THIS! IS! SPARTA!!
Phantom lolled about at Pele's side, utterly idle.
"Must be because this is a leaf where a god resides. I can roll around like this and not a speck of dust sticks. And it's as comfortable as a bed, free of charge."
He circled the meditating Pele. A grown man lying on the ground and spinning was not a pleasant sight, and for a goddess trying to concentrate, it could only be a nuisance.
"Can't you just hold still? What do you think you're doing?"
He'd been at nothing but useless antics for a while now—rolling, standing on his head, dancing. Eccentricities she had no wish to understand, and couldn't have managed if she tried.
"I've been playing around too much."
"Playing? Did you just say you've been playing?"
A vein stood out on Pele's forehead. Fire leaked from the corner of her mouth as her feelings spilled over.
"Everyone else went back to figure out what comes next, and you're fine just lying around here?!"
"There's nothing for me to do. Ilshikgyo is dead to the last, and the villains' strength collapsed after the attack."
"What do you mean, nothing! Do you have any idea how hard my children have it right now!"
With the seal weakening, she could feel it more and more—how hard her children were living after the last terror. They drank their way through each day just to reach tomorrow, and spent their lives weeping for the ones who had gone until exhaustion dropped them where they stood. Far from anyone helping them, trash reached out with dark hands in droves, and hardship spread farther than hope.
"Just you wait until this seal actually comes off. I'll tan your hide."
"Don't we still have to work things out with Chuyeon a few more times?"
"Tch. Just wait a little. It'll come loose soon."
Pele clicked her tongue. Phantom was right.
After the Saintess and the Eclipse God had come and gone, the seal that had seemed ready to break within a day ran into an unexpected wall. It had endured infinite Life and divine power to the very end, even after Dan Chuyeon, unable to hold on, blacked out and Dan Miryu took the work up in his place.
Pele was badly shaken. It had seemed more than possible, and yet it hadn't broken. An emergency consultation with the immortal concluded that the seal was an unknowable thing, beyond interpretation. Only one fact was clear. It was absurdly hard.
Fortunately the seal had weakened for some reason, and the collision with infinite Life had weakened it further. That left only one method: keep striking it. The threat was gone. All that remained was to break the seal.
Hong Yumin's eyes lit up. Taking it for a chance to train her disciple, she threw Dan Chuyeon back into the unsealing the next day. Several more days passed after that, bringing them to now. A little longer, and the seal would come undone.
"So why, exactly, are you doing this?"
"Because there's something I want to ask."
"Then ask already!"
Argh! I could just—
"Understood. Before that, though..."
"Now what!"
"Don't you have a great many questions about me?"
Phantom's mask turned toward her. Over the past few days the broken mask had been slowly restoring itself, until now only the eyes barely showed through. Those black irises, the kind you could find anywhere, were clear and lucid.
Pele felt strange. Eyes like those could belong only to a human—sometimes steeped in desire, sometimes burning with hatred, sometimes brimming with conviction and goodness. All kinds of eyes. Ones that clean were rare even across the span of her life, for most dissolved into complexity with the years and the heart. Even adorable babies didn't have eyes like those.
Pretty. Beautiful. She wanted to pull him close and nuzzle him.
"Sure, I've got plenty to ask..."
Pele cleared her throat and looked away. If she kept looking, she wouldn't be able to control herself.
"But why bring that up? What I'm curious about is one thing, and what you're asking is another. Why does that come up here?"
"You seemed to have your thoughts in order, so I brought it up. Needless suspicion isn't good for either of us, is it?"
"No manners. You could have waited, and instead you go rushing me."
"I apologize."
Watching the back of Phantom's deeply bowed head, Pele sighed.
"...I barely got you shaped into a person, and now it feels like you're sliding back."
"I was a person from the start, though?"
"Introduce yourself."
"I am an ordinary phantom thief, the kind you can find anywhere."
"Right... For now, that's fine."
So long as he didn't go back to the way he'd been when she first saw him.
"Where do I even start..."
Pele thought it over. The questions she had wrestled with for days sorted themselves out in her head.
"How much do you know?"
"About what?"
"How much do you know about this world?"
"...Hmm."
Phantom stroked his chin.
"I didn't know Pele existed. I know Heaven and the earth. I know a few gods as well."
"And?"
"I also know there are several things of the same rank as the Stone of Resurrection."
"...What?"
"I know the most dangerous being on Earth, too."
Will that serve as an answer?
Serve? She didn't understand a single thing. What even was this guy?
"...Then do you know the Eclipse God?"
"I know where Ilshikgyo's headquarters is. I know what the Eclipse God is after. For the record, I also know his embarrassing history."
"What embarrassing history...?"
"The Eclipse God imitated all sorts of humans, and one of them was an idol otaku. He watched a Japanese idol concert from far away and shouted for Aimi-chan. All by himself. Lonely."
Pele's expression turned grotesque.
"Seriously...?"
"Yes. Apparently it suited him better than you'd think."
"How do you even know something like that?"
Phantom gave a soft little laugh. It was unbearably smug.
"I'm a phantom thief. This much is basic."
Pele was speechless.
"That's not how it works..."
"My superpower is Phantom Thief, so I'm a little exceptional."
Pele couldn't take it. She cracked him over the head.
"Don't laugh. You're pissing me off."
"This is so unfair..."
Damn it... I learned something I never wanted to know.
"Why does the Eclipse God go that far? What's his reason?"
"You'll have to hear that from him yourself. Even if I told you, you wouldn't understand."
Phantom rubbed the back of his head.
"At least give me a hint. I'm curious."
"A hint... The mindset of a teenage boy who hates his father?"
"That's a hint?"
"His identity is the biggest hint. I can't give you more than that."
Pele decided against hitting him again.
"Fine. Then what is Chaos?"
"...Chaos?"
"That thing the Eclipse God asked you, sniveling like some cowardly little brat. What is Chaos?"
Pele was serious. This might be a matter of the utmost importance, bound directly to the Child of Man.
"The Eclipse God jumped to a conclusion. I have nothing to do with Chaos."
"No. What is Chaos?"
"Don't you have a next question?"
"Hey."
"Pele."
The eyes behind the mask rolled. An inorganic murk, the very opposite of those clear irises, rippled through them, and every part of Pele's body warned her of death.
Again. That thing. What she had felt the first time she saw him. What had warned her when they discussed how to break the seal.
"...Is that Chaos?"
"I'm not sure what you're referring to..."
Phantom covered his eyes.
"Chaos is simply Chaos. It is nothing, and it is no problem. It will have no effect on Pele."
And further still—
"The same goes for this world."
"...All right."
"Thank you."
He took his hand away from his eyes. The mask had returned to a flawless state, unbroken anywhere.
"Anything else?"
Pele opened her mouth, then closed it. She was afraid. Was it really all right to know the Child of Man? Wouldn't she be falling into an abyss?
...I have to know.
Having come this far, there was no turning back. She would go all the way.
"...The Origin."
"......"
Pele barely managed to get the words out.
"The place you came from. The Origin. Where is it?"
"......"
Phantom was silent. Pele bit her lip until it bled. The silence pressed in on her, and sweat ran down her back. The indifferent mask put a question to her.
Do you need to know?
Pele didn't look away. A single second weighed like a thousand pounds. Phantom shook his head, as if there were nothing to be done.
"...Ask someone who knows, later."
"...Hah."
Did I barely get past that?
"May I ask now?"
"...Ask."
Her voice cracked like an old woman's. Her heart had taken the full brunt of the storm.
"By any chance, have you seen something like an unusual stone fragment?"
"A stone fragment?"
"Yes. A stone fragment that doesn't break."
Pele traced carefully back through her memory, rummaging through the library of what little remained and calling up every recollection tied to stone. Statues, carvings, steles, pillars—memories of every kind passed through her, and at the very last, barely, she found one.
"Now that you mention it, one of my children offered up a peculiar stone."
It had been so very strange that they had offered it to her, a goddess. A strange light gathered in Phantom's eyes.
"Where is it?"
"Uh..."
The child had brought it all the way to the crater...
"It's probably under the volcano, isn't it?"
"Right under here?"
"Yeah."
Phantom pointed downward.
"...Can you get it out?"
"Uh... I don't know. When I receive an offering, it all turns into my power. Wouldn't that stone be the same?"
"No. That stone absolutely does not break. Except in special cases."
"...What kind of stone is it, exactly?"
"I told you earlier. I know of things equal in rank to the Stone of Resurrection."
"...That stone is one of them?! That's impossible! I didn't feel any power from it at all!"
And the only reason I even received it was because the kid hauled it over, straining the whole way!
"That thing is really important..."
"...Ah."
Pele groaned. To think this fool had never known.
"It's your own body. You can't find it?"
"Do you go hunting down every bacterium in your body one by one?"
"Is there really no way?"
"Do I have to make the volcano erupt...?"
"What happened to the woman who was so worried about her children a moment ago?"
"Then what am I supposed to do!"
There's a treasure down there!
"There's only one way."
Phantom spoke with a solemn face.
"Go in and take it out."
"Are you joking? Even if my seal comes off, I'm not sure I could, and if you go in..."
"I'm not the one going in."
"What? Then who..."
"There is one, isn't there. A child who can commune with the world."
"...You don't mean—"
"Wait just a moment."
"You crazy bastard!!!"
Phantom vanished like the wind.
And then...
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
"You son of a biiiiitch!!!"
"Krrngh?!"
Screams rang through the crater.