Let the Whales Fight, This Shrimp is Leaving! - Chapter 71

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 71
The boy shrieked.
“Noooooo! Ahhhhhhh!”
It was a wail so raw that those who heard it felt pierced by anguish.
The boy’s eyes glittered with madness, as though they bore the weight of every filthy emotion that had ever festered in this world.
This was the beginning of a curse.
It was a time more than a hundred and thirty years past, measured in human years—yet standing upon a thread that was both past and present.
Glay Holdin hung precariously from that thin line, clasped in the Demon’s grip.
Retch.
Nausea clawed up his throat at the sight before him—grotesque beyond imagining.
Filthy.
The Demon taunted him, as if to say he could not stomach even this much.
Holdin glared at him with burning eyes and retched into the empty air.
What lay before his gaze defied mere description—appalling did not suffice to capture its horror.
That red thing clasped in the hands of a boy who had lost all human reason.
And that gaping mouth, chewing it down without mercy.
The pointed fangs, stained with blood, proved that he was no longer human.
Skreeeee.
A sickening laugh bubbled from the boy’s throat.
Blood dripped from his split lips as he began to speak in a language Holdin could not comprehend.
“At last I’ve risen. At last I have power!”
It should have been the speech of some alien, incomprehensible being.
Yet as Holdin heard the incantations pour from the boy’s mouth, he realized with horror that he understood every word.
[What in the name of all hells is happening?]
[Stop asking and just watch. Understand this—that’s the beginning of the curse, and that bastard is the one I’ve been searching for.]
The Demon’s lips twisted with cold malice.
Black hair, rigid and beast-like, had sprouted across the boy’s distorted face.
On his arms. On his emaciated frame.
The boy had forgotten how to walk upright; he crawled across the room on all fours.
“The Human Realm! At last, the Human Realm! Ahahahaha! I can become stronger by consuming souls here, can’t I? Isn’t that right!”
The boy—no, the Demon within him—cried out with delight.
A brilliant white light blazed in the direction his fevered eyes turned.
[Yes.]
The voice that answered was almost tender.
The light spread in all directions, gradually taking form.
Silver hair as fine as spun thread, eyes of pure azure.
Skin as pale as if all color had been drained from it, and garments unmarred by any stain.
Two pairs of wings spread wide.
[This is the freedom you have yearned for.]
Even rubbing his eyes and looking again, it was undeniably an Angel.
‘Madness. What in the hells is an Angel doing here?’
Holdin was struck speechless.
Beval, on the other hand, clucked his tongue loudly, as though he had expected as much.
[■■■■. I wondered why things had gone quiet. And here I thought they’d at least managed to contain this. But no—they just buried the matter? And then dare to speak of maintaining order in Hell? Those wretched feathered worms. We should have roasted them all during the Three-Thousand-Year War!]
Beval spewed curses with venom dripping from each word, his murderous intent laid bare.
The relentless stream of profanity was so intense Holdin’s ears rang; he plugged them with his fingers.
A moment later, the world lurched, and the scene changed.
A sunlit Garden in broad daylight.
The Nemanic Mansion stood with noble grandeur, and the boy bearing the Demon within him moved through the lavish Garden like any ordinary child.
Walking beside him was his mother.
Her swollen belly made clear she was with child.
“Mother, Mother!”
“Yes?”
“When that child is born, will you give it to me?”
“Yes.”
“Hehehehe! How grateful I am.”
The Demon laughed with a gaping grin.
The woman’s eyes had grown clouded; she smiled at the boy with vacant affection.
[What is all this? And what was that Angel about?]
Holdin pressed for answers urgently.
Beval, as though the matter were tedious, made a show of picking at his ear before grudgingly replying.
[There were whispers—rumors that one of the Heavenly Angels had voluntarily relinquished its rank.]
[But I only sought to break your curse! Why in the name of all creation is an Angel connected to it?]
[Because it was the Angel who unleashed the curse upon the world.]
[What?]
Holdin paused, wondering if he was being made a fool of by the Demon’s schemes.
But looking at Beval’s eyes, which flickered with barely contained rage, he knew that could not be the case.
[We don’t know the reason. But we have some notion of what it wants.]
[Which is?]
[Perfect Chaos.]
[Chaos? Such a thing exists? And can anything truly be perfect?]
Holdin’s brow furrowed deeply as he protested the absurdity.
[So you unleashed this ape-like Demon onto the world?]
[Yes.]
[Why didn’t you just devour the thing from the start!]
[Don’t you think I regret that bitterly? So shut your mouth, will you?]
Holdin’s lips curled back as he stared daggers at the Demon wearing the boy’s skin.
Everything around the boy moved at a dizzying pace.
Seasons changed. The boy’s mother gave birth.
Exhausted, she languished through the long illness until that cold winter, when snow covered her as she drew her last breath.
The newborn left behind was nursed and grew sturdy in the wet-nurse’s arms.
The boy had become a young man; the infant had grown to the boy’s former age.
“Brother!”
The young man bent down to cheerfully receive his approaching younger brother.
He met the boy’s eyes gently and whispered with tenderness.
“You’ve grown well.”
“Yes, I have. I’m already twelve years old.”
“I know.”
The young man’s expression was sickeningly sweet.
The boy, innocent of all, smiled brightly in his brother’s presence.
“After my birthday, I’ll be thirteen.”
“It seems the time has come.”
“The time? For what?”
“Yes.”
“What time? Will you give me something? Or is there something I need to do?”
“Of course.”
The young man grasped the boy’s hand with a delighted smile.
“Come with me.”
The two walked together across the Garden.
When they reached the Corridor leading down to the Underground levels of the Mansion.
The boy hesitated, seized by dread of the darkness ahead, and hid behind his brother.
“Are we going to the Basement?”
“Yes.”
“I’m frightened.”
“I’m here with you.”
Emboldened by his brother’s comfort, the boy took a step forward.
One step. Then another.
And so the boy descended into the murky Underground on his own feet.
The Basement reeked of damp mold; stone walls enclosed it on all sides.
No light penetrated this place—when the door closed, it would be consumed by absolute darkness.
Only the flickering range of a single candle held back the pitch-black void.
“What am I supposed to do here?”
“Despair.”
“Pardon?”
“Awaken the blackest of emotions.”
“Brother…?”
Innocence drained from the boy’s eyes, replaced by creeping terror.
The young man’s pupils, slit vertically down the center, drew inward as though savoring the child’s fear, tasting it.
“What do you mean?”
“Only then can you carry me in your heart.”
Another boy’s wail split the air.
That desolate shriek filled the Basement to its stone walls.
The Demon persisted on the mortal plane this way, parasiting within human bodies in thirteen-year cycles.
Yet even the Angel’s aid had limits.
[You still haven’t achieved perfect Chaos. I’m disappointed.]
“Give me more time! The human body is so fragile—just when it grows strong, it dies!”
[Then make it stronger, surely?]
“How!”
[Dear me. You’ve even forgotten that you were a Demon.]
The Angel sighed with apparent regret.
Then whispered gently into the Demon’s ear.
[Consume souls to fortify your strength. Then you will gain greater power and glory.]
If you amass enough power to bring forth perfect Chaos, won’t the arrogant Demons who cast you into the Underground bend their knees before you?
[You alone will shatter all Dimensional Barriers.]
Then, through those rifts, devour my Creator, and grant absolute freedom to all that exists.
Understanding the Angel’s words, the Demon began to commit slaughter within its human vessel.
Yet a single human body had its limits in accumulating power.
A method more potent, more destructive, was needed.
As it happened, he was nobility—and he knew an effective means.
“I declare war.”
Thus began Hell itself.
The Demon, traversing battlefield after battlefield and consuming countless souls, finally wielded the power it had so desperately coveted.
It gnawed and swallowed the bones of the Demon who had come to kill it and restore the disrupted order.
It even erased the path back to Hell.
[That’s why!]
[That son of a bitch.]
[Damn it, how did you just leave it! You should have captured it immediately—!]
Holdin’s protests died in his throat as he met Beval’s lethal gaze.
All the while, human time flowed steadily on, and generations turned.
The boy trapped in the small, square Hell came to be called Deyan.

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