Chapter 1544 - 219 - Sins Vs. Leon (6)
When I was about to reach her, I was blocked by a slime copy of Beelzebub, so I jumped back and moved away.
"Scurrying around like a cockroach. I guess you really are the Vessel of Lilith, huh?" Levi said as she looked at me with an expression that was somehow both amused and irritated at the same time.
The look on her face reminded me that she had probably thought back to her battle with Lilith. From the way she was staring at me, it seemed like Lilith must have acted exactly the way I was acting now, constantly moving around and refusing to stay in one place long enough for them to pin her down. Judging from that reaction alone, I had a feeling chasing Lilith around in the past had been an absolute headache for all of them. Looking at the slight twitch near Levi’s eye, I almost wanted to laugh because it looked like those memories still annoyed her even now.
Meanwhile, Beelzebub was already making her move without wasting even a second.
Her slime copies spread across the battlefield one after another, multiplying until there were far too many of them to count at a glance. They slowly formed a circle around me, closing every possible route of escape as though they had no intention of letting me slip away again. They weren’t rushing toward me recklessly either. Instead, they moved carefully, making sure there wasn’t a single opening I could exploit. It honestly felt less like I was being surrounded by monsters and more like I was being boxed in by a group of very patient hunters who had already learned from their previous mistakes.
"We just have to overwhelm him with numbers," she said calmly. "It’s the same thing we did to Mother back then."
I honestly found it a little funny that they were still insisting on comparing me to Lilith.
I had already told them multiple times that I wasn’t going to become Lilith. I’d made it perfectly clear that I had no intention of following the same path she did, and I had been actively trying to convince them that I wasn’t her. At some point, I started wondering if they simply enjoyed ignoring everything I said. It was honestly starting to feel like I was arguing with people who had already muted me before the conversation even began.
Apparently, none of that mattered to any of them anyway.
It didn’t seem like they had any intention of listening to me at all. Whatever image they had already built in their heads had become the only truth they were willing to accept. Facts, explanations, and common sense had apparently decided to take a very long vacation without telling anyone. It was almost impressive how determined they were to misunderstand me.
Satania continued glaring at me with the same burning rage she had shown from the very beginning. The hatred in her eyes hadn’t faded in the slightest, and from the way she looked at me, it was obvious she had absolutely no plans of backing down. She looked like she had already replayed my death in her imagination several hundred times and was only waiting for reality to catch up.
"Can I at least have one civilized conversation with all of you before we continue trying to kill each other?" I asked, hoping someone would be willing to hear me out.
To show that I was genuinely trying to talk, I raised both Ayuru and Samui slightly instead of taking an offensive stance. My posture remained relaxed enough to show I wasn’t trying to provoke anyone. Fighting while talking wasn’t exactly ideal, but considering who I was dealing with, I figured this was probably the closest thing I’d ever get to a peaceful negotiation.
"I know why you killed Lilith," I continued. "And I also don’t think you fully understand the danger we’re facing right now, even if you believed that killing someone like Lilith was the only way to protect this world."
At this point, I already had a fairly good understanding of the situation this world was trapped in.
The real enemy wasn’t Lilith, really.
Instead, the threat waiting beyond all of us was the Great Ones, and they were on an entirely different level from anything this world had ever faced before. Thinking about them alone was enough to make even powerful people seem painfully insignificant by comparison.
I still had no idea why the Great Ones did what they did. They created worlds, nurtured them until they flourished, allowed civilizations to grow, and then, for reasons I couldn’t understand, they would eventually destroy everything they had built.
The entire process felt completely meaningless to me from beginning to end.
Why bother creating a world in the first place if the end goal was simply to erase it? Building something only to destroy it afterward sounded like an enormous waste of effort. Whoever came up with that idea seriously needed a better hobby, although I doubted a Great One would care about my opinion in the slightest.
From what I understood, Satania had chosen to kill Lilith because she believed Lilith herself posed a threat to the world. Since then, she had devoted herself to building an enormous undead army so that one day she could defend this world against the Great Ones when they eventually arrived. Looking at everything she had accomplished, I couldn’t deny that she had poured an incredible amount of effort into preparing for that future.
Unfortunately for her, the Great Ones weren’t opponents that could be overcome so easily.
Sure, I had fought Great Ones before.
Those battles alone had already taught me more than enough about how terrifying they really were.
I fought the Great Darkness, but that was only because it wasn’t actually at its full strength.
I also fought against the Great Red, but that wasn’t because I had personally defeated the Great Red itself. Julius had been the one fighting, and even then, he had only been wielding a mere fraction of the Great Red’s power rather than facing its true form.
Even that fraction had been unbelievably destructive.
The power Julius borrowed was already enough to devastate everything around him. Entire landscapes could be changed just from that borrowed strength alone. Watching it firsthand had made one thing painfully obvious to me.
If the real, living Great Red had appeared in its complete form instead, then destruction would’ve been on an entirely different level. Calling it a disaster wouldn’t even begin to describe what it could actually do.
"So even with all six of you," I said as I slowly looked around at every one of them gathered before me, "and even with the undead army you’ve spent all this time building, you’re still going to lose."
I let out a slow breath before continuing, hoping someone would actually think about what I was saying.
"So why don’t we work together instead and fight them as allies? We’re all from the same world, aren’t we? That alone should be enough of a reason for us to cooperate rather than waste our strength fighting each other."
Satania didn’t look convinced in the slightest.
If anything, she somehow looked even angrier than she had just a moment ago.
"You actually expect me to believe anything that comes out of your mouth?!" she shouted before charging toward me once again.
Trying to reason with her felt like trying to argue with a stubborn toddler. She had already decided what I was long before this conversation had even started, so nothing I said was ever going to change her mind. That realization was frustrating, but it also made the situation painfully simple.
Looking back on it, I probably shouldn’t have expected someone consumed by that much hatred to suddenly stop and calmly consider my argument. Hoping for that outcome was probably wishful thinking on my part.
She rushed at me so quickly that it almost felt like I had blinked.
One moment she was standing several meters away, and the next she was already right in front of me. The sudden burst of speed would’ve caught almost anyone completely off guard. Thankfully, I had been expecting her to attack again sooner or later.
I immediately raised both Ayuru and Samui, crossing them together to block her attack before absorbing the full force of the impact. The clash echoed around us, and the force behind her strike traveled through both swords before reaching my arms.
"I am going to kill you more than anything else!" she roared. "So stop wasting my time with the yapping of someone who’s already dead!"
A quiet sigh escaped from my mouth before I could stop it.
Talking had never really been an option with someone like her in the first place.
That left me with only one realistic choice.
The only thing left for me now was to fight them, whether I wanted that outcome or not.