・・・・・
Larry’s first thought was, ‘I've been dulled by peace.’
Compared to the battles he once fought alongside Leraze in the demon realm, every struggle over the past four thousand years felt like nothing more than child’s play.
Even when he fought half-heartedly, victory had come so easily — it was only natural that he’d grown complacent.
A devil dulled and rusted by time could never compare to one freshly risen from the underworld, still soaked in blood.
Every one of Larry’s attacks was read, blocked, and countered.
There wasn’t a single opening to exploit.
There was a time in the demon realm when Larry had completely dispelled Nivas’s illusions with a single arrow.
But now, the jester had grown so powerful that nothing remained of his former self, save for his ability to conjure illusions.
In contrast, the weakened Larry was tossed around without the slightest means to resist.
“Kuh, urgh…!”
He was struck by the substance hidden within the illusion and doubled over, coughing violently.
The searing pain that pierced his abdomen made him clutch the spot, but no blood stained his hand.
That was because it wasn’t his body that had been wounded — it was his demonic soul.
Feeling around his unmarked stomach was a meaningless, reflexive act.
Watching Larry, Nivas revealed a flicker of surprise.
[You’ve practically become human.]
“You don’t have to keep emphasising that I’m a defective product…”
Muttering under his breath, Larry gazed down at the fading remnants of his soul.
Tiny particles, like drifting pollen, fluttered through the air and seeped into Nivas.
Devils typically grew stronger by absorbing and consuming the souls of other beings.
This phenomenon alone laid bare the glaring difference in their power.
As Larry had expected, it was a fight with no chance of victory.
Nivas could have ended it in an instant, yet he merely stood by as Larry thrashed and lashed out in desperation.
He deliberately avoided delivering fatal blows, instead repeatedly inflicting light wounds on Larry’s soul.
It was as if he were toying with him — watching with twisted curiosity to see how Larry might react when pushed to his limits.
This wasn’t a battle; it was a one-sided game.
Like a child casually tearing the legs off a struggling ant one by one, Nivas indulged in cruelty for his own amusement.
“…Where did your contractor go?”
[Oh dear, this really isn’t the time for you to be worrying about that.]
Nivas, who had dissipated like smoke, suddenly coalesced again and drove a sharply honed burst of demonic energy toward him.
Larry twisted his body, narrowly dodging a direct hit, but he couldn’t stop the magic from grazing his waist.
The pain made him flinch, giving Nivas just the opening he needed.
Spinning swiftly, Nivas launched a spike-like blast of energy at Larry’s back.
There was no time to evade — the attack pierced in, just barely missing the core of his soul, the very essence of his being.
“Urggh…!”
As expected, he avoided the vital spots.
Larry had to endure the miserable feeling of being treated like nothing more than a mere object.
The combat style was elegant and noble, like a textbook example — extracting maximum efficiency from minimal movement.
This was Leraze’s way of fighting.
‘Even if you inherit the power, there’s no way your entire fighting style would change.’
Just as that doubt crossed his mind, Nivas asked:
[That’s your limit?]
“…Of course not.”
But he was slowly reaching his limit.
Even if his core hadn’t been destroyed, continuous damage to his soul would soon bring him down.
And falling here would mean death for everyone.
‘Damn, this hurts like hell.’
Larry wiped the corner of his mouth, where no blood could possibly flow, grimacing fiercely before moving his lips.
“You’re not acting like yourself. By now, shouldn’t you be provoking me and laughing it off like some third-rate villain?”
He had expected Nivas to start with his usual sadistic mind games — breaking him down with illusions — but the jester was behaving surprisingly quite gentlemanly.
This wasn’t just a personality change.
No — this felt like an entirely different devil.
Larry narrowed his eyes before hesitantly voicing the name.
“…Leraze?”
Yes. It was him. Now that he realised it, he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed sooner.
No matter how well illusions masked a devil’s presence, subtle traces slipped through speech, mannerisms, and fighting style.
The nobility that had earned Leraze the admiration of countless devils wasn’t something that could be faked.
And more than that — how could he not recognise the very source and true form of his own soul?
“Hah, no wonder. There’s no way Nivas could have gotten this strong...”
There was a saying that once a thought took hold, it was all you could think about.
The only thing Nivas and the devil before him had in common was their mastery of illusions.
Yet because Irene had called him Nivas, Larry accepted it without question.
He believed it simply because she said so.
He laughed bitterly at his own poor judgment.
When had he become such a fool?
But once he spoke the name aloud, certainty washed over him.
“Leraze...”
Leraze was the god and parent who created Larry; the teacher and guide who instilled all knowledge in him.
An absolute being.
The truth.
The world itself.
And now, the ‘world’ finally spoke.
[So, you finally recognise me. I was curious to see how much you’d grown. But really, you’re pathetic.]
“Wh-why? Why are you here? And why are you pretending to be Nivas? You’re using his powers...?”
The situation was unbelievable.
He muttered to himself in a daze, then suddenly realised—
If Irene’s words were true, Benjamin had indeed tried to summon Nivas.
That was exactly the sort of thing he’d do — using others without hesitation, never taking losses himself.
But the one actually summoned was not Nivas.
It was Leraze, masquerading as Nivas.
And that could mean only one thing.
The devil who was supposed to have been summoned — Nivas — was dead.
His soul had been devoured by another devil, erased from the demon realm.
And the one who answered Benjamin’s call was Leraze, who had absorbed Nivas’s power.
"Because I devoured him."
The devil’s mist-like form shed the illusions around him and slowly took shape.
Standing before Larry was… himself.
As if staring into a mirror — except for one glaring difference.
Those vivid eyes, like droplets of blood, belonged to Leraze alone.
Two completely contrasting gazes clashed in the empty space between them.
The red eyes were the colour most akin to madness, but Leraze’s steady gaze was deep and elegant.
It appeared bored and detached as if he had mastered all truths.
Even that gaze was something Larry admired.
‘I'm sorry, but I feel resentful… I’m afraid, yet I’m glad to see you…'
An indescribable swirl of emotions raged through Larry’s mind.
“You must find it strange that I answered a human’s summons.”
“No, everything is strange. Why did you kill Nivas, and why did you come to see me?”
“How should I put this…”
Leraze took slow, deliberate steps forward.
Hesitating briefly as if confused, he then spoke to Larry with the finality of a sentence passed down.
“I have come to reclaim my soul.”
Not ‘your’ soul.
‘My’ soul.
In those words, Larry was already a devil whose very existence had been erased.
“Stop tarnishing my reputation and return as a fragment of my soul.”
He had come for this purpose alone.
Like a farmer sowing seeds and returning at harvest to reap the fruits — plucking the crop grown from the soil to fill his own belly.
It was a judgment utterly befitting Leraze, one that was often called the devil of devils.
There was actually no reason for Larry to feel wronged.
After all, Leraze was simply reclaiming the fragment that had been part of his own soul since the very beginning.
Who could possibly object to such a rightful claim?
Leraze had created him, raised him, and now, having deemed him a failure, sought to discard the defective product.
That was all there was to it.
“The one who summoned me requested, as part of the contract, that I kill you — along with the body you failed to take.”
He was the most ruthless, the most beautiful, the most merciless being in existence.
"My bow, I have come to personally destroy the world you built because of me. You have no complaints, right?"
His words had always been absolute, his will was always carried out.
But this time, Larry couldn’t simply nod and say, “Do as you wish.”
Not because he clung to his forsaken soul, nor because he feared the death looming ahead.
“If you take me away, what do you plan to do next?”
Larry couldn’t willingly surrender himself to Leraze.
Because once Benjamin’s deal was sealed — and Larry was gone — it was painfully clear what would happen to Irene, left all alone.
Leraze’s expression remained unreadable.
“Who’s ‘next’ are you referring to?”
"Your contractor’s..."
“You worry about the human who will be left behind.”
Even when Larry spoke in half-measures, Leraze immediately grasped his meaning.
Staring quietly at the figure bearing the exact same face as his own, he continued.
“I once told you to learn about love, didn’t I?”
At those words, Larry slowly parted his lips.
“…You said devils cannot exist without humans.”
“That’s right. All the realms we govern originate from humans. That’s why devils must observe and understand them up close.”
Having opened with those words, Leraze scrutinised Larry like a scholar faced with an unsolvable problem, examining every detail as if trying to unravel a mystery.
“But I don’t recall ever telling you to fall so miserably in love with a human... My reputation is completely ruined.”
His gaze seemed to question, ‘How could something like this have come from me?’
Larry met that look with indifference.
In the past, he might have begged for mercy or another chance, but now, Leraze’s judgment no longer held any weight for him.
"After all, they’re just a person who won’t even reach a full hundred years and will die fleetingly. When they die, they’ll be reborn again — endlessly reincarnating, repeating meaningless cycles of time."
"Leraze."
Larry politely called out to the devil who had once been his entire world.
Leraze, as if silently granting permission to speak, waited patiently. Allowing him to leave his final words before his soul was taken.
In the past, Larry had accepted Leraze’s words without question and wandered the human world for thousands of years.
He had been confident. He believed he could quickly understand human love, which existed solely to be exploited by devils, and then return.
But now, well... he wasn’t so sure anymore.
Breaking out of the shell called emotion, Larry discovered a world no devil could have ever imagined.
It was a vast universe too immense to be filled even with countless stars.
“In the human world, every fleeting moment is made up of emotions.”
Having once devoured all of Felix’s emotions, Larry’s world was divided into before and after meeting Irene.
The emotions belonging to that insignificant human had consumed his world — completely overturning it
Looking back, even the trials and hardships he’d faced now seemed as though they had happened just so he could meet her.
He had come to love even the pain of that day, the one he endured because of her.
Even the moments he had merely lived through for the sake of living — those, too, had taken on a completely different meaning.
And so, Larry could finally say it.
“The world that was built because of you has already crumbled apart.”
He continued.
“Sending me to the human world was your mistake. Since my essence has changed, I am no longer your soul, and you have no right to take me.”
Larry spoke firmly, his gaze unwavering as he locked eyes with Leraze.
“So, I will not die.”
“Oh? Quite ambitious, aren’t you?”
“But how great it would be if things always went according to one’s will,” Leraze added with a hint of pity.
No matter how much he struggled, a fragment could never surpass the original.
It was a fixed law.
Yet Larry gathered his power to the very limit and began murmuring what sounded like an incantation.
“…A spell? That human body belongs to a sorcerer, I hear. It seems you’ve done more than just assimilate into their emotions — you’ve even learned some strange tricks.”
Leraze looked at him with a puzzled expression.
A devil, whose very core was pure demonic power, using a spell? Such things were normally reserved for humans — mages or sorcerers who needed to draw power from outside themselves.
About four thousand years ago, devils had recklessly torn open dimensional rifts and invaded the human realm.
Their reckless assault had failed.
Before humans could even react, their world had been corrupted and shattered in an instant, forcing the gods to intervene directly.
Since then, devils who had descended into the human realm could only wield their power through contracts with humans — and they had lost all rights to access the dimensional rifts.
And so, the devils left behind in the human realm lost all means of returning.
Unless they made a contract with a human, they couldn't use their powers.
Compared to humans, they lived for what was nearly an eternity — spending those long years in solitude.
With no other choice, the devils were forced to blend in, pretending to be ordinary humans, interacting with them, and gradually learning their knowledge and skills.
Larry was one such devil, trapped in the human world at that time, left with no option but to remain.
“You wouldn’t understand — having stayed in the demon realm all this time, never once setting foot in the human world. You have no idea what the devils, abandoned and left to wither in the human realm, have come to discover.”
Larry let out a short, dry laugh as he recalled what he had said to Irene.
His power surged violently, erupting into black flames.
The infernal fire known as Suprema — the flames of hell — whirled once around Larry and Leraze, swiftly etching glowing sigils into the ground as it passed.
A fusion of demonic power and sorcery — an act of desperation, like the last struggles of a forsaken devil.
Leraze, who had remained composed and magnanimous until now, lifted an eyebrow.
The unidentified spell exuded an energy so feeble that it was almost laughable for something brazen enough to challenge him.
However, Leraze had no intention of carelessly receiving the blatant killing intent and attack aimed at him.
Even if it was mere sorcery, it wasn’t something to be taken lightly — not when considering the desperate ambition and cunning of humans who sought to transcend their limits.
Before the sigils could be fully completed, Leraze struck.
All trace of leniency was gone.
With a simple flick of his hand, countless invisible arrows — honed to razor-sharp precision — split into hundreds, then thousands, and pierced straight through Larry’s soul.
The pain slammed into him like a thunderclap, so intense that dying from the shock alone would’ve been no surprise.
Though the attack had targeted his soul, even his physical body was hurled backward, crashing into the far wall with a brutal impact before collapsing like a limp, stuffing-less rag doll.
The shockwave shook the already crumbling temple, sending shattered debris raining down like hail.
Larry’s mind blurred.
His consciousness drifted, distant and faint, the pain so overwhelming he couldn’t even scream.
“I could have absorbed you without pain. Even now — do you want that?”
“...”
Larry’s lips parted, but no sound came.
A shrill ringing filled his ears, and his vision flickered — turning white, then black, over and over again.
It seemed Felix’s body had taken a serious hit from the last attack.
Larry had tried to protect Felix’s soul, just as he’d promised Irene — but whether he’d truly succeeded… that was uncertain.
The potion hadn’t had time to take full effect before the blow landed.
There was no way to predict the outcome. After all, Leraze’s power was far from ordinary.
And now, there was only one option left — to preserve Felix’s soul as much as possible.
"I-I… If I die... If I disappear without a trace, he will return to your angel that you knew before." [1]
Oblivion was imminent.
Like a dying flame, flickering faintly as it sensed its end.
If he vanished now, Leraze would have no choice but to kill Felix to fulfil the contract.
"No... it’s not necessary."
Larry barely managed to respond.
"No matter if thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of millions of years pass, there is no way for you to defeat me."
"And there’s no way for you to survive here, either," Leraze said in a voice that was indifferent with a hint of irritation.
"Why can’t you grasp such a simple truth? Not knowing your limits, refusing to give up — that’s just like a human."
Foolishly, Larry had poured nearly all of his power into the spell, leaving himself with nothing to strike back.
A pair of crimson eyes locked onto him — onto what little remained of his soul, now frayed and barely clinging to breath.
And even in that state, he showed no intention of surrender.
It was like watching a captured insect, its body impaled, still twitching frantically — oblivious to its own impending end.
Translator's Corner:
[1] Flashback of what Larry said in ch92 during a convo with Irene.
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