Isabella's Misunderstanding
Isabella's Misunderstanding
What the Demon King, Serena, lacked was information about the present era. What thoughts shaped people's lives, what stood at the center of their world, common notions and rules, taboos and what was permitted—all of it.
Serena knew none of these things.
After all, the body she had taken after being sealed, Canaria's, had spent nearly her entire life inside the Holy Kingdom. And Serena herself was their distant ancestor, from the age of Solomon. She already knew more than enough about the Holy Kingdom—enough to be sick to death of it.
What she wanted was to know the Holy Kingdom, and the world beyond it.
Because she had a promise she'd made with Solomon.
And so she hadn't destroyed the Purple Tower Master's brain.
She had deliberately severed his head to preserve that brain, intending to read the residual thoughts left inside it—to learn about this world.
Then, the moment she read the memories, Serena was enraged.
'...You see, Solomon?'
Humans truly were trash after all. Worthless scum not worth protecting, even at the cost of your own sacrifice—that's what I told you. So why did you, the one they call a sage, live your life without even understanding that much?
While dreaming vain, empty dreams, like a hymn to humanity.
The expression on Serena's face after winning the bet was not a pleasant one. Because, in the end, Solomon had been betrayed by the very descendants he believed in.
The world no longer depended on god.
Those who prayed held no faith, and they felt no gratitude for what had been given. Not only that—they committed unforgivable sins of their own accord.
The Holy Kingdom abused its Saint.
The one who inherited the will of their king.
They lashed the seeker who was meant to guide them.
A friend's empire betrayed the Holy Kingdom.
Solomon's friend, Cain's descendants,
committed the sin of driving the one who inherited that friend's will to suicide.
She might have let it go if it were only that.
After all, they already had experience killing a Saint. They could not deny that bloodline which had stabbed the First Saint to death.
But now they challenged the authority of the chief god, desecrating it. They shattered the taboos of scripture and, with impertinence, coveted the truth. Believing they could become beings beyond that, thirsting for the flesh the chief god had made in his own image.
Now, at last, they harbored the desire to become gods themselves.
"...It's all fallen now."
The chief god's authority, too.
The ideal Solomon hoped for, too.
Nothing remained in this world now.
Only the Demon King remained, who remembered the promise.
When humans dared to defile god's domain,
to grant them the gift of terror,
and to create paradise and give direction to their faith.
The only one who had made such a promise was the Demon King.
"...Can you hear me?"
Serena murmured.
She spoke to Canaria, inside her.
"...I'll cooperate with you on making your paradise."
It wasn't a whim.
It was the promise she had made with Solomon.
She was simply keeping her promise with the one she loved.
Even to make his sacrifice sublime.
"I'll put an end to the games here."
Canaria, within her consciousness, was puzzled.
Because she thought it was a sudden whim.
But regardless, Serena steeled her heart.
From now on, not as the Demon King, but as Solomon's proxy.
"Shall I clear away the trash first?"
Serena saw Blue approaching her.
Soon, she brought out two more wings.
"...For starters, I'll keep your promise."
For the sake of Canaria's promise, inside of her.
She would simply go somewhat all-out and smash this trash.
Her power ran rampant simultaneously with the increase in wings.
Seeing that, Blue's brow furrowed.
Regardless, the die was already cast,
and there was no chance of backing down anymore,
so the sturdiest shield of the present era lunged forward.
With enough force to draw out more of the Demon King's tricks, that is.
"...Know your place."
But since Serena had ceased her amusement,
unlike with Purple, there was no playing around.
Palms sprouted in an instant and seized Blue's limbs.
Shaking them off would be meaningless. Because the fake holy power White generated could not erase magic woven in earnest by the Demon King. Unless the Saintess herself was summoned, all magic enacted at this point could be considered immortal.
And that magic tore Blue's limbs apart. Disregarding any defensive magic, it easily crushed that trained and strengthened human body as if cutting paper.
The healer Green covered his body. It was visible that the severed arms and legs had begun reattaching, but the Demon King paid it no mind.
She approached him directly.
Then she grasped the head of Blue, who was struggling in vain. Holding it, Serena walked slowly. Blue thrashed, trying to use magic to do something about the Demon King's grip. But since there was no way such a trick would work against the originator of magic,
the hand that struck was the one that ended up crushed.
The countless spells that flew in to support him were ignored as well. Before that paradoxical space which not even a holy sword could cut, the magic humanity created simply stopped and lost its function.
And so the place Serena headed for was the Ottoman ramparts.
The mightiest fortress, surrounded by countless enhancement and regeneration spells. The battering ram chosen to break it was Blue's own body.
"You're rather confident in your enhancements, aren't you?"
From now on, she intended to trample that arrogance, one piece at a time.
Therefore, she would compete with them in the field of their confidence.
Serena, for the first time in a while, enhanced her own body. The flesh that had already entered a transcendent stage grew even more robust.
Soon she drew her shoulder back slightly, then, just like that, put all her momentum into swinging Blue's head with full force and drove it into the ramparts.
Kwaang! A thunderous roar, as if a bolt of lightning had struck, echoed through the area.
Blue's face was crushed. His skull cracked, his teeth shattered, and blood covered his entire face.
Serena then applied her unreasonable force to Blue.
A divine power that returned him to a state where he could endure more.
All of Blue's body was visibly healed.
Though the one performing the act was Serena, the price would be paid by Blue.
Such was the irrationality of the progenitor of magic.
That was what a transaction with the Demon King was like.
"Do your best. If you don't die until you break this wall, I'll let you live."
Smiling, Serena toyed with Blue.
How could a person possibly survive ramming their head against a wall?
But Blue, truly giving it his all, operated his magic to survive. So gallantly that it shamed the man he had been when he first leaped at the Demon King. The current Blue presented a sight of someone laying down everything for that faint hope before his eyes.
Serena found the sight delightful.
Because that was conduct befitting his station.
Trash should act like trash.
Vermin should act like vermin.
Act as befits your birth.
An undeniable malicious hatred filled that place.
Again, the sound of a thunderbolt striking the ramparts was heard. This time it didn't end with one. Two, three, four... and then, when it became the fifth.
The roar made by the crushed human body ceased.
"...You made it crack. Congratulations."
It was a result beyond what she'd imagined.
Though it, of course, didn't much exceed what she'd supposed.
"...Well, I doubt you can hear me, though."
Blue's head was in a state of having vanished.
The fragments of his body were embedded in the ramparts. As if it were a trifle, Serena tossed the corpse aside.
Hoping that, before he died, he'd cast aside the arrogance he held and beg forgiveness before the chief god.
Simultaneously, the inside of the ramparts began to bustle.
The Tower Masters issued some sort of orders, and the multitudes followed them. It was the moment when those betrayers, gathered under the concept of a coalition, united without the slightest confusion to confront the calamity approaching them.
Serena placed her hand on the cracked ramparts.
Simultaneous with that hand making contact, the ramparts began to decay.
As if struck directly by tens of thousands of years of time, the cracked ramparts began to form ever greater fissures, and soon, when they started to crumble into powder—
Red shouted.
To prepare the attack, he said.
It was merely laughable.
Without a Saint, without a Hero.
These beings who were nothing more than the drawn picture,
would kill an existence from beyond it?
It was stupidity that exceeded all bounds.
'Solomon, did you call this a hymn to humanity?'
They would perish, but they would not be defeated.
That was the portrait of humanity Solomon had imagined.
But they were now a fate that would be defeated even as they perished.
Because there could be no human who would remain composed before death. Aside from that young Saint who chose death for himself. It simply wasn't possible for the humans of this era, who had emptied out the sublime and filled that void with arrogance.
Serena, who had become the Demon King, sneered at them.
Soon, the ramparts, unable to withstand the decay, shattered.
That was the signal.
Arrows and spears flew in like a rainstorm.
Thousands of spells manifested to play their roles. Even the chains of the fake Saint, imitating the Saint, approached.
The Demon King deliberated.
What should she do, to make them despair the most?
To make them repent their sins, and return to their proper place.
Her thoughts were relatively long.
So, the attacks flew right before her.
Only then did the Demon King finish her choice.
She simply did nothing, she decided.
In silence, she watched all of those attacks. Even when they reached right before her eyes, she did not react.
Because there was no need to.
Once again, all of those attacks stopped in the void space. They tried to form a single point and break the wall of that space, but it was meaningless. How could letters written on a page pierce through paper and emerge?