Ch.153Turning Point (4)

# Turning Point (4)

I’ve been in a terrible mood ever since dreaming about the Pope.

Of course I feel terrible. Belphegor was deceived by that madman.

Right after Second left the audience chamber, Belphegor covered one of her eyes with her palm and thought.

She is not a god. She is merely a monarch.

That’s why she’s not perfect.

She also harbors fatal weaknesses.

“These incompetent bastards.”

Second thinks of her as an absolute powerhouse, but that’s wrong.

Her power has limitations.

She can’t fight for long, and the burden increases the more she fights.

From the beginning, she never intended to fully contain the Celestial God’s power.

Her only goal was to bring down the Celestial God, that being outside normal parameters, because she already had more power than she could handle.

Containing the Celestial God’s power was unavoidable.

After backstabbing the Celestial God, she feared the consequences of leaving that power untaken rather than seizing it.

“Great power comes with great cost, they say. However, those who possess great power often have trouble wielding it easily.”

“I’m perfectly fine, though?”

“You don’t use it often. That’s precisely the issue.”

She never intended to take all that power. Even Belphegor knows that claiming such immense power alone could cause problems.

She failed to consider this possibility because of the Pope, who suggested bringing down the Celestial God and taking that power.

She would never have cooperated had she known his true target was Belphegor, not the Celestial God.

But she didn’t notice. She dismissed the Pope’s eccentricities as the actions of a madman blinded by the intangible power of gods.

In a sense, they were indeed the actions of a madman, but they were far more horrifying and calculated than she had imagined.

“Anyway, the point is that even the Celestial God I serve cannot properly handle that power.”

The Pope had explained it to her.

He gave her one last chance to notice before committing the act.

She couldn’t even fully digest her own power, so how could she possibly contain all the power that even the Celestial God couldn’t fully handle?

The Pope knew this, which is why he didn’t take the power himself. He wanted the power to concentrate in her.

Everything went wrong when the Pope didn’t collect the Celestial God’s power.

For her, the feeling of boredom was a process to stabilize her power.

But even so, there are limits.

“Haah…”

Power that Belphegor struggles to handle.

Power that won’t stabilize no matter how much she sleeps or rests.

That limit is approaching.

“I need to end this with a quick decisive battle.”

When she removes the hand covering her eye, fragments fall away.

A physical body beginning to crack.

After confirming this, Belphegor summons blue flames to forcibly seal the wounds and erase the scars.

Though the inside is already in tatters, she disguises the exterior to appear unproblematic.

She is unstable.

Yes, if she were to burst, she could burn not just this area but the entire demon realm, purifying the entire “domain” of the demon realm, unable to save it any other way.

“I can’t die like this.”

There are no more opportunities. The demon realm’s environment has become so desolate that children can no longer be born, and the Demon King’s army cannot become any stronger than it is now.

In other words, this is the last chance for demonkind to conquer the human realm. The soldiers gathered because they knew this.

“Things won’t go as you planned, Pope.”

A bomb with its fuse lit.

Filled with venom, Belphegor quietly prepared for war.

“We will devour the human realm and reclaim everything we’ve lost.”

Yes, if they drive out everyone in the human realm and claim that territory entirely.

Then even if she, the bomb, explodes in the demon realm.

“Either everyone dies, or everyone lives. The choice is yours to make.”

It wouldn’t matter if it happened in a desolate place abandoned by “everyone.”

***

The Hero’s party moved through the demon realm with more tension than usual.

They could tell certain things from the villages they had passed through.

The atmosphere was unsettled, and everyone was starving.

What was surprising was that despite the impending war, there was no additional conscription or taxation. Of course, even if they did collect taxes, what would there be to take?

“It’s quiet.”

While the Demon King’s army was clearly on the move, there seemed to be no change in the lives of other residents.

‘Is it because demons tend to mind their own business?’

In some ways, this might be better than the war preparations in the human realm, Esmeralda thought as she and the Hero’s party walked through the forest.

“Is this the right way?”

“According to the map, this path is the shortcut.”

“You didn’t just draw a straight line on the map, did you?”

“Isn’t that the fastest way?”

“Good grief, you idiot.”

Esmeralda smacked Lug on the head after he claimed he would find the way.

She had thought he was good at finding paths when they were in the human realm, but since entering the demon realm, she realized he was just looking at straight-line distances regardless of obstacles.

In the human realm, most paths were well-maintained, so it didn’t matter, but…

“Aack! Bugs! Aack! Poisonous plants! Aack! Even crawling spaghetti monsters!”

The demon realm was literally the demon realm.

It would be challenging enough to choose safe paths to move along, but by walking along dangerous straight lines, the Hero’s party was becoming increasingly exhausted with each passing day. Moreover, they couldn’t even camp since entering the forest.

This was because the surrounding terrain was extremely dangerous.

While most complained of fatigue, there was someone who thought differently.

“…”

Millia, with her exceptional scholarly enthusiasm, found everything in the surrounding environment new.

She stared blankly at Tina, who was making a fuss while brushing off the poisonous insects and plants clinging to her body, then deployed her tentacle magic.

“Cute.”

And then she attempted to communicate with the crawling spaghetti monster that Tina had been particularly terrified of.

Squelch.

The moment the tentacle and spaghetti strands touched, a bond began to form between two species that couldn’t understand each other.

Crunch! Crack!

But that was brief. Millia’s tentacle swallowed the crawling spaghetti monster whole.

As the spaghetti monster, which had been squelching as if screaming, was completely digested by the tentacle, Millia looked around for something similar and spotted a human-shaped figure not far away.

A woman in clown attire.

Whether she had crawled here with an injured body or not, there was a trail of blood marking her path from the opposite direction.

Squelch.

Without any suspicion, as if it were the natural thing to do, Millia wrapped her tentacles around the collapsed woman.

“Test subject.”

That brief statement explained why she picked up the woman.

For Millia, whose morality was warped, anything found in the demon realm could be used as a test subject regardless of its form.

But it’s okay.

“Stop right there.”

There was Esmeralda, the excellent teacher single-handedly supporting the kindergarten called the Hero’s party.

She quickly spotted Millia doing something in an inconspicuous place and hastily stopped her actions.

To put it simply, she hit her to make her stop.

That was the fastest way.

“Ouch.”

Millia, seemingly accustomed to the situation, simply pressed the spot where she was hit without much complaint.

“I was just picking up anything… wait, what is this?”

Esmeralda recoiled in shock the moment she confirmed the identity of what Millia had wrapped in her tentacles.

“Third?”

Legion Commander Third.

The Demon King’s army’s extraordinary force, said to be capable of the greatest achievements on the battlefield, was collapsed on the street.

Honestly, it was hard to believe. Esmeralda had only managed to deal with her easily because of the Emerald Tablet; Third’s abilities were on a blatantly unfair level.

“Let’s kill her.”

The first to respond to Esmeralda’s words was none other than Garnet.

She had been thoroughly defeated by Third to the point of feeling humiliated.

She had been completely played not by strength or skill, but by trickery.

The fact that Third had spared Garnet’s life at that time was irrelevant to Garnet. What mattered was that she had been toyed with.

That’s why she wanted to kill Third.

“I prefer her alive.”

As Garnet opened the discussion, the meeting naturally unfolded.

The second to express her opinion was Millia, who usually maintained a passive attitude.

She suggested keeping Third alive, though her choice of words could be misinterpreted depending on how one heard it.

“I think we should spare her.”

Eirene Saintess also opposed execution.

Normally, she would have been the first to argue that they should erase one more of the filthy demon race, but she was relatively level-headed.

“The circumstances of her condition are suspicious. Rather than killing her needlessly, we should keep her alive to extract information.”

A stroke of luck.

While everyone was thinking along those lines, Eirene couldn’t help but feel a chill.

This was Third, after all.

Someone had managed to bring her down, and it would be too dangerous to continue without knowing who that was.

“Thank you for your opinions. I didn’t plan to discuss this, but I’ll make a decision based on everyone’s input. Do you have anything to say?”

“M-me?”

“Is there anyone else in the direction I’m pointing besides you?”

“Um, no.”

Suddenly singled out, the prisoner Twelve shrank back, stammering just as he had during his school days. He seemed to be adapting well to his position as a prisoner.

“Alright, I understand.”

“Esmeralda! I don’t think you’ve heard my story yet?”

“Yes, Tina. Go ahead.”

“Can you please put me down?”

“We’ll do that in a bit.”

Tina was being dragged along, wrapped in moving vines, but there were more important matters at hand.

“I…”

“We don’t need your opinion, Lug. Unless you have something important to say?”

“No.”

“Then that’s settled.”

Esmeralda nodded with satisfaction at the perfectly gathered opinions.

The Hero’s party, which she had been leading alone until now, was beginning to operate through reasonable discussion and debate.

Although the content was extremely personal, at least Eirene had given an answer appropriate to the current situation.

That was enough.

The Hero’s party had grown.

“Then let’s keep her alive. I don’t want to kill someone who’s collapsed so helplessly anyway.”

That day, Third—or rather, a clown named Lacrima—joined the Hero’s party.

Of course, it wasn’t by her own will.