This Much Is Easy (1)
Isaac had no idea who Shuri was.
But then the door swung open—
—Seriously? This is my rival? This little bastard?
Rival.
This little bastard.
Those two words alone were more than enough to grasp the entire situation.
Really, more than enough?
First—anyone who leads off with the word rival is, at best, not an ally.
Second—why on earth would anyone feel obliged to be courteous to some punk who goes around calling people little bastards?
Having thus evaluated his opponent, Isaac hurled his rattle straight at the guy's face.
He was an enemy anyway, so who cared?
No need for hesitation—just turn him into Bung-Bung, the trusty bludgeon, and be done with it.
But for the one whose face had just been plastered, the story turned out to be rather different.
Clutching his reddened cheek, Shuri scrambled up and grabbed Isaac by the collar.
"Hey! Do you have any idea who I am?!"
Who would you be, exactly?
Having already sized up his opponent in a single glance, Isaac scrunched his face with utter indifference.
He had zero desire to memorize the faces of clergy, but—a kid waddling in through a door that was barely cracked open?
Then he was obviously one of the household, and factoring in the words, the age, the gender, the answer boiled down to one thing.
'A Saint candidate.'
Decisively, the brat's hair was brown and his eyes were blue.
A carbon copy of that knob-faced priest Isaac had just been forced to stare at from somewhere not ten minutes ago.
Which meant, presumably, they were cousins.
And judging by the paralysis spell already coating the guy's hand, he'd intended to use it the moment he laid eyes on Isaac.
So, no mystery here—he'd come to cause him harm.
Plenty of justification for a beating, no?
CRAACK!
At the same instant, Shuri's head snapped backward yet again.
"GYAAH!"
The heavy golden rattle began walloping Shuri's face all over again.
Beaten senseless by a cousin he'd met for the very first time, Shuri could only shriek.
From his perspective, it was pure absurdity. He walks into the room and an infant starts swinging at him?
No—wait, more importantly, what the—
'The rattle flew that way. Why is it coming back this way—'THUD!
The golden rattle, having cracked him across the back of the head, whirled back toward Isaac like a boomerang.
"Wh-what the hell! Why does it keep coming back?! It was right there a second ago!"
Shuri clearly couldn't make head or tail of the situation, while Isaac merely grinned.
Yes, of course this wouldn't make sense to him.
The truth was, it was Whisper fetching the rattle back each time. And along the way, Whisper was taking the liberty of landing a few extra smacks for good measure.
But to a child, it would simply look like a rattle moving about of its own accord.
"Wh-what is that?! Why is it moving by itself! What is that?! There's nobody there!"
Sensing instinctively that something was present, Shuri swiped at the air trying to catch it. Isaac, meanwhile, was merrily thrashing his older cousin, and just grinned wider.
'Catch it? Catch what. Go home and drink more of your mommy's milk, why don't you.'
Just as Shuri had dismissed the infant Isaac as harmless, so too did Isaac find this one easy and useful.
'Whisper won't be visible to him for another ten years, at least.'
It would take a 5th-Tier caster—one capable of seeing through demons and wielding true Exorcism Holy Arts—before anyone could perceive him.
Which was exactly why Isaac couldn't use Whisper so openly in front of Rillai or the other knights. But a brat like this?
Low as his magic tier might be at the moment, the Skeleton Demon King had been the greatest mage in history—a mage no one in the lineage of magic could ever stand against.
'A greenhorn. Be a good boy and become my Bung-Bung!'
"GAAK! GAAAHK!"
Well, he does take a pounding well. Fitting for a scion of the Saintess's house.
The family's legendary iron-boned constitution appeared to be alive and kicking.
'Either way, a durable workhorse is always welcome.'
"Ghak! Ghak! AAAH!"
Finally, having taken blow after blow from an invisible assailant, Shuri's temper boiled over.
"What do you take me for!"
"!"
A surge of potent divine power erupted outward.
And a shield of light bloomed around Shuri, the blue radiance wrapping him protectively.
"What, surprised? This is a 3rd-Tier defensive holy art! At my age, I'm the only one alive who can cast it!"
Shuri glared at Isaac the way one glares at a rival.
"From the looks of it, you can use holy arts a little yourself, can't you!"
"A little...?"
That's not a holy art. That's just me beating the crap out of you.
"Behold the power of the Saint who will one day become Pope!"
Pope? Seriously?
Inside his shield of light, Shuri began tracing some kind of sigil with his fingers.
Watching the nimble motion of his hands, Isaac recognized it at once—that was a holy sign.
Mages cast spells through incantations, but holy arts channeled their power through sigil-craft.
And judging by the finger positions, the flow, the sequence, that sigil was—
'The 4th-Tier offensive holy art... Explosion Star?'
A holy art that detonated the target's physical body outright.
Powerful enough to reduce a fortress or an armored knight to a lump of meat in an instant—unleashing it on an infant was, unambiguously, lethal intent.
Whisper, too, sounded displeased, letting out a contemptuous little laugh.
[Oh dear. So this is the great Saint candidate? His gall has swelled well past his size. I shall kill him at once, Master.]
Isaac himself, however, was quietly astonished.
A kid that age can cast a 4th-Tier holy art? A level of mastery that should take at least fifteen years of training?
Granted, spellcraft advanced over the generations as practitioners refined it and their successors built upon it—but it had jumped this far in a mere hundred and fifty years?
"Argh, no, that's not it...! I got the sequence wrong...!"
Ah. He forgot the order and it came out by accident.
"Ugh, whatever! Forget the third one!"
Isaac couldn't tell what exactly he'd abandoned, but the kid had clearly botched his big setup.
Giving up, Shuri fired off two orbs of light.
That was Holy Light Star, the 3rd-Tier offensive holy art.
It came with built-in homing, and its power scaled with the caster's divine power and control—standard fare that even high-ranking clergy used often enough.
But that was the moment it happened.
FLASH!
"GYAAH!"
One of Shuri's own orbs of light suddenly ricocheted away.
BOOM!
Caught completely off guard by the sudden attack, Shuri stared at Isaac in bewilderment.
"Nephew."
A familiar shield of light materialized in front of Isaac.
The very defensive holy art Shuri had cast moments ago!
Isaac, shield shimmering, flashed a grin.
He'd been grumbling anyway about that uncle of his running off without teaching him a single holy art. Problem solved.
"Nephew-aaah (this guy's teaching me in your place)?"
The infant's eyes gleamed with something dangerous.
Shuri, watching the scene, felt an earthquake strike his pupils.
What! How is he casting that?!
He's even REFLECTING it?!
'Why does that thing reflect attacks too?!'
No—that was the lesser problem.
"AAAH!"
Shuri sat down hard on the floor at the sight of the orbs of light hovering above Isaac's head.
Holy Light Star (光聖)
3rd Tier — Offensive
It was the exact offensive holy art Shuri had just used.
Only, the number was completely different.
"Gah—twenty?!"
Impossible!
Even the grown clergy around here could barely manage ten!
Isaac, meanwhile, smiled sweetly.
'Finally, this body's earning its keep.'
Isaac's little frame could hold a frankly obscene reserve of holy power.
And being of the Saintess's line, his divinity replenished itself just from wandering around the household.
He'd already reverse-engineered the spell's recipe the moment the brat cast it—so why wouldn't he use it?
He'd even watched the kid fumble his attempt to raise the orb count.
All the more reason to use it, no?
In that instant, the orbs of light came howling down on Shuri like a pack of rabid hounds.
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
"AAAH!"
Flat on the ground, Shuri screamed as the merciless barrage smashed wall and floor without discrimination.
It was the first time Isaac had ever cast an offensive holy art.
At the sight, Whisper shuddered with rapture, beside himself with ecstasy.
[Ahh, Master, truly! The techniques of these ignorant clergy—mastered at a single glance!]
[Forgive this wretched one for ever daring to underestimate you, even for a moment, in your infant form!]
Wait. So you WERE underestimating me, you little—
[At this rate, you could storm the God Realm this very instant! March into the God Realm, drive out every useless male god, keep only the goddesses, and establish the Kingdom of Iseak!]
Build your own empire by yourself, you lunatic.
Still, Whisper peered down at the collapsed Shuri, sounding genuinely concerned.
[Killing your own direct bloodline, Master. I suspect you'll be cast out before you ever manage to absorb his magic core.]
Isaac scoffed as if the very notion were nonsense.
'Kill him? Kill who? Not a single attack actually touched him.'
[...I beg your pardon?]
'He was never the target in the first place.'
[Then what in the...]
Isaac flashed a sly smile and glanced off toward somewhere—and at that very moment, Shuri rose to his feet.
"Why you little! Scaring people like that!"
"!"
Shuri was hauling himself up with a murderous glare.
He glowered at his younger cousin, burning with humiliation. Baffling as it was, the little brat had copied his holy art, perfectly.
No—if it were mere mimicry, that might almost have been cute. The brat was casting it at a higher level than he was.
As if to declare that the one and only Saint candidate was himself.
'Damn it. I can't let it end like this.'
The Saint—and beyond that, the papacy—had to be his.
It was the only way out of this cursed House Eshua. The only way to earn his father's praise.
There was no way in hell he'd lose to some milk-guzzling brat!
"No matter what offensive arts you throw at me, I, the Saint candidate, will—!"
But that was the moment.
A wave of bone-chilling dread washed over him, and Shuri's spine went cold.
Before he even knew he was turning his head—
"AAAAAH!!!"
At the sight of a Shadow Lich pressing its face right up against his, Shuri very nearly left his body entirely.
His ambitions of the papacy were evidently no empty boast—even as a tiny brat, he recognized the demon on sight.
"A Sh-Sh-Shadow Lich, why! A servant of the Skeleton Demon King who swore to destroy this country, why! WAAAH!"
Huh. So it's famous enough that even a toddler knows it.
The truth was, Isaac's assault on Shuri had been for the sake of the Shadow Lich's resurrection all along.
He'd known from the start that Shuri was carrying the totem.
He'd been racking his brain over how to reclaim what that uncle had swiped from him—and who'd have guessed the boy would deliver it right to his door?
At any rate, Isaac had deliberately roughed him up to shake the totem loose from his pouch, then brought it back to life.
A vicious-tempered creature, true—but it seemed like it would obey well enough. Surely it was fine to let it roam loose.
Meanwhile, entirely indifferent to such considerations, the Shadow Lich thrust its grotesque face toward Shuri.
[You dared raise a hand against the King.]
"IT'S GOING TO EAT ME!!"
The famously ferocious little brat burst into tears the instant he laid eyes on the Shadow Lich.
He even plopped down on his rear and began crawling away, inch by agonizing inch.
"Skel—skeleton, that bastard Skeleton Demon King's minion, WAAAH!!"
Hey, none of MY subordinates look like that.
But Isaac, pleased with how things were going, sucked contentedly on his pacifier.
"Die-ya! (Come back, that is!)"
At those words, the Shadow Lich vanished in an instant.
"Hnggh... huh-uhh?"
The sinister presence gone, Shuri scanned his surroundings warily.
The Shadow Lich... disappeared?
And it obeyed Isaac's words?
Shuri's gaze had no choice but to swing back toward the infant.
'D-don't tell me. Did he banish it?'
An earthquake rattled through Shuri's eyes—then his face scrunched up in denial.
'No. Absolutely impossible.'
The Shadow Lich was a high-tier demon so dangerous it had taken a Cardinal personally stepping in to seal it.
How could an infant possibly command one?
He'd never once heard of a demon obeying a human's words in all his life.
It must have been a hallucination. Or else—
'Could it have been... me?'
My power?
Is that it?!
So I really am the Saint!
So I really am the hope of this cursed House Eshua after all!
Just as Shuri's eyes began to sparkle, something heavy clambered onto his body.
"Gahk!"
It was Isaac.
The shameless little thing had climbed right on top of him, and Shuri shoved at him in disbelief—but for some reason, the kid wouldn't budge an inch, heavy as a boulder.
"Die-ya! Die-ya (Move me, that is, and quick!)!"
What was worse, the infant was bopping Shuri on the head with the golden rattle—pok, pok—while pointing insistently in a particular direction.
"Die-ya-ya-yaaa (The annex, Bung-Bung)!"
The Duke's son, suddenly press-ganged into service as a carriage horse, could only stare in mute incredulity.
"What even IS this. I swear I'm just going to—"
He was on the verge of deciding to hurl the brat straight out the window when—
[Did you not command the King be transported?]
"AAAAAAAHH!!!"
The Shadow Lich materializing at his side yet again wrung one last scream out of Shuri.