My Wives are Beautiful Demons

Yggdrasil kept looking at Qliphoth for a few seconds, clearly satisfied with the result of the punishment.

The little demonic tree was still kneeling among the golden leaves, holding the cone-shaped hat with both hands where the words I Am an Idiot were written, completely devastated by the fact that she had been reduced from her adult form to the appearance of a little girl.

Vergil, on the other hand, had already regained some of his composure.

The pain in his head still throbbed, but it had diminished enough for him to think without feeling as though his consciousness were being torn apart.

That was when Yggdrasil turned her attention back to him and calmly pointed in some undefined direction between the branches.

"Now leave."

Vergil raised an eyebrow.

"No."

The dryad remained silent.

Qliphoth slowly turned her head toward him, huge eyes wide as if trying to say that this might not be the best person in the universe to contradict at that moment.

Vergil completely ignored the silent warning.

"I’m only leaving once I understand what is happening," he continued. "Someone opened passages between Helheim and your roots, thousands of Valkyries were thrown here, and something is interfering with dimensional routes without leaving a normal signature. Besides, I still need to find Frey."

Yggdrasil crossed her arms.

"You really enjoy turning other people’s problems into your own."

"When they involve my people, they stop being someone else’s problem."

She watched him for several seconds. She did not seem irritated by the answer, only evaluating his insistence like someone who had already expected exactly that.

Finally, she sighed and raised one hand.

The space beside her opened.

Not like conventional magic.

A holographic screen appeared.

Vergil blinked.

It clashed completely with the image he had of an entity called the World Tree.

The interface was translucent, made of blue and golden panels suspended in the air, data lines moving along the edges, geometric symbols rotating around coordinates Vergil did not recognize, and an absurd amount of information updating in real time.

He looked at Yggdrasil.

"You use a screen?"

"I record universes. What did you expect? Scrolls?"

Vergil decided not to answer.

Yggdrasil moved two fingers, and the main screen expanded until it occupied several meters in front of them.

"Look."

A recording began.

It was Helheim.

More precisely, one of the regions where the first Valkyries had disappeared.

Vergil immediately recognized the stone architecture, the greenish mist, and one of the lower bridges.

A small group of Valkyries was patrolling the area normally.

There was no sign of combat.

No nearby creature.

Then the space behind them simply opened.

There was no preparation.

No magic circle.

No constructed portal.

A figure appeared.

Vergil leaned slightly forward.

The image could not define it.

Where a face should have been, there was interference.

The body changed proportions with every frame, as though the recording itself could not decide what shape it was observing.

At some moments, it looked humanoid.

At others, only like an elongated shadow.

There was no consistent color, aura, or even a fixed position in space.

The figure moved one arm.

The dimension was cut.

A passage directly into the lower regions of Yggdrasil appeared behind the Valkyries, and before any of them could react, an invisible force struck the entire group.

The warriors were thrown through the opening.

The figure closed the passage.

Then disappeared.

Vergil stared at the screen.

Yggdrasil advanced the recording a little.

Another disappearance.

Then another.

The same presence appearing in different places, opening cuts and simply dumping entire groups of Valkyries into the roots.

"That was it," she said.

Vergil pointed at the frozen image.

"Who is that?"

"I don’t know."

He slowly turned his face toward her.

"You are Yggdrasil."

"Yes."

"And you don’t know?"

"Because that thing is disconnected from my existence."

Vergil frowned.

Yggdrasil touched the image.

Several lines appeared over the figure, all ending in error symbols.

"You were born in Midgard. Even though you changed your race, acquired powers that did not belong to your birth, and established connections with different dimensions, there is a causal sequence leading to you. I can follow that line. I can look at your existence and tell where it began, which systems recognized you, and which worlds you passed through."

She pointed at the figure again.

"That has no line within my sector."

Vergil narrowed his eyes.

"So it isn’t from our world."

"Not merely your world."

Yggdrasil closed the recording and opened another representation.

This time, the hologram became gigantic, showing a structure composed of countless luminous clusters separated by completely dark regions.

"There are traces indicating that this being came from another sector."

"Sector?"

"I am the World Tree of Sector 616."

Vergil remained silent.

The information itself was simple.

The implications were not.

Yggdrasil enlarged one of the luminous regions.

Inside it appeared countless worlds, dimensions, spiritual systems, and tiny points connected by golden filaments.

"My domain includes the cosmological structures associated with this sector. The Nine Realms are only a fraction of it. Midgard, Helheim, Asgard, and all the other regions related to this set exist within the area I can observe and record."

Vergil pointed beyond the luminous boundaries.

"And outside this?"

"Not my domain."

"How can you simply not look?"

"Because I am not the totality."

Vergil still looked dissatisfied.

"You are literally a World Tree."

"A World Tree."

She emphasized the article.

"Not the World Tree."

Vergil noticed the difference.

Yggdrasil continued:

"When I detect interference external to Sector 616, I record it, classify it, and send a report to the World Tree. She has authority above mine and handles the rest."

"So you’re not going after it."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because that is not my function."

Vergil gestured around them, toward the practically infinite dimension that constituted her body.

"You’re telling me an entity capable of sustaining all this simply sends reports?"

"Yes."

"That’s ridiculous."

Qliphoth raised her tiny hand.

"She’s lying."

Yggdrasil slowly turned her face toward her.

Qliphoth immediately lowered her hand.

But it was already too late.

"Would you like to elaborate?"

Qliphoth swallowed.

"You’re extremely strong."

Yggdrasil floated over to her.

The difference in size was already humiliating.

Qliphoth looked approximately ten years old while Yggdrasil remained in her adult form, but the older entity’s expression somehow made her look even smaller.

"Qliphoth."

"Yes, Big Sister?"

"Do you know the difference between being strong and being a fighter?"

"I..."

"You don’t."

Yggdrasil crouched in front of her.

"To you, strength means being able to blow up something bigger than you."

Qliphoth opened her mouth.

"Do not answer."

She closed it.

"I can manipulate quantities of energy you still cannot comprehend. I can sustain countless routes, repair dimensional structures, observe worlds, move energy between planes, and prevent certain cosmological collapses. That does not mean I was created to fight."

Qliphoth blinked.

"But you could beat up a lot of people."

Yggdrasil pinched her cheeks.

"You look five years old."

"I’m millions of years old!"

"And you still think like a five-year-old."

"That was cruel."

"It was accurate."

Vergil almost smiled.

Yggdrasil released little Qliphoth’s cheeks and turned her attention back to him.

"I can be injured. I can be killed. And if an existence with enough authority appears, I can even be controlled. My role is not to cross sectors chasing threats. My role is to record, preserve what I can, issue an alert, and wait for the entities responsible for this level of interference to resolve it."

Vergil crossed his arms.

"A cosmic bureaucracy."

"Basically."

"That’s depressing."

"It works better than three dragons destroying my roots."

Vergil decided to take the hit.

For now.

He returned to the subject that actually mattered.

"So can you find Frey?"

Yggdrasil remained silent for a few seconds.

A new screen appeared before her, and thousands of lines began being examined simultaneously.

The process lasted less time than Vergil expected.

"Yes."

His attention immediately became absolute.

"Where?"

Yggdrasil closed most of the panels.

"In the Inverted World of Exile."

Vergil partially recognized the concept, but not the name.

"What kind of place is that?"

Yggdrasil’s expression became slightly more serious.

"A place where everything has already reached its end."

Vergil waited for her to continue.

"The Inverted World of Exile was not created as an ordinary realm. It has no civilization of its own, no natural function, and no stable cycle of life and death. It is a terminal destination for things that should not remain circulating freely."

She created another projection.

This time, the image showed a dark expanse with no defined sky, broken structures, and regions where space itself seemed to be rotting.

"Banished beings were sent there to serve punishments. Creatures that could not simply be executed, existences too dangerous to remain within normal systems, corrupted souls, and entities that needed to be isolated before a final death."

Vergil observed the projection.

It looked far too familiar.

"Outer Sepulcher."

Yggdrasil looked at him.

"That is what mortals eventually began calling it."

"So it’s the same thing."

"Yes. But its true name is the Inverted World of Exile."

Vergil kept looking at the image.

"Seris said it is older than some death systems."

"That is correct. The Inverted World was created when certain problems became too numerous for the Primordials to personally handle each case. So they built a punishment structure."

"A prison."

"A prison before death, in simple terms."

Vergil slowly ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

That explained a lot.

The voices.

The ancient routes.

The missing souls.

The feeling that certain passages existed outside the rules of the current realms of death.

"If a soul gets lost there?" he asked.

"It can die permanently."

"No reincarnation?"

"No reincarnation."

"No Helheim?"

"No Helheim."

"Hades?"

"No."

"The Authority of Death?"

Yggdrasil hesitated.

"Depends on who is wielding it."

That caught his attention.

But there was a more urgent question.

"How did Frey end up inside that thing?"

Yggdrasil changed the screen again.

The image showed a region near the old routes of Helheim.

Vergil vaguely recognized part of the structure from Hela’s maps.

"There is a passage."

"A door?"

"Something close to that. Very old. Very small. Normally it remains closed."

"So someone opened it."

"Not exactly."

Yggdrasil advanced the record.

Frey appeared.

Still whole at that moment.

Vergil watched the god walk through the region, examine markings, stop at several points, and continue onward.

"He was looking for something," Yggdrasil said. "Quite persistently, apparently."

"Fenrir?"

"I don’t know."

The image showed Frey following a signature to a region with no visible structure.

Then he stopped.

Touched something.

A passage appeared.

"He found the entrance."

Vergil blinked.

"By accident?"

"Possibly."

"He simply found a door to a primordial prison outside the normal routes?"

"Yes."

"And went in?"

"Yes."

Vergil fell silent.

Yggdrasil looked at him.

Qliphoth, still wearing the idiot hat, also looked at him.

Vergil turned his eyes back toward the recording of the Valkyries.

Then toward Frey’s passage.

Then toward Yggdrasil.

"Wait."

She waited.

"So this thing with the Valkyries..."

"Yes?"

"And Frey entering the Inverted World..."

"Yes?"

Vergil took a few seconds to formulate a question whose answer seemed too absurd.

"They aren’t related?"

Yggdrasil tilted her head slightly.

"I see no causal connection between the two events."

Vergil simply stared at her.

"You’re telling me all those Valkyries were kidnapped by something from another sector, thrown into your roots, Niddrog put them all to sleep to protect them, I showed up thinking she was the enemy, Nivara and Crymsaria started a war with her, Qliphoth stole your energy, we almost set Yggdrasil on fire..."

Qliphoth raised one tiny finger.

"It was only one part."

Vergil looked at her.

Qliphoth lowered the finger.

He continued:

"...and absolutely none of that had anything to do with Frey?"

Yggdrasil nodded.

"As far as I can observe, no."

Vergil went completely still.

His expression slowly emptied.

Then he ran a hand over his face.

"...It was all a coincidence."

"Yes."

Vergil looked toward the golden sky.

Then at Qliphoth wearing the idiot hat.

Then at Yggdrasil.

The dryad simply confirmed it once more with almost cruel calm:

"A rather destructive coincidence, but a coincidence."

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