Ch.29■■(3)

In truth, I had been suspicious of this ability to consume factors from the beginning.

No matter how many mysterious phenomena exist in this world and how often humans with special powers are born, there’s always a reason behind such uniqueness.

Like humans born with exceptional sense of smell having dog shapeshifter ancestors, or those who possess innate special abilities due to some mystical influence.

But my “predation ability” was something completely different, lacking any of these characteristics.

What living creature in this world could extract and absorb the factors of killed beings to make them their own, and furthermore, create such a bizarre dream space to absorb remnants and check their current status?

No matter how I thought about it, it seemed too convenient and artificially implemented.

That’s why I had always pondered and agonized over the identity and details of this ability, and now at this point, I finally gained certainty as everything clicked into place like puzzle pieces fitting together.

However, even with this certainty, I couldn’t trust it without proof…

So I took a gamble, and successfully managed to summon the “Demon Lord” while protecting myself with the “True Name.”

“Demon Lord,” also known as Demon King or Demon Lord, refers to the seven demons who divide and rule the vast dimension known as the “Demon Realm.”

Their power transcends that of mortals, comparable to divine power. Normally, a mere mid-level being like me would have had my soul overloaded and destroyed the moment such a Demon Lord turned their gaze upon me, but…

The True Name, this mysterious power, was able to properly protect me from such a being.

In any society of sentient beings composed of humans, one can easily find the unique concept that power resides in names.

In the East, they implemented “taboo names” to prevent people from calling the ruler’s name, and in the West, there exists a monotheistic god who lost its original name after it was passed down too secretly.

Thus, the notion that some magical power dwells in a subject’s “true name” is quite common throughout history and across cultures, and demons, born from emotions and feeding on them, are among those most affected by this concept.

A demon’s “True Name” is a power that can bind or constrain the demon, force demands with a certain degree of compulsion… and with sufficient knowledge, even permanently destroy the demon’s soul itself.

Of course, if you get the True Name wrong, the initiative is seized by the other side, so you have to be prepared to bear the risk regardless of the outcome…

‘I-I succeeded…’

The result was successful after I perfectly pronounced the True Name of a high-ranking demon, which is fragmented so that no single part can give complete control.

Therefore, despite encountering a “Demon Lord,” I was able to face her with confidence… only to be shocked by “her” face, which was all too familiar from pictures I had seen.

While it’s entirely possible that the being before me—a demon famous for deceiving and tricking humans—might be trying to fool me, my soul produced a result that denied this rational suspicion.

This “Demon Lord,” if my spiritual intimacy was true, had to be none other than my birth mother…

【You finally realize it, my son.】

“…Who are you calling son?!”

While desperately resisting her words verbally, I could feel in my heart that there was no lie in what she said.

Even though I kept thinking this might be some kind of deception or trick, my soul and intuition were proving that this was undoubtedly the truth.

Of course, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the demon before me was deceiving me through some kind of trickery…

But considering the nature of the soul as the ultimate substance in this world, I couldn’t bring myself to call this soul homogeneity I was feeling a lie.

In this world where I was reborn, the soul is an unknown entity whose essence or origin nobody knows.

Even the high rulers of heaven and the evil lords of the demon realm don’t know where souls originate from, to the extent that they have to actively recruit and offer contracts to obtain souls they like.

In short, the soul exists solely as an independent identity of the individual—an unknown entity.

And the reality is that, at least within the common sense of this world, a soul telling me lies cannot be called the truth.

【Oh my, you should know better than anyone that there’s no deception or trickery here?】

“…Shut up!”

Her soul gently embraced and surrounded mine, and the gaze with which she looked at me clearly contained twisted yet genuine affection…

Only after clearly recognizing that gaze was I finally able to directly perceive the appearance of the “Demon Lord” Beelzebub.

At first glance, she was simply a demon with the appearance of my mother, “Bella de Alzar.”

On top of her golden hair sat a splendid and brilliant crown, beside which grew horns similar to those of a bull. Her eyes, which gazed at me with loving affection, gleamed with an ominous and greedy purple light.

She wore a medieval gray dress similar to those depicted in paintings, but the grotesque spider body that emerged from beneath her skirt hinted at “her” true nature.

The spider lower body, with its black base and purple accents, along with the pair of bat wings spread behind her back, emphasized her non-human nature.

Of course, apart from these non-human body parts, her basic form was still human, so at first glance, there didn’t seem to be any particular problem with her appearance…

But peeling back one layer revealed her true essence lurking beneath the surface.

One facet of a transcendent self born from countless emotions made me see numerous overlapping forms.

Desire for life, decaying essence, ruler, seed of abundance, killer. And… “gluttony.”

Devouring, consuming, chewing on corpses and eating entrails—a desire that had completely lost its original purpose of energy supply for life, an embodiment of evil constituted solely by “gluttony” that eats only for the sake of eating.

Writhing maggots lurk and pulsate inside the spider’s carapace. Flies buzzing around her body create an even more bizarre atmosphere, and the discharge oozing from various parts of the spider carapace emits a terrible stench.

Without the spiritual protection of the “True Name,” it wouldn’t be strange to go mad from mental damage, as if seeing a mythical creature in some Cthulhu TRPG.

And as I looked at “her,” I asked a question just to test the waters.

“If you’re my parent… if you’re really my mother… why am I a pure human, and what are these memories I’ve had since before I was born?”

Of course, I wasn’t foolish enough to think an enemy would answer all my trivial questions in detail, so this question was more about gauging “her” reaction…

【Well, you were the child of the human ‘me.’ If a child is born between humans, wouldn’t they naturally be human?】

For some reason, while looking at me with a strange gaze, “she” answered my question in a calm tone.

Human, human… Upon hearing those words, I could roughly grasp the circumstances, the secret of my birth.

Since a creature’s species is entirely determined by its physical body, if “she” gave birth to me in my biological mother’s human body, then I am ultimately human.

…Except for the whereabouts of my original mother and the essence of my soul.

The fact that I was a demon’s child—that even if my body was entirely human, my soul might not be human—stimulated something within me.

The thought that I might not be much different from those cultists—the collective term for demon contractors and outer god worshippers, considered absolute evil in the world—blew away half of my reason.

…The funny thing is, even after my reason evaporated, my mind remained cool.

I couldn’t bear to maintain my sanity in the face of this situation that seemed to expose the non-humanity I had been harboring.

I had always believed that demons deserved no mercy or compassion, but her confession tore my already sensitive heart to shreds.

If that demon gave birth to me as my mother, what had happened to my real mother?

Although she might be a complete stranger whom I had never even met directly, the fact that I didn’t know what had happened to my birth mother, whom my father had loved so much, was enough to make my mind boil.

【…Hehe.】

“You’re laughing?!”

Perhaps she had read my anguish and anger? The moment I saw “her” openly smiling before me, I was about to flare up in anger despite knowing I needed to maintain this precarious situation…

【Time’s up.】

“Damn it… damn it!!!”

The fact that this opportunity was ending due to time constraints made me glare at the demon who could eat me like a bug without the protection of the “True Name”—

※ ※ ※

…Fufu. Indeed my son, how cute.

My current True Name isn’t “Baalzebub” but 【Baelzebub】.

I wonder if that child, or the “Arch Duke of Writhing Maggots,” noticed this?