Black Cat, aka Schwarze, and Lavriel, aka Shirohara Ren, lay happily at his feet.
They were naked, they had male and female fluids seeping from between their legs, and their minds were woozy with ecstasy.
A great feast had been waiting here for the party scheduled for the night. Rapha and Daima Makoto were divvying it up between their group when they were instructed to bring something to go with the wine. Micha stood next to the young man with a wine bottle and two glasses.
He accepted one of the glasses and they unsealed the bottle together. Once their glasses were full of that blood-red fermented liquid, they clinked them together.
“Phew.”
Micha drank hers down and sighed, as if to celebrate a job well done.
She then watched with great interest as he slowly but surely emptied it.
“Heh heh. So you’re finally willing to drink with me. Wasn’t long ago you would always refuse.”
“You shouldn’t have been offering alcohol to a minor.”
“Was wine a good choice?”
“Yes, I seem to like it. Especially the grape flavor.”
“Could that be Lilith’s tastes showing through? I prefer beer myself.”
She gave the maid a signal and Makoto brought over a beer and poured it into a new glass without saying a word.
“Don’t drink too much,” cautioned the young man when she started on her second drink already.
She was so used to hearing that line that she burst out laughing, spitting out her drink.
“Avalon, I thought I could meet you if I worked with Lilith, but it seems you’re mostly Mutsuki on the inside.”
“So it seems.”
The young man smiled thinly. The smile hid a lack of confidence that belied his apparent adulthood. It was exactly Mutsuki’s usual smile.
“The memories within the Fruit of Knowledge that forms my core are the Mutsuki boy’s, and this seems to be the result. Lilith’s personality had matured too far after living for millennia, so she is in something like a half-asleep state.” He turned toward the pool. “So I will reshape the world according to the Mutsuki boy’s wishes.”
A light glowed at the bottom of the pool water.
That was a common enough thing at night pools, but a closer inspection showed some objects were laid out at the bottom and those things were glowing.
A speck of light flew through the night like a shooting star and fell in the pool. The glowing object sank to the bottom to become one of the stones illuminating the pool.
They were all apple seeds. Glowing apple seeds.
Most had sunk to the bottom, but a few were floating around in the water like fireflies.
The young man reached out his hands.
“Now there will be no conflict. Everyone can live in peace, equality, and happiness.”
He scooped up some of the pool water that contained one of the moving seeds.
“A world without discord. A world of only relief.”
It had been moving around in a worried sort of way, but once he touched it, it came to a stop as if in relief. He returned it to the water where it sank to the bottom.
Micha turned aft.
Firefly light showed the path the ship had taken away from the port.
The seeds would gather in the pool, but once they calmed down, they would be swept out to sea. The process was complete for about 80% of the humans on earth, but every Fruit of Knowledge was being collected – from heaven and hell as well. The pool would fill up in no time, so the young man would calm down the overexcited ones and return the calmed ones to the ocean.
Once the firefly lights sank into the ocean, they would float around in a pleasant sort of way and vanish into the depths of the night.
“Once this is complete, I will add all of you here as well.
He smiled.
“Of course.”
“As you wish.”
The angels and humans agreed to the proposal with looks of pure joy.
They were not blindly obeying. The FeTUS Witches and the angels knew very well what the young man was saying.
The seeds gathered in the pool could be compared to brains in vats.
But this was an act of benevolence.
After being freed from the bonds of their physical bodies, the seeds were returned to the ocean while dreaming of eternal happiness. These were dreams of loving and being loved.
It was hard to define what exactly this young man was.
But he had just one reason to exist: to be loved by all.
To be loved by him was the greatest happiness a living being could experience.
The witches and the angels were overwhelmed by happiness just by being with him here, so they understood the happiness those seeds were permeated with.
In fact, the ones working here were the unhappy ones. For example, Schwarze and Ren never got along, so they ended up thinking about which one he loved more, which only led to jealousy and worry. It also pained them to see Micha receiving special treatment from him.
They could forget those feelings once they were only a seed. They could cast off their emotions and thoughts and exist only to love him.
There would be no discord there.
“You too, Micha-san.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. I suppose so.”
Micha emptied her beer glass and gave a halfhearted response to the smiling young man.
“But not yet. As a seed, I won’t have a mouth to drink beer.”
The maid quickly filled her glass once more.
When the young man smiled bitterly and chided her for drinking too much, she pressed her tipsy cheek against his and leaned against him.
“It’s been so long. It feels like forever since I started working with Lilith to bring about this day. And it was all so much harder after I met Mutsuki-kun and started stimulating the Adam within him. Since he had that convenient Serpent’s Eye, I assumed he would abuse it the second I taught him the joys of sex. I never imagined he would refuse to use it for himself even after I took his virginity.”
“I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to abuse it, but I felt like I didn’t have to since I had you with me.”
“Heh heh. Well, there was my mistake right there.”
She was still smiling, but a hint of sadness appeared deep in her eyes.
She had been working towards this day ever since they had first met and that had fundamentally twisted the boy’s purity. She did feel some shame about that.
But it was gone soon enough.
“You can take a vacation now. Feel free to enjoy yourself.”
She held out her glass to the young man.
With a defeated smile, he accepted it and drank about half of it.
“So this is beer. To think wheat tastes like this if you brew it.”
“It doesn’t have the grape flavor of wine, but it’s pretty nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s a little bitter.”
“You child.”
They sat with their shoulders together.
Schwarze and Ren looked a little pained at not being a part of it.
“Nh.”
His expression suddenly changed.
“Is something the matter?”
Makoto tilted her head while ready to pour some fresh beer or wine.
He wrinkled his brow in thought.
Then a new golden seed flew in.
It plopped down into the pool and was calm from the beginning, so it would sink right down to the bottom and vanish into the ocean soon enough.
But after so many hundreds of thousands of seeds, this was the only one to make him look puzzled.
“Sakae,” he muttered. “Friends, hm?”
He must have known what look was on his face. He set down his glass and asked a question.
“Where did Ange, Lucia-kun, and Ibekusa-san go again?”
“Um, towards Megutono Academy.”
“I see. Yes, I thought they would be here in short order, but it seems I was wrong.”
Even at sea, Makoto accurately pointed in the direction the jet carrying those three had flown. She pointed toward the city containing Megutono Academy and FeTUS Headquarters.
When the young man faced that way, the sea swelled up and the ship rapidly changed course. It turned in the direction Makoto was looking.
“Let us go get them. …Yes, they are the Mutsuki boy’s precious friends.”