"..."
When Patchouli read the description of [Heaven-Dimming Demon], the curiosity on her face turned grave.
"Stop fooling around." She pinched the cheek of the girl clinging to her for comfort. "Do you feel anything wrong? Anything strange? This thing… looks bad."
Garbled text, talk of becoming an abyss. Was her teammate going to turn into something bizarre?
…Well, her cheeks still felt normal to the touch.
"Nope."
"Really?"
"Really. If you're worried, Patchi, you can give me a physical exam." Zeroy's casual tone didn't hide that she knew the title might pose problems.
"..." Patchouli gazed into her clear eyes for a while. "Better check, then."
"Alright." Zeroy let her probe with Mana and perception. After a while—
"Seems fine… though maybe I missed something." Patchouli exhaled slightly in relief, though still advised cautiously. "Maybe… kill less? Restrain yourself?"
She truly feared Zeroy might be tainted. Even a little corruption of her mind could twist her judgment into something monstrous. Zeroy was still normal now: kind, gentle at heart, just extreme. Her love of beauty made her commit horrific deeds in others' eyes.
If that became true evil… Patchouli despaired even at the thought.
Zeroy's terror didn't just cow survivors—it even cowed her partner. Patchouli almost understood that last pest they hunted down in the mountains, and its absolute despair.
"Impossible! I will never ignore beauty or evil!" Zeroy declared.
"Of course." Patchouli's face stayed blank. She hadn't expected persuasion to work.
"Then at least be careful. Mental distortion is the most dangerous—silent and creeping."
Zeroy gave a thumbs-up, proudly. "Of course! Excellent moral education taught me to reflect on myself three times a day!"
Patchouli was surprised by that. Such a good habit? Regardless, given how nonstop their purge had been, Zeroy had no time for reflection. If she did keep that habit… "Reflecting mid-massacre? That would be unbeatable."
···
Out of 750 million, barely 40 million survived. This world was more twisted than Zeroy expected, leaving even fewer than she predicted. She had thought the Tokyo Area was the worst, written just to torment lolis.
Nonetheless, in reality, Tokyo had been the mildest. Other places were worse.
Now the 40 million survivors were scattered. No single city could house them. Zeroy divided them into three groups, finding three large enough cities in East Asia. She placed teleportation nodes there and moved her corpse towers nearby—not close enough to rot the air, but close enough to intimidate.
Next: how to gather survivors into those three cities.
"My magic can now teleport worldwide, as long as I set nodes carefully," Patchouli said.
Before the Main God Space, she couldn't have. That said, now she was far stronger and the only mage in this world. Both were crucial. It was like painting on clean white paper. In a world full of mystics, with spells and barriers everywhere, it would have been like drawing on scribbled paper—much harder.
"But how do we make people enter my nodes?"
"Hmm…" Zeroy pondered. The simplest way: threats, force them in. Even so, too much fear drives people mad. Abandoning them was out of the question.
"My suggestion: the story of Noah's Ark," Patchouli explained briefly. "In some worlds, there's this myth—God saw the earth filled with corruption and violence, and decided to flood it.
However, he found one good man: Noah. So He told him to build an ark."
She thought of Genesis because Zeroy's purge resembled it. Humanity doomed, saved only by an ark.
"In myth, humanity should have perished. But thanks to the ark, mankind survived. So people both feared God and thanked Him for mercy."
"What do you think? Fear alone isn't as steady as fear and mercy together. And it's your truth, isn't it? You don't hate humanity or love destruction. You hate evil and cherish the good. You don't want those you recognize as good to hate you, do you? This way, people will see your hatred of evil and praise of good more clearly, spreading virtue better."
...
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