Troll God

[And you, you smart!! You only troll who know how to pray to Trollo!! Trollo like that!! Trollo give you power!! Lots and lots of power!!]

The troll god answered. Toward the only troll clergyman with enough intellect to believe in a god and understand faith. The effect was immediate.

A surging crimson radiance was already coiling around Jean Baudri, the troll clergyman. A ridiculous torrent of power you could feel even from afar. Even Solomon, who had no special expertise in that field, could intuitively grasp the rank of divinity dwelling within that crimson light.

[Unfortunately, for a troll’s intelligence, the advanced intellectual activity of ‘believing in a god’ is a very high hurdle.
So there’s no need to say how much the sole believer who serves the troll god would be favored by the god. It’s a kind of…… monopoly on faith, you could say.]

The narrator’s explanation continued. He didn’t even need to hear it. He could tell the moment he saw it.

Udeuk, udeudeuk, kwadeuk! Kwajijik!

Jean Baudri’s body, the troll’s body already swollen as if it might burst, didn’t stop there and pushed beyond. His flesh continued expanding until even the extra-large clerical coat tailored to his frame began to tear. Crimson radiance coiled and rippled along that body.
A berserk power that could not be contained.

[Tear and smash!! Trollo, that’s what Trollo like best!!]

Within that blessing of the troll god, Jean Baudri, the intellectual and refined troll clergyman, muttered.

“Troll…….”

With a body swollen as if it might explode at any moment, with the surging torrent of power behind him.

“Tear, and smash.”
[Trollo tear and smash!!]

Not his usual air of intelligence and refinement, but in the most troll-like appearance imaginable. Just as that troll was about to move, flaunting his trademark stupidity.

─ Oh my, well then.
Blanc of Black Snow, the evil spirit dwelling in the body of the sixteen-year-old girl Marie Molesworth, shrugged.

─ You look pretty spirited.

Crack. At the same time, an eerily chilling cold swept through the room once more. There wasn’t even a sign. The moment you thought you’d felt the flow of cold, it was already over.

“!”

The troll clergyman Jean Baudri’s entire body was trapped within pitch-black ice crystals and frozen solid. Like a mosquito in amber. In the blink of an eye.

Crack, crack.
But what was even more shocking came after that blink-of-an-eye moment ended.

Clang, crash!
Jean Baudri, the troll clergyman who should have been trapped inside those ice crystals, moved. As though ice like that couldn’t possibly confine him.

“Nothing can confine a troll……!”

There was no frostbite or necrosis of cells. There was no rupture where, from rapid freezing, the water inside cells became sharp crystals, bursting cell membranes and breaking tissue apart.
In common sense, there was no way something trapped in ice could break it and come out.

─ Hmm.

Kwachik!
Right after, the pitch-black frost surged up and skewered Jean Baudri’s body like a spit. Not one. Not two or three.
A barrage of dozens, hundreds of pitch-black spearheads was piercing the troll clergyman’s body. From head to toe. Crossing the jaw, skull, brain, heart, organs, ribs, eyeballs, ears, large intestine and guts, every imaginable vital point.
And yet—he couldn’t be stopped.

“Troll, it prickly! Troll, Troll no like prickly!!”

It was stupidity so extreme it chewed up the inescapable laws of life, bordering on the miraculous. He could sense it.

‘It’s not healing or regeneration.’
That had already surpassed, by far, the very idea of regenerating or healing wounds.

「Cannot be blocked.」 「Cannot be stopped.」 「Cannot be wounded.」 「Cannot be killed.」
Wrapped in the troll god’s crimson radiance, the troll clergyman was embodying those descriptions in the realm of reality.

It was literally 「Negation」.
An act that twisted every law and principle that should have existed under the troll god’s blessing. Deus Ex Trollo.

Kwaang─!
Jean Baudri kicked off the floor. It wasn’t a technical leap. The impact was so violent, it gouged a crater into the floor he stepped on and made the room itself scream.

“Troll, tear and smashhh!!!”

It was like an unstoppable tank charging forward. And that tank was targeting nothing more than the body of a sixteen-year-old girl and the evil spirit dwelling inside it. Watching it, Solomon didn’t even know how he was supposed to react to this situation.

‘It’s not like I can stop it just because I want to.’

Kwaang, kwaang! Kwaang!
The distance closed. The tank’s fists swung. Toward the pitiful girl on the canopy bed. A blow like ramming a tank shell in point-blank. Ultimate violence was right there.
Fists surging without end, like a bombardment. Not just fists. With each strike, shockwaves swept through and blocked his view.

─ Must be nice.
Even so, a voice rang out softly. Peaceful beyond belief.

─ Someone whose god can answer when needed.

A voice so calm it was cold enough to freeze.

─ Compared to that, that bastard we call our god…… who never answers at all. Don’t you agree?
“……Hard to deny.”

A chill so bleak that Solomon unconsciously shuddered and stepped back.

[Insight Success! Endless Hatred]

A confession laid bare without restraint by the evil spirit who prided herself on being a pro of the thirteenth-floor.

─ It was so cold, so dark, so frightening, and no matter how desperately I cried out and prayed, there was no answer at all. Just like this child.
“!”

Solomon blinked at what came next. Even as that happened, the troll’s violence didn’t stop. Ultimate violence. And yet he could tell.
Those fists, that ultimate violence, could not harm the girl by even a single hair. To the girl, it was no different from cute little pawing, like a cat’s soft paws. He couldn’t even laugh.

‘So this is…… the monsters of the hotel’s upper floors.’
A battle between hotel powerhouses that couldn’t be approached. And even among those monsters, the difference in rank was obvious.

─ Playtime’s over. I’m sick of looking at this, so freeze. All of you.
Blanc of Black Snow murmured softly, waving a hand as if annoyed.

─ <Black Snow That Freezes Gods (Absolute Zero)>.

There was no visible pitch-black frost or cold swirling dramatically through the room.
Only for a tiny instant, a single scene brushed past.
At first, he couldn’t even understand what he had seen. No, he didn’t want to understand it. But no matter how he struggled, he was forced to ‘understand’. As if someone were cramming information into his brain by force.

“!”

It was…… the death of the universe.

A landscape of death where stars froze, darkness froze, and without sound, light, or waves, the universe froze and stopped. A graveyard of black dwarfs. A thermodynamic death, frozen cold, where even screams couldn’t echo. An endless eternal winter. The cold of the end.
Black frost filled the universe.
Becoming the end-cold that announced the end of this world, the universe.

Only for the briefest instant, that scene swept past before his eyes. That was all. And yet.
Tadak.

[Cold…….]

The troll’s fists stopped as if it were a lie. And it wasn’t only the troll who stopped.

[T-Trollo, cold, too, too cold…….]

The god above the heavens was trembling from the cold.

[C-cold and sleepy……. Trollo, too cold and sleepy, gonna sleep…… khoo-khoo…… kooool…….]
“!”

With that, as if it were a lie, the crimson radiance and berserk frenzy wrapping Jean Baudri faded away. Along with the troll god’s snoring heard from far away.

“T-Troll, cold and sleepy…….”

He was no exception either, even as the clergyman blessed by that god. The troll clergyman’s huge body collapsed limply. Shivering as he curled up like a baby.
Koong!

“Kooool, khoo…….”

By the time he realized it, the god and its follower were sleeping together, snoring in harmony.
An existence that couldn’t be blocked, stopped, wounded, or killed…… had been put to sleep.

─ Some say this world will end in fire, and some say it will end in ice.

Watching that, the Maiden of June smiled softly.

─ And I, who know something of hatred, would say that ice is also fully capable of destroying the world, no less than fire.

“……”

A cold that freezes gods.

‘We’re screwed.’

The last card fell, meeting an ending so absurd you had to laugh. Maybe he should be grateful he wasn’t dead.

─ Ah, see. It’s a loss to get passionately worked up for no reason. Right?

Looking down at them, the Maiden of June shrugged. Her voice mocked her own past recklessness.

“……”

Solomon stayed silent in shock. A clergyman who could call on a god’s power when needed, and an evil spirit who could put even that god’s power to sleep. “Absurd” wasn’t enough to describe it. Leaving the troll collapsed on the floor, already deep in dreamland, Solomon silently steadied himself. And then he let out a hollow laugh.

Resistance would mean nothing anyway. In the first place, with Solomon as he was now, it would be impossible to face Jean Baudri fairly even without the troll god’s blessing.

‘So that’s a VIP from the hotel’s thirteenth floor.’

In front of that cold that could freeze and suppress even a god, what could Solomon, nothing more than a mortal, possibly do.

“Marie Molesworth…… what did she wish for?”

Even so, Solomon asked calmly. In this world, fighting was not the only answer. Solomon had come here on commission. She must have come here on commission as well. Not as a warrior.

─ Do I have any obligation to tell you that?

“You do.”

Solomon answered flatly.

“It seems like we share the same goal.”

At last, the smile faded from the girl’s face. Not a relaxed smile, not a self-mocking sneer. The face of a professional dealing with business, more expressionless than ever.

─ So you mean the evil spirit here, and you two who came to exorcise that evil spirit?

“Well, it wouldn’t appear so if you look at it on the surface.”

Solomon calmly slid the Ghost Whale Bone Blade back into his sleeve. A gesture showing he had no hostility. It wasn’t even an opponent he could beat by fighting in the first place.

“At least we do have something in common.”

─ Something in common. Between us?

Something in common. The girl smiled as if intrigued.

“That we answered the prayer of a pitiful girl who couldn’t save herself with her own hands.”

Blanc of Black Snow was clearly pitying Marie Molesworth. Solomon didn’t miss that fleeting look. It wasn’t the face of an evil spirit clinging to her just to torment an innocent girl.

─ Hehe, you think an evil spirit like me answered this pitiful girl’s prayer?

“Yeah.”

Solomon answered.

“Because more than anyone, you understand the pain of a god not answering a prayer.”

─ …….

“When you pray to a god to save you, and no matter how desperately you pray, no answer comes back—.”

Solomon said.

“Marie Molesworth must have prayed to someone other than a god. No matter what that ‘someone’ was.”

A brief silence.

─ You’re a sharp kid. I like that.

Blanc of Black Snow laughed as if amused. Then she spoke.

─ But still, a VIP from the thirteenth-floor personally ‘answered’ this child’s prayer……. What can mere guests like you possibly do?

“Who knows.”

Solomon shrugged.

───
[Insight] “From the look of it, you’ve been squatting here for quite a while. Seems like there’s a reason for that.”
───

After shrugging, he continued calmly.

[Insight Roll in Progress…….]

To be honest, he had no proof. But there was no other possibility. Even just to find a hole to survive through, Solomon had to believe this hypothesis. He had no choice but to believe it.

───
[Negotiation] “Looks like there’s something we can help with.”
───