"The demon Samael...?"
Even after he gave me a respectful nod, the name didn’t quite click.
If I were actually being possessed, there was no way I wouldn't have noticed. Before I could voice that doubt, Sebas—who had just identified himself as Samael—spoke.
"Even if I call myself that, it isn't as though I am possessing you, Young Master. My service to House Brave remains unchanged, now as it was in the ancient past."
"So, you're the demon Samael inhabiting a person named Sebas?"
"That is also not quite right."
Sebas shook his head.
"I am Sebas, and I am Samael. I am no ordinary demon; I have no need for offerings or sacrifices."
"I still don't really get it, but are you the same guy who’s looked after me since the day I was born?"
"I most certainly am."
"Then it doesn't matter. Sebas is Sebas."
The impeccably capable butler who had rushed to my side in my hour of need was, without a doubt, the Sebas I knew. Whether he was a demon or not didn't really change anything.
"Indeed."
Sebas smiled with visible satisfaction at my words.
"Now, give me a situation report."
I took my usual seat in the office and questioned Sebas while looking toward the door.
"Shall we begin from the moment you were so ungracefully defeated?"
Sebas took his position behind my left shoulder, answering while looking in the same direction. This was our fixed arrangement in this room.
"To pick a fight with Belial in that state... You truly have no patience, Young Master. Especially when you seem to spend all your patience on Lady Alicia."
"Can we please leave the irrelevant commentary out of this?"
I had occasionally wondered if this guy was actually a monster, but I never expected him to be a literal demon. I remembered the incident back in the summer during my demon summoning, when a Named Demon had fled with a pale face. It must have been because he saw you standing there, Sebas.
I had suspected he might be even stronger than my late father; it felt like the mystery of his strength had finally been solved.
"Well then, where shall I begin the explanation, Young Master?"
"From the beginning."
Whether we were mocked as 'Monkeys of the Abandoned Land' or grew up to be battle junkies, House Brave was still the lineage of the Hero. Yet, here was a demon in the family.
I had spent my time complaining about how distorted the Royal Capital was, but it turned out House Brave was just as twisted as the rest of them.
"Aren't there a few too many demons popping up lately?" I asked.
In the game, Alicia had been depicted as an antagonist who sold her soul to a demon, but that was the only real instance. There were similar descriptions for Jelasis, but his image as a 'obsessive' boy was far more prominent; there were no graphic descriptions of him selling his soul and turning into a monster.
...Wait.
I couldn't say for sure, but was the demon Alicia sold her soul to in the game world actually Sebas? For what purpose would he have lent her a hand? The more I thought about it, the less it made sense.
"Regarding the beginning of things... the origin of this country itself dates back to an age long past, when a king who sold his soul to a demon destroyed all the surrounding nations."
Sebas murmured this while staring into the distance, as if looking back at history.
"The king of that era, once ridiculed as a weak and Foolish King, suddenly climbed the ladder of success until he was hailed as a High King. All without knowing that several centuries of unending turmoil awaited him..."
"You talk like you were the one who did it."
"Indeed. For I was the one summoned back then."
"It was you?!"
Sebas, just what did you do in the distant past?
Long before the Ancient Sage, the Saint, or the Hero—figures I was familiar with—there was the demon Samael, deeply entwined with the very foundation of this nation. And that was Sebas.
"That's a pretty shocking fact... Did the king back then want to show off his power so badly he'd sell his soul?"
Still, he did wipe out the neighboring nations and seemingly fulfilled his duties as a king, but...
"Well, a great many citizens died in the subsequent Monster Calamity. Naturally, the countries beyond the borders took notice, and through one conflict after another, the nation grew increasingly exhausted."
Sebas let out a sigh, remarking, "This is what happens when one seeks power from a demon," which was a bit much coming from an actual demon.
"And then what? Why is such a demon hanging around House Brave? Logically, the Foolish King who sold his soul should have been the ancestor of the Brave family."
"Ho-ho. House Brave selling their souls? You must not underestimate your lineage, Young Master."
"I am talking about House Brave."
"The Brave family has absolutely no connection to the royal bloodline," Sebas continued. "Magic power dwells within the will. If a calamity lasts for hundreds of years, tens—hundreds—of thousands of humans will uniformly seek salvation. Eventually, that collective will takes form: the existences known as heroes."
Those who sought salvation from suffering found it in the Saint.
Those who sought governance in chaos found it in the Sage.
Those who sought to repel external enemies found it in the Hero.
The people living in that exhausted land prayed amidst the war and turmoil, and thus the Saint, the Sage, and the Hero were born.
"From there, the story is mostly consistent with what you know, Young Master."
"The story where the Sage used the Saint to create the barrier, and the Hero—the ancestor of House Brave—was driven away to the Brave Territory."
"Indeed. There are minor discrepancies, but we can skip those. The problem lies in the methods used by the Sage of that time."
"The Sage's methods? You mean using the Saint as the barrier?"
"It concerns the appearance of Belial."
Sebas snapped his fingers, and Belial’s face appeared before me. This mental world was surprisingly convenient. I wished he’d show me the past in images as well, but for now, I would listen.
"The Sage used the power of Belial—who is roughly my equal—to offset my curse, which had been brought about by the Foolish King and threatened to destroy the kingdom."
The idea of a demon’s curse being erased by another demon’s power felt incredibly wrong.
"That sounds like nothing more than a postponement of the calamity."
"As expected of the Young Master. It could only ever be a postponement. However, he achieved it by using the four bloodlines that carried the royal blood to localize the effect."
The miasma—or rather, the dense mana—that Sebas had scattered in ancient times, which was thick enough to spawn monsters, was restricted to the Yudaina Mountain Range.
"That's right next to us. That mountain range."
"It is right beside the Brave Territory. Ordinarily, all sorts of disasters would be born from there, but you are holding them back quite firmly, Young Master. Truly impressive."
Wait, wasn't that just a total raw deal for us?! The fact that the Brave Territory was established near the Yudaina Mountain Range was for that very purpose.
"Furthermore, by constructing a Guardian Barrier in the Royal Capital using the Saint as a sacrifice, the Sage of the past managed to nullify everything—from invasions by enemy nations to the monster calamities."
"I see."
To stop the curse brought by the ancient king's folly, the Sage used the power of a demon, and to minimize the fallout, he established a barrier using a Saint as a sacrifice. That was the origin of this country. The Guardian Barrier was peerless. While it was possible for a demon to act inside it, they couldn't exert enough power to actually destroy the nation.
"I can't imagine Belial would cooperate just for that, though."
Demons always required a price. The Belial who had appeared acted as if he were an associate of the Royal Family.
"Belial was the one who taught them how to create the barrier in the first place," Sebas informed me with a thin smile. "The price was the continuous maintenance of that barrier."
He let out a short, dry laugh.
"Every soul that dies within that barrier goes straight into that lowly Belial's gut."