Ch.126Chapter 126 – Forbidden Library (3)

That name is a pronoun.

Since the birth of the first human, that name has always pointed to a single being while simultaneously symbolizing an entire species.

***

The being standing there was not someone Shin Jaehyuk knew. It was neither Mr. B nor Baphomet.

The entity standing there was the ruler who had governed hell since the beginning of time, the one who had become the fear of all mankind.

Satan.

Shin Jaehyuk still doubted whether this was reality. He couldn’t sense anything where the being stood. A void filled his perception, and the world testified to an absence. The sensation that ‘nothing exists in that spot’ felt so natural that its excessive perfection paradoxically created a sense of alienation.

It was as if he was deceiving the laws of the world itself. Without leaving any clue or proof of his existence, he stood there with dignified composure.

“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost? I came all this way to help you. How rude.”

“Mr. B, no… Baphomet. You’re the Demon King?”

“No, not the Demon King. I’m retired. You know the current Demon King is Mara Papias, not me. Kwak Taewoo told you that, didn’t he?”

Satan answered with an inscrutable kindness. As suspicion turned to truth, Shin Jaehyuk’s body stiffened even more. Various confusions and questions dominated him, making him hesitate like a robot receiving multiple commands simultaneously.

“…You were the Demon King?”

Kwak Taewoo mulled over the meaning of those words. Ignorance breeds courage. Sometimes that helps. This was one of those moments. Kwak Taewoo reacted immediately to the words “Demon King.”

“Die—”

A blade of energy released, blue light aiming for the throat, and the blade caught between two fingers.

Everything happened in an instant.

“—Huh?”

“A sucker punch right off the bat? I’m hurt, Kwak Taewoo. After all I’ve done for you…”

Satan smiled smugly. He lightly flicked the fingertips holding the blade, but the result was far from light. Kwak Taewoo’s body flew through a wall and crashed into marble in the distance, bringing down the building with a thunderous noise.

Though the attack failed to land, the moment Kwak Taewoo bought was helpful. Shin Jaehyuk used that instant to unleash his divine power. A spear appeared in his hand with intense light. The aurora surged.

“So this is your divine power? Quite ferocious seeing it firsthand.”

Satan smiled as if pleased with Shin Jaehyuk’s growth and stepped out of the light’s range. His attitude was endlessly playful. He didn’t even assume a defensive stance, as if he could subdue Shin Jaehyuk whenever he wished.

That attitude provoked Shin Jaehyuk further. Lightning branching out in all directions expressed his anger and confusion.

“You’ve been mocking me all this time…! All those deals and contracts, was I just dancing in the palm of your hand?”

“Calm down. I didn’t come here to fight. We’re in the same boat, aren’t we? Oh my, how dangerous.”

Satan prattled on while dodging the light filled with threatening killing intent. His mouth said it was dangerous, but his eyes remained relaxed.

Shin Jaehyuk tried to organize his thoughts while attacking. But the more he tried to make sense of things, the more complicated his mind became. Various incomprehensible questions arose.

Why did Satan make a contract with Iscariot to execute the God Hand Project?

Why did he spare his life after reincarnation instead of killing him?

Why did he try to use him to deal with the Four Heavenly Kings?

Why is Satan joining hands with the Sage to overthrow the second Demon King?

‘More fundamentally, how is he alive and well when he was supposedly killed by Kim Jaemin?’

According to various legends and tales, demons can see through hidden desires. True to this lore, Satan read his question.

“Hehe, you’re wondering how I’m alive in this situation? What’s so strange about it? Even Kim Jaemin, who supposedly returned to dust, is wandering around downtown Seoul. Historians are essentially novelists, you know. Arrogant creatures who write about events they’ve never witnessed as if they were facts. Ancient and secret truths are always meant to remain hidden…”

Shin Jaehyuk didn’t miss the moment when Satan paused to speak. His spear drew an arc, and light followed the arc, coloring the void in a disc shape. Satan’s neck was positioned along that trajectory.

‘Did I get him!’

The severed head fell. But strangely, no blood gushed out. Instead, darkness surged from the cut surface, swallowing both the head and body before being absorbed into a shadow. Whose shadow?

‘He’s… unharmed? I just cut off his head—!’

Satan stood there without a scratch, grinning as if the tragedy from seconds ago had been an illusion.

“How about that? My doppelganger, perfect isn’t it? A power that once deceived even God’s eyes… hehe.”

The power of deception. At some point in the past, Satan had received the power of deception from God, allowing him to perform various feats: changing his body’s form, concealing his presence and existence, or creating duplicates identical to the original.

“I’m bragging, but it was quite difficult to deceive both God and the hero simultaneously. To perfectly fake my death, I had to transfer most of my power to my doppelganger… As a result, I lost a lot of strength.”

“…So that’s why you were avoiding Kim Jaemin. If he saw you, he would immediately recognize your true identity. I should have been suspicious from the start.”

Shin Jaehyuk gritted his teeth. Betrayal, tension, anger… various complicated emotions tangled in his mind, preventing him from calming down. His breathing naturally became rapid. This being was clearly the source of all evil that had invaded Eden hundreds of years ago, a mortal enemy.

The red serpent described in the Bible, metaphors from ancient texts, Iscariot’s records—various pieces of evidence combined. Like solving a problem when you already know the answer, interpreting the evidence knowing Satan’s identity made everything fit perfectly.

“…So you really are Satan. From beginning to end, you’ve been deceiving me.”

“Still can’t believe it? Why, because my manner of speech is too frivolous for a Demon King? …Very well. Let me speak seriously then.”

The atmosphere shifted. His posture, trembling, muscle tension, voice, and aura—everything changed when the jester stopped his act.

“Young holy knight, doubt me not. I am the one your father feared, the one your grandfather’s father called upon, the one your ancestors and their ancestors worshipped. I am the serpent who handed the fruit of corruption to Eve, the one who hates the light.”

With those wicked words came a manifestation of presence. It was the opposite of before. If earlier the world seemed to deny his existence, now the world was crushed under his enormous presence. Even for Shin Jaehyuk with his divine power unleashed, the presence was overwhelmingly heavy.

It was hard to believe Satan’s claim that this was a weakened state. It was difficult to move even a finger. His entire body was experiencing the true meaning of the word “Demon King.”

Instinctively, Shin Jaehyuk released divine power throughout his body. He felt the pressure ease slightly. Not losing that momentum, he frantically swung his light. A white beam covering half his field of vision.

Someone grabbed his wrist. Satan was suddenly before him. As if he had been there all along, calmly holding his wrist.

“That is not how divine power should be used. Allow me to teach you personally.”

Shin Jaehyuk’s gaze met Satan’s. Even Shin Jaehyuk flinched at the emotion swirling in those pupils, condensed to the point of sediment. Looking into those blood-red eyes reminiscent of a volcanic crater, Shin Jaehyuk realized. The usual frivolity and cheerfulness were all an act. Clownish behavior to hide anger that seethed like a storm…

“Behold. Divine power is coloring the world with my essence. It is a law above laws, rewriting the system that forms the foundation of the universe to cover the world.”

Satan unleashed his divine power. Anger expressed through divine power covered the world. Like spreading ink, the void was dyed with darkness. The sky, the earth, buildings, rotting tree roots, puddles on the ground—everything.

The world was plunged into darkness. Light dared not intrude where darkness had consumed. At this moment, the entire Vatican was his domain and his anger. The world vomited sticky anger with its entire body.

“Behold… the sight of all things raging for my sake. I am the law of this world, its foundation.”

Anger that had persisted since the beginning of time blazed not as light and heat, but as darkness. The pitch-black consuming the world flickered like flames. Shin Jaehyuk learned for the first time that darkness could have varying degrees of concentration.

As darkness covered everything, Shin Jaehyuk also emitted divine power in response. Light expanded to drive away the darkness. According to the laws of physics, darkness should melt away like ice cream the moment light touches it, but this was a battle beyond laws. It didn’t work as expected.

“Kugh…!”

The collision of the two divine powers was one-sided. The light emitted by Shin Jaehyuk was gradually devoured by the flames of anger. This phenomenon occurred because Satan’s anger was stronger than Shin Jaehyuk’s will.

“At this level, things like levels or magical power become meaningless. What determines victory is the mindset of the divine power’s manifestor—your state of mind.”

Shin Jaehyuk’s feeble divine power was no match for Satan’s. Satan was the symbol of demons, and the faith and belief sent by demon worshippers were his strength. He contained a depth and age of a different dimension compared to Shin Jaehyuk, who had just awakened his divine power.

The paradoxical phenomenon of darkness burning away light continued. While Shin Jaehyuk struggled just to maintain the status quo, Kwak Taewoo, buried in rubble, found it difficult to even breathe amid the collision of divine powers.

Was a Sword Master such a powerless being? No feelings of inferiority or jealousy arose. The two were something beyond categories. Like gods, or transcendents.

From a transcendent’s perspective, everything except other transcendents was equally insignificant. Whether Sword Master, Grand Magician, or S-class Hunter—all equally so.

‘Even if it was a doppelganger… he defeated such a being?’

Kwak Taewoo felt his hair stand on end as he pondered anew. How monstrous Kim Jaemin must have been to face a transcendent with a human body.

Darkness advanced to devour the world’s only light source. Dense darkness gathered around Shin Jaehyuk, erasing the light. Shin Jaehyuk couldn’t even mount a proper counterattack in this first encounter with battle between transcendents.

It was the moment he sensed defeat. Before the black flame could burn even Shin Jaehyuk’s body, Satan withdrew his divine power. In an instant, the darkness melted away in the sunlight, and the world regained its light. Shin Jaehyuk’s entire body was drenched in sweat.

The overwhelming presence in the atmosphere suddenly lightened, and Satan’s manner of speech returned to its frivolous state.

“Now you get the idea? This kind of private tutoring is priceless, you should consider yourself lucky.”

“You… didn’t come to eliminate me? Because I’ve become too strong?”

Shin Jaehyuk asked, panting. Yet he remained vigilant, wondering if even this was another of the demon’s deceptions. Making that caution seem foolish, Satan willingly disengaged from his combat stance.

“Why would I? You made a contract with me. To defeat the Four Heavenly Kings. I was so satisfied when you took down Belphegor. Why would I discard such an excellent contractor?”

“Then why just now…”

“Why did I attack? I told you. I came to help you use divine power skillfully. What better teaching than experiencing it firsthand? And to be clear, Kwak Taewoo threw the first punch?”

No rebuttal came to mind. Was he sincere? It was hard to fathom what he was thinking. Ignoring Shin Jaehyuk’s confusion, Satan continued with his own agenda.

“Now that you’ve manifested divine power, with practice you’ll be able to manipulate the system too. You know those boss messages that appear when you encounter a somewhat powerful demon? I typed each one of those myself. Hell is truly boring, you know.”

“…How impressive, indeed.”

“How dull. What kind of reaction is that? You’ve reached a state similar to your god, albeit immaturely, and that’s all you have to say?”

“Like Eloah…?”

“Eloah? No, no. You dare pronounce that disgusting name in my presence?”

Satan reacted particularly sensitively to that one word. For a moment, his cheerful expression crumbled, and anger leaked from his pupils.

“Be careful. Not Eloah, but Elohim.”

After correcting the word, his expression returned to normal. As if that fleeting expression had been a lie, he grinned.

“Let’s get our names right. Names are important to everyone.”

“Elo…him? What does that mean?”

“Tsk tsk, you’ve gone through all those forbidden books and still haven’t realized? Or perhaps the clergy deliberately concealed such information.”

The next moment, Shin Jaehyuk’s instinct made him want to cover his ears. A sense developed through experiencing chaos. A very ominous feeling that knowledge he shouldn’t know was about to spill from the demon’s tongue.

Indeed, his premonition was correct.

“There is no such thing as Eloah, the god of light, in this world. The same goes for Rohim, the god of darkness whom demons supposedly worship. There is only one being, neither a god of light nor darkness, but a single hypocritical and selfish creator—Elohim.”

Blasphemous sentences poured out. Words denying the god that Eden’s humanity had worshipped for thousands of years, the light that Shin Jaehyuk had served his entire life.

“Merely playing two roles for his own grand plan, Elohim has been one from the beginning and never two. It was Elohim who created angels and heaven, Elohim who gave birth to demons and hell, and likewise Elohim who molded humans caught between angels and demons.”

The teachings of light that he had followed his whole life were being completely denied. Satan was saying that the teachings of light and scripture were merely lines fitting the role of Eloah, and that the god Shin Jaehyuk worshipped was neither good nor merciful.

The reaction of a person whose entire life is denied can only be one thing. Shin Jaehyuk angrily and vehemently denied the blasphemy.

“Blasphemy! How dare you test my faith with a serpent’s tongue—!”

“Earlier I wished for any reaction at all, but this is truly disappointing… You dismiss history as lies based on your meager experience of less than a hundred years and your insignificant faith? Despite having risen to a god-like perspective, your thinking remains bound by human limitations, narrow-minded to the extreme.”

The demon looked down at the holy knight, his expression revealing utter disappointment.

“Now I understand why the Sage said you weren’t ready. Truly, you are foolish beyond measure.”

The Sage. At that word, Shin Jaehyuk’s pupils dilated. Satan’s partner, humanitarian enough to help the Empire by developing magic cannons. Unlike Satan, that person with a normal mindset might be reasonable.

Clinging to a last hope, he urgently asked:

“Where is this Sage? I want to speak with him directly.”

“Ah, you truly think my words are lies? …Well, if you’re curious, find out for yourself.”

With a deeply offended tone, Satan sighed and used the Demon King’s power. A hole opened in the void behind him, creating a gate that only a Demon King could open. Before the gate swallowed Satan’s body, his final words echoed through space.

“The Sage goes by many names. Hermes Leonhardt, Hermes Trismegistus, Nicholas Flamel, Johann Georg Faust, Michel de Nostredame, Count of St. Germain, and Leonardo da Vinci… But all these names refer to a single person. If you wish to find Leonardo, look for his book of prophecies. It’s kept in some exhibition hall on Earth as an artwork whose true value has yet to be recognized.”