Chapter 269 — Old Testament: The Beelzebute Grimoire (11)
Baalzebul was dead. Locked in a brutal exchange with Jude Thaddaeus, he had been unable to endure the endless barrage of Elena's Holy Rounds that Bartholomew poured into him, and he had died.
Bael, too, had gone silent. It was not that there had been no time to trade words—the connection had been cut in a physical sense. He was probably dead.
At that point there was no chance of victory, and so Beelzebub turned his back and fled.
People liked to say that running from a hopeless fight was not ugly but wise, yet he did not comfort himself with that. He merely affirmed the disgrace of his own self, ugliness and revulsion made flesh.
With that grotesquely bloated body he simply ran, and ran, across the jagged terrain of Hell. The head was a fly's and the body a man's, and the ragged breath spilling from his lungs leaked out through the fly's jaws—though most of the air filling those lungs never reached so far. From his left flank all the way to his collarbone he had been torn open, and he ran scattering his entrails as he went.
It was the same holy round that had taken Baalzebul's life. The moment Han Seoyeon confirmed that death and moved to swing her muzzle toward Beelzebub, he had already read the situation and fled ahead of her. Only because of that had it stopped at a wound like this.
Beelzebub fled, and fled again. He knew perfectly well that he would not get far. Moritz Hoffman, that wolf, had frozen where he stood for one stunned instant, but even starting late he would close the distance in no time. Among the sitting Apostles, judged on raw physicality alone, that one ranked at the very top of the monsters.
Even so, he ran this meaningless flight, because not everything was over yet.
Beelzebute's ambition was finished. With their two greatest cards, Baalzebul and Bael, already lost, no hope remained, and Beelzebub himself would be dead before long. But Beelzebute itself was not finished. One of them still remained.
The last of the four who composed Beelzebute: Baal-zephon. Unlike Beelzebub, he was surely not being hunted at this very moment. If that was so, there was a chance he might survive. The longer the chase after Beelzebub dragged on, the later they would begin to hunt the other.
And so, to buy even a little more time, the fly shoved his spilling entrails back in with his own hands and charged across the broken ground.
…It did not take long to learn that the effort was meaningless.
He ran, and in the end the strength left his legs and he collapsed. A shadow fell across him. Slowly, Beelzebub raised his head and looked up at the owner of that shadow with red compound eyes.
"…Baal-zephon."
"You needn't trouble yourself to call me. If it is my name, I know it well enough, Beelzebub."
It was a youth of gentle features. Impossible to mistake. It was Baal-zephon.
"As you can see, I'm being hunted. Unless you want to die with me, you'd do well to run. Right now."
Beelzebub forced his breathing into some kind of order and laid the situation out as briefly as he could. Baalzebul was dead. Bael could not be reached. He himself was a single step from death. The only choice that offered even a faint promise of survival was to flee in some other direction and hide. That was what he explained.
"I see."
Hearing this, Baal-zephon nodded, his expression grave.
"I came to die with you, so it's quite all right."
And with that, he dropped down beside the collapsed Beelzebub.
"Die together? I don't see what meaning that has."
"Oh, there is meaning. If we're ruined anyway, shouldn't we at least look after the subordinates who trusted us and cooperated?"
To take responsibility as the instigators, and die. That was what Baal-zephon meant.
"Set aside the ones who were truly vicious this time, and I doubt even the demons who cut off their leaders' heads and offer them to the Church will be handled too roughly."
In a certain light, it was a rational argument. They were dead regardless; they might as well spend the death on something useful. It was also precisely the sort of thing the Baal-zephon that Beelzebub knew would say. Perhaps because he was the aspect charged with Beelzebute's divinity, he extended considerable favor to the followers who served him.
"No. You would never make a choice like that."
"Have you thought me that heartless, all this time?"
Even so, Beelzebub shook his head. At the reaction, Baal-zephon wore a faintly wounded look.
"You took Baal-zephon's body and played the part, then deceived even us into starting this war. After going that far, there is no chance you would suddenly sacrifice yourself for someone else."
"……."
And in an instant the expression vanished from his face. Only a cold gaze remained, fixed on Beelzebub.
"…What are you saying?"
"Denying it now won't mean a thing."
"……Hah. Well. That's true enough."
Beelzebub stared at him. Baal-zephon—no, the thing wearing Baal-zephon's skin—soon scowled and mussed its own hair this way and that.
"Damn it. How in the hell did you know? I even fooled Bael of Wisdom……."
"There's no reason I wouldn't recognize someone who was only pretending to be a friend."
"Ah. Is that so."
With a wet splat, Beelzebub—no strength left even to hold up his torso—sprawled across the ground. He was still looking this way, though, and so the thing made no effort to hide its displeasure, and sneered.
"Wait. Knowing that, you still tried to let me get away?"
"You can't be called Baal-zephon. But you also can't be said not to be Baal-zephon."
"What, you're thinking of hauling out that stale Ship of Theseus debate?"
Once again, the thing twisted Beelzebub's words. This time, though, the jab had struck rather close to the mark, and that was why the reaction came out sharper than it needed to.
"Getting caught on the Latch, and not even the Silver Key—that's a first……. So you really meant to help me, for a reason like that."
"Hardly news. I knew from the beginning that you were inside Baal-zephon's body."
Knowing that, he had still lent his hand to the campaign to put down Bartholomew. Beelzebub said it with remarkable calm. That his voice shook and spasmed could not be helped—death had climbed all the way to his throat.
"Why? Why would you?"
"If not for this, it would have been centuries before all of Beelzebute could unite as one."
"…You mean that?"
A slightly foolish look settled over Baal-zephon's face.
He was saying he had cooperated even while knowing the whole of it—that the other had incited and steered demon after demon for no end but his own, intending to turn Hell into a literal hellscape. For the preposterous reason of shouldn't we try being warmly cooperative, just the once?
"At any rate… what I mean is that I'm on your side. I cooperated knowing all of it, so I'd like you to explain exactly what it is you need to accomplish."
"You are genuinely, beyond anything I imagined, insane……."
The thing sighed once more, looking at the dying fly-fiend.
"No—but it's really all over now, so if dying is enough, then fine. To put it properly, dying together is the goal."
"I see. So the purpose is already fulfilled."
Sprawled on the ground, Beelzebub nodded.
"Then your purpose was the war itself, after all. To fix the Church's eyes on Hell."
"It's genuinely skin-crawling and revolting, so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop reading other people's thoughts whenever you please."
"I am a demon who symbolizes revulsion to begin with."
Ignoring the complaining Baal-zephon, Beelzebub went on alone with what he had to say.
"I heard the Spear of Longinus was taken out this time. Then Lucifer, impaled upon it, will be free before long as well. Is that the goal? No. Something about that sits wrong. This wasn't a war on a scale where anyone could be sure whether Longinus would be drawn or not. So the intent was to turn eyes here, and commit something somewhere else……."
Those eyes looked to the sky, looked to the earth, and a moment later met the thing's once more.
"I have a fair idea of what you are. And of what method you used."
"Don't say it? Seriously, don't say it? I still can't even accept how you figured it out from this, and I hid it so hard, all right? If I let it out of my mouth and someone reads the past later and I get exposed, I'll die of how unfair it is?"
"What are you even saying, when you weren't alive to begin with."
Perhaps the matter of identity had been a sore spot. Beelzebub considered for a moment, then held his tongue, exactly as she wished.
"Then coming here to die together must be for destroying the evidence. Heard out carefully from a third party's seat, the testimony might well arrive at you—the mastermind who incited everyone."
Kill Beelzebub, and Baal-zephon himself dies as well. Through that, every member of Beelzebute is dead, and no one remains who grasps with certainty what happened then. Did that mean the next vessel to switch into had already been prepared? Well. There was no need to concern himself that far.
"Fine. Then bring the subordinates. The ones who'll cut our throats and offer our heads to the Church. You've had them waiting nearby anyway, haven't you?"
"Well. Yes."
At Beelzebub's words, Baal-zephon nodded in assent.
"……."
"……Mm."
And once she had confirmed that Beelzebub had gone entirely still, she closed her mouth. In truth, given the extent of his injuries, he had held on for an absurdly long time.
She had been silent for a moment. Then she sighed, and rose once more from where she sat. Just as the fly, already going cold, had inferred—now was truly the time to bury the whole truth in darkness, by means of death.
"…Huh. So that's how it went?"
"…Didn't you say you took part, back then?"
"No—the truth is, I only knew the war had gotten big, and I went in and came out. I'd stopped my heart before going in, so I was rotated out without any real time to get a read on the situation."
"You walked into that slaughter without even knowing what it was……."
At Ryumai's utterly unabashed words, Han Seoyeon pressed a hand to her brow. Beside her, Mika Eru—who had been fiddling with her phone—laughed and spoke.
"It's fiiine~ Honestly, I don't really know the details either. I was stuck in the command post the whole time."
Compared to Ryumai she had probably grasped the broad shape of things, but the precise atmosphere on the ground would have been hard to know. …It was absolutely not something to announce so proudly.
"After that I was busy filling Papa's empty seat and everything, too."
"Ah… well. That much is true."
The Vampire Slayer had been left unable to move so much as a fingertip, and a number of vampires had built up their strength in the gap he left. Worst of all, an anomaly had escalated all the way into a Scenario, and their other teacher had had to be sent in.
"Oh, and speaking of Papa, I just remembered. He got in touch a little while ago, y'know?"
"Master, you mean? If it isn't a vampire matter… no. Even for something of real weight, he rarely makes contact."
"Mm-hm. I was the one who reached out first. The reply came in recentlyyy."
At Han Seoyeon's question, Eru nodded and went on.
"Said he'll be in the country before long, so Natacchi had better hurry up and set a date for the families to meet?"
"……What?"
It was news far beyond anything she had expected.