Chapter 1559: Epilogue 28 - Truce (5)
I agreed to Beelzebub’s request, so before I left, I decided to visit the place where she and Lilith had once lived together.
The place sat quietly at the top of a lonely hill, overlooking the barren land around it.
"This place used to be beautiful," Beelzebub said as she slowly looked around the hill. "Back then, the Demon Continent was so barren that it was almost impossible for even a single blade of grass to grow anywhere. But after we started living here, grass slowly began sprouting all over this hill. It was almost like the land itself had come back to life, which honestly surprised even me. Then, once nobody lived here anymore, the grass withered away almost as quickly as it had appeared. Looking back now, it almost feels like the hill was lonely after we were gone."
So this was where Lilith had once lived all those years ago.
Even now, I could still feel the lingering traces of her mana spread throughout the entire area. It wasn’t overwhelming from outside, but it was unmistakable. Anyone with even a decent sensitivity to mana would immediately realize that someone unimaginably powerful had once called this place home. Even after all this time, her presence refused to disappear completely.
"So this is where she lived?" I asked while taking another look around.
"Yes," she replied. "I mean... isn’t that already obvious enough?"
"Yeah, I guess you’re right about that."
I stepped inside the cave without saying anything else.
The moment I entered, it became even more obvious that Lilith had once lived here. The deeper I looked into the cave, the more I could feel the countless traces of her mana lingering in every corner. It wasn’t just a faint residue either. It felt as though her presence had soaked into the stone itself, refusing to fade even after so many years had passed.
How was that even possible after so much time had already gone by?
Several decades had already passed since Lilith had left this place and eventually met her end.
Even after all those long years had gone by, nothing about that lingering presence seemed normal.
Her mana was still here, quietly filling every corner around us.
It still filled the cave as though she had only stepped outside for a short walk and would eventually return.
The entire cave honestly felt like she had never left this place in the first place, almost as though time itself had simply stopped moving.
"You’re thinking that it feels like she never left, aren’t you?" Beelzebub asked with a small smile as she glanced at me.
My eyes shifted toward her for a brief moment before looking ahead again.
"Well, I guess that’s only natural," she continued. "Mother was simply that powerful. Even I stopped questioning things like this a long time ago."
I kept walking farther into the cave without slowing down.
The farther I went, the denser the lingering mana became. Every step seemed to carry me closer to the center of what had once been Lilith’s home, and with each passing moment, I could feel more of her presence surrounding me. The air itself almost seemed heavier because of it.
A thought quietly formed inside my mind while I continued walking.
Perhaps the reason living organisms had eventually begun appearing around this place wasn’t because of the land itself.
Maybe it had all happened because of her mana alone.
Mana was, in many ways, surprisingly similar to life force.
The two weren’t exactly the same, but they shared several similarities that made people compare them all the time.
Mana naturally existed throughout the world. It flowed through nature itself, and people absorbed it into their bodies before storing it inside their mana cores. From there, it could be used to strengthen themselves, enhance their weapons, or cast magic. It was something every magician and warrior relied on sooner or later.
Life force worked very differently from mana despite those similarities.
Unlike mana, life force already existed within every living being from birth. It wasn’t something you could gather from the outside world, nor was it something you could channel into spells or coat your weapons with. It couldn’t be manipulated the same way mana could, regardless of how skilled someone happened to be.
Life force simply existed to keep a living being alive from beginning to end.
That was its only real purpose throughout someone’s entire life.
Nothing beyond that simple purpose ever changed.
I continued moving farther into the cave without stopping for a break.
The deeper I went, the heavier the residual mana became.
The pressure wasn’t hostile toward me in any noticeable way.
Instead, it simply felt unbelievably overwhelming because of its sheer density.
Even breathing started feeling just a little heavier than before.
"You know," Beelzebub suddenly said, breaking the silence between us, "it’s honestly kind of weird that the two of us are here together like this."
"What exactly is so weird about it?" I asked while continuing to walk beside her.
She let out a quiet laugh before finally answering.
"Just a few days ago, I was trying my hardest to kill you. You were trying to kill me too."
She kept looking ahead instead of turning toward me.
"So I think it’s only natural for me to find this situation really strange. We’re just casually walking together now like none of that ever happened. Doesn’t that feel weird to you?"
"Yeah," I admitted with a quiet laugh. "I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. It definitely feels a little strange."
I shrugged my shoulders before answering the rest of her question.
"But I guess that’s just how things turned out in the end. Sometimes life just decides to surprise you for absolutely no reason."
When I answered like that, Beelzebub simply shrugged as well, as though she couldn’t really argue with my reasoning.
"By the way," she said after a brief silence, "this is the place where Satania discovered the truth about Mother’s origins."
I created a small sphere of light to illuminate the cave so I could finally see what she was talking about more clearly.
As the darkness slowly retreated, ancient murals gradually revealed themselves across the stone walls.
Strange symbols had been carved into the rock alongside illustrations that looked almost impossible to understand at first glance. At first, they looked like random drawings without any real meaning behind them. Still, the longer I stared at them, the more they began making an unsettling kind of sense.
The murals depicted what looked like the possible end of countless different worlds.
They showed entire universes suspended within an endless void while something enormous silently watched over all of them from beyond.
It was a single gigantic eye unlike anything I had ever seen before.
That eye overlooked every illustration of every world and every universe carved onto those walls. Around it were depictions of the Great Ones destroying the very worlds they had created. They weren’t doing it out of hatred or anger. Instead, the murals suggested they were feeding all of those destroyed worlds to that enormous eye.
So that eye really was the beginning of everything after all.
"I see..." I muttered quietly while continuing to study the murals.
Another thought suddenly crossed my mind before I looked back at Beelzebub.
"But honestly, do you really think Lilith simply left all of this here by accident?" I asked. "You and the others found these murals surprisingly easily. Someone as careful as Lilith wouldn’t leave behind something this important unless she wanted someone to discover it eventually."
My gaze returned to the carvings once again.
"I don’t think she would’ve left all of this behind if she hadn’t intended for all of you to find it from the very beginning."
Beelzebub silently stared at the murals for several long moments before letting out a quiet sigh.
"Yeah," she finally said with a bitter little smile. "I guess we really did get set up."
Her smile slowly faded as she lowered her head.
"We walked straight into the trap Mother had prepared for us."
She lowered her gaze toward the cave floor before quietly finishing her thought.
"And in the end, we paid the price for it."