Another Reality
I headed straight for the iron bars and found myself gazing at Tia, collapsed on the floor. “Tia, Tia—!?”
Her expression looked so tormented that I rushed to break the bars and fling the door open. But in that instant, the suspicions I had been harboring flashed through my mind and froze me in place.
“……Tia……”
I stared down at her for a moment. She gave no response no matter how many times I called. Even so, I told myself she must at least recognize her own name. “……Bel, Belberman……?”
The moment the full name left my lips, she stirred. “……That…… can’t be……”
She pressed her hands to the floor, struggled to her feet, and swayed. “……It can’t be……”
When she finally lifted her head, I saw the familiar pair of horns—worn and dulled, yet her features remained strikingly beautiful. “It’s you, Tia……”
The instant I saw her face, certainty flooded me. I cast aside every doubt, offered a bitter smile, and stepped closer. Before I could reach her, she lunged forward and collapsed into my arms.
She did nothing else. She simply clung to me, tightening her embrace with desperate strength.
Only a few days had passed since I arrived in this place, yet the way she held me felt unbearably fragile. She was far more haggard than the Tia I knew, her regal presence gone, her every movement timid and withdrawn. Even her lips looked drained of life.
I wrapped my arms around her as warmly and firmly as I could. In my original world she was still lying unconscious in bed, and the thought sent another wave of crushing guilt through me.
She pressed her face against my chest, listening to my heartbeat for a long moment. Then, in a voice trembling with emotion, she whispered, “……Karia……”
It sounded as though she were meeting someone she had not seen in an eternity. “It’s…… you, isn’t it……? Karia……?”
There was no trace of the Demon King in her tone. “You…… you really came back…… You……”
Her eyes held no light. She looked at me as if I were a hallucination from some distant day. Even so, I gently stroked her thin back while she spoke as though I had already died.
“What…… happened to you, Tia…… Belberman?”
She pulled back slightly. “No…… You’re not the Karia I know.”
Yet her voice carried no disappointment, no pain. Instead, a fragile spark of hope flickered in her eyes. Flustered, I asked again, “What on earth happened…… Tia— Belberman……?”
She studied me for a moment, then asked in a cautious yet hopeful voice, “Then why are you here?”
I hesitated, unsure where to begin. “I…… I came from another world.”
I decided to tell her the truth. She had shown no hostility, and as the Demon King she might know something. Yet as I spoke, the sight of her so broken made me think of the Tia from my own world.
“In my world, you…… you were in danger.”
The words came out slightly different from what I had intended, but they were close enough to the truth. She listened intently, then reached out and gently touched my hands, my arms, my face.
“What was my name there……? And what was yours?”
Her voice was soft, sorrowful, as fragile as the first snow falling on parched earth.
“……Karia.”
I took the hand that had been caressing my cheek and leaned closer. “I was Karia, and you…… were Belberman. Tia Belberman.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then smiled with quiet satisfaction. “I see…… I’m glad……”
A few tears slipped down her cheeks. “I was waiting…… I was always waiting for you to come find me, Karia.”
She began to speak as though she had made up her mind. “I waited here, always, for you to arrive…… In every timeline, in every world…… I took Belberman’s name and gave you the name Karia…… Because I loved you enough to give you my old name, no matter where or when.”
She told me that in every timeline she had met, she and I had made the same choices. “Even when you gave me a different name, I still loved you…… I realized that no matter which world’s Tia I was, I had never failed to love you.”
I was stunned. The fact that Karia had once been Tia’s name, the fact that she had given it to me despite claiming to have no memories—it all left me reeling. How had she known the name? How did this Tia know about every other timeline?
Seeing my confusion, she gathered mana at her fingertips and brought them to my forehead. When I flinched, she smiled gently, her eyes warm and reassuring. “It’s all right……”
Her voice was soft, almost pleading, as though she desperately wanted to show me something. I closed my eyes and leaned into her touch.
The moment her fingers met my skin, her once-clear mana turned pitch black and swallowed my vision. “I wanted to show you…… Karia…… I always wanted to show you……”
Her voice, heavy with regret and self-reproach, reached me just before my consciousness was torn from my body and hurled into her memories.
I was pulled in like liquid being sucked into a vacuum tube, forced to experience the scenes unfolding before me as if they were my own.
This world was almost identical to the one I had lived in. Only Tia’s name was slightly different. Everything else followed the same flow—until the point where I never contacted the Transcendent. Its body here had been too severely damaged, so I gained nothing.
Because of that, the Tia of this world regained consciousness while I returned empty-handed. Afterward, she began preparing to conquer the human world with even greater force. She had witnessed how mercilessly humans had tried to eliminate me simply for standing beside demons, and how their cruelty had only grown worse.
She had known from the beginning that the humans who attacked the castle had recognized me as human yet still aimed their weapons at me. When she sealed me inside the sarcophagus, her face had been resigned, wearing a faint smile.
Day by day her resolve to invade hardened, yet she still respected this world’s Karia’s wish for peace and waited, hoping I would find a peaceful solution.
Even after everything, her love for me never wavered. And this world’s Karia, despite the loss, never gave in to despair and kept struggling to find a peaceful path.
I felt a flicker of respect for that version of myself—the one who had never lost hope. But eventually, that Karia failed. Just like Hayes, while trying to communicate with humans in their own lands, she was kidnapped by those harboring malice.
When Tia infiltrated the human world to find her, what she discovered was Karia already being vivisected and subjected to horrific experiments. By then Karia had lost all sense of self and become little more than a vegetable.
After Tia rescued her and began treatment, the first words Karia managed to speak were, “Kill…… me…… Please……”
Her body trembled like a leaf in the wind. After that single plea, she fell silent again, her breathing fading away completely.
From that moment, my consciousness shifted fully into Tia. I felt every emotion she felt—the grief, the rage, the countless other feelings—without any filter, as though I were drowning in a storm of them.
Tia simply held the dead Karia and wept. Even when survivors launched a surprise attack, she no longer had control over herself. Using the Demon King’s raw, unrestrained magic, she crushed everyone left alive.
Only after a long time did she rise, still cradling Karia’s body. In that moment she realized the storm of emotion had passed and she now stood in its eye—where nothing could be felt. No sadness, no pain, no joy, no loneliness, not even the sense of loss.
With every emotion gone, she granted Karia’s final wish. She shattered the mana stone—Karia’s heart and soul stone—erasing her completely.
As she sent Karia’s body skyward, she made a vow. From that day forward, the demon race would evolve without end, transcending dimensions, becoming a species capable of saving those who had cast Karia aside. Only after annihilating every last human would she attempt to reach beyond the stars and walk beside Karia once more.
Everything would begin only after humanity’s extinction.
She returned to the castle, gathered her strength for several days, then flew to the conference where the seven kings had gathered. She destroyed the building, stepped onto the round table, and declared war.
“From this moment, I shall transform every human into a monster and enslave them, while destroying all human civilization to usher in the age of demons.”
Standing atop the burning world, she calmly dropped the heads of the seven kings and cried out, “You cast out the two saviors who kept peace in my heart with your own hands. Now only ruin remains.”
In the end, the world perished exactly as she had foretold. Tia eradicated every human, turned the survivors into grotesque hybrids, and twisted the rest into monstrous forms. Only then did I understand why those creatures had tried to drag me into their corruption ritual.
Faced with the horrifying reality of this world, I felt the full weight of the pain crashing through my chest. But the memory did not end there. Tia’s recollections continued up to the moment she met me.
After achieving everything, with Karia gone and her great work complete, Tia decided to leave this place behind and embark on a long journey. She had not forgotten her old promise to lead her people beyond the stars, yet she no longer wished to remain here either.
She set down everything she had left on this barren land and departed. During her travels she reached the pinnacle of magic, wielding spells beyond the imagination of ordinary beings. She even transcended the boundary between human and demon. The more she poured herself into magic, the more she felt the passage of time and the desolation of what she had done.
Wondering if a happier version of herself existed in another timeline, she used her perfected magic to peer into other worlds. Yet every world she saw was one where she had either never met Karia or where Karia had died early. She found no hope and eventually returned from her journey.
Along the way she discovered that the demons, deprived of her support, had begun walking the path to extinction. That sight proved her choice had been doomed to fail—that what she had tried to achieve was nothing more than a fleeting dream.
No matter which world she looked at, every successful version of herself had met the same end. She could not say the path of the two saviors was the perfect answer, but she could at least declare that a world like this one must never be created again.
She prayed that her final will would reach another world. Returning to the Demon King’s castle one last time, she touched the ruined corpse of the Transcendent. Though it was already completely dead and decayed, she stayed beside it, pouring every remaining moment of her life into prayer, hoping her will might somehow reach another timeline.
Her prayer contained only one message: she had become both a failure and a pioneer. The future the Demon King had desired held no hope, no evolution—only grotesque human-demon hybrids spiraling into endless chaos and ruin. To anyone who might one day hear this prayer, she begged them to prevent such a future.
And miraculously, because she had mastered the ultimate magic, that lingering thought drifted across the vast sea of stars. The dying Transcendent in my original world found it and accepted it, waiting for someone—perhaps someone even more suited than the Demon King—to arrive and receive this memory.
The Transcendent had known from the beginning that Tia Belberman, the Demon King, was destined to head toward this future no matter what. That was why, even after transcending the boundary between human and demon, she could only ever find timelines that ended in destruction. No demon could ever escape her will, for the demon race was bound by collective consciousness.
So the Transcendent waited for another existence—a human capable of holding this thought—to appear. In the end, it granted me the right to witness this memory.
Yet even that was not the end. Every day Tia prayed before the Transcendent’s broken corpse until one day, in a voice filled with sorrow, she offered her final words: “Karia, I love you…… I truly loved you……”
That same day, the hybrids that had begun wandering the castle dragged her away. Even the Demon King had been forgotten by the remnants of ruin. They took her to perform the endless corruption ritual that would turn her into one of them.
Tia offered no resistance. She believed it was her fate, the punishment she deserved. Yet she endured, refusing to fall into corruption, holding on for hundreds of years so that one day an outsider who would hear her prayer and come to this ruined world might find her intact—someone who could fully accept her heart. She had believed with all her being that the one she would meet at the end of this miracle was me.
I received her feelings in their entirety. She had trusted until the very end that the outsider who would come was me, and she had loved me even in the moments when she was losing herself.
When I finally returned to my own body, I found her collapsing in my arms. “Tia……”
Still reeling from the memories, I looked at her with eyes full of pity. She managed a weary smile, leaned against me, then sank to her knees. “Tia……!”
“There’s…… no time left……”
Even so, she tried to hold me, to listen to my heartbeat. Only when I embraced her tightly enough for the sound to reach her clearly did she relax and speak. “I love you…… Karia……”
She smiled one last time—relieved, without regret, yet somehow guilty, yet happy to have met me. With a smile full of complicated joy, she whispered, “I wanted…… to tell you…… myself…… again……”
Her eyes closed. “……one more time.”
In the end, she had poured every last drop of her remaining mana and life force into showing me her memories. Even the mana that formed her soul stone had been squeezed dry. That was how she had shown me everything, and that was how she left this ruined world in my arms.
I held her and did not let go—not until her breath had completely stopped, not until her body had grown cold. Yet even in that final moment, as I began to release her, she whispered, “Thank you…… for finding me, Karia……”
Her cold lips brushed mine in one last kiss. Then her body went rigid and collapsed, her shoulder brushing mine as she fell.
Stunned, I caught her just before she hit the ground and gathered her back into my arms. For a long while I simply held her, remembering the emotions she must have felt when she held this world’s Karia. At the end of those memories, the feelings I was experiencing now began to surface.
In the current of those emotions, I finally began to accept that this world was real.
Therefore, I lifted her body—which had not yet disappeared—and began walking toward the exit. The shadow at the cave entrance stood out sharply against the light beyond, and I felt as though I could never cross that boundary again. Yet I stepped out anyway and walked the desolate streets of the demon city, heading toward the Demon King’s castle, finally facing this reality head-on.
Just as I had felt the moment I arrived, this reality was unbearably cruel. Every living being was grotesquely intertwined, the end result of purposeless evolution. Beneath the ruins of human civilization, not a single human remained untouched by monster corruption; those who failed to evolve became materials for further corruption. No one retained any intelligence. Everyone was instinctively marching toward ruin. They were all dead. Even though many still moved, they were already dead.
Until now I had been unable to reach any conclusion beyond a vague desire for peace. Whenever something shook my heart, I had wavered and collapsed without conviction. Unlike my days as a hero, when I had a clear target to defeat, I had possessed nothing—no goal to achieve, no comrades to protect. Even when new things worth protecting and ideals worth pursuing appeared, the difference was clear. The limit of that vagueness was obvious.
But now, at last, I was beginning to find direction. I could no longer remain still. That realization was finally taking shape.
So I returned to the Demon King’s castle, carrying the body of this world’s Tia. I walked straight to the throne where she had once sat and gently placed her upon it. Then I set the crown upon her head once more and draped a blanket I found inside the castle over her cold body.
“In every timeline, in every world, you will always be a respected Demon King…… and in the end, you will be a victorious Demon King.”
I made a vow. “I will make it so.”
At least in my world, at least for my Demon King, I would prevent this ending. “No matter where you are, I’ll drape this blanket over you……”
I prayed that my wish would reach her soul. After saying my final farewell to this world’s Tia, I rose and looked toward the massive, shattered window across from the throne.
Scattered golden rays began to gather, forming the golden figure I had seen before. “……Transcendent.”
I spoke the name I now knew it bore. I had known it would appear now. The figure, still wearing a body identical to mine but with a face utterly different—hundreds of eyes—turned to face me. This time, unlike before, I felt no overwhelming revulsion. Perhaps because I was finally ready to confront it. The sight somehow suited the being perfectly.
I approached in silence. The Transcendent, which had been watching me quietly, stood in an ancient, scholarly posture, golden cloth draped over its form. It closed its eyes for a moment, then spoke directly into my mind.
【So…… you understand now.】
The method was the same as before—painful enough to feel as though my head would split—but compared to her pain, it was nothing.
“……I understand completely.”
My calm reply made the surroundings dissolve like washed-away paint, returning to the sea of stars I had first seen. This time I stood steady, feet planted firmly, facing the entity without faltering.
“So what is it you want from me?”
I had realized there must be a reason it had deliberately shown me that world. It would never have connected us without purpose.
The Transcendent slowly opened its hundreds of eyes and gazed out into the distant void of the star sea.
【The being they called the Transcendent was never a particularly good existence.】
I listened quietly, following its gaze, seeing with my own eyes what it wished to convey.
【In life, I was nothing more than a pure collection of instincts, obsessed solely with the propagation and prosperity of my species.】
It showed me its life—from its creation by divine hands, drifting through the star sea, settling on a planet, creating descendants, and then leaving its homeworld to scatter its offspring across countless distant worlds in the hope they would spread even farther.
【In the end, I wandered this vast star sea indiscriminately for the sake of my race’s prosperity, without considering what waves my actions might create……】
Then, when it tried to plant the seed of the demon race on a certain planet, it failed to notice that the world already had intelligent natives. Acting purely on instinct, it judged them mere native creatures and approached with predation and conquest. The natives were annihilated, their planet completely overtaken by demons.
【However, the species that was attacked by us had achieved technological advancement beyond imagination.】
Though their homeworld fell, the colonists who learned of its destruction sharpened their blades for revenge and returned to reclaim it. Having already completed every possible technological advancement, what they needed was honor and courage. To them, prepared to sacrifice everything for their homeworld’s recapture, the demons became their eternal enemies.
War broke out. Though the demons were not weak and eventually conquered the planet after a long conflict, both sides suffered enormous losses, and the Transcendent itself could not escape severe injury. The war ended its drifting; it settled on a distant planet and took root—that planet was Earth, where humanity lived.
Yet even after finding peace on that gentle, livable world, the Transcendent, having witnessed those outer-space beings during the war, knew they would eventually come seeking revenge. To protect its kin who had taken root here, it desperately tried to turn this planet into a single living entity. When it searched for life, it found humans and observed them closely, preparing to accept them if they could be of use to the species. But no matter how it looked, their traits seemed hopelessly inferior, so it ultimately decided to conquer them all and turn this world into a demon planet as well.
【That was nothing more than a barbaric choice.】
But the present Transcendent regretted that decision. It had failed to produce a clear, complete ending. Perhaps because of Earth’s mild atmosphere and environment, even after transforming the surroundings into a demon realm, the demons who adapted here never regained the power they possessed while drifting through space. As a result, they could not even conclude the war with humanity. If that stalemate continued, it was certain they would be mercilessly destroyed by the outer-space beings.
In the very last moment, the Transcendent made its final decision. If its own death was inevitable, then it would find an existence with the potential to surpass it and entrust the fate of its race to that being as a final bulwark. That existence was the Demon King. It found the potential in a human girl isolated on the battlefield, kidnapped her, and succeeded in transforming her into the Demon King—Karia, who would later become Tia Belberman.
After successfully turning her into the Demon King, the Transcendent cared for her as she adapted to the demon realm while continuing to raise an army to fight the outer-space beings and conquer humanity. But in the end, it could not escape death. It was driven underground by indiscriminate attacks from the powerful beings that descended from beyond the stars. It seemed the fate of the demon race had ended, yet through the desperate struggles of countless demons, they managed to inflict critical damage on the outer-space beings as well. The Demon King’s rampage left the deepest scar and preserved the demon race’s future. Though the side effect caused the Demon King to lose consciousness and her memories, the dying Transcendent embraced her and passed on all of its will. That was how the Demon King I knew came to be. The period when the demons stopped attacking humanity was because the Transcendent had died from the outer-space beings’ assault.
【However, my consciousness, having reached the pinnacle of magic, still survived like this……】
Though the Transcendent’s body had died, its consciousness remained in this world, trapped in an endless twilight of ceaseless anguish and contemplation. Amid the countless questions hurled at itself, it came to understand many things it had never grasped in life.
It told me the foundation of the demon race and expressed only one desire.
【There is only one thing I ask of you.】
Only one thing.
【Save everyone.】
Salvation. That was all.
【I know how insignificant and ridiculous it must seem for me to ask this of a mere human.】
Of course the Transcendent understood how absurd it was to entrust something it itself had failed to achieve. In life, the salvation it had sought was for everyone to become demons, but it had realized that was wrong. Now, the salvation it sought was something it believed I could accomplish.
【Still…… I feel that if it is you…… you can do it.】
I looked into the Transcendent’s countless eyes and saw apology, desperation, and hope.
【If my body were still alive, I would surely have tried to help you somehow…… but please forgive me for making only this vague request.】
The entity bowed its head in such a respectful posture.
【Please…… will you not ensure that every life in this vast star sea can be saved……?】
I stared at the Transcendent for a moment, then spoke bluntly. “I don’t really understand why you keep begging me to clean up the mess you made.”
“I just…… want to protect what was taken from me…… and what might still be taken.”
When I thought about it objectively, it really did seem like it was just asking me to fix its own mistakes. I felt a bit resentful toward the Transcendent’s irresponsibility, yet since it had only realized this after its body died, I could somewhat accept it. Still, as it knew, even if I—an ordinary human—learned all of this, nothing would change. I looked at the entity with a somewhat pessimistic expression.
But then—
【Seven years.】
The Transcendent spoke directly to me.
【In seven years, they will return for revenge against our species.】
The time I had left.
【So if you truly wish to protect what remains to you…… if you wish to protect the precious daughter I once gave birth to and raised with all my heart……】
And even what the Transcendent had thought of Tia.
【Unite the two races within seven years.】
The entity seemed to have staked everything on me. It believed no one else could accomplish this.
【Either let the demons swallow all of humanity, or make both races stand in perfect harmony.】
In a way, the Transcendent looked like a gambler betting everything on an invisible possibility—just like we heroes once had.
【Even if you succeed, the possibility of ending up like the future you saw is very high……】
Yet even I, who had felt repulsion at first, gradually began to be moved by the Transcendent’s powerful will.
【Still, I believe this will at least stop the damage caused by my mistake.】
Even so—even after death—the sight of the Transcendent desperately trying to atone for its mistakes, combined with my own intuition that there would be no hope without me, made me speak.
“……”
I gazed into the distant void of the star sea for a moment. Then, suddenly—
“I love you, Karia……”
Her voice, so faint, surfaced in my mind.
“……Haa.”
With a small sigh, I said, “Yeah…… I came to you for that reason anyway.”
I met the hundreds of eyes with my own two. “……We were always gamblers who bet everything on an uncertain future, and she left on her journey home after leaving me one request.”
Now the blurred image of the destination became completely clear. I cried out, “I will make sure that future never comes.”
I renewed my resolve once more. Just like her, who never gave up even on that ruined land. Just like this being, who tried to atone for its sins even after death. Even though my human body was pathetically weak, there was no reason I could not become like them.
Facing the entity with renewed determination, I shouted, “To stop those from beyond the stars, I will unite everyone. And even after finally stopping them, I will stay by Tia’s side and make sure she never swallows everyone.”
What remained for me now was only to move forward. “That…… was her final wish and request.”
The time given to me was seven years. Within seven years, I would unite everyone so that no one would be sacrificed, so that no one would grieve.
“Therefore, I will make my decision now.”
There was no more time to hesitate. I would become the king of a new era, just as Jemma had wished. The Transcendent had laid the foundation for that, and she had given me her final memories so that I could beautifully cultivate those foundations.
“Send me back to Tia Belberman.”
I would return. “……Transcendent.”
I would return to her side. And—
【……】
I would make my decision.
【You have a good face, little life.】
I would face that existence directly. From now on, I…… would never leave her.
【Then I leave the rest to you———】