Chapter 63

Chapter 63 is the sixty-third chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Official Blurb
The new customer seems to have quite a bit of baggage, the likes of which the Corpse God has never seen before...

Short Summary
Not written.

Synopsis
The knot of spirits clustered around Civil first reminds Corpse God of the revenge he took against the Geldwood soldiers who slaughtered those dear to him, and the labyrinthine soul-abundant mineshaft that thereafter amassed. The sheer quantity of spirits additionally reminds him of the "similar amount" of souls that often clung to Utsurojuza post-battlefields, and the spirits' unusual nature of the spirits that once haunted Lemmings. However, slaughtering 'millions' of souls would alone not result in spirits such as the ones haunting his client, for he has never seen spirits "so strongly fused together" as these; moreover, these spirits do not seem to persist out of ill will like Lemmings' did. Although Corpse God can deduce the dense fusion is the result of decades-long maturation, he can only guess what the majority of the spirits are feeling: neither love nor regret, he thinks—perhaps obsession, but he is not sure.

Anxious, Corpse God masks his unease by pasting on a smile with a 'False Face' spell before engaging Civil with vague, banal statements that belie nothing of genuine supernatural ability. Civil decides to pry with a question about Phantom Solitaire's reported visit to the Abandoned Building; Corpse God says he has not met Solitaire, but supposes their fates may have already crossed without his noticing.

Solitaire himself presently sits hunched over a laptop, clad in a simple undershirt while muttering complaints about the computer's "severely lacking" functions. Nearby, Higuro—having watched Solitaire spend yesterday taking photographs and all of today fiddling with the laptop—questions just what, exactly, Solitaire is attempting to do. Solitaire evades the question by soliciting another photograph, so Higuro instead asks the fate of his burner phone, which the police could potentially track; the attending Bug answers that they already burned it. The Bug observes that Higuro appears to fear the police more than he fears them, wondering whether Higuro truly believes the police could make him suffer a worse hell than The Bastard Children of Sabaramond could. Higuro feigns ignorance of the word 'Sabaramond' and claims he simply had the officer Arase in mind.

Cheered by this, Solitaire exclaims the two of them are comrades in their mutual ignorance and suggests they join forces; in other words, that they extricate the secret behind Sabaramond together. Meanwhile, open is an email from 'Nanny', in which Nanny states she has completed 'it' and has attached PhantomSolitairesHeartracingPrankOperation.zip for Solitaire's perusal.

In the Abandoned Building, Corpse God steers the conversation away from Solitaire by inquiring into Civil's second divination request: a "fate that spans one hundred years" in the flow of destiny. Civil's example scenario involves "friends or family [who have] committed some unforgivable sin," and the dilemma of whether such relations should be universally cursed and brought to judgment. For the second time, Corpse God is immediately reminded of the Geldwood soldiers—specifically, their judgement of and punishment for his family's 'corruption'—and, with his painted on smile, he replies he likes to think "this world isn't like that."

Civil now explains that he and his friends are targeted by "troublesome characters" whose century-old hatred is the cause of Civil et al.'s continued exile. A few scenarios run through Corpse God's mind—the client could be a descendant of a serial killer, or even an unrelated innocent party—and he cautiously offers assistance via his divinations, which ought to enable Civil to "avoid such unreasonable situations." To his shock, Civil not only wants to encounter such unreasonable situations posthaste, he prefers his foes' reasons to be as unreasonable as possible—the more unreasonable, the better. Civil opines that one can "return unreasonable action with unreasonable action" with a clean conscience; personally, Civil would feel no remorse even if he maimed his foes' family in front of them.

Corpse God says Civil would be doing the same as their adversary, a point Civil does not deny. Thus, he says, the heart of the matter is the 'order of operations': since Civil's relative committed the first wrongdoing, Civil's adversary would be justified in seeking revenge against that relative; however, in hating Civil solely for his relation to the wrongdoer, the adversary is starting a 'whole new attack'. Since the latter scenario is the case, Civil wonders why he should not be permitted to "make a move against my adversary's relative"—they who committed an unreasonable action first. Surely it would feel wonderful, he posits, to pursue maximum destruction and insult outside the gaze of the law.

Between the Geldwood soldiers and the children they slaughtered from Corpse God's past, Civil is more akin to the former in Corpse God's estimation. Locking such thoughts behind his mask, he asks one question of Civil: whether Civil means everything they have said thus far. Civil challenges Corpse God to divine the answer, a challenge Corpse God accepts.

A large, circular spell manifests overhead as the two lapse into silence. It begins to absorb the fused spirits, veins of magic spreading across the ceiling and crackling down the walls—and a chill shivers down Misaki Sakimiya's spine in the hall opposite. Soara Habaki nearby asks her companion Lulu what is happening; Lulu stares upward, Evil Eye wide.

Referbacks

 * Geldwood's slaughter of the children was first depicted in Chapter 2.
 * Solitaire's and Corpse God's 'fates' crossed in Chapter 29.
 * "Nanny" is likely a member of Café Amaguri. Whether she is 'Granny' from Chapter 28 remains to be confirmed.
 * The magic veins bear a strong resemblance to the magic veins that manifest in Chapter 33 when Corpse God constructs a temple (c.f. Chapter 34 for context on temples and netherworld overflow).