Chapter 221: The Black Demon (4)

The copy of the demonic grimoire floated right in front of him.

From it emanated a black current that completely enveloped him. That smoke disturbed not only his vision but all his senses, dragging his consciousness to a new place.

It was an invitation.

Yuri was absorbed by the grimoire toward the origin of that dark current.

According to Hernando, the demonic grimoire resembled more an intelligent creature than a simple object. But the consciousness it harbored had no form that a human could conceive. It did not think through language like humans.

They were thoughts and images. And echoes of indecipherable sounds.

Yuri’s mind was dragged like by a tide to a distant place.

Suddenly, in the midst of darkness, he saw someone collapse.

A man fell to the ground.

He could not know what the context was, nor the situation, nor who had done it. Only that a man had died, and that he had let out a heart-wrenching scream. His bloodshot eyes opened wide, his face twisted grotesquely, as if expressing all imaginable pain, and he let out a wail.

A death was projected before Yuri’s eyes.

He could feel that this man had died in deep despair. He had not accepted his end. Instead of resigning himself, the man bequeathed hatred and curses to the world.

Then, another appeared.

He was not much different from the previous one. He was brutally impaled by a stake and died impaled.

Around him, in the darkness, sharp thorns emerged that pierced his body completely.

It seemed like an ancient method of execution. The executioner was not visible, but the thorns kept impaling him from the shadows.

Yuri saw his face. He too died full of hatred and resentment. Until the end, he did not stop cursing.

The deaths began to multiply one after another. In the midst of dense darkness, more and more scenes of similar deaths appeared.

The bodies returned to the earth from where they came.

But the souls did not.

The souls, filled with resentment and hatred, remained contaminating the world. There were so many that they darkened the sky.

The screams of the dead had been echoing in the world since time immemorial.

And at some point, a mage intervened. Perhaps it would be better to call him a sorcerer.

He dedicated himself to collecting all that hatred and resentment that floated in the hidden corners of the world, and condensing them into a single object.

Maybe he too harbored some kind of resentment. But that had happened too long ago, and the existence of the creator no longer mattered.

Thus, a book was born.

Yuri understood it.

The pages he had always believed to be parchment were actually made of human skin.

Through his connection with the resentment and hatred of the dead, the sorcerer wrote upon them a tongue that even he did not know, as if they were chaotic murmurs.

Though he used human means, what was recorded was the final scream of the dead, which still echoed from antiquity.

The wisdom of the mage and the resentment of the deceased fused, giving rise to forbidden spells that the world should never have allowed.

This process continued for generations. The demonic grimoire received different names and was passed from one owner to another, wandering the world. Along the way, its power became murkier, its content deformed. At some point, it no longer spoke a human language, and extended its tentacles beyond the earthly plane, even into foreign dimensions.

At the moment when Yuri approached concepts impossible to understand and that should never be understood, his mind veered off to protect itself.

He took a deep breath.

And suddenly, he saw himself reflected in a darkness clear as crystal. Above his body, the unknown letters of the demonic grimoire slithered.

Yuri activated the Cut of the soul and the heart to prevent his soul from being contaminated. But the demonic grimoire infiltrated through his eyes, his nose, his tongue, his ears, his skin—through all his senses. The only thing he could do was slow the process.

He didn’t have much time.

Yuri began to search among the fragments of time recorded in the grimoire, hoping to find what he desired.

The demonic grimoire was a creature with consciousness, an entity that absorbed human emotions. It learned on its own and evolved as it changed owners. Therefore, it housed the thoughts of all who had possessed it before.

There were completely unintelligible fragments, and others that at least allowed some context to be inferred.

Yuri forced his gaze toward the closest fragment he could endure.

The copy of the grimoire was still connected with the original. Through it, Yuri wanted to discover exactly what Cedric was searching for.

He still couldn’t fully comprehend it.

Within the interconnected chaos of that evil network, Yuri headed toward the part that shone the most.

His consciousness floated.

And then it happened.

The cursed words climbing up his body sharpened.

The erratic movement of the language, which previously seemed disorganized, suddenly changed. The strokes formed lines, and pierced the Cut of the soul and the heart.

In an instant, Yuri’s body was defenseless. When his technique collapsed, the barrier that protected him crumbled.

The images dwelling within those words began to attack him. All kinds of horrors passed through the center of his skull. The demonic grimoire recorded all the horrible deaths that had occurred in the world.

But Yuri endured.

Ironically, his mind was already worn out by the demonic illusions he faced every day. That’s why, even though his consciousness wallowed in that crucible of evil, it only eroded—it did not completely break.

Barely, clinging to what was left of his consciousness, Yuri looked around.

By then, everything around him was silent.

Unlike the previous resentment, which writhed full of hatred, here everything was calm. Everything was perfectly ordered. And that was what frightened Yuri the most.

This was Cedric.

He was different.

Yuri closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again.

Blurry images passed through his mind.

Within the language of resentment, Yuri managed to find something related to Cedric and observed it.

Though shrouded in mist, he could distinguish its contours.

Cedric held the demonic grimoire under his arm, with a slight bucolic smile, without a trace of guilt, like someone simply clearing weeds with the calm mind of a gardener.

His thoughts flowed with perfect clarity, unaffected by emotions or personal stories.

He had managed to master the demonic grimoire better than anyone else who had possessed it before.

If the resentment overflowing inside him clamored for vengeance after being betrayed by the world, Cedric, on the other hand, sought it as the logical result of his own mindset and character.

Yuri believed he had understood what Cedric’s final motivation was.

“Yuri. Look at this painting.”

In his childhood, Cedric showed him a painting.

The memory was so old that he couldn’t clearly remember what the painting depicted, but he did recall that there was something about it that didn’t quite sit well with him.

When Yuri tilted his head, confused, Cedric smiled and, dipping the brush in paint, began to cover certain parts of the canvas.

And then, everything fit perfectly.

“Now it’s balanced, right?”

Yuri nodded. Little by little, he began to remember the scene the painting depicted.

It was the world.

The imperfection of the world created by humans did not align with his aesthetic sense.

Yuri lowered his gaze. The drops of paint falling from the brush stained the ground.

They were red like blood. Yuri understood.

The painting Cedric had imagined was more beautiful than the world Yuri lived in.

Human production was enough to feed everyone and still have leftovers. There would no longer be children rummaging through the trash. The cruel wars of killing and dying would disappear. There would be no more soldiers crying on the battlefield. Humans, endowed with the gift of reason, would be controlled so as not to succumb to laziness and greed.

Cedric was the one best suited to use the tool of black magic.

And at some point, everything around him filled with color.

The only black thing there was Yuri.

The demon.

Yuri felt he was being watched.

The radiant figures that inhabited the world created by Cedric were staring at him.

With eyes full of fear, they murmured once more in his direction.

“The black demon…”

Yuri lowered his gaze to his hands.

In his dark fingers, he held an equally black sword.

To the inhabitants of that world, the demon was him.

He was the one trying to prevent that beautiful world from becoming a reality, and he wasn’t doing it for a rational reason like Cedric.

His motivation resembled more the layered resentment within the demonic grimoire.

Countless eyes surrounded him.

Yuri murmured while lowering his head:

“So you saw it…”

With a crooked smile, he caressed Guilty’s hilt. In that world, Guilty was nothing more than a demon’s spear that destroyed peace.

Yuri raised his gaze and murmured again.

“So you saw it.”

He smiled sideways.

And then, he swung Guilty. The beautiful world surrounding him tore apart.

The future landscape Cedric wanted to build shattered like a rag before Yuri’s violence.

Yuri spoke again.

“You saw me coming.”

And then, he noticed a gaze watching him from above.

A tower that rose to the end of the sky. And at its top, a single eye floated.

Yuri now knew whose pupil that was.

Cedric was watching him. Yuri burst out laughing.

Akuaktar.

That was the new title the orcs had given him.

The black demon.

A terribly fitting nickname.

Cedric wanted to redesign the world to his liking.

Unable to endure living as an ape among apes, he sought to build a world fit for true humans.

And so, someone like Yuri, who tried to stop him, had to be a demon to the people of that world.

Then Yuri called out to the would-be god of the new world.

“Cedric.”

And in that moment, Cedric’s figure appeared before him. Although blurry, Yuri knew it was him.

He stabbed his sword into Cedric’s chest and said:

“Sorry, but I’m sick of playing the demon. So it doesn’t affect me one bit.”

Cedric had tried to move him by showing him the landscape of his ideal world, but it didn’t work on Yuri.

With blood spilling from his mouth, Cedric returned the smile.

“I knew you would. You always manage to surprise me.”

He wore an expression of genuine joy.

Yuri didn’t like that face, so he twisted Guilty inside his chest. Cedric’s image shook violently and began to fade.

“Goodbye.”

And Cedric said farewell. And with that, everything ended.

The world around Yuri began to crack. His consciousness was dragged by a whirlwind, tossed in every direction.

And when he regained his senses—

He was back in Maryrose’s workshop.

Yuri collapsed where he stood.

He couldn’t remain standing. His legs trembled. His head throbbed. He had been exposed to so much black magic it felt as if his entire body burned with pain.

Maryrose approached to support him.

“Are you all right?”

“That bastard… he knew.”

“Eh?”

“Cedric knew. He was inviting me.”

With Maryrose’s help, Yuri stood up.

“Even so, it was worth it.”

Yuri smiled broadly. Thanks to this opportunity, he now understood what Cedric desired.

To build a new world.

He showed him that blueprint hoping to convince him, but Yuri was not swayed.

He didn’t care how well Cedric controlled the demonic grimoire, nor how beautiful the world he tried to create with it might be.

He had already come too far to waver over something like that.

Because—

“I am… a demon.”

When Yuri murmured that and began to laugh, the people around him stepped back slightly and looked at him warily.

But Yuri, lost in his own thoughts, didn’t notice those looks. He only murmured once more:

“Depending on what the other does… I can be an angel, or a demon…”

“A-Are you all right?”

“I’m the black demon. Kukuku…”