(Deep beneath the cathedral)
What about the Heavenly Demon, then?
So far, there is nothing concrete to latch onto.
At its simplest, the Heavenly Demon is a demon capable of transporting souls through something akin to delivery routes.However, its true mechanism remains unknown. The only thing I know for certain is that it possesses devastating destructive power.
I raised a hand to my chin and glanced at Janeus walking beside me.
If that's the case, we can make a few assumptions.
First: the Heavenly Demon possessed Sophia's body, or the body of the one who was burned, in order to warn Phelion.Sophia's whereabouts are still unknown, and the destructive explosion could have been the result of emotional instability caused by Love mana.
Or perhaps the one who was burned alive and then sent to Phelion was the truly deranged one.He would have lost consciousness due to oxygen deprivation, dying from suffocation and smoke inhalation long before the body was delivered.
If it was the first scenario, then from the very beginning, there were only a few ways to eliminate a demonized madman.
Faith mana.Mind mana.Or Gifts related to mental balance, such as those of Oxeiburt or Julien.Or… complex mental reconstruction.
However, in cases of emotional collapse or emotional eruption, humans cannot resolve such things on their own. External stimulation is required, something entirely meaningless at this point.
From the start, the Heavenly Demon was a "train."Something that cannot stop.A "serpent."
Yet it resembles an existence rooted more in the mind than in physical reality. That is to say, in essence, it is not truly a train. It is merely something similar to a train, because the mind imposed that form upon the demon.
(In this world, trains do not yet exist, if you're wondering.)
That would explain why Promet, or Hadelus, once said it looked like a dragon.Its form is fundamentally shaped by each individual's perception.
But that interpretation fits the burned victim better.Someone burned to the point of losing their ego, incapable of forming imagery through conscious thought, would naturally rely on the imagination of others. Moreover, Oxeiburt would never allow Sophia to be directly involved with that demon.
Still, something feels strange.Why did he release the demon so openly that year?
Even as a corpse, it would still be something tainted.
"Or—"
I recalled something Acrune once mentioned in a story he told Oxeiburt.
Though fragmented, vague, and lacking clarity, there were elements worth examining.
Desire and love.
Love equals Lust, yet Love is not Lust.
They exist within different frames of perception and experience.
In the old world, there was a hypothesis suggesting that love at first sight arises from genetic and physical compensation.Tall people are drawn to shorter ones.Those with high noses prefer lower ones.
Though unproven, the theory carries some plausibility when explaining the initial spark of attraction.
However, long-term love requires harmony in emotions, values, and thought.
Lust, on the other hand, makes perfect sense without emotional attachment. It is pure desire.
Yet if the peak of Lust is emotional numbness, leaving only the body and the pursuit of physical pleasure, then the peak of Love is obsession.A state of blind devotion where reason is lost, emotions override logic, and even physical pleasure becomes secondary, leaving only the craving to possess love itself.
(The idea of monopolizing love is admittedly vague here. It's not what you're thinking. I genuinely don't believe people love each other to such extremes. This is merely blind love, nothing more.)
What if we applied this perspective to Sophia?
Someone already affected, to some degree, by carrying the seed of the Demon Core.
Was Sophia's soul nailed into that corpse?Due to the corpse's dead nature, she wouldn't suffer severe effects from neural interference, as her soul and body were never fully synchronized. At the same time, this would suggest that demonic influence clings directly to the soul.
That would imply Oxeiburt had already collapsed long ago and was forced to bind Sophia to a corpse, compelling the demon to use the dead body instead of Sophia's original soul.
Because the demon had already seized the soul, it was given priority over the body.Yet while the demon did not need a body, the original soul did. Since the body was destroyed, switching vessels would be considered suicide.
And since the demon was the corrupted essence of Sophia herself, it carried with it the irrational frenzy of chaotic emotions.
Still, it needed a catalyst.A trigger to detonate the bomb.
Only when the original soul consented to the pact could the demon fully claim the body.(Much like Western demon contracts, naturally.)
With Lust, Sophia could not be tempted. More precisely, she was emotionally numb.
But what about the peak of Love?
And—
I shook my head at the thought.Madness. Pure madness.
To preserve even a fleeting fragment of Sophia's life, someone must have chosen the most deranged method imaginable.
Sophia always possessed the peak of Lust, but lacked Love, rendering everything incomplete. What if she were given a love akin to a curse?
All to prevent her soul from collapsing under its own emotional frenzy.All emotions converging into one.
Yet this also became the foundation for demonization.
Even so, recalculating the odds, it was still only a minuscule probability.A single, fragile hope to cling to her existence.All other methods were meaningless.
I raked my fingers through my hair, leaving it tangled and disheveled.
Wait, but then why was the Heavenly Demon inside her from the very beginning? Was this yet another plan of his? Placing both the Demon Core and the Heavenly Demon within a single body? What kind of "heaven" would require such a thing?
Heaven… could the heaven the Pope spoke of be this very thing?
That would explain the need for Love mana, born from years of sexual abuse since childhood. And she had been implanted with Heavenly Mana from the very start, even before awakening a tier-three mana core.
The heaven he referred to. A heaven of wine and decadence. A heaven of the purest form of desire.
A "heavenly" vessel, a train meant to transport cargo, yet that cargo was never the souls of others as I had assumed from the beginning, but rather…
"…"
"What are you doing? We've arrived."
Janeus's voice pulled me from my thoughts.
Himel, who had been guiding us, came to a halt. He extinguished the candle and gestured upward.
Above us, hundreds of eerie oil lamps floated in midair, casting strange lights that illuminated the dark cavern. Strange symbols appeared, etched into layers of rock and earth.
"These are mana languages. As everyone knows, the Earth Demon is the land itself. These mana inscriptions are what merged the Earth Demon with this city."
"What? I didn't know the Earth Demon was—"
Janeus covered her mouth.The stench here was unbearably foul, far worse than before, preventing her from speaking further.
I sighed and pretended to cover my nose as well, abandoning my earlier thoughts.
In any case, everything will end soon.We're steadily approaching the finale.