Chapter 1510: Chapter 214 - The Gluttony (1)
Lucielle looked like she genuinely couldn’t believe what she had just heard.
Actually, "couldn’t believe" might have been an understatement. The way she was staring at me made it look like I had just announced that I was planning to jump into a volcano because I heard there was treasure at the bottom. Her eyes were wide, her expression was frozen somewhere between disbelief and frustration, and I was pretty sure she was reconsidering every decision that had led to this conversation.
Elise, on the other hand, reacted completely differently.
She let out a small chuckle and shook her head, looking almost amused. It wasn’t the kind of laugh someone gave because they thought the situation was funny. It was the kind of laugh that came from someone who had already accepted that a disaster was inevitable and had decided to stop fighting it.
Honestly, that sounded about right.
"Well," Elise said with a helpless smile, "I had a feeling Leon was going to say something like that eventually. At this point, I don’t think I really have much choice other than to support him."
Lucielle slowly turned toward her.
"Are you both insane?" she asked.
The question came out so naturally that I almost felt bad for making her ask it.
"Do you actually hear yourselves when you talk?" she continued. "I already explained this. Satania is far stronger than I am. If you can’t defeat me, then you don’t stand a chance against Satania."
"Well, I don’t think sitting around and waiting to get hunted down is exactly a great strategy either," I said with a shrug. "At that point, I might as well just deal with it."
Lucielle stared at me for several seconds.
The problem was that she looked genuinely offended by my answer.
"You can’t possibly be serious," she said.
Unfortunately for her, I was.
"You’re talking about confronting Satania while being the vessel of Lilith herself. The same Lilith that Satania wanted erased from existence. You’re treating this far too lightly."
She took a deep breath, and for a moment, I thought she was trying to calm herself down.
It didn’t seem to be working.
"Lilith’s revival and your survival are essential to the fate of this world," she continued. "If you don’t want this world to be annihilated, then you need to survive. Do you understand that? Even Satania herself couldn’t oppose those beings."
"Well," I replied, "I think you’re underestimating how stubborn I can be."
I crossed my arms.
"And I’m going to make something very clear."
Lucielle’s expression stiffened.
"I’m not going to let Lilith take over my body. I’m not going to let her revive. She can stay wherever she currently is inside me for all I care, because I have absolutely no intention of helping her come back."
I paused for a moment before continuing.
"And while we’re being honest, I have no intention of following whatever fate supposedly wants me to do."
The room became quiet.
Lucielle looked at me for a long time.
Then she closed her eyes.
"You’re making a terrible mistake," she said quietly.
She opened them again.
"A truly terrible mistake."
There wasn’t any anger in her voice anymore.
If anything, she sounded tired.
"If you insist on doing this without possessing the power necessary to defeat Satania, then you’re destined to fail."
She clenched her hands.
"And if you fail, you’ll be dragging the fate of this entire world down with you."
I wanted to argue that putting the fate of the entire world on one person seemed incredibly irresponsible, but I had a feeling that wasn’t the best thing to say at the moment.
After several seconds, Lucielle let out a long sigh.
"If you’re really not going to listen to me," she said, "then I’ll hide you from her."
I blinked.
"Hide me?"
"Yes."
"Where exactly?"
"Somewhere Satania won’t find you."
I stared at her.
"Do you really think that’s possible?"
"I hid Elise from Satania for years," she replied immediately. "I don’t see why I couldn’t do the same for you."
She looked completely serious.
"If you stay hidden and avoid doing anything foolish, then there’s a chance Satania won’t discover your existence."
Honestly, it wasn’t a bad proposal.
The problem was that I didn’t think it would change anything.
Someone like Satania didn’t strike me as the type of person who gave up just because something was difficult to find.
Besides, spending the rest of my life hiding somewhere because an absurdly powerful lunatic wanted me dead didn’t exactly sound appealing.
I was just about to explain that.
Then I felt it.
A presence.
It was strange.
Not because it was powerful.
Because it felt wrong.
"So this is where you’ve been, Lucielle."
A voice echoed through the room.
The instant I heard it, every instinct in my body screamed at me.
Compared to the aura Lucielle had been releasing earlier, this was something else entirely.
I had heard people use the phrase "the aura of a monster" before.
I had always assumed it was just a figure of speech.
Apparently, it wasn’t.
"I certainly wasn’t expecting this," the voice continued. "You’ve been maintaining contact with Lilith’s vessel? I’m sure Satania will be very pleased to hear this."
I slowly looked upward.
Something was dripping from the ceiling.
At first, I thought it was water.
Then I looked at it more carefully.
It wasn’t water.
Or if it was, then somebody needed to have a very serious conversation with water about its life choices.
It was too thick.
Too viscous.
It moved in a way that made my skin crawl.
The transparent liquid continued dripping onto the floor.
One drop.
Then another.
Then dozens more.
They began pooling together.
The puddles merged.
The merged puddles became a blob.
The blob continued growing.
And somehow, despite the fact that I was literally watching it happen, my brain still refused to accept what I was seeing.
The blob began changing shape.
Arms.
Legs.
A torso.
A head.
The transformation continued until what stood before us was unmistakably a person.
Then, somehow, clothes appeared.
I wasn’t even going to question that part.
I had already exceeded my daily limit for accepting impossible things.
The person standing before us had blue hair and looked incredibly young.
At first glance, I would’ve guessed they were in their early teens.
But that wasn’t the strange part.
The strange part was that I couldn’t tell whether they were a boy or a girl.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely accurate.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t tell.
It was that the distinction itself felt meaningless.
They didn’t feel like either.
And somehow, that was far more unsettling.
One thing, however, was perfectly clear.
This was someone I needed to be very, very careful around.
The blue-haired figure smiled.
It wasn’t a particularly large smile.
That somehow made it worse.
"It seems," they said softly, looking directly at Lucielle, "that you’ve been keeping secrets."
The smile widened slightly.
"Which means, unfortunately, that I’ll have to punish you, Eldest Sis."
Comments