Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

This is actually a ridiculous paradox—it is known that Adam in this world did not eat the fruit, so he and Eve should not have had offspring, because the innocent have no sense of shame!

Forget it, discussing mythological knowledge in this absurd world is just too ridiculous.

"I simply believe that the heavens of this world need reform, the hells need to be rebuilt, and the world needs to be torn down and started anew!"

Lucifer stared at Tsurugi for a while, then suddenly burst out laughing.

"Hahaha, tear the world down and start over? Who do you think you are? God?!"

"You are incredibly arrogant!!!"

"Thank you for the compliment. I've always felt it's a source of pride I deserve." Tsurugi calmly accepted the 'praise' from the Lord of Arrogance and continued...

"You should have seen Angel's soul. What do you think of my transformation?"

Lucifer remained silent. He didn't want to praise Tsurugi, so he kept quiet, but it was true that Tsurugi had been transformed exceptionally well.

Your soul, which was originally turbid and depraved, has become purer than it was in life under his transformation, and you have met the prerequisites for ascending to heaven.

"Yes, I will extend this transformation to the entire hell of arrogance."

Looking down at the city beneath the pentagram, Tsurugi's eyes filled with deep hatred. He closed them and murmured softly.

"Even if it's just to please me, this place must be transformed, completely transformed!"

"So, you intend to torture and harm every sinner in Pentagram City equally?" Lucifer's gaze grew cold.

“Yes, atonement requires suffering; without empathetic pain, there is no atonement!” Tsurugi said without hesitation. He turned to look at Lucifer, whose expression was growing increasingly dangerous, and grinned.

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810

529. The Deal with Lucifer

Tsurugi stood in front of Lucifer, mocking him.

"Can you hurt me, Lucifer? I am a sinner."

"A torture device to torment you, an ant that leaves you helpless, a—hahahahahahahaha!"

"No, no! How could you be so unlucky in this world?"

"The King of Hell can't do anything to the sinners who have fallen into Hell and are being punished? Although this world is as rotten as a pile of shit, I must admit that this punishment is groundbreaking!"

"When I get back, I'll definitely spread your pathetic state throughout the entire Hydra royal court! Hahahaha!!!"

Lucifer stared expressionlessly at the guy in front of him who had started laughing abruptly again, veins bulging on his forehead.

He shouldn't know Tsurugi! He should, absolutely, perhaps—not know her!

But he felt that Tsurugi was very familiar, and he was very unhappy when he heard him laugh at him. He was extremely unhappy!

"Even if I can't deal with you damned sinners, don't forget, I can find other demons," Lucifer said through gritted teeth.

"I can't kill you sinners, but the other demons of the Seventh Ring can!!!"

However, just as Lucifer was expecting to find a look of panic on Tsurugi's face, he saw Tsurugi clapping and cheering instead.

"Well said! That's exactly how you should do it! In fact, that's exactly how it should be!" Tsurugi clapped, cheered, and praised him.

"Since you are the King of Hell, why don't you do this? Shouldn't you do it this way?!"

"Although you cannot torture sinners, you can command other demons to do so! Let them be jailers, let them torture sinners—isn't that the very purpose of hell and demons?"

"Although it still can't change the fact that any sinner falling into this trough of arrogance can become a demon, and that they are all thrown together without regard to their importance, but—as long as there is punishment for sinners, that's a good start!"

"If I can make a decent mess of Hell, and then I can change Heaven a bit—wouldn't that solve everything?"

Lucifer's eyelids twitched slightly as he looked at the person in front of him, who was enthusiastically chattering away, and suddenly he truly realized...

He said he wanted to change the world and make it a better place, and he wasn't kidding!

He simply couldn't stand the heaven and hell of this world, couldn't stand how it all worked, and he wanted a world where good was rewarded and evil was punished!

He had no ambition to conquer the world, nor any wild fantasies of becoming the king of hell or heaven.

All of my actions were truly motivated by pure 'good intentions'.

"...How could someone like you become a sinner?"

Lucifer seemed to let out a sigh of relief, covering his face helplessly.

Because he saw, beneath the two rays of crimson and pure white light, the true nature of this person's soul, hidden beneath the radiance.

It wasn't a pure and beautiful soul; it contained obvious hatred and resentment. But—even surrounded by these emotions, the soul's essence remained pure.

He was angry, but his anger was directed at the evils that displeased him!

Hatred, but directed at the atrocities that harm the world.

This soul is not pure and beautiful, and does not meet Heaven's requirements for a 'righteous person,' but—in some ways, it evokes a unique fondness.

You have to admit that the world is able to become a better place because of so many people who dare to do things, want to do things, and will take strong action against those ugly things, no matter if they are helpless or not!

"Probably because even paradise in this world is shit," Tsugumi shrugged.

"Okay... I won't interfere with what you want to do, but on the condition that you absolutely cannot involve Shirley!"

Lucifer took a step back. He neither agreed nor disagreed with what Tsugumi wanted to do; after all, he had long since lost faith in humanity. But his daughter, Shirley, was the one person he absolutely could not be involved in!

"No way!" Tsugumi resolutely refused Lucifer, adding before he could explode.

"Do you really think Shirley will stay out of it once she knows the truth? Or are you planning to use your power as a father to forcibly restrain your arrogant and self-important daughter?"

“Hey! Shirley isn’t arrogant at all; she’s incredibly cute and kind!” Lucifer retorted.

But what Tsurugi said was also true. Lucifer knew his daughter all too well; she truly and stubbornly regarded saving her people as a great and noble cause. This arrogance, though she was unaware of it, was in no way inferior to his.

Even he himself, if he forcibly stopped Shirley from redeeming sinners, would definitely break ties with his daughter.

Thinking of this, Lucifer's face was full of worry.

"It wouldn't be a bad thing to involve my eldest niece," Tsurugi said, looking at Lucifer with amusement at what might be an unprecedented and unparalleled doting father.

"Letting her witness our ascension firsthand would be a great lesson for her. At least I've presented the outcome and a practical path. As for the process—even if she doesn't agree, at least she'll see hope, won't she?"

810 >>

"...Are you so sure you can ascend to heaven with those sinners?" Lucifer frowned.

"I don't think Heaven will just let you in so easily."

"Heaven? Is that important?" Tsugumi scoffed.

"Although God is nowhere to be found, angels are still just angels. Heaven does not belong to them; they are merely a group of administrators! And the rules of the world are not set by them!"

"So what are you planning to do in Heaven?" Lucifer asked, his face full of anticipation.

He was indeed looking forward to seeing how much trouble this troublemaker could cause in Heaven.

"It's nothing—you'll see when I get there." Tsugumi shrugged.

“And you, Lucifer, I need your help. In return, I will promise not to harm your daughter Shirley and to make her understand the heavy meaning of atonement.”

"Of course, I also need a small reward. I need you, as the Lord of Hell, to grant me a necessary authority... a forged mark of the Goetia family."

"What do you need that for?" Lucifer asked, frowning.

"You can't be both an angel and a demon. Besides, even if you disguised yourself, it wouldn't make a difference. You don't have the Goetia grimoire, and I wasn't the one who created those things!"

Lucifer is the ruler and leader of Hell, but that doesn't mean he created all the demons. The story in that fairy tale book is purely a secondary creation by his admirers. In reality, such a dark abyss existed before him, and both he and Lilith were defeated and brought down there.

He at most single-handedly transformed a dark abyss into what it is today, while the Ring Lord was someone he found and promoted from the dark abyss and then helped them shape themselves into their current form—they are friends, Lucifer is their king, but that doesn't mean he is their father.

Lucifer created the lesser demons, the lowest and most common class of commoners in Hell, and gave the Ring Lord the methods and abilities to create his minion demons. Lilith, on the other hand, used her songs to empower the demons of Hell.

However, the Goetia family's power comes from their grimoires, while the Ring Lords' power comes directly from themselves. The power of the song is almost always used by sinners, while demons have their own sources of power, and the song is at most an auxiliary force.

Therefore, the demons in the sixth ring of Hell are basically variants of their ring lords. Among them, the most common red-skinned imps of the Wrath Ring are the basic templates created by Lucifer in imitation of Satan. Apart from these, the appearance of many demons in Hell is basically determined by the ring they belong to.

As Lucifer said, the power source of the Ring Lord and the Goetia magic has absolutely nothing to do with him—especially the Goetia family, these things really have nothing to do with Lucifer!

"So you know where they came from?" Tsugumi asked with interest.

Lucifer gave Tsurugi a meaningful look, nodding and then shaking his head—Tsurugi immediately understood that some things couldn't be said directly here.

There is indeed a deeper force in Hell, which is the opposite of God who created everything—at the very least, it is the mastermind behind Hell, and compared to God who simply created the world and then left it to its own devices, it has indeed intervened in shaping Hell.

Well, from this perspective, it's even more low-class. Compared to a mere background character, these guys who clearly intervene in the plot but act like they're adversaries to the background characters are actually mostly the kind of people who would be kicked to death by the background characters.

You agree, Morgoth or Ilúvatar.

"I can only say that most of those Getia nobles look like birds," Lucifer hinted vaguely.

"It's similar to that golden, shiny but almost completely irrelevant spokesperson for Paradise. Most of them are birds, and a few of the later ones do resemble other animals."

"Understood." Tsugumi nodded.

"Your Heaven and Hell are all fucking Fury control!"

Lucifer: ......

"Why didn't He strike you dead with a bolt of lightning?" Lucifer lamented.

"In short—even if I gave it to you, you couldn't do it. You don't have the Goetia grimoire, you don't—"

Before Lucifer could finish speaking, Tsugumi silently pulled out her unusable Goetia grimoire.

“Actually, I did come here,” he said quietly, looking at the dumbfounded Lucifer.

"I am not only a saint, but also an angel, a sinner, a demon, and—in short, I have many identities. Even in the East, I have the identity of a god of destiny."

Lucifer: Croak! Three surnames—no, this is a five-surname slave!!!

"...He truly dotes on you so much." Lucifer muttered jealously, then agreed to Tsugumi's request.

There's no reason not to agree, is there? Besides, he'll be monitoring the whole situation to prevent this guy from really dragging his daughter into an excessively bad situation.

810>>>>

Shirley really needs some guidance—if the father can't bring himself to be ruthless, let the uncle do it!

“Then, the deal is done.” Tsurugi extended her hand and shook hands with Lucifer with a smile. With the pale green and deep red patterns, the soul contract was thus established.

Tsurugi immediately returned to the hotel—and unsurprisingly, the atmosphere there was quite hostile towards him.