The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 411: Difference Between Demon King Pandora and Grand Duchess Pandora

”Saint Rosaline, I’m ready,” I say as I activate my recently unlocked magical girl outfit, which is the strongest outfit I have, focused entirely on fighting.

This outfit gets stronger the closer I am to fallen comrades. It’s a long white dress with several floating white rectangular plates around me.

”Great, now go out there and fight the Demon King. The plans have changed a bit because the Demon King has gotten too close,” Rosaline says as I exit the tent, still curious about the circle Rosaline is so focused on creating.

’I hope I can win...’ Rosaline said the Demon King is weakened, but honestly, seeing the Demon King kill soldiers doesn’t make it seem like she’s weaker.

However, this outfit of mine increases my power based on ”fallen comrades,” and many soldiers here are dead, so my power will increase quite a bit, although the increase is temporary.

I start flying as two large white and gold gauntlets appear in my hands, and I charge towards the Demon King’s body at full speed.

”...” The Demon King pauses its attack on the soldiers and looks at me, giving a devilish smile as it moves its giant sword to strike me.

’This giant body will make it easier to hit?’ I’m not sure, I look down and see the ground covered in this disgusting black sludge, but I just accelerate, and soon my fist collides with the Demon King’s sword, pushing the Demon King back.

I feel my power increasing every second due to the soldiers the Demon King is killing.

[Alert! The stars strongly recommend not doing this!] Another warning appears, since I entered the war and started fighting the Demon King, the stars haven’t stopped sending warnings for me to stop.

In our first battle, the alerts kept popping up on my screen, even messing with my concentration.

’Again...why?’ I don’t know, but I don’t even have time to read the rest, and I receive a blow from that giant sword, which throws me to the ground. I fall into the black sludge, which quickly recedes, causing me damage.

”With the brighter light of the stars, all evil will fall [Stellar Burst],” I use a spell, making the plates around me fire a giant beam of magic, opening a huge hole in the Demon King’s body, which looks at me surprised.

”You seem stronger than when you had the buff from the other heroes?” It speaks in an extremely distorted and strange voice while its body quickly recovers.

And it’s right, this outfit increases my power based on the number of fallen comrades, and since there are millions of people here, and the Demon King is killing thousands of lives, I’m getting much stronger every second.

But I also feel that the Demon King is just gaining more mana instead of losing it, which is strange, but I quickly deduce that its mana recovery comes from the bodies it’s devouring.

[The stars strongly recommend fleeing!]

”In the midst of...” I try to use magic, but I’m hit hard by a punch, sinking me into the ground. Soon, the Demon King creates 3 more giant arms of this black goo and starts throwing hundreds of punches that I can barely defend with the plates.

”You’re such an annoying pest,” the Demon King says in that distorted tone, as if there’s some bizarre static in its voice, while its fists emit smoke as if they’re burning.

I manage to get out of the hole I was pushed into and start flying around the Demon King, trying to escape its line of sight, but there are so many eyes everywhere that the Demon King doesn’t even try to turn its body to follow me.

”Gaaah,” It moves one of its hands, perfectly hitting the spot where I appeared, throwing me up. I take advantage of this to fly high, thinking the Demon King can’t easily reach me.

I look around, finally realizing that it has killed almost everyone in the area while fighting me, that’s over 130,000 soldiers.

’D-Damn it! Why is this thing so strong?’ I feel my magic growing again, and with that, I decide to try to completely vaporize the Demon King’s body with my strongest attack.

[The stars strongly instruct you to stop and not use this attack, or it will enrage the Demon King, with a 99% failure rate. We believe the Demon King has already adapted to your abilities in this outfit.] The stars try to interfere, but I ignore them without even reading what they say.

”O impure being that massacres my allies, be pierced by the stellar lance and pay for your sins! [Stellar Breaker],” I say, moving my hand downward, and immediately a giant beam of light is fired from the sky, generating a blinding flash.

”...” I see the darkness below evaporating, the power of thousands of dead accumulated in a single attack.

”Hmm, that’s a good attack.” Suddenly, something grabs me while I hear that distorted voice whisper close to my ear. I look back and see a shapeless black goo, a mockery of what a humanoid should be.

”!!!” It starts to cling to my body, completely covering me in darkness. I try to recite a spell, but it shoves the goo into my mouth while the sludge grabs the floating plates before I can move them to defend myself.

’S-So disgusting!’ The goo in my mouth is cold and viscous, with a severe bitter taste that’s strange to experience. I think nothing I’ve ever tasted before had such a bizarre texture.

”Save your time, you fool. Did you think this anti-monster attack trick would work forever? I’m not a common monster, bitch. After our first fight, I understood why my body recoils from you, and I’ve already made a countermeasure - to adapt.”

It speaks while black sludge ropes tie me up completely.

”This is a good outfit, isn’t it? Its ability is great for wars. Too bad I knew how it worked...”

”Hnf?”

’How?’ How can it know the ability of this uniform? I don’t even have time to think, and we start to descend, as it becomes too heavy for me to fly.

”Amiya, who is your owner?” It suddenly speaks while slowing the fall.

”...?”

”Amiya, do you know something interesting I discovered? I’ll tell you. There’s something I’ve always found strange - why couldn’t anyone figure out that I’m the Demon King? Even though I had the same name as the Demon King, a similar physique aside from the demonic parts, and was relatively evil to everyone.”

”So why? What separates the Grand Duchess Pandora from the Demon King Pandora? What makes people stupidly blind to what’s right in front of them?” As it starts talking, I feel overwhelming fear.

’T-This is...the Grand Duchess!?’ My body shivers completely with this revelation.

”In the end, I found the answer, Amiya. I discovered why no one can say the Grand Duchess and the Demon King are the same being. It’s not because they had contradictory evidence like dates and locations where we were seen.”

”It all comes down to race...I’m a monster, I have a very...characteristic and unique aura, which automatically reveals that I’m not human. And this aura blurs the perception of reality around me.”

”When someone looks at the Demon King, they don’t just see a girl with inhuman characteristics. What they see is pure darkness, a wild and dangerous beast, an aura that covers everything around it, as if the aura itself had life.”

”When I acted as the Grand Duchess, I drank a potion that completely hid this aura. The Grand Duchess is seen by everyone as a mere human with a lot of magic, and mana doesn’t have the same blurring effect on perception as a monster’s aura.”

”Isn’t it fun to know this? That’s why no human has ever been able to connect the Grand Duchess and the Demon King, despite their absurdly obvious similarities.”

”My aura as a monster promptly protected my identity the whole time, because the brain works through association, and it refuses to connect things as absurdly different as being the same.”

”I only recently figured this out by putting a pattern together. Did you know that Mikael Calamitas, the strongest human, described my aura as a monster with eyes and fangs, ready to attack? Hahahahaha...”

”...”

”You will be punished, Amiya. No one told you to attack your master twice, you bitch. Did you forget who’s in charge of you? Why do you think you were the only one to come out alive from that fight?”

”Now be a good dog and stay put where I’m going to send you. Kneel, put your forehead on the ground, and stay there until I arrive.” It speaks as the darkness opens and begins to teleport me.

And in an instant, I’m in a dark room with nothing around, but there are bars on the doors and windows, showing it’s a prison.

”...” My body quickly obeys Pandora’s request as I start crying in fear of her. If Pandora was already terrible to me before, I can’t imagine what she’ll do to me now.

Now the desperate pleas from the stars make sense. They knew, but the stars never tell me things directly. They were trying to warn me that the Demon King Pandora is also the Grand Duchess Pandora, who is ’my master’ and commands me.

[The stars regret your foolishness, but are glad the Demon King kept her word and left you alive. The stars warn that the Demon King has not killed you because the stars and the Demon King made a fair agreement.

The stars strongly request that you cooperate with the Demon King to preserve your life, because despite the agreement, the Demon King can still severely harm you.] The stars issue a final alert, and everything falls silent, with occasional sniffles and lamentations coming from me.