It was raining, and Lloyd had already left. Our discussion of the plan was finished.
I remained seated in the café, enjoying the damp, moldy scenery outside and the warmth of a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
Our plan was to act flexibly, adjusting our moves based on the allies currently available to us and our understanding of the situation.
As for the barrier, it was certain that the Mind Demon functioned as a two-layer barrier. One layer was a fabricated reality, while the other was a shell that prevented the fabricated reality from colliding with true reality.
What I needed to do was turn that blocking shell into a genuine virtual reality. That was the first priority.
Perhaps I should stack another layer on top. After all, I already knew the treasure for this Blue Light midterm competition in advance.
But the crucial issue remained which treasure should be chosen.
…
Regarding demons like the Heavenly Demon.
There was still nothing concrete to anchor to.
In the simplest terms, the Heavenly Demon was a demon capable of transporting souls through delivery routes.
However, its true mechanism remained unknown. The only thing I was certain of was its devastating destructive power.
If that was the case, then some assumptions could be made.
First, the Heavenly Demon might have possessed either Sophia's body or the body of the one who was burned, as a warning to Phelion.
At its core, Sophia's whereabouts and story were still unclear. The destructive outburst could have been caused by emotional instability induced by Love mana.
Alternatively, the burned individual who was sent to Phelion may have been the true madman. He lost consciousness due to oxygen deprivation and died from suffocation and smoke inhalation before the body was delivered.
If it was the first scenario, then from the beginning, the methods to eliminate someone who had gone mad and become demonized were extremely limited.
Faith mana.
Mind mana.
Or mind balancing gifts like those of Oxeiburt or Julien.
Or complex mental reconstruction. However, in cases of emotional collapse or explosive emotional outbursts, a person cannot resolve it alone. External intervention is required, and at this stage, that would be meaningless.
From the outset, the Heavenly Demon was essentially a train. It could not be stopped. A serpent of sorts. Yet it resembled something that existed more within the mind than as a tangible entity in reality. In other words, its essence was not truly a train. It was something akin to one, shaped as such because the mind imposed that form upon the demon.
In this world, trains do not yet exist.
That explained why Promet or Hadelus described it as resembling a dragon. Fundamentally, its form depended on the individual perceiving it.
This interpretation fit the burned corpse better. Someone burned to the point of losing their ego would no longer be able to consciously shape imagery and would instead rely entirely on the imagination of others. Furthermore, Oxeiburt would never have allowed Sophia to be directly involved with that demon.
Yet something was strange. Why had he released the demon so openly that year?
Even as a corpse, it was still a source of corruption.
Or.
I recalled something mentioned in the fragmented story Acrune told Oxeiburt.
Though incomplete, unclear, and lacking context, there were still elements worth examining.
That element was desire and love.
Love equaled lust, yet love was not lust.
It existed within a framework of perception and experience.
There was a hypothesis in the old world that love at first sight arose from genetic or physical compensation. Tall people were attracted to shorter ones. Those with high noses favored those with lower noses.
Though never verified, the theory remained plausible as an explanation for the sudden emotional spark known as first love.
However, sustaining love over time required harmony in emotions, thoughts, and values.
Lust functioned differently. In lust, affection was unnecessary. It was pure desire.
If the peak of lust was emotional numbness, leaving only the body and the craving for physical pleasure, then the peak of love was obsession. A state of blind infatuation so extreme that reason was lost, emotions overrode rationality and physical pleasure, leaving only the obsessive desire to possess love itself.
The idea of monopolizing love was vague in this context. It was not what one might imagine. I did not believe anyone could truly love to that extent. It was simply blind love.
What if this were viewed from Sophia's perspective?
Someone already affected to some degree by carrying the seed of the Mind Demon.
Could Sophia's soul have been nailed to that corpse? Because of the corpse's dead nature, she would not suffer severe neurological damage, since her soul and body were not fully integrated. At the same time, this suggested that the demon's influence clung directly to the soul. This implied that Oxeiburt had collapsed long ago and was forced to bind Sophia to a corpse, compelling the demon to use that body instead of Sophia's own soul.
Because the soul had been seized by the demon, the demon was given priority to use the body. Yet the demon itself did not require a body, while the original soul did. Since the body had already been destroyed, switching bodies would be considered suicide.
And because the demon was the corrupted essence of Sophia herself, it carried her irrational frenzy of chaotic emotions.
However, it still required a catalyst, a trigger to detonate the bomb. Only when the original soul agreed to a pact with the demon could the body be seized, similar to Western demon contracts.
With lust, she could not be tempted. More accurately, she was emotionally numb.
So what about the peak of love?
I shook my head at the scenario forming in my mind. It was madness. To preserve even a fleeting fragment of Sophia's life, someone must have chosen the most deranged method possible.
Sophia always possessed the peak of lust, yet lacked love, rendering everything incomplete. Now, what if there existed a love that functioned like a curse?
All of this was done to prevent her soul from collapsing under its own emotional frenzy, as all emotions had merged into one. Yet this also became the foundation for demonization. Even so, the probability remained minuscule. It was the only hope left to cling to her, because all other methods were meaningless.
All of this was done to prevent heaven from collapsing, to obstruct the Pope's plan with the smallest possible probability, even if it meant complete failure.
I ran my hands through my hair, leaving it tangled and disheveled.
But then why was the Heavenly Demon on her from the very beginning? Could this have been another of his plans?
To place both the Mind Demon and the Heavenly Demon within a single body? To reach some form of heaven that required such a vessel?
Heaven. Could the heaven the Pope spoke of be this?
That would explain the need for Love mana born from childhood sexual abuse.
She had been implanted with Heavenly Mana from the very start, even before awakening a tier three mana core.
The heaven he spoke of was a heaven of wine and depravity.
A heavenly vessel used for transport, yet the cargo was never other people's souls as we initially assumed, but something else entirely.
And what of the Earth Demon?
Either it was the Pope himself, an extremely unlikely possibility, or Himel.
No. In the novel, Himel existed in the real world, while demons were confined within fabricated reality.
Or had heaven disguised its true nature?
No. Fundamentally, that was impossible.
The most plausible explanation was that the Earth Demon originally had no host soul at all, but was created through a sacrificial ritual, like the great massacre three hundred years ago.