CH 152

Caw, caw—

The sky was black, and the jet-black feathers of a crow were swirling.

Johann felt his heart ache as he knelt down on one of his knees.

“Ugh, ha…”

Johann realized at once. He knew that he was in the past.

But he was not ‘seeing’ the past.

Suddenly, the souls of the present and the past became one, and he was living through all these pains and terrible emotions.

“….…”

Before his eyes, Rixus was defeated; he had collapsed.

But it was really weird. The moment he longed for was not happy at all.

Red drops of blood dripping down from Johann’s temple were running down the tip of his chin and falling to the floor.

He certainly defeated Rixus, but Johann was also in a terrible and death-like state. If he shed more blood like this, he would stop breathing.

But even in that state, there was something he had to do.

[Finally I won! This Toulouse has won! Now this world is mine, wahahaha!]

“… I have to go save her.”

[What?!]

As he spoke, the crow stuck its face out of the swirling feathers.

[What crazy talk is that?! How do you resurrect a woman who is already dead?]

Ignoring Toulouse’s words, Johann barely raised himself up with his sword pressed into the ground.

Then he staggered and started walking. Toulouse swiftly followed after him, and said hurriedly.

[Now Marsephone’s door is open! Shouldn’t you get my powers before that?!]

But Johann went to find Berylia without a single word of answer.

To be precise, to the chapel where her body was lying.

Toulouse said with an astonished face, as if tired of it.

[Crazy bastard… you are not normal.]

Surely it was quite a long time ago that Johann had gone mad about her.

In the window of the sacred chapel, the light penetrating the stained glass of the five colors mysteriously shone through.

At the end of the light that symbolized god, her coffin was placed.

“…….”

It was beautiful.

Life had left her body. Berylia kept her eyes closed, as if dreaming.

She was the woman Johann had been dreaming of.

A woman who he had barely spoken to, but who had stolen his own heart just by existing.

It was a long time ago that he became aware of ‘Berylia Spinel’.

It was more than what Johann himself in his seventh life remembered… It was much earlier. Before this particular regression occurred.

In his first life, Johann first met her.

[Johann, this is Berylia Spinel. The woman of your destiny!]

“To live forever…”

[Okay. How would an inhuman idiot like you want a woman? Anyway, to enjoy eternal life, you need a woman who can give birth to your child.]

Toulouse at the time introduced her to Johann, but it was completely unexpected.

It never thought Johann would fall so deeply for Berylia.

Johann always watched Berylia from afar.

Toulouse saw it as a new ‘hobby’ of Johann.

But when he was defeated by Rixus for the first time, Johann whispered with his last breath.

“…I’m sorry. I couldn’t save her in the end.”

[What kind of bullshit?! You look like you’re going to die now! We are ruined! It’s ruined!]

…Toulouse should have noticed since then.

Forgetting memories, but accumulating emotions?

As his lives went on, Johann fell deeper and faster for Berylia.

Then finally, in the sixth life, the condition of Johann was so worrisome, that Toulouse, when introducing her into her seventh life, said:

[You can get ‘any number of women’, so just ‘observe’ with a light heart!]

“……Okay.”

Johann, in the seventh life, from then on, watched. From a great distance.

For the most part, she was a woman who lived without pleasure.

It was similar to himself. He had been living without much fun too.

Because he always lived a boring life wishing the world would fall apart.

The unity of the five continents that he aimed for was not exactly derived from ‘power’.

In fact, it was close to ‘nihilism’ that wanted the whole world to be destroyed.

Born different from others in his mother’s womb, he was just a human living day by day hoping that the world would collapse.

So Berylia was amazing.

She was born ‘different from others’ just like himself… 

Because she held on to her miserable life and lived pathetically, vividly, flatteringly.

She was a woman who was unaware of the futility even when no one was by her side, and somehow managed to live each day preciously.

Her appearance was strange at first, and then she looked beautiful… In the end…

[Why are you looking at Berylia all day like that? Don’t you have a lot of work to do?]

It turned into an uncontrollable feeling.

He literally watched all day. Seeing her laugh and cry. Walking, talking, sleeping… 

He just couldn’t stop it.

The ‘significant emotions’ that sprouted in his empty heart devoured Johann destructively.

At some point, the goal set with Toulouse was overturned and became ‘to have her himself’.

Even in the fleeting dream of wishing the whole world to crumble, he hoped that only Berylia would be intact.

He wanted even her dead body, his heart couldn’t even let her soul leave her body.

This heart, which was finally completed in his seventh life…

[Berylia is already dead! She’s already dead…!]

“…….”

This heart… It was a love close to original sin.

If he could call his self-destructive and obsessive heart love.

Johann stroked the pale cheek of Berylia.

[Don’t you think you can always find another woman to have a baby with?!]

Frustrated, Toulouse shouted, but Johann did not respond at all.

Just silently, Johann took Berylia’s body, and, writhing bloodily, walked out of the chapel.

With blackened eyes, Johann muttered.

“Toulouse, when my power is perfect, I can save her. With the power of the spirit, I can rescue the souls of the dead…”

[You, maybe… How did you even know that? But it’s not good to pretend to deal with the gods who rule the souls!]

“……I do not care.”

Toulouse was incredulous.

‘It doesn’t matter that you lose to the gods? That’s, like, you know! Ugh!’

‘That crazy bastard, are you completely insane?! I should have expected this, damn it!’

In fact, in this last regression, Toulouse tried his best, but he couldn’t stop Rixus from killing Berylia.

When it learned that Rixus was trying to kill Berylia, he was afraid that Johann would ‘directly’ sabotage his plan.

However, surprisingly, Johann seemed to accept her death graciously.

But, in fact, it was not accepted at all.

‘This crazy bastard, he didn’t accept it…’

Even if Berylia was dead, he didn’t give up!

Toulouse was about to explode, so he followed Johann and cried out.

[If we pretend to deal with the gods, something will go wrong with our plans…!]

Not only the god who ruled the souls would be stimulated, but the rest would be too.

But no matter how much Toulouse argued, Johann only remained silent.

Soon after, the door of Marsephone began to slowly open.

Toulouse made a resolution in the moment, soon its eyes began glowing seriously.

Then he cried.

[Aaaaah, hurry up! Then quickly take my heart!]

Johann finally laid Berylia on her back in front of the Black Fountain and said,

“All preparations are complete.”

Toulouse’s ‘final form’ was completed by joining the halves of its heart to Johann’s.

Only then could its own power be fully manifested on earth.

The heart that Johann would have was the incarnation of Toulouse itself.

[It’s going to be painful, Johann.]

Soon, the Black Fountain began to boil and fill with a black aura.

Caw— aw aw aw aw!

The crows of the earth were flocking to the archduke, preparing to welcome the new emperor.

The magical energy of the demonic spirit slowly flowed out of Toulouse’s mouth, and it was tightly packed into a sphere.

It didn’t take long for it to be swallowed by Johann’s open mouth.

“…Keurgh.”

Johann spit out hot, black blood.

The sensation of the whole body expanding as if it would explode at once. The feeling of being burned alive. And the pain of bones dismantling and reassembling. All at once, they came at the same time.

Johann lost his life for a while and died.

And he was resurrected. Trampling the ashes of death…

A true ‘incarnation of evil’.

The destructive power and infinite vitality that swirled through the whole body were in the category of a god’s.

The king of demons, the emperor of the five continents.

It was just before the birth of the new ‘Johann Toulouse’.

But Toulouse did not sit back and watch it happen.

“!”

Toulouse, who had suddenly escaped from the form of a crow and regained its true form, grabbed the still unstable Johann’s neck with a large hand and lifted him up.

[I didn’t want it to be like this.]

“This, what… what?”

[Johann, I felt it. After all, humans are just humans. ]

“…Ack!”

Breaking some of his bones, Toulouse added contempt to its black feathered face.

[Humans are always caught up in meaningless ideas and ruin things. Like justice or love.]

Stupidly.

Toulouse’s voice lowered.

[I’ve always hated that.]

Thud—

Johann’s body was thrown on the floor like garbage.

Toulouse’s nails grew like sharp blades. He spoke arrogantly.

[I was going to let you act as my ‘fuel tank’ in the new world… It’s sad!]

At the words ‘fuel tank’, Johann looked at Toulouse with eyes burning in anger like an active volcano.

Then Toulouse burst out laughing.

[What, huh, did you really believe you would become an emperor?! A lowly human… Of course I am the emperor! You idiot!]

“……Ugh.”

Toulouse began to slit Johann’s chest alive. Its long, sharp claws parted through his skin, revealing his literal insides.

Badump, badump.

A black heart was beating in the crimson muscle tissue.

[Isn’t this heart all I need anyway?]

“….…”

In the meantime, the eyes of Johann, who still had life attached to them, were on the woman, who was lying pale.

Complex compassion, anger, and burning obsession to the end engulfed his black eyes.

Johann’s trembling lips moved upward quietly.

A moment of self-deprecating laughter.

Johann quickly grabbed the black heart in his chest.

[!]

Toulouse’s eyes widened.

Badump, badump.

Johann, who grabbed his heart in an instant, gathered the last magical energy remaining in his body and squeezed the heart— Boom! 

[What are you doing…Ah, ah, ah, ahhhhhhhh!!!]

Toulouse’s painful screams filled the sky.

Having achieved his purpose, Johann’s eyes closed gently for a moment.

Their seventh try at their ambition to devour the world was shattered on the brink of success.

It was the wretched words of the wicked.

“Ha…”

As if waking up, Johann returned to reality, and he breathed deeply.

He squeezed his clenched fists in front of the broken and falling portrait.

His dark, terribly dark eyes were eaten up with anger and became as red as his blood.

“…That motherf*cker.”