CHAPTER 4

For a lack of a nicer way to put it—Scarlet was a demon.

More specifically, a demoness. An Archdemoness, even. She was one of the top-rankers of the demonic realm. She was easily one of the strongest demons in existence, so much so that the only demon she had ever bowed her head to was none other than the very Demon King himself.

Well, him, and probably—with begrudging insistence that she never technically bowed to any demon apart from the King—a few of her colleagues, her fellow Archdemons. While she only ever bowed to the strong ones who had bested her, she was not stupid enough to challenge risks beyond what she knew she could handle. And those other Archdemons? At least half of them could fight her on equal standing, and a small portion of them could definitely annihilate her if they wanted to.

And Scarlet really didn’t want to die.

So she didn’t challenge them, and she never got bested, so she never had to bow to them. Simple!

The demons never really edified their rules, but that was only because the Darklands literally only had one rule: survive. That was it. From the olden times to the present day, the Darklands were the very dredge of creation, a place undesired by even the merciful Goddess because, they said, it was born from Her own rejection of the darkness. It was such a divine darkness that She could not curb it on Her own, a part of creation that She should have casted away except for the fact that a world made of only that darkness would have grown to only be even darker, and She could not afford to leave such a stain on the perfect tapestry that was Her creation.

It was better, She thought, that this dredge be controlled by Her light in Her creation. And thus, the Darklands were made: for each and every darkness in creation She found, She would throw a piece of rock from Her creation to the Darklands, which eventually became a pile of rocks, which eventually turned to an island, which eventually became a whole continent. The birth of darkness was by a simple decision to make sure the light of the Goddess could curb the darkness. It was necessary for there to be darkness in the light, and it was necessary for there to be light in the darkness.

At least, that’s what Scarlet was told. She was lucky: her kin were brilliant storytellers. They were great seducers and seductresses, alluring other demons even when they themselves retain little combat power on their own—they instead banded together and bred as many spawns as possible; they would care for these spawns for a good number of time until they could feed on their own, at which point they would be left for the elements. The greater the number of spawns, the likelier it became that some would survive, which was why her kind instinctively tried to bond with as many demons as possible, just to increase the number of spawns.

Scarlet was different.

Rather than letting herself become a breeding nest for little demons, Scarlet took a road that was entirely hers: a path of pure predatory instinct.

Rather than fully focusing on her inherent seduction powers, she focused on growing stronger.

Not necessarily physically, but stronger still.

Occasionally, her drive would kick back into gear and she would feel the strong need to mate and leave spawns behind, but she was always stronger than this drive—and the number of demons who could control their drives numbered extremely few. Scarlet knew for a fact that it was way less than the number of fingers on her two hands.

It was exactly this ability to keep her own drive in check that drew the attention of the Demon King.

See, all demons were creatures of instinct. If anything, even their invasions were nothing short of instinct—and not without good reason. The Darklands were extremely unfriendly. So much so, that even surviving in groups and not making groups did not leave much of a real difference. The group-makers would find it easier to procure resources, but would face significantly higher risks of betrayal and infighting. On the other hand, soloists would find it difficult to handle many forms of threats, but they’re more versatile and all the resources they found would basically be their own and theirs alone.

And their ancestors survived these conditions for so long because they made these survival habits part of something their children would inherit.

So, yeah, no overriding the instincts. They developed those specifically to survive without thinking. That was kind of the entire point.

However, Scarlet realized something: what about thinking to get even better at that? If anything, she could probably fare better if she could learn when to let her body do the job without thinking and when to think before acting, no? That realization dawned on her with the strike of a magical lightning nearby from a very angry demon that she led on, and she suddenly realized that if she controlled her hunger a little bit, she could’ve feasted on more demons than just the one she was about to kill—the one trying to kill her at that exact moment.

Oh, that lightning….

After she had joined the Mansion, she was more than happy to lend a hand to the Sage of the Ages, the elven belle and renowned mage Dreyhilda Vanaseid. That woman truly did not act befitting her age: her curiosity was bottomless, and each discovery she made would make her act like a child again, as if she did not precede Scarlet’s own birth by nearly two thousand years. Hell, Sage Vanaseid had been alive since before the Demon King launched the Thousand-Year War, even. It’s really baffling how time works.

Sage Vanaseid was kind enough to tell Scarlet that she was observing how Scarlet herself used Dark Magic. Her Dark Magic was very intriguing, she said.

“And not just your Dark Magic, if I’m to be honest,” she said one day. “It’s the entirety of Dark Magic. It doesn’t make sense.”

Humanity originally developed magic in order to replicate what elves could do with spirits. In a sense, traditionally, most mages would say that human magics are inferior to elven magics because of this: that the human magic is but an imitation, a more modern invention that was uprooted from its base, historical form, something only knowable exclusively to the elves.

However, the Holy Empire’s deployed hands—the Priestesses of the Goddess—could sometimes use such alien arts that not even the elves could break through. The Upper Priestesses were often given either a gift of healing or a gift of sealing. The gift of healing was just as its name implied, the ability to heal, but the gift of sealing was the ability to entirely nullify all sorts of the arcane within an area. By all, it meant all. Neither human magic nor elven arts had any effect when the Holy Magic sealed them.

Naturally, people attributed this to the Goddess: that Her arts were holy and sacred, purer than any art conjured by the living or the dead. It was divine, so to speak.

But that didn’t explain how Holy Magic and Dark Magic played off of each other.

In fact, throwing Dark Magic into the equation just absolutely ruined every assumption there was about magic. Some Dark Magic users were weaker than the weakest magic—even humans just trained with the most basic of spellcrafts could defeat them in a magic contest. However, other Dark Art users, such as Scarlet herself, could cast such powerful Dark Magic that even Holy Magic would struggle to properly defeat it.

So what’s the rule?

How did it come to be like this?

Of course, Scarlet was curious. One of the perks of keeping her mind open was the realization that with the right questions asked, even more questions would arise. Not a lot of demons got to this point, most of them were too busy surviving or trying to look tough. If nothing else, it was frankly the main appeal for Scarlet when Suzuki offered to spare her life: that he would indulge her in her pursuit of knowledge.

The Sage of the Ages was just such a perfect partner for her desires, and this was Scarlet praising her entirely apart from her captivating visage. Scarlet had never discriminated between prey, but even she had to pause and admire the Sage’s figure, her perfectly sculpted face, her high cheekbones and sharp nose, her slightly slanted eyes and the way her lips curled when she smiled. Scarlet, being the demoness that she was, had always enjoyed being in the Sage’s company—her looks would draw Scarlet in, and her intellect would keep her hooked for more.

After months of toiling, of observing Scarlet perform Dark Magics of various tiers—along with observing the Hero doing the same in their backyard with his Holy Magic—Sage Vanaseid finally came to a conclusion: that the magic of humanity, the arts of the elves, and the Holy Magic were fundamentally distinct things. So distinct, even, that she proposed calling Holy Magic something else to remove the ‘magic’ from its name.

And, with the old hierarchy of magic theory dismantled, the Sage also proposed an alternative name for Dark Magic, to complement Holy Magic in its new place as ‘Miracles’.

She proposed the name ‘Cataclysm’.

It was apparently Heliodorian for ‘heavy flood’, from words literally meaning ‘a drowning wash’.

“Because that’s what it really is and what it really does!” the Sage explained excitedly.

“Whoa, calm down,” Scarlet said. “You just entered my room.”

“I just can’t wait to share it with you!” the giddy elf replied.

Her conclusion was that the hierarchy of magic existed not because of originality or anything, but instead because the arts were determined by the fabric upon which it functioned.

Magic, for example, was humanity’s attempt at deciphering elven arts. In other words, it’s not the same Arcane Arts—it was specifically tailor-made to adjust for the human incompatibility with sensing spirits, let alone making them do what elves could make them do.

Sage Vanaseid described it as something akin to learning a whole new language: the elves speak a certain language, naturally, with ease and fluidity. This language was also spoken by a certain intermediary, who would pass on what the elves had said to the final recipient. Humanity, since they couldn’t perceive this intermediary, decided to just learn how the language transformed from the intermediary’s language to the final recipient’s, and learned to speak this language in its most formal form—picking the vocabulary apart, learning the grammatical rules, and so on. In this case, the final recipient was the world itself, the entirety of our reality, while the intermediaries were spirits.

So while elven arts were based on communicating with spirits to make the world do something, humanity decided to learn the language of the universe itself, although they’re stuck with its very formal form as consequence, in order to make the world do the same things.

Due to this use of strictly formal grammatical constraints, humanity’s use of the language tended to be more redundant, took longer to complete, was very much systematic, very instrumental in nature, and generally less dynamic. This was called Magic.

The elves, however, could freely converse with the spirits according to cultural customs, and the spirits could make these things happen just as dynamically. It’s like conversing with old friends that they shared an intimate understanding with. It took a lot less time, was equally powerful to Magic at the very least, and also more dynamic in its use. This was called Spirit Arts.

Then, Sage Vanaseid’s eyes glinted. “But what you and Sir Tanaka use, Lady Scarlet, is something else entirely.”

“Wait—me and the Hero? So we use the same thing?”

“Not quite, but close!” Sage Vanaseid took a piece of paper out of her notes and folded it in two. “Imagine that this piece of paper is divine power. This is the very foundation of our universe, the very power that built our world. In essence, it’s our world itself, as manifested by the Goddess.”

She then lifted one side of the folded paper up.

“This side of the paper is the creative power of the Goddess. This is where the Goddess allows the world to function as most species know it—civilizations, innovations, cooperation, everything. This is what Sir Tanaka uses: the direct power of the Goddess. A Miracle, so to speak.”

Then, she lifted the other side up—the side folded inside, hidden from prying eyes.

“While this side is the destructive power of the Goddess, a different side to the same kind of power. I think you mentioned to me once that demonic folklore mentioned the Goddess discarding the entire demonkind from creation?”

Scarlet nodded. Sage Vanaseid nodded in return.

“This is that entire side—the discarded. So, in theory, it should be equal in standing with a Miracle—and since Miracles bend reality itself, that means Arcane Arts based on this very reality, like Magic or Spirit Arts, can’t do anything about it. However, since its opposite was based on destruction….”

“… it doesn’t necessarily follow the same rules as its creative counterpart,” Scarlet completed. Sage Vanaseid grinned.

“Precisely. And this is what I call Cataclysm—a power as equally divine as Miracles, just from a different source and following a different set of rules. That’s why it could sometimes be weaker than Magic, while in other cases, it could easily overwhelm Miracles of the Holy Empire.”

Scarlet found herself whistling. That’s an impressive theory, if what she read about human Magics were true. In fact, that would explain a lot of things about the arcane.

That said—if Cataclysm was so powerful, why was it so widespread among the demons? Meanwhile, Miracles were very rare. Only Upper Priestesses and the High Priestess could use them normally, and even then, their use was in very limited capacity. The Hero was the first person to truly be able to use Miracles with such a wide array of techniques, disappearing and reappearing between places and even performing very powerful attacks with it. Could it have something to do with the rules they touched upon? That Miracles and Cataclysms function differently?

Maybe Cataclysm was more widespread with the tradeoff being it’s generally weaker with only a few powerful wielders, while there were more Priestesses than there were strong Cataclysm users? Maybe the powers concentrated, so the rarer the users, the more powerful each user would be? The Sage did mention that this power was the very same power that the Goddess created the world with—was there truly only a finite amount?

Answers that make sense, followed by more questions that rose from the answers. That was how Scarlet knew the theory was worth listening to.

“So, wielding this,” Scarlet popped a little flame that immediately dissipated into thin air, “I’m bending the very fabric where we exist, meaning I can theoretically do … anything?”

“As long as you know the fundamentals for it, I suppose,” the Sage replied. “I believe that’s also how Sir Tanaka gained his powers. He was simply being creative because he didn’t know the limits of our world, but because his Miracles bend the very reality we exist in, the world makes it as if his most impossible wishes had always been possible to begin with.”

So, if she wanted to advance her abilities, Scarlet would have to think like someone so utterly alien, someone from way outside of this world.

She grinned. That sounded like a good way to pass the time.

*