Six Plans

Burning sulfur flowed backward into a purple-blue night sky the color of a dying man's face. The pale desert was piled with fangs, ready at any moment to bite off the flesh-covered parts below the ankles of any passing creature.

"Ichaint... where are you? Don't forget, I can punish you whenever I want..."

"Come quickly... I'll make you our strategist..."

Yicha watched as several dozen yellowed, withered fangs in the pile before him began moving on their own, arranging themselves haphazardly into symbols of the demon language—Beelzebub's latest private broadcast had arrived.

This time, her tone was exceedingly intimate.

That meant extreme danger.

She seemed to be getting anxious. That was not a good sign.

Anxiety made Beelzebub, King of All Demons, irritable. And her irritation could melt flesh and blood, turn sinews and bones into drifting ash, and evaporate souls.

Nese stood quietly at Yicha's side. Before coming to Chaos Hell, he had prepared himself mentally to witness every imaginable horror. Now that he was here, he found that he was not as frightened as he had expected.

Chaos Hell's scorching, viscous, pungent air flowed through his nostrils and into his lungs. Every breath would have been a catastrophe capable of burning out a mortal's heart and lungs, yet the warlock felt no discomfort—as though his lungs could change at any moment along with the nature of the air.

An energy being, he thought. This was truly incredible.

He had died once. He was no longer human.

Yet he had gained a new life.

Nese sensed his body. The changes were not yet obvious, but his mind had become much clearer and his body somewhat lighter—though for now, that only made him easier to knock over.

Beyond that, he could sense that the world was different. His eyes occasionally caught fleeting specks of light in the air and faint, dark-red wisps drifting in and out of sight.

Energy. He had never seen it before.

He tried to follow those wisps and specks with his gaze, but they easily slipped from his sight again.

He still needed time... to observe, adapt, understand, use it flexibly, and finally wield it as he pleased.

Nese looked at Yicha as Yan Feng respectfully held up the hem of the demon's long robe patterned with crimson lines.

His teacher must have reached the very highest realm long ago... Only now did he understand how terrifying demons were, and how fortunate he himself had been.

That trap set at the planar rift had worked at least half because Yicha had been staring absentmindedly at the sky. At the time, the demon had let himself drift wherever the hounds pulled him, all while thinking about his latest research.

There was one more thing.

In half of an ancient forbidden book with no cover, Nese had once seen this claim:

"It is well known that all angels and demons are typical energy beings. Though their energy domains and structures are precisely opposite, the two inevitably share certain similarities..."

That was precisely why the book had been banned. Even his colleagues in the Warlock Association, who were not exactly upright themselves, unanimously considered such claims utterly heretical and sneered at them.

After all, in the mortal world, angels represented justice, purity, and holiness. They were among the beings humans longed for and prayed to. Demons, meanwhile, were the embodied manifestations of sin and ugliness.

That forbidden book was right... There was still far too much he did not know...

Like what he was now.

Had he become a demon...?

That truly was a serious question.

Nese placed one hand inside his robe, feeling the heavy leather spine of The Nine Planes Handbook as he considered whether he should seize a moment to study it.

The end of the mortal world would not wait for him...

The warlock instinctively looked toward Yicha. The demon mentor wore an indifferent expression and, for some reason, stared intently at the disorderly pile of fangs before him—Hell Broadcast only affected those it was meant to notify; no other beings could see it.

Perhaps Teacher was thinking of a solution, Nese thought.

He had guessed correctly. Yicha was indeed thinking of a solution. A way to stop the Nine Planes from merging.

He had begun thinking of one long ago.

The first thing that came to mind was naturally the simplest, most demonic, most drastic solution:

Find the Chaos Child and kill him. If Beelzebub interfered, kill her too.

Find Order's Holy Child and kill him. If the archangel Gabriel interfered, kill him too.

But that was clearly unrealistic. Though he did not know Gabriel's exact circumstances, Beelzebub, King of All Demons, possessed absolute suppressive power over every other demon.

The title King of All Demons came from the recognition, obedience, fear, hatred, and willing submission of nearly all other demons. This collective will, directed toward a single target, generated immense power and bestowed it upon the being who held that title.

Come to think of it, it was much like human faith.

The King of All Demons was the equivalent of a god among demons.

Before the King of All Demons, every other demon's power was as insignificant as that of a mortal.

Yes, they could only receive broadcasts. The King of All Demons was the one who sent them, no matter how boring the content might be.

So he immediately considered the second plan:

Find the Chaos Child and kill him. If Beelzebub interfered, run.

Find Order's Holy Child and kill him. If Gabriel interfered, run.

It did not take much thought to see that the second plan also had several obvious problems.

The first was that, according to Beelzebub, the demon army had already assembled and was ready to move. If the Chaos Child were lost under such circumstances, Beelzebub would not let the matter rest.

Neither would Leraje, who loved stirring up conflict most of all.

They would only become more excited.

After thinking it over, Yicha added a few more names to that list of excited people: three-headed Asmodeus, mind-reading Malphas, Baipai, who loved bathing in maggots, Vine, who destroyed a city every day, Andras, the "harmony" envoy, and Haures, whose word was law...

The list was too long to finish.

None of them would let it rest.

And he was not particularly willing to kill the Chaos Child he had never met, unless there was truly no other choice.

In this extraordinary year amid Hell's countless millennia, the legendary Chaos Child had been born within his own lifespan. He did rather want to see him for himself.

That brought him to the third plan, a product of revised thinking:

Hide the Chaos Child and Order's Holy Child, then spread the news. That could buy some time to search.

Compared to killing them, if both sides learned only that the children of the planes had gone missing, they might not rush into war. Instead, they would devote themselves to searching for the children.

Delaying things would still mean facing the outcome eventually. But by then, perhaps he would have found a better solution.

There was also a fourth plan, approaching the matter from another angle:

Find a way to make the Chaos Child and Order's Holy Child change their minds.

Very idealistic, very vague...

That gave rise to the fifth plan:

Find a way to make Beelzebub and Gabriel change their minds about unifying the universe.

Forget it... That was probably no easier than killing them. Angels and demons had long, fixed lives. Unlike humans, these extreme beings of their respective energy domains rarely changed their minds.

Speaking of humans...

Drawing on human ways of thinking, he came up with the sixth plan:

Steal and replace Beelzebub and Gabriel's views of the children of the planes. Alter the degree of their faith in those ancient legends...

Yicha stared at the trembling fangs until they returned to their original positions. Beelzebub's rambling vanished from his ears.

He glared at them. The pile of teeth exploded into powder and scattered into an ash-white ring.