“Your scriptures tell you that heaven is the complete essence of all that is good and righteous, and that hell is it’s very inverse. A place that represents the concept of evil. This is a lie.” Laplace, the horrifying demon that had come before us, spoke in his disgusting tone. It was almost painful to listen to.

“Heaven and Hell do not represent good and evil, but control and freedom. The collective, and the individual. The idea of oneness with God, or the uniqueness of the soul. It’s an issue we’ve been fighting over for so long that it transcends your human concept of time.” This time it was Maxwell that spoke, though his voice was no more pleasant to the ear.

“For a timespan that I can only describe as thousands of lifetimes of your universe, the armies of heaven and the legions of hell shed blood in their quest for dominance. It was an eternal stalemate, once that caused untold suffering to both sides.”

“After so many eons of senseless violence, something happened that had never once happened in history, and may never happen again. God and Lucifer shared the same opinion.”

“The opinion that too many of their subjects were being forced to suffer in this never-ending quest for victory. And that a new way of fighting this war was needed. One that would bring no harm to demon nor Angel. As you would call, it a proxy war.”

As the pair stopped talking, they projected countless images onto our brains. So much information that it became momentarily impossible to think.

Images of death. Images of war.

Humanity slaughtering it’s own kind, for hundreds of thousands of years. A cycle of violence that only grew greater in size as time passed.

All the while, controlled from the shadows by forces far beyond their comprehension.

By the time the slideshow stopped, I was on my hands and knees, my entire body covered in sweat. It was overwhelming, in a way that nothing had ever overwhelmed me before.

“Woahwoahwoahwoahwoahwoah!”

I was not the worst off, as the momentary loss of consciousness had caused Nao to fall from the sky, barely managing to catch herself in time to not become a fine red mist.

“Nao! Are you okay?!” Saki immediately turned to her, breaking formation to check Nao’s wounds.

“I-I’m fine. Just scraped my legs up a bit.” Nao winced as she spoke, but it seemed true that she had sustained no major injuries.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

It wasn’t even an attack. All they had done was give us information. And it almost killed one of us.

They were on a level we could hardly comprehend.

“All these years of human suffering… the violence… the genocides… it was all your doing?” I struggled to keep my anger in check. I knew I would have no possible chance of beating them in a fight, but my rage was almost getting the better of me. “Hundreds of millions of humans killed, just so you can catch a breather from your petty struggles against God? What’s next, you gonna wipe us out once one of you wins?”

“You misunderstand. Though the purpose of your creation may seem temporary, the creation of the middle world was a permanent change to the fabric of reality. As was the creation of humanity. They are actions that cannot be undone, by heaven or hell.”

“Then what? What happens when one of you wins?”

“It is as we have said. Heaven is the representation of the collective. Of order. Hell is the representation of the individual. Of chaos. Were one of us to claim victory, humanity would be forced to follow that doctrine.”

Follow the doctrine… so if heaven won, we would all be collectivised as part of God, and if hell were to win…

“This is our chance to earn true free will, Sora Goto. To break free of God’s grasp on this world, and become the true essence of the individual. Do you not understand what’s at steak here?”

All the pieces finally clicked into place. The Director’s magical army… the purpose was to aid Hell in winning this eternal war. To break God’s control.

With only the information given to us thus far, it would seem that the intentions truly were noble, though the actions remained inexcusable.

But something nagged at me.

Something told that we weren’t being given the full picture here.

“What about… love?” It wasn’t me, but Mai that spoke up through the silence. “If we were to become ‘true individuals,’ what would happen to things like love? To romance, and friendship, and family?”

“They would, of course, cease to exist entirely.”

The thing that was bugging me practically slapped me in the face as Laplace dropped that bombshell.

“These are concepts of the collective. One cannot fall in love without another.” Maxwell explained further, neither he nor his fellow demon showing any sign of discontent with the idea.

A world devoid of love. Where the bonds of family and friendship are rendered entirely meaningless.

That wasn’t a world I could live in.

“I’m sorry, Director. But we reject your reality. And we substitute our own.”

I stepped out in front of my friends, ready to stare down death itself if it meant protecting my love for them.

But I knew I had little to fear, as they all joined me at my side.

We would face our deaths together, if today was to be the day we died.

“We do not fight humans ourselves, lest we be interrupted by agents of heaven. I trust you will sort this out on your own?”

Laplace addressed the Director, who had barely moved a muscle this entire time.

“I’ll beat some sense into these kids. Or I’ll kill them in the process. The plan will still work without them.”

“Good. Do not disappoint us.” Maxwell said, as he and Laplace disappeared back into the fiery hole they had appeared from, which then closed behind them.

“Well then. It appears reasoning with you has proven futile. I truly regret that it has to come to this.”

As the director spoke, he seemed to become engulfed in an invisible but suffocating magical energy.

There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in our minds that this would be our hardest battle yet.