Emotion
They were so clandestine, so deeply buried in secrecy, that only a handful of true-blooded royals even knew their name.
I learned of them myself only after I had burned the royal house to ash and picked through the classified documents hidden beneath it.
A tower belonging solely to black mages. A place devoted to the research of eternal life.
Monsters who would use every means the continent had forbidden — black magic, demons, human transmutation, curse-craft, human sacrifice — all of it, without hesitation, in their pursuit of perfected immortality.
They were the reason my fate, my life, everything I was had been ripped out by the roots and remade. The enemy I hated more than any other. The origin of it all.
And so I had flayed the flesh from their bones one by one until none were left, then destroyed the royal family itself — their patrons, their final stronghold.
Was it because even looking back now, that past remained so horrific? I closed my eyes and turned over the pain and despair I had felt then, tasting them again. It had not come from madness. It was pure hatred. Pure rage.
And so I swallowed the emotion down.
There was no need to hurry. They would come for me themselves tonight. The moment everyone was asleep, they would drag me down to the prison at the very bottom.
"We'll make camp here."
"Fine."
The sky darkened, and night settled in. The escort knights and Caron set about preparing the camp while I sat staring at the bowl of porridge that had been brought up for a simple meal. I'd never had much of an appetite to begin with, but today it was gone entirely. I felt no hunger. No desire to sleep.
"Is it not to your taste, Young Master?"
Caron had noticed I wasn't eating at all. She asked carefully, watching my face. I had no intention of making her worry, so I waved a hand.
"I've got no appetite. I'll skip it."
"Well... if you'd like, I could bring you a snack, at least."
"I wouldn't eat that either. Let's just drop it for today."
Caron nodded at that and went to prepare the bedding. A space was arranged inside the carriage where I could lie down in some comfort. I had no intention of actually sleeping, but I lay back and pretended to close my eyes.
I was leaving myself exposed, yes — but I needed to be taken, at least once. If I wanted the weapon that would become my primary armament, the artifact that turned an Immortal into something close to invincible, I had to let them have me.
And then I noticed something strange.
Why was Caron falling asleep in the seat across from me?
She hadn't laid out bedding the way I had, and she wasn't actually asleep — but even sitting in the carriage with her eyes closed was wrong. My memories of that night weren't perfect, but this moment, at least, was vivid. Back then, I had been alone in that carriage.
This time, Caron was sleeping near me.
Of course, she had been doing that all along. From the moment we left the estate for Viscount Caris's castle, all the way through our return, Caron had sat across from me inside the carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But now that I called up the memory with any real precision, I knew it hadn't been.
And I knew where her strange behavior had been leading.
"Caron. You're not asleep, are you?"
She might have looked comfortably at rest, but she was only pretending. The even rhythm of her breathing stopped. Her closed eyes opened, slowly. Dark irises fixed on me without a flicker.
"Yes, Young Master."
"There's something I want to ask you."
"Please. Ask whatever you wish."
The texture of it was different, but Caron's behavior wasn't so far from what Laeli had done when she first approached me. Acting out of character. Fishing for information from my reactions.
"You suspect me."
"..."
"Suspicion I can understand. But do you actually think I'm someone else entirely?"
"You've... changed far too much."
"That much?"
No. I really have changed that much, haven't I.
The original owner of this body had been the kind of person who ran from goblins. It wasn't so strange that Caron, who had served me since childhood, would think what she was thinking — but the direction of that thought was dangerous. Black magic and curse-craft included truly vile arts: possession, the theft of another being's body. That was what she suspected. That something had stolen Argal's body.
Not that it would cause any real problem if a single maid entertained such doubts. The family head, my older brother, my younger sibling — they would all take me at my word. And besides, I had every right to feel wronged. I wasn't some other entity possessing this body. I was myself.
"I am myself."
"...Is that so?"
"If you're that suspicious, just call a priest and have them check."
There were forms of black magic that even a Saintess couldn't detect, let alone an ordinary priest — I knew that well enough — but it didn't matter. I hadn't used any such magic to possess this body in the first place.
Caron seemed to accept that, at least. She nodded. But a question still remained.
"Then why have you changed, Young Master?"
"...I'll tell you someday."
Becoming an Immortal through human experimentation. Killing everything in a fit of madness. And at the end of it all, being sent back to the past by the Hero. I felt no particular need to hide it forever. If telling that story could earn someone's trust, I was prepared to lay it out.
What I hadn't expected was this: that the first person I would offer that past to would not be family, but Caron. She had served at my side since I was a child. She knew everything about me. That was precisely why she had gone past he's changed and arrived at he's become someone else entirely.
"If at all possible, I would like to hear it now..."
Caron didn't want to wait. She wanted my story tonight.
But then — a single footstep.
A tread cutting through the dark.
The most important matter of the evening. The thing I had not forgotten, even while talking with her.
Another step. Then another.
The air went cold. A sensation that stood the hair on my skin. I didn't need to see to know who it was. I knew even better because I had slaughtered every last one of them with my own hands.
A cut below the Master and Archmage-class Transcendents, of which the entire continent could count no more than ten on its fingers. The kingdom's shadows — who, if every last one of them gathered, could readily slay a single Master.
An Executor had come.
The kingdom's Executioners.
Unlike Ambrosia, a great many people knew of the Executioners. They were the royal family's most secret blade. The blade that nobles and high officials feared above all others.
It wasn't that Ambrosia was so weak it needed the Executioners. Ambrosia was a place staffed with black mages capable of burning an entire city to the ground. But the goal they pursued was impossible without some means of operating freely in the outside world. And so the royal family had placed the Executioners in their hands, to use as they pleased.
Thanks to that arrangement, Ambrosia could order the Executioners to fetch whatever test subjects they wanted. The Executioners themselves surely resented being made to dance like servants at the word of some black mage — but what choice did they have? When your superiors told you to bark, you barked.
The one mercy was that the Executioners themselves did not share Ambrosia's nature. If Ambrosia had come here in person, no one at this camp would have left alive. Caron, the knights escorting me — all of them would have died. The Executioners were hardly saints, but they did not slaughter beyond what was necessary.
He had taken only a few steps, and already a strange presence pressed in from beyond the carriage window. Something hazy as a shadow spoke.
"..."
"Hhk—!"
Caron startled violently as her entire body locked in place, twisting against the bind — but she couldn't move. Shadows had wrapped my whole body as well, pinning me where I sat. That densely unique power belonged to one man alone.
I was, I admit, a little surprised.
What surprised me was not the man himself. It was that they had sent a High Executor for something this small.
My body lifted into the air. The Executor seemed content to leave Caron bound and simply drag me away. Whether he had smeared some sleeping draught onto the shadows or not, my consciousness began to blur.
Caron's trembling eyes found me. She tried to open her mouth, as if there were still something she hadn't said — but the shadows held her fast. There was no easy way to break Dante's bindings. Below a certain level of strength, resistance itself was impossible.
That didn't mean an ordinary person had no way out at all.
A desperation beyond all else. If there was a single act you would carry out even if the world itself collapsed — the shadow would release you. It was possible because his shadows were closer to curse-craft than to magic or black magic. The curse-crafted aspects of his power were sensitive to emotion.
Not that this method almost ever worked. Most people thrashed against the shadows wrapping them, fell into despair, and that was the end of it. Climbing over that despair and breaking free was nearly unheard of.
But then, through the haze closing over my vision, I saw something I never expected.
She broke free.
The shadows that had bound her left only a faint afterimage and came apart. The instant she was released, Caron screamed for me with everything she had. As if answering that cry, the escort knights jolted awake and came rushing in under arms.
"Young Master, are you all right?!"
"Who the hell are you?!"
The knights' voices were loud enough. They meant nothing. This was no ordinary Executor. This was a High Executor — a man who could slaughter every fighter at this camp by himself and still have strength to spare.
What actually puzzled me was the fact that Caron had broken the shadow at all. What desperation could have possibly run that deep?
Dante flicked a finger, and every last one of those charging knights dropped to their knees. The shadows went beyond merely covering their bodies — they swelled into the shapes of enormous beasts and crushed them into the dirt.
The feeling in that voice was unmistakable. I knew it well. He was deciding whether to kill them all.
"Nh— hhgk!"
A shadow closed around Caron's throat. The displeasure in him was no longer hidden.
"Ghk— gahk!"
Caron's face was turning a deep, bloodless blue. Her eyes, with nowhere else to go, found me at last. It was not a plea for help. It was not blame. Even at the end, what filled those eyes was worry — for me.
It was strange. Far too strange.
When I saved Laeli, it had only been to close off an unpredictable variable. I hadn't felt any particular value in it. But now — why?
Why do I want to save Caron?
Why is my chest this tight?
Was it the memory of driving a blade through her heart?
My feet touched the ground. A body that had recovered its freedom took a step. I drew in a lungful of the night's cold air.
I had once been a Transcendent, if only by half. A body that could not die would not break no matter how ruthlessly you pursued strength — by any means, through any method. Black magic, curse-craft, human sacrifice, contracts with demons. Even if the flesh became a mire, even if you were half a corpse, the end of that road was Transcendence.
As if I wouldn't know curse-craft.
I didn't even need to regulate my emotions. I only had to undo the binding according to its own laws.
Still ignorant of my approach, the Executor kept crushing the life from Caron's throat. I spoke.
"High Executor Dante."
He looked at me standing there, unbound, and let out a short, incredulous breath of laughter. As his attention shifted, the shadow at Caron's throat loosened.
I couldn't kill Dante. Not here, not now. I didn't hold the Great Demon's power, and I didn't have the conventional dagger I used to channel black magic. If I truly set my mind to it I could still use black magic — but I intended to infiltrate Ambrosia's headquarters, and I couldn't afford any more deviations here. Whatever else happened, the best outcome was to let him kidnap me quietly.
"That isn't what matters."
I let out a long breath. That, in the end, was not what mattered. The thing he ought to be treating as most important was the mission itself. The kidnapping.
Under their hierarchy, Ambrosia's orders were treated as equivalent to a royal command. Not perfectly identical, no — but to ignore an order from Ambrosia was the same as ignoring a command from the crown.
"Executor. Don't forget your duty. Is your mission to slaughter everyone here?"
In the hazy dark of the shadows, the Executor's eyes flickered.