"The trash in this house just keeps piling up."
Solitär stared at the uninvited guest, her expression completely blank.
...Who could have imagined that the one revered throughout the Demon Race as the [War God] would be sitting there after dinner, idly fiddling with his cutlery like a man whose mind had gone somewhere else entirely.
The scene was objectively absurd — but she was in no mood to appreciate it.
"Solitär, you seem rather unhappy," Fíliya said, glancing over at her with calm, unhurried eyes.
"Isn't that obvious? Why did you drag him back here? I have absolutely no desire to see him sitting at my table."
"Mm. Because I promised to show him the Demon Race's future way of living," Fíliya explained, her tone completely offhand.
Meanwhile, Rivale had clearly noticed the naked contempt in Solitär's gaze — and found it far too interesting to let pass.
"Oh? I'm not even worthy of a seat at the table...? I don't recall ever offending you, Solitär. Or perhaps the current Demon King governs by a matriarchal system?"
Rivale shot back at her with obvious relish.
"Tch."
Solitär let out an audible click of her tongue and was already opening her mouth to fire back — when Fíliya cut in, shutting down the exchange before it could go anywhere.
"Both of you, enough. Rivale — you've had sufficient time to enjoy domestic life. Go and do your job."
Fíliya's face was completely unreadable as she issued the order.
Inwardly, she was marveling at just how thick Rivale's skin truly was. It had taken no small amount of effort to beat him into submission — and she fully intended to make every bit of that effort worth her while.
"Yes, yes..."
Rivale let out a quiet, resigned sigh and set his cutlery down on the table, then rose and turned toward the door.
"Round up all the demons who've been dragging their feet on the Demon King's orders, then herd the lower-ranked ones to the Demon King's Castle like a farmer driving pigs and sheep... What a mind-numbingly dull assignment."
Grumbling the whole while, Rivale nonetheless raised his weapon in one clean, practiced motion — and vanished from the room in a flash.
...
"So that's what you meant by your [muscle]."
With that insufferable figure finally gone, Solitär's expression softened by the smallest degree.
"Of course. He's perfectly suited for it, don't you think?" Fíliya replied, her voice carrying no particular feeling.
"It's not a question of 'suited for it'... That's Rivale. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I honestly couldn't have imagined him obeying anyone... Are you genuinely invincible now?"
Beside her, Aura looked visibly stunned.
Invincible, hm? What a wonderful word. I rather like it.
A faint, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of Fíliya's mouth as Aura's words settled over her.
Even Tot — who gave every impression of being interested in nothing whatsoever outside of eating and sleeping — turned to look, her eyes carrying a rare flicker of curiosity.
"Indeed. How did you manage it, My Lord Demon King? 'Lil' Ri' isn't exactly the easiest to bring to heel."
Lil' Ri...
The nickname gave Fíliya pause, and she found herself frowning. Applying a cutesy diminutive to a man who stood nearly two meters tall was... genuinely revolting.
"'Bring to heel?' Wrong. I beat it into him. He's genuinely difficult to handle — simply killing him would've been far easier. Making him submit without taking his life, though... that was the hard part."
"...Is that so."
Solitär's brow furrowed slightly, and she began to fix Fíliya with a probing, analytical stare.
What she most wanted to know right now was... just how had Fíliya ascended to what she was today?
Could simply changing one's race really bring about a transformation this absurd?
Solitär found her mind drifting back involuntarily to those three months when Fíliya had lain unconscious. What, exactly, had she experienced during that sleep — to have soared so impossibly high, so suddenly, becoming in one leap a force capable of reshaping the world and bending the course of history?
"Mm. I can tell you're very curious."
Fíliya snapped her head around and met Solitär's eyes directly.
"...Stop peeking into my thoughts."
Solitär startled, then immediately shot Fíliya a look of pure, undisguised displeasure.
"Hmm... I wasn't, though? Everything you're thinking is written right there on your face."
Fíliya looked at her with an expression of complete innocence, then continued.
"Every member of the Demon Race is born with an innate Talent Magic — isn't that right? It seems I'm no exception, even having become one after the fact."
Fíliya's tone remained perfectly calm — but in Solitär's chest, those words sent a shockwave crashing through.
Was Fíliya saying that the [Talent] she had acquired was the key to her sudden, explosive transformation?
Solitär stared at her, unblinking — a look that said, very clearly: stop stringing me along.
The others present seemed equally gripped by the question.
So Fíliya spoke again.
"Mm. As for what I obtained... I'm honestly not sure how to name it. For now, I'll call it the [Magic to Inscribe One's Being into Every Passing Moment]."
Fíliya offered the name with a tone that was faintly, deliberately cryptic.
"The Magic to Inscribe One's Being into Every Passing Moment..."
Solitär murmured the name quietly under her breath — but her face remained full of confusion. After all, who could possibly divine what this magic actually did just from the riddle of its name?
"Mm. In rough terms — I have become part of the laws of the world itself, woven into the very timescale of this world's existence. My [Being] is engraved into every single moment, every passing second — and that is the source of my [Immortality]."
"But that's not all this magic does. You see — from the very instant the world was born, I already [Existed] within it. And for the Demon Race, as long as one's age keeps growing, mana naturally grows alongside it without any need for cultivation... Mm. After all, the Demon Race is mana's most beloved."
"In other words..."
Hearing such a staggering truth spoken from Fíliya's own lips, even this gathering of formidable, world-weary Great Demons found their eyes going wide.
"Mm... Yes. To all of you, I was only asleep for three months. But to me — it was like living through... a vast and sweeping history. Starting from the Age of the Gods, one moment at a time, one second at a time, all the way to the present — and I gained mana equal to every single one of those years."
"Mm. Come to think of it — compared to me now, every one of you is more like an unweaned child. I am this world's true [Elder]."
Fíliya finished the sentence with a light, quiet laugh.
Lady Solitär, however, was clearly not buying a single word of it.
"You spent all that time inside some mental world... and now you want to lord it over everyone?"
"Hmm? You're that reluctant to give up your [Big Sister] status? Swapping positions, I'd say, wouldn't change much."
"It changes everything!"
Solitär declared her position with absolute, iron-clad certainty.
The idea that she should accept Fíliya as factually older than herself — that was a complete impossibility. Such foundational logic could not simply be overturned on a whim.
"Fine..."
Seeing that Solitär was immovable, Fíliya let the matter drop.
In any case, the heights she had reached were the product of extraordinary coincidence — as though at every critical juncture, some strange and perfect anomaly had slotted into place, ultimately producing a result no one could have predicted.
And there was something she had not fully disclosed to Solitär and the others — something like... the in-mind shop that had once allowed her to exchange accumulated emotional points for magic. It was completely gone now.
After she had sent her proclamation out to the human world, the emotional points she had gathered had swiftly lost all meaning. The numbers had grown to a scale where she could simply obtain whatever magic she desired — and so the shop had ceased to have any purpose.
She had emptied it of everything. Every last spell. Except for the [Future Sight]-type magic she still loathed with every fiber of her being.
Now, in the most literal sense of the word, she was omnipotent.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Re:Zero: Wrath Route Yandere Emilia Watches the Projection
✅ New releases are dropping, plus get exclusive content & updates.
✅ Help us unlock community rewards:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone