times and not be satisfied. So why don't we just have a nice little chat about how things went down earlier? Depending on how our conversation goes, we might be able to part ways without me having to test how much you can really endure." The Saint's expression froze. Ever since the world's creation, she had been in constant agony. By all rights, she should have been beyond fear. Yet her composure, which had been born from having tasted everything the world had to offer, crumbled. Standing before her was something unknown. Her thoughts thrown into disarray, a hoarse voice escaped the Saint's mouth. "I... No, you..." "The two of us should get along and part ways as friends. Wouldn't you agree?" Suddenly, Kaito released his grip, and the Saint collapsed. After plopping back onto the bed, she began violently coughing. Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked up at Kaito. At the moment, she was sheltering neither God nor Diablo in her body. All she had available to her was her natural aptitude for magic. What could those eyes of hers perceive within Kaito? The Saint clutched at her own trembling shoulders. "You're...you're not...one of my creations. No...you're not...even... Who are you?" "I wonder. Who do you think I am?" Kaito turned the Saint's question back on her. Memories of a nostalgic voice echoed within the depths of his ears. It felt like it had been over a century ago when someone had called out to Kaito in that voice. "Butler," she'd called him. "Fool." "Kaito." Her voice had been resonant, free from any sort of modesty or restraint. Of course, even with her gone, there were still people left who would call out to him. At the moment, though, those people had been separated and spread out across the land. All of them were following Kaito's orders and working to fight against Diablo. And so, alone, the boy acting as the Mad King shrugged. Several gruesome strands of blood dribbled from his lips. When the individual responsible for the fate of the world smiled this time, it was a completely different smile than the one he'd worn before. "Truth is, I'm not sure even I know anymore." His tone was detached, and his words were as light as the wind. Yet at the same time, they carried with them a deep sadness. Furthermore, his clumsy smile was too broken to truly be called human. The Saint gazed vacantly at his comical, pitiable state. A length of time passed, and it was certainly not a short one. Suddenly, though, the Saint's expression changed, and once again, she adopted the kindly demeanor of a mother. It was unclear whether it was his deranged cheerfulness or his grief, which was as deep as the ocean, that had gotten through to her. All that was clear was that the stubbornness she'd borne until then had vanished without a trace. "This is a tale from long, long ago." And with that, the solitary woman began narrating. It was a story from long, long ago. A tale too horrible to be called Genesis, too tragic. But it was also far too twisted to pass off as a fairy tale. 4 A Tale from Long, Long Ago This is a fairy tale. Those who wish to refer to it as such are welcome to do so. But it is a horrible tale as well. One way or the other, it's a tale from long, long ago. Not only were all records of the old world annihilated, but they were also purged from the flow of time itself. No methods remained that one could use to learn what happened there. She was the only person who could testify to the events of the old world. She was the beginning and the end, the slaughterer and the mother. "Back then, my world was engulfed in war." The Saint began giving her account. Kaito frowned lightly. As she told it, the old world wasn't ruled by nations, but by a number of independent organizations and powers all vying for hegemony. Bound by their own interests and motives, they twisted the bloody annals of history for the sake of justice, hatred, and greed. At the end of the day, though, the sources that led to this tangled situation were surprisingly simple, and it was possible to classify them into two broad categories. Racial conflicts were escalating, and people's capacity for magic was advancing too quickly. The former had strewn the seeds of conflict throughout the world, lending each side a different sense of justice and pretext to rally behind. The latter made it so that organizations with powerful individuals and skilled mentors could attain military strength surpassing that of nations. In other words, the old world was what the current world would be like if the balance of power got thrown out of whack after the current world spent another few centuries developing. However, while the existence of higher entitiesâ€”God and Diabloâ€”had been proven in the old world, nobody had been able to come into contact with them directly. "Perhaps that world, too, was rebuilt from the ashes of destruction, or perhaps it was the first world God had ever created. I do not know. However, the old world had no religion that held the Creator in reverence. While the general indifference toward God helped spur on the wars, the fact that the Creator offered no guidance was what led to the assumption that it was impossible to interact with the higher entities. Because of that, the world managed to avoid both being attacked by demons and having God descend. Or it did, but..." "But then you were born." "Indeed. I was." Upon hearing Kaito's murmur, the Saint nodded. Sometimes, the birth of a truly unprecedented prodigy could bring about massive change in a world. When the small farming village she called home was set ablaze and her family was massacred, her latent talents came into bloom. After being taken in by the state, she became the youngest-ever graduate from the magic academy she was tossed into, then began wandering from war front to war front, working as a weapon of mass destruction. One day, when she gazed upon the scorched earth that she herself had caused, she found herself struck by a certain question. From her perspective, humans, demi-humans, and beastfolk were nothing more than fragile ants. Why, then, did such feeble beings feel the need to kill one another? While she quickly realized the abnormality of that thought and hid it thereafter, her magical aptitude was far beyond what the logic of her world accounted for. Because her country had obtained a powerful mage by sheer chance, it was able to put together a plan to reclaim some territory it had been sorely missing for many years, but she herself quickly lost interest in such petty affairs. In the beginning, the reason her family had been torn to pieces and burned alive had been because the enemy nation had given weapons to the beastfolk who lived near her village. However, she didn't hate them, nor did she hold a grudge. Unraveling the truth behind the tragedy further revealed the honorable beastfolk would never have committed such atrocities if not for the fact that her very motherland had betrayed them. Upon delving further, it became clear that the original reason behind the conflict involved suspicions that another nation altogether was meddling in their affairs. When one obtained transcendental power, the whole world started to look flat. The conclusion she arrived at was that the entire cycle of hatred was meaningless. "I justâ€” I found it peculiar." With unclouded eyes, she'd taken in the situation as a whole. War had driven the country to poverty, and its people's hearts could bear no more. The whole continent was being stripped bare, and if things continued on along the same path, all sides were headed for mutual destruction. However, she quickly came to understand something. Everyone was already well aware of that fact. Yet they had no means by which to stop. Every party was terrified of falling behind, so the magical arms race was spiraling out of control. Nobody even knew the state of their own research, and nobody felt they could afford to stop. Economies and supply lines were converted to support the war efforts as well. Some people felt armistice would prove disadvantageous to them, so they devoted their wholehearted efforts to throwing fuel on the fire. Their education systems were designed not to teach children about the consequences of their actions, but to brainwash them and instill hatred deep in their hearts. With each successive generation, people stopped questioning the war more and more, even as its original purpose was lost to obscurity. There was no country large enough to serve as a mediator, nor was there one powerful enough to secure a decisive victory. Eventually, she arrived at a conclusion of her own. A certain entity would be necessary to free them all from the quagmire. "Such as a powerful deterrentâ€”the likes of which didn't exist." For example, something like God or Diablo. From her perspective, humanity, beastfolk, and demi-humans were all equal. Every living creature was ignorant, and every living creature was like a stupid animal. That was why she had to save them. After steadying her resolve to bring about salvation, she got to work. As long as she could summon them, God and Diablo would be the most powerful forces in the world. She presented her thesis to her government, and just as she'd expected, she received a massive budget to carry out her research. In the current world, summoning a powerful demon had the contradictory requirement that one must first consume a demon's flesh. However, the old world's magical techniques were centuries more advanced, and she herself was a vessel of such rare quality that her very birth was an astronomically unlikely event. Thus, in a tiny time frame, she was able to come up with a method to summon higher entities, a feat that Vlad had once estimated would take the current world another two thousand years to develop. On that fateful day, though, she was unsuccessful in summoning God. As long as some sort of condition was unmet, God remained immovable. After reaching that conclusion, she tried summoning Diablo instead. It manifested successfullyâ€” "â€”And the world broke." With a pop. More easily than a soap bubble. God creates the world, and Diablo destroys it. Even the old world knew about these properties of theirs. However, because nobody had ever actually interacted with them, her estimations were overly optimistic. She'd summoned lower-ranked demons over the course of her experiments, but God and Diablo's reason for being was fundamentally different. The two of them existed solely as a system to rebuild and destroy. They didn't even have the framework necessary to carry out negotiations. And as supreme a vessel as she was, her lack of experience in dealing with higher entities left her with no ability to resist Diablo. And so, through her body, it automatically carried out its task. She didn't really remember what happened afterward, only that it felt much longer than it had actually been. All she knew were the vague, nightmarish scraps of memory that remained. Horrific figures blotting out the sky. Seas transformed into plains of black and crimson. Azure blades cleaving through the earth. Black titans. Parts of the sky transmuted into glass. Bubbles forming in the land. Her own stitched-together body. A cluster of roses in full bloom. Resentful voices, their resistance as short-lived as that of insects. Frail entreaties that, in the end, transformed into bloodthirsty jeers. "Loathsome, repulsive, cruel, hideous!" "A curse upon you, a curse upon you, a curse, a curse, an eternal curse upon you,!" And then when she came to... ...she was in a place with nothing in it. If one was to describe that place, the most