The Stolen Body
Fair point. It's true, and yet—
I only caught on to Caums' ability the moment I learned that 1,700 years had passed. His appearance was far too old for a man of a long-lived race, but it never once occurred to me that he was lying.
He really had been a small child back then, and he truly had played no part in the great events of that era.
Karuns himself, that is.
Judging by Akron's memories and the way his soul moved, Caums could swap bodies freely at will. In other words, Caums had transferred into Karuns' body ages ago and had been living in it ever since. After stealing the vessel, he'd simply aged its appearance — and since Karuns himself had spoken no falsehood, there was nothing to trip me up.
Back in the day, I'd have seen through him instantly.
Part of it was that I'd let my guard down. Part of it was that I hadn't been in any state to be sharp. And if I'm honest, I'd taken the whole thing far too lightly from the start.
"...Caums switches bodies?"
"Yes. You didn't know?"
"I didn't know that, no. Wait — hold on. Don't tell me that means..."
Akron's face twisted in puzzlement — and then abruptly drained white.
He had heard something strange once before, back when he cut down the Venetus. Words spat out by a chieftain driven to the very brink of death, grasping at any straw to survive.
"Caums..."
"'The chieftain can change bodies! Isn't that enough for you?!' — that's what he screamed."
"...I thought it was utter nonsense."
So it had been true all along.
"I see. I will capture the wretch no matter what. There's no telling what he'll do next."
"I've made what preparations I could on the tribe's side, just in case. He is the sort of man who would kill even his own descendants to make use of them."
"Understood."
Akron released the Primordial Body. Then, with the meager dregs of mana he had left, he scattered flame across the entirety of the island.
Short on mana as he was, that hardly meant he couldn't work magic. The fire combed over the island, hunting for anything out of place. He raked through it for a long while before his mana ran dry at last and he reverted to the Primordial Body once more.
"Whew... running out of mana really is a crippling thing."
"It is certainly inconvenient when you don't have any."
In Deoen's earliest days, with neither mana nor divinity to draw on, things had been brutal beyond words. Back then I'd just burned through my own body with Sacred Fire like a fool.
And even 'those early days' lasted less than a year.
"Found him. Over there."
FWAAM! Akron kicked off the empty air and shot forward. I drifted after him at a more leisurely pace toward the point he'd streaked toward.
Caums was strong — strong enough that the current me couldn't take him lightly — but our side had its own cards to play. As long as Akron remained in my hands, there was no way Caums could win.
".....Hm."
And yet, why was that?
Something feels off.
Not anxiety over the battle. Something... something else entirely, an unease creeping in from a different direction — the kind of dread that felt as though the very meaning of my existence was about to take a hammer blow...
What on earth is this?
SHRAAAK!
The instant we arrived, the sight greeting us was Akron being torn apart by a blue sword. So complete was his shock that he couldn't even raise a guard — disbelief written across his face as the blow landed clean and drove him straight into the ground.
And the one holding that sword... was a strikingly beautiful woman.
Red bobbed hair and burning crimson eyes that seemed ready to ignite. She wore a long robe of deep blue, and between strands of her hair a faint azure light glimmered.
"Uh..."
"As expected, this body is superb. To think it would accept primordial mana this readily."
Lise?
Before me now stood Caums — wearing Lise.
To every outward appearance, nothing more than a beautiful woman. The former chief of Rutilus, a wielder of elegantly lethal swordsmanship, a powerhouse who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Akron himself.
And yet inside that body lived a man who had walked through millennia.
"......"
He wasn't wrong. He wasn't, but—
"...So you were the one who took the corpse from the tomb. I'd assumed the body had been damaged beyond use and lost."
"And throwing away a vessel this magnificent would have been a joke, wouldn't it? Well? What do you think?"
Isn't it just ideal?
".......":
Whatever else was true, he had undeniably grown far stronger than before — woman or not.
The Caums of this moment was sustaining the Primordial Body while his mana kept refilling without pause. By its nature, the Primordial Body could only be unleashed once one's mana had been completely drained — but Caums had found his own workaround.
The trick was to seal a fragment of his soul inside the sword and bank mana there. That way he could draw on both powers at once.
Clever, I'll grant him that.
Rattle-rattle...
"...Lise? Is that truly you, Lise?"
"Akron. That one is Caums."
"Lise..."
He was swaying where he stood, a man whose mind had already broken. Unable even to hold himself together, he left the wounds across his body unhealed and simply walked — unsteadily, one step at a time — toward Caums wearing Lise's form.
I stopped him. He struggled against my hold, but the will to fight had already bled out of Akron. In the end he fell back and collapsed onto the ground.
I drew the White Savior.
Caums-in-Lise chuckled low and swept his blade down in one clean arc.
KA-GAAANG!
Sword and spear screamed against each other, and blood sprayed from my forearm.
"Truly... every single time, even when I come out in the open like this. How unbearably tedious."
"Can you handle it?"
"I was about to ask you the same. Given how things ended for Akron."
Can you handle this body?
Gu-gu-gu...!
The mana threaded through his sword amplified. Mana that had no business existing inside the Primordial Body came surging up, and power past its very limits coiled and thrashed along Caums' blade.
As things stood, handling it was beyond me. He'd grown stronger than even the Demon-Void Art — to win this fight I would need at the very least the stage of Gwan.
But I didn't use it.
Instead, I reached for something else.
"Oh, I can handle it. Of course I can."
"Of course?"
"Not me, though."
In that instant, the sky went dark.
It was as if day and night had traded places — but that was, quite literally, an illusion. What had blotted out our sky was something enormous.
Flap.
A dragon.
KWAAAAAAM!!!
The breath of Absolute Zero swept over Caums in a white torrent.
The defining power of the Rutilus was fire. Because of that, the Venetus had always displayed crushing dominance over them — but once the Primordial Body opened, elemental advantage ceased to mean anything at all.
Ssssshh...
And yet, the affinity itself remained. The classic example: searing heat's natural counter — a cold so fierce it strangles flame outright. As the Absolute Zero spread, snow began to fall across an island that had known nothing but warmth for its entire existence.
Sre — grown now too vast for my eyes to take in all at once — padded over to me and pressed herself flat against the ground.
"Uu!"
"You've gotten enormous."
What on earth had she been eating in there to grow like this?
"You've been well?"
"Yes!"
"Good, good."
I floated up lightly and stroked her head. Sre smiled with her eyes, thoroughly pleased with herself.
It felt like only yesterday I'd been carrying her around in my arms.
"C-c-c-cold!! It's so cooold!!"
Whump!
"Uuuu..."
Redberry, hastily shrouding herself in heat and flame, shivered from head to toe. Flame wizard or not, Sgaredo had been the monarch of the frost dragons. Ordinary fire couldn't so much as dent her cold — and beyond that, the fragment of the Demon King of Absolute Zero had been implanted in her long, long ago. Right now, no being in this world was colder than Sre.
Which was, of course, exactly why I'd brought her out.
I wrapped Redberry in divinity.
"How are you possibly withstanding this...?"
"I do feel the cold too, you know."
Well — I did perceive it as somewhat brisk.
At my words, Redberry's expression turned distinctly strange.
"Keep your distance for now. Things may get dangerous."
"Yes ma'am... oof."
Redberry scurried away and slipped off the island in a hurry. The snow-buried forest split apart in a vast seam, and out of it walked a single woman.
Just as I'd expected, she hadn't taken much damage at all.
"...You really did prepare everything, didn't you. What are you now, a talking lizard?"
"I do happen to keep rather a lot of companions."
"Fine. Bring out everything you have. I'll make good use of all of it."
"Uu!"
Water-laced swordsmanship came crashing in. Since fire wouldn't work on her, he'd evidently decided to fall back on his original element.
But that was, if anything, an even worse move.
"Whoa!"
CRUNCH!
"...Hah. Unbelievable."
The water froze solid before it could spread a single step further. Sre wore an insufferably smug look, bobbing her great head up and down.
"Weak sauce! Weak sauce!"
"...And where exactly did you learn to say that?"
Who on earth taught my child that?
"Weak sauce?"