The Lord Of The Flies

“Well, now.”

The sound of a cane tapping the ground. A silhouette emerged from the street’s shadows.

“To think I’d see you here again.”

A coat was draped over his shoulders like a cloak, and he held a mahogany cane at an angle, its handle intricately carved into an eagle’s head.

A dignified black suit embroidered with gold. Amid his salt-and-pepper white hair, a cross-shaped scar above his right eye stood out.

“!”

The moment they saw him, the mustached Bourgeois and his Sword Watch subordinates stiffened. That was the end of it. There wasn’t even time to shout or react.

“Kuhk, kuhk.”

At first, they coughed as if something were caught in their throats.

“Aeogeok, eok…! Kuh heuk!”

“Agagagak!”

Buuuuung!

From the mouths of the men and women there, an uncountable swarm of flies began to pour out.

They ripped and burst through eyeballs, and from noses, mouths, ears, and every hole in their bodies, a number of flies no common sense could accept spewed out, forming a black vortex.

Like billions of locusts unleashed by plague or abnormal climate. It was a scene of apocalypse.

Cheolgeureong.

The medium’s chains that were supposed to restrain Dr. O’Neill soon lost their power and crumbled away.

Dr. O’Neill’s soul, belatedly gaining freedom, didn’t rejoice.

Rather than rejoice, his face went paler than ever, drained to a leaden hue as he began to tremble. He collapsed where he stood, as if surrendering.

— Ah, aah…! G-Great King, Great King…!

The man was there.

In the past, the man before him had introduced himself as Lord Bernier.

But the man known as Lord Bernier of the City Judiciary had already been dead at that point.

To the evil being now standing before them.

The Lord of the Flies. The host of lesser devils loyal to the Great King swirled, gnawing through the Bourgeois and their hounds from the inside, bursting them apart as they’d come to retrieve Dr. O’Neill’s soul.

“Beelzebub….”

The Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub.

And what Solomon had heard in Haunting House’s mansion didn’t end there.

「He said he was searching for a soul. One whose life or death isn’t even clear.」

「The Great King of Hell is looking for a soul when he doesn’t even know if it’s alive or dead?」

「The soul of that… bastard child the patriarch of House Bale is said to have had with a prostitute.」

“Fucking hell!”

The Fairy King Oberon blocked Solomon and O’Neill. Dazzling golden radiance, the fairy-light scattering with his Jesus-style grown-out beard.

The fairy’s radiance collided with the hellish swarm of flies that looked like the world’s ugliness gathered into one.

The writhing swarm of flies, a filthy blackness like sewage, a mass of every evil and revolting thing imaginable. Fairy and demon. Light and darkness.

Koong.

Just then, Beelzebub lightly struck his cane down.

And the swarm that had filled the area sank as if it were a lie.

“Hheok…!”

Along with it, the fairy radiance wrapped around Oberon also faded.

“That old bastard’s ridiculously strong.”

As if he’d already burned through no small amount of stamina, Oberon’s voice was rough. His small wings trembled.

In contrast, the Great King, Beelzebub, didn’t so much as twitch.

That alone made the gap between them painfully clear.

‘He still doesn’t know who I am.’

That was the one fortunate fact. Beelzebub still didn’t seem to know Solomon’s identity. His goal was Dr. O’Neill behind Solomon, nothing more.

Why he wanted O’Neill wasn’t Solomon’s concern. Neither was whatever information was inside O’Neill’s head.

“As Curators, our role is…”

Beelzebub continued calmly.

“To collect and preserve the evil of this world.”

As a Curator of the Black Museum, the cabal of evil that threatened Solomon’s life.

“And Dr. O’Neill… holds a clue to a truly fascinating subject, one we’ve searched for a very long time, and yet also let slip.”

— Hiiik…!

“I see. Then can’t you just take him and leave nicely?”

The job was over anyway. The Bourgeois corpse that had died under the swarm of flies had explicitly said so before dying.

Leaving aside how the ones who were supposed to protect Solomon had been wiped out so helplessly, this situation had long since left the realm of what Solomon needed to concern himself with.

“My job ends here anyway, so I don’t need to know anything past this.”

Solomon spoke as if calm. And he was, in fact. Separate from the bastard child’s soul the demon ultimately hunted, the information inside O’Neill’s head was, in the end, someone else’s business.

That’s what he thought.

“Oh, don’t be so cold.”

Beelzebub answered in an unhurried voice.

“As you heard in that mansion, I am searching for a certain soul.”

He should have realized sooner.

“And Dr. O’Neill is something like a stepping stone in the task of finding that soul.”

“……!”

“Therefore, he must be in Haunting House’s hands. The Spirit Binders can do many things.”

From the beginning, none of this had been someone else’s business to Solomon.

It was his story.

Now he could tell. The reason Solomon got tangled up with them wasn’t ultimately because of the elf broker Yuria, even if she bore some fault.

The shamaness isn’t the agent of tragedy carrying out an oracle. She’s only a messenger.

The tragedy swallowing Solomon had been raining down from far higher up from the start.

[Many things are tangled together like threads.
The Black Museum, the Lord of the Flies, what’s inside Dr. O’Neill’s head, and finally, the bastard child’s soul the Great King is searching for.
But when we look from afar with calm perspective, we can see they all ultimately come from a single thread…]

“I’ll give you one last chance.”

Maintaining the highest level of composure he’d ever managed in his life, Solomon forced himself to keep a poker face.

“Return Dr. O’Neill to Haunting House’s hands.”

— Hiiik!

“Why should I?”

“For the record, this is not a request for hire.”

Beelzebub added.

“And it’s even less a plea.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Obedience.”

Not hiding the pressure befitting a Great King.

“That is the only virtue I permit you.”

Solomon fell silent for a moment. Should he obey here?

Seeing the City Council’s corpses, the ones who’d promised to protect him, lying scattered like this, it felt like it might be better to bow his head before the Great King.

The being before him wasn’t even at the level of an ‘unbeatable formidable foe.’ It was essentially a calamity.

No matter how horrific a disaster was, you didn’t call it an enemy.

“I can’t do that.”

Even so, Solomon shook his head. He knew what it meant to agree to a demon’s temptation, coaxing, or threats in a TRPG world. He didn’t even need TRPG to know.

[Threat resistance successful!]

The narrator’s voice followed.

‘As expected.’

Solomon’s guess was right. That threat just now was basically a trap that led into a death branch.

There wasn’t even the sound of dice rolling. In other words, this wasn’t a roll.

It was a decision made purely by Solomon’s free will.

“Good choice.”

Then, flapping his tired wings, Oberon flew up.

Even now, the swarming flies couldn’t approach because of the golden radiance he was emitting.

“Oh, pitiful Oberon.”

Beelzebub sneered.

“O former king of fairies, who has lost his old glory and fallen, sunk into ruin.”

As if he knew him well.

“Look at yourself. You’re truly a sorry sight.”

“Wow, the world’s really gotten better. Flies are worrying about fairies now.”

“……”

“But don’t worry too much. These days I’m finding inner peace through meditation and mindfulness.”

Fly and fairy. At Oberon’s mockery, Beelzebub’s expression turned menacing for the first time.

Under his salt-and-pepper white hair, the cross-shaped scar above his right eye. The eye between that scar lost its light and glared this way.

It wasn’t a human eye.

A black, dark iris where the light that should exist did not. A demon’s eye.

“Do mind your words.”

“Go eat shit, Your Majesty Great King.”

Oberon flipped him off.

Solomon was left speechless by that shocking boldness.

Beelzebub, too, fell silent. Quiet and chilling beyond what ‘razor-sharp’ could cover. It wasn’t the kind of silence that meant anything good.

In that ominous silence, just as Beelzebub was about to speak.

Solomon would never get to hear what he was going to say.

Puk!

A sound rang out. From behind the Great King. The sound of an attacker striking from the rear.

Realizing what that act meant, Solomon was horrified.

‘Ambush!’

A strike delivered from behind to an unguarded opponent. A move so familiar it was practically intimate.

But the target of that ambush, Beelzebub, was never a ‘normal being.’

So logically, it followed that the one performing the ambush wouldn’t be a normal being either.

The fact they’d approached him without being noticed and drove in a strike was proof. They had literally stabbed a blade into the Great King’s back.

And that act didn’t stop at simply stabbing him physically.

Puuk!

The blade tip tore through and burst out of Beelzebub’s chest from behind. Black and dark. And it was different from Solomon’s . It wasn’t a shadow.

It was a deeper black, of an unfathomable nature.

“At this point, please withdraw, Your Majesty Great King.”

From behind the Great King, the attacker who’d stabbed him spoke. A voice Solomon had never heard before.

Beelzebub didn’t answer. There was no sign of agitation or panic.

“……”

Just then, the Great King’s body began to distort.

His body warped and contracted, then was sucked toward the black, dark blade tip that had pierced him.

Like being swallowed by a black hole. Like a planet dragged beyond the event horizon and erased without form.

No trace of the Great King’s form remained there.

Only a jet-black blade, dense and dark like a black hole, remained. Still and quiet, without trembling.

“Hoo, well now.”

The attacker holding the blade quietly looked at Solomon.

A voice he’d never heard, a face he’d never seen. And yet the neatly tailored suit felt oddly familiar.

A spotless pure-white suit.

“The Faceless One…”

“Your eye has gotten a lot sharper.”

[Insight success!]

The man answered as if amused.

The Faceless One.

The contractor who had led Solomon to Hotel Snark, and one of the heads of the contractor organization centered around Hotel Snark.

「A top-tier contractor so powerful that no one in this city doesn’t know of him… and yet, no one knows him.」

In the past, the narrator had described the man before him like that.

“That didn’t kill him… I’m guessing.”

Solomon started to speak, then corrected himself. Even by common sense, that was true.

“Right. At best, all it does is drive out an avatar for a moment.”

The unfamiliar man in a suit, the Faceless One, shrugged and grumbled.

“To be blunt, it’s not exactly a profitable move.”

Guest of Room 1408. The Rogue Master who resided at the very top of Hotel Snark said.