10. Demon in a Bottle (11)
10. Demon in a Bottle (11)
A Sacred Relic was the term for a powerful Magic Tool that embodied the authority of a Demon God.
True to its name, the Jewel Trill was the Sacred Relic of the Demon God Kirkeus.
The Eye of Kirkeus.
The jewel had earned that alias because of a peculiar trait.
Whenever a performance took place before it, the gem emitted a red glow. The larger, more extravagant, and more magnificent the performance, the brighter the light grew.
But the phenomenon wasn't limited to sheer scale. The more masterful the acting, the more difficult the acrobatics, the smoother the narrative, the more audacious the staging, and the more polished the script, the stronger the light shone.
In past Circus Grand Prix events, this jewel had been used to determine which troupes would ascend to the Wonder Stage. Companies would perform before the Trill, and only those whose brightness exceeded a set threshold advanced to the finals.
Historical records described how the finalist troupes would compete fiercely over who could make the jewel gleam brighter.
This was why it was called the Eye of Kirkeus: because Kirkeus was believed to watch the performances through this gem.
However, the original Eye of Kirkeus had been lost after the terrorist attack at the Second Circus Grand Prix.
The jewel mentioned in the article had been newly crafted for this year's event.
Ordinarily, a Magic Tool or Sacred Relic was obtained through a Rite, in which a Madosa bargained directly with a Demon God.
But in recent years, thanks to the efforts of magicologists, methods had been developed to draw upon a Demon God's power through a combination of offerings, scriptural characters, glyphs, songs, and dances.
Kirkeus worship, by its nature, had always occupied a space between the domains of faith and commerce—rooted in adherence to rules and the logic of transactions. The academic research had tilted the balance toward commerce.
According to the article, the scholars of the Castille Magic Academy were responsible for restoring the Trill for this year's Grand Prix. That academy was Maya's alma mater.
I reread the contents of the third Main Quest.
*Main Quest - Trill
: The thing you have desired to lay your hands upon.
Completion Condition
: Devour the Trill once it has turned fully red.
Success Reward
: Manipulation of 'Innate Traits' is possible without incurring 'Demonization Penalty.'
Failure Penalty
: None.
The quest instructed me to devour the Trill after it had become "completely red."
As mentioned, the Trill shone red when it witnessed an exceptional performance.
But making it turn completely red with the performance of a single troupe was impossible.
The article mentioned that over twenty years ago, the era's finest companies—including the Pandora Magic Show—had gathered to perform before it, yet the red light had failed to fill even half the jewel.
In other words, achieving a fully red Trill required a festival on a greater scale. It demanded selecting the world's best circus troupes, gathering them in one place, and drawing out their finest performances before it.
That was precisely the Circus Grand Prix.
Wonderstein's obsession with this competition had no other explanation. He was after that jewel, waiting for the moment it shone at its absolute brightest.
I had known since early on that Wonderstein's goal was this gem. The Trill was, as the title suggested, the central object of the game.
What I hadn't known until reading the article were the conditions for its red radiance and the lore tied to it.
Still, rereading the article over and over yielded no further answers.
Why did the Eye of Kirkeus possess the power to manipulate Innate Traits? What connection truly linked Devolut, Wonderstein, and Kirkeus?
I spent the night turning those questions over, but nothing else surfaced.
In the end, I set aside my worries about the Eye of Kirkeus. To see it reach a fully red state, I would have to wait until the finals anyway. It was a problem I could afford to contemplate over time.
Something else demanded immediate attention: the Demonization Penalty.
"Troupe Leader, it's time to leave!"
Yurakne poked her head around the door. Two hands gripped the edge while her other four rapped against the wood.
"Has it been that long already?"
I rose from my seat. I'd pulled an all-nighter sorting through the new information.
The clock had only just chimed. Though it was early morning, we couldn't delay our departure from the villa. The carriage ride to the school took an hour and a half, and if Ella and Maya were going to avoid being late, we had to leave now.
Yurakne held out a wrapped bundle.
"Toast and milk for the road. And for you, Troupe Leader—ta-da! Tea! I tracked down the local specialty blend, even in a cold region like this."
She extended a thermos. After half a heartbeat of hesitation, I accepted it.
"Thank you."
"Oh, come on—we agreed you wouldn't say that just for tea."
"We did, didn't we?"
I pulled on my cloak and stepped out of the room. She fell in beside me as naturally as breathing.
"Are Miss Ella and Miss Maya ready?"
"Already downstairs waiting. Though Miss Maya was being impossible. She tried to leave with her hair a total mess, just rolled out of bed. So I grabbed her, washed her hair myself, even scrubbed her face. If I'd let her out the door like that, people would've blamed you. Leaving a girl that pretty looking neglected."
As we walked together, I studied her profile with a sidelong glance. A faint weariness clung to her face. Since dawn, she'd prepared the troupe's meals, checked on the students' readiness for school, and still found time to see to my comfort.
And it wasn't just today. Within this circus, she was second only to Ella in how much work she shouldered.
If Ella led the troupe onstage, Yurakne supported it everywhere offstage.
"Forgive me. You're always overworking yourself, Miss Yura."
"Huh? Oh—ahaha—saying that out of nowhere is a little embarrassing. Everything I do, I do because I want to. Call it selfish. Still, it does feel nice to hear it."
She beamed and said she was glad, but I found it hard to take the words at face value. Not after what I'd learned about her Demonization Penalty the day before.
I looked again at the reward entry on the third Main Quest. It hinted at something crucial.
Without the Eye of Kirkeus, any attempt to manipulate an Innate Trait triggered the Demonization Penalty.
A conversation I'd had with her about a month ago, during the entrance exam, surfaced in my memory.
—Ah, it's not that I don't trust your power, Troupe Leader! It's just... I thought maybe... staying like this wouldn't be so bad.
—Are you comfortable in your body as it is, Miss Yura?
—No, no, it's not that. I'd like to be normal too, if I could... But if the treatment has side effects...
—Side effects?
She'd known something then. I'd tried to press her on it, but Allen and Joe had kicked up a fuss about entering the examination hall, and the chance had slipped away.
Now, though, I could guess what she'd been about to say.
Demonization. She'd been aware of it. Aware that it was the penalty for tampering with an Innate Trait. That was why she'd been skeptical of my offer to attempt treatment.
I opened the Member Management Window. Her Demonization progression currently sat at 22 percent.
The clues all pointed in one direction. At some point in the past, she had tried to erase her Innate Trait. It had failed, and she had experienced the side effect—the Demonization—firsthand.
The Spider Woman. Seeing her demonized form in the game, you didn't need to read the explanatory text to grasp the meaning of those words: Eros and Thanatos.
She abducted men, sealed them in cocoons, mated with them, and then devoured them. She professed love for Wonderstein while murmuring about how much she wanted to chew his head open.
A textbook Black Widow.
I read the description of her Demonization Penalty.
Trait: Demonization Penalty — Eros and Thanatos
Target: Yurakne
Effect: The subject experiences confusion in distinguishing between erotic and thanatic impulses.
I'd once read a blog post meditating on spiders. If the erotic impulse was love and birth, the thanatic impulse was destruction and death. The killing frenzy of a female spider devouring her mate manifested at the peak of copulation—the moment erotic drive crested, it converted into thanatic drive.
That was the Demonization Penalty afflicting Yurakne. Fitting, for the moniker of Spider Woman.
But had she ever actually shown symptoms of Demonization? Judging that was difficult, since it all played out inside her own mind.
A past question I'd once harbored about her resurfaced in my thoughts. The incident at the Axville Market.
At the time, I'd been a figure of terror to every troupe member except Ella. And yet Yurakne had approached me with an Affection level of just 3. Though she trembled with fear, she'd peeled potatoes beside me and accompanied me to the market.
Ella had overcome her fear through hatred, but Yurakne had no such fuel. To chalk it up to her simply liking Wonderstein from the start didn't fit—the warmth she showed me had never matched the Affection level displayed by the System.
Back then, isolated from the entire troupe, I'd simply been grateful she reached out to me at all. But in hindsight, it was strange.
Why had she been capable of feeling goodwill toward me?
I hadn't understood then, but now a plausible hypothesis had formed.
Demonization Penalty — Eros and Thanatos. It impaired the distinction between erotic and thanatic feelings.
In other words, she had indeed feared me. But the moment our eyes met that night, her terror had peaked—and in that instant, it had been converted into an increase in Affection level. The exact reverse of the female spider's mechanism.
"Troupe Leader?"
Yurakne turned to look at me. Lost in thought, I'd stopped dead in front of the staircase.
"What were you thinking about?"
She tilted her head. Brown skin, violet hair pinned up with a hairpin. Even the loose blouse she wore to conceal four arms couldn't fully hide the curves of her figure.
The curious expression on her face as she looked up at me had a cuteness that belied her status as a married woman in her mid-twenties. But beneath that, the rich, heady scent of a woman in full bloom rose from the lines of her body.
Had she been born ordinary, she would have been cherished wherever she went. Instead, thanks to the devil Wonderstein, she'd been cursed with a form that invited scorn, lost her husband, and ultimately met a wretched end as a monster. I remembered her dying form, weeping and calling out Wonderstein's name, begging to be saved. Back then, I'd dismissed her as just a villainess clinging to a psychopath...
The affection of the only monster in the troupe who'd ever shown Wonderstein any warmth—had it, too, been something he'd cultivated by exploiting her psychological weakness? And I had unwittingly done something similar.
A deep sympathy for her welled up in me.
"...No. It's nothing."
Down the stairs, Ella and Maya waited in their gym clothes. Yurakne spotted the disarray in Maya's hair and hurried over to fix it again.
The Eye of Kirkeus. It would only fill completely with red light after the Circus Grand Prix Finals began—which meant after the completion of the Main Quest: Circus Grand Prix. And the forced return triggered by the Main Quest: Prequel would activate at some point during the competition.
The only window to resolve the Main Quest: Trill lay between those two quests.
Kirkeus never demanded the impossible. It could be done.
"Troupe Leader!"
Yurakne had bundled the other two into the carriage and was calling to me, gesturing toward the empty seat beside her.
A normal body. That was the only gift I could give to the members who would spend these two years with me.
I carved that new goal into my mind and climbed into the carriage after them.