"Is the plan to throw us into the abyss?"
"Mm. From here on, I’ll explain as we go. That’ll be better for you too."
Belphegor spread his wings.
Selena tensed slightly at that. He had such a relaxed air about him that it was easy to let one’s guard down, but Belphegor was a demon. And one of the Seven Deadly Sins at that.
"Where are we going?"
"You said you’re going to save Atjie, right? Then we have to go there."
At Belphegor’s words, Frondier looked at Selena.
"Selena, you can’t use flight magic, right. Can you go inside the shadow?"
"......The shadow is a means of movement, nothing more, so staying inside it isn’t appropriate. It’s not a space where you can breathe."
"I see. Then you can’t stay there long."
"Yes. At most about ten minutes."
"......"
Frondier was at a loss for words for a moment.
So Selena can hold her breath for ten minutes?
"It can’t be helped."
Frondier turned his back to Selena. Then he knelt on one knee.
"Get on."
"......"
This time, Selena’s words stopped.
"Hurry. We don’t have time."
"U-um, that......"
Watching, Belphegor spoke up.
"Oh dear. Frondier, you don’t understand a woman’s heart."
"What?"
"She’s saying she wants you to hold her like a princess. So she can see your face right in front of her,"
"It’s not like that!"
Selena cut off Belphegor’s words and carefully moved in front of Frondier’s back.
"E-excuse me."
"Sure."
Selena hesitated, then in the end climbed onto Frondier’s back, and Frondier stood up.
"Let’s go."
"This way."
Belphegor took off first, and Frondier followed after him. All the while, Selena hid her reddened face against Frondier’s back.
Fwoooosh──
As they flew, Frondier asked again.
"So, what was that plan of Satan’s?"
When Frondier asked, Belphegor wagged his finger playfully in the air.
"Like I said, I wasn’t interested in the situation in the demon realm. However they fought their power struggles, and whoever ended up king as a result, none of it had anything to do with me. But Satan apparently didn’t think that way."
"What do you mean?"
"That guy thought I was trying to become king. That’s something I only found out later, though."
There, Satan had taken in one hand a staff from who knows where. When he swung the staff, letters appeared in the air. ‘Baal’.
"Originally, the strongest among the Seven Deadly Sins was this guy."
"......Baal."
"Yeah. A guy who doesn’t exist anymore."
"Doesn’t exist? I met Bael, though."
"Right. So......"
Belphegor, who had been about to explain, suddenly stopped. He looked at Frondier with a puzzled gaze.
"How do you know Bael and Baal were originally the same being?"
"......"
For people of this world, that was knowledge they had no way of knowing. To begin with, they hadn’t even known of the demons’ existence.
Frondier, °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° however, had knowledge from his previous world. He at least knew that Baal was called by several different names.
"Well, it doesn’t really matter. That’s not the important part."
Soon Belphegor let it go and continued his explanation.
He seemed to have gotten tired of it.
"Originally, among the Seven Deadly Sins, there was Baal. A demon who was, in name and reality, the strongest. There was no king then either, but the meaning was different from now. Baal was the king anyway, so there was no need to bother designating one."
"He really must have been overwhelmingly strong."
"Yeah. But that guy had one problem."
"What was it?"
"Half of him was a god."
Frondier tilted his head at that. Was such a thing even possible?
"Baal is both one of the strongest and one of the oldest demons. At the very least, to the people of old, Baal was a god. Somewhere even now there are probably prayers being offered to him as a faith. So Baal didn’t have the ‘desire’ that demons are originally supposed to possess, and it was possible for him to give Ecleksis to humans. Back then, they even interacted with the gods."
"In that case, if anything, he doesn’t show any proof of being a demon."
"Right. But he lived in the demon realm and liked to command demons. So Baal looked like a bridge that connected both demons and gods, but at the same time, to either side he looked like a bat with a foot in each camp. Well, he was so strong that no one ever said it out loud."
And then— Belphegor slashed through the letters spelling Baal with his staff.
"He made a mistake."
"A mistake?"
"He fell for the gods’ temptation."
Next to it, Belphegor wrote one more name. ‘Odin’.
The moment he saw that name, Frondier’s eyes naturally narrowed.
"Odin wanted to weaken the demons’ side. That guy knew Ragnarok was coming. If Ragnarok really came crashing down, and the demons’ power was strong, the demons might sweep away all the gods."
"So what did he do to Baal?"
"He persuaded him to become a god."
Baal had a foot in both the gods and the demons. He had the confidence that he could stand on either side, but at the same time he had a subjective confusion that he was neither side. Odin read that.
"But Baal didn’t know any concrete method for becoming a god. Honestly, that was obvious. He was already a god. He was just the only one who didn’t think so."
"What did Odin say?"
"He said that since Baal was half god and half demon, he had to throw away the demon half. If he ripped off one side, the other side would settle completely in its place. That’s what Odin said, and Baal listened."
──But where in the world does a being like that exist?
"So it doesn’t work that way?"
"Half-god half-demon, half-god half-human. Those kinds of beings, we only call them that for convenience. It’s not like they’re literally made by sticking halves together. If there were such an easy method, all those mixed-bloods would already have decided which side to stand on."
If you applied Odin’s words to someone else, Heracles would have become a god long ago.
A soul isn’t something you can peel off and reattach as you please.
"Baal didn’t know that. Or maybe he did and still thought he’d be different. He tried to rip out what he himself thought of as ‘the demon part’. An ordinary demon would have died right there."
You are splitting your own soul. Most demons wouldn’t even know the method, and even if it were possible, they wouldn’t survive.
"Odin’s goal must have been to kill Baal, but something a bit unexpected happened."
"......The separation of his soul succeeded."
"Yeah. That’s how Baalzebub and Bael were born."
Baal ripped off his ‘demonic part’, and that severed part somehow gained consciousness and managed to survive.
That side was Bael.
The half that remained after the soul was torn off somehow managed to restore a body, and although his strength dropped, he clung to the position of one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the demon realm.
That side was Baalzebub.
"The separation of the soul succeeded, but he didn’t become a god. By succeeding at the separation, his rank fell."
"Was that part of Odin’s scheme too?"
"Who knows. No one could have predicted whether Baal’s soul separation would succeed or fail."
Even for Odin, no one could say if he’d seen that far ahead.
"Anyway, after that, Bael left the Seven Deadly Sins. It was pretty much the same as being abandoned by Baal, who he originally was. The Seven Deadly Sins regarded Baalzebub as the main body, and Bael as something that had split off, so he didn’t have any allies. So he left the Seven Deadly Sins and settled somewhere in the demon realm."
"That’s when he started entering the ranks of the 72 Demons."
"Right. Bringing along some of the forces that had followed him back when he was Baal. Actually, even though Bael fell out of the Seven Deadly Sins, his existence is fairly stable. In a way, he was born again."
Since Bael was Baal’s ripped-off demonic part, Bael was extremely stable as a demon.
In the demon realm, being thoroughly demon-like is advantageous in many ways.
"But Baalzebub, because he thinks he’s the main body, has a hard time restoring his body. He lost as much of his soul as Bael exists."
Baalzebub was Baal’s incomplete form, who had lost as much of his soul as Bael’s existence. He endlessly searched for something to replace his missing half.
However, naturally, that was only possible with Bael. An unfillable void, an eternal hunger.
The demon of Gluttony. Baalzebub.
"......But that’s amazing. Even after losing half, he still stayed in the position of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Just how strong was he?"
Frondier was amazed at Baal’s might.
It had been that difficult just to defeat Belphegor, but Baal was incomparably stronger than that, and even after the separation of his soul, he was still one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
At that, Belphegor made an ambiguous expression.
"Well, that’s not wrong, but. What I want to say starts from here."
"What?"
"The truth is, Baalzebub was on the verge of being kicked out of the Seven Deadly Sins."
No matter how strong Baal had been, Baalzebub was different. After half his power flew off, he was lacking to be called one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
"I stopped that."
"You stopped it?"
"Yeah. No matter how solemn they pretend to be, the Seven Deadly Sins are demons at their core, so they get caught up in power logic and can’t see anything else."
Haah, Belphegor let out a sigh. Now that he was no longer one of the Seven Deadly Sins, his brazen way of disparaging them as he pleased stood out.
"If we just kicked Baalzebub out like that, there was no demon to replace him."
"......There’s Astaroth."
"Ah, my replacement?"
Only then did Belphegor react as if remembering there was such a kid. His eyes were bored.
"Not happening."
"......Is that so."
"Odin was lying in wait, obsessed with killing demons. So no matter what Baalzebub’s actual condition was, we needed to show the outside that he was fine. If the Seven Deadly Sins wavered, the demon realm was finished. All the more so if it was Baal."
That persuasion got through, and Baalzebub remained among the Seven Deadly Sins.
But from there, Satan’s gaze toward Belphegor changed.
Belphegor raised letters in the air once more. Side by side, ‘Satan’ and ‘Lucifer’.
"Right now, these two are the strongest among the Seven Deadly Sins."
"Aren’t they the Seven Deadly Sins because they’re all similar?"
"They are similar. But these two are the most unusual after Baal. Their recognition among humans is so high they even have a bit of faith mixed in."
Satan and Lucifer.
The other Seven Deadly Sins were plenty famous, but the fame of those two was overwhelming.
Demons gain strength just from being widely known among people.
"Satan is a smart guy, but he’s honest with his emotions. His preferences too. What he likes is simple. The single strongest one. So he liked Baal, and now he likes Lucifer. Lucifer has similar traits to Satan, so the two of them became friends in no time."
"The two strongest among the Seven Deadly Sins joined forces?"
At Frondier’s question, Belphegor nodded.
Seeing that, Frondier tilted his head slightly.
Wasn’t the power balance among the Seven Deadly Sins already collapsing?
"The truth is, at this rate, Satan becoming king would have been a matter of time. But then a trivial problem came up. At least, to me it was a very trivial problem."
"What was it?"
"Ever since the Baal incident, Lucifer has been rating me highly."
Belphegor’s stance had always been that of an observer.
However, that’s not how those around him saw it.
Holding Satan back in the monster war, stopping Baalzebub’s expulsion. Those two things greatly changed the way people thought of him.
Until then, he’d been nothing more than a lazy demon who, despite being one of the Seven Deadly Sins, never did anything.
"Lucifer treats any being he doesn’t understand as inferior. It’s only natural. He believes he’s the strongest. If there’s even the slightest part that’s different from him, then that difference is exactly the reason they’re weak. That’s what he thinks."
"......That’s arrogance itself."
"So I used to be the being Lucifer hated the most."
Belphegor let out another sigh.
"For some reason, he suddenly changed his attitude toward me. Saying I was the one he acknowledged the most and all that. Of all times, right in front of Satan. ‘The king of demons should of course be me, but if you, Belphegor, want to do it, I’ll yield.’ That kind of thing."
Frondier quietly listened to that and thought.
He just watches from afar, and then, at the most important moment, shows up and solves a big problem. So the evaluations around him start to change.
But he himself only wants to keep playing the role of observer.
......Huh? This is completely—
