Inside the White God, the Demon God

Under Marisa's supervision, tackling the unfamiliar dishwashing, Merea was, in another part of his head, replaying Shaw's earlier story.

— The Saisalis Religious Nation.

About its existence, he was not yet carrying any large feelings.

But on its shape — on how it was built — he was carrying something.

— A bulwark to protect the body, then.

This too is downstream of the what-if line earlier — but as a shape, the Saisalis Religious Nation is, at minimum, worth a real thinking-through.

That is — if the Saisalis Pope was using the Saisalis religion as an enclosing host in order to protect the body.

If a single person, to protect themselves, built a country — that person is frighteningly able.

That person, surely, had layered up considerable knowledge.

The history of an analogous past era, for instance. Or — the thinking-pattern of people in such an era.

In any case — that person knew.

That, in the next era, a more solid power would be required to protect the body.

— …Yes.

Merea recalled the conversation with Serius.

Those words remained, raw and clear, like a memory-wound, in him.

— "Wrong about nothing. The age called for power."

— "An age is made by people. Speak as if an age were a rule fixed by gods, and —…!"

— "Even so — humans cannot resist an age."

To protect the body — power is required.

Serius, throughout, sought grounding in the age itself, as though it were a larger, near-divine will of the world in which human hands had no edit-rights.

— "The instant one is born into a titled house, that one is a Demon Lord. That custom and convention, we ourselves built. Want to change it — change it. Overthrow Mūzeg, and you can. — How about it?"

On another beat, Serius had said that.

— He sought grounding in the age, and at the same time was, unconsciously, sensing that the present-day Demon Lord system has room for transformation.

That was, perhaps, why Serius reached for the age, as if to a god, with something like a wish in the reach.

So that the system be solid.

To start with, Serius carried a hard-to-describe duality.

Standing across from him, Merea felt it.

The lines, perhaps, were faces of that duality.

— Nodding to your line is bitter, but —

Hearing the Saisalis Religious Nation story, Merea, freshly, recognised — to deliver on a given wish, commensurate power is required.

Naturally, he had not forgotten.

But — lately, the priority sticking-points had been the most-difficult question of how the first goal is delivered, and how the word Demon Lord is transformed; thinking on the means hadn't been getting full bandwidth.

For now, what is to be done is —

— Yes — protect the body.

Which becomes — accumulate power.

Looking at Saisalis is enough.

At minimum, power is, in this age, one of the most useful shields available.

To stand against Mūzeg, who is trying to make an age — how large a shield is required.

To transform the Demon Lord and title-system that Mūzeg is leading the transformation of — how high a bulwark is required.

To protect, first, the present-age Demon Lords —

— How strong must I be.

In that instant — inside Merea, the Demon God's will burned in.

Said simplest — Merea's —

— will to be the strongest.

---

Past a certain line, power generates an untouchable sanctuary.

That kind of effect exists.

Merea, having stockpiled the stories of any number of overwhelming past Heroic Spirits, had grasped that mechanism early.

— I must be stronger than anyone.

That sense of personal duty, said to no one, he had carried in the chest somewhere.

That he had been raised by lovable Heroic Spirits ties into it too.

For their names' sake — he could not afford to lose, and above all —

— I do not want to lose.

So he thought.

— Don't forget, Merea.

He is the head of the group attempting this absurd thing.

They have said they would prop him up.

There is no line beyond that one.

So —

— You — whoever the opponent — must not lose.

The moment of losing, of bending — all of it ends.

Honestly, when that moment came, he had thought it would be ideal to let them alone get away, on to the next road.

But, almost certainly —

*— They would try to fall with me.…

That was their resolve.

The resolve each one swore on the way down from the sacred mountain — the resolve aimed at me.

Indistinguishable from his own.

Just as he had decided to be a Hero for the Demon Lords, they had decided to be a salvation for him.

— So — I —

Must not lose.

And, always, the will to be the strongest — must not be discarded.

Inside Merea-as-〈White God〉, that was the pride of Merea-as-〈Demon God〉.

And — when, in Merea, the will-to-be-strongest lit one notch hotter — there was, suddenly, motion in the picture in front of his eyes.

Lost in thought, he had had his eyes open but had not particularly been seeing.

Which is to say —

"— Ah."

When he noticed it, the plate in his hand had cracked clean in two with a parin.

On the sound, Merea snapped to and looked at Marisa, watching from beside him.

Frightened-dog style, side-glance.

"……"

"……t-tehe?"

"……"

"Ah — that's not gonna work, that was the wrong move."

"…To wash a plate, why must one bring such a level of aura to bear?"

"S-sorry…"

"Hah…"

Marisa, with that sigh and a shoulder-drop — her body, in fact, was very slightly trembling.

---

To be honest — chilling.

Marisa had noticed the moment Merea's eyes narrowed mid-dishwash, in thought-immersion shape.

With his attention drifting elsewhere, awareness of force-modulation would lapse, and he was, soon, going to break the plate in his hand.

So predicting, Marisa, after some seconds, made to call him.

But —

"Me—"

The hand reaching for his shoulder stopped of its own accord.

The name about to be called stopped on a single syllable.

Voice and body, both, would not move.

Sensing the anomaly, scanning for the source, she noticed, almost at once, where the source was.

From Merea's body, an unsayable killing-edge was bleeding out.

Catching it on something closer to animal-sense, Marisa noticed sweat sliding under her clothes inside a beat, then swallowed, hard.

Merea, surely, had not noticed it himself.

The pupils of the red eyes split vertically — dragon-style — emitting a frightening light, not blinking once, thinking something.

That kind of register.

Some moments later, finally, with a parin, the plate broke.

Eleventh, the still-cool quadrant of Marisa's mind logged — and at the same beat, she had landed on what Merea was thinking about.

Force-modulation.

From that phrase, the connection had clicked.

Power.

That, surely.

And — the moment the plate broke, Merea's air was most alarmingly transformed.

That the man in front of her was a Demon God, Marisa did not doubt.

*— This person has not forgotten the orientation toward power.

If anything — he was increasing it.

The Merea of that moment had not a single grain of his ordinary, gentle, innocent air.

If anything — even the opposite-sex feeling Marisa sometimes carried about Merea — was, in that beat, not detectable.

A side beyond gender — a single, hard-to-name monster.

Lately, that air had been less prominent — likely because the volume of things he had to think about had spiked.

Inside this master, there are, at all times, many threads of thought.

He worries, surely, more than anyone.

In among that, the monster side has, in fact, grown.

— Possibly, on this expedition…

That side may grow further.

Bringing the name of the Saisalis Religious Nation to mind, Marisa, somehow, had that premonition.

"— Truly — Merea-sama, your housework destruction feels, day by day, worse."

Marisa, finally noticing her own trembling stop, threw a line back at Merea.

Merea was head-low in apology, but the silhouette read like a no-discipline dog.

"…Mind, what's broken is broken. Can't be helped — so let's set a penalty, and call the books even."

"Eh?! Today, of all days, penalty?"

Merea, on this first-time event, eyes wide in surprise.

Yes — penalty was a first.

"Properly speaking, I am the side on which penalty is delivered, but Merea-sama is too kind and never inflicts a reward— oh I mean penalty, so I thought, this time, I might try delivering one —"

"Penalty — like, hand-stand and climb a cold-wind mountain to the top, or, you, no food for a week, or, transcribe my formula three thousand times, or, ahh — sorry! my elbow slipped right into your eye-ball—! — and — uh —"

What, exactly, has this master been receiving as penalty.

What, in fact, was penalty.

Marisa's value-system, for an instant, wobbled.

"Yes — that one — Hey, I'd like to objectively assess how durable your body actually is, so, jump off the sacred mountain just now. It's fine — you won't die. — Probably. …Not that sort, no?"

"That, almost certainly, is not penalty but torture or some such."

"So that was torture…"

Merea, eyes gone distant, looked off somewhere.

To pull Merea back, Marisa, without missing a beat, said the line.

"Yes… well, then —"

A beat —

"Um… if you would let me… lick your feet…"

Just as Marisa, fidgeting, was about to land it, a voice came in from the kitchen entrance.

"That is your own desire on full display!! — Granted, it is, in some sense, a penalty, but!! — Seriously! I came to grab something I'd forgotten and run into this! — Truly — every one of these people is an eccentric! No moment of slack at all!"

"Tch."

Salman, hair somewhat bossou-bossou-tousled, snapping a finger at her.

Marisa clicked her tongue mortified, turned her eye to him.

The cool, flat-eyed look on her face.

"Pardon — an eccentric, you say. — I am a perfectly ordinary woman aiming to become a perfect maid."

"If you count as ordinary, every woman in the world is ordinary!"

"Hah. The trouble with the world-uneducated…"

"That phrase right back at you—!!"

"By the way — your hair is in some disarray; what happened?"

"Hm? Ah — bit of, uh — the twins."

"Ha. Surely you didn't lay hands—"

"Why does that conclusion follow?!"

"Well — you, also, are an eccentric — no — a deviant, are you not?"

"Oi, Merea — punching her now is fine, yes? Even allowing for woman, I think it's, just barely, allowable in this — wait — you are completely set on running, aren't you!?"

"Well then!"

By the time Salman, mid-tongue-war with Marisa, noticed, Merea was already half-out the kitchen window, hand snapped up sharply, beaming.

"Penalty is scary after all!"

In Merea's head, evidently, the various past penalties had revived; Marisa's actual line was beside the point.

Concentrating on how to escape, he had landed on out the window.

On a clean smile, in the next instant, Merea was out of the kitchen.

"There — let him get away, you have!"

Marisa pointed at the window-sill, cheeks puffed.

"You are, seriously, feeling robbed there…"

"Kh — …no — I do not give up. Next opportunity, taken."

"Give it up there, surely…"

Marisa, then, set into the rest of the dishes at frightening pace; in a blink, the cleanup was done. She decided, instantly, to also wrap the room's final inspection at speed and started moving briskly.

Salman watched the scene shrugging.

"Truly — being able makes them more trouble, this lot…"

The Fist Emperor's sigh echoed in the kitchen. </parameter> </invoke>