I just finished reading volume 10 of the light novel series Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road (The Executioner and Her Way of Life), and finally, we get to see the story from the point of view of Hakua. This shows us the real reason why she went rogue over the last 1000 years, creating this dystopian world with her as the leader.

But before tackling that, let's focus a bit on the initial parts of the volume. Hakua forces one of her Elders to be a sacrifice to summon Pandemonium (the real version, not the pinky finger Maya) and proceeds to absorb her. She wants to be unstoppable and reach her objective: obtaining control over the device to go back to Earth with Akari.

Our heroines are instead divided between the Sahara/Maya team (with support from the old underlings of Hakua) and the Momo/Akari/Menou team, together with Ashuna. Sahara's mechanical arm seems to be an important piece to defeat Pandemonium as it contains the result of 1000 years of research by the Entangled World "Human Error."

Smiling together!

Momo is getting a bit of attention from Menou finally!

As the peril of Hakua approaches, the two teams communicate on how to solve the crisis. Maya wants to sacrifice herself to seal Pandemonium again, but Sahara is vehemently against it. Menou considers what to do with the device; they can return one person back to Earth, be it Pandemonium or Hakua, but the one left behind will definitely become aggressive at that point.

This highlights one of the biggest changes over the last couple of volumes: Sahara. She started as a very selfish and self-centered girl who would betray anyone for her personal gain, as shown by her interactions with Menou. Then she met Maya and was initially terrified since she was the pinky finger of Pandemonium.

But as they spent time together, bickered, and faced so many challenges... she started to warm up to her. And at this point? She is totally in love with her! In the critical moments (when Menou uses the device to send back Pandemonium to Earth), she jumped in without caring for her own life to prevent Pandemonium from grabbing Maya (as shown in the picture below). She lost her arm in the process, but that can be restored. 

Shirakami Hakua, Hoshizaki Nono, Gadou Ran and Ooshima Maya

In the end, the plan was a success. Hakua was fooled into thinking they wanted to use Maya to seal Pandemonium. She didn't realize until it was too late that the device was used to send the real Pandemonium back to Earth instead. Apparently, from a scene shown after she got sent back, Pandemonium will be reborn as a new human child on Earth due to Maya having the soul of the original. Maya has become fully human due to the influence of Pandemonium completely disappearing from her body.

Hakua was furious, but after getting a request from Akari, she allows them to see her past by sharing her memories. Initially, we get some context around Hakua on Earth. She was a sickly girl who lived most of her days in a hospital alone. Her parents loved her, but to make sure she got the best treatment, they had to work hard and couldn't spend enough time with her.

One day, Akari (a classmate of hers) appeared in the hospital room to visit, and they started getting closer. For Hakua, it was like a ray of light in the darkness, and I can see why she ended up being so obsessed with her afterward in the story.

Sahara won't allow anyone to take her Maya!

Akari appearing in Hakua's room

And here we get the bombshell revelations. We see the past where Hakua worked tirelessly to save people by removing their powers using the "White" magic she has preventing any chance of becoming a human error. Then she discovered, due to one of the Elder's machinations (who wanted to take over her body), the truth behind the "ideal advanced society" that was built in this world.

The higher-ups were summoning and using Japanese people as power sources to keep the high level of technology working, killing them in the process after unspeakable suffering. She was furious and killed all the involved people, but that wasn't enough. She wanted to erase the possibility of this happening again, so she decided to eliminate the people who must have known about it (like two of her Japanese allies who had powers to see through things). She forcibly downgraded society to a level where that technology wasn't needed, installing herself as leader and judge killing anyone who opposed her.

Unfortunately, the influence of the Elder (which was partially absorbed by her magic) left her in a confused state. The obsession of the Elder with "one person" was replaced with Hakua's obsession with Akari. This was further powered up by the fact that she learned Akari was going to come to this world in 1000 years.

Final showdown incoming!

This set everything in motion leading to the events of this light novel, with her preparing everything to ditch the world and get back to Japan with Akari. Now Menou and Hakua are at the final showdown with their ideals clashing, and I am really curious to see how everything will end.

Hakua was not inherently a bad girl; she was just ruined by the corrupt individuals around her and forced to act in a role she didn't want. I wish they could give her some level of a happy ending as well after so much suffering (Akari explicitly asked Menou for that). I am going to read the last volume later and make a post once I am ready.