Chapter 2054: Elayne Explains Her Past

"Hey! We’re doing our best to survive here, okay?!" Sailor said furiously. "I am really getting freaking pent up with this bastard’s annoying way of speaking. Did we really have to pick him up?! He should’ve stayed in his fancy little house... someone like him doesn’t belong with us!"

"S-Sailor, you’re being too mean..." Norman tried to stop him gently.

"Blank, Sailor, that’s enough," Elayne said firmly. "I understand that you two are very different from each other, but that is enough. Under my rule, you two will get along. Understood?"

"..."

"..."

Sailor and Blank did not respond right away. They simply remained in tense silence.

"Understood?" Elayne insisted once more, placing her hands on her hips and looking down at them like a mother reprimanding her two unruly sons.

In the end they both succumbed to her quiet motherliness.

"Yes, ma’am..." Sailor sighed while rolling his eyes.

"Fine," Blank nodded reluctantly.

Elayne nodded with a kind yet satisfied smile. "Alright. As I was saying..."

Elayne began explaining to everyone present a brief summary of her past, their true identities, what they had been doing, who they truly were, and more. At the same time she started spreading her spores across Jester’s mangled corpse. Even though the Demon had already eaten his soul and a large portion of his body, he had still left behind hundreds of tiny soul fragments no larger than dust particles lingering within the remaining flesh.

The Demon had not finished his meal completely, leaving whatever remained for Elayne to "enjoy" however she wished. This once again showed Elayne that Demons were not exactly absolute evil monsters that destroyed everything they touched. Under the right circumstances they could be reasoned with, negotiated with, and even befriended.

"I see... I kind of... get it, somehow... um, wow," Sailor muttered after a long pause. "Wow..."

"It is a lot to take in," Norman nodded slowly. "So you really come from Earth, and you were all Players!"

"But the Demon King in his malevolence~ Came to ambush you in your home, instead of fighting you as players~! You were not as strong as the avatars~ And... sadly perished... under his evil... claws..." Dorothy’s usual song turned sad and quiet as she sighed and shed a single tear.

"..." Shade remained silent while carefully taking in all the information, then nodded once. "Elayne... master is still master... at the end."

"Yes, I am," Elayne smiled kindly while gently patting Shade’s head. "Now, do you understand the context of what we were talking about a bit better?"

"More or less," Sailor admitted.

"Yes," Norman nodded firmly.

"See? Blank? They aren’t as stupid as you claimed," Mark said while rubbing the point in Blank’s direction.

"Stupidity has nothing to do with understanding, but rather with the lack of will to try," Blank replied coldly. "They were mostly forced to listen by Elayne’s kind heart... And— Ahem! Yes, I suppose I was wrong." He quickly changed his tone the moment he saw Elayne crossing her arms and glaring at him while pouting. He could not truly resist her, and his pride folded the instant her gaze locked onto him.

"Anyway!" Elayne continued. "It seems that our deaths were what catapulted everything into motion... Somehow the Demon King of Death gained enough power to do all of this after defeating us..."

"D-Did he gain your Divinity?" Mark asked urgently. "The power you were developing... no, the one we were all developing together..."

"Yeah. He likely absorbed my Divinity and used it to rise to an even higher level of power," Elayne explained. "He already possessed the Crown of the False Demon King of Void, which Merlinus had originally created... and which he later took from him. With that alone he had already gained the power to use the Void Element and move freely between realms and dimensions. He also likely allied himself with other powerful beings... even deities... When I used my Dream Magic to look into Jester’s soul, I was able to learn a great deal about the Death Apostles... and among them... among them there is... a goddess from Earth."

"?!"

Everyone was left completely speechless by the revelation.

"A-A god is helping him?!" Sailor asked in shock. "W-What kind of goddess?"

"A Goddess of Fate... Clotho the Fate Spinner," Elayne sighed heavily. "I-I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s doing working with him. She’s a goddess who can manipulate probability and the future itself! She can cut the lives of people short in an instant, ensuring death along their paths... I-I think... I think he was originally meant to lose against us, but he used her power to defy fate and kill us instead!"

"!!!" Mark was visibly shocked. Although Blank did not know who Clotho was specifically, the knowledge that she was a goddess of fate was more than enough to leave him equally stunned.

"T-This is unbelievable..." Blank muttered. "So that bastard...! But why hasn’t he already won completely? What is he still planning? Why is he struggling at all?"

"It’s more of a cold war right now. The process is slow, but he’s carefully preparing... something big, something that will finally allow him to conquer even the Netherworld," Elayne said. "The Deities that govern this place, who mostly reside in the White Void Realm or beyond... would they even hear our pleas if we asked them to come defend their own world?"

"...I have no idea," Blank shook his head slowly. "Even as a Noble among Nobles, I am still far too distant from reaching the level of our Venerable Ancestor, the Mother of all White Ghosts... but I have heard tales from my father about those who became strong enough to communicate with their ancestors. Or rather, the ancestors themselves sense our rising power and come to recruit us so that we may become gods alongside them."

"I-Is that so?" Elayne wondered aloud. "Maybe if we help you grow stronger, Blank... that could become a real possibility, a chance to speak with a higher being... but even then, it’s more than anything just wishful thinking right now, isn’t it?"

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