I Picked up the Demon King - Chapter 153

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 153

 

The idea that the World Tree takes root in the Demon Realm and supports the Heavenly Realm with its branches is merely a symbolic story.

 

Just as the Demon Realm is not physically located underground, the Heavenly Realm is not above the sky either. It’s merely a metaphorical expression of the different hierarchies of the world.

 

However, now, continents rise from the earth, and tremendous earthquakes and tsunamis occur.

 

However, now, worlds crash down from the sky, burning the atmosphere. Like when Kaella summoned meteors, but even more so.

 

This is the price of elevating this world to the same hierarchy as those two worlds. The price of dragging those two worlds down to the same level as this one. The impact alone would show enough power to annihilate all life.

 

There is no one left to fear it. This is a world with only one step remaining until destruction.

 

This alone could be considered achieving the contract.

 

A world where humans are not ruled by gods. It might be somewhat inappropriate to call it a world of humans, but if there are no humans to be ruled, wouldn’t that suffice?

 

But.

 

I didn’t feel like leaving it that way.

 

I release the World Tree branch from my hand.

 

A massive tree rises from the earth, supporting the falling Heavenly Realm. I swing rippling water droplets to calm the tsunami. I swallow the rising continent with darkness.

 

What remains is the cluster of light being sucked into the holy sword. Fragments of the world. Placed on a single hierarchy, even the Demon Realm and Heavenly Realm were collapsing.

 

It was a delightful scene. The Goddess’s world would be destroyed by the very laws she had forcibly created.

 

However, as I had already decided. I had no intention of letting the world perish.

 

I declare.

 

-‘I’ am not the Demon Lord.

 

The world trembles.

 

Far away, the world shrouded in darkness cries out. It takes the other side I harbor, the soul of the Demon Realm’s king, as evidence. It judges my declaration to be wrong. It defines me as the Demon Lord.

 

-The Demon Lord is merely a part of me. It is not a term that can refer to the whole.

 

At the continued declaration, the flow of laws stops.

 

It’s a temporary measure. Before long, the contradiction will grow, and it will become a crack that destroys the entire world. Perhaps it might bring about a collapse even greater than being absorbed by the holy sword.

 

It doesn’t matter.

 

I freeze the world through Eternal Ice.

 

With this power that can freeze even time, I should be able to endure until everything is finished.

 

As my wings flapped, I reached the land that was originally the Heavenly Realm. The innermost, highest land. A space where I could look down upon the entire world at a glance. This was truly the Goddess’s heart.

 

“You’ve come.”

 

The Goddess was there. She neither fled nor showed any attitude of hostility toward me. Then had she given up?

 

No.

 

No matter how infinite wisdom one might possess, predicting a god is nearly impossible, but the dragon heart that had already been deceived by the Goddess pulsed violently.

 

And then it finally gave me an answer.

 

That wicked, cunning, and crafty thing would never give up, so I must keep my eyes open and watch.

 

-….

 

-Don’t glare at me like that. I am your beloved mother.

 

The Goddess said this while smiling with her eyes.

 

It was an utterly warm, utterly beautiful, and utterly noble appearance.

 

Therefore.

 

It gave an utterly filthy, utterly unpleasant, and utterly ominous feeling.

 

-Mother?

 

-Yes. I am the mother of you humans. I am the benevolent goddess who loves you.

 

At those words, laws are written.

 

The world trembles. The ice that had frozen the world breaks, and new laws are carved inside it.

 

The Goddess spoke.

 

I am the Goddess’s child. The Goddess is the mother of humans. Therefore, I am human.

 

The wings behind my back crumble, and the divinity I had barely managed to bind escapes.

 

Indeed, this was the Goddess’s Divine Authority. The omnipotent power to establish laws. The absolute authority that could make a mere creature reach divine status, or cause the six gods to split apart.

 

I squeezed out my last wisdom.

 

Originally, I shouldn’t have been defeated so easily.

 

I had gathered the six divine authorities into one, becoming the legitimate ruler of the Middle Realm.

 

But what binds those six divine authorities together is me. And another divine authority within me, the Demon Lord. By denying the Demon Lord, the overall balance was shaken, causing it to collapse so easily like this.

 

There was no reason to just take it lying down.

 

-I deny it.

 

I crush the laws written by the Goddess with force.

 

The Goddess is not a perfect and absolute being. She possesses neither omnipotent power nor has she reached omniscience.

 

She only appears infinitely close to that through her divine authority to establish laws.

 

-I am not your son.

 

The Goddess has already been depleted.

 

Just as the Demon Lord was defeated by the Hero twice, leaving only small fragments of his soul.

 

The Goddess created the concept of the Hero, selected Heroes three times, and descended to the Middle Realm twice.

 

No matter how much of a goddess she is, it’s impossible to bear the causality consumed in that process. The power expended there is considerable, and her condition can hardly be said to be better than the Demon Lord’s.

 

-Really?

 

However, even though she felt her divine authority crumbling, the Goddess did not lose her smile.

 

-Are you certain?

 

This is strange.

 

-Are you sure?

 

Divine authority is no different from a symbol that defines a god’s existence. To maintain such a nonchalant attitude even while feeling it crumble. Perhaps she has forgotten even her own divinity at the end of her corruption.

 

-You were human.

 

The laws written by the Goddess writhe. The laws I had crushed come back to life.

 

-Since no human is born without a mother, you too must have a mother.

 

That wasn’t it.

 

The Goddess had not forgotten her divinity. A god who had honed her divine authority since before the Mythical Age would not be easily defeated just because she had lost power.

 

The six gods of the Middle Realm.

 

In other words, a god divided into six. Since the Goddess exists completely alone as the master of one world. As one, she was more complete than six.

 

-Do you remember your mother’s face?

 

She said this with a smile.

 

The law the Goddess carved into the world was not that I was human.

 

My mother, whom I cannot remember. She placed herself in that position.

 

Altering the past. Just as the Demon Lord had overlaid others’ memories through deception, the Goddess filled the empty space with her divine authority.

 

It’s fine.

 

The Goddess’s divine authority is not absolute.

 

The Emperor, who had already obtained divinity, once noticed the deception and escaped from its influence. Since I have completed divinity more powerful than the Emperor’s at that time, I can escape from the Goddess’s machinations.

 

To do that, I must understand.

 

I had to recall my mother’s face.

 

-I cannot, remember.

 

Through the Demon Lord, I could know how I lived before my memories were erased. However, that was not complete.

 

It didn’t even reach the moment of my birth.

 

I search through memories.

 

If I cannot make them mine, I search through others’ memories. There might be someone who remembers. Most humans on the continent died, and I absorbed all their souls.

 

-It doesn’t come to mind.

 

But there’s nothing.

 

The researchers. I search for the souls of researchers who participated in the artificial Hero experiment.

 

They were souls mangled beyond recognition.

 

All sorts of information had been overlaid through deception, making their original forms unrecognizable. Naturally, information about the mother of a test subject they had handled long ago. There’s no way such information would remain.

 

-I cannot find it.

 

The Dragon Heart weaves wisdom once again.

 

Based on the information gathered so far, there was a possibility that Master Sevian was connected to my mother.

 

That family.

 

The pair of arms that followed behind Master. I recall the younger sibling’s face.

 

-Oh no.

 

I cannot remember.

 

Can I not prevent the Goddess from overlaying my past like this? Behold my mother’s benevolent smile. How could one not call it beautiful? In her face, I could discover features that resembled my own.

 

-Are you coveting even my Divine Authority?

 

Since it would be impossible to lay a hand on my loving mother, I would be embraced in her arms and live a peaceful life for eternity. That would be the very reason for my existence…

 

-Let me interrupt for a moment.

 

Laughter could be heard.

 

* * *

 

The sky is black, and the ground is white.

 

In such an infinitely stretching space, I was sitting.

 

“Wait, sit down.”

 

No, the Demon Lord was sitting.

 

He had my face, but jet-black hair. After briefly looking around, I sat down.

 

Though it was clearly an empty space, there was no difficulty in sitting.

 

“I’ll praise you for succeeding in handling six Divine Essences. Who would have thought you’d utilize that crude Dark Magic in such a way.”

 

The Demon Lord spoke while clapping his hands.

 

“Human creativity, indeed. Even among things that seem useless, occasionally something like this emerges. However.”

 

But soon he clicked his tongue.

 

“To think you’d be defeated so easily even with such power in your hands.”

 

Binding six Divine Essences into one was certainly a great feat, but even with such power, I was defeated by the Goddess’s Divine Authority. It was natural. How could a child defeat their parent?

 

“Well, at that age, you’re still unable to escape your parents’ shadow, I suppose. Who would have thought age would matter in something like this.”

 

The Demon Lord burst into laughter as if he had made an amusing joke. Then he immediately spoke with a cold expression.

 

“We made a Contract. You swore an oath.”

 

When I reached the Demon Realm and discovered the Demon Lord’s Soul, I made a Contract with him.

 

“While alive, strive for my Resurrection.”

 

The Demon Lord becomes subordinate to me. At the same time, he strives to keep me from dying.

 

“While alive, strive for the death of those related to my death.”

 

The Demon Lord would always tell only the truth to his master. An absolute Contract made with souls at stake that must never be broken.

 

Already, through Soul Magic, both our souls had changed, and the Contract made at that time had lost its effectiveness.

 

“It’s time to fulfill that Contract.”

 

However, the Demon Lord had not broken the Contract.

 

Then it was proper for me to fulfill my Contract with the Demon Lord as well.

 

Just as I had upheld the Contract the Hero made with the Demon Lord without ignoring it. Even if there was no binding force, it was proper.

 

“Fulfill it.”

 

The proper reason was because it was the right thing to do.

 

But what Contract could possibly take precedence over one’s own mother’s life?

 

I could not fulfill the Contract with the Demon Lord. I had given up on fulfilling it…

 

“No.”

 

The Demon Lord denied it.

 

“What I’m requesting of you now is not to kill the Goddess.”

 

Something else.

 

The Demon Lord’s Resurrection.

 

For me, who had united six Divine Essences into one, creating a single new body wouldn’t be that difficult. If I made a usable body for the Demon Lord and breathed a soul into it, no one could complain that the Contract hadn’t been fulfilled.

 

“No. I don’t want that method.”

 

The Demon Lord denied it.

 

“I propose this. My master. My other side. My other half who possesses the same soul as me.”

 

Rather than the most complete method of Contract fulfillment, he proposed another way.

 

“Let us become one.”

 

A moment of contemplation.

 

And a nod.

 

In the black and white divided world where nothing had existed, a single Magic Circle filled the space completely.

 

Soul Magic.

 

We are.

 

No, I looked at each other standing on that Magic Circle.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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