Hell Lies Ahead
Lola regarded X's answer with a puzzled frown.
"...What even is this?"
"Think of it as a miniature prison for the human soul. An artifact crafted by demons."
It took Lola a long moment to process what he'd said. Then her expression turned deadly serious, and she pressed him.
"That joke has gone way too far. Do you realize what you're saying? You're claiming every noble attending the masquerade is a demon."
"Well... I suppose an explanation is in order."
"Then explain. Right now. Depending on what you tell me, I have to decide whether to fulfill my duty as a noble."
She said it firmly enough, but her voice was trembling. X could easily guess what "duty as a noble" meant.
I was going to tell her everything anyway.
X found a nearby bench, sat Lola down, and took a seat beside her. The look she gave him was complicated. After organizing his thoughts, he began.
"My lady, you're aware that demons exist in this world, I assume."
"...Yes, I've heard of them. I'm no divine arts student, but I know demons are real."
"Demons have barely shown themselves in a very long time. Even when they do, it's usually just cultists. I doubt you've ever heard of a genuine demon appearing."
That was the lore, at least. Demons had certainly existed in the past, and humanity had suffered at their hands. The problem was that all of it had been a hundred years ago — a distant, faded history.
Lola cut him off mid-explanation.
"Well of course they can't appear. Ever since the Church of Deusrute became the state religion, the Empire has been under the Goddess's blessing. Just speaking Her name is enough to tell a demonkin from a true demon. How could a demon possibly operate here?"
"That's exactly it. The demons exploited that loophole. And the result is the Soul Trap Ring."
"What?"
X pulled out the ring and continued.
"This ring was designed to bind the wearer's soul the moment a demon seizes their body. Its purpose is to draw in the holy power that would otherwise settle in the flesh — think of it as a lightning rod."
"Wait. So you're saying even speaking the Goddess's name wouldn't tell them apart?"
"Correct. That's how the demons have infiltrated the Empire."
"...Haha."
Lola stared blankly at X's face, then let out a hollow laugh. No matter how she turned it over, his words sat somewhere beyond anything she could process.
"Okay, that was a little funny. You've got a knack for spinning stories. I almost believed you for a second there."
X said nothing.
"...You're serious?"
"I wouldn't have gone through everything I did today just to tell a lie like this."
The knowledge she was never meant to possess slammed into Lola's mind all at once, and her brain short-circuited. What X had just said was serious enough to turn the entire Empire on its head. It meant that even if a member of the imperial family were a demon, there would be no way to tell.
"We have to report this! Right now!!"
It was a natural reaction. X talked her down calmly.
"My lady, it's already too late. If demons infiltrated the human world, where do you think they'd seize control first?"
"Th-then what are we supposed to do? Just leave it? When the Empire itself might fall?"
"Preventing that is why I went through all of this today."
At those words, Lola recalled something X had muttered to himself last time, lost in grim thought. Only now did the suspicion catch up to her.
"How do you even know all this?"
A fair question. One X had fully anticipated. He'd already been asked this once before, so the answer was ready.
"I am, in fact, an operative of a secret society within the Holy Kingdom."
A lie, of course.
Even so, I can hardly say, "I'm actually one of the people who created your world. Oh, and I'm also the one who doomed it."
Lola believed him, and her eyes went wide.
"A s-secret society?"
"The public knows us as the 'Freemasons.'"
"I've never heard of them!"
"Well, it is a secret society."
Lola had no answer for that.
Overwhelmed by the logic, she stared blankly into space. X had no way of knowing what was going through her head, but the persuasion, at least, seemed to be over.
Maybe she'll actually listen to me from now on.
He'd never planned to make Lola a collaborator from the start. But the situation was too dire. Approaching any of the original novel's key characters meant too many variables to account for.
Above all else, Leon's power-up is the priority. The scenario built around him, too.
In circumstances this bleak, Lola made a surprisingly capable ally. Her magical combat ability left something to be desired, but the guts and acting she'd shown today had far exceeded his expectations.
Come to think of it, she's pretty well-connected too — spreading rumors, gathering information...
"Th-then..."
While X was lost in thought, Lola fidgeted with her fingers, mumbling. The look on her face — swollen with anticipation — was something else.
"The reason you're telling me all this... don't tell me I... I'm joining the secret society too...?"
Ah.
Lola's eyes lit up. Looking into those two bright orbs, shining with admiration and longing, X's conscience stabbed him like a knife. He'd forgotten that kids her age lived and died for things like "secret societies" and "world-ending crises."
I'm an idiot. Of all the lies I could've told.
But the milk was already spilled. X couldn't fight the current now.
Ah, to hell with it!
If he was in this deep, he had to go all the way.
"...That's right! After grave and careful deliberation, our secret society has decided to put Lady Lola's qualifications to the test."
"Qualifications...! A test...! S-so what happened?!"
"Before that, I have one last question."
X took hold of both her shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes. Lola swallowed, tension coiling through her. He let the silence hang on purpose, stretching it until her nerves were at the breaking point. Then, at last, he spoke.
The words were a test of her resolve, and Lola steeled herself.
"I-I'm the daughter of Count Lemercier's house! A little resolve like this is nothing!"
It was such a Lola answer that X nearly laughed, but he held it in. There was a limit to how much he should mess with her.
"Well then, we should head in for tonight. If we're too late, the dorm supervisor will have our heads."
"Uh, um..."
"Ah, your legs gave out, didn't they? I'll carry you."
"No, that's not— aren't we going to do a vow or something? Like spilling blood on a holy relic...?"
"We don't do outdated rituals like that. Oh, and don't put the ring on. You'll be cursed."
"Eek!"
And so the two of them returned to the dormitory. After finally depositing Lola in her room, X headed back to his own — and found someone waiting at his door.
"You've got some nerve, X. I told you there was two hours of private training after class."
It was none other than Roxwell. He'd been waiting this entire time because X hadn't shown up for personal training. Roxwell packed every ounce of his fury down into a tight, compressed mass, and said:
"I'll beat you half to death."
That night, X very nearly died.
The next day — Saturday — X headed to the library without fail. He needed to prepare for the upcoming masquerade ball.
I have to analyze the ring, and I need an escape plan in case things go south.
Ultimately, he had to conceal his identity, meet Beatrice, and uncover whatever conspiracy she was plotting. Given the high likelihood of a demonic connection, tying that to Leon would let the power-up event proceed as intended.
The problem was how to extract that information once he met her. Beatrice was not the kind of person who'd spill her secrets to a stranger on first meeting.
I have to remember — demons in this world are transcendent beings.
In this setting, demons were depicted as transcendentally powerful. An Archdemon, in particular, was a force of nature — a walking natural disaster.
The opponent is the demon Andras. Ranked sixty-third among all demons.
Andras, possessing Beatrice, wasn't quite Archdemon-class, but he was powerful enough to rule over the Empire's demons. The only reason they were hiding was that they didn't have the numbers.
What's the worst-case scenario?
He ran through every scenario that could occur within the bounds of guaranteed Probability. Among them, only one stood out as the absolute worst.
The Blood Masquerade incident.
It was one of the "discarded scenarios" that never appeared in the original novel. A horrific plot in which high-ranking nobles gathered at a masquerade ball, only for Beatrice — descended as a demon — to slaughter them all.
It won't be this. If this happens, the entire Empire-fracture scenario vanishes. Looking at what Elysia's been doing, she's been accelerating Doom Scenarios if anything, not erasing them.
This scenario had been discarded because it removed a villain holding the title of Imperial Princess far too early. Elysia wouldn't do anything that would write out the main villain of the Empire-fracture arc.
The next one that came to mind was the Academy's Mass Demon Assault. Before the Hellgate ritual was prepared, a horde of demons would appear at the Academy, massacring students and faculty — until Leon's party stopped them.
It had been discarded over Probability issues. An academy story in which the academy itself was nearly wiped out was a problem, and so was the question of where that many demons had suddenly come from.
Honestly, this one worries me quite a bit.
He didn't know how far Author Points could stretch, but considering that an author's job was "creation," it wouldn't be strange if demons simply appeared out of nowhere.
I should keep this one in mind too.
Finally, the most likely scenario was Mass Demonification. The nobles gathered at the masquerade would all be transformed into demons by an object the demons had created. This, too, was a scenario designed to throw the Empire into chaos.
It had been discarded due to continuity problems with later scenarios, and because the Probability of the key object was too hard to justify. If every high-ranking noble became a demon, Leon's party casually attending the Academy afterward wouldn't make any sense. And turning people into demons with a single object was far too difficult to make plausible.
The reason this one ranked as the most likely was yesterday's events.
That object Marlene mentioned... it was similar to Mass Demonification.
So which of the three should he prepare for? He kept turning it over, but in the end, there was no way to know which was the right answer.
"Commoner, the library isn't a place for making scary faces."
Lola found him while he was still deep in thought. She'd come because he'd promised to tutor her.
"...So, what's going on?"
A quiet gleam of anticipation was shining in Lola's expression. She seemed to think this had something to do with the secret society.
"It's about what's coming. There's a problem we have to stop."
"If it's 'that business,' we can talk it through together, can't we?"
"Ugh... Fine. Here's the situation..."
X gave her an edited version of what he'd been wrestling with. He left out the part about the Imperial Princess being behind it all, and glossed over his source as a personal information network.
"This isn't something we can handle on our own..."
Hearing X's account, Lola couldn't help but fall into worry of her own. Noble conspiracies were filthy and terrible beyond imagination, but they didn't come close to the horror of what X was contemplating.
Then Lola said something unexpected.
"I think I know what's going to happen."
"Excuse me?"
"I know exactly what's going to happen."
It seemed Lola had figured out something even X hadn't seen coming.