"And what about you? What happened in your life?"
Jenkins pointed his sword at the miner, who imdiately turned his head so his normal face could speak.
"I was a miner from Linden, a town in the city of Drow, within the Fidektri Kingdom. A mine collapse took the lives of my father, my older brother, and my younger brother, leaving to care for the whole family. But do you think I could really feed so many people just by digging ore? The big shots in the city enjoyed a life we could never dream of, all thanks to the coal we dug with our lives. But all I could do was follow the sa tunnels where my father and brothers died, continuing their existence. If I didn't offer up my soul—the only thing I had left of any value—was I supposed to watch the rest of my family starve to death, or sell their bodies?"
He was speaking the truth. By all accounts, he was a pitiable man.
Intelligent life is complex, its good and evil difficult to define with simple labels. It's rare to find soone who has only ever done good deeds or only ever done evil ones. Besides, what constitutes a "good deed" or a "bad deed" varies entirely from person to person.
So, while the story he'd just heard was tragic, it was rely a common snapshot of the era. In corners unseen by Jenkins, countless similar events were still unfolding.
While he was feeding his cat delicacies in a high-end restaurant, an innocent girl might be freezing and starving to death on a street corner. While he was lighting his fireplace with firewood, he never considered the imnse labor a lumberjack expended for a single log. While he was riding in a carriage with his eyes closed, waiting to reach his destination, the driver was likely worrying about his family's food for the winter.
Jenkins was able to act as a "good person" most of the ti only because he was fortunate enough to have his current circumstances. If he had arrived in this world as an orphan in the slums, he might very well have walked the sa path as the two n before him.
Good and evil are two sides of the sa coin, interdependent and born as one. Even demons possess a sliver of good, and even an angel like Louise must have a touch of evil. Perhaps the true aning of the "Twin Demons" was this very duality—the contradictory yet coexisting sides of good and evil within humanity.
"Let guess. No matter which tal cocoon I choose next, the third person will also be a pitiable soul forced onto the wrong path by the tragedies of the era."
"I know nothing," the human-faced snake replied, its tail suddenly twitching.
"I must remind you, Mysterious Realms usually have a ti limit. Haven't you noticed it's getting hotter in here? Before long, the sea of magma below will erupt, surging upward until it floods this entire cavern. You need to make a decision quickly. Will you choose a third cocoon? Or will you rely on these two souls to help you find the exit door?"
"Where is the Earthfire Worm?"
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
For the first ti, a different expression appeared on the human-faced snake's face.
"I know nothing."
That, finally, was a lie. And with it, Jenkins confird that the power of the Beast of Calamity hidden in this Mysterious Realm was indeed that of the Seventeenth Epoch's Beast of Calamity, the Earthfire Worm. He had only asked on a whim, but of the fourteen Beasts of Calamity whose nas he knew, this was the only one with such a strong connection to magma.
"So, what is it you really want? From my perspective, sacrificing the souls of these villains—who weren't good people to begin with—to find the exit for seems like sothing I could accept. But is it really that simple?"
The human-faced snake simply smiled at his question without a word. It coiled its body upright, flicking its tongue at Jenkins.
"You are the participant. I am rely the host."
It wasn't just the Difference Engine's sche; this Mysterious Realm itself was strange.
Even when ordinary people stumbled into a Mysterious Realm, there was no guarantee of death, but there was also never a situation with no danger at all. Yet here, Jenkins had rely picked two cocoons at random and had practically t the conditions for leaving. He hadn't sacrificed anything—not just physical stamina, but he hadn't even needed to use his intellect. Never mind the bizarre, treacherous realms he'd faced in the past that required extre caution; even the realms where the sovereigns of Death and Flowers had appeared, which couldn't be considered ordinary, were more difficult than this.
He didn't imdiately move to choose a third tal cocoon. Instead, he stood his ground, thinking. He cast a suspicious glance at the human-faced snake, which returned his look with a smile. He then turned back to the miner and the train conductor.
"If I send you into the magma, your souls will burn... What's the principle behind that? Is it a sacrifice of souls to gain the ability to move through the magma?"
"We are bait. Bait to appease the mad demons below the magma. When we enter the magma, the demons within will drain our souls. As bait, we obviously can't be consud by the magma instantly."
The train conductor explained. His soul was clearly stronger than the miner's weakened one.
"This isn't so kind of prison, like a 'Magma Hell,' is it?"
He wondered suspiciously, then asked aloud:
"What will happen if those mad demons get your souls?"
"They'll beco active for a while, then fall silent again once our souls are gone. They're completely mad, interested only in souls," the train conductor explained again, his normal face pleading.
"Please, kind sir, don't make us..."
"So, the trap of this Mysterious Realm is that if I send the chosen souls into the magma, even if they find the door, I'll have to get past the awakened mad demons to go through it."
And Jenkins had already had a taste of the mad demons' strength. His reckless descent earlier had only startled one of them, and its power would be enhanced in this environnt. Jenkins could handle one, and he could handle a group, but he didn't want to waste all his energy in the very first Mysterious Realm fighting demons he didn't have to.
He understood the rules of the realm, but the Difference Engine had set another trap. Still, no matter how he looked, Jenkins couldn't see the black spiritual glow that represented the power of the Earthfire Worm. He suspected the snake before him was the worm itself—after all, they were both long and slender.
But even at this close range, no matter how strong the human-faced snake's black spiritual glow was, he couldn't detect the slightest trace of a Beast of Calamity's power.
He looked up at the sky again. The worm could also be hidden within one of the countless tal cocoons. But against the backdrop of the Mysterious Realm's own spiritual light, he couldn't pick out his target.
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