Chương 33: [That Time I Was Enslaved by the Demon Lord and he Made Me Administer CBT]

-MEANWHILE, AT THE DEMON LORD'S CASTLE- Power. Have you experienced real power before? No. Of course you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't be here. Let me tell you something about power, dear reader. It is not a drug. It is not an addiction. However you might have heard it described to you, however you may imagine it must feel to wield, I assure you: power has no substitute. There is no story you can tell yourself that can replace it. There is no fantasy that can let you live it.

Your games, your shows, your fantasy land and silly little stories… less than shadows. Not even a placebo. It's just a lie. An empty… vapid… hollow lie. Like trying to pretend you're bathing in the warmth of the sun… while drifting alone in the furthest, darkest corner of the universe. Let me tell you something about power, dear reader. It doesn't 'change' you. It kills you. The moment you wrap your hands around it, everything you once were dies. And in its place, a new life emerges.

Something more than human but less than humane. Something both animal and divine, primal and godly, something that would eat you alive and steal your spot in Heaven in the same ruthless strike. You become anointed in it. It becomes your body, blood, and spirit. You seek it so others cannot have it. And if you lose it, you go mad. Let me tell you something about power, dear reader. I have lost it. And I have gone mad. It all happened years ago. Far too many years ago than I cared to count.

A mortal had a silly idea: what if death… was not to be feared? This was a rebellious idea of the highest order. Life is made to sustain itself, and so, death must be feared. Death had to be avoided. How else were you to create more life? Sustain the cycle? The inevitability of death was necessarily tampered with a desire to avoid it and that endless chase between entropy and atrophy that turns the wheel of the cosmos. Death could not be so easily dismissed and it wouldn't be.

For even though this idea went through many iterations, revisions, and reimaginings… mortals continued to fear death. And so I continued to have power over them. The rebirth system, this 'Isekai' business? It was a law of the cosmos well before it was ever conjured up by the mortal imagination. It was not designed to be a mercy, nor a gift, nor an opportunity. It could best be described as a spiritual crop rotation. It kept souls fresh and healthy to bounce between realities. The whimsy and danger of fantasy.

The exploration and optimism of science fiction. The earnestness and passion of mundanity. Every new experience and every new reality would keep these precious sparks of life burning brightly for the Eternity they would spend swirling in the great dance cosmic. It was a beautiful system. But it was not perfect. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. It was not perfect. Eternity is a long time. Such a terrible, terrifyingly long time.

You cannot fathom the horrors of it. You never have to. All you need to comprehend is that in the span of an eternity, if anything can go wrong, it will. And it did. Mortals had long imagined the concept of an Isekai. But there was a breach in the system. The reality of the workings of the universe had somehow leaked to your world. Fantasy broke containment. And what was once seen merely as conjecture at best and wish fulfillment at worst had a sudden, wicked realness to it.

And people all around the world realized in the same, stilled breath… that death truly was not to be feared. Something waited beyond. An escape to distant shores. Friendly lands. Brighter suns. It spread like a cosmic plague. The souls could not be quarantined for fear of their dimming, so they spread their knowledge across the multiverse until every world was aware of the underlying machine of reality.

Some Goddesses leaned into it and gave people their fantasies and their holidays and their happy days in fantastic worlds. Some tried to contain the damage, wipe memories, like trying to empty a bottomless well one cup at a time. And Demon Lords like me? Those that would churn the waters, oversee the mass migration of souls across realities, soak the earth with dead and fill the air with the fertile terror? We lost our power. And we went mad.

"... I believe we've gone over this, my name isn't Reader. It's Becky." Sorry Becky.

"Secondly, you would need a psychologist to actually confirm a diagnosis like that and I'm a therapist. But last I checked, the DSM-5 doesn't have a category for 'madness'." So what do you think I have?

"Like I said, I'm not qualified to give you a psychological assessment. But whatever you think you have, the fact that you're trying to better yourself by choosing to have these sessions is proof to me that you think you can be helped." Managed, maybe.

"You have to contain a fire before you put it out. Don't undersell the value of management. What else do you manage in your life right now?" My legions, my castle, my lieutenants… I spend most of my time managing things, actually.

"And are your legions fierce, castle strong, and lieutenants loyal?" Yes.

"So clearly you have a gift for management! Listen, my role isn't to 'fix' your mental health. It's to give you the tools and empowerment you need to help you manage your emotional and mental wellness yourself. Since you're obviously so talented at it, I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about what we can accomplish together!" Do you really think so?

"I do. You and I are going to be using Cognitive Behavior Therapy — or CBT — to identify your negative thoughts, challenge them, and find ways to replace them with thoughts that are at least productive to the kind of Demon Lord you want to be. So here's what I'm going to ask of you: start keeping a journal with you and every time you think something negative about yourself, jot it down. Next session, come in with your journal and we can go over it together, okay?" Sure. But that'll be a big journal.

"Don't worry. That's what you enslaved me for!"