episode_0036
by fnovelpia
“… It must have happened when I was five or six years old.”
Sarah began to speak with a calm voice and an indifferent expression, as if telling someone else’s story.
As a child, the only people by Sarah’s side were a demon disguised as a maid and her mother, Terezina.
Terezina played with Sarah whenever she felt like it, using her doll skills, but the devil basically focused on his duties.
Sarah, who had lived in the mansion her whole life, naturally had no friends, so she wandered around the vast mansion looking for things to do to immerse herself in, as if to ignore her loneliness.
One of them was exploring the mansion.
To young Sarah, the vast mansion felt like a new continent that no one had yet discovered.
Like an adventurer exploring a dungeon, Sarah wandered around the mansion, going from place to place.
Perhaps because she was still a child, no one, including Terezina, attached any special meaning to her actions.
Sarah, who was exploring the mansion as usual and flirting with new discoveries, happened to arrive at a library.
There were several libraries in Terezina’s mansion that stored the devil’s contracts and rare old books that were not on the market, and this room was one of them.
The only difference was that, unlike other libraries, that room had a fireplace.
“What’s the problem with that?”
“I don’t know what it is like in other mansions, but there are no fireplaces in the other library in that mansion. It could spread and cause a fire, or someone could come in through the chimney and steal the book.”
When an inexperienced explorer’s instincts told her that the fireplace was suspicious, young Sarah immediately stuck her head into the fireplace and looked inside.
The moment she went inside to take a closer look, the door began to open in response to Theresina’s blood flowing through Sarah’s body.
It was a pure coincidence, without anyone’s malicious intent, and Terezina’s mistake.
All doors leading to the basement of the mansion, including that door, were imbued with a special magic that only Terezina could enter.
Even if someone else had found the door to the basement, they could not have entered the basement unless they were Terezyna herself.
Even if the barrier was bypassed by some means, people other than Terejina would have definitely noticed the moment they entered the laboratory.
But Theresa did not know.
Since Sera’s body was built based on Terezina, the barrier recognizes Sera as Terezina.
After many coincidences, Sarah returned to the womb of her mother who gave birth to her.
As I climbed down the ladder, what appeared was a dark hallway with no end in sight.
On the other side of the hallway, a small bright red light flickered as if beckoning me to come here.
Sarah headed toward the light as if possessed by something, and eventually arrived at a semicircular room with bright red light fluttering from all directions.
There were egg-shaped tanks lined up against the wall, and inside them were floating fetuses that had not yet fully formed into human beings.
Sarah, who was young, didn’t know exactly what it was, but when she saw it, she felt bad and turned her head away.
‘I’m scared here… .’
The adventurous spirit that led her to unexpected scenery, in a bad way, disappeared completely.
It was an adventure and all, but right now I just wanted to go back right away.
However, feeling that she would really regret it if she just went back, Sarah gathered her courage and stepped deep into the laboratory.
And when we reached the end, we found a deep hole like a well.
I raised my head and looked inside the well, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see inside.
I have no choice but to stick my head a little deeper and wait for a while for my eyes to get used to the darkness… .
“… … .”
What was there was a person.
He was like a doll.
There were a lot of children piled up in the pit who looked so similar to Sarah that even though they were separated twins, there was no sense of incongruity at all.
Empty eyes with no sense of intelligence, body movements that are extremely quiet, as if breathing has stopped.
The girls’ appearance was full of realistic beauty that could not be reproduced with dolls, but their movements were no different from those of dolls.
“… … !!”
For some reason, Sarah couldn’t hold back the fear that came over her the moment she saw the girls, so she covered her mouth to prevent herself from screaming and left.
It was only after Sarah got a little older that she realized that what she saw in the pit was a corpse.
From that day on, this incident became a trauma for Sarah, and whenever she was bored, it would come to mind and torment her.
Thinking that one day she might become one of the dolls in the pit, she secretly went in and out of the laboratory to spy on Terezina’s research.
And then I realized what it was.
“… What I saw then were my sisters. My sisters and I were not ordinary humans, but homunculi that were a combination of a human and a demon.”
“… I understand that. But why is it said about taking your body?”
“While investigating the lab, I was able to understand a little bit about her thoughts. The reason she created us was to protect this territory she had built over her entire life.”
“… Are you trying to create a successor?”
“Yes. I guess she thought that someday after her death, a foolish descendant would be born and ruin this territory.”
Rather than caring for the people, it may have been a feeling of not wanting to ruin the best work of art he had created.
She could not accept the ending that every empire must meet one day.
Therefore, he wanted to leave behind a leader as similar to himself as possible to prevent cancer from being born in the future.
“I thought that the person who most resembled my perfect self was not a descendant, but a homunculus, an android whose body was made up of most of my own cells.”
*****
In order to protect the empire that he has built over his entire life, he makes a perfect copy of me and rules the empire.
I feel sorry for Sarah, who mustered up the courage to tell everything, but it was not some kind of sci-fi dystopian novel, and it was difficult to believe it right away.
Memories of childhood are usually distorted.
Moreover, there was no solid physical evidence that something like that had happened, so the only evidence to support this story was her vague memories.
Usually I don’t believe it.
However, Terezina, the subject of this story, was not a person who could be explained by common sense or ordinary words.
“Honestly, it sounds like a lie, but I think my older sister would think that way.”
“… Do you believe me?”
“If it was someone else’s story, I wouldn’t have believed it, but if it was my sister’s story, it gives me a strange credibility.”
She doesn’t trust others.
If your family was included in the category of others, it was natural that you would not believe them even if you said they were born with a stomachache.
So, although you wouldn’t normally think about it, it wasn’t particularly strange for someone to nominate themselves as their successor.
However, if all the stories so far are true, one question arises.
“Why is your sister neglecting Sarah?”
No matter how many guards you have, if you go through several fights in a place like this, there will come a day when you are in danger.
Unless there was a successor other than Sarah, it was quite unnatural to leave her unattended like this.
If there was a reason to let her go like this, there would be only one.“
“… Is this story related to the devil?”
“That may be so. It is said that the demonic cells that make up the bodies of my sisters and I were the archduke of the demon world whose name has been forgotten.”
It is unknown why Sera had such devil cells or what she was thinking when she mixed those cells into the homunculus’ body.
However, if there is a reason why Sarah was left unattended, it must be related to the devil’s cells.
“Can you transform into a devil or do you have any special skills?”
“None. I’ve tried many things since I was young to try to find out about her, but it seems like there wasn’t much success.”
“Then there are two things I can think of. The first is the theory that it is the ability to bloom in real life.”
The second theory is that it was left unused because it was no longer needed.
“If it were the latter, the story would have been easier in some way. That can’t be possible. If it was no longer needed, I would have just gotten rid of it.”
“… Yeah, and he doesn’t waste anything. I also thought out a plan for when I decided that I couldn’t be used.”
“That plan… .”
“Magic to exchange souls.”
In Hell’s worldview, the soul is closely related to the body, so even if the soul is changed, it will not be able to adapt to the body and will quickly collapse.
However, if the body of a homunculus is composed of the same cells, the story is different.
No one knew what would actually happen because no one had ever tested it, but Terezina had enough time and money to experiment with it.
‘I roughly understood the story… .’
One question still remains.
Why did Theresina wait until Sarah was a second year student to try to steal Sarah’s body?
I may not have perfected the magic of exchanging souls yet, but somehow I thought that wasn’t the only thing.
If there is another reason… .
‘What changes happen to Sarah’s body when she becomes a second year student?’
A homunculus with devil blood.
What if the condition for the devil’s power to manifest is not experience or level, but time?
Or was it around that time that they were looking for a way to forcibly manifest the devil’s power?
“… … .”
It’s almost August now.
There may not be much time left.
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