Demon King – Chapter 442 – The Price of Silence

“What do you think, about what Grandma said today…”

“Emmmmm… it was just a story, right? Nothing with any real practical use.”

Two silver-haired little girls lay facing each other, propped up on their elbows with their chins resting in their hands, discussing what they had heard today, trying to dig out anything useful from it.

“By the way, sis, I have a question.”

One of the girls bit her lip. After hesitating for a bit, she finally asked the other.

“Why didn’t you just go discuss it with the one outside? What’s the point of asking me…”

Yes, it was already nighttime. At this moment, Her Majesty the Demon Lord was in the gap between dream and reality, discussing things with the existence that had previously called herself the Insurance Mechanism, but was in truth a fragment of her own sister’s soul.

“Because… you know more?”

The little Demon Lord tapped her finger against her lips. After thinking for a moment, she gave an answer that left the other speechless.

“Everything I know is stuff you told me. Oh, the you from before. But if you didn’t tell me, then I don’t know either.”

Slapping the ground around her in protest, as an incomplete existence, ‘Eiya’ really did not want to waste what were essentially nonexistent brain cells.

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“And even if I did know something, you wouldn’t be able to take that information out anyway, right? Once you wake up, you’ll forget everything that happened here. What are you even discussing with me for?”

“But every time I come back here, I remember again. And I have ways to give hints to the me outside…”

Her Majesty the Demon Lord replied like this. Thinking about it carefully, this wasn’t even the first time she had played memory loss play. Although she still hadn’t recovered that segment of memories to this day.

“I’ll say something you probably won’t like. I actually don’t really like discussing things with Little Ya…”

“Then why are you saying it to my face? Can you consider my feelings a bit? I’m also Eiya. What are you trying to imply here?”

Rolling her eyes at the other, ‘Eiya’ felt that your logic here was seriously flawed.

“Anyway, here our psychological thoughts are interconnected. With a little sensing, we know what the other is thinking. What’s the point of hiding anything?”

Eiru rolled over on the ground. Amid the other’s expression full of black lines, she lay flat on her back in a spread eagle pose.

The little Demon Lord wasn’t lying. From childhood to now, although she would occasionally vent or chat about things, she had never truly sat down and discussed anything seriously with Eiya.

The reason was simple. This girl was too changeable. Especially after she grew crooked, sometimes she would suddenly become willful and unreasonable, and that was genuinely troublesome.

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If she really went to discuss things with Eiya, for Eiru who admitted she couldn’t read the other’s mind, if she accidentally stepped on some landmine without knowing where, the chain reaction afterward would truly annoy her to death.

So even though she loved her, Her Majesty the Demon Lord had always been avoiding any kind of deep discussion or communication with her. One second she was a clingy, obedient, soft girl. The next second, she would suddenly have a princess syndrome flare up and start acting willful.

Eiya’s usual reactions often gave Eiru a sense of mental tearing. The contrast before and after was too great and too sudden. You simply couldn’t guess what she was thinking. How were you supposed to discuss things with someone like that?

Just like what happened that summer vacation, when they went to the police station together. In the apartment she had been perfectly fine, the concern she showed toward Eiru wasn’t fake. But while walking on the road, she suddenly and inexplicably started throwing a tantrum, completely ignoring the fact that she herself was still injured at the time.

Eiya’s emotions were volatile, her thought process somewhat inexplicable, and her actions often went directly against her own thoughts. As for all this, Eiru had long since gotten used to it.

“Compared to the Little Ya outside, the you inside is much easier to talk to… but are you two really the same person? The difference in personality is way too big.”

The little Demon Lord complained. If she hadn’t verified it through certain means, she would never have been able to connect the troublemaking little devil in front of her with the sister outside who alternated between obedient girl and crazy brat.

The Eiya on the inside was actually quite similar to herself. Although she was mischievous, even without mental interconnection, her thoughts weren’t that hard to read. Compared to the one outside, this Eiya who didn’t act willfully or throw tantrums was more mature and reliable, and communicating with her wasn’t nearly as exhausting.

“Well… the me inside is fake. The one outside is the real one. Everything should be based on the physical entity. The Eiya outside is the true form.”

“Stop talking in riddles. Speak like a human.”

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“My personality is fake, pre-set. The lightly mentally split one outside is my real personality.”

After a round of explanation, Eiru more or less understood the situation. This Eiya inside her, who had once called herself the Insurance Mechanism, was a part that she had forcibly torn off from her own sister’s soul in the past. It belonged to the non-human part.

The nature of the non-human part defined her base personality. On top of that, having stayed inside Eiru from a young age, watching her life from a first person perspective, under such subtle influence, her personality gradually leaned toward Eiru’s direction.

The portion of soul that Eiru had torn off was fundamentally insufficient to give birth to a true self awareness in the real sense. So the Eiya inside her was completely mechanically imitating and learning from her. Although she looked very human, conceptually she wasn’t much different from artificial intelligence.

“So don’t look at how lively I am. I don’t actually possess something like emotions. I’m just using borrowed memories and a simulated cultivated personality to play a different ‘Eiya’.”

While explaining, ‘Eiya’ even shrugged. Her human-like reactions made it hard to imagine that she was actually a response based existence without emotions.

“So, after you go back… you’ll disappear?”

The little Demon Lord suddenly felt uncomfortable. Because even if emotions didn’t exist, the existence in front of her was still a part of her sister.

“She will obtain my memories. Other things won’t be affected…”

Organizing her words, ‘Eiya’ thought for a while before giving this answer.

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“I never existed in the first place, so there’s no such thing as disappearing. I’m just returning to where I originally belonged. You can think of it like a DLC plugin that was separately detached and upgraded returning to the main game. Other than her gaining a bit more stuff, nothing else will be affected.”

“Such… such a vulgar explanation.”

Eiru felt a bit embarrassed, but she quickly recalled something the other had just said.

“You just now… said Little Ya? Light mental split?”

“Yeah. Otherwise, why do you think she’s so inexplicable? Even she herself can’t control her emotions, right? Because a part of her soul is here with you.”

According to Eiru’s calculations back when they were young, even if Eiya had a part of her soul with her, with the two sisters sticking together every day, nothing should have gone wrong with her.

Even if something really happened, like she caused trouble from being too mischievous and got kicked out of the house, given their sisterly relationship, Eiya would definitely speak up for her and plead on her behalf. Given how much their parents doted on her, as long as she spoke, there was basically no possibility they wouldn’t listen.

But the one thing the little Demon Lord back then never expected was that… the future Eiya, when facing her brother’s issue, chose silence.

One wrong step led to another. Everything began to spiral toward an uncontrollable direction. And Eiya also paid a price for that choice she made back then, a price she herself never even realized.