God Spawn

Vlad Țepeș, Ishtar, and the girl reborn as the Black Museum’s new curator, Ishtar’s new daughter, the Ishtar Spawn, Marie Molesworth.
Monsters were gathering there.

When it came to being monsters, the hotel’s side joining Solomon’s party was no exception.
Evangelist Gunter, Blanc of Black Snow. Two elves called the Shaman Priestess of the Lake.

“Ishtar, as an evil god, giving birth to a ‘God Spawn’ is clearly an act of breaking the Accord.”

As the Shaman Priestess of the Lake, Yuria, the monocled elf in a business suit, opened her mouth. She didn’t shrink before their presence. She was cold and businesslike to the extreme.

“Remove that Spawn immediately.”
─ Ah, I don’t think I can do that?
“You haven’t forgotten the Accord, surely.”
─ Oh my, how could I forget.

Behind Marie Molesworth, Ishtar, who had formed her shape by absorbing Angra Mainyu’s swirling evil, giggled.

─ I only granted this child’s prayer. Not because I had any intention of ‘expanding my influence.’ I purely granted her wish. And you’re telling me to remove it. Do you have no blood or tears?
“Hehe, that’s right. Lady Ishtar answered my prayer.”

Taking up her words, Marie Molesworth giggled.

“Unlike the human god who knows nothing but silence, no matter how much you pray and shout and howl.”
“Well, I can relate to that.”

The girl, Marie Molesworth, who had taken a god’s spirit-body as flesh, who had, literally, taken flesh, and been reborn as the Messiah of Evil, spoke.
At those words, the evil spirit dwelling in her former body, the human body of Marie Molesworth, agreed.

“A prayer answered only by silence is hollow and painful. In that case, wouldn’t you reach out to even a ‘straw god’?”
As befits a TRPG world, gods truly existing and answering in this world is not unusual in itself.
As with the troll god before, and the orc god Evangelist Gunter believes in (probably), or with evil gods who are treated as demons but possess divinity all the same.
All except one, the god of gods called the mightiest, the omnipotent god.
The god of gods, the creator of gods, the absolute being said to have created this world. Another name for that god was…….

The God of Silence, and the Father of Gods.
The only one bearing the title of absolute being. Though called the mightiest, it never answers prayers or grants an easy-to-grasp power. It only remains silent.
And that god was the god of the race that made up most of this world……. Humans.

Even if evil gods trampled the world and tormented it, even if you prayed for salvation in despair, all that returned was silence.
The silent absolute being.

「Must be nice. Someone whose god can answer when needed.」
「Compared to that, that bastard called our god…… never answers at all. Right?」

That was why someone ended up cursing god, despairing, and becoming an evil spirit.
And someone reached out not to a god that would not answer, but to a god that would. Not caring even if it was a being called a demon, or an evil god.

In silence that never answered no matter how much you prayed, maintaining faith was cruel beyond measure. Even a saintess could not be an exception.

“Black Museum. Do you truly understand the meaning of that act, breaking the covenant and giving birth to a Spawn?”

Yuria, the monocled elf, asked back coldly. Even knowing that all she would get were sneers and mockery in return, she checked the facts as if calmly inspecting them.

─ So what can you do about it?

Ishtar giggled.

─ You Wardens already lost to us and fell all the way to the bottom, running a janitor hotel. Are you going to ‘punish’ us or something? Ah, how frightening.

Hotel. Wardens. It was an old story he had heard before.

「Long ago, there was an organization called the Wardens.」

An organization said to have been founded with the lofty cause of protecting the world’s order.

「In the end, the Wardens went completely under. The end. What, is that surprising? It’s the usual ending for grand justice built up high, in front of villain bastards.」
「And at the end of that ruinous downfall…… it ended up like this.」

That was how Hotel Snark was built. It didn’t mean the old conflict itself had disappeared.
Even if, in the fight between justice and evil, evil had won.

That was why, before the tyranny the victor wielded, the powerless loser had no words to say.

“What, is there something we can’t do?”

That would’ve been the case, for a loser who couldn’t resist.

Kwachik!
A sound rang out. A sound far too familiar to Solomon. The sound of an assassin punching a knife-hole into someone’s back.

In that sneak attack was destructive power from a realm Solomon could not compare to now.
As if saying that was the ultimate ideal Solomon had to reach.

─ Faceless……!
“Oops. It’s too late even if you get a hole punched in you and scream.”

Ishtar cried out. When he realized it, there was a pitch-black blade that had pierced out through her back and was trying to pierce ‘her daughter’ who should have been in front of her as well. It held the same kind of blackness as Solomon’s Black Sword, but it carried a depth far darker and deeper than anything Solomon could compare to.

It was a voice he was hearing for the first time. And yet he had no choice but to know. A being that could stride up behind a being that called itself a ‘god,’ even if it was evil, and plant an assassin’s blow into its back with confidence.
At least, among the assassins Solomon knew, there was only one like that. And after hearing the word Faceless, there was even less room to doubt.

‘The Faceless One……!’

Like when a blade was stabbed into Beelzebub’s back, the blackness writhing around the tip began swallowing the surrounding scenery. Ishtar was no exception, nor was her daughter in front of her, Marie Molesworth.
It had to.

─ I won’t let you wound my daughter……!

Ishtar cried out. She laid bare a motherhood that didn’t suit a demon, to the bone. In truth, the action itself had already begun before she cried out.

Gulleong, gulleong.
That place, the vortex of evil at the center of the 9th Deep Layer End-Processing Zone. The endless vortex where all this city’s impurity and pollution and evil gathered…… began to writhe all at once.

Chwaaak!
Not toward Ishtar, but toward the ‘Spawn’ she had to protect. Like a mother’s instinct to protect her daughter.

The vortex of evil, swirling in the form of sticky tar, moved and writhed all at once like a living creature. A torrent so absurd it was as if the vortex itself moved, swept through and coiled around Marie Molesworth there.

Against the Faceless One’s sneak attack that tried to pierce through Ishtar and swallow even Marie Molesworth beyond her.

“……!”

As that blade warped the surrounding scenery like a black hole and swallowed Ishtar, it was shielding Marie Molesworth, who should have been swallowed along with her, like a barrier.
Angra Mainyu. As if the material of impurity and filth, pollution and evil, forged by this city’s sins, possessed will.

It was not a metaphor.

“Ah…….”

Marie Molesworth sobbed softly.

“Why, why……!”

Why was she sobbing?

“I, I was going to protect you, I was going to save you……!”

Wriggling, tar-like slime was forming a single shape.
Against the Faceless One’s blade, against the black hole that tried to swallow the area like a horizon of thought and twist and absorb it into the deep black, as if it would never hand her over.

“Ah, well then.”

The countless forms of saintesses made of black tar…… were blocking the way as if protecting her. Willingly offering their bodies as sacrifices to be swallowed into the black hole. Even then, not losing their smiles. Showing smiles of mercy and compassion worthy of the name saintess.
That was why, at the end of the sneak attack, the Faceless One had no choice but to pull the blade out and withdraw.

“At this rate, I don’t even know which side I’m supposed to call the villain.”

He withdrew with a hollow laugh.
Ishtar vanished. Pierced through by the Faceless One’s blade. But the Ishtar Spawn wasn’t pierced. So what remained, along with her…… was.

“The boundary between good and evil is always vague.”

It was Vlad Țepeș, the handsome man in a blood-red suit with black hair grown long.

“Sometimes, even one who believes without doubt that they are evil can become an incomparable good to someone.”

He giggled in a glib voice, and the Faceless One, withdrawing and readjusting his grip on the hilt, gave a bitter smile. As always, dressed in a pure-white suit, wearing a face he had never seen before.

That thing, believed without doubt to be swirling evil, held the form of saintesses more merciful than ever and blocked him. To protect Marie Molesworth, the Messiah of Evil there.
If so, could their actions be called evil.
Though they were sacrificed to purify this city’s evil, in the end they were reborn as part of that evil, so must it be called evil after all.

“……”

Solomon didn’t know. He had stopped knowing. He hadn’t come this far planning to grandly debate right and wrong. He simply didn’t know.

In this situation, whether he truly had to call Marie Molesworth, the girl who claimed to be the Messiah of Evil, evil.

“Why?”

So Solomon asked.

“You’re not planning to become a villain and do simple bad things. Even so, you claim to atone for evil, and become a curator of the Black Museum…… just what is it that you want?”

Because he truly couldn’t understand. At least one thing was certain. The girl in front of him was different from the Black Museum curators so far. No, should he really say she was different.

“There’s only one thing.”

Marie Molesworth answered.

“As a curator of the Black Museum…… to collect and preserve this world’s evil.”

Words no different from what he had heard from curators so far. And at the same time, he could tell. It was a little different. What was it?

“People always make excuses. They blame the filthy things they did on ‘temptation by evil,’ or justify it by saying the world is rotten so there’s nothing they could do.”
“……”
“This city isn’t a city of evil. It’s a city of sin.”

Marie Molesworth said with a cold expression.

“Isn’t it strange. People fear and reject evil like that, and yet they are so numb to the sins they committed. To the point they even rationalize them by blaming them on ‘evil.’”

Sin and evil were different. Though it sounded contradictory at first glance, Solomon understood those words oddly well.

“You are the same, Solomon.”
“……”

He had no choice but to understand.

“To live, to survive, how many ‘sins’ have you committed, Solomon?”

Because Solomon himself was the very one proving this city of sin.

“How many people have you killed, and how many countless sins did you rationalize, making excuses that it was because of this city’s evil?”
“……”

He killed to survive. He killed to live. He killed because he had no choice. After opening his eyes in a world he didn’t even know, that was how Solomon had lived, and that was his sin. Because he had no choice.
That contradiction was what Marie Molesworth was mocking.

“And you make excuses talking about ‘inevitable evil,’ and yet you act as if that evil doesn’t even exist. Exactly like it has nothing to do with you. Isn’t it funny?”
“……”
“But no matter how much you pretend it’s not there, turn your head away, and play innocent, this world’s evil won’t disappear. Even if someone wipes it away, it forms again, pools, and rots. Like the 「Angra Mainyu」 here.”

She looked down at the black vortex beneath her feet. It was clearly there. The crystallization of all the pollution and impurity and evil this city had produced, in a visible form, vividly.

“A curator’s work only has meaning once it’s shown before people.”

She smiled brightly. It was a smile so clear it was eerie.

“So now, people will come to know.”

Gulleong, gulleong, chwaaak!
At the same time, the vortex of evil, the vortex filling the 9th Deep Layer End-Processing Zone 「Angra Mainyu」, rose up like a waterspout. After rising, it surged toward a single girl like a living creature.

“What true evil is.”

Toward the Messiah of Absolute Evil who sought to atone for this city’s evil.