Focus, Valerie commanded herself. She had no right to be afraid, not while her savior and lord, who had lifted her from helplessness and given shape to the useless thing she had been, waited upon the edge where even prayer grew thin and quiet.
She had been afraid so often in her life that fear had become almost familiar, a cold little room she could enter and endure, but this was different. She pressed her palms more firmly against Lord Meruem's brow and chest, though her fingers wanted to shake, and she forced herself to breathe through the copper reek of blood, through the sight of his ribs torn open and the terrible hollow where his heart had been. She had wept already, and weeping had not restored him. Turning every living soul she could reach into mindless monsters and hurling them like offerings into the path of his murderer had bought her minutes at most, and minutes were not mercy unless she used them.
Focus, she told herself again. You need to save your master. You need to save the one who saved you.
The [Sephiroth Graal] had given Valerie the ability to understand life and souls instinctively, with a terrible intimacy no mind had been made to bear. Some spoke of souls as though they were shining jewels or flames, but to Valerie they were all of those things and none of them, each soul a secret garden, a song sung once and never again in exactly the same way. She knew their contours when her power touched them. She knew where they bent under sorrow, where desire had grown like ivy over old wounds, and where the small, stubborn root of life clung even when the body wanted to surrender.
Her ever-crafty master, as was his nature, had looked upon this sacred and dreadful gift and seen at once how it might be exploited. He had seen the sanctity of life and wondered how it might be made into a weapon. Valerie had not liked that, truth be told. She had not liked the training, the prisoners, the criminals, the nameless lowlives whom nobody would miss, as Lord Meruem had called them with that mild tone of his.
She had not liked laying her hands upon bound men and feeling the shape of their souls recoil beneath her touch. No matter who they were, no matter what crimes they had committed, the soul remained the most intimate sanctuary a person possessed, and to violate it was, in Valerie's heart, the greatest evil one could commit against another living being. And still she had done it. She had done it each time he commanded, because he was her master and because she was his. She had transfigured souls, violated them, broken men into mindless monsters and reshaped their lives according to Lord Meruem's will.
She had wondered often, whether a girl could damn herself by obedience and still call that obedience love. She had wondered whether Lord Meruem knew how heavy the gift became in her hands. Of course he knew, she would think afterward, ashamed of the doubt. He knew almost everything. If he asked it of her, then there was a purpose. If there was purpose, then she could endure. She did not enjoy it, not once, but she did not regret it now, because if she had never learned how to drag a soul from one shape into another, then she would have knelt here helpless beside his corpse and watched the last ember of him go out.
She closed her eyes and sent her awareness outward for miles, searching for nearby souls before she dared begin the true work. She could not allow anyone to stumble upon her, in this delicate stage. There were fleeing lives in the distance, flickering lives whose shapes had been made monstrous by her own desperation; and farther still there were presences she could not safely examine without drawing attention. She waited until the search parties had passed and the immediate field grew thin enough. Only then did she open her eyes and look properly upon the body most precious to her.
Dead, the ignorant would have said, because his heart was gone and the bones around it had been torn open by the giant's hands. Valerie refused to allow death to claim her master. Lord Meruem had not saved her so that she might abandon him at the threshold.
Valerie laid one hand upon his forehead and the other near the ruined hollow of his chest, reverently, as though touching an altar from which the god had stepped away for only a moment. Then she began to sing. A was the song of life as the [Sephiroth Graal] understood it, a melody sent through blood, bone, memory, and soul.
She had never resurrected anyone before. But she knew this lay within the Graal's dominion, and therefore within reach if she was willing to pay whatever price the act demanded. There was no room for failure. Failure was a blasphemy, and Valerie, who had committed so many sins in obedience, would not commit that one.
She found herself floating in a void of darkness, a boundless inward night with no path to follow and no sky above, no direction at all by which a frightened girl might orient herself. This, she understood, was where Lord Meruem's soul had been housed within his body. Devils did not have an afterlife and the inner chamber of his being had begun to empty into a great devouring absence. She could feel it around her, immense and patient, gnawing at the edges of what remained. The dark had appetite. Somewhere far away, or perhaps very near, the voices began to murmur.
They always came when she used the Graal too deeply. Mad voices, the whispering chorus of life understood too completely and sanity strained too thin. Sometimes they laughed. Sometimes they begged. Sometimes they told her secrets about the body, the soul, the womb, and the tiny doors between living and dying that no mind should notice. Tonight they were louder than ever, pressing against her thoughts with wet little fingers, and Valerie knew that resurrection would be far more painful than ordinary healing or transfiguration.
To call someone back from death was to walk into the place where the world insisted no path should be, and the Graal punished such trespass by opening the user wider than any soul was meant to open. It did not matter. Compared to pouring the chalice of brimming life into her master's broken heart, a little pain was nothing. If her mind cracked, it would crack in his service. If there was a price, she would pay it gladly and call the pain blessed.
Find the gradient, she told herself. There must be a focus point. There must be some remaining warmth, some final knot of identity around which life can be woven again. He has not been dead long. He has not gone beyond reach. He cannot have gone beyond reach.
Her spirit toiled onward through the great emptiness, through the untenanted house that had been Meruem's body and being. She followed a subtler inclination within the Graal, the way a root might know water beneath stone. The void gnawed at her soul as she moved, cold and terrible, and more than once she felt pieces of memory tug loose from her like threads from a sleeve.
She would have given all of them, if the path demanded it. Lord Meruem had chosen her when she was nothing useful to anyone else. Lord Meruem had looked upon the ruined, frightened vessel that others despised and had made of her a tool worthy of being held. Was that kindness? Was it ownership? Was there truly any difference that mattered now?
Then she saw it. A small ember burned in the dark, no larger than the flame of a candle nearly spent, breathing its last faint warmth before the great void swallowed it forever; fragile enough that Valerie's own breath might have extinguished it had she possessed breath in that place.
She reached for the ember, and the darkness surged as though insulted by the attempt while the voices of the Graal erupted into furious screams. Valerie sang louder. She sang the song of blood remembering its road, of bone knitting to bone, of flesh obeying the soul's old shape. She sang of the chalice overflowing, of roots drinking after drought, of the first breath of infants and the last breath denied. She sang what the Graal placed within her, pouring into the ember every trembling fragment of reverence she possessed.
The ember flickered weakly, but Valerie gently cupped it between both hands and breathed new life into it.
The world was cold.
Meruem woke with a violent gasp, air flooding back into lungs that had no business drawing breath again. For a brief instant every muscle in his body seized as though uncertain whether it still belonged to the living. Then the sensation returned all at once. The weight of his limbs. The slow pulse of demonic power moving through veins that should have been empty.
"Rise slowly, my King, and be at peace."
The voice seemed very far away at first, muffled and indistinct, as though he were hearing it through layers of water. It took several moments before he recognized it as Valerie's.
"I died, didn't I?" he asked calmly, unbothered by the fact. Dying, as experiences went, was profoundly unpleasant.
He slowly rose from the massive stone slab upon which he had been lying and surveyed his surroundings with quiet curiosity. They appeared to be deep within some vast underground cavern untouched by any natural source of light, but the darkness posed no obstacle to him whatsoever. His devil's eyes pierced the blackness effortlessly, allowing him to see every crack in the stone walls and every shadow lurking within the cave. It was only after satisfying himself that he was no longer in immediate danger that he turned his attention toward Valerie.
She stood several paces away, trembling violently. Tears streamed freely down her face as though some great dam within her had finally broken. For a moment she simply stared at him, her wide eyes searching his face as if terrified he might vanish again should she blink.
"Master!"
She threw herself into him with enough force to nearly stagger him, clutching him desperately as sobs wracked her body.
"You're alive…" she cried. "You're alive… Thank God… Thank God…I thought I lost you. I thought I failed you. I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't save you. I watched him…" Her voice broke into a fresh wave of tears. "I watched him kill you. I watched him tear your heart from your chest and there was nothing I could do. Nothing. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have protected you. I should have died before allowing that to happen. Please forgive me, Master. Please…"
"It's alright," he said quietly. "I'm here."
Meruem took a moment to return the embrace and softly reassure the crying girl that he was, in fact, perfectly fine now, though accomplishing even that much proved somewhat difficult. He was admittedly more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of her reaction, which seemed wholly disproportionate to the situation from his perspective, even if another part of him could understand why witnessing someone's heart being ripped from their chest might leave a lasting impression upon an observer.
"What happened?" he asked calmly after she had finally managed to settle herself enough to speak without breaking down again.
Valerie slowly raised her head from his chest, her eyes still glistening with tears that stubbornly refused to disappear.
"After the giant killed you," she said softly, her voice carrying the lingering tremor of remembered terror, "I transfigured every man and woman who stood in my way inside the Utsusemi Agency's hideout and ordered them to swarm him. They could not truly stop him, and I knew they could not, but there were enough of them that eventually he was forced to acknowledge their existence. When his attention shifted away from you for even a few moments, I took your body and escaped before he could realize what had happened. I brought you here and remained hidden while I tried to bring you back."
He remembered his heart being ripped out in vivid detail and found that it remained an experience he had no particular desire to repeat in the future. His hand drifted toward his chest almost unconsciously, his fingers brushing against skin that was now completely whole and untouched by injury, and the absurdity of that realization caused Valerie to giggle softly through the remnants of her tears while he himself felt a faint amusement stirring within him.
What a humbling experience, he thought with dry amusement. The disparity between him and Naburazazd had been so vast that even now, with the benefit of hindsight, he struggled to imagine any realistic sequence of events in which the battle could have ended differently given his current level of strength. No wonder the gods decided to drown the earth.
Though, judging by recent events, a few members of that glorious species had apparently slipped through the cracks. Meruem found himself rapidly losing respect for the gods. For beings with such grand ambitions, their execution leaves something to be desired. One would think that if they were going to commit genocide, they would at least have the decency to finish the job properly.
"Where are we now?" he asked as he rose fully to his feet and flexed his muscles, testing his body for any lingering weakness and finding none whatsoever, which was reassuring because one never truly knew what side effects might accompany the process of dying and subsequently returning to life.
"We're deep underground in the same place where you fought the giant, Master," Valerie answered dutifully.
"Why are we still inside the Utsusemi's pocket dimension?" he asked curiously, rolling his shoulders and finding them just as responsive as before, much to his satisfaction.
"At first I was going to take you directly to our meeting place," Valerie began softly. "But then I remembered Rossweisse's rune magic and how she could locate anyone she wished, and I started wondering what if the giant could do something similar. He had your heart and bones after all, and who is to say someone as powerful as him would not know some method of using them the same way Rossweisse uses her runes to find people. If I brought you directly back to our hideout, then I would be leading him straight to it, and to everyone else who might still be there as well. It would have been disastrous, so I decided against it."
"Oh?" Meruem looked surprised by the explanation. "But why this place and not any other?"
"Because," Valerie replied nervously, sounding as though she was worried she had gotten something wrong, "if he really can use some kind of tracking spell like Rossweisse's, then I thought maybe I could throw him off the same way you tricked the Lords of Darkness back in the forest. During your fight with that giant, you used so much demonic energy that it soaked into the entire battlefield. It was everywhere. I thought that if someone tried to track you through your demonic power, all they'd find would be traces of you all over the place. The spell would pick up your energy everywhere at once and have a hard time figuring out which one was actually you and which ones were just leftovers from the fight. So I brought you as far underground as I could while still staying inside that area where your energy had contaminated everything."
That was actually some impressively quick thinking from his bishop. Very good, in fact.
He had always privately believed that Valerie was the slowest member of his peerage, though he had never been cruel enough to say such a thing to her face, and he had always attributed many of her shortcomings to the simple reality of her upbringing. As a dhampir she had been neglected, abused, and denied virtually every opportunity for proper education or preparation for life, which had left countless gaps in her development that should never have existed in the first place. The Tepes faction, in their infinite wisdom, appeared to regard an intelligent and capable woman as some manner of existential threat, and the predictable result was generations of women deliberately prevented from reaching their full potential.
"Did I make a mistake, Master?" she asked hesitantly.
"Not in the least. You did very well," he praised sincerely, and the relief that immediately appeared on her face made it clear how much weight she had been carrying while waiting for his judgment. "You might have saved everyone's lives, assuming they are alive at all. To think I would find a true Nephilim here of all places…Hahahaha, how interesting!"
He was not ashamed of his defeat. Why would he be? Shame was for men who believed themselves finished, for those fragile souls who mistook a single stumble for the end of their journey. If anything, Meruem found the experience invigorating. The Nephilim had crushed him with ease, and all he felt was a burning excitement. The gap between them was vast, a towering mountain that seemed impossible to climb. Good. Mountains existed to be conquered. After all, he intended to become the Emperor of Hell. Who would ever expect such a throne would be handed to him after a pleasant stroll through a garden? That destiny would bow its head simply because he desired it? The very thought was laughable.
True, he had come disturbingly close to permanent death. He had felt the cold breath of oblivion brushing against his neck, and he had disliked the sensation immensely. But dwelling on it served no purpose. Fear was useful only when it taught a lesson. Meruem had no intention of carrying unnecessary baggage. Nabuazazd was another stone lying in the road ahead. And what kind of pathetic failure would Meruem be if he allowed a single loss to break his spirit? A man who expected victory every time he stepped onto the battlefield was a fool. The only sin was to remain the same person today that he had been yesterday, that was the true disgrace.
"A true Nephilim?" Valerie repeated slowly.
"They're the original offspring of the daughters of man and the angels sent to guard them," Meruem explained with a trace of amusement lingering in his voice. "They're one of the many reasons the gods flooded the earth in the distant past, and after experiencing one of those things firsthand, I can only lament that the gods performed such a remarkably poor job of it. A normal Nephilim is to a true Nephilim what a monkey is to a man."
"It makes sense that only such a legendary creature could defeat you," Valerie said with unmistakable admiration. "But if the gods wanted the true Nephilim extinct, then how did one manage to escape?"
"The gods are not infallible," he replied calmly. "It wouldn't be particularly surprising for a handful of true Nephilim to conceal themselves and survive the Flood. What surprises me is that the gods apparently never bothered conducting a proper search afterward. You'd think that after flooding the entire world to exterminate a species, they might dedicate a little effort toward confirming the species had actually been exterminated. Evidently that expectation was asking far too much from a collection of incompetent morons."
"Because of their incompetence, you almost died, Master," Valerie said angrily before her expression softened into curiosity. "You died for a moment, however brief. How did it feel? Death, I mean?"
"Nothing after the initial pain of my heart being ripped out," he replied truthfully.
Having already died once before, it was hardly a novel experience for him, although there had been at least one notable improvement compared to the previous occasion. His entire life had not flashed before his eyes this time. Small progress was still progress, he reflected with dark amusement, and one had to appreciate incremental self-improvement wherever it could be found.
Valerie looked puzzled by the answer, clearly uncertain what to make of it, though she ultimately nodded and accepted it regardless.
"Master, perhaps I should inform you that the giant didn't spend much time searching for us after I managed to escape, and he disappeared in great haste as though we no longer mattered," she explained quickly.
"Most likely because of the attacks on the other hideouts," Meruem said thoughtfully as he considered the implications. "Perhaps we should avoid being overly optimistic regarding their survival if that thing managed to reach them before they escaped."
He was the strongest member of that rescue operation, and he did not have even the slightest chance of victory against Naburazazd. If half of his servants survived the catastrophe unfolding around them, he would already consider the outcome a success.
"Please don't say that, Master. I am sure they will all survive."
The hopeful conviction in her voice contrasted sharply with his own assessment of the situation. Meruem said nothing in response. There was little value in arguing against hope, even when he found it misplaced.
"Did you leave Azrael there?" he asked casually.
"I… yes, I did, Master," Valerie admitted nervously. "I panicked after seeing the giant appear out of nowhere and take you with him. I thought something terrible might happen to you, and I rushed after you as quickly as I could. I am sorry."
"No, you did well," Meruem said with a faint smile. "Who knows how far Naburazazd would have gone if you had tried to free her."
Even if Valerie could heal the seraph's injuries, breaking the divine chains binding her was another matter entirely. Meruem himself was not sure he could accomplish such a feat, and he doubted Valerie would have fared any better against restraints powerful enough to imprison a being of Azrael's stature.
"What does the Nephilim want, Master?" Valerie asked curiously. "I mean, kidnapping a seraph of Heaven, experimenting on all those people, they are obviously working toward something extraordinary, and if the Nephilim are truly as powerful as you say, then it must be a great thing they are working on."
"Your guess is as good as mine," Meruem replied with a shrug. "The Utsusemi Agency, I understand. They wish to recreate the Independent Sacred Gears, and the Cult of Mikaboshi were promised a weapon that might help free their great lord. Those motivations are straightforward enough. What I don't understand is what Naburazazd gains from any of it. Surely he's not dedicating centuries of effort merely to advance Sacred Gear research. He would not need Azrael for that. Someone has been working toward something for a very long time, but the question is why? and for what purpose?"
"What are we going to do now?"
Hmm, that was the question, wasn't it?
He had miscalculated rather badly. Worse, he had acted on incomplete information, which had ultimately resulted in his death. An unfortunate consequence, all things considered. He had assumed that the Utsusemi Agency possessed nobody capable of truly threatening him, and even in the unlikely event that such an individual existed, he had been utterly convinced that he would overcome them just as he had overcome the Lords of Darkness and Diodora Astaroth. Looking back, he could finally identify the flaw in his reasoning.
He had become too accustomed to winning.
Too accustomed to being the strongest presence in the room. Somewhere along the way he had forgotten what it felt like to encounter a being who outclassed him so completely that resistance bordered on irrelevance. The sensible course of action would be to get as far away from this entire affair as possible and wash his hands of the Utsusemi Agency altogether, because it had proven itself vastly more dangerous than he remembered from his previous life. He had been certain for instance that Satanael wouldn't act so quickly or so directly after the attack on the Utsusemi hideout.
Why? What exactly had that certainty been based on?
He paused to consider the matter and found the answer rather embarrassing. Had he really relied on a fictional story from his previous life and unconsciously accepted its events as fact?
How foolish.
He had spent so much effort avoiding dependence upon that particular advantage, only to fall into the trap regardless. Still, the lesson had only cost him his life, so things could have gone worse.
A true Nephilim was simply too great a risk to confront directly and not something he could reliably overcome at his current level. Meruem was brave, but he understood the difference between bravery and stupidity, and charging at an ancient monster capable of ripping his heart out before he could react fell firmly into the latter category. And yet...
It irritated him. Despite every rational argument urging caution and retreat, he found himself unable to let the matter rest. It irritated him that he had been so helpless. It irritated him that he had been unable to do anything meaningful against Naburazazd. Most of all, it irritated him that his survival had depended upon another person. It irritated him that if Valerie had not intervened, he would truly be dead.
He, who prided himself on his self-reliance, had needed someone else to save him. His continued existence had become contingent upon another person's actions. He disliked that immensely. In fact, he hated it.
And so, like any rational man who had recently returned from the dead, he naturally concluded that he should hunt down the being responsible for killing him and kill him in return. It only seemed fair. Yes. The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded.
"We'll go kill a true Nephilim," Meruem declared simply. "It is quite rude, you know, to kill a man and not even have the decency to make sure he really stays dead."
They teleported directly into the attic that he had designated as their meeting place, and Meruem immediately raised an eyebrow at the scene that greeted him upon arrival. He had naturally concealed both himself and Valerie before entering, unwilling to risk revealing their presence before determining whether the hideout was secure, and so he observed the room unseen while quietly taking stock of the situation.
His Queen, Rossweisse, lay atop a mattress entirely naked while cradling an equally naked Natsume Minagawa in her arms. The young woman was unconscious, and a glance through his activated [Alpha Stigma] was enough to reveal the nature of her injury at once. The wound in her stomach carried the unmistakable residue of light, the sort of damage a Fallen Angel might inflict, and Rossweisse was clearly dedicating her full attention toward healing it.
The entire attic possessed the mournful air of a funeral. Kuroka paced restlessly from one side of the room to the other and then back again, only to repeat the process moments later while muttering beneath her breath and fidgeting incessantly, her agitation so obvious that it was almost painful to watch.
Tobio Ikuse sat near the mattress with his eyes fixed upon the floor, looking thoroughly defeated, while Lavinia Reni occupied a chair some distance away and appeared considerably calmer than the others, though her posture suggested she was prepared to attack at a moment's notice if circumstances demanded it.
"AHHHHHHHHH!"
Meruem turned toward the source of the scream and immediately discovered Leonardo enjoying himself immensely. The artist had chained a man who appeared to be somewhere in his forties to a chair, though the unfortunate captive had been altered so extensively through torture that recognizing him as human required a degree of charitable interpretation.
Leonardo was currently occupied with the delicate task of removing the man's fingernails one by one while the victim expressed his opinions regarding the procedure at considerable volume. Judging by the screaming, Meruem concluded that the man did not appreciate the makeover.
It was reassuring in a way. He had entered the hideout expecting casualties and perhaps even total annihilation after witnessing Naburazazd's strength firsthand, and yet a surprising number of his people remained alive. His gaze drifted around the room once more, mentally counting survivors, though he quickly noticed one conspicuous absence. Kouki Samejima was nowhere to be seen.
After observing the room for several moments with Valerie standing quietly beside him, Meruem ultimately decided that the hideout was secure enough and allowed the concealment spell to fall away from his body like a serpent shedding its skin.
Kuroka was the first to notice. She spun around instantly, her body reacting before her mind had fully processed what she had seen, clearly prepared to attack the sudden intruder, but the moment her eyes met his own she froze completely. Her golden eyes widened and for a fraction of a second she simply stared. Then she moved. She crossed the room almost instantly and threw herself into him with enough force to make her intentions abundantly clear as she wrapped both arms around him and clung to him as though letting go might somehow cause him to disappear again.
The others reacted a moment later. Their attention shifted toward the source of Kuroka's sudden movement, and one by one expressions of shock spread across their faces as they stared at him and Valerie. Meruem could hardly blame them. The last information they had received regarding him probably involved his death. Seeing a supposedly deceased man casually appear in front of them was bound to provoke a reaction. Unlike certain individuals, however, he had managed the feat without requiring three full days.
Among them all, Lavinia looked the most stunned. Her mouth hung slightly open as she stared at him with the expression of someone witnessing a ghost for the very first time. Leonardo, meanwhile, appeared the least surprised of anyone present. The artist merely glanced toward him as though nothing particularly unusual had occurred and responded with a wide grin before returning his attention to his prisoner.
"Don't ever do that again!" Kuroka buried her face against his chest as she spoke, her voice breaking repeatedly between sobs. "You scared me! You scared me so much. When they told us what happened, when they said you were dead, I tried not to believe it. I kept telling myself you would come back somehow because you always come back. You always win. You always have some ridiculous plan. But then I saw that monster, and for the first time I couldn't convince myself everything would be fine. I thought you were really gone. I thought I would never see you again."
Meruem gently stroked her black hair while returning the embrace, and despite himself he found the situation faintly amusing.
"Did you really believe that killing me would be enough to make me stay dead?" he asked with a grin.
"Shut up, you idiot!" Kuroka replied while continuing to cling to him with all the determination of someone making up for lost time. "When I saw that monster appear, I gave up every hope of you or Valerie surviving. I would never have doubted you if it were anything else. I have seen you do impossible things before. I have watched you overcome enemies that should have killed you. But that giant…" Her voice trembled. "That giant felt real. Every instinct I had was screaming that nobody could survive something like that. I was terrified. I was so terrified."
Then, almost as suddenly as she had attached herself to him, Kuroka released him and immediately threw herself at Valerie instead. The dhampir barely had enough time to react before Kuroka wrapped her in an equally fierce embrace and began showering her face with kisses while tears continued streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm so glad you're okay too, Valerie," Kuroka said as her sobs gradually began to subside.
"M-me too," Valerie replied while awkwardly returning the hug. "I-I'm happy you're okay too, I mean."
Meruem wondered whether all nekomata were this emotional. Despite Kuroka's playful exterior and carefree demeanor, she possessed an extraordinarily sensitive heart beneath it all. The intensity of her reaction, coupled with Valerie's earlier breakdown, stirred a certain sense of satisfaction within him that he was reluctant to examine too closely.
A darker corner of his mind quietly rejoiced at the sight. Loyalty, devotion, dependence, attachment, these things were cultivated patiently over time through carefully maintained bonds. Seeing both girls so profoundly affected by the mere possibility of his death was a reassuring reminder that those efforts had borne fruit exactly as intended.
He walked slowly toward his queen, who was visibly relieved to see him alive, though she did not throw herself at him as Kuroka had because her attention was focused upon healing Natsume. Crouching beside the mattress, he leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss upon Rossweisse's forehead, earning a satisfied hum from the Valkyrie.
His attention then shifted toward his newly acquired [Rook]. Natsume Minagawa was unconscious and occasionally trembled as she clung instinctively to Rossweisse beneath the blanket. Meruem carefully pulled the blanket aside and examined the wound in her stomach. Observing with his [Alpha Stigma] once more, he quickly determined that the light poison left behind by the Fallen Angel attack had ceased spreading entirely, though complete recovery would still require time even with the healing effects provided through prolonged physical contact among devils.
He motioned for Valerie to approach.
The Dhampir immediately stepped forward and knelt beside Natsume's unconscious form before placing her hands upon the girl's body. The effect was instantaneous. The hole in Natsume's stomach closed before their eyes, flesh and tissue restoring themselves within moments until no trace of injury remained, as though the wound had never existed in the first place.
Tobio Ikuse stared in utter disbelief.
"She's okay now, Tobio, don't worry," Valerie reassured him softly. "She just needs some rest now. All her injuries are healed."
For several moments Tobio simply stared at Natsume's restored body before relief finally overwhelmed him.
"Thank you," he said hoarsely. "Thank you so much. I thought… I thought she was going to die. I didn't know what to do. Thank you, Valerie. Truly."
Meruem exchanged a glance with Rossweisse, who had risen from the mattress and was now slowly putting her clothes back on while wearing a satisfied smile.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Things didn't go as planned," Rossweisse replied before proceeding to explain how the Utsusemi Agency had somehow known they were coming and had prepared a trap in advance, how they had been captured, and how the situation had descended into chaos until Lavinia arrived with news of Meruem's death, shortly after which the giant had appeared.
Meruem listened quietly. He could sense there were details she was deliberately omitting, though he decided that now was not the appropriate moment to press the issue. Rossweisse was not someone who concealed information without reason. When she believed the time was right, she would tell him herself.
"Would you happen to know what the giant creature was, Master?" Rossweisse asked curiously.
"A true Nephilim," he replied simply.
Rossweisse's eyes widened dramatically. "A T-true Nephilim, Master?! But I thought those beings were…"
"Extinct?" Meruem finished for her. "So did I, but evidently not. The gods' incompetence knows no bounds."
Leonardo snickered at that remark, drawing Meruem's attention toward him and, more specifically, toward the unfortunate prisoner currently occupying his attention.
"Who is that?" Meruem asked as he slowly approached.
"Hanezou Himejima," Leonardo replied simply. "He's the leader of the agency or something like that. I captured him while we were escaping. I've been trying to make him sing ever since, but he refuses to use the microphone."
A grin slowly spread across Meruem's face. Capturing someone of Hanezou's importance was the last thing he had expected. As the leader of the agency and a direct subordinate of Naburazazd, he should have been among the most heavily protected individuals present.
"Now this is what I am talking about," Meruem said proudly as he looked at Leonardo. "I was dying to get some answers to a few questions."
Doumon Kazuhisa had known surprisingly little about the deeper workings of the organization despite being one of its leading researchers. He had only fragmented knowledge regarding the agency's goals and had known virtually nothing about Naburazazd himself. Hanezou Himejima was an entirely different matter. As the leader of the agency, he would have worked directly alongside Naburazazd and participated in the organization's highest level discussions. If anyone possessed crucial information regarding their plans, motivations, and long-term objectives, it would undoubtedly be the man currently chained to that chair.
"Master, what are we going to do now?" Rossweisse asked curiously. "We didn't expect a true Nephilim would be involved in this plot. This is obviously far beyond our capability to deal with. We must retreat or we will all die for real."
"What?!" Tobio shouted in shock. "How can you say that, Rossweisse-san?! How can you say that we should abandon my classmates and let them be abused just because of some Nephilim or whatever the hell he is? They killed Kouki!"
"And if you continue to challenge them, you will soon be too," Rossweisse replied coldly. "Do you have the slightest idea what a true Nephilim is even capable of? No, you clearly don't understand what exactly we are dealing with here. These are beings whose names survive only in whispers and fragments because entire ages of history were drowned trying to erase them. They were monsters so powerful and so utterly beyond reason that the gods themselves abandoned their pride, united their rivalries, and chose to drown the entire world rather than allow the true Nephilim to continue walking upon it. They looked upon every kingdom, every city, every innocent life, and decided that all of it was an acceptable sacrifice if it meant exterminating that race. That is what we're up against. That's the kind of creature that killed our king once. What hope do we have against something of that caliber?"
Tobio stared at Rossweisse with bloodshot eyes filled with grief and desperation. Then he turned toward Meruem, his gaze burning with determination.
"You gave me your word that you would help me save my friends, or were those empty promises?" he asked with enough venom to earn Meruem's amusement.
He is strong willed, that one, Meruem thought with mild admiration. Very strong willed. Very emotional. Very suicidal.
The sharp sound of a slap echoed throughout the attic.
Meruem raised an eyebrow with interest. Kuroka had crossed the distance in an instant and struck Tobio across the face hard enough to send him sprawling onto the floor.
"What do you think you're saying?!" Kuroka demanded furiously. "Trying to guilt trip my master? Your own king just came back from the dead and you want him to fight the same thing that killed him again?! Do you even hear yourself? Do you want him to die for you? Do you want Valerie to die too? Do you want all of us to die because you can't think past your own grief for five minutes? We almost died, all of us! And the first thing out of your mouth is demanding more sacrifices! Get your head out of your asshole!"
"Relax, Kuroka," Meruem said with a chuckle. "I'm sure Tobio didn't mean it that way. He is simply overwhelmed and emotional after losing a friend. Such things can make people say foolish things. But he would never suggest that we should all die merely to save his friends... would ypu, Tobio?"
The boy suddenly looked ashamed and could not bring himself to meet Meruem's eyes. "I'm sorry," he apologized softly. "I didn't mean it that way. I would never want any of you to come to harm because of my selfishness."
"But indeed, you are right," Meruem said with a smile that immediately captured everyone's attention. "The Agency has killed Kouki Samejima, a member of my household. A greater insult could scarcely be imagined. One of my own has been murdered under my protection and by enemies who believed themselves beyond consequence. To retreat now with our tails between our legs would be a stain upon my authority as the King of House Beleth. Such an affront cannot be ignored. Such a debt cannot remain unpaid. No one kills someone who belongs to me and continues living as though nothing happened. No one!"
"So we're going to fight the giant?" Leonardo asked with a grin, looking almost excited by the prospect.
"Yes," Meruem declared simply, his smile widening ever so slightly. "We're going to finish what the gods started."
AN: Having someone who can resurrect you every time you die sure is convenient, and Meruem being Meruem simply doesn't know how to back down from a challenge anyway.
Advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: abeltargaryen