"...I'd thought I was just going to clean up a mess, but I ended up learning quite a lot."
Roland gazed at the empty expanse around the Golden Throne, feeling strangely bereft for a moment.
Pāpīyas.
He knew a great deal about this Buddha's Enemy.
It was not simply because of the Demon Gods' knowledge of phases, or his Campione instincts' analysis of Bishop, that Buddhist Demon God.
It was more because-the other's power was a part of him.
The beast incarnation of the god of love, Kama, the being named Mara, was an aspect of Heavenly Demon Papiyas.
Unable to love herself, yet loving everyone, her incomplete, twisted love would never cease, even if it filled the entire universe. That was why she qualified as Humanity's Evil.
She was the first person Roland had encountered who took playing with concepts even further than he did.
But it was also thanks to her that Roland, using the Key of All Spirits as a medium, had been able to reverse the future. After becoming a complete Humanity's Evil, he had gone on to devour other instances of Humanity's Evil, forging his path of principle.
In a sense, Pāpīyas's incarnation was one of the starting points of the Principle of Humanity's Evil.
Back then, the girl who had manifested as an incarnation of principle and called herself BB had described Mara like this.
...Someone who bore Pāpīyas's name in name alone.
Thinking back now, the interesting Replication Battle she had mentioned probably did not simply refer to eating the other Beast III ahead of time, but to something deeper.
The same probably applied to the fact that, in the future, he had already ascended to heaven, yet the Principle of Humanity's Evil remained incomplete.
Compared with Eternal Reincarnation, which was intimately connected