A counterfeit grimoire of the demon hovered right before him.
From it flowed a dark current that wrapped around him. The smoke didn’t just cloud his vision—it scrambled all his senses, pulling his consciousness into a new realm.
An invitation.
Yuri was drawn by the grimoire toward the source of that black current.
Hernando had said the demon’s grimoire was more like a magical beast with a will of its own. But its sense of self was unlike anything humans could imagine. The grimoire didn’t think consciously through language like a person.
Instead, it echoed with thoughts, images, and incomprehensible sounds.
Yuri’s mind was swept away like a wave, drifting far into the distance.
Suddenly, in the darkness, he saw someone collapse.
A man was falling apart.
There was no way to know the background, the circumstances, or who was responsible.
All that was clear was that a man was dying, screaming out in a single, desperate cry. His bloodshot eyes were wide open, his face twisted in a grotesque mask of agony as he howled.
One death played out before Yuri’s eyes.
He understood that the man died engulfed in sorrow. He did not surrender to death quietly. Instead, he left behind a legacy of curses and hatred upon the world.
Then another appeared.
Not much different from the first. This one died pierced on a cruel spike. Sharp wedges emerged from the darkness, puncturing his flesh with countless holes.
It was an ancient form of execution. The executioner was unseen, but countless thorns continued to stab his body in the shadows.
Yuri saw his face. This man, too, died filled with rage and hatred. He never ceased cursing until the end.
The number of deaths multiplied in succession. In the dense darkness, countless deaths repeated endlessly.
The bodies of the dead were buried in the earth, returning to where they came from.
But their souls did not.
Souls steeped in resentment and hatred polluted the world. There were so many that they blotted out the sky.
The death throes of the departed had echoed through the world since long ago.
And then, at some point, a mage intervened. Perhaps “sorcerer” was a better title.
He devoted himself to gathering the resentment and hatred bound to the world’s underside, shaping them into a single object.
He, too, may have harbored some deep grudge. But it was so long ago, and the existence of the creator no longer mattered.
A book was born.
Yuri realized.
The pages he had thought were parchment were actually human skin.
The sorcerer connected his consciousness to the resentment and hatred left by the dead, scribbling down an unknown language—dialects he himself did not understand—in a chaotic stream.
Though he borrowed human power, what was inscribed was the death throes of the departed, echoing from ancient times to the present.
As the mage’s knowledge combined with the grudges of the dead, forbidden dark arts began to emerge in the world.
This work continued for ages. The demon’s grimoire went by many names, passing from owner to owner as it wandered the world. Along the way, its malice deepened, and its contents became corrupted. At some point, the language ceased to be human, extending its tendrils not only across the earth but into distant otherworldly realms.
When Yuri reached the point of concepts he could neither understand nor should understand, his mind instinctively turned away to protect itself.
He took a breath.
Suddenly, he saw his own reflection in the clear darkness, like a glass orb. Crawling over his body were the indecipherable characters written in the demon’s grimoire.
Yuri summoned his soul-cleaving technique to block the corruption of his spirit. But through his eyes, nose, tongue, ears, skin—through every sense—the grimoire’s influence seeped in. At best, all he could do was slow the process.
Time was running out.
Yuri traced the timeline recorded in the demon’s grimoire, searching for what it was that Cedric truly sought.
The demon’s grimoire was a sentient being, a monster that fed on human hearts. It learned and evolved as it changed hands. Within it dwelled the spirits of all who had ever possessed it.
Some parts were utterly incomprehensible; others hinted faintly at cause and effect.
Yuri forced his gaze toward the nearest fragment.
The counterfeit grimoire was still linked to the original. Through this connection, Yuri hoped to uncover Cedric’s true intentions. He still struggled to fully understand him.
Within the tangled neural network of malice, Yuri moved toward the sharpest flash of insight.
His mind drifted.
Then—
The language of grudges crawling up his body sharpened.
The chaotic, glowing movements of the words shifted. Strokes aligned, piercing through his soul-cleaving technique.
Yuri’s body was disarmed in an instant. As his soul-cleaving technique faltered, the protective barrier around him crumbled.
The images embedded in the language attacked him. Horrifying visions began to pierce the center of his skull. The demon’s grimoire recorded every gruesome death that had occurred across the world.
But Yuri endured.
Ironically, his mind had already been worn thin by the daily repetition of soul-cleaving. Though he tumbled through this crucible of evil, only the surface wore away—he did not shatter completely.
Clinging desperately to his fading consciousness, Yuri looked around.
Suddenly, everything was calm.
If before the grudges had writhed in malice, here it was different. Everything was orderly, composed. And that was what frightened him most.
This was Cedric.
He was different.
Yuri closed his eyes, then opened them.
Faint images passed by.
Within the language of grudges, Yuri found something about Cedric and peered closer.
Shrouded in mist, vague but with discernible outlines.
Cedric was the product of precise, disciplined thought—unbiased by emotion or personal history—like a gardener removing weeds without remorse. He bore a gentle, pastoral smile, utterly untroubled by the acts he committed, the demon’s grimoire tucked under his arm.
He controlled it more perfectly than any who had owned it before.
If the grudges flooding the grimoire screamed malice as a form of revenge against a betrayed world, Cedric pursued it simply as the logical conclusion of his own temperament and reasoning.
Yuri felt he understood Cedric’s ultimate motive.
“Yuri. Look at this painting.”
As a child, Cedric had shown him a painting.
It was so long ago that Yuri had forgotten what it depicted, but he remembered feeling something was off.
When Yuri tilted his head, Cedric smiled and covered parts of the canvas with brushstrokes soaked in paint.
Then everything fell perfectly into place.
“Now it’s balanced, right?”
Yuri nodded. The landscape in the painting, long forgotten, began to come back to him.
It was the world.
The imperfections of the human-made world did not suit Cedric’s aesthetic sense.
Yuri lowered his gaze.
Drops of paint fell from the brush, staining the floor.
They were as red as blood.
Yuri understood.
The world Cedric painted was more beautiful than the one Yuri lived in.
Humanity’s production, enough to feed everyone, was distributed where it should be. No child rummaged through trash bins anymore. The cruel wars of killing and dying vanished. No soldier cried out on the battlefield. Humans, gifted with reason, were controlled so they would not succumb to sloth or greed.
Cedric was the one who could wield black magic best.
Colors flooded the space around him.
Here, the only black thing was Yuri—himself.
A demon…
Yuri felt eyes upon him.
The radiant beings in Cedric’s painted world stared at him.
With eyes full of fear, they whispered once more.
The Black Demon…
Yuri looked down at his hands.
In his dark grasp was a black sword.
To the inhabitants of this world, the demon was him.
He sought to stop the beautiful world they would enjoy, and his reasons were not the rational conclusions Cedric had reached.
His motive resembled the layers of grudges piled up inside the demon’s grimoire.
Countless eyes surrounded him.
Yuri lowered his gaze and murmured,
“You saw it…”
He toyed with the Guilty in his hand. In this world, the Guilty was nothing more than a demon’s spike that disturbed peace.
Yuri narrowed his eyes and whispered again,
“You saw it.”
A smile curled at the corners of his mouth.
Then he swung the Guilty.
The beautiful world that surrounded him cracked.
The future landscape Cedric sought to create shattered and crumpled like tattered rags before the violence Yuri wielded.
Yuri spoke once more.
“I see you saw me come.”
Eyes looked down on him.
A tower soared to the edge of the sky.
At its peak, a single eye floated.
Yuri now knew whose pupil it was. Cedric was watching him.
Yuri burst into a loud laugh.
Akuaktal.
The new title the orcs had given him.
The Black Demon.
A fitting nickname indeed.
Cedric sought to reshape the earth to his liking. Humans, tired of pretending to be monkeys among monkeys, no longer wished to live as such. He aimed to build a world befitting humans, not monkeys.
So, to the humans of that world, Yuri—who sought to stop him—would be the demon.
Yuri called out to the one who wished to become the god of this new world.
“Cedric.”
At once, Cedric’s form appeared before Yuri. Faint, but Yuri knew it was him.
Yuri plunged his hand into Cedric’s chest and spoke.
“Sorry, but I’ve played the devil’s role one too many times. So, it doesn’t faze me at all.”
He tried to shake Yuri by showing her the world he wished for, but it didn’t work.
Cedric, pierced through the chest, smiled at her with blood trickling from his mouth.
“As expected. You always surprise me.”
His expression was almost joyful.
Displeased by that, Yuri twisted the Guilty. Cedric’s form wavered violently and began to dissolve.
“Goodbye.”
Cedric said, and that was the end.
The world around Yuri shattered. Her mind was caught in a whirlwind, tossed about helplessly.
When she finally came to her senses, she was standing again in Marie-Rose’s workshop.
Yuri sank down right where she was.
Her legs gave out. Her head throbbed. The overwhelming exposure to so much magic left her body burning with pain.
Marie-Rose approached and supported her.
“Are you okay?”
“That bastard… he knew.”
“Huh?”
“Cedric knew. He invited me here on purpose.”
With Marie-Rose’s help, Yuri pushed herself up.
“But still, there was a result.”
She gave a small, bitter smile.
This encounter had revealed what Cedric truly wanted.
To build a new world.
He tried to sway her by showing her that blueprint, but Yuri didn’t budge.
No matter how well he controlled the Devil’s Grimoire, no matter how beautifully he tried to shape that world, Yuri didn’t care.
She had come too far to be shaken by something like that.
Because—
“I am a devil…”
Muttering to herself, Yuri began to smile. The people gathered around her flinched and stared.
But lost in her own thoughts, Yuri didn’t notice their gazes and whispered again.
“Depending on how the other side acts, I can be an angel… or a devil…”
“Are you… alright?”
“I am the Black Devil. Heh heh heh…”