CHAPTER 65
When I woke up, it was morning. I raised my body from the bed and checked out the window; the sun was already high in the sky.

I had gone to bed quite early yesterday, so I had technically gotten a full night's sleep, but...

"Did I even sleep or not?"

After spending a long time wide awake inside my dream before finally waking up, I couldn't tell if I should even call this sleeping.

In the end, after meeting the Heavenly God in my dream yesterday, I wasn't able to fall asleep again within the dream, and just stayed awake with my eyes open.

Because of this, it didn't feel like I had woken up from sleep, but rather like I had kept my eyes open the whole time and just been transported to a different location.

The Heavenly God told me to try sleeping within a dream if I wanted to be a god, but wasn't that impossible in the first place?

If he was done with his business, he should have just returned the dream space to normal...

"Ceres!!!!"

Suddenly, the door burst open, and someone rushed in shouting my name.

For a moment, I was startled, thinking the Heavenly God had come back to say something else to me, but that wasn't it.

The person who opened the door and entered was Viol. However, she looked very different from her usual self.

The black dress she always wore was in such disarray that one of the shoulder straps was slipping down, and she had either forgotten to tie her long red hair into her usual twin-tails or just left it hanging loose.

Her expression was also unusual. Her eyes were constantly shaking, and she was breathing heavily. It was as if she had seen something terrible.

What's going on?!

Her appearance was so alarming that I felt a sudden flash of fear. Did another terrifying natural disaster like a massive earthquake happen?

But I hadn't felt anything.

"Did something hap—"

I got up from the bed to ask, but in that instant, Viol threw her arms around me.

She grabbed me tightly with both hands and pulled me into her embrace. Because of our height difference, my face was buried deep into her chest.

"...Why?"

I was bewildered. She pulled this kind of intense physical contact quite often, but the atmosphere was completely different this time.

"Ceres..."

Holding me in her arms, Viol spoke in a dying voice.

"Don't go."

"...Where?"

"Don't leave me!"

Like I said, where am I going?!

I had absolutely no intention of going anywhere, so being held down and told not to leave left me completely flustered.

She didn't answer my questions and just kept hugging me, begging me not to go. The posture was also quite embarrassing, so I wanted to break free immediately.

"Hey, let me—!"

Just as I was shouting for her to let me go.

"Lord, do you need help—"

Niobe, who had hastily entered my room, saw the situation and contorted her face into a scowl.

"Emperor, what in the world—!"

Startled, Niobe tried to pull Viol off of me, but it wasn't easy. Regardless of their overall skills, Viol's physical strength alone was greater than Niobe's.

"Good heavens. Have you gone crazy too? Unhand the Lord at once!"

"Don't interfere with me..."

"You are the one interfering with the Lord! Do you think grabbing the Lord like this is of any help to him?!"

Only after Niobe shouted at her did Viol finally let me go.

However, as if she was too anxious to separate completely, she kept a tight grip on my hand.

"What's going on?"

Keeping my eyes fixed on Viol, whose condition was clearly abnormal, I spoke to Niobe. From what Niobe had just said, I could roughly guess the situation, but I desperately hoped my assumption was wrong.

"Everyone has started acting strange, so I came to seek your help, Lord."

My assumption was right. It wasn't just Viol acting like this.

"When you say everyone, who exactly?"

"Almost all the women associated with you, Lord, excluding us."

"If you say 'almost all,' does that mean there's someone who isn't?"

"Red."

Red is fine? Then does that mean this situation doesn't affect demons?

...Wait, no. Sibylius's name wasn't mentioned when she listed who was fine. It seemed Sibylius had gone crazy too, so what exactly was going on?

Feeling another headache-inducing situation brewing, I swept my hand through my hair.

"Lead the way."

"Yes!"

At my command, the first place Niobe took me was a bar inside the Imperial Palace.

I wondered who would be drinking here, but it was a truly unexpected person.

Hames?

The person who always lived a life of moderation befitting a High Priest was binge drinking for some reason.

She was chugging expensive liquor straight from the bottle, and judging by the several empty bottles rolling around nearby, she had already downed quite a few.

Since the bar was in a mess, the staff managing it were at a loss for what to do.

"U-Um, High Priest Hames? Drinking like that is bad for your health."

Someone couldn't bear to watch and tried to stop her, but her reaction was astonishing.

"Shut up, just bring me more booze!!"

Is this really the Hames I know? Shouting like a violent drunkard, she threw a bottle against the wall and smashed it.

As far as I knew.

Neither the Hames from the original novel nor the female Hames I had actually met were the type of people to ever act like this. Even the deranged original Hames wouldn't have done this?!

"What are you doing?!"

Unable to stand watching a High Priest throw a tantrum any longer, I stepped forward. When I yelled, Hames flinched in surprise and looked at me.

"Ce-Ceres..."

But her reaction was strange. Completely terrified, it was the reaction of someone who had committed a grave sin and was now looking at the victim who suffered because of it.

Then, she finally scrambled to run away.

"Where are you going?!"

"L-Let me go..."

When I grabbed the hem of her clothes to stop her from escaping, she spoke in a dying voice.

"I absolutely do not have the face to look at you!"

"Why not?"

"T-That, I cannot say!"

What the hell is going on? She suddenly starts acting crazy and then says she can't even tell me the reason; it was ridiculous.

I was in the middle of a scuffle trying to hold onto the fleeing Hames, but my other hand was still being tightly held by Viol, making it incredibly cumbersome.

"Listen to the Lord."

Seeing that I was lacking strength, Niobe stepped in. She grabbed Hames firmly and growled.

"I don't know what happened, but pulling a stunt like this won't help the Lord at all. If you truly feel apologetic toward the Lord, at least listen to what he has to say."

"What do you know..."

At Niobe's persuasion, Hames tried to argue back for a moment, but her voice gradually grew smaller.

As if she had no choice, she stopped trying to run away and joined our group, but she kept her distance, avoiding my gaze.

"Now we must go to where Sibylius is. Her situation is the most serious!"

Saying that it was more important than hearing the situation from the others, Niobe guided me to where Sibylius was, and I followed her.

But soon, Niobe drew her sword and spun around. Then, she blocked something flying toward Viol, who was standing next to me, with her Aura-clad blade!

The thing Niobe had deflected was a bizarre sword dyed pitch-black. It was Black Pain.

"Don't get in my waaaaay!!"

And Ares, the one who swung Black Pain, screamed at Niobe for interfering.

"If you get in my way, you're an enemy too!"

"...That's my line. Swinging that monstrosity around where the Lord is present, have you lost your mind?"

"I am perfectly sane. More than ever! I need to separate that wench from Ceres right now!"

...What?

Seeing my mother, Ares, screaming like a madwoman, I blinked in sheer disbelief.

I knew full well that Ares hated Viol, but since Viol was the Emperor, she had always maintained a minimum level of courtesy. But now, she wasn't even doing that.

With a murderous intent that bordered on desperate overflowing in her eyes, she glared at Viol, visibly anxious.

"If I let that thing live, 'it' will happen here too! So I must kill her, and then I'll kill the rest of you too! Hames, Sibylius, Alios! All you bitches..."

"Stop it!!"

I restrained Ares, who continued to scream wildly, having lost all reason.

"What are you doing right now?"

"Ceres! This is all for your sake. I'll explain everything, but first I have to kill that thing..."

"Calm down!"

I spoke coldly to Ares, who was excitedly brandishing Black Pain.

"Don't be mistaken. This isn't for my sake."

"No, you're only saying that because you don't know the situation. Actually..."

"Actually what? I don't know what happened, but do you think I'll be safe if my mother kills the Emperor? And on top of that, you're going to kill Alios, Hames, and Sibylius too? That's just a delusion."

"...If I try hard enough, it might work."

Ares made excuses, but internally, she must have realized I was right, as she lowered Black Pain.

"I'll hear the reason why you're doing this later, so for now, just follow us. It seems you aren't the only one acting strangely, Mother."

"Understood."

Ares reluctantly agreed and followed me, but she continued to shoot murderous glares at Viol and Hames.

What was surprising was the attitude of those two toward Ares.

Normally, both of them would have snapped at her for glaring at them, but Viol just stayed silent, still tightly holding my hand.

Hames, on the other hand, desperately avoided Ares's eyes, looking for all the world like a guilty sinner.

Then, we finally arrived at Sibylius's room.

"What is this?"

I was appalled at the state of the room. Unintelligible formulas and magical runes were densely scribbled all over the place.

In the center of it all, Sibylius was tearing at her hair like a madwoman, constantly writing something down.

"No, this isn't it. I need to make the formula more precise..."

"What are you doing?"

"...Ceres?!"

She had been so focused that she hadn't even realized I was there. Belatedly noticing my presence, Sibylius freaked out.

Trembling as if she had run into someone she absolutely shouldn't have met, she barely managed to regain her composure.

"I was just researching some magic."

"What kind of magic are you researching to suddenly end up like this?"

"Magic to travel to a parallel world."

"Why something like that?"

"...Because there is someone I need to kill."

I didn't know who it was, but I could feel an immense hatred. The sheer pressure radiating from Sibylius the moment she mentioned it was enough to make even me flinch.

"Who?"

Feeling tense, I asked who this target was that Sibylius was willing to travel to a parallel world to kill.

"Sibylius."

"...That's you."