Chapter 31
Ominous Contract (2)
This is why demons are…
Above all.
“…It’s not even your real name?”
“Still. Please call me Therion.”
If I didn’t call him that, he’d probably pester me endlessly, saying, “Please call me Therion,” and never get to the point.
Having no choice, I sighed lightly and called his ‘name’.
“…Therion.”
Only then did he seem satisfied, gently scratching my palm with his nails.
As I curled my palm from the ticklish sensation, he answered with a voice tinged with laughter.
“Yes. I know. I came to retrieve that curse, you see. Lady Edith… My original purpose was here. But it seems your purpose was here too. How strange.”
“……”
“Can I ask what I’m curious about now?”
“Wait, about the nature of the curse…”
His hand, which was holding mine, suddenly tightened. I bit my lip and suppressed a groan at the pain that felt like my wrist bones were being crushed.
His purple eyes, now cleared of any trace of laughter like a fog lifting, looked at me.
“You know, don’t you?”
“…Know what?”
“The curse that kills you by scattering your body like ashes. And… that curse won’t let you die until it sees its end.”
“……”
“Lady Edith. You took it, didn’t you?”
…My heart was pounding.
The heart in my body told me I was still alive.
Emphasized it.
As if telling me not to forget.
Yes. The fact that I regressed again means.
‘…The curse.’
It means the curse is still with me.
Since I can’t regress without the curse, even if I returned to a point before the curse, it was natural that the curse would still be with me.
And since I had the curse, this place was left empty with only the barrier remaining.
So Rimos Therion, who came to retrieve the curse… realized that I, who entered this place, had ‘already’ taken the curse.
What’s more despairing is the fact that as long as the curse remains with me, even if I die again, it will only result in another regression.
‘But why did the point of regression change?’
What caused it?
As he said, I surely saw the end of the curse.
I definitely closed my eyes after settling all the world’s calamities.
“Oh my, Lady Edith. Don’t think too complicatedly.”
Rimos Therion cradled my head as if to wake me from my thoughts, tilting it to rest against his chest.
It snapped me back to reality.
“It seems you don’t know everything about the curse after all. Right?”
No. There’s still one last thing to grasp onto.
I desperately clutched at Therion’s hood.
“…Is it your curse that I obtained? If so, please release me. No, you can kill me. Rather, please kill me.”
“Hmm. That’s problematic, because it’s not a curse I created…”
“Then why are you trying to retrieve it?”
To my desperate cry, he rolled his eyes once, then asked something strange.
“Lady Edith, how many times?”
“…What are you asking?”
“How many times have you returned to the past?”
He ran his fingers through my hair, intertwining it.
Suppressing the urge to push him away, I answered.
“…hundred times.”
“Pardon?”
“Hundreds of times. I lost count after six hundred. I lost my mind.”
“…How many times?”
“I said at least six hundred times.”
Rimos Therion’s hand stopped abruptly.
I lifted my head from his chest to look at his face again, and he was staring at me with wide eyes.
The relaxed and leisurely air had completely disappeared, and his cheeks suddenly flushed red. He seemed a bit… excited.
“…I thought it wouldn’t be just once or twice. But this is surprising… I’m really curious about you now, Edith.”
“…Pardon?”
Rimos Therion raised his hand and lightly tapped my head. As I stared at him blankly, my head tilted slightly.
“I wondered. I couldn’t see what was in this head of yours.”
Ah, the reason he proposed a question-and-answer session in the form of a ‘contract’ to me.
My feelings became ambivalent.
“…Can you read other people’s thoughts?”
“Yes. Though I can’t see well into non-standard humans like Ethan Behemoth or Camilla Guinevere. And you, Lady Edith… are a bit more unusual.”
“Unusual how…?”
“Don’t try to know the details. Anyway, now I understand the reason. It was because hundreds of causalities were overlapping.”
“Please explain it to me properly.”
“Do you know how delicious you look, Lady Edith?”
“…I don’t want to know.”
“You look really tasty though.”
He’s completely ignoring what I’m saying.
“……”
“Lady Edith. Want to make another contract with me?”
He murmured while cupping his own cheek, only rolling his eyes to look at me. Then he smiled, his eyes crinkling.
“This time, not just one trivial question. Let’s bet your entire life.”
It wasn’t the smile of a demon who had just massacred hundreds using monsters. It was pure and even affectionate. It was even lovely.
‘…Ugh.’
That’s why it’s even more disgusting.
For a moment, I felt nauseous with revulsion, but I managed to feign calmness, hiding my true feelings as I asked briefly.
“…What kind of contract?”
“Lady Edith. I’m a demon who governs over ‘unspeakable mysteries’.”
He carefully held my wrist, which had been bruised red by his own hand, and kissed the back of it.
I felt his cool, soft lips touch lightly and then pull away.
He whispered with a beautiful smile.
“If you let me taste all of your long memories, I’ll help you finish this life.”
I swallowed hard at his words.
“You mean…”
“Yes, I’m saying I’ll help you be freed from the curse.”
Therion nodded readily, as if confirming my thoughts.
“I think that would be more fun than interfering with you, Lady Edith.”
“……”
His words confirmed my suspicion.
This demon has twisted everything I remembered from this iteration just because it seemed interesting.
Rimos Therion, who had been so ordinary in previous regressions that he didn’t leave an impression, or rather, this demon mimicking ‘Rimos Therion’, must have failed to retrieve the curse in the past, not even knowing that I had taken it.
‘But now I’ve become too noticeable to him.’
That’s why Rimos Therion started to intervene in events continuously.
The early massacre of professors and knights, the sudden appearance of the Gigantic Arachne, and the monsters persistently targeting me…
Therion swept his palm over the altar once.
As the faint dust cleared, I noticed complex patterns engraved on the surface.
He turned his gaze to me and tapped my wrist once, and a faint blue pattern I had never seen before appeared on my wrist.
It was identical to the one drawn on the altar.
He stroked it with a loving expression.
“This curse… carries excessive causality. The proof is that you, a mere human, have repeated the world hundreds of times. That’s why I tried to retrieve it…”
“……”
I met Rimos Therion’s eyes. The ominous purple flickered like a malevolent flame.
“It’s late, but this is even better. How precious you are, maintaining your sanity despite being human.”
His hand persistently caressing my wrist as if handling a rare object, and his gaze upon me, were extremely unpleasant.
…Did he say ‘despite being human’? Recalling those words, I frowned and slapped the back of his hand with my other hand.
“Ouch.”
Rimos Therion looked at me with round eyes and a pitiful expression. Judging by his expression alone, he seemed like an innocent victim.
“What’s wrong, Lady Edith? Don’t tell me you’re going to refuse?”
I remember that although he was wearing a human skin, occasionally his unnatural thought processes surfaced, making me shudder.
‘I must not get involved.’
I straightened my back and looked at him directly, trying hard not to show that my vision was wavering.
“…I will make the contract. However.”
“However?”
“If you want to make a contract with me on those terms, you should respect my memories. The memories of a mere human.”
I deliberately raised my blood-stained chin slightly.
I stared at him intently, not avoiding his murky light purple eyes. Looking at them this way, they didn’t resemble flowers in a blue field, but rather oil swirling in muddy water.
And the reason I could take such a high-handed approach is…
Because Rimos Therion’s eyes were already drenched with interest.
“Lady Edith.”
Yes. But I shouldn’t underestimate a demon either.
“Which do you think would be easier? Helping you die, or tormenting you to regress forever?”
He smiled more happily and tilted his cheek.
“I’m better at tormenting, you know.”
…Really, the beings who take a liking to me generally don’t have good personalities.
🥀
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