maximilien, having said that much, looked at me and said.
"King of Humans. Am I wrong?"
"No? You're right. This body was not made by a god's intention."
Stating the obvious. Maximilien is right. This is something you can figure out if you think about it properly.
"Then why don't you accept cogwheels? I'm asking purely out of curiosity."
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Why, he asks. Stating the obvious. I pulled the regressor's wheelchair to one side of the table and answered.
"It's normal for the world not to go as one wishes, Mr. Maximilien. That's why you can't become a Demon God."
[Kyaa kyaa kyaa! What a sight! Kyaa!]
The parrot grabbed its belly and laughed at my remark. Doubt appeared on Maximilien's expression.
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. In the first place, the world doesn't cater to our convenience. The most efficient and rational method? That's a way of living by adapting to the laws of the world, not a way of making the laws. You're trying to judge by reversing the cause and effect."
A Demon God is the law of the world. It's problematic to think of this law as the legal code of a single country. Unlike a state made by humans, for humans, and of humans, the world simply existed.
"You're trying to make a rule that adapts to rules, which is the problem. If being good at adapting is something to be proud of, you can just keep living like that, but because you're trying to make it go in circles, problems arise."
I am not a Demon God either. But among those countless beasts, only humans reached the Demon God, and thanks to that, even I, who can handle the Demon God, conceptually know what a Demon God is.
It feels like I'm giving a lecture after a long time. I began my explanation with a parrot and a cogwheel figure in front of me.