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Chapter 17 – Girls’ Talk

I recently found out that ‘jashin(evil god)’ is translated by Google Translator (CN>EN) as ‘Cthulu’.

Remember that ‘Sacred Goddess’ comes with the implication of ‘Holy Woman-esque Deity’.

The kukuku here is probably stifled laughter, and not ‘My name is Leysis Vi Felicity Sumeragi.’-type kukuku.

“Speaking of which, are you the daughter of the Demon King, Leonora?”

“Mn? Yeah, that’s right. The current Demon King is my father.”

I invited Leonora, who had signed the friendship contract, down to the residential area and had tea with her… after having her take a bath. She cleaned up that dirt and blood stained appearance of hers and we moved to the living room and drank the black tea that Tena brewed.

She was stiff at first, but perhaps because she gradually got used to it, we progressed to being able to call each other by the name. Only, she won’t meet my eyes. It seems that the Evil God Aura has an immediate effect on beasts and monsters whose instinct is strong, but to demons and humans whose reasoning is strong, the effect is equally weak. On the other hand, the effect of the mystic eyes apparently works just fine, and when our gazes meet, she’ll immediately dogeza. I wonder if I should count myself lucky just that she isn’t running away. I’m paying attention so that I don’t accidentally meet eyes with her.

“I heard that the Demon King revives once he dies, but is that true?”

“As if that’s possible!”

I got told off.

Asking her in detail, I found out that the Demon King doesn’t revive, but is apparently just passed on as a title. The previous Demon King from a few decades ago that Tena mentioned is probably Leonora’s grandfather. Even when they get defeated, the next generation steps up to take their place, which is probably why weird rumours spread amongst the humans.

“If you’re the Demon King’s daughter, then you’re the princess of the demon race… Why are you in a place like this?”

Although it’s near the Demon Race Territory, this is clearly in human territory. It seems weird to me that she’s here.

“The Romariel family has a custom of having the Demon King Successor go on a journey by themselves in order to become an adult. I wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, but I was thinking that I wanted to have a look once at the Human Race Territory, so I came here.”

It’s a custom that I’ve heard of someplace else. But still, to even think of being a princess who marched into enemy territory by herself, she sure has fire.

“I thought that the Demon King was in the Demon King Castle.”

“No, that way of thinking isn’t wrong. Because the Demon King has a lot of influence, from the moment he ascends the throne, he can’t freely go out anymore. ‘That’s why while I’m still only a successor…’ is probably one of the reasons for the custom as well.”

I see. So this is also the last period where they can ignore responsibility, huh? It’s like going on a trip after graduating from uni… Hm, maybe that’s a little different.

“How long is your journey?”

“It isn’t really fixed. I don’t have any plans of coming back until I have some kind of achievement though.”

“Achievement?”

“Like defeating the Hero that’s the enemy of the Demon Race, or maybe winning over someone useful as an ally I guess.”

I suddenly understood Leonora’s circumstances, as she made an extremely displeased expression for some reason.

“Did you come to this dungeon for that reason too?”

“”Gu-… That’s right. I was thinking that I’d hand down punishment on the fraud Evil God, and depending on the circumstances, I’d make them into my underling.”

I see. I don’t know what kind of position the Evil God holds amongst the Demon Race, but at the very least, it’s someone that you wouldn’t be forgiven for selfishly impersonating. Having said that though, it’s unbearable being attacked due to a misunderstanding even though I never called myself the Evil God, so I’d like her to do some serious reflecting.

“Then can I ask you this instead, Anri?”

I nodded to her question.

“You said that you were given that power by the Evil God, but…”

I wasn’t sure if she would believe that I came from another world etc. so I’ve kept that part from her just like Tena, but as for being a human that was given this title and these skills by an evil god, I’ve already told Leonora.

“Honestly speaking, the person himself didn’t call himself the Evil God. I’m just guessing based on the names of the title and skills.”

“Hmm…”

Leonora sank into thought about something after I replied. When I wordlessly prompted her for an explanation, she averted her eyes and began speaking.

“No, it’s not that I’m doubting your words, but… the ‘Evil God’ shouldn’t really exist.”

“? The people of Riemel and you used the term 『Evil God』. Don’t you call it that because he exists?”

“Certainly, there exists the word and concept of the Evil God. But the deity known as the Evil God doesn’t exist.”

Is this some kind of riddle? What she said “doesn’t really exist” doesn’t sound quite like she’s denying the existence of gods. It seems that Leonora said that with the belief that “gods” exist, but the “Evil God” doesn’t.

“The Evil God is an imaginary god created by the human race.”

“An imaginary god?”

That evil god was imaginary?

I actually met and talked to him though.

“Yeah. Anri, how much do you know about the gods?”

“I heard that the God of Light that created the world──Sacred Goddess Sofia, battles against the Evil God that tries to destroy the world, and leads the people through divine protection and revelations.”

“I heard about this from the rumours, but hearing it again really is shocking.”

She’s kind of looking at me really pitifully, but she won’t look me in the eyes, so I’m just guessing through. Only, I don’t have any information source about the myths of this world except for what I heard from Tena, so I’ll be troubled if Leonora looks at me like that.

“Very well. It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll tell you the true myths passed down in the demon race.”

It’ll apparently be a long story, so I called Tena and had her brew some more tea. Since she’s bringing it over anyway, I’ll have her listen to the story as well. I won’t be able to compare it to the myths that the humans have by myself, after all.

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“The world was created by the one and only god, the Creator God.

“The Creator God created various animals as the inhabitants of the world, and finally, with the Creator God’s own form as the basis, they created humans.”

Up until here, Tena hasn’t objected and has been nodding along. There were various myths in my old world, but creation myths were all relatively similar I think.

“The human race received the favour of the Creator God, and prospered to the extreme, but that immediately reached the limit. In a world with no natural predators, there grew to be too many humans, because they couldn’t gain enough food.”

So the balance of the food chain collapsed? Without any natural predators, that seems certainly likely, but this is quite scientific for a myth.

“The Creator God gave food to the human race who entreated for help, but at the same time, worried about the situation, the Creator God took countermeasures. They created the natural enemies of the human race in order to bring the world to harmony… the demon race.

“The demon race was born, and fulfilling its duties, it opposed and attacked the human race, decreasing their numbers. With the demon race who was stronger than humans, yet less fertile than humans, as the natural enemy of the humans, peace was born.”

“That can’t be…”

Tena was stunned at the story that was so different from the myths that she knew, but certainly, with a small-numbered strong foe standing on top, you’d get the food chain back into balance, and makes more sense than the human myths that I heard form Tena.

“However, the Creator God was tormented by their own actions. There was no choice but to torment the beloved humans for the sake of their prosperity… The result of that self-contradiction was that the Creator God split themselves into three parts. Most of their power was separated into preserving the world, while their remaining power and mind was split into two.

“The two parts of the divided mind became the God of Light and God of Darkness, and they split the things that they governed into two────the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the human race and the demon race, or so it is.”

“…”

Tena couldn’t even form words. It’s probably already quite divorced from her common sense.

“That’s the myth passed down in the demon race. Those called ‘gods’ comprise only the God of Light and God of Darkness. There is no god known as the Evil God.”

Certainly, if you take the demon race’s myths as true, then the two gods are beings born from the Creator God, and aren’t separated by good and evil, or right and wrong. The God of Darkness sounds exactly evil, but it’d be like the Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto in Japanese myths.

“To begin with, the ‘Sacred Goddess’ was something that the human race themselves attached to the God of Light afterwards, to strengthen the god’s authority. And for that sake, they proposed a fictitious Evil God as the enemy, and so the God of Light ended up fighting against it.”

“Couldn’t they have just had the God of Light fight the God of Darkness?”

“It’s just a guess, but I think that as you’d expect, they didn’t have the guts to go against the God of Darkness himself.”

“Um, excuse me, I heard that the Evil God that the Sacred Goddess battled against governed darkness, but…”

“Ahh, it’s obvious that if they didn’t clearly say anything, the idea that the Evil God was the god of darkness would come up. That’s why the demon race finds both the words ‘evil god’ and the worship of the Evil God something detestable.”

I see. So they hate it because it’s something that shows contempt for the God of Darkness that they worship. Is that why Leonora was going to punish the swindler who called himself the Evil God?

But there’s something she said that’s been on my mind.

“They worship the Evil God? Even though it’s fictional?”

“It’s fictional, but only a handful of humans know that, even though it’s something that the human race created. Even if it’s a fictitious story, as long as the people up top spread it around, it’s natural that people will think of it as the truth. It’s a weird fact, but there are apparently humans who worship the Evil God in earnest, you know.”

There were Satanic cults and demon worship in my old world too, so I guess there’s nothing weird about such people existing.

I can’t sympathise though.

“I understand what the Evil God is now. I don’t know what the guy I met was, though…”

“Yeah. Even if we debate it now, it won’t be anything but a guess.”

For now, I’ll just think of that evil god as the Evil God(?).

“I understand about the God of Light and God of Darkness, but what about the Hero and Demon King?”

“The Demon King is a being that the God of Darkness brought forth to lead the demon race. And the ones brought forth by the God of Light for the sake of the humans afraid of the Demon King threat, are called the Heroes.”

Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?

According to what I’ve heard, the threat of the Demon King is someone who plays a key role in making sure that humans don’t increase too much, so it’s supposed to be problematic if you eliminate the threat.

Perhaps sensing my doubt, Leonora gave a bitter smile as she began to continue.

“I know what you want to say. If the Demon King or demon race are defeated, then they’re right back where they started, and in that respect, the Creator God’s goal and God of Light’s actions create a contradiction. By separating from the God of Darkness, the God of Light specialises in favouring the humans after all, so that’s why things ended up the way they are.”

“I see. Then what does the demon race think of the Hero?”

From the demon race’s point of view, even though they’re attacking humans to carry out the role given to them by god, god’s underling ends up attacking them, so if you had to ask if it was unreasonable or not, then it was unreasonable.

“The God of Light’s wishes don’t matter. To us, the only god we worship is the God of Darkness, after all. The opinion of the demon races is that the Hero is just a strong opponent.”

“I see. Speaking of the Hero, they came to this dungeon the other day.”

“What? What were they like?”

I told Leonora about the Hero(lol) party that invaded this dungeon the other day. When I told her that they were muscle-brains that ran away even though they came as far as the 10th floor, she held her sides, bursting into laughter.

“Pff-, ku-ku-ku… T-, They got depressed over that puzzle and gave up, going home? …AHAHAHAHAHA-!”

“It looked like the even the Holy Sword’s guidance couldn’t solve the puzzle.”

“I-, I’m begging you, don’t make me laugh any more… M-, My sides are splitting… I-, It hurts… ku-ku-ku…-!!!”

Seeing her continue to laugh in tears, I started to feel like a little mischief.

“You were stumped for an hour too, though.”

“PFFT-!? Y-, You were watching!?”

The moment I commented, Leonora turned shocked and bright red, and averted her eyes. What she was ridiculing the Hero(lol) Party for came back like a boomerang and pierced her.

“F-, From what I hear, that Hero seems to be an Orthodox Hero, huh.”

Ah. She’s trying to distract me. I could poke at her some more, but her words have me wondering, so I’ll leave it for now.

“What’s an Orthodox Hero? Are there different types of Heroes too?”

“Yeah, it’s a classification that our demon side came up with. Has that made the idea unfamiliar to the humans? Amongst the demon race, those called Heroes amongst the public are separated into three types. The people of this world who gain the divine protection of the God of Light are the Orthodox Heroes, the ones summoned from another world are the Summoned Heroes, and the ones who arbitrarily declare themselves heroes are the Self-Proclaimed Heroes. From least to most troublesome, you have the Summoned Heroes, the Orthodox Heroes, and the Self-Proclaimed Heroes.”

Are Other World Summonings something that happens often? Or maybe there are other people in this world that are in the same situation as me. I don’t have any intent of going out of my way to find them, but if we met by chance, it’d be nice to have a chat, huh.

But still, isn’t the order that Leonora gave kind of strange?

“You didn’t get the order wrong? The Self-Proclaimed Hero sounds the weakest, but…”

‘Yeah, they are. Hm, if you arrange it from strongest to weakest, it’s still Summoned Hero, Orthodox Hero, Self-Proclaimed Hero. The chance that someone summoned from another world has powerful skills is high, so there are lots of them that are stronger than Orthodox Heroes.”

So it’s normal even in this world that summoned people have OP skills, huh? Speaking of OP skills, mine probably count in a way, but… honestly speaking, I’d like to pass them over to someone else.

“Then why is the Self-Proclaimed Hero the most annoying one?”

“Even though they’re weak, they pop up one after another without end. What’s more, most of them aren’t much different from hoodlums, you know? Going around killing, raping, stealing as they please, they’re no different than bandits. They’re the highest priority target amongst we demons.”

Ahh, I guess it makes sense that self-alleged heroes with no qualifications would be massive attention seekers and self-centred, huh.

“I see. Then what about Summoned Heroes being the easiest to deal with?”

“They have powerful skills so when you fight them they’re strong, but to begin with they’re not people from this world, after all, so they don’t have much reason to fight. Most of the time you can avoid them by using their weak point, or by winning them over. There’s even the statistics that when the Demon King is a woman, or when they have a little sister or daughter, the Hero changes sides over 80% of the time.”

…That’s terrible.

But well, I guess people who’ll agree after being suddenly kidnapped and told to fight would be in the minority, huh.

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“By the way, I have a request.”

“Mn? What?”

Now that we’ve finished discussing the basics of the Heroes, I remembered that there was something I wanted to ask of her.

“Please teach magic to Tena and I.”

Since I’ve already made friends with somebody who seems like they’d be able to use darkness magic, I’d like to take this chance to have her teach us. Both Tena and I only have the skill without any knowledge, so it was just pearls thrown before swine. To give an example, it’s like somebody with pro baseball level batting skills, but zero knowledge of the game, I guess.

If darkness magic was also like the dungeon master skills in that I could just use it somehow, things would be a lot easier, but it seems that not everything can go so well. Or it could be that being able to just somehow use dungeon related abilities isn’t because of the skills, but because of my title.

“It’s not as if I won’t teach you, but darkness magic is specific to the demon race, you know? You are technically humans, aren’t you?”

That “technically” was unnecessary.

“It’s fine. We have the skills.”

“What? Ah, is that also a skill that the 『Evil God』 gave you? Then fine, I don’t mind.”

Alright! Instructor, GET.

With this, I too make my debut as a mahou shoujo; Jashin Shoujo Terrible Anri starts n-… ever.

I don’t think I’ll have a chance to use magic in the future either, but there’s probably no loss in learning it for self-defence when the time comes. If I had to say, then rather than me who’s a hikikomori, it’s more necessary to Tena who goes out to town, though.

…*

…*

…*

What’s more, three hours later, that Leonora ended up sitting on the floor, hugging her knees with a distant look is not my fault.

“I-, I even lost to Tena…”

“Umm, I’m sorry?”

“That’s okay.”

A student is someone who’s supposed to surpass their teacher, you know. Well, we only beat her in magic though.