Chapter 119: The Demon and the Deity (Part 2)
“Hiss—”
Amid the roar of the colossal beast, Aresta couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. His vision blurred suddenly, reality spinning around him like a merry-go-round. The horned horse took flight, and before long, there was a scream followed by a loud thud as it crashed nearby. Aresta’s body tumbled with the same sound—sharp pain shot through him, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He rolled through the soft sand and came to a stop just as the darkness began to creep in.
“Ugh… mmm…”
He lay face-down, his cleric robes sullied with sand, his right elbow feeling like it had been dislocated from the impact. One leg felt completely numb. He tried to get up, only to find himself immobilized. The intense pain left him gasping for breath, and it took a while to lift his head.
What he saw next was the demon standing calmly in front of him, its feet wrapped in black armor.
“Uh… uh… wait…”
He was terrified, instinctively wanting to beg for mercy, but the words wouldn’t come out. His face turned a shade of red as he frantically waved his left hand at the demon. Thankfully, it didn’t immediately strike; it merely observed him. After a long moment of him panting heavily, it slowly crouched in front of the man.
“Wait… we’ve met… we’ve met before… cough cough…”
Aresta coughed so hard that spit flew out. Ignoring the sand sticking to his face and getting into his mouth, he quickly rattled off, “Do you remember me? I’m… Aresta… We fought together… to slay the heretics, cough cough, just a year ago in Alectine City… at the Castle of Silence… We battled side by side… Miss Silvya… for the sake of… ah—”
He let out a yelp, feeling as if his scalp was being yanked off. The petite demon grabbed the young bishop’s hair, lifting his head off the ground, dragging him closer to her face.
“Miss Silvya is dead.”
She stared straight into his eyes.
“Ah… let go…”
Aresta’s face twisted in pain, his bloodshot eyes fixated on the ground, unable to meet her ruby gaze. His voice became almost pleading: “I—I was following orders… you know, I’m just a regular cleric obeying the church… I had no involvement in everything that happened later in Silgaya… I swear…”
He wasn’t lacking the strength to resist.
In fact, from entering the town to this moment, Aresta had barely lifted a finger. He was still in peak condition. Be it sanctioning divine miracles or natural wonders, he was always a standout even among his peers in the Faith Organization. His faith was purer and more powerful than any cleric who had perished before. Although he was hurt from the fall, he had some fight left in him.
What he lacked was the courage to stand up.
The young bishop realized clearly that the gulf in power between him and this girl-turned-demon was not something mere “courage” could bridge. She was no longer the same as a year ago; she had “died” once. That d*ath seemed to have granted her an opportunity that was either lucky or unfortunate.
He had no idea what had transpired.
But now, reappearing in this desolate Eastern Continent, her strength had exceeded the church’s imagination.
Aresta felt that pressure firsthand.
Even the mere presence of her was enough to make it hard to breathe—she hadn’t even attacked, just hovered above, effortlessly blocking the onslaught of holy light and summoning her minions from the abyss, letting chaotic forces engulf the land, swiftly annihilating the elite First Knights Order. The whole ordeal didn’t take long at all; Aresta couldn’t even escape out of town before she caught up.
Order, chaos, even infernal fire…
The girl possessed a power beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
Thinking back to the hellishly terrifying scene that had just unfolded in the town square, the young bishop’s teeth chattered in fear, his mind going blank.
Resistance was a guaranteed dead end.
He had no choice but to lower himself to the ground, hoping to buy himself a sliver of survival.
“Back then… I was in Alectine City… I didn’t know anything; I was not involved in the Choir of Saints’ actions… I only learned about you later… I even helped save people alongside you! Don’t you remember…?”
“Mm, I remember.”
The demon girl nodded: “And what of it?”
As soon as she spoke, the grim smile that had emerged on Aresta’s face froze again.
“You…”
His trembling, cracked lips struggled to articulate anything—he lifted his gaze, feeling despair wash over him. In the girl’s bright crimson eyes, he saw that the innocent charm he had remembered was gone, replaced by a depth of nothingness, devoid of emotion.
Those eyes watched him, void of excitement or anger, compassion or pity—just a hint of mockery, deep down hiding an endless, yawning void.
Like a puppet stripped of all human emotion.
She…
Was no longer the pure girl named Silvya.
“Who… are you really…?”
Fear kept bubbling up, making it hard for Aresta to get his words out: “You aren’t… Silvya… but you remember those things… you have her memories… her body… but you are not her… who exactly are you? A… demon, or… the will of the abyss… a deity…”
“I am not a demon.”
The girl interrupted Aresta.
She seemed bored of his fearful trembling, releasing her grip on his hair, allowing his head to hit the ground with a loud thunk as he let out a pained grunt, trying to crawl away.
The demon girl was unfazed.
She slowly stood up, her black flame wings folding behind her, her long tail waving restlessly as she looked down at him, her voice calm as she continued, “I never wanted to become any deity. Honestly, I’ve never believed in the existence of deities in this world. Whether they exist or not doesn’t really concern me; at first, I just wanted to live peacefully in that simple little village. But what happened…?”
The girl looked up at the swirling dark clouds above.
“Demons, deities… these titles are just definitions humans—you, the church—imposed on them, aren’t they?”
“Be it demons or deities, you ask me, yet you don’t realize that from the moment my consciousness fully merged and awakened, I’ve been pondering what I’ve truly become… I still haven’t figured it out, and your attacks just keep coming in waves…”
The girl paused.
She gazed at the sky, her lips turning down as if revealing a hint of sadness: “At first, you treated me the same way.”
