Family heirloom, then turned into a demon girl

Chapter 339 Mission: 02-3 Prison Break
It's a somewhat strange idea that someone stole Nero's desire.

As Samael said, lust and emptiness are two sides of the same coin. Everyone has desires, and when those desires are satisfied, emptiness follows. Desires are of many kinds: tangible, intangible, necessary, excessive, legitimate, sinful... When these desires are satisfied, people always experience a brief period of emptiness, but new desires quickly fill it, keeping them from stopping. Desires are neither good nor bad. The absence of desire for good can be said to be the root of laziness, while pure emptiness, lacking even the desire for evil, is the most extreme form of laziness.

Nero's problem before was that she had lost her "driving force".

She wanted to leave the prison, eat, drink water, take a shower and change clothes. This seemed to indicate that she still had certain desires in her heart.

However, she no longer felt the urge to fulfill these desires. Their existence seemed dispensable, unable to motivate Nero. It could even be said that it was only the lingering instincts of Nero's flesh telling her, "This is what I should do," even though she had no real desire to do them. Her strongest desire to bathe was simply because, unlike eating and drinking, dirt and odors caused her physical discomfort.

This is why Nero fell into the void and had to be rescued by Samael. If it were the previous Nero, this problem would never have occurred.

After all, the desire to eat a little cake won't disappear. As for the meaning? Isn't being able to eat the little cake itself the greatest meaning?
It seems that Samael's "stolen desire" is not an exaggeration. And in Nero's opinion, there is probably only one person who can do this.

Demon Emperor, Mondes.

This can be seen even from his human identity. The sin of greed, "greed," pervades the entire financial world, without exception. As someone who controls an entire city through finance, and is even now controlling the world, this is Mondes's greatest sin.

However, compared to the somewhat mysterious statement of "stealing", Nero felt that it might be the overwhelming "desire" in Mondes' magic that suppressed and conquered the desire in Nero's heart, making Nero feel that his desire was "not worth mentioning", thus turning him into a decadent person with no desires.

Because after crossing the boundary of reality and leaving Virgil's secret prison from the inside, Nero still felt that the desire that had just ignited in his heart was gradually fading.

The desire for power, the desire for revenge, the desire to defeat Mendes... these forces that drove her to act again were also defeated by Mendes's desires and gradually disintegrated.

"It takes time..."

She needed time to recover, and also time to find a way to defeat Mundus.

The power of this world's Mondes, the Mondes who had defeated Sparta, was truly extraordinary. Urizen, now the King of the Demon Realm, was supposedly as powerful as the Mondes of that world, but the pressure Urizen had brought to Nero at that time was nowhere near half as great as this Mondes.

Unbeatable. This was the first feeling he gave Nero.

With this thought, Nero drew the sword hidden within her staff and, with some difficulty, broke open the metal gate. She emerged from the garage, hiding a secret, and looked up. A chaotic sky, like a vast vortex, lurched to devour. Dark demons soared beneath it, circling a tower clad in silver wings in the center.

This is Limbo, a dimension adjacent to reality, yet also influenced by it. "Now that I think about it, leaving everything to that unreliable Virgil was foolish."

Nero, who breathed in fresh air again, stretched slowly and hid back in the shadow of the house before being discovered by the demons patrolling in the sky, thinking about what to do next.

Indeed, at this point, after removing the filter of familiarity, Nero's assessment of this world's Virgil is "unreliable." This isn't about his lack of strength or willpower, but rather his character, which is difficult to judge.

Perhaps it was some change in his experiences, but the Virgil of this world had become much more hypocritical. The Virgil Nero knew disdained to lie or cover up anything, but the Virgil of this world seemed incredibly cunning, even resorting to using his brother's name to deceive... Even if he had said his own name, Nero would still have gone with him.

Perhaps this change was due to coexisting with humans for so long? After all, he seems to have founded an organization in the human world. If that's the case, then Virgil is truly a man who only learns the flaws of humans and demons, ignoring their strengths.

...But it seems like demons don't have much to offer? That's fine, Nero will think Vergil here is even worse.

I think I've strayed off topic. In short, Nero now finds it difficult to trust this world's Virgil, and Dante's credibility has also declined significantly. This is because this Virgil has given her a reminder that, after all, he and the Virgil Nero knew are not the same person.

They just have the same name and power.

Even their strength might not be the same, because according to Nero's personal understanding, Virgil's mentality destined him to not be stronger than the one Nero knew.

So her earlier words in the cell, "Let Virgil and Dante handle it," were just a passing rant; Nero had to intervene. Her primary task now was to understand why this world's Mundus was so powerful, and where his power came from.

And how to weaken him and defeat him.

"It seems like more than one thing? Never mind."

She poked her head out again, gazing at the silver tower, surrounded by countless tall buildings like the moon and stars. Her intuition told her that was where Mondes was, the Silver Bag Bank headquarters, the Silver Bag Tower. The reason was simple: a self-proclaimed "King of the World" like Mondes would never allow anyone to "outdo him," so he would definitely build his headquarters to the highest point.

If she wanted to find out more about Mondes, that would be the easiest place to go. But in her current state, going there would be like seeking death. So, the second place where she could find out more about Mondes was...

I'm afraid this is Virgil's headquarters.

(End of this chapter)