The Blood Sea Answers
"Not bad. I'd thought you weaker than expected, but apparently not."
Even so, the gap was one that could not be crossed.
"Angels are hopelessly ignorant. All they do is swing that tremendous power around."
"......"
"The Demon Tribe, by contrast, designs. We amplify the power we hold a thousandfold, ten-thousandfold, and create phenomena that raw strength alone could never achieve."
"......"
"This future, too, is merely a possibility—but in effect, a foreseen... Are you listening?"
"Ah."
When Berd's grand monologue finally broke off, I lifted my head after a moment's pause.
I was at least trying to hear him out, and he'd gone and cut himself off.
"I'm listening. Please, continue."
"...You feel no fear at all, do you."
Demonic energy, saturated with the will of the world, pressed down on me.
Even so, I showed no reaction whatsoever.
My job here was simply to listen, after all—or so my posture said.
"You actually seem more at ease than before... Have you gone mad?"
"About halfway?"
It wasn't wrong.
It wasn't right, either.
Tap.
The moment I stepped into the world brimming with demonic energy, the power crushing me gave way.
Pure white divinity spread out around me, and the demonic energy was blasted apart, bit by bit.
Purified completely, the corruption could not regenerate; it simply ceased to exist.
Wings of light unfurled from my back, and the divinity that had so casually seized the space Berd had claimed as his own blazed with radiance, as if announcing its presence to all.
Merely by entering, I had thrown the space of possibilities into convulsions, and it retched out a warped, distorted shriek.
Berd's face, already split wide in a grotesque grin, contorted into something even more monstrous.
"I've been giving it some thought. About what to do with you."
Berd, the Sword God, Merni.
Berd's path was annihilation.
There was not the slightest room for rehabilitation—and if only he hadn't dragged me into his mental world, I would have sealed him away somewhere untouchable and been done with it. Instead, he had dug his own grave.
'Though the very idea of "rehabilitating" a demon is laughable to begin with.'
The Sword God, once he lost his sword and went through a cleansing, would probably sort himself out fine on his own.
How much of the system's protection had eroded during his fusion with the demon was an open question, but he likely wouldn't be holding onto that Rank 1 spot much longer.
And last, Merni was...
"What should I do with you?"
The world moved.
Berd's army, swollen with arrogance, moved.
Puppets lunged at me with their various weapons, and from far in the distance, black roots with no end in sight came charging, spraying the demonic energy of lesser demons.
Even the vast demonic energy writhing around Berd condensed into thousands of swords and hurled itself at me.
Quick instincts, I'll give him that.
"You can come out now."
Unfortunately, that instinct had come far, far too late.
From the moment this space had invited me in, the outcome was already decided.
Ssshhk...
Blood began to pour through the seams of the twisted dimension.
Crimson gore, far deeper and darker than any demonic energy.
As if flaunting its very existence, the deluge of blood crashed down and burrowed into the fissures of the earth.
Berd furrowed his brow and twisted a portion of his swords to intercept it—but the culprit of this crimson flood simply curled her pale fingers, almost welcomingly.
FWOOOOOOSH!!!
In an instant, every living thing approaching this place was drained of its blood.
Berd scrambled to shield his puppets from the sudden redirection of the bloodflow, but it was useless.
"Ah, ah—"
Control over all the blood had already passed into her hands.
Click.
A beautiful girl who looked about sixteen.
Silver hair cascaded down her back like a waterfall, reaching her waist, and her crimson eyes—saturated with the blood she'd drunk—glowed proudly within the darkness.
Yet it was not a glittering light, but a red glow that bloomed out of the dark.
Her skin was deathly pale, but with her doll-like features and her neat, composed attire, she didn't look especially strange at all.
"Haa..."
An ancient race who had spent thousands of years in the Void Space.
Master of Blood, the Progenitor—Rasty gazed at her other 'half' with blood-brimming eyes.
"Weak."
"...What?"
"Pharaoh would honestly be better company."
She clenched her thin, white hand once more.
BLURGH—!!!
A staggering torrent of blood gushed out of Berd's body.
And it wasn't merely blood—the 'demonic energy' mixed within it came pouring out along with it.
"Khh—?! URK?!"
Even caught off guard, Berd mounted a counterattack—but it was already too late.
The sea of blood—no, the Blood Sea—swept across the continent, and the roots that had been closing in on us were swallowed whole by crimson waves.
Thousands of swords, submerged in the red flood, lost their master.
"Hk—ghk... Wh-what... What is..."
Click. Click.
The sound of dainty flats rang out across the blood-soaked ground.
With icy eyes, she looked down at Berd, who writhed on the ground like an insect.
Even demonic flesh has blood in it.
And a vampire holds the authority to move that blood as she wills.
Of course, a demon of Berd's caliber would ordinarily have complete dominion over his own blood—but his opponent was Rasty.
An experimental subject built on a supreme demon bearing a higher name, and unlike me, a vampire whose very 'half' was demon—the Progenitor of all vampires.
The experiments performed on her were the implantation of a deranged authority over 'blood' and the infusion of a demon's 'half' into her being.
Everyone had assumed the experiment impossible, yet after more than a thousand years of torment, it succeeded—and Rasty emerged into the world as the first vampire.
'Though the demon who made her is dead.'
Even a supreme demon bearing a higher name can die.
No matter how strong a being is, if the Eight Thrones—who stand above it—exert their power, it dies.
That was the law of the world, and that was exactly why I had cried out in horror back then.
'How was anyone supposed to stop those lunatics?'
The Eight Thrones and the Six Demon Kings—beings whose single swing could hurl a continent into the sky and shred dimensions to tatters.
I still couldn't believe they'd actually reconciled.
Rasty had used the bloodflow to turn every drop of demonic energy on the continent against itself.
The demonic energy put up a brief, token resistance before settling obediently, and from then on, everything moved according to her will alone.
Soon the black roots, too, would run red, and there would be no corner of this world her blood did not reach.
From this moment on, this place belonged to Rasty.
"Rasty."
"...This place is yours now, Unnie?"
Rasty picked up the crude copy of me that Berd had fashioned.
This was a future of possibilities—and since a future in which I was captured and turned into a puppet could never actually come to pass, the thing must have been assembled half-heartedly, a flimsy substitute.
Berd must have been quite flustered, too.
The future itself had unfolded exactly as he'd wanted, but the Lily Elbrit within it was a laughably shoddy thing.
"Grrk. Grrrk..."
In the end, the one taken captive was Berd.
Rasty glanced back and forth between me and the fake, then turned to me and spread her arms wide.
Pat, pat.
At her faint touch as she straightened her own neat clothing, I silently bowed my head and embraced her.
Squeeze... Rasty's pale hands, her slender fingers searching for a warmth she could no longer make herself, wrapped around me.
"You're warm."
"Pharaoh deserves some of the credit for that, you know."
"That statue isn't warm, he's hot. All he knows how to do is play in the sand."
She grumbled as she reluctantly pulled away.
Ever since becoming a vampire, her body no longer held any warmth of its own—it was cold, always.
No matter how much blood she circulated through her body, no matter how much scorching demonic energy she pressed against her skin, that fact never changed.
'Not until she stops being a vampire. Forever, otherwise.'
"It's not like I can hug the Hatchling, either. That little one's full of cold."
"That's true."
"...I told you to speak comfortably. Does it bother you?"
"Of course not."
Rasty is the Progenitor of vampires.
She was once a monarch who commanded tens of thousands of her kind, and an ancient monster once called the Blood Calamity.
The reason she'd been branded an ancient 'monster,' naturally, was the countless humans she had slaughtered.
'...Could you kill me? Me? Me, who cannot die?'
But the Rasty I knew was a young princess.
A tragic girl, kidnapped at sixteen, who through experimentation gained authority over blood and immortality itself.
The world is full of tragic stories, but hers was crueler than most.
Kidnapped in the same instant her family was annihilated, she spent thousands of years in a space where time flowed differently, subjected to experiments that peeled her soul apart.
And when she finally emerged from thousands of years of torment, the first thing she did was paint her homeland red with blood.
Her descendants, her hometown—and beyond that, even the kingdom where the last traces of her family lingered.
Her mind, already reshaped by demonic energy, had made her someone else entirely, and only after the demon who had experimented on her died did she come back to herself.
By the time she awoke, everything was already over.
All of it.
"It's been thousands of years, so I was wondering if I should start showing you more respect."
"...Is that your way of teasing me about being old?"
Rasty's eyes narrowed.
She had spent thousands of years in the Void Space since that day, but she hadn't aged a single day.
A half-demon and the Progenitor of vampires, she would live eternally.
All the more so, considering how much of her time in the mental world was spent asleep.
"Unnie."
"...Sorry, but it's still not time yet."
The me of right now is weak.
While Rasty had grown far stronger over her thousands of years, I had lost my power.
Even if I reclaimed it, Pharaoh would be the first to step out into the world before me.
Rasty, who had once been only a mid-tier demon, now radiated demonic energy at the level of a full high-tier demon.
For her to appear in DeoEn, I suspected I'd need to at least reach my former peak.
Rasty shook her head.
"Take your time. I can keep waiting forever."
"You've made a few friends, at least."
The other monsters inside had vanished when I lost my weapon, but Pharaoh and Rasty, sealed within the Void Space itself, had remained through the years.
The Void Space was a place I'd made precisely so the monsters could chat and keep each other company, to ease their boredom—yet with only the two of them, it must have been dreadfully dull.
'One's a statue. The other is a Progenitor who sleeps ninety percent of any given day.'
...Now that I thought about it, Pharaoh was probably the bored one.
But with new friends being added, things should be a little livelier now.
I was planning to add Karabus before long, too.
Rasty wore an odd little smile.
...Whenever she made that exact face, something suspicious was usually going on.
"What is it now."
"I've stopped sleeping lately. So I'm a little less bored—you don't need to worry."
"Really?"
"Mm. Especially."
She gazed at me, quiet and steady.
"With Lily here, I'm happy."
"...? I see."
I nodded.
Her crimson eyes curved into a gentle smile.
As she looked at the 'someone' from beyond—the one she had crossed over to.
'My name? I'm Lily. Lily Elbrit.'
She looked just like Lily.