Darkness as thick as ink swirled around Yuuma Tokoyogi, gathering before Epsilon and the others into a pitch-black pillar of light that stretched from earth to sky.
"Hum... hum..."
A deep vibration filled their ears. It seemed to pulse unconsciously to some strange rhythm, weaving itself into a dark and eerie melody. The sound was so oppressive that merely hearing it made everyone feel as though an invisible hand had closed around their throats, choking them.
A wisp of black mist leaked from where the pillar met the ground.
The instant it entered Epsilon and the others' field of vision, a voice like a Devil's whisper sounded directly inside their minds. Their attention was completely seized, leaving them dazed as though their souls had been pulled from their bodies.
But it lasted for only an instant.
Deep within Epsilon's body, the Magical Power seed left by Shadow-sama gave an almost imperceptible tremor. That tiny vibration shattered the Devil's instinctive temptation and brought Epsilon and the others back to their senses.
"What the hell is this thing?!"
Epsilon cursed angrily. With no time to investigate further, she swung the scythe in her hand.
Her control over Magical Power, honed to the absolute limit in order to maintain her slime body, allowed her to transform her Magical Power into a crescent-shaped slash in an instant and send it flying toward the escaping wisp of black mist.
"Camaxtli!"
At almost the same moment Epsilon regained her senses, the Third Primogenitor also broke free of the temptation and immediately summoned her Beast Vassal.
A golden bolt of lightning as thick as a barrel crashed down from the sky toward the black pillar.
"Le Ombre!"
At the same time, Aya Tokoyogi cried out sharply.
A pitch-black metallic Knight appeared before the black pillar, raising its greatsword in an attempt to seal the source from which the black mist was leaking.
"Boom!"
A violent explosion erupted, and a powerful shockwave swept across the entire area.
Yet everyone could clearly see that the black pillar piercing the heavens still stood firmly upon the earth.
The combined attacks they had just unleashed had accomplished nothing more than sealing the single opening through which the black mist had escaped.
"What the hell did you create?!"
Epsilon roared at Laugus, who seemed to have only just regained his senses.
After experiencing the Devil's temptation firsthand, Epsilon could feel sticky sweat running down her back.
Everyone attending today's press conference, aside from Laugus, whose strength remained unknown, was generally considered to be at least an A-rank powerhouse.
And yet, without the Magical Power seed Shadow-sama had left inside her awakening her at the critical moment, even Epsilon would have been dragged into that illusion.
As the thought crossed her mind, Epsilon suddenly froze.
She turned toward Azazel, the only person who had not joined the earlier attack against the black mist.
Sure enough, although Azazel appeared perfectly composed on the surface, the lingering haze in his eyes made it obvious that he still had not escaped the Devil's illusion.
Perfectly normal.
Fallen Angels were beings who had fallen from Heaven because they could not resist the desires in their hearts. Against a temptation that directly attacked the mind, this was practically a critical hit with a special effectiveness bonus...
As if that made any sense!
Realizing what this meant, Giada, Epsilon, and the others stared at the black pillar in horror and instinctively took a step back.
This was the Fallen Angel Governor General.
Even if his inner desires were somewhat stronger than average, for a single wisp of black mist to keep him trapped until now was terrifying enough in itself.
"You actually don't need to worry too much about that black mist. Based on my personal experience just now, it seems to be a kind of inducement whose effectiveness depends on the strength of a person's desires and the rationality restraining those desires. Generally speaking, it should only work the first time... probably?"
Seeing how wary Epsilon and the others had become, Laugus helpfully explained his analysis.
However, as he looked at the black pillar, so dense and viscous that it was almost solid, even he began to sound uncertain by the end.
"Damn you..."
Epsilon gritted her teeth, nearly unable to stop herself from attacking Laugus.
But after glancing at the enormous black pillar beside them and Katerea, who was clearly protecting Laugus, she merely raised her scythe and pointed it at him.
"Tell me exactly what this thing is. And what is the Cult of Diablos plotting?"
"Strange..."
Laugus showed no intention of answering her.
Instead, he pulled a pen from his white lab coat, scribbled several lines onto a sheet of paper, and frowned thoughtfully.
"This really is strange. My calculations shouldn't have been wrong. The Contract Demon was suppressed so easily by the Lord of Netheril, who even took away both its own contract and the Witch's contract. The difference between it and Roland Augustus should have been enormous. So why is the gap suddenly this large now?"
Laugus genuinely could not understand it.
The Contract Demon was part of the world's natural rules. However, because of what the Deva had done in ancient times, the Seeds that should have complemented those rules had gone missing.
As a result, it could only follow its instinct to repair itself, forming contracts with Witches and harvesting their souls so that, after death, they could become candidates to serve beneath it.
Under those circumstances, it was essentially a crashed program.
Leave it alone, and nothing happened.
Touch it, however, and it became a direct confrontation.
Once or twice could perhaps be dismissed as coincidence. But Roland had successfully reclaimed the souls of so many Witches that there was only one possible conclusion.
The difference between the two sides had to be overwhelming.
The Contract Demon must have been completely restrained, unable to move at all, forced to watch helplessly as its contracts and the souls of its Witches were taken away.
Unless the Contract Demon had voluntarily returned those souls and contracts, then as long as it could move even slightly, the frozen program known as the "Contract Demon" should either have reactivated long ago and resumed performing its duties, or completely collapsed and triggered a large-scale extinction event.
"Clang!"
While Laugus was wondering exactly where his calculations or research had gone wrong, the sharp sound of metal striking metal rang beside his ear.
He frowned.
"This is exactly why I hate barbarians like you. Your heads are filled with nothing but using brute force to threaten people, while none of you are capable of thinking through the correct answer yourselves."
The heartfelt insult did not bother Epsilon in the slightest.
Back in Shadow Garden, she had been the one responsible for looking after Eta. She was already thoroughly accustomed to this kind of personality.
She simply stared coldly at Laugus and raised her weapon again.
"...Fine, fine. I'm not interested in making enemies of this many people either. A situation like this is extremely rare. Dying this early wouldn't be in my best interests."
Laugus swept his gaze around.
Azazel had nearly recovered from the illusion.
The Third Primogenitor, Giada, was staring at him with open hostility.
Rias, who had accidentally stumbled into this situation, was pointing at him with obvious malice.
Even Katerea, originally his ally, was beginning to harbor hostile intentions toward him now that the controller had failed.
Realizing that he had managed to anger nearly everyone present, Laugus could only nod helplessly.
"I used the Witch bloodline of this girl named Yuuma Tokoyogi, along with the lives and blood of numerous powerful Devils and Humans as sacrifices. Following the standard ritual by which a Witch forms a contract and summons a Guardian, I attempted to summon this Devil's true body."
"But if this small amount of energy were enough to drag part of the world's natural rules into reality, then this experimental subject would be far too cheap. It certainly wouldn't have been worth all the effort I put into this."
"So my actual goal was only to summon one arm of the Devil's true body, then use Kanase's Faux Angel to stimulate the Contract Demon and force the Devil to descend into reality."
"After all, no matter which version of biblical mythology you look at, Devils and Angels are fundamentally opposed. As long as this world developed according to mythology, that characteristic should remain inherent to both sides even if they have both crashed. And as long as that characteristic still exists, they can stimulate each other..."
Laugus stopped there.
But he no longer needed to continue.
Two entities locked in a struggle would either stop once one side exhausted itself or keep fighting indefinitely.
And if they wanted to continue fighting, both would have to enter reality.
That, however, was not the main reason Laugus had stopped speaking.
Because the development of this world's mythology had been interrupted, Laugus could only use mythology itself to determine which mythical beings the "Contract Demon" and "High-Dimensional Angel" currently wandering the world corresponded to.
After extensive research, he concluded that these two entities most likely corresponded to the respective leaders of Hell and Heaven.
Satan and Michael.
Only that could explain why Devils and Angels continuously drew people away from the Human world and into their own domains.
The Seeds corresponding to their respective subordinates in biblical mythology had been dug up by the Deva, those visitors from beyond the world, before they could even sprout and were turned into bombs.
That operation not only caused both entities to crash, it also left them without any subordinates.
They could only instinctively pull Humans, or Witches, from the Human world and elevate them into Angels or Devils to fill the vacant positions.
Laugus did not particularly care about any of that.
He merely used this information while running deductions with his project partner, and together they arrived at a very interesting conclusion.
"If her theory is correct, then in World No. 2, besides Devils and Angels, there should also be another existence above both Heaven and Hell. A Divine Person. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find it..."
Laugus spoke in a low voice.
This was one of the few points on which he and his partner disagreed.
If the Divine Person of World No. 2 had already appeared before Devils and Angels, then the Deva would never have had any opportunity to interfere with the world in the first place.
For that reason, Laugus supported the idea that the egg came first.
The Divine Person should only be born once the mythology had fully developed, because the "one God" of monotheism was simply too vast a concept.
His elf friend, who preferred to remain anonymous, believed the chicken came first.
In her view, World No. 2's Divine Person should have been born long ago, but only as an unconscious Divine Person representing the evolution and development of the world's mythology.
Neither could convince the other.
According to the theory they had developed, the evolution of World No. 2's mythology itself could be taken as evidence that the Divine Person already existed, supporting the chicken-first theory.
Yet the exact same evidence could be interpreted in reverse to support Laugus's egg-first theory.
Of course, now that the subject had come up, Laugus had no choice but to temporarily concede that the chicken came first.
"Your Majesty, the Third Primogenitor. I can now give you an answer to the question you asked this morning..."
Laugus turned toward Giada and spoke with complete respect.
When it came to transactions, at least, he had principles.
"If that Divine Person truly exists, then it would absolutely be capable of removing the curse placed upon you and calming the rampaging Beast Vassals within your body. For it, doing so would be effortless..."
Yes.
Effortless.
The curses afflicting the Three Primogenitors were the result of the reckless destruction caused by the Deva, visitors from beyond the world, which interrupted the natural development of this world's mythology.
The rampaging Beast Vassals of the Primogenitors were caused by mythological Seeds that had been excavated before they could sprout.
Originally, they had been naturally sacred beings that absorbed Spiritual Energy from the planet itself.
Instead, they had been forcibly transformed into incompatible existences that lived inside Vampires and fed on Magical Power.
All of those problems could be solved by the Divine Person that, until now, existed only within Laugus's hypothesis.
A single word from God could alter the development of biblical mythology.
The position of an absolute Creator meant that a drop of blood, a single word, or even one thought would be enough to suppress those beings who, according to their original destined path, should have been its creations.
"Is that so..."
Giada murmured softly, narrowing her eyes at Laugus.
Nothing in her gaze revealed what she was thinking.
"Who cares about any of that?!"
Despite Epsilon's otherwise flat tone, a trace of impatience was impossible to hide.
Giada, whose thoughts had been interrupted, said nothing. She merely glanced silently at Epsilon before returning her gaze to Laugus.
"Tell me how to deal with those two things. Don't tell me you have no idea what they are!"
Epsilon pointed toward the pillar of light on the distant horizon, which seemed to be standing in direct opposition to the black pillar beside them.
Her expression made it perfectly clear that if Laugus failed to give her a satisfactory answer, she was prepared to kill him.
Fortunately, Laugus had no intention of refusing.
"Of course I know. That should be the Faux Angel I used to stimulate the Devil's descent, the one I obtained from Kensei Kanase to serve as the vessel for the Dimensional Angel. As for these two pillars, they are most likely the preliminary stage before the Devil and Angel descend into the world."
Laugus answered Epsilon with remarkable helpfulness.
His reward was a scythe descending straight toward his head.
Even Giada, who had just received an answer from him regarding how to solve her own problem, immediately turned against him. She merely smiled as she watched Laugus awkwardly dodge Epsilon's strike, showing absolutely no intention of helping.
"I asked for a solution, not an introduction! You'd better think carefully before answering me again!"
Laugus glanced at Katerea nearby, who was repeatedly shouting at the Devil engulfed in black Qi and seemed to have fallen into some kind of obsessive trance.
Then he looked toward the pillar of light on the distant horizon and the black pillar towering directly beside them.
The corner of his mouth curled upward.
"I have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"
"Huh?"
Epsilon froze instinctively for a moment before catching on.
"Fine. The good news."
"Right. The good news is that my plan failed. Because of some inexplicable error in my calculations, these two have already escaped my control and started following their instincts."
Epsilon had not expected Laugus to admit the truth so readily.
Almost without thinking, she asked the obvious follow-up.
"You've told me the good news. What's the bad news?"
Laugus blinked.
Then he looked toward the pillar of light reaching into the heavens and the Angel within it, whose transformation was now complete.
"Oh no. I think what I summoned is the Old Testament..."
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