A Name from Eight Hundred Years Ago

[To Keir:

All in all, I was having an absolutely terrible time.

You would never believe how little these people Beelzebub sent me knew. I had to start teaching them from the basic letters of the demon script...

But that was not what I wanted to share.

Recently, I learned that they actually had an organization called the Fallen Angel Cult.

You may not believe this, but their doctrine was that demons were angels who had fallen down from the Source of Order.

They believed the first fallen angel was called Lucifer or something. They all fell under his influence.

You and I both knew that the Source of Order and Chaos Hell did not have any such distinction as above or below. They were merely two poles on the same map. Demons and angels were also two different species.

And as far as I knew, there was no demon called Lucifer. I mentioned Flame Cliff before, right? All our demons' names were on it. Look, I specifically checked. There was not a single name called "Lucifer."

But they were incredibly steadfast. Could you imagine it? They dressed like angels, lived the most ascetic lives, endured everyone's humiliation, and followed a set of foolish, laughable rules—I heard they had been doing this for twenty-two hundred years—all just to wait for someone from the Source of Order to come pardon them and welcome them back!

Then they would return to the Source of Order and become angels again.

No offense, but even if it were true, I did not see what was so great about becoming an angel.

As I wrote this letter, they were gathered around the pool outside my door, treating it as holy water and praying to the angel king Gabriel and that Lucifer.

I had to say, it was hilarious. If the water in there really were Order Holy Water, they had better be careful not to fall in—it would leave nothing of them behind.

By the way, they had been doing this for almost four months now. It was starting to stop being funny.

Could you imagine that?

Oh, you probably could. After all, you angels had to do this sort of boring thing every day.

What I meant was, their obsessive behavior was making me start to doubt the basic knowledge I had learned.

So just in case, I had to ask: had you ever heard of anything like this over there? Or had there ever been an angel called Lucifer?

At present, I believed they had fallen into some kind of collective hallucination. What did you think?

May your day be more interesting.

Ichaint]

[To my dear Ichaint:

Order above. Such a thing actually existed.

Hahaha.

My information matched yours—there was no angel called "Lucifer" in the public records. Not now, and not in the past.

I agreed with you. This was a remarkable collective hallucination.

Had you performed an energy analysis on them? Hallucinations were often believed to be related to the power of the Dream Domain used by dragons.

But I wanted to remind you of the fundamental law of the power of faith: where there was will, there would be false fruit.

Their behavior was already very close to faith. I thought you should be careful.

Yours in utmost holiness,

Keir]

Yes. Someone should be careful.

Only, that someone was him.

The angel Keir, carried into the tower amid the cheers of Fallen Angel Cult members, thought gloomily.

Of course he knew what this was about. He had known eight hundred years ago. He had known from the moment he sat up and saw the demons' strange clothes, their inexplicably long curls, and the tattered imitation angel robes on their bodies.

The leading priest, Sankarabi, had even fastened a golden angel-feather button to his front...

It was practically shouting in his ear, "Remember now?! We are the Fallen Angel Cult! We are about to sing the praises of the archangel!"

So he immediately told them who he was. To the members of the Fallen Angel Cult, there was no identity more convincing or more beneficial to them than that of a real angel.

And it was his true identity.

Being able to tell the truth was always good.

He just had not expected it to bring him even greater trouble. They had latched onto him.

Yicha and Nese were nowhere to be found, and Xiqisi, the only familiar face to appear, had run away too.

The world spun around him. Cheers rose and fell beside his ears, and a chandelier made of finger bones loomed larger before his eyes. Keir realized he was being tossed into the air like a hero. He swallowed twice, forcing down the churning sensation in his throat.

He still could not get used to the smell here at all...

He turned his head and saw the bobbing heads of demons. They were carrying him past the enormous ten-headed serpent Disaster Stone sculpture in the front hall. Yicha had described the ten-headed serpent to him, saying he had seen it in a dream. After waking up, he had made many similar decorations for his floating island.

That was unusual too. Angels never dreamed. He did not know whether demons were different from him, or whether Yicha was different from him.

A demonic claw was pinching his calf painfully. He struggled, but did not dare use too much force. The power of Order would undoubtedly hurt these demons.

It would be better to just tell them the truth...

"Hey. Listen to me. I am not here to take you away."

He tried to sit up but failed. Struggling, he said, "I am only a Virtue Angel responsible for looking after a library called Tabumo. Lucifer does not exist..."

You are not angels at all, and there have never been any fallen angels cast down from Heaven. There is no Lucifer. You are merely a group of demons with vivid imaginations. Really, there is nothing wrong with being demons. There is nothing wrong with having vivid imaginations either.

He stopped. He did not continue.

Keir felt the last notes of his words vanish dryly into the air. The demons had all frozen at what he said.

The boisterous laughter and cheers burst like a pricked bubble.

The Fallen Angel Cult members slowly raised their blackened, filthy faces. Keir could see many terrified eyes looking at him—the flames in their sockets had shrunk, turning a malnourished pale color.

"Respected angel... what do you mean?" Sankarabi asked in a trembling voice. His eyes were still green, but they had grayed somewhat as well.

"What do you mean, Lucifer does not exist? He is our ancestor. There can be no mistake."

The short, dark demon shook his head repeatedly. Yet in the vast silence, he eventually began to hesitate. He looked from side to side at everyone's reactions, his face twisting. "Isn't he...?"

He said those words in an incredibly soft voice.

The demons let out anxious noises.

"Everyone, do not panic."

Sankarabi pressed a hand onto the shoulder of a gaunt demon who looked as though he might topple over at any moment, while waving his other hand through the air to encourage the others.

He stepped forward and tried hard to force out an ugly smile. "Respected angel. Please do not make such jokes. Everyone believes in you."

"Uh..." Keir felt like he was having trouble breathing.

Angels could not bear to see this sort of thing.

"You said Lucifer does not exist... what did you mean?"

Sankarabi leaned nearly into his face, speaking word by word in a suppressed voice.

The demon's gray-green eyes stared at him unblinkingly. Keir's angelic heart could not avoid being flooded by the sympathy that kept surging up within him. He could see that Sankarabi was just as panicked as everyone else—he was merely trying hard to hide it.

"Uh... I meant, I meant..."

The Apocalypse War. The War of Dawn.

The world was about to descend into chaos. If their side won, Chaos Hell would no longer exist. There would be no place for them to stay.

And these people had already waited monotonously for three thousand years.

All sorts of messy thoughts flashed rapidly through the angel's mind, swiftly stirring his brain into mush.

"You can say whatever you wish..." Sankarabi said softly.

"You are angels. Yes. No. What I mean is... do not despair..."

"You just said that you were not here to take us home, and that the legend of Lucifer was false."

The priest's voice was dry as grit.

"What I mean is... uh... I did say that. Yes. I am not here to take you away. And there is no angel called Lucifer."

Keir felt the words flowing out beyond his control.

"But someone else will come to take you away. The records were wrong. Uh... everyone remembered his name incorrectly. Because his original name was shaved away. Yes. The very first fallen angel has actually been by your side all along. He will take you back. Yes. He will. Yes."

The angel did not know why he was saying this, but he immediately felt the pressure on him lessen.

He looked around. Those hollow, dim eyes were lit once more.

"That is wonderful. May I ask what his current name is?" Sankarabi's voice became steady again.

The angel blinked in despair. This called for someone who could understand these troublesome matters, and who was powerful enough to handle them.

He had no choice. He had to keep going.

"His name is Ichaint."

In reality, it was commonly believed that the first demon—the fallen angel—was Lucifer. Demons were said to have originated from one-third of the angels falling. This book did not use that setting, but it could parody it a little~