Chapter 8: What a beautiful dead end

—I’m searching for a ■.

Or maybe I’m looking for a box, or perhaps a precious gem, or maybe a fetus. No, what I’m really looking for is a gear. Or was it an egg? The princess asked me to find it.

“My snake has run away. Find it, catch it, strangle it, hang it, and have off with its head.”

“Okay.”

I decide to sleep until morning.

I lie on the sofa, looking up at the black goat staring down at me from the ceiling.

Its eyeballs spin around and around in their sockets.

Its long red tongue hangs out of its mouth, quivering as it whispers longingly, “Cruel Marchen”.

“Wake up, big brother. It’s morning.”

My little sister shakes me awake. It’s already morning.

Sunlight streams through the curtains, awash with the primary colors. I check my coffin-like alarm clock. Its four hands are still ticking in perfect disorder.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

“If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late?”

She’s right. I don’t want to be late.

Leaping out of the amniotic fluid, I get ready for school.

Throwing the curtains open forcefully, I look out at the dripping and multi-colored sky. The wind carries the sweet smell of rot. What a comfortable stench of spring.

Looks like the weather is nice today.

I sit at the table.

“Good morning, big brother.”

“Where’s Mom?”

“Over there.”

The hanging timber’s bending as it creaks.

Mom is swinging leisurely.

This is the fourth time this month.

A reddish-black mass is squirming beneath Mom’s feet. It’s imperfect.

I scoop it up and taste it. Its flavor is like well-boiled crude oil.

—I have to find a ■.

“I’m off.”

“Big brother, you forgot something. Yes, it’s your lunch.”

I take the caged bird from my sister and leave the house.

Ribbit. Ribbit.

Families of frog-faced fishmen fill the city streets. As I walk through the outdoor shops, I hear an insect salesman with a spiral-shaped head calling out to potential customers. He’s a fungus.

The salesman calls me over.

I take a look at his wares.

He’s selling brains.

“Here is your brain.”

So the saleman says.

“Your Universe is contained within this. But your existence has overflowed out of this brain.”

The one is leaking out.

The one is melding into the all.

The one in all.

However, the all is not one.

The one has lost the one it was isolated from.

Sacrifice.

“I got brains taken from Rhode Island Hospital as well.”

The salesman shows me another brain. The light gray pudding-like thingy is slightly quivering.

“Would you like some morphine with that?”

I’ll be late for school if I don’t start moving.

I jump on the train.

I almost missed it.

The train chugs along. I look out the window at the silent yet flame-swept fields.

Green snow is falling.

The ground is melting away beneath us.

With the ground being lost and the tracks are twisted, the train plunges into the bowels of the Earth. Darkness and abyss.

The train thoroughly keeps falling, keeps rising. The Earth is round.

The train finally reaches its final station.

The station conductor announces.

“Last stop. Last stop. The Original Egg. The Cosmic Egg. The Unfertilized Egg.”

I step off the train and find myself in front of a church.

A sister and some children are crying on the steps.

Crimson tears are pouring from their eyes, yellow snot is dripping from their noses, and white liquid is leaking from their ears.

“What’s wrong?”

“God is hatching.”

I hear whistling.

It’s Gustav Holst’s [The Planets].

The [Uranus] movement.

“The holy child was born at dawn. At dusk it will surely become an infant and die.”

The children agree.

“Vicissitudes.”

“Reversals.”

“A manmade Heaven. A remade Paradise. A fresco.”

—I have to find a ■.

Better go to school.

—Sick to my stomach, I wander through the festering city.

I have to find a ■.

Ruins of the World.

Filled with grotesque darkness.

I have to find a ■.

The planet is pale.

The sky is soaked with blood.

I have to find a ■.

The wind carries the stench of death sweeped through.

I have to find a ■.

Beyond the Light and the Dark.

I have to find a ■.

Complete expansion. Infinite contraction.

Interrupted eternity. Consecutive apocalypse.

Birth is a return. Old wounds are new.

The past is untrodden. The future has already happened.

Existence is nothingness. All circles run straight.

Order is chaos. An aborted fetus is conceived.

The finished still grow. The solid gush forth.

Foul dirt is pure. The alone are together.

—I have to find ■.

……The loop that is equal to infinity, the flow of time that is equal to eternity.

Once again I regain my sanity, although only for a moment. Even if that is nothing but an infinite loop.

—Miskatonic University, secret library.

The pages of a grimoire whirl through the air like scattering petals. That’s right. Of course it is.

Once upon a time. When I was still a student of the Occult Division. When I came here for my first grimoire reading.

This is the place—where I met that Other.

My memories rankle. The ache soon becomes severe, my head felt an immerse pain as though it is about to crack.

It is the only thing I have to hold onto in this nightmarish World.

With only the burning and tormenting memories in my head to rely on, I step into the library.

A surge of powerful magic power warping the space. All of these are demonic aura, emanating from the grimoires lining in the bookshelves of this library. The library is filled with highly-concentrated phantasmal energy.

I have nothing to fear now. After all, there can be nothing more horrible than this nightmare.

The whippoorwills cry somewhere.

Whippoorwills.

Legend says that these nightjars will rob away the souls of the dying.

I keep moving. Deeper, deeper.

A labyrinth of shelves. The corridors extend forever. I advance through the maze that continues without end.

I go right. Left.

Up. Down.

Forward. Backward.

Inside-out. And in any other angles.

My aim is—

The pages of a grimoire dance. Scattering. Scattering. Like flower petals.

A dreaded yet fairytale-like sight. And—

Beyond the dancing fragments and flowers.

In the deepest part of the library.

I see the appearance of that girl.

“■■——!”

I tried to run.

Trying to reach out my hand.

Trying to scream that name.

I—

“……Who?”

I don’t know.

I cannot think.

I cannot remember.

Even her voice. Even her hair.

Even her eyes. Even her fingertips.

Even the love and dreams that are as much as the number of stars.

That’s right, all and everything.

All things doesn’t have any meaning.

—She bursts apart. The girl’s body disintegrates and unravels into countless pages of grimoire.

The sheets of paper that once, was a girl, spill out and slip away from between the fingers of my extending hand.

I just watched that very scene dumbfounded, without a slightest emotion.

“Too bad. That’s far enough.”

I heard a voice from behind me.

My heart freezes.

Both of its arms drape over my shoulders. I feel massive breasts pressing against my back. Its hot breath whispers in my ear.

Something hot and cold winds itself around me.

The invisible light and blinding darkness, the pure and impure, the slimy, pulsating, wriggling and crawling over. It engulfs my body.

“Come, fall with me…… my dear—bride.”

……What is this thing talking about?

As I could not understand what on earth is this—

Or rather I don’t even need to understand in the first place—

Emptiness fills me.

—I hear music.

A sickening, unearthly melody.

The muffled, maddening beating of vile drums.

The thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

All things are corroded.

And there It dances in unison to the blasphemous music, sluggishly, clumsily, stupidly, foully, in a realm beyond Time, beyond Space, beyond even Thought, in a domain that is the outer limit and the center of the World,

Blind and formless,

Ignorant and absolute,

The shimmering nuclear,

It is—

“—God?”

My soul shatters.

I’m crumbling down. I’m falling apart.

Broken, dispersed, scattered, I’m,

I’m,

I’m—

I catch the eye of God.

And I comes to understand everything.

That’s right, I am—

—I’m searching for [God].

[And then even my despair fades to nothing]

[I struggle to live through this nightmare]

[Extend my right hand]

—Oh. So you are there huh.

The Core of Chaos. The King of All Creation. The God of Blind-idiot.

The Creator—Azathoth the Daemon Sultan.

The Creator of the Universe and the Origin of all Evils. That’s right, it is the existence that must be cut off by me – the Sword that smites Evil.

I can reach to it.

[God] is right over there, if I extend this right hand.

The Sword that smites Evil. I can accomplish the mission that has been engraved in its name.

The time has come for the Good, the prayers for tomorrow to be completely triumphed, and the Evil of Trichiliocosm to be slayed.

If I can—reach out my right hand—

“■■-kun! What are you……!”

Something that is clinging onto my body, it make a frightened noise.

It is the very Chaos that’s coiling around my body. The one that mocks. The one that is Faceless. The thing that leaps through the darkness…… It is the true Evil similar to that of love.

—In short, it is nothing but a pile of trash.

Come, let us pick up the sword.

In this Universe (Sky) burning with hatred.

With righteous anger in our hearts.

Let us cut off all Evils.

Let us put an end to everything.

With this right hand—

“In this world of light, there is no place for you beings of darkness! Thirst not hunger not return to the void! —Lemuria Impact!”

My right hand reaches out. I catches the Universe.

And then—

“—Sublimate!”

—Azathoth is finally, dead.

Tell me—

Just what is Evil?

Just what is that which cannot be forgiven?

This is something that can only be decided by those at the very outer limits of this place.

It is for those who sits on the very upper of this domain to decide.

It is for the Black Savior of Glyu-Vho to determine.

Let’s proclaim a grand declaration.

Let’s resound with a graceful and melodious tune.

To judge. To cleanse.

To gaze, curse and to hate.

To decide upon the Evil to be severed.

To decide upon the Evil to be eliminated.

This is for those who dwell in the highest still.

Those who invoke the name of that pillar do not exist in this Universe (here). If there is anyone who does, then there is only one, it is only you who transcends the Infinite Spiral.

But she is no longer here.

Not even in the lost Universe (World) itself.

The Infinite Spiral (Ouroboros) has unraveled and vanished.

Even the Dead End has crumbled and disappeared.

She is nowhere to be found. He is left alone, to shed tears.

In this richly-colored horizon.

In the very end of Glyu-Vho which has been reduced to ashes.

To despise—

—Perhaps it is Sky of Hatred.

—Perhaps it is the Lotus Throne.

—That is the place where the most exalted ones sits.

—Perhaps the which that far beyond Glyu-Vho.

—Perhaps the remnant of the Infinite Spiral.

—Or maybe. Perhaps only the Lotus Throne itself.

—Or just perhaps the Glyu-Vho.

In the far upper Lotus Throne.

Even now, those who wield the swords will fight.

Even now, those who wield the swords will howl.

From the eyes of the sun that continues to burn itself, constantly shedding tears of blood.

The feral ones will become furious. The virtuous ones will become disdain.

Everything and all, even the tears are nothing but a flash in the pan.

All and every single one of those that are wicked,

All and every single one of those that are defiled,

As they staring at these palms that have lost.

To abide the infinite yet innocent blade.

To wield the endless yet perpeptual blade.

The rage. The hatred.

The entirety of Trichiliocosm that has risen and fallen.

To scowl at them from this top, in the distant—

[The cycle of reincarnation. All things are flowing]

[The fetus. The sacrifice. The blind maggot]

[O’ those who don’t have a soul]

[Now, the time has come]

[It’s the time for conviction]

[Prepare to know our tears]

[Prepare to know our souls]

[All the hatred of Trichiliocosm]

[For that is the sword that we have to draw forth]

[O’ those who don’t have a soul]

[Those who reject my purification and salvation]

[Our traitorous arch-enemies]

[Such as the peace of eternal rest]

[Such as the never-ending eternity]

[Everything, all]

[All things doesn’t have any meaning]

[The suffering of being apart from loved ones. The suffering of being together with despised ones. The suffering of unsatisfied wanting. The suffering from the flourishing of Five Skandhas]

[Even if—there is no meaning—at all]

[Cosmic Slaughter]

ROBOT

DEMONBANE DEAD END

Pilot: Collapsed

Grimoire: Lost

Vortex Destruction God Demonbane

The one that smites Evil (Demonbane). Lawful Good. Universe (Inverted position).

The past her has lost, and the past him is nowhere to be found.

He became the very steel that he piloted.

In order to fulfill the will that has been engraved in its name.

TRANSLATION NOTES

The character that has his name censored is an alternate Daijuuji Kurou in an alternate version of the Bad Ending from Al Azif’s Route. Albeit this time he managed to destroy both Azathoth and Nyarlathotep, resulting the Dead End where everything is annihilated by the Vortex Blaster. The two choices, [And then even my despair fades to nothing] and [I struggle to live through this nightmare] are available at the end of the Al’s Bad Ending in Kishin Houkou/Zanma Taisei, where the player are free to, either end Kurou’s suffering or keep looping the same scenario that torments him.

However, there’s an unexpected development, the Kurou of Dead End’s world has pulled out a choice that doesn’t exist in any of the Evil God’s scenario, which is [Extend my right hand]. So, Dead End’s Kurou has done something that not even we – the players or the original Daijuuji Kurou can do: He freed himself from the prison of the blind idiot God and reached to the said God, to destroy him.

Maybe to some of you, it does sound kinda meta or even ridiculous at the same time, but it is what it is. A simple explanation for this, let just say, it’s an absurd, nonexistent story in which an impossible situation has occurred.

Cari Blog Ini

Zanma Taisen Demonbane