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Mephistophales continued to cry. For the time being, as long as he wouldn’t stop bawling, we couldn’t continue our talk. I took an Amrita from my magic pouch.

“…Miss… Alim? What are you planning to do?”
“Hm? I’ll revive Mika, you know?”

By the way, I was currently giving her a lap pillow. Even after checking several times, I felt neither magic power nor warmth from her, which had a profound effect on my heart.
Let’s quickly bring her back to life.

“…It’s impossible… If she has died due to Armageddon… Legend Potions won’t be able to resurrect her!”

I ignored Mephistophales words and poured the Amrita Potion into Mika’s mouth. In fact, merely a single drop should have been enough¹, but because it was Mika, I wanted to make sure.

“I am sorry, I truly am… It was our fault… but it’s a fact…”

To be honest, I also had some worries about reviving Mika with an Amrita.
After all, it’s only due to a… feeling my skill gives me, right?

I had no evidence to back it up.
Come to think of it, I never used an Amrita to bring something back to life, so…²

Still, Amrita Potions clearly had this effect. I started to feel magic power from Mika’s body. Reflexively, I embraced her while crying.

I knew it, I did, but I’m so glad. Supremely glad.

“It… can’t be? She really came back to life…” Mephistophales uttered in amazement. Or rather, he’d never stopped being amazed.

More importantly, I now knew that I could bring everyone in the country back to life with this. Tears ran down my cheeks and fell onto Mika’s shoulder. And at the same time… she slowly started to open her eyes.

“Mmh…?”
“Mika! Mika!”
“H-huh? Ayumu? Eh, huh? What’s going on? Why are you crying? Huh?”

Frankly, I wanted hug her even tighter and kiss her, but that would have to wait for later.

“Alim…? Hey, being hugged like this… makes me… uh, really happy, but… I have no idea what’s going on, so I’d like an explanation… or something. Erm, uh… we can take our time when this is over…”
“Oh, s-sorry! You’re right. I’ll explain it to you.”

I told Mika what had happened; Mostly how I defeated Samaeyl, who then killed everyone when she noticed she was about to be sealed, how Mephistophales absorbed the demon god, but was then rendered powerless and captured by me, and that he was from Japan.

“Hm… I understand the situation. In other words, we won the war, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then, it’s now about Mephi… Mr. Mephistophales… right? That man… you want to talk about what we should do with him?”
“Yep.”

Mika and I faced him.

“Mephistophales, since I can bring everyone back to life like this, it should be alright, you see. In fact, we’ll likely have zero losses in the end. Though that doesn’t change the fact that everyone died because of what you did.”
“Uh… You’re… right… b-but this is astonishing. Is that potion from just now on a higher level than Legend Potions?”
“Indeed.”

I showed him an Amrita Potion, as if to flaunt it.

“Good… great.”
“…Then, back to the main issue, Mephistophales.”

He slowly nodded. When I looked briefly at his neck, he seemed to swallow hard.

“Why did you… join the Shaytan and become Samaeyl’s subordinate? Additionally, you even completely absorbed her… What did you plan to do?”

Surely, the answer to this should explain the entire war. Mika silently observed. He then slowly opened his mouth.

“…About Samaeyl, the demon god… To make it short, she’s one of the divine pillars of this world, you know. On a day, two years after I had arrived in this world, I was spending my time as an adventurer and heard the tale of a certain demon possessing the power of prophecy, who said, ‘If you take the power of the demon god and mix it with an item created by a red-haired girl, who shall appear during the war, 300 years from now, you shall gain the means to connect world to world’.”

I see, that’s why he absorbed Samaeyl and tried to make me create the item with his Forced Contract twice.

“Is that so?”
“Yes. Because of that, I relied on the demons, became one of them and served Samaeyl. As a representative of the Shaytan’s ruler. Becoming a demon was probably a bad idea. Gradually, all I thought about were plans to support Samaeyl, I became tainted by evil… For example, I captured the hero, to prevent the next holder of ‘Brave’ to appear… Except for those occasions, I was mostly asleep.”

I see, at this point, I’m awfully curious about that demon prophet, but…? Usually, you wouldn’t believe the words of a demon, even less some false-sounding prophecy. Perhaps it’s possible that he was brainwashed, too, right?

“Then, what happened to the demon who made those prophecies?”
“Well… I don’t know. However, since I don’t feel his magic power, that means… he might have died due to Miss Mika’s white rain.”

Way to go, Mika!

Suddenly, he looked at Mika’s face, who didn’t seem to think of anything in particular, as she fixed him with a serious gaze.

“…Come to think of it, how were the two of you summoned to this world? For me… it was by a self-proclaimed god of this world who was apparently just killing time…”³　

At Mephistophales’ sudden question, Mika and I looked at each other’s faces. In other words, he came to this world without dying.

“Mika and I… we died in an accident… Lord Jizou from close to where we lived reincarnated us in this world. We looked like this from the beginning…”
“What, so you’re the same as the humans⁴ in this world, aren’t you? In other words, you were born again… by the circle of transmigration. I see… I look like this, since I turned into a demon.”

So, when he turned into a demon, he also became a clown, didn’t he? But I wouldn’t have expected that there are other methods to come to this world.

“By the way, I received the Forced Contract from that so-called god, you see, and I discovered the smoke magic in a dungeon. This scythe, too,” he continued to talk, even while being restrained.

At any rate… 300 years, that’s so long, isn’t it? If it was me, if I was together with Mika… could I have lived for 300 years? Well, I probably could have. But if we weren’t together? …I shudder at the thought. I sympathize with him.

…However…

I wonder, should I deal with him at my own judgement?

Would the people of this country who were injured agree with that? What about Karua, who was abducted and forced to live through a dreadful experience? What about the king, whose daughter was kidnapped and whose wife’s remains were stolen? I’ll probably need to make a decision…

TL notes:
When I read this chapter the first time, I was genuinely happy that Alim realized at the end that even though Mephistophales is a fellow Japanese, he did some seriously nasty shi̲t and maybe he shouldn’t just let him bugger off to Japan without any consequence. But then I read something the author wrote a bit into volume 8, explaining that this was exactly what happened originally, before the story was rewritten…

As a reminder, what the Joker-Wannabe has also done beside the stuff Alim knows about:
-Gave Faust the title that allowed him to prey on women without any recourse for years (chapter 76.5).
-Gleefully anticipated watching Alim despair as Karua was sacrificed in front of him (chapter 117).
-Had absolutely no issues with Karua, a 13-year-old girl, being violated by a demon (chapter 130).
-Killed Karua’s mother, simply because it’d be convenient in the future (chapter 154).
-Was likely behind the attack during Herrell and Elle’s wedding (chapter 167).

Apart from that, there’s also a high possibility he knew Samaeyl would kill everyone in the royal capital, and from his perspective, there would’ve been absolutely no way to resurrect those people. That’s hundreds of thousands of victims, pretty much a genocide.

1. After checking the Amrita’s description in chapter 105 again, all it said was that you could bring something back to life from a single hair, but it never said anything about only needing a single drop. I guess this was either retconned or is an effect that wasn’t mentioned back then.
2. Too bad he never ran those experiments with the dragon he had planned to do.
3. This kinda reminds me of what happens to Kanata in Disciple of the Lich. Being ripped away from your friends and loved ones, merely for the amusement of a deity is not exactly a nice thought.
4. In the original he uses 人族の人間 (“people of the human race”). 人間 is a bit annoying, since it means “human(s)” but in fantasy novels it is often used for “good humanoid people”.