Not a God, but a Demon
Mana from the surroundings was drawn into Butler Ju as he seized Anubis’s spear.
Flustered, Anubis tried to wrench the weapon free, but it would not budge an inch.
“To call yourself a god when you can’t even handle this much? You’ve got a long way to go.”
Butler Ju sneered at the sight and drove a kick straight into Anubis’s head.
Thud!
The blow to the head sent Anubis staggering backward; he released the spear, and the construct of pure mana scattered into nothing.
“Grrraaah! You old bastard!!!”
Anubis forged another spear of mana and charged. This was no simple thrust—he put spring into his body and swept the weapon in a great, cutting arc.
Butler Ju slipped the strike with an upward punch, then whipped a roundhouse kick into Anubis’s gut.
“Guhk!”
“Even infinite mana means nothing if the output cannot exceed SS-class. Did you truly believe it would work on an SSS-class?”
Butler Ju’s method of shattering the twenty-four-hour invincibility was simple: overwhelm the enemy’s mana with the sheer output of an SSS-class and seize absolute control of the surrounding flow.
In a war of attrition Anubis, with his endless mana, would eventually win—but that attrition had to drain Butler Ju dry inside twenty-four hours. Once the day passed, Anubis’s defeat was already written.
“Damn it all!”
Having tasted omnipotence through mana and felt, for a moment, like a true god, Anubis now slammed against the immovable wall that was Butler Ju and detonated his power. Even a glance at the mana currents told him Butler Ju was holding back, unwilling to raze the city. Knowing victory was impossible, Anubis deliberately exploded his mana simply to create an opening to flee.
He had gambled his life once already to obtain this power. He had no intention of throwing that hard-won life away now.
“Heh heh heh. This body is still unfamiliar to me. Call it my loss for today. We’ll meet again.”
Feigning composure to the last, Anubis stepped into empty air and vanished.
“Does that process come with side effects that scramble the brain or something?”
“That is a question for future research. The far more urgent matter is…”
“Why the Organization possesses power like that in the first place, right?”
“Exactly.”
With Anubis gone, Jeong-Hoon finally let the tension ease from his shoulders. Silently thanking himself for having pocketed a dagger in advance, he followed Butler Ju into cover. The crisis was over; lingering in plain sight held no appeal.
The sudden appearance of the Organization in Italy—where a mere B-class Awakened had triggered a Raid and then used monsters to seize power beyond S-class—threw the family into full emergency. At Jeong-Hoon’s summons every one of the 12 Vassals dropped whatever they were doing and flew to Italy at once.
Because a full council of the 12 Vassals would never fit inside a royal suite, Jeong-Hoon had taken the top-tier MVP room. Now, looking around the conference chamber at the assembled Vassals—plus Hwa-Rim and Min-Ha, who had tagged along—he shook his head.
“I get why Secretary Kang is here, but what about you?”
“Because I figured you’d need every S-class or higher you could get, so I volunteered!”
“We don’t even know the enemy’s strength. Where does that confidence come from?”
Min-Ha shrugged proudly. Jeong-Hoon only shook his head again and swept a look across the others. In New York they had never expected open war, so bringing the girl had been one thing; now, when war was a real possibility, why had they dragged a minor into the middle of it?
“Gaju. During the journey here, Butler Han Su-Ho’s investigation led us to conclude that we would need as many S-class and above as possible. That is why I authorized her accompaniment.”
Lee Yeong stepped forward as spokesman. Jeong-Hoon’s expression asked what on earth that meant; he flicked his fingers.
“Yes, sir! I’ll explain! I’ve been waiting for this. Whee~ It’ll take a while, so I’ll start from the beginning.”
Reacting instantly to the finger-snap, Han Su-Ho rose and projected a massive screen across one wall of the conference room. It showed the photograph of the Awakened who had become Anubis—captured through Jeong-Hoon’s glasses. Because Jeong-Hoon had been wearing them at the time, the man’s face had been recorded cleanly before he mutilated himself and his body began to break down.
“Using this photograph we cross-checked every Awakened in Italy. And—surprise!—he was nowhere on the Awakened registry.”
“……?”
Jeong-Hoon’s face asked how someone who had done something only an Awakened could do could be missing from the list. One possibility surfaced at once.
“An unregistered Awakened, then?”
“Correct. Europe is far freer about registration than Korea. So we compared him against every Italian citizen we could search. This is the result.”
Han Su-Ho swirled a finger; the screen changed to the personal dossier of the man who had become Anubis. He had been a low-level courier for a newly formed mafia family that rose after the Great Change, moving drugs. Arrested multiple times on narcotics charges, he had always walked free under pressure from the guild-ized mafia organization—not a simple street gang.
“And that same mafia organization was the guild controlling the area at the moment Anubis appeared.”
“So not only Anubis but the entire mafia outfit is linked to the Organization?”
“We assess the probability as extremely high.”
Jeong-Hoon nodded silently and made a quiet resolution: before he left Italy, that mafia at least would be cleaned out.
“Ah—has the analysis of the magic circle I sent finished?”
“Yeees! It’s done! Lord Fernandez’s cooperation made it easy!”
Remembering that the footage had captured not only Anubis’s face but the magic circle as well, Jeong-Hoon asked. Dong Sa-Seong shot to his feet to answer.
“…Doctor Dong?”
“Yes, Gaju. Is there a problem?”
“…No, just—why is Doctor Dong speaking instead of Director Han? Isn’t Director Han the family’s greatest mage?”
Jeong-Hoon knew Dong Sa-Seong ran Photon and produced countless artifacts that fused magic and technology, yet he had not expected the man to take the floor.
“Butler Han Su-Ho’s magic is certainly outstanding, but he casts by pure instinct. When it comes to analysis, I’m better.”
Dong Sa-Seong’s explanation was brief; Jeong-Hoon only looked more puzzled.
“Magic can be used by instinct?”
“Of course! Gaju, magic is not a science like mathematics. It is far closer to the humanities—persuading mana through sensibility. Whether a circle or any other method, the process of activating magic is poetry, not calculation. An artifact is simply a recording of that recited poem, played back.”
As though the words had been itching to escape, Dong Sa-Seong fired them off in a rapid stream the moment Jeong-Hoon asked.
“Uh… I think I get the gist. So what exactly is that magic circle?”
“It is a magic circle, yet it is also a hybrid with martial arts.”
Among the traitors’ martial arts there existed a technique that stole another’s power by taking their blood. That technique had been woven into the magic so that, by absorbing a monster, the circle seized the faint sealing mana the monster possessed and forced the target through a complete remaking of the body—that was the core of the circle.
“Other elements are mixed in as well; analysis is still ongoing. But I can guarantee the success rate is under ten percent.”
“Is there any chance the Organization’s ringleader was revived with this?”
“Absolutely none. It is impossible to begin with. The body would have to be reconstructed by absorbing monsters, and no such signs appeared.”
Worried after hearing that Yong-Ha had stabbed his own heart with a dagger and died, Jeong-Hoon asked. Dong Sa-Seong shook his head firmly. The island where Butler Ju and Hwa-Rim had fought Yong-Ha to the end had already been scoured several times.
“I see. Then can we complete a thorough analysis and devise a countermeasure from this?”
Jeong-Hoon flicked his fingers. Butler Ju produced the dagger Anubis had used for self-mutilation. Dong Sa-Seong reached for it, but Han Su-Ho snagged it first.
“Whee~. This one’s useless. The magic engraved inside is completely destroyed.”
True to his status as the greatest mage, Han Su-Ho diagnosed the dagger in an instant. Dong Sa-Seong’s cheeks puffed out as he snatched the blade away.
“Ah… you’re right.”
After examining it himself, Dong Sa-Seong nodded in agreement—then suddenly smiled with a sly, knowing light.
“Gaju? It seems we need not be overly wary of this.”
“Did you find something?”
“This thing has a catastrophic flaw. By now the Organization itself should be sweating bullets.”
Speaking with a scientist’s certainty rather than a mage’s, Dong Sa-Seong corrected his earlier statement. The success rate was nowhere near ten percent; it was less than one percent—and it came loaded with side effects. A defective product through and through.
Having fled by detonating his mana, Anubis spent the full twenty-four hours granted by the remaking simply stabilizing his new flesh.
Once an Awakened reached S-class or higher, Hunter’s Disease no longer struck; the ability to control mana kept the vessel from shattering. Even so, he had overreached. Had he not been immediately after the remaking, he might have needed more than a month of recovery.
“Heh heh. But I am beginning to understand how to use a god’s body.”
While stabilizing the flesh, his mastery of mana had also surged. In a single day he had crossed the wall into true SS-class.
“Feeling better now?”
“…No problems. A god’s body is perfect.”
The mafia boss who had pressed the dagger into his hand and forced the life-or-death gamble—Anubis’s superior within the Organization—arrived. Anubis answered with open contempt. In his B-class days the boss had been an object of pure fear; now the man felt trivial.
“Power has made you arrogant.”
“By obtaining this body I became a god. I have no reason to bow to you humans.”
Anubis’s eyes flashed; a powerful wave of mana lanced toward the mafia boss.
Boom!
“Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Just because you can handle mana, you think you’re something special?”
The mafia boss casually nullified the wave. Guild master as well as mafia don, a man with enough clout to force the police to free his men on drug charges, he was himself an SS-class Awakened—one of the officers Yong-Ha had carefully recruited and backed.
Crack!
In an instant he closed the distance and seized Anubis by the collar. Anubis’s mana shattered.
“You drug-addict piece of trash—your only use is as a lab rat. I treated you like a human being and now your brain’s gone soft?”
The boss slammed Anubis into the ground; the body embedded itself in the floor. No matter how refined an SS-class’s mana control, it still fell short of a boss who had mastered both magic and martial arts.
“Y-you dare!”
“Dare, my ass! A bastard like you! Needs! A beating! To come! To his senses!!!”
Thud! Thud! Thud!
As Anubis shouted from the crater, the boss stomped and kicked, beating him without mercy.
The catastrophic flaw Dong Sa-Seong had named was precisely this side effect on the mind. Even though the man had “returned,” the experience of death itself had shattered his psyche and twisted his soul. Layered atop that damage, the fusion with a monster sealed for thousands of years warped his very way of thinking. Dong Sa-Seong had deduced all of it from the tiniest remaining fragment of the magic circle on the dagger.
“You’re no god. You’re a half-dead corpse—an undead, a demon stitched together from monster carcasses.”
After thrashing Anubis for a long while, the mafia boss finally cooled his rage and spat.
“With the Master gone, we must carry out the Organization’s ideal ourselves. Your only job is to stay a good little lab rat.”
Clamping a restraint collar around Anubis’s neck, the boss referred to the former head Yong-Ha as “Master” and looked over the kneeling Organization members around them.
“Release the seals! Death to the false king! Reveal the true face of the world!”
“““Release the seals! Death to the false king! Reveal the true face of the world!”””
The boss roared the slogan; the members echoed it in unison and dropped to their knees.
Anubis—the sole successful case—was nothing more to the Organization than an experimental subject for the sake of their ideal.