Hell and Sloth
Peace.
The sensation of filling the black sea felt distant and serene, like sinking into warm ink.
But even as I savored the sweet repose of rest, the world beyond the veil I'd twisted had transformed into a hell worse than Hell itself.
"......Ah, aaaah!"
The boundary of the veil.
A single demon that had stepped across it stood frozen, mouth agape.
Its time was stretched a hundredfold.
In the span of a single blink, its brain had to process tens of thousands of agonies.
Invisible blades sliced meticulously through its eyeballs and eardrums.
Before the scream could even burst forth, causality rewound mercilessly.
The blades grazed over the restored eyeballs once more.
Loop Count: 1,402 times
Less than a minute had passed in reality.
But for it, it had already been days of eternal slaughter.
The respawning demons instinctively realized it.
This "sanctuary" was forbidden ground where even death was not permitted.
The terror etched into their souls spread like a plague, and in an instant, several kilometers around the veil were shrouded in deathly silence, devoid of any life.
In that stillness, I finally began to dream a satisfying dream.
*
The heart of Hell.
Atop the obsidian citadel piercing the heavens.
There, Hell's king, Bael, sensed the heavy vibrations in the sunken atmosphere.
"......It's twisted."
Her low voice echoed into the void.
To her, who grasped all causality in Hell, a faint but distinct crack had registered.
Bael opened her closed eyes and expanded her vision.
Her gaze crossed thousands of kilometers of wasteland in an instant, reaching the sanctuary flowing with that alien silence.
A man stood there.
A bizarre existence that emitted no movement, no will.
Around him, lesser demons that had lost track of time were preserved as grotesque statues.
"Hmm."
Bael's eyes narrowed.
In sheer magnitude, the power rivaled a Great Demon.
But its hue was insidiously subtle.
Had she not been Hell's ruler, she might not have even noticed its presence.
Bael pondered deeply as she continued her probe.
"No breath, no pulse, not even the slightest twitch of muscle—absurdly minimal."
It was uncanny.
Undeniably present, yet steeped in such profound emptiness that its energy was imperceptible.
Its birth seemed roughly contemporaneous with hers, yet its concealment was so perfect that even she, the ruler, was only now perceiving it.
"......The primordial sin. The root of Sloth."
Bael murmured softly.
The entity, utterly motionless as if in slumber, was disrupting Hell's ecosystem, yet it posed no immediate threat.
It simply existed there as perfect "nothingness."
"No issue for now."
Bael retracted her expanded vision and lifted her head to the sky.
The pitch-black, burning heavens began to warp slowly.
"The gates are about to open."
A chill smile curved Bael's lips.
"Come forth, pitiful sinners."
She slowly spread her arms toward the falling cluster of souls.
An arrogant gesture, as if benevolently embracing all their screams.
"This is your final destination, the sanctum where your true nature is finally proven. The ugly truth hidden beneath the mask of life shall blossom brilliantly through the torment here."
Amid the torrent of soul-screams, she narrowed her eyes as if hearing a delightful melody.
"Scream to your heart's content and atone for eternity. Hell rejects you not, nor will your sins ever release you."
As her words ended, the heavens split with a colossal scream.
Shimmering soul shards rained down like a meteor shower onto Hell's plains.
Followed by millions, billions of screams that thundered across Hell like an onslaught.
Hell's king, Bael, turned contentedly and stepped into the dark citadel.
As Sloth's sleep deepened, a new pandemonium began in Hell.
*
How much time had passed?
To me, time was merely a measure of sleep's depth.
It didn't matter precisely how many days or nights I'd indulged.
Only the sensation of the soul sea filling up roused my rebooted consciousness.
When I slowly opened my eyes, the scenery beyond the veil had changed dramatically.
The swarms of tens of thousands of demons that had been noisily clawing at the veil were gone.
"......What? A glitch?"
I peered beyond the veil with a puzzled expression.
The empty wasteland was unnaturally quiet.
Dragging my heavy body upright, I slowly walked to the transparent veil's boundary.
Where the soft grass ended and Hell's barren rocky ground began.
I indifferently surveyed the demons' traces strewn beyond, beginning my deductions.
Definitely... no system error.
The ground bore stark black punctures where they'd pierced their own chests, and nail marks from writhing in agony.
The system I'd built was flawless.
A loop that amplified neural screams by stretching time a hundredfold, rewinding causality just before death to repeat the torment infinitely.
In that dilated time, even twitching a finger would feel like eons of minutes.
Executing "self-destruction" like crushing one's heart or brain in such a prison was logically near impossible.
It was like being trapped in a game with the logout button gone.
......And yet they forced a system shutdown and bailed.
They'd done it.
Amid nerves fraying strand by strand, they'd swung their hundredfold-heavier arms to destroy their own hearts—that impossible "suicide."
What terror had driven them to complete the agony of shattering their bodies in that sluggish time and flee?
Death in Hell wasn't the end.
Just revival at some other coordinate.
In the end, to escape this horrific infinite disassembly show, they'd endured self-harm crueler than any Hellish punishment and escaped.
Here, death—the greatest pain in Hell—had become their sole salvation.
I let out a hollow chuckle at the traces beyond the boundary.
"Impressive. Even as they destroyed themselves, time slowed. Must've taken ages to wreck their bodies...... Yeah, impressive."
My words were admiration, but my eyes held not a shred of pity.
I smirked and muttered.
It had consumed a massive amount of soul energy, but instilling terror enough to force suicide through that heavy time was, for lazy me, the perfect defense.
Satisfied, I turned and flicked my hand beside the bed.
Air particles coalesced, forming a massive leather sofa that enveloped my body.
Plop.
Sinking into the sofa, I drowsily closed my eyes.
Come to think of it, I used a ton of power. Wonder how full it is now.
I gathered my consciousness inward, sinking into my inner world.
An endless space of darkness.
Before sleep, my origin—downgraded from vast ocean to a small lake from overexerting time-twisting—came into view.
But now filling it wasn't a rippling lake.
It was a serene, immense black sea once more.
......Full again. No, even fuller?
Not imagination.
The sea's level was far higher than before sleep, its density incomparably heavier.
Recovering power through sleep was one thing; amplification was another.
At this point, staying awake felt like a loss.
Feeling satisfied, I opened my eyes to Hell's landscape again.
Leaning deep into the sofa, I gazed ahead.
My eyes saw what others couldn't.
Whether a reincarnator perk or side effect of this power, the world's flows registered as particles.
Everything in Hell brimmed with mana.
The distant erupting volcano, the grotesquely twisted giant trees, even that unsettling blood-red sky.
But the black sea within me differed fundamentally.
Hell’s mana pulsed wildly and destructively; mine bore absolute weight, swallowing all into silent subsidence.
"Hmm, needs a name."
Even this felt annoyingly bothersome.
But without one, explaining later would be more hassle.
I spat the first word that came to mind.
"......Sloth. Just call it Sloth Force, whatever."
Quintessentially slothful naming.
Leaning askew on the sofa, I expanded my vision across Hell's vista.
Wherever my will touched, Hell's scenes sharpened on my retinas like a pulled zoom lens.
Compared to when I'd last opened my eyes, Hell had swollen vastly, more grotesquely.
Volcanoes towered higher, spewing black flames like phlegm; the ground writhed like a starving beast, warping terrain.
And beneath that red sky, an alien drizzle began.
Myriad gleams.
No—human souls.
Beyond my expanded sight, Hell's raw face revealed itself.
Hell was no longer just demons' haunt.
Toward souls pouring onto the post-quake lands, distant starving demons charged like a dog pack.
They snatched falling souls, tore and tortured them like toys, reveling in the screams.
No direct sound reached inside the veil, but the transmitted wails via extended senses were harrowing.
Yet their essence was repugnantly vile.
"Save me! What did I do wrong! It's all that bastard's fault!" "If there's a god, this can't happen! It's a scam, a scam!" "Outta my way, you fuck! I gotta survive first!"
Even crawling here past death's threshold, shoving blame or clinging to greed, howling.
Amid despairing screams, their souls stained turbid.
As if only they didn't know why they'd fallen here—that pathetic sight.
Growing bored observing, I moved to retract my sight.
......Hell as ever.
Noise not worth pity.
I chuckled dryly and finally rose fully for the first time in ages.
"Hell, huh...... But wait."
A queer unease flickered in my mind; I furrowed my brow.
"Why am I a 'demon' like them, not a 'soul'?"
I'd surely been an ordinary human in my past life.
Unlike those souls, my body brimmed with vibrant life force, more than any creature.
"Did I have reason to come here? Even so, why born a demon of 'Sloth' with this power......?"
I murmured lowly, gazing at the black waves filling me—Sloth Force.
"One of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity, or Catholicism—'Sloth'......"
Faint past-life memories surfaced with related knowledge.
It wasn't mere laziness that was sin.
The Seven Deadly Sins weren't emotions themselves, but roots of wicked acts born from them.
Not fleeting thoughts, but sustained plans or imaginings to harm a target counted as grave sin. Sins divided into mortal and venial; the Seven were roots from which all sprouted.
So what mortal sin had I committed to be tapped as one of this place's lords?
Sin of ignoring others' pain?
Or abandoning the world for my own rest?
Chaining thoughts tangled my head.
"......Fuck it, whatever. I'm no theologian."
The longer the thoughts, the more poisonous.
Even analyzing causes drained too much energy.
"Reason doesn't matter; power's in my hands, and if I'm comfy, that's it."
As I concluded and shut my eyes again—
Shoooo—
A creepy chill crawled my spine.
The Seven Sins definition that'd flashed, my old workplace name, even my favorite food's taste.
Those vivid memories blurred like watercolor in water.
Before Hell's eons, mere decades' memories were too frail, too thin.
A chilling hunch struck: sleep now, and next awakening, I'd forget who I was.
"Ah, damn it! This ain't right!"
A frantic shout burst from my lips, my usual apathy gone.
I hurriedly focused my mind.
Before memories fully eroded, I needed a "frame" to fix them.
"Library. Yeah, a library's perfect."
Eyes closed, I forcibly drew up the endless black sea within—Sloth Force—to build the heart of my inner world.
Fading memory particles gathered at my will.
I classified them by category, meticulously preserving them on incorruptible pages of mental paper.
First came [Basic Knowledge and Concepts].
Fire's temperature, gravity's laws, language structures, and so on.
Then morals and laws sustaining human society.
"Human standards" essential against Hell's madness filled hundreds of shelves as books.
Next, [Modern Civilization and Knowledge].
From semiconductor principles to car engines, internet networks,
and plots of novels, movies, anime I'd enjoyed.
It didn't stop.
Mindless YouTube clips, trivia from docs, useless survival trivia—metal smelting, first aid, ancient mysteries, recipes—all cataloged.
Modernity's gleaming legacy, near dust, became leather-bound tomes stacking neatly.
Finally,
what I most wanted hidden yet never forget—[Personal Memories] rose as bookshelves.
Mom's hearty soybean paste stew aroma,
the thrill of my first paycheck, a cold beer's refreshment on a summer night,
faces I loved and hated.
Forty-five years from birth to death, not a page missed.
"......Hah, hah."
I, Sloth incarnate, had done unprecedented meticulous "grind."
Each book bound made my mind haze, fingers tremble.
Sloth Force infinite, but my mental fatigue exceeded limits.
Yet I couldn't stop.
Unfinished shelves, and I'd devolve to a nameless powerful monster wandering eons.
This was my last bastion of self.
How much time passed?
Thud.
Finally slotted the last memory book.
Tens of thousands of books filled the inner world.
As long as this library stood, no matter Hell's time, I'd remain "me."
"Fuck...... finally...... done......"
I sprawled starfish on the inner world's floor.
Exhaustion so brutal, curses spilled unbidden.
Mind shredded, head throbbed like fried circuits.
Catching breath, a doubt arose; I calculated real-time discrepancy.
"Wait, how long in reality? Insane......"
Subjective decades inside, but vast Sloth Force preserving memories had twisted Hell's physics too.
Glancing out, even the soul screams felt distantly faint; Hell's terrain had shifted again.
Slowly exiting inner world, I opened real eyes.
Hell's acrid air hit; relief birthed odd worry.
......Memories safe, but hope my shell didn't turn horned monster too?
Memories locked, but monstrous husk would suck.
I summoned Sloth Force, conjuring a full-length mirror.
Trembling, I peered in.
"......Oh?"
No hideous demon.
No rough, knobby middle-aged man.
Instead, my early twenties prime—ignorant of chronic fatigue or pain.
No wings, no horns.
Only the deep abyss in my pupils proved I wasn't ordinary human;
form perfectly regressed to peak body.
"Younger. Way younger."
No dry eyes, stiff neck muscles.
Within, vast Sloth Force surged like a living sea, infusing vitality.
"Demon, sure...... but not monstrous looks, so fine."
Worry to relief, pent yawn erupted.
Sorting memories, checking mirror—burned years' energy at once.
"Ugh, too much work. Now real sleep."
Satisfied, I burrowed deep into the bedding.
Even Hell's flames burned quietly, loath to disturb my slumber.