The Immortal King's Body (3)
It was an astonishingly brilliant light.
What in the world is that light—?!
This was the vault where countless Doljabi trials had been held over the course of hundreds of years, and prodigies of legendary caliber had emerged from among those trials time and again. The people of House Eshua had long since stopped being surprised by anything less than extraordinary. But this time was different.
A light that has never existed before!
What on earth was happening inside there?
Yet even that was not the most shocking thing to occur.
"G-great heavens! The demon's aura has vanished completely!"
"What? You mean the Fourteen Six Demons guarding the Skeleton Demon King's body?"
"Yes! The demonic energy is interfering with the connection, so I can't see clearly, but…! It appears someone among the children dealt with it!"
What on—?
The adults erupted into an uproar. The demon sealed within the Saintess's Vault was quite famous among those of the divine factions. No one knew the details, but it was said to be a dangerous high-tier demon of the 8th Tier or above. It had been declared that the moment its seal broke, the Doljabi must be suspended at once and a rescue launched. And now a child had slain it?
No—there was hardly any need to ask who.
Who else could it be?
Every adult's gaze turned toward a single point. Kina Berith, of course.
Cardinal Verith, the recipient of all those stares, wore the contented smile of a man watching the entirely expected unfold. There was simply no one else in that vault capable of driving out such a demon. And sure enough—
"The child who defeated the demon appears to have retrieved the Skeleton Demon King's body!"
"Oho! The Skeleton King's body—a relic even countless heroes could scarcely bring themselves to approach!"
"To think a child existed who could lay hands on such a thing!"
"Truly the bloodline of His Holiness the Pope!"
"Congratulations, Your Eminence. You must be delighted."
"Rescuing the children and securing the Skeleton King's body on top of it! Young Lord Kina lacks for nothing—character, talent, honor."
"As expected, the papal throne is not a seat for just anyone."
As the nobles marveled toward him, the Cardinal's lips curled upward at the corners. His gaze slid across the hall to the opposite seats—the seats of House Eshua, struck utterly mute amid the festival atmosphere. And there, his eyes met Rillai's.
I know exactly what you want, Eshua.
The Skeleton King's body, no doubt. That was why they had set conditions and sent it out of the vault in the first place. But the one who ended up taking it was not some Eshua brat—it was the Papal House.
Now, to obtain it, you'll have no choice but to come crawling to us.
The Blue Faith, throwing itself at the authority of the Papal House without even understanding its place. How much longer could that haughty Saintess family keep its chin raised so stubbornly?
The nobles of the Papal faction drifted to the Cardinal's side, making sure the Eshua delegation could hear every word. "The Doljabi may have been hosted by House Eshua, but this vault is a treasure granted by god, is it not?"
"The result is the will of god. The Saint, it seems, has already been proven."
Verith folded his hands, looked straight at Rillai, and let out a quiet sneer. "I see. It was a truly fine demonstration, wasn't it."
The words had barely left his mouth before Rillai's friend Simon clutched the back of his neck. "Rillai, you heard that? Hey! Did you hear me?"
"Yes, Simon. I heard."
"A 'truly fine demonstration'?! What kind of horseshit is that! Ugh, he is insufferable. Wow. Is that smug face a passive skill of the Papal House or something? Seriously, isn't this just cheating? How is anyone supposed to beat a kid who gets one-on-one tutoring from the Pope himself?!"
"Simon. As servants of god's messenger, it makes no difference who brings out the Skeleton King's body. Look—see how the Elder and the Elders are roaring with joy right now?"
"GRAAAAGH! VERITH!!"
"WAAAAAGH!"
…You call that a roar of joy?
Everyone was so busy groveling before the Papal House that the whole family had the air of a funeral procession, didn't it?
"If anyone has to kneel here, it's me. No one else needs to bow their head."
What Rillai was actually worried about lay elsewhere entirely. His gaze would not leave the doors of the vault, where the children who had already been eliminated were being treated between sobs. And, remarkably, Isaac still had not come out. Which was why the people of House Eshua looked faintly hopeful.
"If Shuri still hasn't come out, could he actually be pulling it off?"
"Yes. Even so, he's holding firm protecting his little cousin! We never expected the Skeleton King's body in the first place—please, let it at least be the 7th Saintess's holy armor or the 18th Saintess's gauntlets from the Third Vault…!"
"That's right! At minimum, the necklace of the 79th Saintess—the most recent one!"
As the elders murmured their prayers, Rillai clasped his hands tight. Isaac, forget those treasures. Just come out healthy, please.
Amid that tense standoff, the retainers spoke to the Emperor. "The Papal House truly is formidable, it seems." His Majesty had come all this way in person, only to leave having watched the Papal faction triumph at every turn.
Rillai, watching the same scene, furrowed his brow. It was true—the day had become one where the Papal House carried away both honor and wealth. He pretended nothing was wrong in front of Simon, but his heart was far from light. The two houses had been enemies for hundreds of years to begin with, and of late, over the matter of Isaac's parents, the Papal House had tormented them without mercy. And yet, still—public duty and private grievance had to be kept apart…
"Oh! The last children are coming out!"
"It's Shuri!"
"!"
At that name, Rillai's head whipped around like a compass needle. The children suddenly came pouring out together. Judging by their number and faces, these were unmistakably the ones who had entered the Third Vault! Rillai frantically searched among them. One, two, three, four… ten!
The children were nearly all accounted for—yet Isaac! Not a glimpse of his little nephew anywhere! He rushed straight for the boy.
"Shuri! Thank the heavens you're safe. But where is Isaac? Where is your cousin?"
Despite his uncle's anxious badgering, Shuri for some reason only broke out in a cold sweat. "Th-that is, Uncle…" What? What kind of reaction was that? Why, when every single child had emerged, was Isaac the only one still missing? Why on earth?
"The children came out of the Third Vault carrying treasures! The only ones to do so out of everyone who entered!"
"Oho!"
"Let us confirm the treasures at once!"
The adults crowded toward the line of children. Every admiring gaze naturally settled on Kina Berith. He was already the hero and star of the festival. Cardinal Verith likewise approached his son with a fond expression—
—and then his face stiffened, visibly.
"Kina. Where is the Skeleton Demon King's body?"
"Um."
"And what, precisely, is that thing in your hand?"
Hanging from Kina's fingers was a battered old brooch that anyone could see was worthless junk. "Who told you to bring back this?"
Kina Berith could not lift his head. "Kina?" Something was wrong here. Come to think of it, where was the most conspicuous figure of all—the infant? And at that very moment—
"Good heavens, look there!"
With someone's shout, light came pouring down above the vault doors. FLASH!
A colossal silver wolf appeared, looming over the assembled crowd. And the lump of meat it held clamped in its jaws—
"Isaac?!"
"Young Master Isaac!"
The infant was sucking away at something in the picture of comfort, utterly at ease. Isaac's nanny, Asili, had gone white as a sheet. "That creature holding Young Master Isaac in its mouth—isn't that a dragon?"
"…!"
It was! That was the young guardian dragon that watched over the vault—no, that wasn't what mattered right now.
"Rillai. Isaac is… sucking on something. What is that?"
"What do you mean, what is it. It's a bone."
"I see. It's a bone."
"Yes, a bo—"
A BONE?!
The people of House Eshua went deathly pale, and every soul in that hall doubted their own eyes. That mana alone said it all—and how many bones could possibly be lying around the Saintess's Vault?
Don't tell me—the Skeleton Demon King's body?
No one could do anything but gape in horror. "Isaac! Why on earth do you have that?!" "That's not the point here! Is he allowed to be sucking on that?!" "There's no way that's the Skeleton King's body! It must belong to some thief who snuck in and died!"
Amid the bedlam, the nobles stirred uneasily and turned their eyes to the Cardinal. Cardinal Verith, his face carved from ice, rolled only his eyes toward Kina Berith. "Kina. You handed the Skeleton Demon King's body to that child? And came back out carrying this piece of trash?"
His voice was cold as forged metal. "Th-that is…"
"Was it out of deference to His Majesty? If it is 'staging'—a Saint honoring the reputation of the host family—there are worse notions, but it hardly strikes me as an intelligent plan."
The Cardinal opened his mouth, as if to set the record straight—
"!"
The voice came from the dragon holding Isaac in its jaws. The young dragon, transformed into a silver wolf, spoke with unmistakable disbelief.
"…Pardon?"
What?
"What did you say?!"
The ones astonished now were everyone else. "The Eshua infant did that?" It was difficult to believe—but the source was a dragon. This was the young dragon that the Matriarch of House Eshua, a family bound in deep covenant with the Divine Dragons, had brought into the vault. Whatever strange circumstances had led such a precious hatchling to be there in the first place, a dragon was a dragon. However young it might be, no dragon—vastly superior to any human in magic—could possibly have misread the situation.
Yet even amid the collective astonishment, Rillai alone found it in himself to level a rebuke at the dragon. "Still, unleashing the seal on one of the Fourteen Six Demons went far too far! You knew full well those children could never handle such a demon—"
"!"
The nobles recoiled in shock and whirled toward Kina. The Cardinal, feeling every stare, let out a scornful laugh. "Young dragon, do not lie. Did you think I was unaware of your family's deep ties to the Saintess's line?"
But the voices burst out at once. "That's not true! Kina asked for every trap in the Third Vault to be triggered!"
"That's right! We said we wouldn't go, and he dragged us in by force!"
"Because of him, we all nearly died to the demon!"
The parents of the children from the Third Vault stared at Cardinal Verith in stunned horror. Is the Papal House in its right mind?He asked for a demon's seal to be broken? In short order, the enraged nobles turned on the Cardinal. At the same time, the other nobles watching the scene were astonished in an entirely different sense. If those words were true, then it meant an Eshua child had defeated the very demon the Papal House's child had unleashed.
That Eshua boy… outperformed the Papal House's own child?!
If word of this reaches those absent today, there will be an uproar.
Thus the nobles' trembling gazes converged on House Eshua—but the Eshua family itself had no spare attention for any of it. The reason was Isaac, of all things.
"Come along now, Isaac! Good boy! Here's your pacifier! That's a no-no, sweetie! No-no! Let go of it NOW!!"
Nope. Not letting go, you bastards.
Chup-chup-chup-chup-chup!
Isaac, sucking on the Skeleton King's thumb like a piece of candy, gave a contemptuous snort. It was dissolving. The fine-quality mana he was tasting for the first time in ages was absolutely sublime!
Ahh, must be the Survival Origin at work. The moment I suck it down, it absorbs.
Ordinarily, absorbing mana on this scale would have demanded no less than a hundred years of secluded training even under the best of conditions. But by eating it? Instant absorption. Isaac slurped away at the steadily shrinking bone of the Skeleton King with pure delight. Chup-chup-chup-chup-chup!
And while the tug-of-war to pry it from his mouth raged on—
"O-ohhhh! Isaac truly did it!"
"Elder!"
The Elder and the Elders—said to have vanished somewhere inside the vault—appeared, dressed in rags like beggars. "Where on earth have you been until now?!"
"We stumbled into the demon's strange trap, and it tried to tear us limb from limb—but then it suddenly vanished! Damn it all! Where did it go?"
Well, I had ordered the Shadow Lich to grab it and release it, so that much was only natural.
Isaac kept right on gnawing at the bone. Chup-chup-chup-chup-chup!
The Elders, watching him suck away at it, rejoiced as if it were their own triumph. "Not a child of Berith—THIS child brought it back!"
"Yes, yes! With this, the Matriarch will be overjoyed! No—all of House Eshua will rejoice as one!"
Yeah, yeah. Keep celebrating. While you're busy doing that, I'll grow strong on this and take this family and this country for myself.
But Rillai, as if to say the Elders should do more than just deliver reports, gave the bone a firm tug. "Of course—Mother will be overjoyed that her long-cherished wish is finally fulfilled! With this, we can finally track HIM down! So please, lend us your strength!"
In that instant, Isaac's eyebrow twitched.
Hmm. Track, you say?
Track WHAT, exactly?
A being gifted with the Survival Origin felt an instinctive chill run down his spine. Wait. Now that I think about it—why did Melissa want someone's body in the first place? Even dangling an absurdly massive reward for it? Why? Is that woman a pervert? A corpse fetishist?
"They say that with the Skeleton King's body alone, one can cast a tracking spell to trace the Skeleton King's very soul."
Ohh, I see. With the body, you can track the Skeleton King's sou— wait, WHAT?!
But apparently none of it was reaching Isaac's ears. "I can't imagine where he's been hiding for a hundred and fifty years—but a soul-tracking spell should find even the Skeleton King."
What tracking—that's DESECRATION of a corpse, you maniacs!!
"The moment Matriarch Melissa arrives, we begin. So Isaac! Hand it over this instant! You can have the pacifier instead. Finally! At long last, the chance to find the Skeleton King and KILL him!"
Hell no!! If you couldn't find him in a hundred and fifty years, then just GIVE UP already!!
"Now, Isaac! Hand it over so we can pinpoint the Skeleton King's location! That body is the last of its kind left in the whole world! Let's cast the location-tracking spell!"
No! There is NO need to cast location tracking! The Skeleton King is ALREADY standing right in front of you! Shit, you perverted bastards have all lost your minds!
"Sweetie, it's the only one left, so it's truly precious! Hand it over nicely so it doesn't get damaged, hmm?"
Before long, Rillai let out a sigh and lifted Isaac high into his arms. "Now! Isaac! That thing is far too powerful and dangerous to begin with! Merely holding it could bring who knows what upon you. So hand it over at once—"
But it was at that very moment.
Gulp.
"…Huh?"
The faces of everyone in House Eshua drained dead white. And no wonder—for Isaac had just put the Skeleton King's bone into his mouth and swallowed. …Swallowed?!
Uh—uhhh? UHHHHH?
"Hurk."
"AAAAAGH!"
THAT IS NOT FOOD!!