"......!"
The moment he saw that, Baalzebub changed his state of mind.
Ruuuumble─
All the statues in the temple lit up their eyes and stood up. The falling corpses were forcibly made to rise by Baalzebub’s power, extending their barely remaining lifespans by a few minutes as they faced off against Bael.
The hosts of demons, and the worshipping statues and corpses, confronted each other.
"......I’ll eat you, Bael."
Baalzebub said,
"You’ll have to."
Bael gripped his sword and took his stance.
The hand holding the sword felt unfamiliar. How long had it been since he’d fought with a sword?
What a wretched past.
For someone feared as a master swordsman, how could he.
"When all of you can fit into your own maw, that is."
***
"Belphegor!"
By the time Belphegor arrived at Satan’s position,
The Four Knights and the Seven Deadly Sins were still facing off.
"Lord Belphegor!"
One of the knights cried out in slight panic.
"My apologies. We still haven’t finished them."
"It’d be a problem if you’d already finished against the Seven Deadly Sins."
Belphegor spoke as he took in the situation around him.
Both the Four Knights and the Seven Deadly Sins showed signs of fatigue, but none of them had taken any grievous injuries.
After seeing Mammon die and dropping their carelessness, the Seven Deadly Sins were indeed strong. The Four Knights couldn’t easily decide the outcome.
The Four Knights outstripped Asmodeus and Leviathan, but they seemed to be falling behind Lucifer and Satan.
And Baalzebub and Bael were glaring at each other from a slight distance, frozen in place. It was unmistakably Pandemonium.
"What in the hell are you doing!"
Satan shouted in a voice full of rage.
"Is this revenge on me for dropping you into Nastrond!"
At Satan’s words, Belphegor let out a dry laugh and shook his head.
"No, Satan. That’s not it. It’s not some childish problem like that."
"A childish problem......?"
Satan’s eyes blazed.
Only now did Belphegor feel that Satan was acting a bit more like himself. A very long time ago. That killing intent like he’d swallowed up all the flames in the world by himself. This was the original Satan.
Belphegor spoke.
"Yeah, from the start I haven’t had any real feelings toward you. No matter how many feelings you might have toward me."
"Don’t give me that bullshit! Then how am I supposed to understand what you’ve been doing! By helping Frondier, you’re ruining not just the Demon Realm but every world there is!"
Satan shouted.
He was certain Belphegor was # Nоvеlight # doing all this out of a desire for revenge against him. Otherwise it made no sense.
But Belphegor said,
"You aren’t the cause of why I’m doing this."
And in his eyes, there really didn’t seem to be any feelings toward Satan.
True to him, his gaze was dreadfully languid.
"You’re just one of the steps on the path I’m taking."
"A step?"
"Yeah, I’m not doing this out of malice."
Ah, do I have malice? I am a demon, after all. Belphegor tossed out that trivial line and then laughed to himself.
On this desperate battlefield, he alone was relaxed.
"Satan, you, you were playing around with Loki’s body."
"......So you did go into my castle."
Satan guessed as much and lowered his eyes. Belphegor nodded.
"You wanted to make use of the Weaving skill, didn’t you? The ability to copy any weapon you set your mind to. But since you could only make them as illusions, it’s a skill that needs conditions. So you racked your brain for a way to make it something other than an illusion."
Satan was a demon who had accumulated a vast amount of knowledge over a long time. The quantity of that knowledge was enough to let him contend with Odin.
That was why even his thinking was similar.
If he could use the skill called Weaving freely, he could create weapons suited to every enemy in this world who stood against him.
There was no perfect being in this world. Not even gods. Satan knew that very well.
A weapon that could transform instantly and pierce the very weakness of a being itself. Even in this world, that wasn’t all that rare. Just within the bounds of Satan’s knowledge, every being he knew was placed on top of a weakness.
So Satan coveted the Weaving skill Loki possessed.
"So you tried to make use of Loki’s flesh itself. Since skills are actually closely tied to the body and the soul. You figured that if it was made as an illusion, your body could stand in for that illusion. That really is the kind of idea a demon would have."
Whether demon, human, or god.
Everything in this world maintains the form of its existence. It’s only natural. No one can afford to recklessly ruin their own body and still remain alive.
So Satan had tried to create something that didn’t exist in this world in the first place.
By using Loki’s body.
"In that process, you found out one of the characteristics of Weaving, didn’t you? That Weaving is ‘inherited.’ That must have been when you started your under-the-table dealings with the gods."
Satan had learned that Weaving could be inherited.
In other words, if left alone, some human somewhere would again possess the Weaving skill and, by fate, resist the gods.
"I wonder if it was the Moirai who told you that would be Frondier. At least that much would be within the reach of their authority. So you used me to try to control Frondier. Since I, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, was on the continent of Falind, and it wasn’t easy for the gods to descend. I made for a convenient middleman who could easily suppress the holder of Weaving, didn’t I? And in return, the gods looked the other way and gave you all sorts of privileges. Thanks to that, you smoothly climbed into a position where you could become Demon King."
So Satan had said to Belphegor,
Grant Frondier Sloth.
"So what does that amount to. Do you want a pat on the head because you only figured it out after coming this far?"
"No, to be precise."
Belphegor scratched his cheek.
As if feeling a bit embarrassed.
"I wanted to point out the fact that even after I’ve said all this, you still haven’t caught on."
"What did you say?"
"You’ve been scheming in secret with Thanatos and the Moirai and the gods and the like."
At that point Belphegor laughed.
With a laugh that suited him.
"I’ve got my own secret scheming going on too."
"......Don’t talk nonsense. There was no one around you. No one hiding, no one communicating from a distance, nothing like that. You were definitely alone."
"Ha ha ha. You’re right about that. There’s no one around me. But this isn’t that kind of scheming."
Belphegor lifted a finger.
"My co-conspirator is Loki."
"......Stop your crazed babbling right there. Loki is,"
"Yeah. He’s dead. That’s why I called it a step."
Belphegor’s eyes sank, as if recalling something from the past.
"This is the content of the contract."
***
Humanity of the previous age lost to the gods.
The biggest cause was the mid-battle intervention of the gods of Olympus.
The giants had not foreseen their intervention, and the worst of them all was Thanatos.
Thanatos can forcibly reap souls. Even if it isn’t strictly death, it brings about a result that is death in all but name.
The one who last stood against him was Loki, but.
"......Tch, damn it."
Right now Loki was waiting for the moment of his death, with a hole punched through his body.
Even the fact that his last fight was against Thanatos had already been according to the gods’ calculations.
Thanatos laid a curse on Loki, who used Weaving.
Conscious of the "inheritance" characteristic of Weaving, he planned to kill the owner of the skill when Weaving interfered with reality once more.
"I win."
The one who approached Loki, whose day of death was now set,
"......Belphegor."
was Belphegor.
Loki looked up at him with a powerless voice.
Belphegor knelt on one knee and lowered his body, drawing closer to Loki.
"You remember our contract, right?"
At that time, Belphegor had no particular interest in the war between gods and humans.
He was a purely demonic demon, through and through. He still bore the epithet of Sloth.
"I will lend you my strength. Until the day you die. And after that, your soul is mine."
Loki had made a contract with Belphegor long ago.
But this contract was of no help to Loki.
"You should have specified clearly what you meant by lending strength. That you wanted me to join the fight, or that you wanted me to put a weapon in your hand, something like that. When you make a contract, choose your wording precisely. Next time."
Belphegor mocked Loki.
Of course, since he had said he would lend strength, he couldn’t not help at all.
There was a considerable compulsion to it in its own way. It didn’t go so far as stealing his strength, but it did bind his freedom.
But in the end, it was a contract where Loki could only be freed by dying. There was no way Belphegor would properly help Loki.
For this to be the contract laid down by Loki, the center of the giants and the one on the front lines. It was so slapdash it made him yawn.
Well, he was always the type to yawn anyway.
"Ku ku ku."
But then Loki laughed.
"No, Belphegor. Remember it properly."
"......What do you mean? I’m not misremembering anything. You said nothing but ‘lend me your strength,’"
"Not that part."
Loki said.
Loki had probably seen it too.
That spark of anticipation in Belphegor’s eyes as he looked at Loki, who was still wearing a sly smile even in the midst of dying.
"I said, ‘when the owner of Weaving dies.’ I didn’t say when I die."
"That’s you."
"Right. For now."
When Belphegor made this contract, the phrase "owner of Weaving" was a measure to avoid another person with the same name as Loki. Very occasionally contracts are dodged in that way. But the owner of Weaving was only one. Loki could not escape this contract.
But Loki said,
"The truth is, Weaving gets inherited."
"......Inherited?"
"Yeah. When I die, the next owner of Weaving appears."
The next owner of Weaving.
Realizing what that meant, Belphegor felt a chill.
"......In other words, the owner of Weaving will keep appearing,"
"And you’ll have to help them every time. Every time."
During the time this contract was in effect, Belphegor hadn’t been able to use any real strength toward Loki.
Belphegor’s fingertips trembled.
Loki spoke.
"You eagerly accepted the contract with me so you could keep using that sloppy phrase ‘lend strength’ as-is."
That’s right.
He had believed it was a contract advantageous to himself.
"If the other party doesn’t point out the loophole in the contract, think about whether there are any loopholes pointing toward you. Next time."
It’s hard to suspect what’s behind you when the situation is unfolding exactly how you wanted.
Belphegor had learned that law bitterly at this moment.
"Until humans win, you’ll stay bound to my contract."
At Loki’s words, Belphegor let out a short laugh.
"You played a trick on a demon."
"That’s what I do."
Strangely enough, Belphegor didn’t feel any anger.
This human was similar. To himself.
Belphegor was a demon. A demon well-accustomed to deceiving and being deceived.
The fact that he’d been deceived did not stir anger so much as it sparked curiosity.
Grab.
Just then Loki roughly seized Belphegor’s clothes.
"I knew you were taking this contract lightly. But after this, you won’t be able to do that anymore."
"......You never expected humans to win from the start, did you."
"Not just me."
Loki’s eyes flashed open.
"All my comrades who fought with me entrusted humanity’s fate to the future. Right now we can’t defeat the gods. We still haven’t found a way to resist fate."
Loki’s fist trembled.
"But that’s only the story for now."
Resentment, sorrow, and the guilt and regret toward all his comrades who had died.
"Next time, humanity will win. It doesn’t have to be me. But the one after me will definitely defeat the gods!"
"......."
Belphegor closed his mouth. From his perspective, it didn’t feel like humans were going to change in any way.
But now he couldn’t just brush it aside. He was bound by the contract.
Instead, Belphegor asked a different question.
"......Loki, you said Weaving can only be held by someone who has already experienced another world."
"Yeah."
"What was the world you originally came from like?"
At those words, Loki was briefly blank.
Then Loki smirked and said,
"Ask me again on the day you take my soul."
And then.
Loki died.
As he watched Loki sink down, having lost all trace of life, Belphegor slowly rose to his feet.
"I see."
Belphegor put one hand on his hip and slowly turned his gaze.
"I’ve gotten a bit curious."
