Special Bonus – Child of Fate
A surprise attack by Meltis, goddess of light. Mother, falling as she shielded us. In the same instant, we were cast into the Demon World. Lost as I was, I gave myself over to rage and grief and let my mana loose exactly as I felt it.
To survive. To win the right to see tomorrow. To learn the truth of why my mother had to die.
I gave courage and strength to my frightened, suffering sisters. I roused the people of the Demon World, who had bowed to terror and let their fangs be pulled. Little by little my forces grew, and the momentum refused to stop; in the end I rose past the very king who ruled the Demon World and ascended to Demon God, the summit of all who command the demonic.
Then, several hundred years ago, Meltis came. She led the warriors of the Heavenly Realm, her own host, in an invasion of the Demon World, meaning to wipe us out for good. The stain of the daughters she had failed to finish must have become impossible for her to keep ignoring.
Curse the angels. Curse the demons. With both war cries rising, the fighting turned uglier by the day, and the battlefield spread in step with the ruin it caused. As both sides spent their strength and fell, one after another, I finally stood face to face with Meltis. My mother’s killer.
Even with my sisters’ strength joined to mine, we could not drive Meltis back. In the thick of it we finally managed to deal her a wound deep enough to kill, but we couldn’t land the finishing blow, and she slipped away.
With no strength left for pursuit, we chose to withdraw as well. That double retreat let the war between the Heavenly Realm and the Demon World wind slowly down, and in the end the curtain fell on it as our victory: we had pushed the front all the way back to Heaven’s side.
Since Meltis had taken a near-fatal blow of her own, I believed the advantage would be ours if war ever came again. Only recently did I realize how wrong I was.
In the human world, a religion called the Meltis Faith had spread across the globe, and its teaching told humans that the demons of the Demon World mounted a merciless invasion to destroy the Heavenly Realm. Humans in great numbers swallow that teaching whole; a great many are the Faith’s puppets now. If war came again, it was plain as day that a whole world of humans would point their swords at the Demon World.
Preparations for the next war are already moving, and they drag the human world along with them. Left like this, the Demon World has no future. I was working through every countermeasure I could devise, any way to free the humans from the Meltis Faith’s grip and settle this between Heaven and the Demon World where it belonged, when a brand-new problem arrived.
“The Great Heaven-Demon War has warped the world. This world and worlds unlike it have become connected.”
Titielly Tistis, the god who governs the powers of the netherworld and my elder sister, had discovered a transfer gate joined to another world. Worse, Meltis already had her hands on it: she was posting angels there, poor fighters but lovely to look at, to charm even the otherworlders visiting this world into her fold.
“Otherworlders grow at an abnormal rate. They may pass a high-ranking demon’s strength in no time at all.”
So said Karen, the god who governs the powers of death, my younger sister. This world’s humans alone would be one thing; if we had to face humans out of another world on top of them, our chances of winning were as good as gone.
At this rate, the Demon World will be destroyed. We were the ones invaded, and a teaching that says the exact opposite has the whole world calling us evil. There is no more room for hesitation. For the Demon World’s future, and to learn at last the reason for my mother’s death, I decided to make contact with an otherworlder.
“But which otherworlder do I draw to our side…”
If I’m drawing one in, an honest one is best to start with. Then I want a leader: excellent judgment, the kind who can stand at the head of the other otherworlders. And, yes, I want someone combative too, the sort who throws the first punch the moment she decides something is an enemy. Anyone who does what an angel says from the opening move has no future here; those I write off without a second thought.
With the conditions narrowed, there were indeed a few who made me feel it: this one, perhaps. Every one of them had refused the angels and set off chasing an adventure all their own, and, to my astonishment, almost all the otherworlders I had marked gathered in the same place, as though led there, and built a thing called a guild, running it as the summit of otherworlder society. The guild’s name is Kasho no Yume, which apparently carries the sense of an ideal world one hopes someday to make real.
Only one of them had gone and become an inquisitor of the Meltis Faith, though her doubt and her disgust with it appear to swell by the day. She still ranks high on the list of otherworlders I want on our side…………!?
“——I hate angels!! Drop dead!!”
Sh-She hit them!? One of Meltis’s angels, not seconds after they met!? I-I have never seen a child like this…!! And then the finishing blow, for being noisy… Forgive my rudeness, but might the young lady possibly be a little crazy…?
————Well, the chance is right here. Perhaps I’ll try this girl.
This girl is different from the other otherworlders; the air around her is unmistakably strange. It’s her. Let it be her. And if she doesn’t move the way I intend, that will only mean my eye for people was hopeless to begin with. In that case… next time, I had better let Big Sister Tistis or Karen-chan do the choosing.
Now then. First, we go and talk. For the first step of the counterattack against the Meltis Faith, please, for me… for us. May the otherworlder who decked an angel the moment they met be the one who brings prosperity to the Demon World…