CH 119

“Thousands of years ago, three siblings lived.”

Garou ignored my reply and started talking.

As I tried to intervene, he licked his lips and shook his head.

“After you hear my story, you will naturally know. What I want.”

I slowly sat down. After Garou confirmed that I had calmed down, he opened his mouth.

“The human god, Ram, the beast god, Zaccadius, and the plant god, Flora. They don’t like friendship, so they always fight. And by creating a creature that resembled themselves, they tried to figure out who was the strongest god…”

“…It’s something I already know.”

I cut off Garou’s words. Of course I would know; the story was Genesis, which has been told countless times.

Garou shrugged and curved his eyes like a half moon.

“Then do you know this?”

“What?”

“The fact that it wasn’t just three siblings.”

Garou lined up gingerman cookies side by side on a dessert plate.

And next to them, a dark chocolate gingerman cookie was placed.

“The gods were four siblings.”

One simple term flashed through my mind.

“…The demon god.”

Without realizing it, I mumbled words I had heard from Hugo’s hypothesis.

Garou tilted his head as if intrigued.

“Demon god? Oh, that’s nice. You can call it like that. Because it is the god who created the demons.”

If one just thought about it, it was simple. If there was one more god, it would have been related in some way to the other three gods.

I put my elbows on the table and muttered.

“If there were four siblings, then why…?”

“Why were only three people made known until now? Simple.”

Garou finished my words and chuckled.

He lifted up his fork and smashed it down onto the black gingerbread cookie. The thick cookie was split in half immediately and slid off the plate.

“They have erased his existence.” 

(TL/N: I still don’t know about the demon god gender, so I’ll stick with ‘he’ for a while.)

The appearance of the cookie cut in two was somehow eerie.

I gently made eye contact with Garou, then turned my head to the side.

“…Who?”

“The rest of the gods.”

Garou picked up one of the cookie pieces cut in half and put it in his mouth. The once human-shaped cookie shattered beyond recognition.

“Because it seemed like the demon god would win if they let him be.”

“Win?”

“The demon god was unrecognized garbage.”

Gulp. Garou swallowed the piece of cookie and picked up the other half.

“Compared to the other siblings, he was a very ugly god. The human god, the beast god, and the plant god all laughed and shunned the youngest demon god. But so what…?” 

He spun the fork once with his other hand and smashed down onto a white gingerbread cookie.

“The demon god intervened in the bet between the three gods, and he got the best result. The demons killed humans, beasts, and spirits without a break!”

Crunch, crunch! Crunch! 

The cookie crumbled without mercy.

It was a simple fork, but there was a strange madness in Garou’s eyes.

Without realizing it, I trembled. I glanced sideways and checked Benny’s condition. He was unchangingly calm and expressionless.

“That’s why the older siblings were outraged. For the chaff, which has been neglected for so long, for him to be worshiped as the supreme god…” 

Garou sighed and tossed his fork in the air. The silverware fell onto the table with a sharp sound and spun round and round.

“Isn’t that kind of hard to accept?”

Garou grabbed the remaining chocolate cookies. The black gingerbread cookie disappeared into his mouth, no crumbs were left behind.

“So they wanted to kill the demon. The demon’s potential was enormous, but it couldn’t stand up against three gods.”

“…Ah.”

I suddenly remembered the world outside the barrier. Even if I tried to forget, I couldn’t forget the scene, where the egoless evil spirits cried out in the wilderness where nothing could grow.

Until now, I had only thought that the living hell was due to the invasion of evil spirits.

“It was not an invasion, it was a war.”

Garou scratched his head. He was silent for a moment, as if contemplating my words.

“…Ha.”

He shook his head and laughed. Soon, he grabbed his stomach and laughed even harder.

“Hahaha! Hahahahaha!”

The sound of laughter that I had heard in my dreams was much more delicate. I shrugged and shot,

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, no. That’s funny.”

Garou could hardly breathe. He turned his head to the side and looked up at me, wiping away the tears that were dripping down.

“Thousands of years ago or whatever, there has never been a single beautiful time in this land… Believe it.” 

“…What?”

I didn’t easily understand Garou’s words.

“What are you talking about? This world was originally beautiful, but it was destroyed thousands of years ago.”

In the war of the gods that Garou spoke of, only this empire that the World Tree had raised at that time survived.

The barrier of the World Tree showed the fantasy of the past. That was the definite that I knew.

“Lilietta. And you.”

Garou looked at Benny for the first time.

“You’ve seen a gladiatorial match before, right?

It was a random question. I frowned and answered.

“Yes.”

Not only had I seen it, but I remembered it vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

Because I put Benny directly into a gladiator fight, and watched as the stadium collapsed.

“Okay. Then… You know what a stadium usually looks like, right? They build walls around so gladiators can’t escape, and they release them into the empty sand.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It was the same with the gods. Would the creatures be tempted to fight if they were released in the rich heavens?”

Garou lifted his messy white hair and tapped the sides of his forehead.

“You have to drive them into the wilderness where there is nothing but to bite each other.”

At his words, I froze in place.

Garou shrugged as if telling me my thought was right.

“This world was created this way from the beginning.”

Garou looked up at the sky. I blankly followed his gaze.

The blue sky was high up and beautiful.

“There was no such sky from the beginning. It is just an illusion created by imagining the world that Igdrasil, the World Tree, will give to the victor of this battle.”

This world was a wasteland from the beginning.

“We’re living in a dream from the beginning.”

It was a battlefield created by the gods to let their respective creatures fight. It was not a comfortable place to rest.

“Thanks to this, my mother puts a lot of mental energy into maintaining this fantasy. Oh, but don’t be too quick to sympathize or thank her. If you continue to listen to me, that feeling will disappear.”

Garou smiled mischievously and rested his elbows on the table.

“Have you never thought of this? The World Tree, the first creature created by the plant god, is still alive, so why is there no first existence created by the human god and the beast god?”

This was the first question I had when I was studying Genesis. I uttered the exact answer I had given my tutor.

“I don’t know about the Demon King… But I heard that the first creatures of the human god and the beast god died thousands of years ago during the war against the evil spirits.”

“That’s right.”

Garou tilted another glass. He drank the yellow champagne in one breath and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“My mother killed them. They joined forces to kill the Demon King, and then she hit the back of their heads.” 

My heart became cold.

Garou smiled and tilted his head all the way to the back of the chair.

“Just like that, she killed those who trusted her, and now she doesn’t even remember their names.” 

“…What about the Demon King?”

I gripped the handle of the cup that had lost its warmth.

There were no records of the first creatures created by the gods of human and beast.

However, the Demon King still appeared in fairy tales and plays. It also showed up in Hugo’s research materials.

Then, unlike the previous two, the Demon King was probably…

“Did you get it? As expected, you’re smart.”

Garou tapped his temple.

“The Demon King is alive. In a way, that was the price of betrayal. Thinking that the Demon King was dead, she killed the friends who helped her, but in the midst of that, the Demon King fled to the bottom of the earth…” 

There was a rattle, and the sound of bells came from the bushes.

Placing his index finger on his lips, Garou hushed, “Shh.”

After a while, servants appeared among the rose bushes.

They each carried a tray of sumptuous desserts.

Servants, dressed lavishly like nobles, set up several more tea tables. Various cakes and fruits were laid out on pure white tablecloths.

As soon as the sweet smell of sugar was added to the flower garden full of the scent of roses, I felt suffocated as if I had fallen into a honey jar.

Garou beckoned the servants to leave and picked up the knife himself.

He stood up loosely and cut a slice of whipped cream cake.

The section filled with red velvet was eerily red.

“Now that she had killed the comrades that helped her, what’s next? Mother alone can never defeat the Demon King. When he regains his power, it’s over. So my mother tried to prevent the return of the Demon King itself.”

Garou moved the slice of cake onto a plate. The large slice fell sideways with a soft sound.

“Boldly, she’s trying to take advantage of the demons.”

“…Take advantage?”

He put the plate down in front of his seat and wiped the cream-spattered cheek with the back of his hand.

“My mother, Igdrasil… kills the demons.”

Garou cut a second slice of cake and set it down in front of Benny.

His golden eyes gleamed like a thirsty man’s.

“And after exploiting the demons.”

On the last plate, there were toppings on the whipped cream cake.

“She turns the demons into monsters that everyone hates.”

Garou placed the largest slice of cake in front of me.

The rose decoration made from whipped cream was crushed.

“Eat. I added pomegranate.”

The boy tossed a knife smeared with cream into a rose bush and grinned.

“Do you like it? Pomegranate.”