Chapter 461: Yin and Yang

"What do you mean?" Kouhei asked.

He had honestly thought that the witch might have some kind of answer to their problem. Petra had been around for long enough to know things that ordinary people could not even begin to imagine, so Kouhei had naturally assumed that bringing the problem to her would at least give them some direction. Apparently, however, even Petra was having trouble finding an answer to something that seemed to exist outside the boundaries of what she considered possible.

"Do you really think I would have an answer to a question about something that, throughout my entire existence, has never happened before?" Petra asked. "Even during the prehistoric era, when the world was still considerably different from what it is now, there was no situation recorded that would give me a direct answer to this particular problem."

She leaned back slightly before continuing, her expression becoming more serious as she tried to explain the situation in terms that Kouhei could actually understand.

"There has been nothing in recorded history indicating that a half-demon and half-fallen-angel has ever existed," Petra said. "Fallen angels may have lost the purity that ordinary angels possess, but fundamentally, they are still the same kind of being. Their nature remains connected to that of angels, while demons are fundamentally incompatible with angels when it comes to producing offspring."

Petra paused briefly before raising a finger to emphasize her next point.

"When I say fundamentally incompatible, I mean fundamentally impossible," she continued. "I’m not talking about something that is merely extremely difficult, incredibly rare, or unlikely to happen under normal circumstances. I’m talking about something that should literally be impossible according to the natural laws governing these beings."

She had emphasized the impossibility of a fallen angel and a demon producing a child so many times that Kouhei began to wonder whether she was trying to convince him or herself.

"Think about it for a moment," Petra said. "How should I explain this so that it makes sense without turning the whole thing into some complicated lecture? Let’s use something simple as an example, like a magnet. You know what a magnet is, right?"

"Well, I do," Kouhei replied.

He could not imagine why she had to ask that particular question, since magnets were hardly some ancient forbidden knowledge that only witches with several centuries of experience could understand.

Practically everyone knew what a magnet was.

Someone would have to be living under a rock for their entire life to somehow reach adulthood without encountering one, and even then, Kouhei suspected that Petra would probably find a way to explain magnets to the rock as well.

"Magnets typically attract each other, right?" Petra asked.

"That’s the basic idea, yeah."

"Exactly, but they can also repel one another depending on which poles are facing each other," Petra explained. "If you put the North pole against the South pole, they attract each other. If you put North against North, however, they push away from one another, and South against South works the same way. Their behavior depends on which poles are interacting."

Kouhei nodded slowly, following along with her explanation even though he still was not entirely sure how magnets were supposed to explain the existence of a half-demon and half-fallen-angel.

"But an angel and a demon aren’t quite like that," Petra continued. "The difference between them goes much deeper than something as simple as having opposing poles. An angel is fundamentally repulsed by demonic essence, while demons possess a similar incompatibility with angelic essence. Their natures don’t simply pull toward or away from one another depending on the circumstances. The two exist as fundamentally opposing forces."

Petra folded her arms as she continued explaining.

"That is why what happened to your Faction Member is so absurd," she said. "Someone being born from opposing powers, carrying both demonic and angelic characteristics within the same existence, is something that should not happen naturally. It would be like forcing two things together that were never designed to coexist in the first place and somehow expecting them to function perfectly."

The explanation was beginning to make more sense, although Kouhei still had the uncomfortable feeling that Petra was describing his Faction Member as some kind of biological impossibility that had somehow slipped through reality’s quality-control department.

"There is another problem you need to consider," Petra added. "Even if you somehow managed to get a demon and an angel into a situation where one became pregnant with the other’s offspring, there is no guarantee that the child would survive long enough to be born."

Kouhei’s expression became more serious.

"In fact, the chances could be considerably worse than that," Petra continued. "The incompatible essences might place such an enormous strain on the mother’s body that she could die before the pregnancy ever reached its natural conclusion. The child itself might also fail to develop properly because the two opposing powers would interfere with one another."

She shook her head slightly.

"So what happened to your Faction Member is, at the very least, something with an absurdly small chance of occurring," Petra said. "Calling it a one-in-a-million possibility might actually be too generous, depending on how strict we want to be with the numbers. The important point is that this was never supposed to happen in the first place."

Kouhei stared at her for several seconds.

Petra had thrown so many strange explanations at him that he almost felt as though someone had taken a pile of completely unrelated words, tossed them into a blender, and somehow expected him to understand the resulting explanation.

Still, underneath all the complicated terminology, he understood the basic idea.

Two opposing forces were not supposed to blend together.

It was basically yin and yang.

White and black.

Light and darkness.

Opposing principles that could coexist within the same world without necessarily being meant to merge directly inside the same person.

"What about me, then?" Kouhei asked.

Petra looked toward him.

"I mean, I know I’m a bit of a special case," he continued. "That’s pretty obvious at this point, honestly. But why am I still alive when I’m carrying both demonic and angelic essence?"

Petra stared at him for a moment before the corners of her mouth slowly lifted into a grin.

"Well, didn’t you just answer the question yourself?" she said.

Kouhei blinked.

"What?"

"You are a special case," Petra replied. "You’ve already established that yourself, so I’m not exactly revealing some great secret here. You have been blessed by two opposing powers, and somehow, instead of those powers destroying one another inside you, they have managed to coexist."

She pointed toward him with one finger.

"You have the yin and the yang," she said. "That alone makes you unusual, but there is another important factor that separates you from the situation we’re discussing. And that is you being human."

"My being human?"

Petra nodded.

"You were originally human, and that matters more than you might realize," she explained. "Humans are fundamentally different from angels and demons because their nature is not restricted to one absolute side. Humans are capable of carrying both light and darkness within themselves without necessarily being destroyed by the contradiction."

Kouhei remained quiet as he listened.

"Even though you’ve been reincarnated into your current body, your original human essence has not simply disappeared," Petra continued. "Your body may have changed, and you’ve gained things that you certainly never expected to have, but the foundation of your existence is still connected to what you were originally."

"So because I was human, I can handle both?" Kouhei asked.

"That is the simplest way of putting it," Petra replied. "It doesn’t mean that everything about your situation is normal, because your situation is about as far from normal as you can possibly get. However, your human nature gives you a foundation that allows opposing qualities to coexist without necessarily destroying you."

Kouhei went silent after that.

For a few moments, he simply stared at the tea while thinking about everything Petra had explained.

It seemed that coming here had been useless after all.

They had gone through all the trouble of seeking out someone who possessed knowledge far beyond their own, hoping that she would immediately point them toward an answer. Instead, Petra had essentially told them that the situation was so unprecedented that even she had never encountered anything comparable during her incredibly long existence.

"Although..." Petra suddenly said.

Kouhei looked up.

Petra’s expression had changed slightly, and there was now something thoughtful behind her eyes.

"I should clarify something before you decide that this entire trip was pointless," she continued. "Everything I’ve told you is based on what I know, and as far as my personal experience is concerned, this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a case like this."

Kouhei’s attention immediately returned to her.

"However, that doesn’t necessarily mean your Faction Member is the first person in history to ever experience something similar."

Kouhei’s eyes widened slightly.

"What are you saying?"

"I’m saying that there might be records somewhere," Petra answered. "Ancient records, religious records, magical records, or perhaps something that was written down by people who witnessed an event they didn’t understand. The fact that I don’t know of another case doesn’t automatically mean another case never existed."

A small spark of hope returned to Kouhei’s expression.

"So there could be something that tells us what happened?"

"Possibly," Petra said. "We won’t know until we actually look."

Kouhei straightened slightly.

After hearing so much about how impossible the situation was, that single possibility was enough to bring some of his hope back. He had almost accepted that they were going to leave without finding anything useful, so hearing that there might still be another avenue they could investigate changed his entire mood almost immediately.

"Then what do we need to look for?" Kouhei asked.

Petra smiled.

"We just have to get..." Petra began.

She deliberately paused, letting the silence linger for a few seconds.

Kouhei stared at her.

Petra stared back.

Then Petra’s grin widened.

It was the kind of smile that made her look almost devilish.

"The holy book," she finally said.