Spirit Queen Elesion
A great deal of time had passed since that day.
Nearly two full weeks had already slipped by since the Dean and I fled to the Forgotten Snowfield for our lovers’ escape and began our training in earnest.
“Haa…”
I brushed the lingering scraps of mana from my palms and stepped into the igloo.
Outside, the razor-edged wind still howled without mercy, yet inside, the magic carpet and the hearth made the little dome almost ridiculously cozy.
“You’re back, Erevan?”
Kyra looked up from the rocking chair by the fire, a book open across her lap. A faint silver-gray light shimmered through her hair, and the ancient tome resting on her knees looked thicker than my arm.
“Yes, I’m back. Pleasure hasn’t shown her face all day, so it’s actually quiet for once.”
“Mm… she probably wore herself out clinging to you for two straight weeks. She’s asleep inside my heart right now.”
She gave a soft snort of laughter and held out a cup of steaming tea. I took it and dropped heavily onto the seat beside her.
We rested like that for a while, trading idle stories with the crackle of the hearth as background music. Then my eyes drifted to the title of the book she was reading.
Principles of Spiritology: Origins and Extinction of the Elementals
Oh… spiritology.
Come to think of it, the original novel’s lore on spirits had been pretty interesting. The stories about the Spirit King—Elesion—had been pure bait among the readers.
Around chapter 160 or so, when the protagonist tried to form a contract with a highest-rank spirit, the spirit that appeared had left behind a single line:
“With you… it might just be possible to awaken the King…”
After that, Elesion was never mentioned again. The academy simply went down in flames and the story ended. So I only remembered the name; every scrap of actual setting had vanished from my mind.
Maybe… I could finally settle a few old curiosities.
I opened my mouth carefully.
“Dean, there’s something I’ve been wondering. May I ask?”
“What is it? More outer-god talk?”
“No. Spirits this time.”
I sifted through what little I remembered and continued.
“According to the stories I’ve heard, the Spirit King Elesion exhausted every last drop of power holding back the four outer gods that descended on Rahelon centuries ago, and was sealed away for it.”
The four outer gods.
The Apostate of Usurped Faith. The Apostle of the Corrupted Sun. The Greatest Fragment of Nothingness. The Screaming King of Severance.
Each of them had nearly turned Rahelon into a living hell under its own theme. The hero who stopped all four at once—another transcendent—had been so grievously wounded that she fell into eternal slumber deep within Dream Island Avalonia and never woke again. That was the legend.
“Is Elesion truly… never going to wake? Or is she someone who could rise again someday?”
I asked as a devoted reader who simply wanted the answer. If she could wake, she would be an enormous asset in the coming war against the outer gods.
But—
“……”
Instead of answering, Kyra suddenly snapped the book shut. She stuck out her lower lip and puffed her cheeks like a sulky child.
“My dear Erevan…”
She jabbed a finger into my side.
“Five transcendents aren’t enough, so you want to add one more? Not a five-way split anymore—you’re aiming for six?”
“What? N-no! That’s not—I was only thinking strategically!”
“Hmph. Strategically, my foot. Do you even know how pretty Elesion is? The spirits themselves sculpted her face. She sparkles way more than the rest of us.”
She shot me a jealous glare, then let out a long sigh.
“Haa… teasing ends here. I get what you’re after. Since you’re curious, I’ll tell you.”
She straightened her posture and spoke with sudden seriousness.
“To cut to the chase… yes. Elesion can wake whenever the conditions are met.”
“R-really?”
“There’s a catch, of course. Only a ‘Compatible One’ can do it.”
“Compatible One?”
“Only someone capable of immersing themselves in the Spirit Spring—the well that holds every last fragment of the Spirit King, no, the Spirit Queen—can form a new contract with her. When that happens, the Queen will finally rise from her long sleep.”
Kyra’s eyes grew distant. A deep teal light seeped through the silver-gray strands of her hair.
“Back then… she was the pitiful woman who had to sacrifice herself in place of us, who were too exhausted and too indifferent. While we hid behind the excuse of causality, she alone faced those four.”
“….”
Whatever the full story was, it clearly cut deep. Even the transcendents seemed to carry a debt to her.
I stayed quiet for a moment, then an absurd thought slipped in.
Wait… could I maybe…?
Protagonist buffs were all locked onto Leon, so that was out. But a reincarnator’s exclusive privilege? Something like that ought to exist, right?
If I entered the Spirit Spring, woke her, reinforced our forces, and maybe even used her help to break past the limits of this body…
I turned toward Kyra with eyes full of hope.
She, of course, had already predicted every foolish dream and sliced it clean through.
“Keep dreaming.”
“…Excuse me?”
“It won’t work. Your spirit affinity is zero, and your mana wavelength is the complete opposite of a spirit’s. The moment you get near the spring, every spirit will scream and run for the hills.”
“Ah… I see.”
Awkward. When she shut me down that hard, even joking about it felt impossible. I scratched the back of my head and accepted defeat completely.
“Yes. So stop getting your hopes up for nothing.”
She drove the final nail in with merciless firmness.
“That’s enough talk about the Spirit Queen. Any more and I might get jealous enough to yank out all my hair.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be quiet.”
I obediently shut my mouth. Kyra snorted a laugh and picked up the stack of newspapers on the table—papers I’d quietly grabbed when I went down to the village earlier, full of continental news.
“More importantly, shall we read these? Might as well check the state of the continent.”
She unfolded a paper. The moment her eyes landed on the front-page article, they went round as saucers.
“……”
“……”
We stared at each other. The corner of Kyra’s mouth twitched as if it might start convulsing.
“Those bitches… they’ve completely lost their minds.”
I nodded before I even realized it. Her words hit far too close to home. At this rate, the continent would collapse under the transcendents’ cringey nonsense long before the outer gods ever finished the job.
At that very hour, the Empress’s romance special lecture was racing toward its climax.
“Now, Your Majesty! Let me stress this once more. The gaze has three stages!”
Madame Bernie, head lady-in-waiting of the Imperial Palace, brandished a conductor’s baton and poured her soul into the lecture. Serene sat on the edge of the bed, nodding with grim determination.
“S-so…”
“Stage one: make eye contact! Stage two: widen them as if startled! Stage three: lower them shyly!”
“Mmm… Stage one, make eye contact. Stage two…”
Serene’s eyes flew open. She marched meticulously through all three stages exactly as Bernie had taught. The result, however, was nothing like the intended effect.
It looked more like the stare of an executioner about to behead a traitor. Anyone meeting those eyes would have felt their own neck was next on the chopping block.
Bernie recoiled with a shriek.
“Your Majesty! That isn’t ‘startled’—that’s ‘I’m going to kill you’!”
“I have lived my entire life with only this expression! What am I supposed to do?!”
Serene pounded a pillow in frustration. For the Empress who commanded the world, “shyness” was a quest more difficult than hunting a dragon.
“Haa… fine. Let’s try something else. Next is the ‘inducing skinship’ section.”
Bernie wiped sweat from her brow and flipped the page.
“You pretend to trip and fall into his arms. What is your line at that moment?”
“Mm… Oh dear, Our Imperial body has lost its balance. You shall support Us, yes?”
“…Wrong! Fail! Zero points!”
Bernie wailed.
“It’s ‘Oh my, I’m so clumsy…’! You have to trigger his protective instincts!”
“Protective instincts… no matter how I look at it, I am the Empire’s greatest transcendent. I hardly require protection—”
“Romance is not logic, Your Majesty—it is emotion! Please put down the sword and focus on cosplaying a fragile maiden!”
Serene pouted, looking thoroughly wronged, yet still turned to the mirror and practiced with fierce concentration.
“O… oh my… kyaa…”
Screams that sounded exactly like someone reading a textbook aloud filled the imperial night.
Meanwhile, in the very heart of the Demon Realm, an equally passionate class was underway.
“No, listen!”
Succubus Queen Lirien slammed both palms against the blackboard in exasperation.
“When you say ‘Don’t go,’ you lightly grab his sleeve! Not his throat!”
Nemesia stared down at her own hand with an aggrieved expression. Dangling from her fingers was the completely shredded neck of a practice mannequin.
“I… I thought I was grabbing lightly. Why does it keep tearing off?”
“Because Your Majesty’s strength is monster-tier! Please, for the love of all that is unholy, ease up a little!”
“Easing up is harder!”
Nemesia grumbled and hurled the mannequin. It smashed into the wall and exploded into splinters. Lirien clutched her head.
At this rate they would send KJH to the afterlife via cervical fracture before any seduction could even begin.
“Haa… fine. Let’s move to dialogue practice. This is the famous tsundere technique.”
“Tsun… what?”
“Cold on the outside, warm on the inside! Repeat after me. ‘Hmph, it’s not like I saved you because I like you or anything. I just happened to be feeding my demon trees nearby.’”
“……”
Nemesia’s face turned tomato-red. She trembled and tried to hide behind the throne.
“Do I seriously have to say that? I’m the Demon King! I have dignity!”
“You said you wanted to drag KJH into the bedroom! You said you wanted the spiderwebs gone! Wait—actually, thinking about it, this is ridiculous. You absorbed every technique for sharing intimacy just fine, yet—”
“Uuuugh…”
Nemesia squeezed her eyes shut and roared.
“Hmph! I-it’s not like I grabbed your collar because I like you! Your neck bones just looked pretty so I decided to snap them!”
“Do not change the script! That’s a murder threat!”
And in the elven forest of Silveraya, a somewhat more… refined problem was unfolding.
“Your Majesty, this outfit is a little…”
Knight-Captain Elaina turned her face away, cheeks blazing. Queen Arsiena stood before a full-length mirror, striking pose after pose.
The dress she wore was pure sheer fabric—every curve of her body visible beneath the latest human-realm fashion.
“Why? They call it a masterpiece that displays both elven mystique and sensuality at once.”
Arsiena ran a satisfied hand down the line of her waist.
“This level of boldness is required if I am to defeat that thieving cat.”
“Even so, Your Majesty, it is far too daring. Your people would faint on the spot.”
“I am not wearing it for my people. I wear it solely for that man—KJH.”
She locked eyes with her own reflection and sent a sultry look that could melt steel.
“And for the finishing blow… permission to touch the ears.”
She toyed with one pointed ear. To an elf, the ears were both an erogenous zone and a token of lifelong partnership. Offering them was practically a declaration of “Take me.”
“When that man starts playing with my ears… mmmngh…”
Arsiena drifted into fantasy and let out a thoroughly indecent sound. Elaina suddenly felt a powerful urge to flee the forest.
“Your Majesty, please regain your senses! The forest’s life force is becoming corrupted!”
Lastly, in the dragons’ paradise of Heidelas—
“Oppa-aaang!”
KWA-AANG—!
Serapagnia’s aegyo breath obliterated an entire cave wall.
“Again! Do it again, my Lord! Your tongue is far too long!”
Kaldrania shouted while wearing industrial-grade earplugs. Serapagnia, currently in the form of a middle-school girl, collapsed onto the floor and bawled.
“Waaah! I can’t do this anymore! I quit! I’ll just burn everything down!”
“Endure it! The charm of a younger woman is cuteness mixed with reverse appeal! If you give up now, my Lord will spend eternity known as a legal loli granny!”
“Wh-what?! Legal loli granny?! Kugh…!”
The word “granny” hauled Serapagnia back to her feet. She wiped her tears and forced the corners of her mouth upward.
“O… Oppa. Buy me skewers. If you don’t, I’ll burn you to ash.”
“Excellent! That murderous edge! That is pure gap-moe!”
“Really? Will this actually work?”
“Of course! Humans find life-threatening romance thrilling!”
(※ Kaldrania’s knowledge of humans was catastrophically distorted.)
And so the four transcendents each completed their desperate preparations in their own unique ways.
They arrived at a single shared conclusion.
The preparations are finished.
Now we go find him.
My love… KJH.