/
187 #22. Well, this is merely the beginning (2) >
#2 Their circumstance: the Demon God’s circumstance
In the beginning, two Creator Gods created the world and gave birth to two new gods.
The two Creator Gods then showed the newly-born gods two continents and asked them.
-Choose the side you find to your liking. And then establish a suitable balance for this world.
Two newly-born gods might have been born on the same time, same day, but boasted two opposing personalities. As such, they unhesitantly selected different continents from each other.
-These will be the lifeforms you shall now look after.
The Creator Gods began releasing various lifeforms they had formulated throughout the land. Once everything was complete, the two gods declared thus:
-We have now accomplished everything we set out to do. The rest is now up to you.
At the end of that declaration, the two Creator Gods allowed the newly-born gods to decide their own beliefs, distributed ‘underling’ deities to serve the two, then left the world.
The two newly-born gods, named the Good God and the Demon God, took the first word in their names and renamed the continents they were in charge of as the Good Continent and the Demon Continent.
And so… time passed.
The Good Continent eventually became the human continent, and soon afterwards, a concept the two Creator Gods had never considered appeared – the concept of evil. And then…
That concept, evil, gained divinity and began threatening the world. That forced the Good God and Demon God to stop their ongoing conflict to join hands and seal the evil. But then, a certain god undid that seal on the rest of the world.
The Goddess of Benevolence and Devotion gave up on her godhood and used herself up as a sacrifice to re-seal the Evil God. Her selfless sacrifice meant that the world regained its balance, even if it was still unstable.
The remaining gods worked hard to restore and maintain the world’s balance. And the Demon God referred to as the top god among them all was currently…
“Ouch…”
…She was lying on her back, busy clutching her pounding head.
“My head hurts…”
A god’s job is to watch the world. To keep an eye out on her belief system, her temple(s), and her faithful flock. And that was why the Demon God was bitterly regretting her short-sightedness right now.
“I should’ve changed the name of my continent, too…”
The Demon God repeated these exact same words every single day – no, make them as often as three times every minute!
It bears repeating once more: a god’s job is to watch the world. The belief system, the temple(s), the believers. These three things.
And the Demon God was the object of worship for the entire continent.
In other words, the Demon God was burdened with a massive responsibility to watch every single subject on the demon continent!
“Urgh… When that damn broad said she’d change the name of her continent, I should’ve noticed the truth…”
The humans’ continent that used to be called the Good Continent, but now simply referred to as the human continent… The master of this domain, the Good God, willingly gave up on the position of the master and began co-managing the continent along with other gods.
The Demon God initially scoffed at that, but when enough time passed by for the number of humans and demon races to creep up higher and higher…! She finally learned the true meaning behind that broad’s actions.
-Oh, dear Demon God! Please bestow your curses to this seditious bastard!
-Kuwaaaahk! Oh, my Demon God, please!
-Oh, our great Demon God, why have you forsaken us…!
-Demon God, we beg thee!
“Urghhh…”
The non-stop stream of desperate, ardent calling towards her entering her head finally pushed the Demon God over the edge.
“You bloody sons of b*tches, why are you calling out to me when it’s you lot that caused your own problems?!”
Aaaaaaaargh!
The Demon God yelled like a little kid throwing a tantrum, but unfortunately for her, the world’s rules didn’t want to go easy on her.
“Why don’t you all just disappear…”
You lot, just get wrecked or something!
The Demon God muttered that half-jokingly, then began pondering something quite seriously.
“Should I just switch off? Like, seriously? But the last time I did that, things went to sh*thouse real quick… Even so, I’m going crazy over here. Why did the children have to go and make so many more children so quickly? Why can’t they just make one kid and focus on raising that one? Aren’t they too loose with their birth policies?!”
The Demon God honestly began hating the increasing birthrate of the world, or more specifically, the demon race. She was even seriously pondering switching her receiver off and not listening to the voices of the believers.
“Urgh… But if I do that and the seed of evil pops out, then we’ll all be in trouble, so… I mean, one did pop out the last time I tuned myself out, and everyone was slagging me off for it…”
In the past, the Demon God did switch off the believers’ voices only for a portion of the evil to wake up somewhere in the demon continent. That sure was a huge incident that could’ve caused the utter destruction of the demon continent!
That incident prompted not just the Good God but also the Demon God’s subordinate deities to severely criticize her. That’s why she couldn’t dare switch off the believers’ voices.
“Urgh… B-but, wait! Wouldn’t it be okay to switch it off for just a century?! N-no, not even that long. Just a decade! Yes, only a decade!”
Even the dragons that lived for thousands, nay, tens of thousands of years were nothing more than little kiddies to the real gods. To the Demon God and the Good God created first by the Creator Gods, things like a century or a decade were truly a brief wink of time.
“I wonder if it’s fine? No, it should be fine. I mean, will the world really change in only ten years?”
Just as she finished convincing herself of the idea, the Demon God heard a single voice in her head that stopped her from potentially ruining the entire world.
-Hooray to the Demon God, hooray to our new demon king!
“Mm? Did that guy, Aggreahrt, finally become the demon king?”
A god couldn’t arbitrarily interfere in the world of the mortals. Granting some powers to an apostle or a believer was fine, but directly influencing who gets the throne or outright selecting a king was totally out of the question.
Unless, of course, the situation was bad enough to threaten the balance of the world.
For instance, unless things were on the level of humans invading the demon continent, all the Demon God could do was just watch on.
“Last time I looked, he seemed to be still working extra hard for the throne… Why method did he use, then?”
The Demon God’s curiosity was aroused, so she temporarily turned off the voices of all the believers except for one and focused her attention on this voice.
-Not yet, huh…
“Mm?”
That voice sounded just a little tired but still flat, composed. But that’s how Aggreahrt usually sounded like, though?
“That’s weird?”
The Demon God extended her authority and began observing Aggreahrt’s surroundings. He was dealing with a mountain of documents on his desk, a look of fatigue staining his face. However, there were no discernible voices praising and exalting Aggreahrt as the next demon king.
“Could it be that some loons are trying to install a new demon king somewhere?”
Something like this happened occasionally: some random idiot would show up from nowhere, claiming that he had survived the Demon God’s Blessing to become the next demon king.
“Maybe it’s a suicide hopeful? Let’s see…”
The Demon God stopped paying attention to Aggreahrt, closed her eyes again and focused on the voices she could hear.
“It’s not here, not there… Mm… It’s not here, either…”
Demon king, demon king, demon king!
The Demon God listened to each voice crying out ‘demon king!’ one at a time, eventually figuring out that all of them were coming from one location.
“H-huh?”
And she was left with no choice but to stand there, mouth agape, at the revelation.
“T-that place… It’s my own temple?”
Feeling flustered now, the Demon God began to search through her temple more thoroughly next.
“W-what is the meaning of this?!”
Doing so allowed her to finally realise something important.
“I never chose anyone today, though?!”
She realised that someone had withstood the Demon God’s Blessing… without her even noticing it!
“But how?! I’m supposed to get an automatic notification when a Demon God’s Blessing ceremony takes place, you know! So why wasn’t there any signs? Could it be a fraud?”
The Demon God’s Blessing was a ceremony for the Demon God to ‘select’ the chosen individual as the next ‘demon king’ – more specifically, the brave warrior of the Demon God. A hero, in other words.
Whenever the demon continent lost the war against the human continent and was threatened with the prospect of losing all of its territories, this ceremony would be performed to give birth to the strongest demon king in existence! The ceremony was meant to grant all of the Demon King’s accumulated powers to the chosen. Not only that, even the gods under her borrowed their powers to the recipient, too.
The passage of time meant that the demon race’s idea of the ceremony’s purpose had changed somewhat, but regardless of that, this ceremony was never meant to give birth to a new demon king but the hero of the Demon God. Her direct apostle, if you will.
Being a god’s apostle was like being a god’s clone. Obviously, such a being would never be born without the permission of a god!
“Just what on earth is the problem with… Huh? Ehhh? What is that thing doing in that place?!”
The Demon God locked eyes with that thing, and her jaw fell all the way to the floor.
She was f*cked.
That thing had butted in now, meaning the Demon God would not have much of a way to interfere.
“Oh no, this is bad!”
The Demon God hurriedly left her divine territory and rushed into another deity’s domain.
“Hey, Goddess of Nature!”
“Ah, you’re finally here…”
The domain she rushed to belonged to a subordinate deity to the god standing on the opposite side to the Demon God, the Good God. Yes, it was the domain of the Goddess of Nature.
“W-why is that thing in my…!!!”
“My sincerest apologies.”
“You think your apology is sufficient right now?! In some ways, that thing is far worse than the seed of evil the humans mislabelled as the Demon King!”
“Indeed, you’re correct…”
“You know, yet you let this happen?!”
Griiit!
Even though the Demon God openly gritted her teeth, the Goddess of Nature didn’t say anything to excuse herself.
“Why did you let it happen, then?”
“Because of the rules, unfortunately.”
“Wha?”
“Since the beginning, any human entering the demon race’s territory cannot receive my powers even if that human happens to be my apostle.”
After the world’s creation, there were times when humans had the ascendency, or the demons held the upper hand. However, a ‘Hero’ would always appear on the losing side to save their continent and re-establish the boundary between the two continents.
“That is the rule.”
Ever since the world’s creation, the boundary between the human side and the demon race side of the continent was fixed, unmoving.
“H-hey, you! Even if that’s the case…”
The Demon God was rendered speechless, her lips bobbing like a goldfish. But just as she tried to say something…
“The Goddess of Nature is right, Demon God.”
“…You!”
The God of Beginning born at the same time as the Demon God but possessing an opposing nature from the get-go… The god of all human races, tasked with managing the human continent…!
“The Good God!”
The Demon God gritted her teeth while staring at the goddess that looked exactly the same as her except for the pure-white hair, which was in stark contrast to her black hair.
“How can you be like this? Shouldn’t we work together to deal with that thing?!”
“Since they’ve gone over to the demon side of the continent, we can’t carelessly interfere.”
“Is this how you really want to play?! Is that it?!”
Despite the Demon God’s pointed glare, the Good God didn’t avert her gaze. “It’s difficult for us, too.”
“What is?”
“Soon, the Demon King will awaken. This time, on our side of the continent.”
“It’s already that time?” The Demon King’s eyes opened wide.
The Good God watched her counterpart’s reaction and muttered ‘I knew it’ quietly while nodding her head. “That’s why we’d like you to manage that situation by yourself. I mean, it’s in your side of the pond, after all.”
“T-that, well…” The Demon God pouted unhappily, but she couldn’t think of a rebuttal.
“The problem was with you not noticing them crossing over to the demon continent in the first place. Be honest, you weren’t paying attention to your continent because you got annoyed, didn’t you?”
“No, that’s not true!”
Sure, the Demon God almost nearly did that, but in the end, she hadn’t done it! Of course, she was not stupid enough to mention that out in the open.
“We’ll do our best to eliminate the Demon King on our side. That’s why we want you to deal with the problem by yourself. I mean, it’s still relatively docile right now, no?”
“It being docile is even more terrifying, you know!”
The Demon God closed her eyes and looked into her temple once more.
There she was, the daughter of the previous demon king, Belegrea. The Demon God had taken a liking to that girl and Aggreahrt.
And that girl was accompanied by the last surviving descendent of the Succubi race. The Demon God granted that child a blessing of survival since her race was about to go extinct.
And then…
“Dammit! No wonder I couldn’t notice anything! Even after focusing like crazy, I still get only a blurry image…!”
A human that could faintly be sensed by the Demon God, but then, those monsters that could not be discerned when using her divine powers…
The Demon God spat out a lengthy groan after using her powers to borrow the eyes of her apostles and finally take a look at that monstrous group.
-I shall be your demon king from this moment on!
-Hooray, our demon king! Hooray for our Demon God!
-Glory to all corners of the demon race’s territory!
“No, you’re wrong…!”
The Demon God gritted her teeth at the birth of a new demon king she didn’t even choose and at her foolish believers happily celebrating it.
“Very well. I shall deal with this mess.”
The Demon God immediately headed back to her domain, then issued a new oracle.
-Awake, my child.
#3 Their circumstance: A certain small farmer’s circumstance
“Urgh!”
Plop!
I wordlessly stared at my farming tool falling to the ground. I was supposed to plough the land but had no energy and couldn’t even do a decent job of that.
“So hungry…”
Today’s breakfast was also potatoes. Lunch, more potatoes. And there’s also a very good chance that supper will be more potatoes, too.
“I’m so sick of potatoes…”
I stretched my limbs grandly, but my head was still filled with the images of potatoes. I was confident of almost never whining about my food, but for the past month or so, 95% of my meals consisted solely of potatoes.
Even someone like me would find it hard to endure in such a case!
“I pray that this year’s harvest will be…”
I looked up at the sky and began praying at the great Demon God. I prayed for an abundant harvest this year to spare me from the fate of eating nothing but potatoes next yea… Eh?
-Awake, my child.
“I’m sorry?”
Before I could finish, though, someone started talking to me first.
-The child who can hear my voice. You are to immediately head to the Demon God’s Temple to declare my will. I’m the god of all demon races, the Demon God. I command you as your noble god. Go and inform them of my will.
“Y-yes, sure…”
I inadvertently ended up swearing an oath to deliver the message. Well, that voice sounded so noble and divine, you see.
Despite my family trying to stop me, I followed the Demon God’s will and eventually reached the Demon God’s Temple. Then, I tried to deliver her noble will.
-Child, you shall now declare the following. I am none other than…!
“I am none other than!”
-…The great, noble Demon God’s apostle, the new demon king!
“The great, noble Demon God’s apos… Kkueeewek?!”
In the middle of carrying out the noble Demon God’s will, a middle-aged demon suddenly rushed up to me and attacked me. That’s when I finally understood the truth of this world.
…That gods were dead.
-H-hey, I’m not dead!
No matter how many times the sacred voice ringing in my head proclaimed to be the god’s will, the violence unleashed onto me right now was simply far scarier!