Chapter 42. The Desperate Struggle of the Insignificant
After several explosions and the screams of demons, Michael finally reached the Mosaic, who was coloring a painting.
“Crazy bastard… this is giving me chills.”
At first, it had only been a familiar black-and-white drawing.
As more color was added, it became a portrait of Michael.
The portrait had been painted almost entirely red.
It looked more like a curse than a painting.
Most of it was already finished.
Only the feet remained uncolored.
“What do you think? Beautiful, isn’t it? I put quite a lot of thought into the coloring.”
Glasya-Labolas lowered his brush and proudly showed off the painting.
Michael looked irritated.
“It’s my portrait, so naturally it wouldn’t look bad. But anything touched by your hands becomes disgusting. Get rid of it.”
“Aww, how cruel. Still, you arrived faster than I expected. I thought it would take longer.”
Just as Michael expected, Glasya-Labolas had known he was traveling through the artwork to reach the mirror.
“You knew, yet you didn’t stop me?”
“Of course I tried to stop you. I gave you my cute little cat, didn’t I? I even threw some small fry at you along the way. Oh right, did you enjoy my present?”
Grit.
Michael clenched his teeth at the way Glasya-Labolas mocked the shelter residents who had briefly become his companions.
Even so, Michael did not want to let himself be controlled by Glasya-Labolas’s words.
He forced himself to remain calm.
“Oh, I enjoyed it very fucking much. It’s been a while since I felt such a fresh kind of disgust, you bastard.”
Apparently Michael’s reaction amused him.
Glasya-Labolas lowered his brush.
“Come on, don’t get so worked up. At least the reunion was nice, wasn’t it? Just like when we met again.”
It was absurd to call it a reunion when he had erased the memories of those people.
Glasya-Labolas did not care.
“Why them?”
“Do I need a reason? Maybe it was simple jealousy because they were with you. Or maybe it was part of my research for a new artwork.”
The longer the conversation continued, the deeper Michael frowned.
He had already experienced more than enough of Glasya-Labolas’s slippery attitude.
Michael slowly began gathering aura around his arm.
“Ah, you have no idea how much fun I had finding every one of them! Walking along the road you once traveled was enjoyable too. And the despair on their faces when their memories vanished and they became trapped inside the artwork, magnificent!”
Glasya-Labolas became more and more intoxicated by his own words.
Michael’s calmness gradually disappeared.
A vein bulged on his forehead.
Whoosh!
“And the despair of the knights tasted especially good. The expressions they made when things like honor and chivalry completely collapsed, ah, wonderful. Still, I suppose it’s fortunate you completed the artwork. Those people are free now. Or maybe not? Who knows what else I might have done to them… whoops!”
Michael decided there was no value in continuing to listen to him.
He surrounded his aura blade in White Flame and swung it.
A crescent-shaped wave of White Flame shot toward Glasya-Labolas.
THOOM!
A demon whose arm looked like a shield suddenly appeared and blocked the White Flame.
A small jar had opened beside Glasya-Labolas.
“The Jar of Pandemonium….”
The Jar of Pandemonium was a demonic artifact Glasya-Labolas always carried.
It could capture demons.
He used those demons inside his artworks or selected useful ones and trained them directly as subordinates.
“Oh my, how dangerous. Attacking in the middle of a conversation? I do like that violent side of yours, though. Still, that one is rather sturdy.”
Glasya-Labolas placed down his brush and sat on a chair that had seemingly appeared from nowhere.
“Sturdy? Your eyes must be completely rotten.”
Michael scoffed.
Slide. Thud.
It had looked as though the demon blocked the attack.
However, the arm it used as a shield had been cut cleanly in half.
Glasya-Labolas looked disappointed.
“You’re right. This one isn’t nearly enough. Hey, get lost.”
“G, guh! Please give me another chance!”
“No. Something like you is only taking up space. Hoo.”
The demon tried to flee from Glasya-Labolas’s breath.
Escaping him was impossible.
“Aaaaaagh!”
WHOOOOSH! Rustle.
The breath grew into a violent gust.
It completely disintegrated the demon and turned it into fertilizer for the green leaves around them.
That was the terrifying power of the Jar.
Once a demon had been captured, the authority over its life and death belonged solely to the Jar’s owner, Glasya-Labolas.
So that’s why those demons charged at me without fear?
“Aww, I’ve suffered such heavy losses today. I lost my factory, and I lost a lot of my children too.”
“Factory?”
Realizing his mistake, Glasya-Labolas covered his mouth with one hand.
A delighted chuckle escaped between his fingers.
“Ahh, I wasn’t supposed to tell you this. But since it’s you, I’ll make a special exception. That book was actually… a factory. A factory for extracting despair.”
Michael tilted his head.
He understood that demons lived by consuming human emotions, but why call it a factory?
“You visited it yourself, so you should understand. Idiots who never die, searching endlessly for clues that don’t even exist. Eventually they fall into despair, but humans break too easily if all they have is despair. So I added something.”
Something he added?
Michael thought back to the artwork.
Then one word suddenly came to mind.
“…Alcohol.”
Clap, clap, clap!
Glasya-Labolas loudly applauded like someone delighted that his quiz had been answered correctly.
“Correct! When humans drink away the suffering of a difficult day, they start hoping for tomorrow.”
Michael finally understood everything.
His eyes trembled.
They would search for clues again the next day.
Then they would despair again.
Then they would drink the pain away and repeat the exact same thing.
It was truly an endless wheel built entirely around despair.
And the shelter residents had unknowingly named themselves after the very alcohol used to keep the cycle going.
How amusing must that have been to Glasya-Labolas?
“Well, it wasn’t actually alcohol. It was a drug that simply made them feel good. That’s why I warned my children not to drink it. It could cause problems if a demon swallowed it.”
So that’s why that charcoal bastard kept gagging.
“Pfft!”
“Hahahaha! Looking at your expression makes all the effort I put into preparing it worthwhile.”
Glasya-Labolas burst into laughter at Michael’s increasingly grim face.
“Oh, right. That isn’t the important part. You came because you wanted to know the final destination, didn’t you? Unfortunately, the trial isn’t over yet.”
“Cut the bullshit. It’s practically over already.”
Michael pointed toward the paint bucket.
Because he had destroyed every portal supplying blood, the bucket was completely empty.
“That’s right! Isn’t that just cruel? I didn’t even finish painting yet. Well, I suppose it was inevitable. Hahaha!”
“There’s no reason to drag this out. I won. You only need to answer me. Where is the final destination?”
Hummm.
Michael raised his aura blade and pointed it toward Glasya-Labolas, demanding an answer.
“The trial isn’t over. I told you, it lasts until night.”
“There’s nowhere left for the blood to come from. How are you supposed to continue the trial? Just end it already.”
Glasya-Labolas sighed as if Michael had said something ridiculous.
“Haa, Michael. When did you become so simple? Who said you destroyed every portal?”
“What?”
After passing through the mirror room, Michael had destroyed every portal his senses could detect.
There should not have been any left.
As though reading Michael’s thoughts, Glasya-Labolas pointed downward.
“This mirror itself is still here, isn’t it?”
Snap!
Glasya-Labolas snapped his fingers.
A mirror showing the real world appeared in the air.
Inside it, Sia and Heesong were fighting Yeonhwa and the possessed demon.
“Watch carefully. The desperate struggle of the insignificant.”
