Part 55:
The Fake Princess Gets Delevohs
ELISE DREAMT.
In her dream, she returned to the time before she awakened as Elise of the Reflection. Up until then, she had been but a scornful demon aimlessly wandering the human realm.
Trace… Copy… Complete. I’m now Princess Sheila.
Every year, Elise replaced an important figure in the human realm. Her objective was simple: to make light of the humans. That was all.
They’re all so stupid!
She seemed to remember having a different objective in the beginning. During the War of Genocide, the greater demons had ordered the Demon of Reflection (at the time she’d had no name) to replace important individuals. But when the war ended, the greater demons vanished, and her sense of being went with them.
Abandoned, the young demon decided to enjoy the world for all it had to offer. Principally, that took the form of laughing at the humans. Scorn and mockery were the only emotions the Demon of Reflection retained.
“Oh, Lady Sheila, I love you and only you…”
While accepting the clueless prince’s kiss, the demon laughed within her heart. Ah ha ha, this idiot thinks I’m the same Sheila from yesterday! What a fool!
She smiled brightly with the knowledge that everything the prince believed to be true was fake. His true love, his eternal vow, his friendship. All of it, she could easily copy and ape, and that filled her with such joy. All humans were fake, and the meaninglessness of their lives was so pitiful that it made her laugh.
Ah ha ha ha!
Thus did she live, laughing and laughing.
Then something changed. She met a girl—no, an existence.
Having grown tired of playing the role of Princess Sheila, she searched for her next target. She had played a king of the human realm, a demon emperor, a princess, and a hero. Next, she sought to become a saint in the backwoods of a certain holy nation, one who was worshipped by the locals as a prophet.
According to the saint’s retainers, she claimed to be God’s messenger and had a growing list of believers.
The demon took great interest in this falsehood of a girl.
Hee hee, how about I fake the role of a fake God? The demon was certain it’d be a blast.
When she faced the prophet and called the other girl a fake, she was merely making a bit of fun. But in reality, the saint was a genuine fake. She was no prophet. And the moment the demon at last crept up upon the saint and cast her Reflection Eyes upon the girl, she faced a terrible sight.
“Hrm, Demon of Reflection, you still wander the surface?” said the saint.
“?!”
Chills shook every atom of the demon’s being.
“Shall I erase you, then?”
A wave of intense confusion washed over the demon.
Error. Incapable of recreating. Data analysis impossible. Initiating conceptual interference protection. Reverse assembler activated. Reflection system infiltrated.
This was bad. Very bad.
System destruction—
“NOOOOOOOO!!!”
At the last minute, the demon managed to avert her gaze with her remaining power and just barely escaped the saint.
“Oho, you managed to evade the protection program? Not bad at all.” The saint smiled the faintest of smiles.
“Wh-what… Who are you?!”
“Fascinating. It’ll be quite the interesting experiment to keep you alive. Struggle as you must.” The saint giggled happily, her smile familiar to the demon. It was the same sort of smile the demon often wore. A smile of scorn. A smile that looked down upon all before her as base and pitiful. “Good luck, fake who can never become real.”
With those words, the saint vanished.
Left behind, the demon’s mouth hung open as she came to grips with what had happened—and the meaning behind the saint’s final words.
The saint had mocked the demon for being a fake who would never truly know what it felt like to be real.
Me? Laughed at? The being who laughed at all others?
For the first time, a feeling other than the desire to scorn others bubbled up inside her.
“How… How dare you!” the demon screamed tearfully.
The constantly transforming demon had never felt so fierce an emotion. The tears wouldn’t stop rolling down her cheeks, nor would the shakes come to an end. She would never forgive that saint. She’d never forgive that higher being for looking down on her, making fun of her, and laughing at her.
The script had flipped on the demon, and that, well, that was—“Unforgivable! I’ll get you for this, I swear!”
It hurt. But she wouldn’t give in.
A fake who can never become real, she says?
“I’ll show her… I’ll become real. Just you wait and see!”
And so the demon’s objective changed. She would find her way back to being the one who laughed at others. But in order to do that, she had to figure out what exactly the saint was. She researched and researched and researched, using the identity of whoever she could find. The head of the philosopher’s academy, the captain of the Holy Temple Knights, the head historian of a great nation.
Only once she found her way to a meeting with the greater demon Zeleburg in Hell did she finally understand.
“You came into contact with a God-class entity—a Pantheon Master. One who had descended to the surface, no less.”
“What do you mean?”
“You met a monster capable of controlling the world’s laws. Judging by your description, I’d bet it was the Lord of Souls, Elise.”
A creature like that existed in this world? Upon learning this, “Elise” finally regained her laugh. Hee hee, she has a name. She conceptually exists. Which means I can fake her. No matter how complex her being appears to be, how impossible it might seem, if she exists, I can—
“Become you, Elise!”
It was a challenge to the gods themselves—a pledge to challenge the very laws of the world.
Zeleburg gazed upon “Elise” and smiled. He too was a greater demon who sought to join the ranks of those who controlled the world. His meeting with “Elise” could be considered nothing less than a matter of fate.
“All right, Elise. I shall grant you power. The power to overcome a higher existence.”
“Yes—yes…”
“A power granted by Lord Asmodeus. The power to pierce the world’s laws.”
And so Elise received this power from Zeleburg in the form of a shining silver blade with a glowing tip. The beauty of its slender form struck her core, with its graceful adamantine curves polished like a mirror, perfect for a Demon of Reflection, a shovel—
“WAIT—NO—WHAT THE HELL?!”
Around that point, Elise leapt out of her dream as quickly as possible.
“Ah, did you notice, shovel?”
In any case, Princess Lithisia’s attempt at Shovel Mind Control ended in failure.