“Ngh...”
I felt something grab me by the scruff of my neck, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the ground. I raised my head to see Veiss’s grim scowl. He must’ve pulled me away from those claws at the last second. In the same instant, he’d picked up his fallen greatsword and cut off the arms restraining Cion as well. Of course he had—what else had I expected?
But now the former champion was sunk on one knee, and his shoulders heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He was obviously exhausted.
Meanwhile, facing us was the Demon Lord’s right hand—well, he was pretty much all hands now.
“This is omnipotence and omniscience! This is the power of a God!”
He’d gotten on some kind of weird kick, and he was shouting with a creepy fervor in his voice. Frankly, I didn’t want to deal with him for another second if I could avoid it. He was starting to feel a little too much like a certain other idiotic zealot I knew.
“But what are we even supposed to do about this...?” I sighed.
The champion next to me couldn’t be counted among our forces anymore. He’d had his blood drained and his internal mana ripped out by Scarlet Brave, just like Cion had done to me. And that wasn’t the only way he was spent...
“Why did you sacrifice your arm?”
And his right arm, at that—his stronger side.
“I would’ve been fine if you hadn’t gotten in my damn way.”
Nope. You definitely wouldn’t have been. You were the one who got yourself caught, weren’t you?
“What’s done is done. The facts are the facts. We cannot progress without accepting the truth.” The devil stared haughtily down at us as he swallowed up Veiss’s severed arm with a huge, gaping mouth. “One must make sacrifices for the sake of victory, but how foolish to give up your own flesh and bone. What now, hmm? How will you stop me?! Go ahead and try, Champion of the Kingdom!”
“Still don’t get it? I can beat you just fine one-handed, dumbass!”
“It is you who fail to understand.”
His tail lashed out like a whip toward Cion—
“Gah—?!”
—knocking her wounded body flat as she tried to get back on her feet. Veiss immediately tried to charge in, but his body wouldn’t go along with it, and he was left howling with his hand planted on the ground.
“This is your punishment.”
The long, swift tail wrapped around Cion’s leg and lifted her into the air upside down. Cion tried to fight back, but from her awkward position, she couldn’t get her blade through Raven’s tough hide. That long, spindly thing looked like an insect’s limb—or the arm of a revenant reaching up from hell.
“I shall kill her slowly.”
Veiss couldn’t move. The innkeeper and his crew had their hands full just defending themselves. There was only one thing for me to do.
“Gods dammit...”
I absolutely hated how weak I was.
“Raven!” I shouted, throwing my bible at the devil turned monster.
“Hmm? Surely you don’t intend to preach the word of your false Gods now of all times?”
He picked it up off the ground, gazing at me disinterestedly.
That’s it. Look at me. Just stay focused on me.
“I’ll obey you,” I said. “I don’t know what value my blood holds, but do with it as you will. Just please, stop your divine soldiers.”
I was just barely outside his reach. If I stepped any closer, he’d be able to knock my head off my shoulders with a single strike before I could even dodge.
“Might I beseech your mercy, O Demon Lord?”
This was a gamble. I didn’t have any power left, and I didn’t have the spare capacity to demonify myself either. The demons were fighting with everything they had, but the mercenaries were on the brink of death, and the champion and the Hero were both out of action. The only option I had left was to turn to the Gods for help.
“‘Demon Lord,’ you say... You misapprehend me, I’m afraid. I shall not become the Demon Lord. I shall become a God!”
He turned his face to the heavens, trembling with ecstasy.
I let out a laugh. “A God?” Thankfully, I at least had the energy left to mock him. “No one can become a God.”
There weren’t any Gods. They were just objects of faith and fantasy; their words were just the words of a pack of fraudulent priests, written for the profit of a privileged few. So—
“Oh, they do exist.”
The absolute certainty in the devil’s voice made me falter, ever so slightly.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“What is a demon? What is a human?” he asked back. “Knowing that devil-touched carry the mingled blood of demons and humans, knowing that humans are a degenerate form of demons, did deeper possibilities never occur to you?”
I stared at him. “What does that—?”
“The Gods are the origin of all—so it is written in the humans’ scripture.” Raven flipped through the pages of my bible. “None will believe a story fabricated wholly from groundless lies. The myths of your Gods have garnered such widespread faith because they contain a sufficient measure of truth.”
“Don’t listen to him, Alicia!” Cion shouted.
She struggled to get free of him, but he only tightened his grip, and a pained scream rang out. The taste of blood spread through my mouth.
“The first God formed the first Goddess from his own body, he created the world, and life flourished across the earth... The essential point is thus: Our world must possess an origin.” Raven tossed the bible back to me and looked to the heavens once again. “The First—the progenitor of all life. And his lineage has persisted across time. That is the true nature of the Demon Lord.”
Somehow, I felt no surprise. Only dawning comprehension, mixed with a strange relief.
“In other words, the Demon Lord is himself a God.”
Veiss let out an infuriated hiss as Raven revealed the truth.
“It has long been humankind’s custom to eliminate any who uncover that knowledge, however.”
That much was probably true, at least. Regardless of whether the Demon Lord was actually a God, just uttering those words would be grounds for execution. You’d get sent straight to the inquisitors, without a chance to say a single word in your own defense.