"We are cannonballs!
Making wizards tremble in fear!
Walking through hell,
Sleeping soundly.
Beneath our feet are raging flames,
Fear and greed ever at our side.
No one dares look! No one dares look!
We are the candles of Black Prison!
Never to be extinguished!
Knock me down! Knock me down!
Even death cannot knock me down!"
As pitch-black "cannonballs" fell from the sky, this hoarse, low song gradually rose among the gaunt prisoners beneath the Hell Equation.
Sea demons, liches, Insect Demons, beast demons, bird demons, and more—whatever their identities had been outside the prison, in Black Prison they had only one name: prisoners.
They had fallen into demonhood to survive, and they endured in Black Prison to survive.
They rose up in resistance for the sake of survival as well.
Rather than turn into a handful of dust once their strength ran dry, or become firewood for someone else's survival, they would rather, when someone raised an arm in call, embrace death to live and bravely cry out the inner demons buried in their hearts.
At the beginning, the song was scattered and timid.
"...Beneath our feet are raging flames,
Fear and greed ever at our side.
No one dares look! No one dares look!"
The hunched Dog Demon lowered its head, seeming to want to tuck its mouth into its chest. Yet its eyes strained upward, and the demon's scarlet glow trembled faintly alongside the rolling, bursting bubbles of lava in the surrounding trenches.
Gradually, the song spread.
A staggering skeleton tore off its own ribs and beat them against its bare skull. Circling bird demons flapped wings that had nearly lost all their feathers, striking out crisp notes like ringing swords. Bowing insects farted with all their might, hidden spiders plucked strings upon freshly woven webs,