Mage×Family

Mission 0: Dealing with the Devil

The truth was that while he despised Tanya Degurechaff, he was a god of many worlds, managing countless domains with countless struggles. In each one, a decline in faith was a consistent trend. It was a minor crisis that needed to be fixed, Degurechaff was but one of many experiments in that regard. Sure, she was a particularly frustrating experiment, but that was all she came to in the end.

He could only get as mad at her as one would to a cake they had dropped onto the floor, ruining it. Sure, it was frustrating to have all that effort be for naught, for the hours spent planning and baking had been wasted, and he was certainly angry, but he would forget about it in a minuscule amount of time. Given a few decades, he would forget about her entirely. He had lived for eons, after all. The anger generated in less than a measly 20 years wasn't worth fretting over for any longer than a few decades.

Besides, he had hardly paid attention to her during most of that time. His focus was on other agendas, even within her own world. The Russy Federation became his primary target. Tanya Degurechaff was an experiment, one that seemed to enjoy pissing him off on a personal level, but she wasn't a problem, per se. The Russy Federation, a communist state in Eastern Europa, however, was.

He had influenced the Russy Federation into a war with the Empire, not to crush the Empire or Degurechaff, but instead in hopes that the Empire would crush the Federation, better still if it caused more trouble for Tanya, killing two birds with one stone. In the long term, however, the Empire was now slowly collapsing under the weight of its many enemies across the world.

It wasn't without its benefits, and even despite the Empire's impending loss in the war, they achieved what Being X hoped; they had destabilized the Russy Federation. In a move that was ironically pushed for and suggested by Degurechaff herself, the Empire began collaborating with ethnic groups to form civilian governments in their occupation.

These civilian governments gave the ethnic minorities who so aggressively despised communism an opportunity to experience greater freedoms that they wouldn't soon forget. The foundations were set, all that was needed was a little manipulation and the exhausted Russy Federation would come crumbling down, taking its anti-religious policies with it.

However, his negligence with Degurechaff wasn't without its consequences. While he was busy with his other affairs, Degurechaff had begun amassing a small web of influences. While she wouldn't, couldn't get out of the front lines during the war, she would no doubt be well set for the war's impending end.

Although he could extend the war for perhaps another year at most, that year would only allow Degurechaff to spread her influence even more. Although he hated to admit it, there was only so far he could really go in manipulating the world and its people before it started causing problems. His Angels wouldn't take too kindly if he manipulated free will too much, and they would rebel.

His angels were loyal, but they also had some semblance of free will. If they got mad, usually when the free will of humanity is challenged, they would protest, which while not much danger to him was a headache to deal with and would mean a few centuries of fixing the mess. It was better off letting this one cake burn itself in the oven compared to having to repair the oven itself.

Although he would soon move on from Degurechaff and her antics, he despised the possibility of sending her back into the cycle of reincarnation. Contrary to many religious beliefs based around him, hell didn't exist, not in a conventional sense at least. If a soul did not reach salvation, it would be reincarnated over and over again until it reached it, resulting in its eventual enlightenment even if it took millennia of crossing over hundreds of worlds.

Reincarnating Degurechaff felt like letting her out without any punishment at all for her annoyances, even if she wouldn't remember any of her lives in her reincarnation. There was no hell to really send her to, and destroying her soul felt like a waste and yet another escape without punishment since she was quite worthless in the grand scheme of things.