The Possessor Gallery
My head was a wreck. Worse than the first time I had turned into a succubus in this world.
The message that had popped up out of nowhere hit just that hard. I had only just brought down the Demon King, and now it was rambling on about some gallery?
It was ridiculous, but the message didn't care how I felt and simply kept talking.
G-gallery, open?
I did what it told me before I could think better of it. A screen rose in the corner of my vision, a little larger than the phone I used to live on, and the interface of the Possessor Gallery appeared across it.
Welcome to the gallery.
This is a place of exchange, prepared for possessors who have finished everything.
"…."
It was too absurd. A gallery that existed for possessors like me? Something like this was actually real?!
The message offered my shock not the slightest courtesy. Its work was done, it seemed to say—handle the rest yourself—and then it was gone.
H-hey, you have to at least tell me how to ask for help!
Or, since it was a gallery, was I supposed to write a post? But how? I'd activated it in my head, so it would be nice if this worked the same way....
I tried writing a post on the spot, and it was easier than I could have imagined. Merely picturing the words was enough for them to write themselves.
I'd been in such a rush that what came out was considerably unhinged. Then I waited for someone to leave a comment. Right around the time I started thinking what kind of insane stunt is this, a response arrived.
13th Commander? The handle had a strangely familiar ring to it. Riding that odd feeling, I left a reply.
The moment my post went up, automatically labeled Newbie, a reply came back in a baffled tone.
What?!
I-I mean, the front of the board did say as much. But the message had told me to request help here, so what was going on?
I'd been so flustered that even writing with my mind produced catastrophic typos. The reaction that came back was, predictably, unkind.
Having delivered that rebuke, the 13th Commander promptly set about interrogating me.
For a moment the other side seemed startled. The reply stalled, as if this were something he had never expected, and only then came through.
I'd asked on a sudden whim, and an astonishing answer came back.
Immaculate!
That, too, was one of the legends of the shonen manga world.
An urban fantasy in which the holy knights of the modern age fought vampires scheming in the dark behind that very same modern world.
The premise itself was incredible. It had seized the hearts of teenagers while it was serializing, and it was still popular.
Not really my taste, though.
It wasn't that I disliked Immaculate. If pressed, I preferred a contest of strength you could actually follow—even the brain-melting power inflation of something like Dragon Brave.
…No. Wait.
If he was the 13th Commander of Immaculate—
Yoel Asad. Among the Holy Knight Commanders—the starring figures who ruled the holy knights—he was the thirteenth, held as taboo, and a traitor.
The final boss of Part One of Immaculate!
I explained to the 13th Commander everything I had been through. This time I didn't panic; I laid the situation out properly, and he answered with something like goodwill.
To me, thrown by the sudden praise, the 13th Commander offered an explanation.
He praised me at almost tedious length, then dropped a warning as if it were nothing.
Demon King Vadio had fallen. Not a soul, however, spared a glance for the bastard sprawled there as a corpse.
Every mind in that place was fixed on another body. A middle-aged man, his musculature honed to the utter limit, lay collapsed with his chest caved in.
He was Jade, martial artist of the Hero's party. A master renowned even as the Fist King—and yet his end had been pathetic. At the very last, caught in the Demon King's brainwashing, he had turned his strength upon his own comrades.
The face of the man who had met so ignoble a death was steeped through with bitterness.
"Amy, can't you do something?!"
"I-it isn't working!"
The party's other two comrades—Shins, a warrior of the very highest class, and Amy, its priestess—tried everything they could to bring him back. It was hopeless.
"Stop. It's already too late!"
Another comrade cut in, her voice cracking like a whip. An old woman in a mage's robes, stubbornness written into every line of her face.
Archmage Hazenul. Eldest among them, she spoke to the younger ones without a shred of give.
"That one is dead. No one can bring back the dead."
Only after those words, heavy with long years, had landed did the two of them stop.
"D-damn it!"
"Uncle Jade…."
And in the moment their hands fell still, the last of the Hero's party drew near.
Long blond hair, a handsome face with a gentle cast—this was Abel, the Hero.
"…Thank you. For everything, until now."
Drawing close to his dead comrade, Abel closed the man's eyes and laid a cloth over the body. He bowed his head for a brief, silent prayer, then rose.
"Come. All of you, stand. There is still work that must be done."
"What did you say?"
Hot-blooded Shins seized Abel by the collar.
"A comrade just died, and you're already looking somewhere else? You're not even sad?!"
"I am sad. But we all made our resolve before we came in here. That we would bring the Demon King down, even if it cost us our lives."
"That's that, and this is this!"
"No. Precisely because a comrade has died, we have to see this through all the more thoroughly."
Abel said it with finality, and it was the truth. The Demon King was dead, but the matters still waiting to be settled stood piled like a mountain.
"If we are to deal with all of it before trouble rises again, I need your help. …And the help of the woman over there. Mahare's."
Mahare. The instant that name was spoken, every gaze converged—on the succubus standing blankly in a corner.
A ponytail, long and black as pitch. Ruby eyes that shone like jewels, and skin white as snow. A face sculpted like a statue, cool even as it was beautiful. A pair of bat wings at her waist. An unrealistically perfect figure, thrown into relief by a black suit cut like a corset. Cool, beautiful, and sensual—a beauty every inch a succubus.
Yet more astonishing than her looks was her strength. She was the succubus who had come to them one day, declaring that what Vadio was doing was wrong. Having turned on the demonkin to aid the Hero's party, she was a staggering power.
Strong enough to stand as Jade the Fist King's equal, or better—and, in effect, the greatest of the demonkin after Vadio.
"Now that Vadio has fallen, the most powerful demonkin upon the earth is Mahare. So I would like her to take charge of what becomes of the remaining demonkin."
"You're seriously going to dump a hassle like that on her? And now, of all times? She just killed a comrade when she never even wanted to!"
In the instant pragmatic Abel and emotional Shins were about to collide, Mahare abruptly spread her wings and tore away at blinding speed.
"…."
"D-did she hear what we were saying?"
When the comrade who had brought down the Demon King beside them vanished without warning, both of them went white. Abel, especially, moved to chase her at once.
"Wait!"
"Leave her!"
Hazenul caught Abel as he rushed to cast a flight spell. Something in her long years had told her what she was seeing, and she murmured at Mahare's retreating back.
"Leave her be, for now. From the look of it, that one still has something she must do."