Chapter 3

10

Ademisaul walked down the street with his head lowered and his steps unsteady, dressed in a worn shirt and blue coarse-cloth trousers, swaying with every step. His destination was the poorhouse on Iron Cross Street in Tingen. It was sponsored by the Ernst Charity Foundation, a long-established charitable organization headquartered far away in Intis. Founded over a hundred and fifty years ago, the Ernst Foundation had countless poorhouses, Welfare Homes, and charity schools of all sizes across many countries. Even the lower streets of a city as modest as Tingen had one.

Born with excessively high spiritual perception, Ademisaul often fell into trances and muttered to himself. He could barely work normally to support himself and scraped by on odd jobs at the poorhouse and charitable assistance.

"Our Mr. Monster is back!"

He entered the poorhouse and handed the shopping list to the person in charge. A female caregiver he knew then greeted him warmly, led him to the dining table, and set down a bowl of vegetable soup containing a few fingernail-sized pieces of meat, two slices of toast, and a pat of poor-quality butter. The children learning to sew at the poorhouse had just reached their lunch break. They ran over with excited cheers, gathering around Ademisaul and chattering like a flock of swallows.

"Sir! Mr. Monster!" A little boy clutching a beginner's reading textbook squeezed in front of him. His eyes swept over the meat in the vegetable soup, and he reached for the spoon with a movement he thought was very discreet.

A slightly older girl glared at the boy. He withdrew his hand sheepishly, though his eyes kept darting toward the meat. "What kind of story will you tell us today?"

"A story..." Ademisaul murmured, his cloudy eyes narrowed. It was impossible to tell whether he was sleepwalking or awake.

He had told the children about the scenes he sensed. He said he had seen a young man steeped in the aura of death, as though he had just climbed out of a grave. He said he had seen a pitch-black inverted cross appear behind a gray-eyed gentleman, and a single glance had nearly killed him. He also said he had dreamed of a catastrophe: the entire city drowned in a sea of blood, and everyone died. He had rolled about and wailed in agony over it, shedding bloody tears... But the children did not understand, nor did the people at the poorhouse. They could not comprehend it, and even if they did, they could not change the future.

Only the Nighthawks had taken his visions seriously. The gentleman seemed to have received treatment, though the final outcome was unknown. But even the Nighthawks harbored doubts about his dream in which everyone in the city died. They did not know what would happen or where to begin investigating.

"No stories," he said. "Dead. No more stories..."

Ademisaul was too grief-stricken to speak, but the children surrounding him merely looked at one another. His words did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm, and they eagerly continued peppering him with questions.

11

"Go on, children, off with you. It's time for your nap, and you have more lessons this afternoon!" An elderly woman in her fifties shooed the children away with a smile. "The fabric for the Evernight Welfare Institute has to be delivered tonight. Anyone who doesn't finish won't get any sweets this week!"

The children scattered, racing one another off to bed.

Then the kindly old woman-the director of this poorhouse-let out a breath and sat opposite Ademisaul with a smile, asking a rather pointed question. "Are you still having that dream, the one where Tingen is covered in dead bodies?"

"..." Ademisaul chewed his bread slowly. Only after a long while did he nod.

"Goddess above." The director drew in a quiet, sharp breath and traced a Red Moon over her chest. "I hope my dear children will be all right."

"Everyone will die," Monster said, bewilderment on his face. "Someone stirred the sea of blood, and a single wave drowned this place. Humans are so fragile. What meaning does life even have...?"

"...Life is a pilgrimage of accumulating suffering and happiness. Life is merely a journey from birth to death." After a moment's silence, the director spoke softly, uttering words that did not appear in the Evernight Revelation. Her voice was so quiet that only Ademisaul could hear her clearly. At the end, she considered for a moment before asking cautiously, "Your gift is extraordinarily rare. We need your strength to investigate this matter. Would you consider helping us?"

The words about journeys and pilgrimages made Ademisaul's eyes widen slightly as he ate with his head lowered, as though he had heard something inconceivable. He swallowed his soup, and the scalding heat sliding down his throat brought him a little clarity. A strange river wound through his consciousness, surging onward. He felt his mind slipping into a trance again. Across from him, the gentle, loving director watched him with concern, and he could not help mumbling:

"...Almost there..."

12

As an Outer Deity, I knew all too well that a lamentably thick barrier stood between humans and me, born of the vast gulf between our levels of existence.

I watched that small city. With no demigod-level powerhouse protecting it and no sufficiently powerful Sealed Artifact, I could think of no reason for failure. As for the Fraudster who kept trying to escape, I had given him a warning through the world of dreams. I could think of no gentler method. Yet he grew even more frightened, almost to the point of madness.

I did not remember the name of every individual human, just as humans could not reliably distinguish one ant from another. Thus, whenever I encountered an uncommon human I needed to remember, I would choose a distinctive trait as a code name.

His reason for being afraid was, "When the divine child is born, I'll inevitably die. How could a mere mortal deserve to be the father of a divine child?" I found that fear utterly pointless. Willingly participating in a cult's ritual without being prepared to die was rather disrespectful to an evil god. Clearly, he did not know that he, too, was one of the vessels for the descent, one even better concealed than the seed already planted.

My ally had arranged two layers of insurance for this plan of Descent of the True Creator. While finalizing the plan with him, I came to deeply appreciate just how "generous" the treatment of being jointly sealed off by the seven gods was. It had turned him into a god who fussed over every detail like someone with an obsessive compulsion. I remembered that, during the millennium of our alliance, he had attempted a Descent of the True Creator every hundred years or so, and each had ended in one form of failure or another. By comparison, an evil god like me, who had walked the earth from the very beginning, truly failed to appreciate my good fortune.

Of course, as a reliable ally and an excellent, magnanimous "Remnant of the Old Days," I ought to help him reach the ground sooner rather than later, both as a matter of sentiment and of reason.

Yet reality and ideals often ran in opposite directions. Every failed Descent of the True Creator of his invariably involved the eldest son he had created back when he was still the Sun—now his other half on the Spectator Pathway, the King of Angel Adam. And I could not encounter him, nor did I want to. My humanity was false, and my appearance was simulated. In the company of that King of Angel, whose greatest expertise lay in seeing into human hearts, I had no confidence that I could avoid giving myself away.

It was not as though I could not beat him to death, but at present I was merely an ordinary passing Sequence 2 Angel. Switching to my own authorities would attract attention.

Thus, whenever I spotted him, I immediately retreated far away.

"This time... we must..."

His words echoed in my ears again. All right, I answered him. As long as Adam does not interfere this time, I will certainly do my best to help you.

Passing a theater, I saw actors already dressed in costume conducting a simple rehearsal in the open space behind it. One was dressed as a prisoner, his clothes ragged, his eyes gleaming with terror, unease, and overflowing hatred. Another was dressed as a clerk, arrogantly addressing words of courtship to a tearful young woman. A cursory glance told me they were rehearsing the opening acts of The Return of the Earl, which told the story of an innocent sailor framed and imprisoned, forced to spend fourteen years apart from his beautiful fiancée.

...Oh. Not a sailor. A genius mechanic.

When we had recognized each other as fellow people from the old world, I had put it this way: "The Count of Monte Cristo is wonderfully written. It even bears a slight resemblance to your The Return of the Earl."

At times like these, I felt compelled to marvel at the usefulness of the Savant Pathway, which allowed him to write out an entire long novel from memory without missing a single word. Although I had completely devoured and digested Edward Vaughan's soul, ordinary human memory was inherently weak. Most of the pages he had once read had already blurred beyond recognition, leaving only scattered phrases.

Still, he had at least been an associate professor at a university. Although his field was not particularly suited to my purposes, if I went through his memories a few hundred times and supplemented them with my own inventions, I could cobble together a few hefty volumes such as... A Thousand Years of Solitude, Deep-Sleep Flower Girl, and The Backlund Orphan.

But having Roselle as the one publicly known Remnant of the Old Days was quite enough. I remembered hundreds of Light Cocoons of various sizes hanging within the Sefirah of that Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings. I did not know what they were for. If they were all released at once, it was hard to imagine what this world would become.

13

I still remembered my first meeting with Roselle. Back then, he was still an outstanding genius serving under the God of Steam and Machinery. I approached him as a Remnant of the Old Days, and, as someone far from home, he quickly accepted me, even though we had not come from the same country.

This matched my assessment of humans: they could never free themselves from their attachment to the place they came from-their homeland. (Difficult to understand, when this was plainly Earth.) When they were close to home, they longed to play with their neighbors. When studying away from home, they longed for fellow townspeople from the same city. When alone in a foreign country, even the sight of someone from their own country excited them.

And in this "world," where no other transmigrators existed and Roselle was all alone, only he and I came from the same era.

Roselle asked, "Compat-no, my international friend, which Pathway are you on?"

I answered, "Sequence Two of the Devil Pathway. An Angel."

Roselle exclaimed in shock, "Holy shit, Chainsaw Man."

I was puzzled, but said nothing, leaving him alone with his embarrassment, his embarrassment, and then the desolation of receiving no response.

TBC

*There is an Angel Devil in Chainsaw Man, a manga by the free-spirited manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto.