Everyone must be struggling. They endure much hardship. Having chosen to shoulder a greater burden, they must be suffering proportionately.
What if I carry that burden for them? I can. Just as I did in the Demonic Alliance, if I read their hearts and harmonized the winds, perhaps it could work somehow.
But that would not be the end. The wind does not disappear. What truly disappears would be their wind.
The reason they suffer and agonize is because they try to take it all on.
I am right. I can share their burden. But I cannot carry it for them.
The same holds true for anyone else.
"I can still make them happy, even now. More than you can imagine."
The expressions of those who suffer pass before my eyes. Filled with worry and anxiety. But that is longing. Because they desperately desire something, they strive to achieve it.
[…Even you, who became the king of some future civilization, have not yet denied barbarism. We have no choice.]
"However, I cannot make you happy. Please understand. I belong to everyone."
So this is what it feels like to reject a confession. Not bad. Rather relieving, actually.
Though it feels a bit odd to ask after saying that.
"Now let me ask one thing. Are these all the demon gods that comprise the celestial god?"
The First Saintess answered immediately.
[Yes. This is all.]
"That can't be. Light, wind, waves, lightning. They are certainly powers closely related to the celestial god… but one of the most important powers is missing, isn't it?"
Precognition. The power to see the future. That power cannot be explained by these beings. At best, the God of Space I recently encountered could only interfere with time to a limited extent.
Information about the future. I need to know where it comes from. Because that would likely be the Demon God of 'Knowledge.'
[Pondering where one originates from is the beginning of philosophy. Even you, who are the product of philosophy, have come to pursue philosophy. You, who called yourself a beast….
"Could you please answer my question?"
Instead of answering, the First Saintess showed her power directly. The celestial god is a single illusion created by combining the power of demon gods, the imagery of countless people, and religious sorcery. Behind that massive veil, the First Saintess sits at the very center.
The Demon God of Light is powerful. But the power to see the future is impossible with light. Show me that power. Having come this far, you cannot hide anything from me.
The First Saintess, who had been tightly wrapped in Heaven, revealed her presence to me.
Light pierces through the darkness and descends upon Heaven. It was so blinding I had to forcefully shut my eyelids. Amidst the searing white light, only the First Saintess's murmur could be heard.
[Just as spilled water cannot be gathered again, and scattered fragrance cannot be collected once more, lives that have vanished fleetingly cannot be breathed back into being.]
And then, a bizarre phenomenon followed.
The flashing lightning flowed backward and scattered in all directions. The condensed clouds turned into vapor and drifted about. The heat and cold that had been flowing this way and that grasped each other and gathered.
A bizarre phenomenon unrelated to light. Rather… it was closer to turning back time!
What? Light has the power to reverse time? I've never heard of such a thing!
[When the universe was born, God flipped the hourglass. Those hot grains of sand only slowly trickle down, never to rise again. That is what time is. Something that scatters and disappears, never to return.]
But before my eyes, the phenomenon continued. Restoration, regeneration, stagnation, or reversal.
The power to reverse irreversible phenomena.
As if flipping the hourglass upside down, the world that had been turning came to an abrupt halt. The wind no longer blows, and the falling droplets of water stop in their tracks. A scene like a moment of nature cut out and taxidermied.
The seeds of lightning wait only to sprout from the clouds, the mingled winds find their respective colors once more, and the droplets of water stop in their fully coiled state before dispersing.
The First Saintess murmured within the sliced-out world.
[It is a sad thing to be unable to turn back. Because it can never be returned to how it was before.]
Or perhaps, could it be.
It's an absurd hypothesis, but if she is the First Saintess, the beginning of all this…!
"Demon gods… two…?"
The Demon God of Light.
And, the Demon God of Time.
[That is the power with which I alone created the celestial god.]
The First Saintess gathered the scattering particles of light back into her hands. The light, returned to a crystal of pure power, slumbered while harboring the potential to transform into anything. The First Saintess shaped a form with that light.
A divine authority truly approaching that of a god. Embodying two demon gods within her single body, she achieved the laws of the world as naturally as breathing.
"With power like this, she could have replaced the king of humanity countless times…! No, she already has done so sufficiently…!"
Irreversible sand. Those hot, flowing, disorderly fragments gradually scatter and grow chaotic. Like time, they only flow forward, never returning.
The First Saintess can stop that, or at least reverse it to a limited extent.
It wouldn't be the type that manipulates time at will. The law she grasped was 'irreversible phenomena.' The reversal of entropy that had only continued to increase since creation.
By observing it through the medium of 'light,' she peeks into the future.
Tch, so there was no Demon God of Knowledge? It has nothing to do with that?
But clearly, all beast kings gaining human form came after the First Saintess observed the future she was born into. Then why did the beast king change?
[However, it is different from what you asked. The power to see the future is mine, but that future is not mine.]
"What do you mean?"
[The answer to your question lies in the future. But you denied the future I promised. Now I have no answer for you, so you must find that answer yourself.]
The stopped time flows again. The First Saintess hid herself within the light, the clouds, and the lightning. In the Heaven that had descended once more, four—no, five demon gods glared at me simultaneously. An immense gravitational force emanated from the celestial god.
They intend to expel me from this Heaven!
"Wait! I still have one more question!"
I need to obtain a clue regarding Shay's existence too! If I'm driven out already…!
But the celestial god was resolute. It was the aggregate of the five demon gods, the mask of belief created by the First Saintess. It was trying to exclude me from Heaven with unwavering certainty.
[…It is not that we have forsaken you. It is you who have forsaken us.]
A voice like resentment. Along with it, the immense pressure I felt. The unified will of the five demon gods was used solely to exclude me.
It transcended wind or atmospheric pressure. The entire atmosphere and air masses moved as one, raising that massive storm solely to blow me away. The swirling winds ground even the clouds that had hardened as solid as bricks.
Waves divided into thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of branches headed toward my body. The vibrations that had no power at all merged into one upon reaching me, distorting into a rift that tore apart space itself. All the while, the hymns ringing clearly in my ears were maddening.
Over that, a prickling sensation was felt. The crackling static was the seed of lightning. It meant the divine thunder about to drop from the clouds was aimed at me. My hair stiffened in an instant, and crackled like straw in a campfire.
And the torrent of pure power, which had not yet even been shaped into a form, would crush me at a speed rivaling light. Impossible to evade or block.
[If you still consider civilization to be the most powerful form of barbarism, then we too have no choice but to choose power to protect civilization.]
Perhaps this is my karma. I consider civilization itself a kind of barbarism, and I know it is enforced by greater power. If that is my assertion, then the power of the five demon gods enforcing me with power is only natural.
If I had answered that justice exists in the world, and all things move according to right and wrong, this wouldn't have happened. This too is my choice.
However.
This is right.
[She will become the King of Divinity. You will become the King of Sin. That is the result of you, the King of Civilization, affirming barbarism.]
An eye for an eye. Now the celestial god stands on the same starting line as me.
I am now the same as that thing. The rules rewritten by the laws of the world and the faith of hundreds of millions, and the rules of me alone are equal. We stand on the same logic.
Whether I break.
Or the celestial god breaks.
This is not a challenge against a higher concept; it is merely a dispute between human and human.
The First Saintess's voice disappeared. It was now replaced by the resonant voice of the celestial god. The voice of the celestial god, as if in wrathful fury, resounded throughout the world.
[Unbelievers shall be burned with fire and lightning. Let them be reduced to ashes.]
"Humans are not trash to be burned!"
My scream was buried and lost amidst the voice that shook the world.
The celestial god's strike, meant to exclude me, tore the world apart.
Storm. Shockwaves. Lightning. And time, which harmonized all those powers along with light. Tossed about within that overwhelmingly massive and potent maelstrom of power, my body was flung in every direction. Stripped from Heaven at a speed surpassing the speed of sound, I was caught up in the shock of the world turning inside out.
The celestial god. It is the laws of the world that gathered all the massive concepts of the world. Before those rules, I am merely one frail human. I could neither resist nor endure it.
While being torn, sliced, burst, burned, frozen, scorched, snapped, and shattered. Planetary-scale phenomena constantly chased after me, trying to melt my very existence into the world.
In this world, a human is nothing more than an insect. No one cares how a worthless insect disappears. It is merely buried in the dirt and forgotten.
Even so, I was still alive.
Just as humanity survived even as the world endured tens of thousands of years, froze and thawed, and storms swept across the earth, I too am still alive.
Even as I was swept away by the storm, I pulled out cards. Though they fluttered as if they would fly away at any moment, I used every ounce of strength I had to draw five cards and stack them together.