Chapter 39

Chapter 3 History and Herstory The prayer room was in the very center of the Archbasilica, adorned with the first statue of the Goddess, which had been laboriously carved by the hands of the first pope. It was where the four cardinals—including the Holy Mother Cardinal, Vermeita—gathered to hold their usual meeting. “It seems the heroes that we’ve dispatched to the east are up against a difficult fight.” “Indeed. It appears the elves have caused quite the inconvenience.” “What a pain. If this continues, we’ll never be able to fulfill Pope Eument’s mission.” “That said, it wouldn’t be the wisest move to stir up trouble with the elves, seeing that they’re strong magic users.” The four discussed the locations of the heroes and how they would handle the various countries as if they were engaging in small talk. That was until the Materialistic Cardinal, Snobe, suddenly interrupted the conversation and made his move. “By the way, are things going well with Miss Sanctina?” The question was innocent enough on the surface. But it had dark intentions, slimily coiling around Cronklum like a snake tightening its grip on its prey. The Elderly Cardinal, however, smiled and nodded, betraying no emotion. “Yes, our plans have been set back somewhat by the people in Tigris Kingdom—all obstinate—but they’re proceeding smoothly.” Things were not “proceeding smoothly” at all. Cronklum was wracked with anxiety since he’d been unable to contact Sanctina for quite some time, but he wouldn’t have made it this far if he was the sort of person to let that show. “I see. Very good.” The Materialistic Cardinal backed down from the inquiry surprisingly quickly. However, for just a brief moment, Vermeita saw an amused smile flit across his face, causing her to wonder: Hmm, does he know something? The Materialistic Cardinal lacked popularity in the Holy City, but of all the cardinals, he had the greatest influence in other countries, giving him a wide net to bring in information. There was a chance he knew something Cronklum didn’t. In order to properly gauge the situation, Vermeita proposed, “If there’s been a setback, should we send some more people to support her? I’m sure you’ll all have your opinions about this idea, but we’ll have nothing to show if the Goddess loses her prestige.” “Indeed. To defeat the evil demons, we must forget our quarrels and work together,” said Effectus, but Cronklum immediately shook his head. “No, there’s no need for that. It is for the girl’s own good that she resolve these issues by her own hand.” “…Heh.” The Materialistic Cardinal accidentally let out a tiny snort of laughter. So he does know something. Maybe it’s not just a delay. Could Miss Sanctina…have failed? Even Vermeita would never be able to imagine in a million years that their Saint had fallen for the Demon King’s daughter and willingly betrayed the church. It seems I should check up on the situation in Tigris. She’d held back from doing anything out of line to avoid ending up on Cronklum’s bad side—but if this was true, things were about to change big time. I will not let the next pope be someone like Cronklum, who’d gleefully brainwash children to keep up appearances. Much less someone who treats women as trophies, like Snobe. That’s why Vermeita was aiming to become the next pope even though she was at a disadvantage for being the youngest candidate of the bunch. I must make the Holy City an ideal place, one of great value— As she burned with newfound resolve, time passed, and the meeting came to a close. Vermeita left the prayer room and met with her attending priestess who was waiting outside the door. “Your schedule for the rest of the day is open. What would you like to do?” The priestess smiled. “Let’s stop at home for a moment,” Vermeita proposed as they walked out the main entrance of the Archbasilica. The Elderly Cardinal was in charge of the church’s affairs in the stead of the ill pope; the Materialistic Cardinal controlled the purse strings; the Agreeable Cardinal spearheaded legal matters; but Vermeita was only in charge of ceremonies and rituals. That was because as a woman of considerable beauty, she could act as the proxy for the Goddess in ceremonies, even though she was well into her forties. This meant she was very busy before and during the festival to celebrate the Goddess’s descent to Obum. But her schedule was relatively free for the rest of the year. “I hope everyone’s doing well,” she thought aloud as she stepped into the carriage on standby next to the Archbasilica. They set off toward the south. After they passed through the cityscape into the open fields, they came into sight of two simple yet large buildings on an estate: the residence of Vermeita and the reason for her nickname, the Holy Mother Cardinal. Just as soon as the carriage entered the grounds of the red-roofed building on the left, the door burst open, and a gaggle of girls pushed through, tumbling out. “Mother, welcome home!” cried the children, grinning gleefully from ear to ear. “Thank you. Were you all good today?” With a smile, Vermeita gently hugged each one. All the children in the estate were orphans; the Holy Mother had taken them in. Of course, with spells to resurrect the dead, it was rare for a child to become orphaned because their parents passed away. This was the opposite: Because there were these spells, it became a real problem when parents had too many children without thinking the consequences through. In many cases, they’d find themselves with too many mouths to feed, compelling them to abandon or even sell their own children to lessen the burden. There were also cases of parents brutally abusing their children with the knowledge that all injuries could be healed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t uncommon to see children running away from home to live on the streets. “Oh yes. Mother, the most wonderful thing happened today!” “What’s that?” “A nice man gave us cookies!” one of the girls exclaimed, opening up her pretty little handkerchief to show Vermeita. “They’re very sweet and yummy!” “Mother, you try one!” “Why, thank you.” Vermeita gave in, succumbing to their expectant gazes, and took a bite of the cookie. “Oh, they really are nice.” “Right? I’ve never had such sweet cookies before.” “And they’re not just brown! There’s red and blue and green! They’re so pretty!” “Yes, that’s nice,” she acknowledged with a gentle smile. She ushered them back into the building before calling the eldest girl, who’d been in charge of minding the house in her absence. “Who was this man who gave them the cookies?” “A merchant. I’ve never seen him before. He said he came to give you a donation…” With some hesitation, the girl very apprehensively held out a heavy pouch. Vermeita opened it to see that it was brimming with gold coins. “That’s an astonishing sum.” “Y-yes, I was so surprised. I’ve never seen a donation this big before…” Over the years, there’d been more than a few donors acting out of pure goodwill and others to curry favor with the cardinal. Telling one to not be suspicious of an unknown merchant and his outrageously large donation? Impossible. Could it be someone working for Snobe? Off the top of her head, she could only think of the Materialistic Cardinal. He’d be the only one with connections to someone this extravagant and generous with their money. It could very well be an apology: About a year ago, he’d visited the orphanage and let slip that he wanted the prettiest girl to be one of his mistresses. She’d sent him on his way with a good beating from her cane. “Has the man left already?” “No, he went to the blue building.” The girl pointed to the blue-roofed mansion a little way away. Vermeita suddenly hiked up her skirts, dashing off toward it. “Mother?!” Her attendant and the girls let out surprised yelps, but she ignored them, moving forward, leaping over the hedge between the two buildings in one fluid motion. She arrived in the garden of the blue building— “Ready, set, shoot!” The middle-aged merchant and the maid attending him, along with the exhilarated boys of the orphanage, were battling with some flat, metal spinning tops. “Blow ’em away, Behemoth!” whooped one boy. “Heh-heh-heh, you might have thought a bigger, heavier top would be stronger, but you’ve made a serious mistake!” The merchant sinisterly snickered. “What?!” Just as he’d predicted, the merchant’s smaller top struck the larger one in rapid fire succession, each time making the larger top lose its grounding. “Of course, the heavier one has more power. But the Behemoth is too heavy for its own good! Its axis is to the side, and it’s easier to knock its rotation off.” “It’s true! It’s getting all wobbly!” wailed another boy. “And larger tops have another weak point: Their bases are wide open. Take ’em down, Cerberus!” “Aaah?!” As if to obey the merchant’s battle cry, the small top sent the Behemoth flying, causing the boy to collapse to the ground in defeat. The other children watching all raised their hands, clamoring to be the next to play. “I’ll take down Giesh’s enemy. And exact my revenge! My turn!” “Carlo, you went already. I’m next.” “Heh-heh, I bet I can take all of you down at once.” “Pick on someone your own size.” The maid sighed as she watched the merchant goad the boys with an evil smile. At this completely unexpected sight, Vermeita had been frozen at a standstill. “…What are you doing?” she finally found it in herself to ask. “Ah, Mother, you’re back!” called out one of the boys, finally noticing Vermeita. One after another, the boys pulled themselves from the game and ran over to greet her. “Welcome home. We’re playing BeySpinners!” explained one of them. “BeySpinners?” asked Vermeita. “Mr. Manju showed us how! It’s super-fun!” As if beckoned by their cheers, the merchant named Manju stepped to the front of the crowd. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Cardinal Vermeita.” “And you. Thank you for playing with the children.” Their exchange was outwardly pleasant enough, but she’d noticed how the merchant’s body was cocooned with magic. An Illusion spell, huh. And I’m gathering that woman over there cast it. Though the merchant seemed to possess some capacity for magic, it wasn’t any more than the average priest. His maid, on the other hand, was radiating wave after wave of magical power. She couldn’t hide it even if she’d tried. At the very least, she’s as powerful as a bishop, possibly even more powerful than I am… That unnerved Vermeita somewhat. But she didn’t show it. Instead, she continued to give him a gentle smile, befitting the name of the Holy Mother Cardinal. “I must say I feel uncomfortable receiving such kindness from someone I’ve just met.” “Ah yes. You’re right. I guess I was too eager and overstepped my bounds. Please forgive me.” The merchant bowed. When he noticed the group of boys looking at him strangely, he grinned devilishly. “Grown-up business is boring as hell. Run along and keep playing BeySpinners with that lady over there. I’ll give the last man standing the prize of battling against my Cerberus.” “Oh man, I’m definitely not losing this time!” The boys chattered energetically as they scurried off to play with the maid. The merchant watched them go with a smile then suddenly looked at Vermeita with a dead-serious expression. “To put it bluntly, I doubted you. I wondered if you were gathering orphans to do the same thing as Cronklum.” He explained that he came in her absence to check, but that his fears were groundless. “They’re all good kids. They obviously love you very much. You wouldn’t be able to raise them like that if you didn’t love them back.” “Thank you.” “I came here prepared to take them in if their condition was bad enough—and with the money to do so—but thankfully that wasn’t necessary.” “Oh, you flatter me.” On first glance, she seemed humble, almost bashful, but she was heightening her defenses on the inside. I don’t think he’s lying, but I don’t think he’s telling the truth, either. On top of that, he knows about how Cardinal Cronklum raised the Saint… He didn’t just have money backing him: He had information. Just like the Materialistic Cardinal. As she continued to think, the merchant looked up at the clear and balmy sky before speaking as casually as possible. “I’m not going to lord the fact that I made a donation, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. Would that be all right?” “Go ahead.” “What do you get out of gathering and raising these children?” In all truth, Vermeita was taken aback by his bluntness, but she flashed him a gentle smile almost immediately. “Would you not accept the answer that their smiles bring me great joy?” “Well, I know there are some angelic childr—excuse me, kind people in this world. But I’m a crooked and dishonorable person myself, and I tend to doubt other people’s good intentions.” His wicked smile showed her a sliver of the merchant’s true form, disguised under the mask of a philanthropist. Refreshingly straightforward. But his bluff could use work. Is he actually a young man? Even as she tried to sniff out her opponent’s actual identity, she grinned genially and repeated herself. “It would be dishonest to say that my reputation isn’t better off because of it, but I’m not lying about my desire to see the children smile.” Vermeita glanced at the boys battling their tops. “Let me go again! One more time!” “Fine. But if you lose, you have to do whatever I say, all right?” “D-deal! And if you lose, you have to be my servant!” “Hmph, you’re all talk! Hold up, is your leg shaking?” Vermeita watched the boys as the started arguing, getting worked up over the game, and remarked, “…Precious.” “Hmm?” “Don’t you think the sight of children having fun is more precious than money?” Vermeita broke into her signature smile from ear to ear—as honest as the Holy Mother herself. The merchant was struck silent for a moment, but then the corners of his mouth twitched up. “You’re right. I’m sorry I doubted you.” “No, I’m glad you understand now.” “I have one final question, if it’s not too much trouble. Why are the boys and the girls in the orphanage separated?” The orphanage was divided into the building with the red roof for girls and the building with the blue roof for boys, complete with a tall hedge to separate the two. “But no one was upset at me for entering the girls’ dormitory, and it doesn’t seem that the boys and girls are forbidden from visiting each other, so I was wondering why they were separated at all.” Vermeita recited an answer that she’d given countless times before: “Many of the orphans were abandoned by parents who had too many children to take care of. That’s why we give them lessons on sexual education, so they don’t repeat their parents’ mistakes.” She didn’t need to explicitly say that’s why their dormitories were separated. It was a sound argument. However… “I see. It’s one of those ‘separate the children once they’re old enough to realize their differences’ type of thing. I wish the people who confuse gender difference and discrimination would get an earful of this.” “What?” “Just talkin’ to mysel—” “AAAAaaaaaahh—!” Just as he scrambled to piece together some explanation, a scream pierced the air, drowning out his half-assed excuse. As the merchant tried to grasp the situation, the maid barreled over, clinging to him with a pale face. “H-hey! Celes, what’s wrong?” “No! No! Keep it away!” She squirmed like an infant, almost smothering him in her large chest. Vermeita was just as perplexed and looked over in the direction that the maid had come running from. She found a group of boys standing stock-still, their faces bewildered. “Were you being mean to this nice lady?” Vermeita asked. “N-no, we weren’t doing anything!” “Will was just showing something off when she suddenly screamed and…” The group of children nudged one boy to the front—mild-mannered Will. He took a step forward. In his hands, he held a box made from slender sticks, holding something inside. Because Vermeita knew absolutely everything about the children, she immediately realized what it was. “Ah, it’s Will’s bug—” “No! No! Don’t let it near me!” “Calm down, Celes. It’s not what you think it is. It’s just a female rhinoceros beetle!” The merchant looked in the box—the insect cage—and tried to console her, but she was on the verge of tears with no intention of letting him go. “I-it doesn’t matter if it’s a rhino something-or-other beetle! They’re all the same… Please don’t let it near me!” “I knew you hated those nasty roaches, but I didn’t realize all other bugs were no-go, too.” He gazed at her with weary yet gentle eyes as he held on to her. He bowed his head to Vermeita and the boys. “I apologize for this fuss. We shall take our leave for today.” “No need to apologize. My children were the ones who caused it. I’m sorry.” “Um, I’m sorry, Miss…,” stuttered Will. Vermeita, Will, and all the boys hung their heads in apology. The merchant flashed his pearly teeth at the children. “No worries! We’ll play some soccer next time.” “I—I was just a little surprised. You need not worry about it. I hope we can play again,” consoled the maid, trying her best to smile. The two then headed on their way. “Next time,” huh…? Vermeita thought as she and the children saw them off. She still couldn’t guess their motives, but she knew she’d be seeing them again and would need to prepare for when that time came. Vermeita sent a telepathic message to her priestess-in-waiting. “I am truly very sorry for being so disgraceful.” The moment they’d returned to the inn and Celes had dissolved the Illusion spell, she bowed so deep, her head was about to hit her knees. But the merchant, aka Shinichi, didn’t blame her or anything. He just sat on the bed with a wry smile. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s got something they don’t like.” “…I’m sorry, are you running a fever? Wouldn’t you normally demand for me to ‘strip down and grovel on the ground’?” “Yep, that’s my Celes.” Shinichi felt reassured to hear Celes had returned to her foul-mouthed ways. “Why do you hate bugs anyway? I’m surprised I don’t see you make a scene on a regular basis. There’s all sorts of creepy-crawlies around.” “That would be because I keep an Insecticide spell in place. It exterminates all bugs near me by shaving down their life span.” “A broad-spectrum Ra—d?! Just use an insect-repellant spray instead! Is that even healthy to inhale?!” “I dispel it when I’m with others. That’s why I was particularly surprised to see a bug while my defenses were down…” “I see. Wait, how about now?” “I’m currently releasing it at 200 percent.” “What about my health?!” It was a pretty big waste of magical power, but the fact that Celes was constantly using it could be one of the reasons she’d become a top magic user, second only to the Demon King. “Well? Why do you hate them to the point you’d use specialized magic?” “That’s…” Celes’s face suddenly clouded over, and she turned away. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna.” Shinichi tried to end the conversation, sensing that this memory was too difficult to recount. But Celes shook her head and looked up at him. “No, this is a good opportunity to talk it out. But I would like to hear something from you in return.” “Like about the day I decided to check the locations of all the fire extinguishers at school, just out of the blue? And how I thought I could use them as weapons in case the school was taken over by terrorists?” Shinichi joked, teasing her with an example that was incomprehensible to someone in this world. But Celes didn’t laugh—much less make fun of him. Her expression betrayed no emotion, as if she had forcibly squashed it down. “Who did you lose?” she whispered. At times, Shinichi would show anger or envy toward the heroes’ ability to resurrect from the dead. She’d picked up that it was emotional scar tissue, left behind after he’d lost someone precious to him. “…I see. That’s how deep this conversation is going,” Shinichi murmured after a moment of silence, letting out a self-deprecating sigh. “It’s not something you want to talk about lightly.” “Well, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to?” Celes echoed his earlier phrase, making him smile wryly as he shook his head. “No, I’ll tell you. I want you to know… But it’s not a happy story. I wouldn’t want Arian or Rino to hear it, but I think you’ll be okay.” “Excuse me? What exactly do you think I am?” “A dark-skinned, big-boobed, sharp-tongued, sexy-ass maid.” “Understood. Increasing Insecticide strength to 500 percent.” “Hey, I’m actually getting chills here!” After they finished their usual comedic banter, her face dissolved into a warm smile for a moment before she released the spell and sat on the bed next to Shinichi. “I can go first,” she offered. Celes began to tell the tale, as wearisome as an attempt to fish out clothes from the back of a dresser. “I have never known my parents. My earliest memory is being forced to work as a slave for the Gray Demon King, a were-elephant.” She’d been born in a country controlled by violence—one that was the manifestation of the demon world as imagined by humankind. “Anyone who attempted to go against the Gray Demon King or run away was slaughtered mercilessly—even infants. There were only two ways that the weak could survive: if they curried the favor of someone greater or if they worked obediently as slaves.” “…Yeah, I guess violent brutes really exist,” murmured Shinichi. He’d spent so long with the demons, especially with Rino as their leader, that he’d forgotten they lived in a dog-eat-dog society. The strong triumphed, and the weak were killed. It was actually normal for demons to use their power to control people, like this Gray Demon King. Shinichi’s master—the Blue Demon King—might be a big softy with mad respect for the strong, but beneath that shell, he was cruel and vicious. He’d have no problems completely obliterating the human race on the ground of their weakness. His conscience was cleaner thanks to an angel by the name of Rino, but he wasn’t all that different from the Gray Demon King. “While I was a slave there, I worked to gather beossla with the other children.” “Beossla?” “An edible, man-eating plant. They were allegedly the Gray Demon King’s favorite,” Celes explained. “But I’ll bet it’s disgusting. Like all plants from the demon world.” The beossla had a number of tentacles protruding from its round green body—the monster version of the carnivorous sundew plants on Earth. If Shinichi dared to nibble on it, he’d find it inedible, sputtering something along the lines of I’d rather nosh on some weeds on the road. But of course, demonkind had unsophisticated palates. The Gray Demon King was no exception, delightedly scarfing down beossla. Its biggest problem wasn’t even its flavor: It was the fact that it was a man-eating plant that could move of its own accord. “At the time, I was so weak, I could only cast about four magic arrows a day.” “Stronger than the average human adult. Terrifying.” Shinichi shuddered. “We were constantly under the supervision of soldiers, which made it impossible to run away. We spent every day desperately hunting for beossla. There were a lot of slaves in the mix who were unlucky enough to be swallowed whole, but the Gray Demon King apparently laughed it off and thought it tasted ‘best when fattened up with little brats.’” “……” “The strongest wins and takes all; the weakest loses and forfeits all. Those are the rules of the demon world, regardless of if you’re a demon, a monster, or a man-eating plant.” She was trying to say that she didn’t resent them, but she couldn’t help but avert her gaze, mourning the death of the other children. “Based on these circumstances, I’m guessing you can imagine that my room was vile as well.” It was a small, damp, stone cell, holding upward of ten children packed in together. They were never allowed to bathe, much less have a proper bathroom. Instead of a toilet, they’d used a bucket, and the gag-worthy smell of urine and feces reeked across the room. Their scraggly blankets were full of holes and ticks. Those filthy conditions were bound to attract nasty pests. “They would scurry across the room,” Celes continued, referring to the bugs. “At the time, I just didn’t have enough energy left to care. But there was this dark-elf boy sleeping next to me, and one day he started whining to me that his ear was in pain…” “Nope! I know where this is going! Spare me the details!” “I peered in his ear and saw that they had l-l-laid eggs at some point and…they ha-hatched and tiny, black ones scuttered out…!” “AAaaaaaaagh—!” Full-body chills shivered up and down his spine, and Shinichi shrieked in spite of himself. Celes’s tanned skin paled as she recalled that gruesome spectacle. “Ever since, I can’t help by be petrified at the sight of them and any other type of bug…” “Yup. Anyone would be traumatized by that incident.” Celes covered her long ears with shaking hands, which Shinichi found particularly adorable, but he couldn’t really bring himself to smile in this situation. “After all that, I was so sickened by them that I could no longer bear to be in that tiny stone cell. I tried to make a run for it.” But she was immediately apprehended by an ogre on lookout who beat her until she couldn’t stand any longer. As she lay on the ground and blood dripped out of her nose, the ogre swung a massive club in an attempt to cut her young life short. But a gale blasted between them at the last moment. “Someone snatched the club with one hand and punctured the ogre’s chest with their fingertip.” “Sounds like the kind of guy who could make the sky fall with the power of his love.” This figure was the Savior of the Century’s End—or at the very least, a savior in the eyes of Celes and the other children. “This person cast a Healing spell on me before sprinting off to the Gray Demon King’s castle without another word.” On the way, this so-called savior clobbered the gang of small fry desperately trying to prevent their advances, as if flicking off some dust, and in no time, reached the tyrant. “With a single spell, the feared and hated Gray Demon King was reduced to ash.” “Wow, totally rigged! A cheating bastard. The only beast who can bend the rules is the Demon King… Oh?” “Do you get it now?” She smiled gently at him, as something in Shinichi’s mind finally clicked. “It was His Highness’s future wife, my magic teacher and trainer: The Blue Princess of War, Regina Petrara Verlum.” She was the alluring azure woman who’d squashed the Gray Demon King out of existence and gazed down at the trembling demons with boredom. This image of her was burned into Celes’s young mind. It was as if the blue sun of the demon world itself descended down in a divine and dazzling display. “After Lady Regina defeated the Gray Demon King, she seemed to lose interest, determined to leave the area.” She didn’t intend to partake in some generous, feel-good act of freeing the slaves from their pitiful conditions. She’d come to this land to fight the brute upon hearing rumors of his strength. She only had eyes for combat. That was why she was called the Blue Princess of War. “Even if this Gray Demon King was a benevolent ruler, she wouldn’t have hesitated to strike him down and slaughter him.” “Well, she sounds just about rabid.” “To top it off, she’d resurrect the good if their corpse was in adequate condition.” “You’re telling me she’d eliminate the bad and resurrect the good? I guess that’s fine—” “According to her, ‘I do it ’cause we can brawl over and over if I bring them back to life, eh?’” “Yep, positively insane!” But Regina was only stoic with the strong; she was gentle with the weak. After all, she’d healed Celes in her time of need. “I chased after Lady Regina and begged her to make me her apprentice.” And surprise, surprise, the Blue Princess of War allowed her to tag along. “Oh, Lady Regina is a master of martial and magical arts. She tried her very best to polish her battle techniques. But on the flip side, she had absolutely no interest in cooking or cleaning. She was just searching for someone to help with day-to-day chores when I approached her.” Regina was the type to train to the brink of exhaustion—physically and magically—if left to her own devices. If it reached her ears that there was a strong warrior in the east, she’d dash off and beat him into submission. If she heard there was a powerful magic user in the west, she’d whiz over there and blow her away. As Celes frantically followed her teacher every which way, she’d gone through a magical growth spurt. “It could be because Lady Regina was getting sick of her impossible quest to find a suitable opponent. I think she was hoping to train me until I surpassed or defeated her.” “Like some sort of final boss. Geez…” But before Celes reached that level, the Blue Princess of War learned of another with the “Blue” title. She was on the verge of a fateful encounter—with the Blue Demon King, Ludabite. “I still remember how Lady Regina was grinning ear to ear as His Highness awaited her arrival with a smile. That marked the beginning of the now-famous incident, ‘The Last Day of the Timoar Mountains.’” “Oh, when those mountains were turned into empty fields…” This “Last Day” part of the name wasn’t a figure of speech. On that day, the Timoar Mountains were wiped away from the surface of the demon world, caught up in the scuffle between the two behemoths. For the first time, the Demon King and Princess of War had found an opponent capable of fighting on equal ground and withstanding their full strength. “I was watching from above, using a Fly spell, but I came close to dying a few times from the sheer force of their combat. It could have knocked me straight down.” From dawn to dusk, the decisive battle had stretched over the course of more than half a day. The curtain had finally closed after the pair clashed against each other, squeezing out the last of their strength to cast their most powerful spell. A flash had burst through the sky, momentarily blotting out the inky darkness of twilight. The Timoar Mountains were swept away, leaving nothing behind other than a cloud of dust. After a moment, the debris settled to reveal the Princess of War laying in the bottom of a crater and the Demon King coated in blood, kneeling but somehow still conscious. “I rushed to Lady Regina’s side and healed her, then used my remaining magic to heal His Highness.” “Did you consider finishing him off right there in his weakened state?” “Excuse you! If I had, it would have sullied the honor of not only the victor but also that of Lady Regina.” “Right, yup. Celes, you’re definitely a demon.” The victor was strong—therefore, righteous. That was why she didn’t try to skew the results by meddling in their affairs. Shinichi couldn’t argue with that: He actually liked the simplicity of their muscle-headed ideals. “Then the two fell in love, got married, and had Rino,” he concluded. “Yes. For a time, Lady Regina stayed in the castle. Was well-behaved. She helped me train, and I cared for Lady Rino.” Celes broke into a soft smile, imagining baby Rino in her nappy. Celes had never known her parents, but Regina had acted as her mentor and mother figure. And Rino was both like a little sister and her master at the same time. “Compared with them, you really roughhouse your ‘father’…” “How rude. I respect and love His Highness, just as much as the other two. But I wish he would grow up a little and stop his helicopter parenting.” “I can’t agree more.” Shinichi nodded. Celes let out a big huff as she remembered one particular incident. “When Lady Rino was three years old, she was bit by a tiny mosquito on her arm. His Highness was so enraged that he spent two months clearing the surrounding sixty capra (about 120 miles) of all mosquitos.” “If he exterminated an area the size of Hokkaido, I’m sure that completely obliterated the ecosystem…” “Obviously, I helped him with this mission.” “You’re just as bad!” Well, in Celes’s case, she had the added reason of hating bugs. “Time passed, and two years ago, Lady Regina abruptly declared that she’s ‘gotta train again, gotta test out the human world.’” “And then she came back from the human world with bread, which brought us here.” “Yes. After that, she left again. This time to search the demon world for the Black Dragon.” She didn’t seem worried in the slightest for her master’s life. But she cast her gaze down, pining to reunite with this precious person. Shinichi thought quietly as he looked at her profile. Her earliest memories. Hmm. Let’s say that’s about five years old. Then she was a slave for about a year. Then she traveled with her teacher for, like, a year. Her current masters got married, and then Regina got pregnant and gave birth—that’s another year. And Rino’s fourteen years old now. In total, that makes her at least twenty— “What are you calculating?” Crunch. “E-erm, can you mind read with magic?” “I’m not using magic. It’s what they call a woman’s intuition.” “Even scarier!” Shinichi shook with fear as Celes’s hand clenched his face. His skull started to make some seriously ominous creaking noises. Geez! He couldn’t hide anything from that maid. “It’s your turn. Spit it out.” “I’m about to spit out my brain juice!” he protested, wiggling out of her death grip. Shinichi took a ragged breath as he forced a wry smile. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to continue with your slapstick routine. I’m not going to be too upset at recounting my tale.” “…I’m not particularly worried about you.” Shinichi thought about teasing Celes as she turned her face away, but he’d risk his skull getting crunched again. He obediently started his story. “Mine isn’t as bad as yours, Celes. Eight years ago, a girl in my neighborhood drowned in the ocean and died.” There were approximately a thousand fatal accidents at sea every year in Japan. That was one in every hundred thousand people. It just so happened to be his childhood friend. “Like I’ve said, we don’t have these superconvenient spells to resurrect the dead on Earth. If you die, that’s it. It’s over.” Even though people learned best from failure, there was one failure they couldn’t come back from: death. “I don’t think she understood that. She was such a dumbass.” A smile crept across his face. She was the kind of person who was all smiles, all the time. “I’ve always been cold and distant even when I was a kid. All the adults in the neighborhood said I was an unpleasant little brat.” “I think you’re quite unpleasant now,” Celes offered. “Don’t. Anyway, she was different: honest and endearing, a bright and lively idiot.” “Which is why…” “She reminds me of someone I used to know.” …Which is why he’d whispered that when he decided to save Arian. But Celes didn’t say that aloud. Shinichi guessed what she was thinking and shook his head, chuckling. “I said she reminds me of her, but Arian’s way prettier and way smarter. Plus, Arian might seem happy-go-lucky on the surface, but she’s got a pretty dark past.” “Right. Just when you think she’s gotten too soft, she’ll pout and throw a tantrum.” “Compared to Arian, this girl never had anything going on in her mind. She was a dumbass. The real deal. She legit seemed happy every day.” She’d play outside from morning to night, rolling around in the mud. And just after she’d wept as her mother scolded her, she’d bounce back with a big smile. It wasn’t that weird for an elementary schooler to switch emotions so quickly, but she was still a real big idiot. At least, that’s what he’d think to himself. “She was so stupid! She’d try everything: She’d fall from the monkey bars and hit her head; she’d attempt an overhead kick and hit her head; she’d dive headfirst into the kiddie pool and hit her head.” “…Um, I get the impression she hit her head constantly.” “Yup. I’m sure that’s why she was so stupid.” Even as a kid, he’d tried to warn her, fretting about how she needed to think her actions through or she’d have to face the consequences in the future. “But she’d reply: ‘It’s fine! In the future, I’ll have you to take me in, Shinichi!’ That was the first time I seriously felt like killing someone.” “…Is that so?” She kept her answer short, seeing him smile through a difficult topic. Celes could tell how much this girl meant to him, even if he bashed her repeatedly, dumbass or not. This girl must have warmed him like the sun, he who was cold and distant. “Did you like her?” “They say the idiots are the cutest. If I had to choose between liking and hating her, I’d have to say I liked her. But not romantically. Well, I’m not sure.” It wasn’t a lie. It was how he’d felt. He had no intentions of insulting young love. But he just couldn’t understand it—because he was tied to logic and reason more than emotions. After all, he was a rational person at heart. “What is love anyway? If it’s an increased heartbeat, well, then I’m definitely in love with your boobs, Celes.” “That’s just lust, you pervert.” “Um? I’m pretty sure it’s more perverted to dislike boobs!” “I’m creeped out that you’re so insistent.” If Sanctina were here, she’d probably side with Shinichi, but she was definitely a pervert for sure. “Anyway, she was fun, but I couldn’t be around her for too long, ’cause that would just exhaust the hell out of me. We never got that close.” And that’s why he didn’t go that day when she invited him to the beach with her family. “She loved the pool, but she couldn’t swim at all. Her teacher was this spirited moron and got it in her mind that she ‘shouldn’t be afraid, just go for it!’ She got riled up, you know, super-excited to go off into the waters. Then she went in the ocean when her parents weren’t looking and drowned. She was really foolish. I guess that was inevitable.” He’d heard a rumor that she had drowned trying to save a kid, but he didn’t know if it was true. He was certain that she hadn’t considered for a millisecond that she might die—or that those left behind would be in so much pain. “Kids always think they’re invincible, that they’ll be okay no matter what. You reap what you sow, I guess. It was no one’s fault but her own.” Shinichi understood that in his mind, but he couldn’t forgive the adults who’d always pushed her to do more and not reprimanded her for being careless. But he was most resentful of something intangible, not someone. “She died for being dumb. But if she’d noticed that someone forgot their indoor slippers, she’d lend hers; or if a kid dropped their flan at school lunch, she’d give them hers, even as drool dribbled from her mouth—they were her favorite. Once, there was a kid crying because he wet himself in class, so she wet herself to cheer him up. She was a good kid.” “I’m not sure about that last one,” Celes replied, exasperated. Shinichi smiled wryly back at her. “An idiot. But she was well liked, and everyone was bawling their eyes out at her funeral.” Well, everyone except Shinichi, who was seething quietly. “She did her best and didn’t back down from a challenge. But she made this one little mistake, and that was it. How could this world be so unreasonable? An arrogant, unpleasant brat like me could keep on living just fine, but an actual good kid dies. I couldn’t forgive the world for being that cruel.” That’s why Shinichi decided to fight against death. But he didn’t choose magic or voodoo or anything shady like that. He chose the more realistic option: science. “I’d read books from the library every day. I’d read every page of science sites on the Internet. I was so obsessed, I even surprised myself.” Thanks to that, he knew a lot about science. But it also made him face the reality that resurrecting the dead was impossible. He gave up. And now he was here. “Well, that talk went longer than expected. All it was was that a girl I knew died.” “Which is why…,” started Celes, fumbling for words when she realized the answer to her doubts, nagging at her secretly. From the moment the Demon King had summoned Shinichi up until now, Shinichi had never once uttered that he wanted to return to Earth. In most normal cases, anyone would want to go back to their home, to their parents and friends. Of course, the answer in Shinichi’s case wasn’t so simple. He’d stuck around to satisfy his own morbid curiosity and to test out his dirty tricks in real life. Along the way, he started to worry about the well-being of Rino, along with the others, which compounded his reasons to stay. But at the center of it all was this girl. She’d meant something to him. When he’d lost her, he’d had no other ties to Earth, especially when he’d realized that he’d never be able to resurrect her. That was what he’d been hiding in the small cracks of his heart. “I may be stepping over my bounds, but why can’t this science resurrect the dead?” asked Celes. “Well, it’s the same as this world. If the body was in good condition, it might be possible.” By freezing a corpse, the dead could potentially be resurrected in the future, when science had advanced enough to allow it. But if the body in question had been cremated—losing the brain, its memories and information, its DNA—it was impossible. “Unless we were able to computerize it, I guess. Like in sci-fi movies, you know, uploading a person’s memories into a server once the brain is gone…” “Do what now?” Celes called out to him, but after he’d blurted out some foreign phrases, he’d gone silent. Her voice didn’t reach him. He’d been stunned by another revelation, triggered by his own words. No way. What if that’s the kind of system that the Goddess is using to protect the undying heroes? It wasn’t something that could be done in his version of Earth in the twenty-first century, but it wasn’t that absurd to think it could be done in a few hundred years. In theory, it was possible to achieve immortality. Let’s say you took and stored some of your cells alongside the information in your brain. If this information was transmitted automatically, it would be akin to taking a backup of your computer. Meaning even if you died, they could make a clone out of your cells and download the information into the clone’s brain—making a re-creation of “you,” save for the memory of your death. If there was a technology that could transmit real-time information about your body, it’d be an even more perfect version of “you.” But then we run into the “Swampman” identity issue… He was thinking about the philosophical thought experiment. Say lightning kills a man in a swamp at the same time that another bolt of lightning crashes into another swamp. In a miracle of miracles, it rearranges the molecules to re-create the deceased—down to the last atom. This is the “Swampman.” Can you call it the same person? This problem has existed since ancient Greece. The ship of Theseus, another thought experiment, asks: If we swap out all the pieces of the ship, is it the same ship? Philosophers have struggled to come up with an answer. Each person’s suggestion to the Swampman problem seemed to come down to whether they thought of humans as “collections of matter” or “collections of consciousness.” Would the heroes be able to handle the truth? If they’re “Swampmen,” that is. Even Shinichi didn’t know, but he did know one thing. If that’s how it’s done, resurrection from nothing would be possible. Even the Blue Demon King had said it was impossible to resurrect a corpse that’d been completely destroyed. But it’d be a different story if there was a copy of their memories and body. If being a “hero” is the authentication necessary to access the Goddess’s server and save backups… Shinichi looked at the back of his own hand, which obviously wasn’t emblazoned by the sun symbol, the proof of being a hero. There are no issues in theory. If resurrection is already possible with magic, it shouldn’t be impossible… When the Demon King said he couldn’t do it, it wasn’t because he didn’t have enough power. He just couldn’t conjure a system that could make it work. Magic was a way to alter reality to match your imagination. And there was no way the Demon King would be able to imagine a system to upload memories, clone bodies, and download information without Shinichi’s knowledge of science and sci-fi. Meaning it didn’t matter how much power he had. If he couldn’t picture it, he couldn’t replicate it in reality. That’s all well and good. But how is the Goddess able—? “Sir Shinichi.” “Ah?!” Shinichi jumped back in surprise when he found Celes’s face inches away from his. He could feel her hot breath on his skin.