Three Will Come (2)

[Oh, the Magi and the three gifts. Unless you’re a pastor who scams people out of money, it’s not an easy story to know.]

Three of them were there. Just like the words said, three will come.
Right there, spreading pitch-black wings, Ishtar, the goddess of love and compassion and the demon of the Black Museum, raised her voice solemnly.

—The golden-winged fairy, the first Magus, offering the gift of gold.
[Since ancient times, gold symbolizes the qualification of a king.]

Following Ishtar’s solemn proclamation, the narrator added as if waiting for it.

—The clerical troll, the second Magus, offering the gift of frankincense.
[Frankincense symbolizes a priest, and is a sign of the divinity and holy office (聖職) one bears as bloodline of a god.]

After the golden-winged fairy who ended up there and the clerical troll of all things……

—And lastly, the human assassin, the last Magus, offering the gift of myrrh.
[Lastly, myrrh is a medicinal material used in funerals, and signifies the suffering of the cross, death, and sacrifice that will come to the son of god. Now you could go start a church anywhere.]

The three there were, coincidentally, each being assigned perfectly fitting roles and forms.

‘It’s fucking easy to understand, isn’t it.’

Solomon, the human assassin, thought in disbelief.
Of all things, Marie Molesworth was in a place which couldn’t be reached without the need to rely on a fairy’s help, and of all things that commission went to the troll clergyman Jean Baudri…… and of all things, a human assassin got dragged along as a bonus.

“An ancient rite that brings down a God Spawn.”

The troll clergyman Jean Baudri added. Gods. Even if they now called themselves demons, like most demons, they too were gods. Ishtar and Beelzebuth were no exception.
“And the key to carrying out that rite is the three witnesses.”
“The three Magi……”
“Witnesses who take the form of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to receive a god’s bloodline. Coincidentally, all of us fulfill those forms.”
“So it was for performing the rite from the start.”

Insight Success. It wasn’t something to be happy about.
Three will come meant them. The witnesses who would receive baby Jesus and prove his divine birth. But what the three here were facing wasn’t baby Jesus. It wasn’t the Holy Mother either.
And yet the mother and daughter were claiming to be this world’s redeemer of evil, in the same form, in the same way.

“「Ishtar Spawn」…….”

The evil god Ishtar and her offspring. God Spawn. As a TRPG player, there was no way he wouldn’t know that word.

“Looks like it’s time I fulfill my duty as a clergyman.”

Right then. The troll clergyman Jean Baudri spoke, along with a brief cough.

“Troll, objection!!”

Gulleong, gulleong.
Even then, the pitch-black form coiling around Marie Molesworth, Ishtar’s black wings, kept spreading without end. Like tree branches growing, they spread and grew, until they became large enough to swallow the entire cavity.
Jean Baudri raised his voice again and again without caring.

“By the ancient rite, the three Magi must come here guided only by a star! But troll, did not see Star of Bethlehem!! Star, not see!!”

It was a Bible story Solomon had heard too. The tale of the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem, following it, and receiving baby Jesus.

“Therefore, the rite does not stand. Troll, this rite is invalid!!”
“……”

Who was he even saying it to? Jean Baudri shouted as if making a solemn claim in court, and that was when it happened.
Twitch. The pitch-black wings growing endlessly behind Ishtar, as if to swallow the cavity, stopped growing. As if some unseen someone acknowledged Jean Baudri’s objection. A brief silence.

—Hehe, you didn’t see the star. What are you talking about?

At the end of the silence, she giggled as if amused.

—Back at the baron’s golden banquet…… you saw a star more beautiful than anything.
“!”

The moment he heard that, a shock hit him like being struck in the head with a hammer.
That day, the enormous jewel chandelier decorating Baron Gould’s lobby. The apex of that golden lobby, sparkling with countless jewels like starlight. Baron Gould had called that chandelier by that name with overflowing pride.

「Invited bourgeois ladies and gentlemen! Look upon the star that will light you tonight’s sky, a star more beautiful than the starlight of that night sky, the Star of Bethlehem!」

‘The Star of Bethlehem…….’
—Guided by that very star, you came all the way here.

He dropped that star and cracked the troll’s skull, and thanks to that, Solomon ended up with him in the form of a human assassin. Nothing was an exception. It wasn’t a coincidental match.

“Fuck.”

Once again, Jean Baudri spat out a curse.

“Don’t tell me the one behind the commission Baron Gould gave me was…….”
“……”

After thinking that far, Solomon swallowed as well. Coincidentally, the very person who gave the commission so that he would drop a star on the troll’s head right there. Nothing was an exception.

‘Don’t tell me Violet too……?’

The narrator’s words brushed through his mind again. Many things were tangled like a skein of thread. But when you looked from afar with composure, it ultimately came from a single thread.
A brief silence. At the end of it, the pitch-black wings that had stopped began growing again. Before long, Marie Molesworth was wrapped within those wings, not even visible anymore.

Like a fetus inside its mother’s womb, waiting to come out into the world……

Kwachik. Kwachik.
It didn’t take long for that fetus to grow enough to be born.

Kwachik!
Like cracking an egg, a hand tore through the gap in the wings and reached out. First a hand, then two legs. One after another, a hatchling facing the world revealed itself from within.

“—Thank you.”

The bird that broke out of the egg spoke. There was no heart-shaped tail seen as a demon symbol, no cumbersome wings, no vicious-looking horn ornaments. She looked just like she always did.
A sixteen-year-old girl who looked utterly pure without a speck of dust, Marie Molesworth.

“For granting my prayer. For letting me be born again as Mother’s daughter.”

Even so, she was born again. As Mother’s daughter. There was no need to ask who that mother referred to. Right here and now, there were black wings endlessly growing as they absorbed the evil of this 9th Deep Layer End-Processing Zone, Angra Mainyu.

“……Do you really believe that’s the way to atone for this city’s evil?”

That was why Solomon asked back. Marie Molesworth’s prayer had been one from the start.

“Yes.”

Marie Molesworth nodded at that question. Then she said.

“—It’s not being saved from evil.”

It wasn’t “deliver us from evil.”

“It’s saving evil.”

Saving evil.

“My sisters tainted by this city’s unforgivable sins, my sisters who can no longer be distinguished from evil…… the evil they bear, the evil that can no longer be separated from them.”

Along with that which formed Ishtar’s figure and stretched out as endless wings, Marie Molesworth turned toward the vortex beneath her. The pitch-black vortex of evil there didn’t lessen at all. As if saying the evil overflowing in this world would not decrease no matter how much you used it.

—As curators of the Black Museum, our duty is…….

At the same time, Ishtar spoke as a goddess and demon, and further, as a curator of the Black Museum.

—To collect and preserve this world’s evil.

Ishtar Spawn, stroking her new daughter as if lovingly.

—Therefore, this child is my daughter, the most beautiful collection piece, and worthy of becoming our new comrade.

Evil to collect and preserve as a curator, and a new comrade.

—Before the three witnesses, I testify that the Black Museum’s new curator—the Messiah of Evil—has been born.
“……!”

The Messiah of Evil. That was the moment they had no choice but to witness a new seed of evil bloom.

“That’s enough, you heretics.”

Clang! A sound rang out. Like a glass bottle shattering. Right after, Ishtar’s wings that were stretching out to fill the cavity inside the deep end-processing zone abruptly stopped growing. Before you could even think they’d stopped, they shattered. Like glass shards.

—Aaaaaaah!!

A scream of pain rang out. It wasn’t Marie’s. It was Ishtar’s voice, the one coiling around her like a mother and embracing her lovingly.
A wail as the wings spreading while absorbing impurity and evil at this city’s filthiest bottom broke apart.

When he realized it, a radiance too bright to watch with open eyes was sweeping through the place. Holy light surging as if purifying Angra Mainyu, the interior of the end-processing zone.

“Master……!”

Right after, the clergyman troll Jean Baudri shouted in alarm. At that title, Solomon couldn’t help but be startled too. Master?
Before long, there was a silhouette blocking Solomon and Jean Baudri. It was not as huge as a troll, but big enough that “hulking” didn’t fall short by human standards. And it wasn’t the first time Solomon had seen that back.
It was a hulking orc dressed neatly in a business suit.

“Evangelist Gunter……!”

The orc contractor he’d seen back when he first visited the Deadlock Workshop. The moment she saw him, Maya had been horrified, and the narrator added that too.

「Hotel Snark is overflowing with legends and big shots of all kinds. And most of them are psychos. Long-term guest of Room 1004, Evangelist Gunter, is no exception.」

Long-term guest of Room 1004, Evangelist Gunter.

「An orc, preaching the gospel?
Surprisingly, people who stand before his sacred hammer shed tears of joy and hear a gospel they’ve never believed in their entire lives.」

That was why Solomon shouted reflexively. That was all. All he knew about him was that name.

‘So that guy was his master.’

A troll clergyman and an orc clergyman. In a sense, they were the perfect pair of fellow clergymen, master and disciple.

Kooong!
Amid swirling thoughts and confusion, amid Ishtar’s shriek ringing out, Evangelist Gunter slammed the hammer he held in both hands down without a word. Kooong! The sound rang out as the hammerhead struck the ground. A sound that foretold the violence to come.

“Holy Bombardment.”

Evangelist Gunter murmured softly and kicked off the ground.

Kooong!
As if he had wings, the hulking orc kicked off the ground and soared into the air. It didn’t mean he actually had wings. In reality, it was just a leap from kicking off the ground with absurd strength.

So high it was hard to distinguish from flight. The word bombardment fit exactly. Like an aircraft dropping missiles to the ground, radiance burst out from Gunter’s body in midair.

Kwagang, kwaang, kwaaaang!
More precisely, it was something that should be called missiles of radiance. A bombardment of light slammed down like indiscriminate air raids toward Ishtar and her daughter, growing as they absorbed Angra Mainyu’s evil.

“Gospel learned through bones.”

After the bombardment, Gunter, still suspended, adjusted his grip on the massive hammer.

Spin.
With that, the leap ended, and the evangelist’s body landed on the ground. Kooong. With a weight that “heavy” couldn’t fully describe, he brought down the massive hammer packed with absurd kinetic energy.

Kwachik!
It was the sound of gospel learned through bones.

“—Excuse me.”

At the same time, a voice came from behind Solomon. When he turned around, there were more unexpected faces.

“!”

Yuria, the fortune-teller elf in a business suit and monocle.
Adina, the dark elf medium.
Along with the two elves each called the Shaman Priestess of the Lake—.

—To think I’d see you again so soon?
“……!”
—Ah, don’t glare at me like that. It’s business, right?
“So you’re saying being here right now is business too.”
—Exactly.

There was another Marie Molesworth. Strictly speaking, the Maiden of June, the hotel’s thirteenth-floor VIP evil spirit guest possessing Marie Molesworth’s former body.

“Hm, if you say so, I can see something like a pure-white handprint on your neck. Where have I seen that before? Feels like I saw it when the higher-ups were chewing someone out.”
—…….
“Next time, don’t do the kind of shit only bat bastards do.”

Scattering black, dark frost along the ground at Solomon’s mockery.

“Oh, well.”

And those weren’t the only unexpected faces.

“Truly, it resonates to the bone.”

The gospel learned through bones, Evangelist Gunter’s hammer, was now blocked by a silhouette in front of Marie Molesworth. By that silhouette’s hand. A hand pale and bloodless like a corpse. With sharp nails.
Evangelist Gunter muttered softly.

“Vlad Țepeș…….”
“Oh, you left out ‘Chairman’ at the front.”

A handsome man in a blood-red suit with black hair grown long down to his waist was there.