The next moment.

The color of the sky suddenly changed.

If just a moment ago it had been clear autumn weather… now it had become something bizarre, something you would never see in reality.

The sun disappeared, and the world was stained in blood-red.

The change was so sudden and terrifying that we were left gaping.

Xenia spoke with a trembling voice.

“What.. what is that? What’s happening right now?”

“…….”

“This is the ‘Embrace of the World,’ isn’t it? Mide’s world… did something terrible happen to our world?”

“Calm down, Xenia.”

Bion, perfectly composed, took a bite of her sandwich.

“That’s not something happening right now.”

“What?”

“You don’t realize it? You are looking at the ‘Eye of Omniscience.’ And not just any version, the complete, true Eye of Omniscience.”

“We are looking at the sky, though.”

“The secret I need to show you this time is massive in scale. I needed a much bigger screen.”

Realizing what she meant, I shivered unconsciously.

“So you used the sky itself as the screen.”

Everyone turned to look at me.

Bion quietly nodded.

A story so massive that she needed to use the entire visible sky as the screen.

I looked up at the sky again.

Something was reaching down from the blood-red sky.

I couldn’t be sure that it was even a ‘hand.’

The shape was so colossal that even with the sky as the screen, it was hard to see its full form.

The only thing we could barely discern was a single segment of a finger.

Offense asked,

“What are we looking at?”

“The moment the Demon King tried to annihilate the world.”

“What?”

“The first Demon King to ever descend after the appearance of humankind. You could call him the Primordial Demon King.”

When Bion spoke that title, her expression looked bitter.

Neril asked,

“……He must have been unbelievably powerful.”

“Of course. He was literally a Demon King who could hold the entire world in one hand. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean literally.”

“So what we are looking at is the ‘moment the Demon King tried to grasp the world’?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

A chill ran down my entire body.

Velosian and Idria had been powerful, and the Demon Kings of Destruction, Greed, and Corruption must have been formidable too.

The Demon Kings faced by the heroes of pre-Impelium ages, those lost to history, had surely been extraordinary.

‘But none of them were anything like that.’

A Primordial Demon King who destroyed the world with one hand.

Lisel managed to ask, her voice strained,

“W-What kind of Demon King was that?”

“I told you. The Primordial Demon King.”

“No, I meant, what was its name? Like Lies or Destruction. What kind of negative energy could humanity have created to produce that?”

Her question was sharp.

Even ‘Lies,’ something humans speak every day, couldn’t create something like that.

Serein added,

“And another thing. Where is the hero of that era?”

“…….”

“How did the hero of that time defeat such a monster? Who defeated it?”

“Well, I don’t need to answer that last question.”

Bion looked back up at the sky.

Our gazes followed.

—Kuwaaaang!!

The Primordial Demon King finally closed its grip around the world.

Everything we were seeing shattered, split apart, and dissolved.

The screen shifted to a distant vantage point, showing the world from far above.

“……!”

It was the same view we had once seen when sharing Impelium’s hobby, seeing the world from afar, like a round globe.

A massive hand closed around that world.

And crushed it.

The world was destroyed.

No reversal. No hope.

It simply ended.

Adwin shouted with a trembling voice,

“Why didn’t the hero of that era…!”

“There wasn’t one. No hero existed.”

“What?”

“There was no hero. That happened before the system was born.”

Thunk.

The screen vanished and the sky regained its blue.

Bion spoke.

“Because the system didn’t exist yet, humanity’s negative energy didn’t form the Demon King back then. Instead, that negative energy was simply spread evenly among all humans, causing them to fight and kill each other endlessly.”

“…….”

“There wasn’t a single peaceful day. Wars broke out nonstop across the entire world. Humanity grew exhausted with the ceaseless, nauseating cycle of slaughter.”

“…….”

“No, saying they were exhausted is too gentle. They were on the brink of extinction.”

Bion let out a soft sigh.

“At that time, civilization was more advanced than Mide’s world… no, more advanced than any of the hero worlds. If the Primordial Demon King was the beginning of Demon Kings, then you could call that era the beginning of humankind.”

“…….”

“Humanity had created countless weapons capable of wiping themselves out. With negative energy overflowing in every person, they were seconds away from destroying themselves.”

The party fell silent, even our breathing paused.

Bion continued calmly.

“But humanity struggled desperately against the extinction looming over them. The smartest and most respected people gathered to form an organization, determined to find a way to break the endless cycle of war.”

Neril frowned.

“They started searching for a way? Is that even possible?”

“As I said, their civilization was advanced beyond comparison to now.”

“Hmph. A civilization advanced enough to strangle itself.”

“Anyway, they finally discovered a way to extract their negative energy.”

I couldn’t help admire that.

This was an era without a system.

Without any prior knowledge, they discovered negative energy and even figured out how to extract it.

Neril had spoken cynically earlier, but compared to now, that era must have been absurdly advanced.

“And then?”

“After extracting all that negative energy from humanity, they poured it into a single vessel. Believing that if they could manage that vessel, eternal peace would come.”

“…….”

“At that time, humanity’s population exceeded 80 billion. When the negative energy of 80 billion humans were contained in one vessel… someone stole it.”

Gulp.

I swallowed without realizing.

I asked,

“Stole it? It must have been a project carrying humanity’s fate. The security must have been too lax.”

“The security was perfect. It’s just that the one who stole it was the project’s highest-ranking leader.”

“The person responsible for all that did something like that? What kind of criteria did they use to pick him?”

“No different from today.”

A thin smirk appeared on Bion’s lips.

“There were countless complex requirements and tests, of course, but humanity had no shortage of people who qualified. When expertise and skill were all roughly equal, what remains?”

“What?”

“Politics. The leader outmaneuvered every rival, won the hearts of the people, deceived their eyes and ears, seized the organization and its authority… and raised himself to a position akin to ‘humanity’s savior.’ All of humanity believed in him.”

What Bion said reminded me of something.

It was as if my guess was correct, because her words continued.

“If I were to give you an easy comparison to help you understand, the status of the project leader at the time was like that of a ‘hero’.”

One single word that made everything make sense.

Hero.

People of this era believe everything I say without any doubt simply because I am a Hero.

Idria’s fabricated lies.

Velosian’s existence.

Even when, during the demon king trial, I said I would take her to the underworld.

They believed it simply because the Hero said it.

Neril opened her mouth.

“I see…… when you put it like that, it makes more sense. There was no system, but that project leader was the hero of that era.”

“Yes. At least in terms of status, calling him a hero wouldn’t have been wrong. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the leader stole the vessel infused with the negative energy extracted from 80 billion humans. What do you think he did with it?”

I couldn’t even guess.

But there was a hint.

In the screen we had just seen in the sky, didn’t the primordial demon king destroy the world?

“Did he make a demon king with the vessel? The primordial demon king you mentioned earlier.”

“When I called it the primordial demon king, that was just a metaphor. Since there was no system back then, that enormous negative energy had no ego or will, unlike the demon kings we know.”

“But it really did destroy the world. Doesn’t that mean it had a will?”

“No. That was something that happened because of one person’s greed and mistake. Someone who tried to steal the negative energy of 80 billion and manipulate it in his own hands.”

I was able to understand what she meant.

How was I able to understand something that abstract?

‘Well……’

Well, of course because I have seen it before.’

The final battle with Idria before regression.

What had Kaeld done then?

He stole Idria’s heart and tried to use it.

But he ended up getting devoured by Idria instead.

“The same thing happened?”

“Yes. Pathetically enough, the project leader who tried to toy with the accumulated energy of 80 billion humans was swallowed by it in an instant.”

“……”

“Of course, since it was still an era without a system, a demon king didn’t actually ‘form.’ But when uncontrollable, overwhelming power rampages in the hands of a madman, you could call that itself a demon king.”

Xenia nodded.

“So the project leader who was devoured by that energy became the primordial demon king and destroyed the world.”

“Correct.”

“How crazed would someone have to be to do something like that?”

“……”

“I mean, if you could handle that kind of power with one hand, you could become a god…… no, something beyond even a god. But what confidence made him think he could achieve such a feat himself, seriously.”

Xenia added, “Unless he was unbelievably stupid.”

But.

But I already know.

And my party members, who heard the story from me, would know as well.

That there was someone who had done that same ‘unbelievably stupid’ thing before regression.

Bion quietly looked at us.

With that gaze, my party members, including me, slowly began to realize.

Serein spoke.

“No way, right? You are not thinking what I’m thinking, right?”

“How would I know what you are thinking.”

“What Mr. Mide is thinking right now.”

“……”

“I know one fake hero who was that stupid, yet was once called humanity’s hope.”

Offense continued her words.

“Yeah. People showed him unconditional trust just because he was called a hero.”

“……”

“And that era’s project leader was the same. He fooled humanity with politics and a silver tongue and got himself seated as the head of that massive project.”

“……”

“Damn it. Why is so much overlapping.”

To that half-question, Bion gave an answer.

“Because he is the same person.”

“……!”

“The leader of the Humanity Salvation Project. The man who held a status equal to a hero. And the soul that ultimately became the primordial demon king.”

“……”

“That man was Kaeld Wake. Well… his surname was different back then.”

…….

You were trash before and you are trash now, Kaeld.

Somehow, I could accept it.

How Kaeld managed to push Trail’s soul out and take his body.

How he won the struggle over the body’s ownership against Aktion.

If he was something on the level of the primordial demon king, that might not have been difficult at all.

I still don’t know why Kaeld appeared in my world or why he exists in this era.

“I will explain that part now.”

“I was just thinking that in my head.”

“It shows on your face. Anyway, please look at these data screens. We don’t need a large display like earlier, so just pay attention here.”

Tap.

Bion displayed a reasonably sized screen this time.

“In the project I mentioned earlier, outstanding talents from every field gathered. Their number was in the tens of millions, and of course, aside from Kaeld the leader, many others were well-known.”

“……”

“Most of them believed in Kaeld as their savior, but there are always rebels wherever you go.”

“……”

“There was one man who could be called the head of those rebels, a thorn in Kaeld’s side. A man who doubted Kaeld’s schemes until the end and cornered him.”

My heart dropped.

I had already overlapped Kaeld the project leader with Kaeld the pre-regression hero once before.

Why would it be any different this time.

“It was you, Mr. Mide.”

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