By the time I opened my eyes again that evening, after half a day had passed, the three demon women were gathered around me.
One pair of eyes was worried, one pair was relieved, and one pair was congratulating me.
Judging by their expressions alone, you would never guess these three were [Primordial Demons], beings feared by the entire world.
Their eyes looked cleaner than any human's.
"Hmm..."
'...More importantly, that dream from earlier...'
It had been a strange dream, one I recognized as a dream and yet somehow still couldn't understand.
That dream, the one I instinctively felt had been a prophetic dream, was still filling my head.
It bothered me even more than losing the fight.
'Is this also an innate ability of [Divine Demon]... no, [Deva Lord]?'
I had already experienced something similar once before.
Hundreds of years ago, when I visited [Sarion] with Chronoa.
Back then, when I was still a [Divine Demon], I had possessed a peculiar ability.
An ability that let me observe another person's soul and find the ties of fate connected to them.
Because I had that power, I had been able to explain to Chronoa that I knew of Shizu's existence.
And the sensation I felt from that dream now was almost identical to what I had felt back then.
'...Honestly, even though it's my own body, I still don't understand it.'
This was surely related to me being [No Attribute] too, which was why I had spent four hundred years searching for information, but what was there to find when I was the only demon to ever end up with an attribute like this?
From the moment even [Odin] and Guy couldn't figure it out, old records and history books had already become practically useless.
"There you go again, getting lost in thought."
I had only gone quiet for a moment, but Ria immediately noticed my mind had drifted elsewhere.
She had also been the first to notice when I woke up, and right now she was slowly stroking my head as I lay there.
"Is it because you lost the spar? You still managed to land a hit on Lord Guy."
"Right now, resting should be your top priority, not dwelling on that."
Rain and Misery each added a comment of their own.
Apparently, they thought I was sulking because I had lost the spar.
"...It's not that. I just had something on my mind for a moment."
I did not particularly care about the result of defeat.
I had already expected I would lose, and I knew how strong Guy was.
If anything, I was more surprised that I had managed to hold my own against him this well.
Ria had probably been aiming for exactly that when she pushed me into fighting at full strength.
I planned to ask her about it later, but right now the dream mattered more.
Like all dreams, the one that had filled my mind was already slipping away from memory, and in this short time more than half of it had vanished.
'...If it had just been an ordinary dream, I would've let it go, but of all things...'
Unfortunately—
<Adelio.>
—I wasn't given any time to retrace that dream.
<Come to the audience chamber. I have something to give you.>
**
The audience chamber of the White Ice Palace.
Whenever Guy was present, this was usually the place where hundreds of [Arch Demon]s stood in formation.
But today, unlike usual, there was not a single [Arch Demon] in sight. Instead, Velzard was seated beside Guy.
Holding a longsword in her hand that looked strangely familiar.
"Hmm. Fortunately, it seems your recovery is going well."
Guy, seated on the throne, looked much the same as before.
In other words, it looked as though he had already fully recovered from the attack that struck his heart.
I could at least excuse my own recovery because I had [the body of a saint], but Guy's regenerative ability was monstrous on another level.
It almost seemed even faster than Veldora's, despite him being a [True Dragon].
"...What is this thing you wanted to give me?"
I asked with a slight nod, and Guy muttered something like, "Straight to the point, huh," before immediately signaling to Velzard with his eyes.
"..."
Velzard then walked over to me and handed me the sword she had been holding.
A gray longsword, the exact same shade as my hair, one I was certain I had seen somewhere before.
'...This sword...'
Seeing it up close made it feel even more real.
There had definitely been a day in the past when I had laid eyes on this blade.
'...Where was it? [Sarion]? [Eldorado]? [Ruberios]?'
No, it hadn't been in any nation.
No one I didn't know had ever possessed it.
'...The Jura Great Forest? The frozen continent?'
No, not a continent or a forest either.
That place had been dark.
'Then where in the—'
If I had to compare it to something, that place was...
...like a world that would resemble hell itself if hell were dyed black—
"!!!"
—a single world.
'It was my [Mindscape]...!'
It was a special world I had only ever visited once.
**
My [Mindscape], dyed entirely in pitch black like [Black Heaven, Nether's End].
There, I had met two other versions of myself, and the sword held by the one who looked almost exactly like the current me was this very gray longsword.
"..."
'...Why is this sword here...?'
My already tangled thoughts became even more complicated.
The [Mindscape], which had been just as difficult to understand as my [No Attribute], had suddenly dropped a clue right in front of me. The more I tried to widen the scope of my thoughts, the more tangled everything became.
"...Lord Guy. This sword..."
I was about to ask him, wondering if perhaps Guy knew something about it.
But before I could even finish the question, Guy answered.
"Hmm... so that sword really was connected to you after all."
"...Then that means—"
"That's right. I don't know the details either. I just have a very fragmentary memory left in my head."
He said that at some point, the sword had begun appearing in his memory, and thanks to the price paid by an angel, it had become real.
"The angel who entrusted that sword to me... the demonic sword [Fragarach], [Avenger]..."
Once, that being had served as a [Seraphim], guarding the [Creator God], but after his death, he had fallen from grace.
The strongest swordsman in the world.
"...was Dino."
One of the [Demon Lord]s of the current age.
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