Lynn narrowed his eyes and said nothing.
The Flesh Dominator signed the Peace Treaty, an unreadable eeriness lurking in his countless eyes. He gave the distinct impression that he already had one foot in the Abyss.
At last, the enormous eyeball at the very center of his twisted form turned its frenzied gaze on Lynn.
"Because I don't think this is fair."
"Because when I was born, my forebears were all dead. They wailed in my mind day and night, replaying that bloody fall in my eyes, again and again, over and over, until I went mad."
His enormous body began to writhe.
Little by little, he rose like a mountain.
"And yet you get to enjoy every honor. No matter how you struggle in Hell, there's always someone to pull you up at the last moment, to keep you from sinking."
"But I don't envy you, because I have someone too. He always pulls me up at the last moment, letting me advance step by step toward the end of this road, making me feel that there's still hope in all of this."
The enormous Vertical Pupil in the sky trembled.
Yet the Flesh Dominator's countless eyes held nothing but a bone-deep calm.
"But do you know what destroyed me?"
"It wasn't the outcome we saw on Blue Star. Leaving Hell was always going to be unbearably difficult, and I never truly dared stake everything on that outcome. All I felt was guilt and regret, because I thought I'd failed his expectations. I couldn't take him out of this Hell. I'd failed all those countless years of guidance and hope he'd invested in me."
Lynn instantly realized something, his gaze instinctively turning toward the enormous Vertical Pupil in the sky.
But the Flesh Dominator remained indifferent.
"But do you