"Y-you... who are you?" Sir Deville asked the two monsters before him, trembling.
"Deville, you're dead. The two of us are here to take you away," the bull-headed monster said. "This is the world after death."
"Impossible!" Deville was becoming hysterical. "You must be lying to me!"
"I'm a believer in the Evernight Goddess. I donated so much money and made so many contributions to the Church of Evernight. After I die, I should enter the goddess's kingdom and rest in eternal peace."
The other monster picked Deville up and said fiercely, "Cut the crap. Move!"
"Once we're done with you, there's another one waiting. Our time is precious!"
Helpless, Deville could only let them force him into an eerie hall.
At its center, he saw a giant over ten meters tall sitting behind an enormous desk. The giant looked exceptionally sinister and terrifying, and was frowning as he wrote and drew in a book.
Standing before the desk was someone Deville had known in life, a man named Corodo. A dignified voice rang out in the room:
"Corodo, you committed countless evil deeds in life. You oppressed the hired farmhands on your estate, exploited the lower classes, and sought only to advance yourself without regard for whether others lived or died. You stopped at nothing to do so and hurt many people."
"The verdict is now in. You will pass through all eighteen levels of hell and suffer every punishment, then be reincarnated as a beast. This is your punishment!"
"No, I don't want to!" Corodo shouted.
"I have money, lots of money. As long as you let me have power and money after I'm reborn, I can give you everything I have!"
The giant waved his hand, and the floor suddenly vanished. Corodo lost his footing and fell straight down. "Aaaah!!!"
Deville's legs trembled as he watched an endless sea of fire swallow Corodo. Then the floor returned to normal.
"All right, next." The solemn voice rang out in the hall again.
"Get moving. It's your turn!" The monster behind Deville gave him a shove, forcing him into the center of the hall.
The figure across from him picked up another book and asked, "Your name is Deville, correct?"
"Yes."
"Hmm... let me see how much good and how much evil you did in your life."
The sound of pages turning echoed through the hall.
"Not too bad. Much better than the last one. Although you were a major capitalist, you did a great deal of charity work. Most of it doesn't count, though, so it needs to be deducted..."
"As for your evil deeds, there wasn't much deliberate intent behind them. Most were forced by circumstances, simply following the crowd, but some were intentional..."
"So, adding it all up..."
"Wait!" Deville suddenly spoke up. He didn't know where he found the courage.
"I did so many good deeds and was known to the world as a great philanthropist. Why doesn't most of my charity work count?"
The figure across from him pointed to the things on either side. "These are the standards by which I judge good and evil!"
Deville followed his gaze and found two lines written there: "Good done with intent, though good, goes unrewarded; evil done without intent, though evil, goes unpunished!"
"That's right. That's what I base my judgment on."
"For example, you once met a young woman named Hailiye. She worked at your lead factory and collapsed from lead poisoning, but you left her without help. Her death added to your sins."
"You thought paying her two soli more per week than other lead factories was an act of kindness. You thought applying for emergency aid for the people working at your lead factory was a good deed..."
"No, they were neither. You understood the harm lead caused, but you stood by and watched their bodies be ruined. You used wages and aid as excuses, putting yourself on the moral high ground and shielding yourself from guilt."
"But none of that matters here. Those things won't be counted as good. On the contrary, they'll add to your sins."
"However, since you were indeed forced by circumstances, and there was a measure of kindness in what you did, I won't punish you for it either."
Deville stood rooted to the spot when he heard this.
"All right, the good and evil of your life have been tallied."
"The final verdict is that you will spend a hundred years in the Hell of the Sinful Mirror. During that time, you will experience the suffering endured by the workers in your employ."
"After a hundred years, you will be reincarnated into an ordinary, well-off family. You won't enjoy great wealth or status, but you'll never want for food or clothing."
The scene changed, and Deville was sent to a place where countless people struggled and cried out that they had been wronged. They were tormented by all kinds of suffering, and Deville had even known some of them in life.
Day after day, year after year, he suffered there. He was poisoned while making lead, developed lung problems from the excessive dust in a porcelain factory, and was burned when a steel production line malfunctioned...
For every industry he owned, he endured the suffering others had once endured. His body went from healthy to sick, then gravely ill, until he finally died. Then he would be given a healthy body again, and the cycle would repeat.
Like the others, he cried out that he had been wronged and begged for mercy. He invoked the Evernight Goddess and his faith, but it was no use.
His mind gradually grew numb, and his body slowly adapted to the pain. Just as he thought the hundred years would never end, the two monsters who had originally brought him came again:
"Deville, your sentence is over. You may leave this place now and return to the mortal world..."
Deville opened his eyes again in the carriage and rubbed his aching forehead.
"How did I fall asleep again? And I had such a strange nightmare."
With that, he opened the curtain and looked outside.
Thud!
A thin young woman in tattered clothes collapsed beside the carriage. Her skin was pale all over, and she was gravely ill. Deville knew this illness: it was lead poisoning.
Deville frowned. Just as he was about to close the curtain, he suddenly stopped.
"Have I experienced this somewhere before?"
Deville looked at the young woman lying on the ground, then saw a resentful spirit rise from her body.
The resentful spirit looked at Deville coldly and opened her mouth.
Bang!
An invisible shriek struck Deville's head. His thoughts stalled, and a string in his mind suddenly snapped. A flood of images appeared in his mind.
"Aaaah!!!"
The real world.
"Ah!"
Sir Deville shot upright, drenched in sweat, his eyes full of terror.
"Huff, huff..."
"Was it a dream? Thank goodness!"
Deville had just wiped the sweat from his forehead when he suddenly felt the room grow inexplicably cold. His heart tightened, and he slowly turned to look to his left. There he saw two people.
One had the corners of his mouth slightly raised in a teasing smile. It was Vincent, whom he had seen in his dream. The other was floating in the air, her cold gaze exactly as it had been in the dream.
"Aaaah!"
"There's a monster! A ghost!"
"Security! Guards! Butler! Somebody, come quickly!!"
"Someone save me!!!"