I didn’t care anymore about the spell going wild or Phibrizzo’s scheme. I didn’t care about anything.
I just wanted to save Gourry. My slime-for-brains, self-appointed guardian Gourry.
“Thou, the quaking Sea of Chaos, the Golden King of Darkness…”
“Oh?!” Phibrizzo suddenly cried, his voice lifting in surprise and joy.
Once upon a time, I’d heard that the Lord of Nightmares—that which had fallen from Heaven into the Sea of Chaos—was the Demon Lord of Demon Lords.
But that was wrong. I knew it was.
The Claire Bible told me that the Sea of Chaos stretched beneath the many worlds was, itself, none other than the Lord of Nightmares.
There’s a legend everyone’s probably heard about— the one that says the world is resting on top of a staff in the Sea of Chaos.
But that’s not the right way to put it. It should go more like this:
“The Sea of Chaos itself is the foundation of all existence.
I call upon thee,
I pledge myself to thee;
Let us stand together.
And let the fools
Who stand before us
Suffer the fate of destruction … !”
For a second time, the darkness—No. Now the nothingness spawned. Or was it even that? I was even starting to think that the substance I saw was Chaos itself.
A black something that was way, way beyond human understanding slowly converged in the open palm of my right hand.
I could feel myself being drained again. But this time, it wasn’t magical or physical strength —it was my life force, my soul, that was being sucked out toward blackness. Every cell of my body screamed from the pressure.
But I couldn’t lose consciousness. I couldn’t let the spell run wild. If I lost control … just like Phibrizzo wanted, just like Sylphiel had warned, the entire world would return to nothingness.
THUMP!
I heard a sound as my entire body shuddered.
As my will held the spell back, darkness ate away at that will little by little. The darkness spawned before my right palm continued to vibrate irregularly, growing bigger, little by little.
I can’t let him … make it run wild!
I clenched my teeth. As I glared at Phibrizzo, the background trembled and grew hazy in my eyes.
THUMP!
The darkness expanded.
But this time, it reached into my soul.
I can’t hold it back.
The moment I thought it, my consciousness sank into the darkness.
And then …
I slowly opened my eyes.
The darkness, about the size of a clenched fist, remained stable at the edge of my outstretched right palm. Directly ahead of it stood Hellmaster Phibrizzo in the form of a boy, a bright smile stretching across his entire face.
“Huh. You controlled the spell—isn’t that something?”
Phibrizzo’s “voice” reverberated inside my head. He seemed neither panicked nor surprised.
“But don’t think that this means you’ve beaten me. I knew you might be able to control it. After all, you’ve got the Demon Blood Talismans. I had you obtain them for exactly this moment. ”
For a moment, an image of Sairaag City invaded my mind along with Phibrizzo’s “voice.”
“I still haven’t explained it to you, have I? Why I didn’t let you into this Palace of Hell earlier today.
“I know that I said I materialized the souls of those in the city and gave them physical form. But do you know what material I used? ME. Pretty much everything that exists in this city is my will in material form. In other words—this city and I are one and the same. ”
“Your point?” I said in reply.
“My point?”
A hint of hatred crept into Phibrizzo’s smile. Perhaps I’d spoiled his mood.
“Don’t you get it yet? You ate food this morning! Food that was made out of ME! Everything in this city is me, so now there’s a part of ME inside you!”
“And?” I asked.
“You still don’t get it?!” Phibrizzo’s “voice” yelled angrily. “Listen! It may not be possible to attack you from the outside while you control the Void—but with a portion of my existence already inside you, I can use that to destroy your body from the inside! I can burst your heart open with a mere thought! What do you think will happen if I kill you now and you lose control of the darkness?!”
Sigh.
I let out a loud laugh at Phibrizzo’s complete nonsense.
“Oh, so that doesn’t bother you?! Fine! I’ll kill you, just like you want! I’ll rip your body into pieces!”
But that moment, the power Phibrizzo pushed inside me just… broke apart.
“WHAT?!”
Phibrizzo left my head and shouted his surprise through the air. As I stood, silent, he stumbled back a few steps.
“H-how?!” he cried. “That should’ve burst your heart! You should be dead! Wh-why aren’t you … ?!”
I turned my eyes toward him with absolute indifference.
“Why did you REVIVE?!” he screamed.
Yes. He’d killed me. When Phibrizzo’s “power” had struck me, my heart had burst and I had died.
However …
“And what of it?” I asked.
My voice momentarily stunned Phibrizzo into silence. Then, finally, he shrieked in fear and fell to the floor.
It seemed he’d finally realized who I really was.
But using an insignificant attack on me without realizing my true identity … it was just so crude.
Phibrizzo was trembling. “It,” he blurted, “it c-can’t be!”
I slowly raised up the Void.
“I shall grant you Destruction, Hellmaster Phibrizzo,” I said. “You shall have precisely what you desire.” The golden-hued hair of the human Lina Inverse, who had become my center, swayed in the air.
I crushed the Void in my right hand with the greatest of ease. It simultaneously jumped across space and transferred into Phibrizzo’s body.
“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Hellmaster Phibrizzo screamed. At that same moment, I “saw” him leave an astral fragment within the Void as he fled into the astral plane.
Leaving his tail behind like a lizard was his specialty. But that, too, was absolutely futile.
Through the Void, I chased Phibrizzo with my own power and slipped into the astral plane. When I caught his astral form, he resisted fiercely.
If you want Destruction, I told him, then yield!
He only resisted more strongly in response. He was afraid of me. He was confused by me.
I extended a tentacle of Void toward the desperately struggling Phibrizzo.
Normally, I’d have simply run through a foe like Phibrizzo without difficulty. But I couldn’t call forth all the power I pleased, possibly because I possessed a human being.
But I wouldn’t let him escape. Whether or not he realized who I was, he had attacked me.
Destroy!
My consciousness burst open. Tentacles of Void, like roots stretching forth from the earth, ate away at the Palace of Hell and Sairaag City itself.
And then …
Hellmaster Phibrizzo’s agonized consciousness burst apart.
...
I opened my eyes to see lots of blue sky. I was flat on my back somewhere. After a long pause, I blinked my eyes a few times. Then I—
“Huh?!” I jerked up to a sitting position.
I’m … I’m… Lina Inverse.
I blurted another sound of surprise. Completely confused about the situation I was in, I jerked my head back and forth to see where I was.
I was at the bottom of some kind of deep crater. Gourry, Zel, Amelia, and Sylphiel were lying nearby, obviously unconscious.
The Palace of Hell was gone. Well, duh— when Phibrizzo had been destroyed, the building he’d created and the city of Sairaag itself had vanished. When it occurred to me to look, I also checked my hair—but it was nothing more than its natural chestnut color.
Then that means … I was finally starting to realize what had happened. When I ran my eyes over the area again, I suddenly noticed a dark silhouette standing right beside me. Don’t ask me why. Honestly, don’t. But I felt strangely relieved to see him there.
“Too bad things didn’t work out for you, Xelloss.” He’d probably jumped across space. Since I hadn’t seen him since he’d vanished from Dragon’s Peak, I checked his right arm; it was back in its proper place, as if Gaav had never sliced the thing off. But he was a Mazoku, alter all—who knows how much damage he could recover from.
He smiled at me like he always had.
“I’m not particularly disappointed,” he said simply. “After all —it’s not my failure, is it?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Jeez, Xelloss. You’re the type to ditch your allies with a great big smile on your face.” True to form, he answered with another smile. “That, of course, is what makes me a demon.”
“So why’re you here now? I doubt you’re hoping to avenge Phibrizzo.”
“Let’s not be silly. I was just wondering if you could explain what happened here.” He brushed a strand of hair behind his ear. “I don’t understand it whatsoever. It really didn’t look like you controlled the spell.”
I snorted. “You thought I’d just explain it to you?” Xelloss paused and tilted his head a bit. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I thought it was worth asking, at least.”
That made me laugh. Typical Xelloss.
“Funny story,” I said, rolling my shoulders, “He just mixed the two of us up.”
“Two?” Xelloss repeated.
“I’m the first to admit that it’s weird to have two people in one like that, but whatever. I didn’t win here—I just survived, really.”
Xelloss pursed his lips. “Really.”
“I wasn’t sure what ‘losing control of the spell’ really meant, and I’m pretty sure Phibrizzo didn’t, either. When I did lose control, my body was taken over by the Lord of Nightmares.”
Xelloss’ face twisted a little as I said “the Lord of Nightmares.” I ignored it and kept talking.
“Maybe my consciousness and it became one at that point, or maybe I was completely absorbed … I remember it pretty well, but I’m not sure about that part. Anyway.
“Phibrizzo attacked me because he didn’t realize I had become it, so it got angry and attacked back. Phibrizzo seemed really confused since he’d attacked it by mistake and it should’ve been an ally of demons. He fought it to the end.”
And before anyone says anything—I know, it’s complicated. But it seemed that Phibrizzo’s fatal mistake was considering it the ally of Mazoku. That explained his shock and resistance when he was attacked.
One could definitely say that demonic existence is close to that of the chaotic Void, but Phibrizzo had said it himself: demons who want destruction and those of us who want existence were originally split off from a single source. In other words, from it. Not just the king of the demons, but the king of everyone.
And hey, everyone knows the rule: when you hit someone, even by mistake, they usually hit you back.
“So, it took offense and crushed Phibrizzo. The stuff from that point on is probably beyond human understanding, but my best take on it is that it was a lot more powerful than Phibrizzo but it couldn’t increase its power freely because it had a human at its core. But it went after Phibrizzo anyway, all insulted and ignoring the limits on how much of its own power it could draw at once.”
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