Arald
“He joined hands with them?” Elodie asked back.
“The Seven Sins wouldn't go to Nastrond just because they lost their positions. Normally, they'd just fall into hell. Someone among the devils, most definitely Satan, must have joined hands with God.”
“And that God would be a God of Asgard,” Lily added.
Nastrond was the closest thing to hell in Norse mythology. Naturally, the God who joined hands with Satan would also be from Norse mythology, a God of Asgard.
“Why would Satan do that? No, how is that even possible in the first place?”
Sending a devil who fell from the position of the Seven Sins to Nastrond instead of hell. Was that actually possible?
To that, Frondier replied, “To understand that, you need to know the original process of how devils fall into hell."
Was there a law that dictated that devils who descended from the Seven Sins had to go to hell? Or was it a tradition among devils? Was it something they did directly, or was it closer to a phenomenon?
Without knowing that, they couldn't figure out how the switch to Nastrond was made.
“But I can understand what Satan is thinking.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. So, what do you think, Arald?”
Arald remained silent for a moment. Soon, he nodded his head and said, “Satan became the King of Devils in the demon world. And he abandoned the 72 devils. Thanks to that, he was able to avoid war with Zeus. Because in Zeus's eyes, the devils' power would have appeared to have diminished.”
At that, Lily's eyes twitched.
“...You’re saying their power didn’t actually diminish?”
“If Belpheghor fell to Nastrond instead of hell, it would have been much further in the past than now. Since then, Satan must have already reached some kind of agreement with the God of Asgard.”
In other words, if Satan really had made an agreement with the God of Asgard and was able to abandon the 72 devils because of it…
It was possible that some of Asgard’s forces had joined forces with the devils.
“If it’s a God of Asgard, then who? Which God joined hands with the devils?”
Frondier, who answered Elodie’s question, gathered obsidian in his hand and showed it to her.
“One of them is Hela.”
“...Ah.”
“Hela is one of the few Gods of Asgard I've encountered. She’s the God who governs the underworld, so she might be able to connect with Nastrond. And above all,”
“She hates Master Frondier,” Selena said instead. Frondier laughed.
“Hahaha. That's right. She hates me. So there is a possibility that she formed an arbitrary alliance with Satan.”
Of course, it wasn’t just a matter of like and dislike.
Frondier absorbed Helheim’s Mana. Not only did he absorb it, but he also wiped out all the souls and lesser demons that flocked to him. Those who were strictly residents of Helheim.
Of course, it was in self-defense because Frondier had been attacked first, but from Hela’s point of view, it wasn’t something she could just overlook.
Above all, the very existence of Frondier, who absorbed a large amount of Helheim’s Mana and walked around perfectly fine, was a problem. In Hela’s eyes, Frondier would look like a heterogeneous monster that was neither human nor anything else.
“The other one is Odin.”
“…….”
At those words, everyone's faces darkened.
Frondier continued, “I've always wondered. Why Odin is after me.”
“...Isn’t that because of the Weaving?”
“Well, that would be one of the reasons. He’s the God of Gods, so it’s understandable that he’d be upset. But even so, it’s strange that Odin would be the first to intervene in human affairs like that.”
Frondier had never Replicated Odin’s weapon. Because he had never seen it.
Rather, it would make more sense for Thor, the owner of Mjölnir, to come forward first if he was angry. Given Odin's position, it would be more natural to send his son, Thor, first.
But Odin moved himself.
With his eyes downcast and his hand over his mouth, Frondier said, “Odin wanted me to regret it.”
“Regret?”
“He made me the Empire’s enemy and made a mockery of my will to save everyone. If I resisted there, the Empire would be split in two and fight, and it wouldn't be long before they were torn apart.”
Not everyone in the Empire was Frondier’s enemy.
And that was the reason Frondier had accepted his exile.
Right now, there was Enfer, who surpassed the Zodiac's skills, and Azier, who was unmatched in one-on-one battles, and they were his family. The Empire’s strongest knight order was under Enfer’s command.
Among the Zodiac, Osprey, Ludwig, Monty, and Lily would side with Frondier. Not to mention Constel’s talented individuals.
Everyone who had gone through the war and recognized Frondier’s worth there would become his allies. They would fight to prove Frondier's innocence, and…
—The Empire would surely be set ablaze.
“Odin knew that and made his move. In other words, getting rid of me was more important than the well-being of the Empire. No matter how blasphemous the Weaving was, this was a problem on a different scale.”
Frondier at that time thought that he, being rejected by God, was a special case. There was a reason why God didn’t like him, whether it was the Weaving or something else.
So conversely, he believed that God would be favorable to other humans except for himself.
That belief was shattered by Odin’s actions.
“Odin didn’t exile me because he hated or resented me.”
“...Then why?” Elodie asked, and Frondier slowly tilted his head.
“...He just, had to, so he did?”
In the end, he seemed to tilt his head as if he felt it was strange himself.
“What’s that?”
“But that's the most accurate way to describe Odin's actions. Odin exiled me out of necessity. Not out of personal feelings.”
In the end, they didn’t know what it was for.
After exiling Frondier from the Empire, did Odin achieve what he wanted?
Or, since he had aimed for the division of the Empire or Frondier’s death, did things go wrong?
“But if Satan really did join hands with Odin, then it’s easy to understand. It wouldn't be difficult for Odin to send devils to Nastrond.”
“...It may be easy to understand, but the situation is very uncomfortable,” Pielott, who had been listening, said with a pale face.
Frondier muttered as if organizing his thoughts. “Odin made me into the Empire’s devil, and he succeeded. But not everything went according to plan. Even more so if he expected me to claim my innocence. Was Odin ultimately aiming for the division of the Empire? If so, why? Why then? Was making me into a devil a means to an end? Or was he waiting for me to become like that…?”
The muttering continued. Frondier had already slipped into his own world, armed with speculation and logic.
Elodie looked at him strangely.
‘…Strange.’
There were quite a few times when Frondier didn’t seem human.
But Elodie had never felt Frondier as unfamiliar as she did at this moment.
‘How can he think like that?’
Frondier's judgment was remarkably clear. She felt like he was thinking with a clear mind.
That seemed strange to Elodie.
‘It’s none of his business.’
Frondier wasn’t talking about someone else's story.
It was his own business.
Frondier himself had endured the war, had been branded a devil, and had been framed and exiled to prevent the Empire from being divided.
Didn't he feel anything about it?
Whether it was Odin, the Empire, God, devils, or humans.
Shouldn’t he hate someone? Hadn’t he been through something worthy of that?
But now, Frondier was just talking as if he was solving a problem.
“...In the end, we’re back to square one.”
Frondier spoke as if he had finished his thoughts. “We have to find Pandemonium. We lack information.”
“Pandemonium?”
“Yes. That’s why I called you all today.”
Frondier briefly explained about Pandemonium. About having to find the giant inside.
“If we know where it is, we can get in. But we don’t know where it is.”
At that, everyone fell into their own thoughts.
The first to speak was Carla. “Wouldn’t books be helpful? Like the areas where each God mainly resided in mythology.”
“Hmm. Most of the records from the time of Ragnarok would have been erased. But it’ll still help.”
“I’ll look into it. Most of the records are in Atlas,” Carla said.
Pielott also joined in. “Me too. The more people there are to find materials, the better.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Then, Lily, who had been deep in thought, raised her finger. “Devils live a long time. Maybe they have eyewitness information?”
Finding that quite plausible, Frondier nodded his head again.
Next was Elodie. “About that Pandemonium. You’re saying it can’t be found through Mana detection?”
“Hmm. Theoretically, it’s difficult.”
She scratched her cheek with a subtle look on her face.
“I, might be able to find it?”
“Huh?”
“No, like. It’s just a hunch?”
Elodie had recently become aware of her Eclexis. Because of that, she had almost entered Pandemonium with Vishnu.
Of course, she had done it half out of momentum back then, so there was no guarantee that it would work again. Besides, finding Pandemonium, where the winner had already been decided, was a completely different matter.
Frondier didn’t know that Elodie had become able to use Eclexis, but he nodded his head once again.
Elodie was a genius, after all.
“Then I’ll ask you all to do some research. Report back to me if you find anything. Let's have another meeting shortly,” Frondier said and announced the end of the meeting.
As everyone was about to go their separate ways…
“Oh, right.”
For some reason, he uttered a preface that sent chills down everyone’s spines.
“Arald, stay for a moment.”
He said with a bright smile.
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