397. Dusk (2)
397. Dusk (2)
- 1 -
Clarent sprawled beneath their feet.
The colossal city carved from an entire mountainside cast deep shadows in the dying sun's crimson light.
"Heh. A city that truly reveals Hecate's desires."
Asmodeus traced the city walls with a finger, murmuring in admiration.
"Is that so?"
Saya's voice was impassive.
Her eyes of fated crimson meticulously observed Asmodeus's every move.
So she could later find something to report to her master.
"Of course. That ambition of hers, claiming the Demon King's throne..."
Asmodeus folded her arms and nodded.
Between her slender arms, her 'sensuality' became even more pronounced.
Her eyes were scanning the entire panorama of the city.
"Is on full display."
It was exactly as she said.
The black city, Clarent.
Sharp, towering spires jutted up all over the city as if to pierce the heavens.
Wyverns and flying monsters gliding leisurely between them.
Black, purple, and crimson banners fluttering atop the dark ramparts.
A city that was simultaneously majestic and yet somehow shrouded in an ominous aura.
Even its inhabitants regarded that ominous aura as 'a symbol of steadfast strength.'
It was as if Pandemonium had been lifted up to the surface and scaled down.
"...It is also beautiful."
Asmodeus turned her gaze to the sky.
"Now I understand why nobles from the Demon Realm come up to the surface for pleasure."
A sky shifting from blue to the scarlet of evening, then to a mysterious violet.
The ever-changing spectrum of color was scenery impossible to find in the Demon Realm, where only a red sky existed.
The endless spectrum of the heavens reflected in her golden eyes, creating a mysterious light.
"Have you never visited the Continent?"
Saya asked back, a note of surprise in her voice.
Among the high-ranking nobles of the Demon Realm, there were barely any who had never experienced the pleasures of the surface.
Asmodeus looked at her as if finding her endearing.
It was a gaze both bewitching and gentle, befitting the Duke of Lust.
"That's right. I saw no reason to come."
She clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her body backward.
Not a flamboyant dress, but a simple one-piece dress fluttered in the wind.
"The value I place on beauty primarily lies in living things, you see."
It was an understandable statement.
It was an answer befitting the ruler of 'Lust,' who had no less than forty official consorts.
"But this place, truly..."
Asmodeus spun around with both arms outstretched.
Her skirt billowed wide, revealing pale legs.
Her golden hair scattered, leaving trails like sparks of light, making her resemble an angel descending to the surface.
Except for the fact that she exuded an allure that could captivate anyone.
"...is beautiful."
She turned and faced Saya.
Her eyes, glowing with a light brighter than her hair, narrowed.
"Including someone standing right here."
Sandaled feet trod the grass at the summit.
Saya, her chin lifted by a finger, stared back at her with indifferent eyes.
Gazing into those fated crimson eyes, the Duke of Lust's eyes softened into a gentle curve.
"You're completely unshaken. This hurts my pride."
"My apologies. My heart is directed only toward one person."
Saya's voice remained perfectly steady.
The only place she ever wavered was before her master.
"It's enough to make me jealous. My..."
Slowly descending fingers. Fingertips approaching her collarbone.
The divine authority to enthrall with a mere touch, to induce submission with a mere meeting of eyes.
That hand, advancing like a serpent, was seized by Saya firmly and without a moment's hesitation.
"...Utter single-minded devotion."
A being unaccustomed to refusal. A woman whom everyone naturally coveted.
That was the Duke of Lust. A being called 'the most beautiful demon' of the present age.
Yet, not a trace of displeasure surfaced on Asmodeus's face as she looked at Saya.
On the contrary, a pleased smile lingered there.
"So it makes me covet you more... but I must restrain myself. I don't wish to earn Hecate's hatred."
"That is because my master is a being many times more beautiful than someone like me."
Saya continued to offer calm praise of her master.
Asmodeus, who had been looking at her with a somewhat dumbfounded expression, smiled softly and nodded.
"That's true, though. She properly inherited the beauty of the Gluttony Duke and her mother."
At those words, Saya's eyes began to glimmer.
Curiosity about her master's birth. It was an emotion she could not suppress.
"Do you know about the Great Mother?"
"There's no way I wouldn't. It was the greatest gossip in the Demon Realm at the time."
Asmodeus gradually revealed what had happened back then.
"For some reason, the Gluttony Duke, who hadn't had children for a long while after giving birth to her youngest, brought in a 'new youngest' from somewhere..."
She paused for a moment and looked down at Clarent, recalling that the master of that city below was precisely that 'new youngest.'
"And within a few days, she pushed that newborn infant onto the surface."
And so, Libertas, who had left for the surface, reappeared exactly twenty years after the Gluttony Duke had pushed her away.
"...Is such a case common, originally?"
"Which part? Registering a child of unknown origin as legitimate instead of illegitimate, or sending a newborn to the surface?"
Asmodeus tilted her head to the side and asked in return.
"Both."
Asmodeus fell silent, touching her lips with her hand.
She soon voiced agreement.
"Yes. Both are fairly common occurrences. Though combining both was rare. Only low-ranking nobles who mistook the seat of a Dungeon Lord for a gamble would throw a newborn onto the surface. The children of high-ranking nobles were sent only after they had grown a little."
She turned again to face Saya and continued.
"That being you call the Great Mother. The moment that otherworldly being appeared, the Demon Realm fell into great confusion."
Even though so many years had passed, Asmodeus's voice still held lingering awe.
"Unless you were at least of Count grade, merely standing before her would cause inexplicable headaches. Had she not shown 'consideration,' half the nobles in Pandemonium at the time would have perished."
"It was that...?"
"Even that is a fairly conservative estimate."
Asmodeus recalled that being in her mind.
'She' seemed to strive somehow to maintain a humanoid form, but her power and existence would soon betray her amorphous true nature.
Her hair became the Milky Way, shedding countless starlights and 'eyes.' The eyes that had risen in the pitch-black void had gazed at Asmodeus herself as if in passing, bearing indescribable power.
Just that alone had sent shivers through her entire body.
She was not an unassailable enemy, but a being you could only fight while resigned to certain death.
It had been an experience that instantly awakened her—she who, after becoming an Archduke, had fallen into arrogance and believed that, aside from the Demon Realm Archdukes like the Demon King, there was no one who could face her.
"How she and the Gluttony Duke formed a relationship remains one of the mysteries of the Demon Realm. She was such an overwhelmingly powerful... and 'beautiful' being, after all."
She let out a long breath, like someone waking from a deep dream.
Then, clapping her hands lightly, she spread her arms as if shaking off fragments of the past.
"That's enough old stories. Let's return to the main topic."
Her curved eyes still held the same goodwill.
"Though, what I have to say is the standard inspection."
Behind her back, nine voluminous golden tails revealed their semi-transparent forms.
- 2 -
Holy Imperial Capital, the Holy See. The Pope's Bedchamber.
""Your Holiness!!""
The Archbishops and Saintesses burst into the room, shouting the title in unison.
Right now, everyone had to. Whether it was genuine worry or calculated flattery.
But they soon had to stop in their tracks.
"Shh. He is sleeping again."
Because Ceremonial Archbishop Theodosia was standing before them, a finger pressed to her lips.
She had not attended the meeting and had instead been tending to the Pope here.
Now that the line between enemy and ally within the Holy Kingdom was unclear, only she, who oversaw the education of the Saintesses and was simultaneously the Pope's first cousin, could guard this place.
"Did he really... wake up?"
At Adriana's worried question, Theodosia nodded slowly.
"Yes. Though he fell back asleep shortly after."
Following her gaze, everyone's eyes turned to the bed.
There lay the Pope, looking similar to how he had for the past several weeks, yet clearly different.
Swooo...
His chest, which had been so still he seemed truly dead, without even a breath, was faintly rising and falling.
"Did his body seem alright?"
"Since he has been unable to move his body at will for so long, he is still very weak. But other than that, he is healthy, so he will be able to recover and rise soon."
At Theodosia's words, the Archbishops let out sighs of relief.
"Hah... What a relief."
"Indeed."
"The Lord has not abandoned us."
The Archbishops' expressions and eyes held genuine sincerity.
They had yet to fully taste the sweetness of power and were originally diligent bishops who had worked for the people in the field.
Though their newly gained positions might be endangered if the Pope awoke, everyone understood that the Holy Kingdom now needed a firm center of gravity more than anything.
A faint smile appeared on Adriana's lips as she read the bishops' hearts with her 'eyes' and felt reassured.
It was then.
"...Ugh..."
""Your Holiness...!""
At the sound from the bed, everyone's attention focused there again.
Pope Clemens IV was struggling to open his eyes.
"Wait. Do not all crowd him at once. Only the Saintesses, come this way."
After Theodosia organized the Archbishops, she led the three Saintesses to the bedside.
"Your Holiness! Are you alright?"
Lucia immediately took the Pope's hand, eyes welling with tears.
Clementine glared at her with a sense of disbelief.
It was the behavior befitting the most calculating woman among the three.
"Lucia... Saintess...?"
"Yes! It's Lucia Kantes Kerubon, Your Holiness!"
Clemens IV's clear eyes, which had been staring at Lucia's face for a long while, moved to Adriana and Clementine standing beside her, then closed again for a moment.
And then he uttered a name that shattered everyone's expectations.
"...Esther?"
At that single word, the faces of the three Saintesses darkened simultaneously.
One with genuine regret, the other two with subtle jealousy.
The three reached a tacit agreement with just a brief exchange of glances.
'His Holiness is still physically frail.'
'Let us keep it secret that Esther has joined a new religious sect until he recovers properly.'
Adriana stepped forward.
"She has not yet returned, as she is still on an external mission."
"Is that so..."
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Pope did not inquire after Esther any further.
Instead, he suddenly called out to Adriana with a voice imbued with incomparable strength.
"Adriana Kantes Kiriotha."
"Your Holiness...?"
A voice that subtly resonated in all directions.
Startled, Adriana found the light dwelling in the Pope's reopened eyes.
A radiance resembling the power of the one who poured down from the distant heavens above.
A holy effulgence.
The power contained in that voice was not something a mortal could produce.
"N-No way...!"
"Lucia Kantes Kerubon. Clementine Kantes Dinami."
At that point, the other two Saintesses also realized what was happening here.
The Pope's body rose like a feather and settled above the bed.
His back and shoulders were perfectly straight. Effulgence shining between his half-closed eyes.
A halo rising above his head, and an aura settling over his entire body.
It was a divine revelation. An 'Oracle.'
""O Lord...!""
The Saintesses all knelt, and the Archbishops prostrated themselves on the spot, awaiting his words with awe.
"Go to the highest place. With all hands."
A voice that echoed directly only within the souls of the three Saintesses.
The Saintesses lifted their heads and stared at the Pope with questioning eyes.
"March forth and pour out the glory of Heaven. Then I will lift up your hands and judge."
"What do you mean by that...?"
It was not a human proclamation, but a divine directive.
"It awakens. 'Slaughter' and 'Frenzy.'"
Kurrrrrng —— !!
It was the revelation of a true 'Holy War.'