Chapter 374 - Episode Twenty - A Certain Story of the Doom Tribe's Past (5)
It was soon after Nelea became pregnant with Mea that it appeared.
When she was reading a grimoire alone in her room, she noticed an unfamiliar book had increased.
“You smell a little like me.”
When she opened it, she found that on the edge of the blank page, there were words written in a difficult spirit language.
When Nelea tried to close it, the words were written one after another, all by themselves.
“Poor thing. Another child like me will be born and become a victim of the family.”
Nelea’s hand stopped.
She had a vague feeling that this was related to the lore of the red stone that was disturbing the Doom tribe.
“Y-You, what are you? A demon in a book? Do you understand my language?”
“I am Sim. I don’t even remember if that was my real name anymore. I don’t even know if that was my real name anymore. I have lived for many years, or hundreds of years ago, I guess? I was called Red Stone then.”
“Red Stone ……? There’s never been a book like this before. Where did you get ……?”
“I don’t know, either. I just felt a magical force similar to mine. Maybe I was drawn to it and my ego returned in fragments.”
It is said that all objects, not just living things, have a soul, and when the soul disappears, part of it turns into a spirit.
For this reason, there are stories and legends that demons, which are the aggregate of spirits, retain the memories of the dead.
In fact, it is said that since the demon is a collection of spirits from various sources, it is impossible for a single person’s ego to be strongly expressed, but the grimoire in Nelea’s hand claimed that she was one.
“You are pregnant with the same red stone as I am. The poor child will probably be conveniently treated by the Doom tribe and executed if she gets in their way. Just like they did to me.”
“T-That is……”
Nelea thinks about Melzef.
He has publicly stated that he will always dispose of the red stone immediately, even if it is his own child.
It is unlikely that Melzef’s character will overrule that. I think Nelea knew that better than anyone.
“Hey, this baby, is it possible for you to help it?”
“Yeah ……”
“I don’t want any more victims of the Doom tribe like me. If there was any point in my ego coming back to life, it was to help the child.”
Nelea was troubled, but in the end, she did as Sim asked, without telling Melzef.
She raided the graveyard beforehand and prepared the blue crystalline stone to be buried with the remains.
It was to replace the red stone.
The magic crystal stone on their forehead did not serve as an organ or sense organ for the Doom tribe, but was merely the result of the baby letting his magic escape so that it would not run wild in the womb.
Once it is removed and hidden, no one will ever know.
“But I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to replace it ……”
“I’ll get it prepared for you.”
“…… prepared?”
“Calm down, okay? I, you know, want to help you, And I want that kid to be happy, not like me, that’s all.”
The incident occurred on the day the baby was due.
On that day, Sim was just a book, and no matter what she called out, no words were added.
But on that day, there was an attack on the village by a large number of spirit beasts.
It is not uncommon for demons to guide and control spirit beasts, which are also subordinate demons, as a force to be reckoned with.
It should be easy for them to distort the magic field and gather or increase the number of spirit beasts.
However, if he could gather hundreds of them without being detected in advance, he must be a very high-ranking demon.
If it was not the Doom tribe, but a normal village, all the inhabitants would have been killed.
“I never thought he would go this far ……”
Even if he had good intentions, demons and humans have completely different senses.
The Doom tribe would not have suffered much damage, but a child who delayed evacuation could have been seriously injured.
If I had known that this was what he was going to do, I would have stopped him, but now that it had actually happened, I had no choice but to let it happen.
In particular, there was a big commotion at the chieftain’s mansion where Nelea was, as the spirit beasts gathered there.
The only person left in the room at the time of the birth was the housekeeper, who had served the Chief’s mansion for a long time and was also Nelea’s best friend.
Nelea’s greatest fear was that she would be suspected of replacing the magic crystal.
If she hadn’t foreseen the birth of the red stone, there was no way she would have been able to prepare the normal blue magic crystals in advance, so she knew the chances of being suspected were slim, but she still wanted to have some insurance.
This is why Nelea decided to lower the risk of suspicion by not showing any pretense of protecting her child from the people around her.
“When Mea is old enough to be on her own, we can take advantage of the opportunity to get her out of this village. The fact that Nelea was willing to keep the girl away was reason enough for Mea to run away from here. I’m sure no one will suspect us enough to bother chasing them.”
“At that time, I too ……”
“No, Nelea. If you were to disappear with them, everyone would be suspicious. They’d go after you first and foremost. And if they do, there’s no escaping Melzef.”
“…… Yeah, right.”
Eventually, Mea turned fifteen.
The peddler, James, visited the village.
The last time an outsider came to the village was eleven years ago, when he helped a wandering adventurer.
“Good for you. It’s as if the gods are guiding us to help Mea. But now I have to say goodbye to Mea.”
“…………”
“I can feel my strength draining away. I feel like I’m losing my power. Is it because I’m satisfied? My scars won’t go away, but if I was able to help Mea because of them, then I think this was a great thing. I’m glad I met you, Nelea.”
As Nelea watched the spirit words being spelled out, she felt uncomfortable.
(The timing is too good ……)
Originally, there were too many strange things in Sim.
Nelea couldn’t help but think that a demon that left a clean slate of personal delusions and memories was the stuff of fictional stories.
Nelea had been researching demons behind Sim’s back, but she still couldn’t find a single such demon in any of the well-sourced records.
She couldn’t help but feel uneasy about whether she could really entrust Mea to that peddler.
Sim conveniently appeared in front of Nelea, who was pregnant with a red stone, had enough power to command hundreds of spirit beasts, and to top it all off, he acted as if he knew that a kind-hearted traveler would visit them at this time.
The final deciding factor was the look of amusement on her face when she saw Mea talking to James from a distance.
Nelea asked James to call Mea through a bookmark in his book, and gave her the precious metals and ornaments that she had been collecting for fifteen years since she was born without anyone noticing, and sent her off.
A month had passed since then.
A few people were suspicious of her departure, partly because of the discovery of Mea’s letter to Dafne, which Nelea had hidden in a crevice of a book.
However, Melzef must have sensed something, because one day he asked her, “Are there any of Mea’s magic crystal stones left?” He had asked her one day.
One day, Sim, who had recently returned to a blank book, wrote a new sentence again.
“I need to talk to you about a few things. I need you to move to a place deep in the forest, out of sight of others. Mea may be in danger.”
Nelea followed the text and went out into the forest.
In fact, Nelea had been preparing herself for the possibility that Sim might send her such an offer in the near future.
Deep in the forest, Nelea opened her grimoire and checked to see if any new words had surfaced.
“Thank you, Nelea, we’re close. I knew you would respond quickly.”
The voice was not written on the page, but directly to my ear.
It wasn’t even a spirit language, but a human language.
A demon that can understand human language is a very high-ranking demon.
And Sim had deliberately kept it a secret until now.
Soon, countless beastly, demon-like snarls could be heard.
Nelea’s surroundings were surrounded by spirit beasts.
“But Nelea, you’re no longer needed. Thank you for believing my big, red lie and moving around so desperately. It’s always the same, but why do people always try to do the most important things without consulting anyone or having any proof?”
A strange demon’s laughter echoed in the forest.
A round ball of green light, the size of a child, floated behind the spirit beasts.
“…… What do you mean?”
“Aha, ahahahahahahahahaha! It was all a big lie that the red stone was a victim of the Doom tribe! Thank you, because if a spirit as big as me were to come into contact with the red stone unintentionally, it might attract other high-ranking spirits. It’s really good to have someone who’s easy to move! Of course, It’s not that I’m not able to keep up with the other spirits, but …… I don’t want to be bothered or have my precious magic consumed. And if possible, I’d like to see the Great Evil God sleep before the Moon Festival Dinmei.”
A loud laugh of vile malice echoed.
“Really, thank goodness. All we have to do is get another puppet escort, give the other high-ranking spirits no time to notice, and retrieve the red stone just before the Moon Festival Dinmei! I wonder if she believed it? That that kid will really be happy like this. Because of your stupid decision, all of the Doom tribe will become my puppets and will be used and destroyed at will! Just like the prep test 500 years ago! Except for this time, it won’t be like that.”
“Puppets, pre-test ……?”
Nelea had no idea what Sim was talking about.
The only thing she can tell is that Sim was planning to use a spirit beast to dispose of her properly so that no information would leak out from Nelea when she was no longer needed.
Since it had been a month since the Mea had left, it was difficult to find a causal relationship.
It’s not uncommon to be attacked and killed by a mysterious spirit beast.
“Well, it can’t be helped, though. To this Great Spirit who lives forever, you humans are nothing but dust that will die of old age in the blink of an eye! I played you, used you, and then killed you, that’s a fitting end for dust, isn’t it?”
“…… the Great Spirit Sim, also known as “The One that Slaughters history. A demon that has been observed for over 1,000 years, and has repeatedly destroyed many nations through possession and seduction. That’s who you really are, right?”
The laughter echoing from the sphere came to a halt.
“I’ve been doing some research since you’ve been interfering with me less frequently. I couldn’t understand what was written in the old literature because of the peculiarity of the array letters, but I made a hypothesis about …… your identity and compared it to it, and found one thing that made sense. You can pretend to be something you’re not, but you can’t use an alias. Even if you can pretend to be someone you’re not. You’re bound by name as a condition of some kind of magic or sorcery.”
“…… Ha! All this blabbering is so annoying! What would you do? If you knew who I was, what would change! You’re going to die here unsightly! Idiot! Ahahahahahaha!”
The spirit beasts all jumped at Nelea at once.
Nelea waved her staff.
A huge magic circle unfolded around the area, enveloping the swarm of spirit beasts and Sim.
“…… Wha-? Tha-That’s ridiculous! What the hell is this? There’s no way that a human can perform magic of this magnitude!”
“Boundary deployed!”
A pillar of light extends over the magic circle.
The shadows of a group of spirit beasts floating in the light lose their outline and disappear one by one.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Sim’s shout echoed.
“…… Thanks, Sim. Even if you were an evil spirit trying to use the Doom tribe’s red stone, you still saved Mea, who was supposed to be killed sixteen years ago ……”
Of course, it’s not just magic.
In this forest, there is a huge tree that the Doom tribe worship as a divine tree, which is said to be about two thousand years old.
Anything that has lived for a long time, whether it be an animal or a plant, possesses a dense magical power.
Nelea knew that Sim’s true identity was that of an evil high-ranking spirit, and as a countermeasure, she had prepared in advance to deploy a ward that would use the magic of the divine tree to disintegrate the spirit body.
When Nelea was looking into the books stored in the chieftain’s house to find out the true identity of Sim, she found a description of a magic formula in which the Doom tribe of long ago tried to use the divine tree to defeat a completely different demon.
According to the document, they had embedded magic stones in the underground and surrounding trees, and carved the magic formula out of sight.
If Sim wanted to get rid of Nelea, he would have voluntarily moved her to a less popular place.
In order not to make Nelea distrust him in any way, he was likely to let her choose the location herself.
As a result, Nelea had won the bet.
If it was revealed that she had used the divine tree as a medium for magic without permission, she could have been executed, but she didn’t care about what happened to her.
“The girl had already left the village. I won’t let Mea die at the expense of the Doom tribe …… Great Spirit Sim! I won’t let her be your toy!”
Even if it is a demon that has lived for more than a thousand years, if it were to use the magic stored in a two-thousand-year-old tree to cast a ward against spirits, he would have no chance.
That was supposed to be Nelea’s plan.
When the light ceased to shine, the tree lost its leaves as its magic power was siphoned off by the sorcerers, and it became black and shriveled.
Every single spirit beast that had been caught in the light had been obliterated.
However, in the center of the ward, where the small spirit sims had been floating, there was a huge sphere, ten meters in diameter, floating in the air.
It was green, but had a black haze pattern running across its surface, and various eyes, large and small, were moving as if they were spread across the entire sphere.
“…… This is a lie, right?”
“I’ll tell you one thing. You may not have been able to read the material correctly, but I am not like those high-ranking spirits around here who are only a thousand years old at most. I am a great spirit who has lived for more than ten thousand years. It’s not that the age you live is simply proportional to your magic power, but if you thought that you could eliminate me with the magic power of a tree like that, you’d be foolish to think otherwise.”
There were countless eyes looking down at Nelea.
He had an evil air about him that was unparalleled in the past.
“But, now you’ve done it …… you bitch. You’ve ruined all the careful moves we’ve made up to this point. The risk of attracting the attention of troublesome high-ranking spirits from other factions has increased. The magic that I had stored away was wasted. It’s not enough to just killed you …… I’m going to punish you. You will become a stone with your ego still intact, and your mind will not rest until the end of this world, and you will continue to hate and suffer for having been born. Just like everyone else who’s ever turned against me ……!”
The countless eyes shone with light.
Not only Nelea’s body, but also the shrunken tree that lost its magic power, the soil and even the grass in the place turned into stone all around.