Chapter 37: Love and Peace (6)

It was a fear that stemmed from instinct.

The magical girl named Aeon felt like something far too alien to be called human.

Even Ianna, who had always tried to treat every magical girl without discrimination, instinctively shrank back whenever she approached Aeon.

She couldn’t maintain her usual composure at all.

Aeon was more beautiful than anyone else.

So beautiful, so forlorn, like a solitary flower blooming high atop a cliff, that Ianna could barely meet her gaze.

She looked endlessly peaceful, endlessly beautiful, and dignified.

Every time Ianna saw her, her heart would boil without her realizing it.

At first, she thought this sensation—the heat rushing to her face—was some unspeakable affection she only felt toward a very select few magical girls.

But it wasn’t.

It didn’t take long for her to realize it was fear.

It wasn’t her heart burning—it was her heart cowering in anxiety.

Just like an animal that freezes in tension when encountering a higher predator, Ianna’s whole body would stiffen and enter a state of heightened tension.

And every time that happened, Aeon would tease her playfully with jokes—like, “I’ll eat you up,” and so on.

Jokes that she couldn’t easily laugh off.

Even knowing they were jokes, they made her skin crawl.

Aeon’s voice was colder than anything else in existence, and it chilled Ianna to the core.

After spending a day talking to Aeon, she would find herself soaked in cold sweat.

Even so, Ianna still tried to get closer to Aeon.

Because most other magical girls would flee in terror the moment they saw Aeon, leaving her perpetually alone.

That sight pained Ianna deeply.

Thus.

She tried to overcome her fear.

She wanted to understand the source of the terror she felt toward Aeon.

Responsible as she was, Ianna couldn’t simply leave it alone.

She wanted to figure it out—and resolve it.

That was what she believed her role to be.

‘…I shouldn’t have.’

Aeon had the air of a noble queen. Ianna could sense an overwhelming dignity and grace that she could never hope to reach.

Though she never asked about Aeon’s past, she assumed Aeon must have been from an aristocratic lineage in Europe.

That was simply how she carried herself.

In the end, the one who pushed Aeon halfway into madness was none other than herself.

At least, that’s how Ianna saw it.

She had failed to notice what Aeon was missing. She had failed to see the hollowness within her.

She had failed to identify the true cause of the fear she felt.

She had failed to understand what Aeon needed to fill the emptiness in her heart.

Unaware of everything, Ianna had approached her—and thus drove her halfway to insanity.

It was the greatest mistake of Ianna’s life. She had always regretted it.

The guilt weighed so heavily that she could hardly stand upright.

Ironically, despite what she had done, Aeon harbored an immense fondness for her.

Even when she had lost control, Aeon obeyed when Ianna requested that she submit to a little restraint.

Aeon was being confined at the Hokkaido Dispatch Agency—located deep beneath the sea.

Even if Aeon were to escape, it was meant to buy enough ‘time’ to gather every magical girl on Earth to respond.

It was literally just to buy time.

It was impossible to imprison or stop Aeon by burying her deep underwater.

Even if they detonated the entire Hokkaido agency, it wouldn’t kill her.

It would only make her stronger.

Aeon could not die.

No matter what form she took, no matter what she looked like, she would live on.

Even Ianna didn’t know how long Aeon had been alive.

Sometimes she was a girl, sometimes a noblewoman, sometimes a general or a merchant, a female pharaoh, even a king, an emperor, or a politician.

Aeon lived by freely shifting her forms, and the Administration Bureau itself was suspicious of her origins.

No one knew if she’d lived hundreds or even thousands of years.

Only a tiny handful—including Ianna—knew the truth: that Aeon was immortal.

Even Huh Sang and Hojoon couldn’t grasp the full extent of Aeon’s identity.

Aeon’s two eyes were different colors.

She had heterochromia: one eye was blood-red, the other a shimmering emerald green.

Ianna thought that the source of the terrifying alienness she felt from Aeon lay in those two eyes.

Every time she looked into them, the fear she felt would surge.

And so.

When Ianna suggested colored contacts to hide them, Aeon immediately gouged out her own eyes.

It was a memory that remained a deep trauma for Ianna.

It was also the moment that exposed just how unstable Aeon’s mental state had become due to her.

Aeon had lived a long time carrying her Lemegeton.

But after meeting Ianna, she had fallen into madness—or so Ianna believed.

The day after gouging out her eyes, Aeon’s eyes were perfectly restored.

Even when Aeon had her limbs torn apart by Misangche, when she was launched into outer space, or when she strangled a fellow magical girl and was sentenced to “execution”—

The very next day, Aeon would be back as if nothing had happened.

No one besides Ianna ever noticed.

No one remembered what had happened the day before.

Neither did Aeon.

They were both steadily going insane.

Maybe, if Ianna had just stayed away from her, it would’ve been fine.

Aeon’s obsessive affection toward her sometimes sent chills down her spine.

Whenever Aeon so much as touched her, she would faint.

Even Ianna’s iron will and indomitable spirit would melt slowly, without her even realizing it.

Moreover—

What she truly feared was Aeon’s ability.

Aeon’s Lemegeton took the form of a staff with serpent-like curves wrapped around it.

Among magical girls whose Lemegetons typically took shapes like swords, spears, or shields, it was an unusual form.

And with that staff in her hands—

Aeon was the strongest.

Among both the Twelve Seats of magical girls and the artificial magical girls, Aeon stood unmatched.

Even Ianna, at her peak, had been no match for her.

Aeon.

As her name implied, she could make others “plead”.

She could make them beg for death, beg for love, beg for peace or mercy.

The moment she muttered a spell while gripping her staff, everything changed in an instant.

Magical girls who once loathed Aeon would offer up their lives to win her love.

Mindless Misangche would obey her commands.

Some magical girls, consumed by the urge to die, would beg Aeon to kill them, pressing their foreheads to her feet.

Others would faint from sheer terror upon seeing her.

Aeon’s powers even surpassed Huh Sang’s ability to alter reality.

Thanks to this ability, in the novel’s later parts, Aeon single-handedly massacred billions of humans on Earth.

And—

The creepiest part was that there were never any corpses left behind.

Those caught by Aeon’s ability simply vanished.

Only some reddish stain would remain at the corners of her mouth.

Ianna would see Aeon dabbing the blood delicately with a handkerchief after smacking her lips and feel a bottomless disgust and fear—but she couldn’t say anything.

Physical attacks didn’t work on Aeon.

Even if her body was torn into thousands of pieces, she would regenerate, squirming back together.

Even if temporarily knocked out, she would fully recover by the next day.

As if nothing had ever happened.

No one would even remember that Aeon had been attacked.

Not even the attacker.

Aeon’s main specialty was overwhelming mental assault, devastating even against Misangche.

But that didn’t mean she was weak in close combat either.

Even at her prime, Ianna had been miserably defeated by Aeon without Aeon taking even three steps.

No one denied that Aeon was the strongest.

Anyone who dared scratch her pride would not escape unscathed.

Aside from her mental instability, Aeon was the Administration Bureau’s most powerful hidden weapon.

That’s why she wasn’t included in the “Pest Control” plans.

Other bureaus that knew of her existence dared not pick fights with the Bureau.

Mainly because—

They couldn’t kill her.

Regardless, from her experience, Ianna had a vague sense of it.

The abnormal terror that Aeon radiated—it was a primal survival instinct.

Just like normal humans instinctively found Byulmuri unsettling because they couldn’t see ether energy, magical girls who could sense ether felt abject fear when facing Aeon.

It was like feeling a snake slithering across your shoulders.

Even now, merely recalling Aeon’s face made Ianna break out into cold sweat.

Remembering the times Aeon smacked her lips while looking at her—or when Aeon had threatened to “eat her”—made her feel like fainting.

“Deputy Director! Connection established!”

“…Put it through.”

The time had come.

Everyone swallowed hard.

Even people who couldn’t see ether energy felt the oppressive pressure of the name “Aeon”.

Anyone who had ever seen her face couldn’t help but tense up.

[Hojoon, you’ve grown so much. The suit suits you nicely.]

“…Thank you, Magical Girl Aeon.”

Aeon was securely bound in restraints, with only her crimson lips visible.

Yet she still seemed to be able to observe Hojoon’s appearance.

Even just seeing Aeon’s lips, Ianna felt like she was about to faint.

Her mind was at its absolute limit.

[So, you have a favor to ask, don’t you?]

“Yes. We are facing a crisis. An unidentified magical girl is rampaging. In a rather grotesque form.”

[I know. I’ve been watching everything.]

At Aeon’s words, even Hojoon flinched slightly.

It was rare for Hojoon to show any signs of nervousness, but it was evident in his trembling voice.

And yet—

For some reason, Aeon’s voice sounded endlessly sweet to me now.

Regardless of intonation or pronunciation, it was an incredibly soft, pleasant voice.

[Hojoon, what price have you prepared? Are you ready to offer me all the Twelve Seats of magical girls? If so, I’ll gladly act.]

Aeon smacked her lips as she spoke.

Despite the tranquilizers still lingering in my system, the sheer terror made it impossible to move.

Like a mouse before a snake.

It felt like Hojoon was going to offer me up to the witch called Aeon.

[If you do it now, I could solve it with just one among the Twelve Seats….]

Without saying a word, Hojoon quietly moved to shield me—just like the lieutenant had done before, hiding me from the monitor’s view with his broad back.

And then—

[…Janwol, you, specifically.]

Those were Aeon’s final words before I blacked out.