Chapter 45

“An angel…? Are you saying that giant from earlier was an angel?”

Mr. Layton seemed quite shocked. As soon as the angel disappeared, he grabbed me and started bombarding me with questions. No matter how I answered, he just kept asking more.

“He’s one of the many attendants who serve the Lord. I’ve met him before.”

“But… he looks so different from the angels I imagined…”

The relaxed smile Mr. Layton had earlier was gone. His head was filled with chaotic thoughts, and his eyes were visibly shaken.

“Did the Ancient God really command such angels…?”

But the same went for the Princess. Mr. Layton answered.

“The Ancient God is the Law of the Universe. Why would a law need something like an angel? It’s already permeated throughout the cosmos. There’s no reason to command or create such things. Only a personal god would create angels.”

“But no matter how I think about it, this is completely different from the angels we know.”

A human-like appearance and stature, with unparalleled beauty. Pure white wings and a halo floating above its head.

Before I met the Lord’s angels, I too imagined angels to look like that. Because everyone said so, and everyone thought so.

I just thought they all had unique appearances. Was it really something to worry about so seriously?

“There’s one possibility.”

After much deliberation, Mr. Layton seemed to have reached some conclusion.

“The deity the Priest serves might be a new kind of divinity we’ve never encountered before. A divine being from beyond our understanding. I’ve never heard of such a god existing on this continent.”

“So, not the Ancient God, but now an alien god?”

I could only laugh helplessly. Unless the Lord Himself explains who He is, all these speculations are just wild guesses.

No matter how much I think about it, who He is isn’t important.

What I’m more curious about is why He chose me and bestowed power upon me.

“Duke. No matter how much we discuss who the Lord is, it only deepens the mystery. We don’t even understand His will, so how could we possibly grasp His essence?”

What’s important is that He heard Mr. Layton’s troubles and granted me a miracle to solve the problem.

The miracle, the Bell of Command. I summoned the mysterious bell and held it in my hand, showing it to Mr. Layton. Startled by the sudden appearance of the bell, Mr. Layton looked at it in confusion. Suddenly, as if realizing something, he spoke.

“Could that be…?”

“It’s the miracle the Lord granted me after hearing your second prayer.”

The Lord respects human free will and does not wish for humans to lose their freedom and be unable to fulfill their desires.

The Bell of Command exists as a miracle for those who are bound.

To break curses, throw off shackles, and bring freedom. The reason He granted me such a miracle must be because Mr. Layton is not truly free.

The Lord always sees ahead of me, and what He deems necessary for me always turns out to be truly necessary.

It wasn’t hard to make this much of a guess.

“So, will you tell me?”

No matter how great a miracle is, what meaning does it have if there’s no one to receive it? A miracle only becomes a miracle when there’s someone to benefit from it.

Why this miracle, which grants freedom to those born bound, is necessary for Duke Layton, I don’t know. Unless he tells me himself, I might never know.

“Duke Layton. Are you perhaps being controlled by someone?”

*****

There were children who were not wanted from the moment they were born.

Children who had to die before they could even develop consciousness or perception. A place where the bones of children would trip your feet like pebbles as you walked.

It’s perhaps natural that a Death God would be born in Meso Mountain, where such children were buried.

The will to live and the desire for acceptance, the fear of being unwanted.

The anger and survival instinct toward a world that did not welcome them. The god was born embracing all of that. Inhaling the accumulated resentment, it built its divinity. A malevolent spirit transcended its stage and became a god.

What is a god? It’s a being that gathers human desires and receives prayers.

Is there any desire more earnest than the desire to live? A newborn is pure. A baby knows nothing of wealth or power, only the desire to be loved and to live. That pure desire coalesced into a strand of divinity.

“Why didn’t you love us?”

The Death God, possessing Layton’s son, whispered. It whispered into Laila’s ear, who had hung herself. Even as a god, it was still a child.

It yearned for love, desired it. But the source of its power came from the opposite of love.

It pursued, but could never reach. The Death God was thus a twisted existence from the start.

To prevent the birth of such beings, priests from the Three God Faith and other sects would perform sacred rites and scatter divine power in places where many had died. They wouldn’t even take money for such tasks.

The Death God is their most formidable rival. If such a being is born, the aftermath is endless. If they neglect its birth for a few coins, the consequences would be too much for humans to handle.

However, the culling of vampire newborns was conducted in secret, and this territory itself was highly exclusive to priests. Divine power is fatal to vampires, so it couldn’t be helped.

In the end, the resentment of the dead children accumulated, and this disaster occurred.

*Bang bang!*

Someone knocked on the door, unaware. The Death God looked at the door with cold eyes.

When there was no response from inside, the sound of the door breaking soon followed. Vampires of the Lord class, sent by Duke Shimira, arrived one after another.

“Laila. By the Queen’s command. You gave birth to a hybrid and hid it until now? Did you think the Queen wouldn’t know?”

“Let’s make this easy. You know you can’t defy the Queen’s word. Bring out the hybrid you gave birth to now. If you can’t kill it yourself, we’ll do it for you.”

“And divorce Layton immediately and take the seed of another Lord… What the?”

Duke Layton and Laila thought they had escaped Duke Shimira’s notice, but the Duke already knew they had given birth to a deformed child.

She just hadn’t brought it up until now. Once she decided to purge Layton, bringing up what she had ignored was enough.

Some of those she sent laughed at Laila’s misfortune, while others pitied her.

But the True Ancestor’s command is absolute. Defiance is impossible. If she decided to kill Layton’s son and give his wife to another man, no one could oppose it.

The True Ancestor is the absolute ruler and physical dominator of all vampires.

But what they saw when they entered to carry out the order was a child quietly watching them.

And a woman hanging lifelessly. The execution was already over. The Death God looked at them with a strange light in its eyes.

“Who… who are you?!”

“Laila…? How did she commit suicide…?”

Duke Shimira had once used her power of domination to forbid her vampires from committing suicide. Yet Laila had hung herself. That fact alone made all the vampires realize something was wrong.

Moreover, that thing, though it looked like a vampire, was absolutely not one.

A child who looked no older than two stood firmly on two feet, staring at them with eyes no child of that age should have. Everyone felt a chill.

“Kill it!”

One of the vampires, creeped out, grabbed a stake and struck the child. Clearly imbued with magical power, yet not a single wound appeared, and the skin remained unscathed.

Another kicked the child, but the sound was all that was loud. The child didn’t move at all. No, it didn’t even blink.

“Don’t you love me?”

After a moment of silence, the child smiled. No answer came.

The moment it smiled, the heads of the one who kicked and the one who held the stake burst simultaneously. Two corpses were made, and the silence grew longer.

Everyone couldn’t believe what they had just seen.

They all stepped back hesitantly, but even if they didn’t know this child, the Death God knew them. The Lords were the ones who had killed the children buried in Meso Mountain.

“Haha.”

The Death God laughed once and toddled toward the door. No one dared to block its path. The vampires, who had unknowingly stepped aside, stared at the dark corridor with wide eyes.

The thing that left the room disappeared without a trace, leaving only darkness thickly filling the corridor.

Everything felt like a nightmare, but the hanging corpse and the two with shattered heads proved it was real.

Belatedly, Lord Belron realized what he had seen and staggered. His voice was filled with fear.

“The… the Death God!”

That rare and scarce being had been born in this territory.

This was a catastrophe, and at least with their power, they couldn’t overcome it. They needed to quickly consult the Queen and prepare countermeasures… countermeasures…

*Crack!*

His head split, and blood poured out. Belron, who had collapsed without realizing it, heard thuds all around. He wasn’t the only one who fell.

‘A curse…’

His fading consciousness deduced the answer, but…

‘It didn’t just leave…’

Even if he knew, he couldn’t speak, and even if he did, there was no one to listen.

So it was a meaningless answer. The floor was littered with corpses of those whose heads had burst. A god is not an existence that can be opposed by numbers, and no matter how many lesser beings there are, they are meaningless.

If humans wish to oppose a god, they need several heroes of equal strength.

Unfortunately, aside from Duke Shimira, no vampire here has that level of power. The Death God laughed once and slowly walked out of the house. It wanted to see a world wider than this territory.

Now, the child greeted the world.

The child wondered what kind of greeting the world would return.