Chapter 2 — 의문
Part 2, Chapter 32
A Question
Mephisto yawned his maw wide and bit down on Lilith’s true body.
Crunch!
Where his fangs sank in, torrents of demonic energy burst out like blood.
Sparks sprayed in every direction, shredding the nearby remnants and drifting souls.
But Lilith wasn’t easy prey either.
Hiss!
She slid like water, coiling hard around Mephisto’s neck.
Crk-krk-krk.
A horrifying sound came from Mephisto’s throat.
Bite force was one thing—but there was something far worse.
Demonic poison, seeping in.
From the venom glands behind Lilith’s fangs, demonic toxin leaked into Mephisto’s body.
Truth be told, Lilith’s true specialty wasn’t hypnosis or brainwashing.
Her venom was so vicious that just inhaling it could kill you—or at least leave you a drooling idiot.
Even a single bite had a devastating effect on Mephisto.
And yet—
Mephisto didn’t loosen the grip once he had hold of her.
If anything, he shook his head with such ferocity it looked like he’d tear her apart at any moment.
Kra-koom!
Then he slammed Lilith’s head hard into the ground.
Her fangs ripped free. Black blood gushed—he didn’t care.
Instead, he packed demonic energy into one hand and forged a massive spear.
The very demon-spear that had once felled the Gem Dragon Shainak.
Mephisto gripped it and drove it straight down.
Krrrrrk!
Whump!
Unable to withstand that concentrated demonic energy, one of Lilith’s heads exploded.
Screeeech—!
「How dare you! How daaare you!」
Lilith screamed in pain, but—
『Noisy. I’ll tear that other mouth off too.』
Mephisto snorted and swept the spear brutally toward her remaining head.
Lilith’s eyes flashed; she slipped past and coiled the shaft instead.
Her jaws yawned wide as if to swallow Mephisto whole.
Thud! Boom! Thud! Boom!
With each pass of the two Demon Kings, the inner world shook like it would collapse at any second, blasted by raw detonations.
A fight of bite and counter-bite that never stopped.
Then—
Skreeeek!
From one corner of the inner world came the sound of glass cracking, and fractures spidered out.
Rrrrrumble—
A wave of demonic energy crashed over it, widening the cracks.
If the battle kept up like this, the inner world really would collapse.
And then what?
If they were merely ejected, they’d be lucky. But if they were trapped in here…
A dozen possibilities flashed through Elric’s mind—but he still didn’t dare jump in.
This wasn’t anything like the fight with Azazel…!
Of course, things were different now.
Unlike Azazel, Lilith had spent a thousand years focusing on recovery. Mephisto, too, had regained far more power than back then. The gap was inevitable.
Which meant, unlike with Azazel, there was nothing Elric could do by charging in.
Still feels wrong to just stand here doing nothing.
As he scanned around for any way to help—
Something snagged Elric’s eye.
The remnants of the ritual he’d seen at first, and the souls drifting through the void.
“…Come to think of it, how did Lilith recover her strength again?”
She planted her brand to make hosts, and when they died, she absorbed their mana.
And those souls and remnants were the people who’d been her hosts.
“Oh?”
The moment the thought clicked—
Grin.
An unspeakably wicked smile curved Elric’s lips.
At the same time, a chill pricked down Lilith’s spine without her even knowing why.
“【Cut.】”
As the Wordspell triggered, an icestorm of blades roared out from Elric.
Ch-ch-ch-ch—
In a blink, several souls vanished with strangled death cries.
Lilith flinched and snapped her gaze his way. The wounds Mephisto had dealt her were knitting far more slowly.
Bingo.
Elric grinned wider.
「Mervingeer!」
Lilith bellowed, enraged that he’d exposed her weakness.
* * *
“Pff! Guess a wild hunch really can bag a demon, huh?”
The moment Elric’s hypothesis proved true, he didn’t hesitate.
Lilith had her hands full with Mephisto anyway. She’d have a hard time targeting him.
“【Rend】, 【and Rend again】. 【Break】, 【and Break again】.”
Elric ranged across the inner world, hosing down everything in sight with offensive spells.
Boom-boom-boom—
Ch-ch-ch-ch!
Screeeeeam!
Wails echoed from every direction. The wandering souls were torn apart, the remnants crumbled to dust.
「You little wretch, how dare you…!」
All of that was the source of demonic energy fueling Lilith’s revival.
As it threatened to run dry in an instant, Lilith roared herself hoarse.
But—
『You dare take your eyes off this king? How arrogant.』
In the same breath, Mephisto blurred in, sank his fangs into her torso, and tore out a chunk.
Slaaash!
「Kyaaaaaah!」
“Oh, look at you, Mephi—actually useful for once.”
Elric gave him a thumbs-up and went right back to work.
Whooosh-whooosh—!
With the interference gone, clearing out remnants and souls got even easier.
And each time he did, he could feel Lilith’s power bleeding away in real time.
The pressure warping the space around them softened drastically.
As expected—these were feeding her power.
With his guess confirmed, Elric went even harder.
Patriarch’s Secret Art
Heaven-and-Earth Annihilation Bomb
Boom-boom-boom-boom—
“Now that’s a spectacle.”
The blossoms of fire filling the void looked like festival fireworks.
Lilith wrenched free of Mephisto and shrieked.
「Mervinger! Mervingeer! You pests dare meddle with my work again!」
She had to choose.
Keep fighting Mephisto, or lose her power to Elric—either way ended the same.
In the end, she judged the hulking Mephisto harder to kill than Elric. Better to take one of them with her at least. She yawned her jaws wide and lunged straight at Elric.
Screeeech!
But—
『Did you take my words for nothing?』
Mephisto raised his hand. Demonic energy massed thick at the tip of the spear he lifted high.
『You die here today.』
「N-no…!」
『At times like this, that inexcusably rude brat of the Mervinger clan has a catchphrase.』
Kraaaaa—
『It’ll do.』
Mephisto’s spear punched clean through Lilith’s crown with a thunderclap.
Crack—
Whump!
Kra-kra-kra-kra—
A colossal shockwave rang out in countless ripples, racing in every direction.
Cracks webbed across the inner world in an instant, and fragments started to fall away one by one.
He didn’t stop—he poured on more force and drove the spear deeper.
He meant to finish Lilith for good.
To strip her of every last drop of her power.
And of course—
Screeeee—
Szzzzzt!
Wraiths and remnants leaked out of Lilith’s shattered body, howling as they were sucked into Mephisto.
Demonic essence was among them.
The distillate of demonic energy she’d scraped and hoarded for a thousand years.
『Stronger. I grow stronger, and now I will achieve a perfect resurrection!』
Madness flooded Mephisto’s eyes.
A thousand years. A thousand!
He’d lived like a dead rat, dreaming of full revival.
And now, that dream was right before his eyes…!
Seeing those eyes flare blood-red, Lilith—her mind blurring as one head lay in shards—thought. No, understood.
Mephisto’s true aim.
Original Sin…! What Mephistopheles wants is…the complete revival of Original Sin…!
Original Sin—one of the four great powers the Demon God left behind.
Mephisto aimed beyond mere resurrection, beyond the constraints imposed by the sigils. By fusing Lilith’s sigil,
A Demon God.
The source from which Demon Kings and demons themselves sprang.
And—
Mephisto was drawing closer to it, step by step.
Stay here any longer, and forget revival—she might be erased.
「You bastaaard! Damn it aaaaall!」
Clinging to her flickering consciousness, Lilith made one last bid.
If she couldn’t stop them, she had to run.
And her life wasn’t singular.
Two heads.
Which meant she ‘held’ two inner worlds.
Kraaaaa!
A different surge of demonic energy burst from Lilith. A last, feral thrash to live.
Mephisto felt it and moved to react—but she was faster.
Riiip!
Like paper tearing, the inner world split in two.
Boom!
Before either could resist, Elric and Mephisto were flung clean out of reality.
“…Hah!”
Elric sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden shift and snapped his gaze to Kaniye.
“Grrrrr…”
Kaniye’s eyes rolled white; foam bubbled from his lips as he convulsed.
The rampage Elric and Mephisto had unleashed in his inner world had shattered his mind.
Crackle—
Then his body crumbled to fine dust and vanished.
『Damn it! If this king had just a little more power, I’d have finished her!』
Regardless, Mephisto stamped the ground, seething.
Lilith’s escape clearly galled him.
“Still, we didn’t send her off empty-handed.”
Elric glanced at his shoulder. The Sigil of Temptation he’d absorbed before was glowing bright.
When the inner world burst, he’d taken in a substantial chunk of Lilith’s power.
Mephisto’s Sigil of Original Sin was the same, blazing brighter than ever.
Even so, Mephisto looked thoroughly displeased.
『We could have gotten a hundred and only took fifty. What’s there to smile about?』
He hadn’t known Lilith possessed two inner worlds. It had been a trump card she’d hidden even from the other Demon Kings.
Because of that, absorbing only half her power made reawakening the Sigil of Original Sin far harder.
But Elric wasn’t the least bit disappointed. In fact, he was beaming.
“At least we know her nest now. We just nab her there.”
『True enough, but… Haaah.』
They’d gleaned it by peeking into her memories while absorbing her power.
“Who would’ve guessed she was holed up in the Imperial Capital—right in the heart of the Imperial Palace?”
The Talent-Swallowing Magician