Peek-a-boo (1)
‘The Papal House proposed adopting Isaac.’
Goel honestly couldn't believe it.
Of course, things had seemed off ever since his father had ordered him to investigate the Papal House. But an adoption? An adoption? Of whom? Of Isaac??
‘There's definitely something behind this.’
Otherwise, the sheer lunacy of wanting to adopt that brat would never have crossed anyone's mind!
And it didn't end there.
“Father. I'm speaking of the priest who oversaw the apprentices' God Summoning at the Ordination Ceremony.”
House Eshua had tracked down the ceremonial priest of the Holy See who had presided over this latest Ordination. Their goal: to confirm exactly which god Isaac had summoned. The man who had pricked the apprentices' fingers and drawn their blood right beside Cardinal Verith would surely remember their crests in vivid detail.
“I see. I heard he took leave and went down to his hometown after the ceremony. They said he vanished even there—did you find him?”
“Yes. As a corpse.”
“...!”
“His face was unrecognizable, but the Blue Faith's knights and I discovered him in the demon forest.”
At Rillai's report—Rillai, who commanded the Eshua knight order—everyone froze. The ceremonial priest who had recorded the crests, found dead? Suspicious didn't even begin to cover it!
‘Don't tell me the Papal House silenced him.’
Was it truly something worth eliminating a witness over?
‘Do those who approach the truth lose their lives?’
His father had warned him to be extremely careful, but Goel had jumped at the chance to visit his maternal family, House Verith, for the first time in ages—all to dig out the reason behind this talk of adopting Isaac.
Naturally, the Verith household gave an Eshua a welcome about as warm as a blizzard. But that was fine, as long as one premise held: Goel was a pureblood on his mother's side.
“Well, if it isn't the young lord. It's been far too long.”
“You seem to be doing well yourself, Nanny.”
The one to greet Goel was the head maid of House Verith—once the nanny who had raised him as a child.
“How are things at Eshua?”
“How are they? Still garbage, as ever.”
“And the worst of the garbage must be that wretched Isaac Eshua—disrespecting the Blue Faith's head and sabotaging young Master Shuri, no? Hypocrites, the whole lot of them.”
“You know them well, as always. Disgusting, isn't it.”
Goel was, in truth, a spy planted in Eshua by Verith. That was why he made regular visits to his maternal family, feeding them the inner workings of House Eshua. And indeed, Goel had stripped Eshua of its rights and handed them over to Verith.
Well—if the Papal House overlooked anything, it was the small detail that Goel was a double spy.
Because in truth, Goel had been won over by Ilay, the head of the Blue Faith.
‘I have no good memories of that place.’
The head maid—Goel's old nanny—had always pitied him deeply for it.
“You are precious blood of the great Papal House, Lord Goel. Had you simply not been born at Eshua, you would never have endured such treatment.”
As if Goel could ever forget what that treatment was.
“Goel, was it? Henna's son?”
“His coming-of-age is right around the corner, and he's still only 4th Tier? Is he really the Papal House's blood?”
“Goodness, how dreadful. At 4th Tier, he's nothing but trash. A stain like that in one of the Five Great Ducal Houses.”
“Well, Eshua blood runs in him. Even the great Lady Henna's child couldn't escape the Eshua Curse.”
“No wonder Lady Henna's eyes looked a bit off whenever she looked at the boy. Unthinkable, by the Papal House's standards.”
Yes. Trash.
A trash cockroach.
Abused by his own mother from childhood, raised under sneers and contempt, Goel was long familiar even with those pitying gazes. How hard had he worked to make sure his own son, Shuri, would never receive such looks?
And yet, half-bloods like them were treated as outsiders everywhere they went. There was only one way for such half-things to escape being trampled.
Becoming the head of the house.
Well—though frankly, Shuri worrying him these days, hanging around Isaac like he'd gone a bit soft in the head.
“Father, I know you hate hearing this, but honestly—Isaac is remarkable.”
“Trust the Saintess bloodline too far, and you'll be the one betrayed in the end.”
“Father!”
Well, Isaac might disgust him, but with Shuri's future at stake, Goel intended to carry out his father's orders faithfully. He hated Eshua, yes—but if it came down to it, he was the one rooting for Verith's destruction.
And the same went for this whole Isaac affair.
‘Isn't this a chance to land a real blow on Verith?’
True, Isaac carried Eshua blood too, so he couldn't have summoned an Upper God. But a god valuable enough to spark talk of adoption? That was another matter.
‘The God of Fortune, perhaps? One of the Middle Gods?’
Fifty years without an appearance meant the god's contract would be treated as precious indeed.
And so Goel made his way to the Verith library. As Verith's own spy, Cardinal Verith had always extended him certain courtesies—and the library was one of them.
The librarian bowed his head the moment he saw Goel, and Goel haughtily flicked a slip of paper at him.
“Bring me these books.”
“Yes, my lord. One moment, please.”
The instant the librarian left to fetch them, Goel moved.
His target was the restricted zone deep within the library—the archive of forbidden texts that only the head of House Verith could enter.
And it was certain to be there.
‘The records from this Ordination Ceremony.’
Every classified document of the Holy See was stored in the Verith family library.
Getting in wasn't difficult.
‘Who knew the key copy I made back in the day would come in handy.’
There was some manner of alarm system, granted, but that posed no problem.
Relic of the Blue Faith
Conceals the user's presence and scent completely—a trusted tool for infiltrating enemy lines.
Goel drew a long stick of incense from his coat—something he'd brought from the Blue Faith. He touched a small holy flame to its tip, and smoke curled upward, wrapping around him. Within moments, his entire body turned invisible.
Inside the restricted zone, Goel scanned the document shelves—ones that looked freshly stocked.
‘This is it.’
The Holy See's copied records stated that Isaac had summoned a nameless Lower God. But had he really summoned a Lower God?
If all of this was fabricated, the original would be here without fail.
‘Isaac Eshua... Isaac Eshua...’
Goel's hand stopped mid-search. This was the moment he would first lay eyes on Isaac Eshua's name, the crest of the god he'd summoned, and its name.
‘This crest...?!’
Goel doubted his own eyes.
It was familiar.
⟨ All Things Are With Me ⟩
Certain. Absolutely certain.
He had studied the relevant lore during his boyhood stay at the Papal House, which only made him more certain.
And that was precisely why Goel could not help but be shaken to his core.
No—he'd assumed it wouldn't be some ordinary god, not with the Papal House raising the subject of adoption. But this—
‘A Supreme God?!’
At Eshua? That little brat?
This was no longer merely the Holy See's problem.
‘This is the kind of thing that could wipe House Verith off the map.’
It was a matter that could overturn the Verith family—no, the entire nation.
“Ahh, finally gone, are they?”
Isaac was sprinkling a white powder in front of the Blue Living Quarters.
“Spawn of Saintesses, never come back! Ptui, ptui, PTUI!”
It was none other than salt. Only after Isaac had scattered a salt bag as tall as himself all over the courtyard did the Blue Faith team finally return.
They were abuzz with talk of Leah and Melissa.
“Wow, that was my first time seeing them in person, and they were genuinely beautiful...”
“Well, I knew everyone from Eshua was like that—you and Shuri included—but those two weren't just beautiful. They were otherworldly...”
“Hey, compare things that are actually comparable...”
“Hehe, if we get picked for the execution ceremony, we'll see them again, won't we?”
“Right, dignitaries from other countries come for the execution too—they'll definitely be there to see the Saintess.”
“Or maybe they're coming to see Isaac?”
“They say this year's Pentagon is the hottest topic abroad because of the execution! We absolutely have to be selected, so...”
“Hehehe. Honestly, if we just stick next to Isaac, we'll get to see the Saintesses again, so... YAAAGH!”
“What is all this!”
The team recoiled in horror at the mountain of salt piled in the courtyard like fresh snowfall. And the moment they realized it was all Isaac's doing, the apprentice priests screamed.
“You—what is the matter with you!”
“Exorcising the Saintess.”
...Excuse me, WHAT?!
“The Saintess shall perish. Begone, debt collectors. Never return.”
As Isaac danced like a man possessed, flinging salt in every direction, his teammates grabbed him in open horror.
“You insane bastard!!”
“You've actually gone and cursed the Saintess now?!”
“Not the Saintesses, you idiot!”
Shuri pressed a hand to his forehead. He'd wondered for a long time now—had that guy held some grudge against the Saintesses in a past life? Why else would he fly into a frenzy every single time they came up?
“I don't understand. What did they ever do to you?”
At that, Isaac's pupils dilated.
What did they do?
What did they DO?
Fine, you want the list? Shall I unwrap every last one of these grudges for you?!
Even a rough summary would take a hundred all-nighters—do you REALLY want to hear it?!
At the look of pure murder in Isaac's eyes, Shuri went pale and waved him off frantically.
“...No, never mind. Don't tell me. Whatever it is, I don't want to know.”
Damn it! I nearly DIED because of those women!
Granted, the Saintesses would probably say the same about him!
Thanks to that, his mana—which had collided head-on with the power of a Saintess—was, as Whisper, practically foaming at the mouth.
[Shall we eliminate the Saintesses first after all?!]
Ha... enough.
Way he saw it, rather than fighting them, corrupting the Saintesses over to the Demon King's side—or dragging them into the fall—was ten million times more efficient.
Besides, if Isaac was honest, the Saintesses were actually the most tolerable of all the clergy.
‘They're still this body's ancestors, after all. They've been bleeding Eshua dry over my knockoff—I'll pay them back properly.’
With that in mind, the thing Isaac pulled out upon entering his room was the Magic Core.
He'd obtained a precious item from Melissa, yes—but now what mattered was this.
[So you've finally decided to consume the Magic Core?]
That's right. That's the plan.
‘I need to raise my mana if I'm going to rescue my subordinates.’
The binding spell holding his subordinates captive wasn't something ordinary magic could break.
And thanks to Leah, the Magic Core he'd smuggled out of the annex looked like it would finally be usable.
‘No matter what I tried, there was a seal on it—I could never eat it before.’
But according to Leah, he could eat this one?
At the same time, Isaac brought the necklace Leah had given him to the Magic Core.
And then something astonishing happened.
‘!’
The necklace's light began erasing the seal-script characters coiled around the Magic Core. And from within it, black mana started to seep out, slow as smoke.
[Oh! The seal is breaking!]
It's actually coming off?
So the thing sealed on this Magic Core was some special Eshua seal?
‘A sealing-type art I was never subjected to, then.’
That explained why he'd never known about it. Not that it mattered now.
Having etched the seal's holy script into his memory, Isaac's eyes gleamed.
‘Eat every last drop before the magic leaks away!’
[Yes, my lord!]
Whisper thrilled at the feast and began devouring the escaping mana with gusto.
The reaction was immediate.
‘Far stronger mana than I expected.’
The former—and current—Demon King knew it at once. This was a vast reservoir of mana, easily enough to raise his magic tier!
Kuuuuuuguuung!
His whole body tingled and crackled with the surge of power, and Isaac burst out laughing in delight.
‘Yes, YES! This is why you never sell—this is what hoarding was for!’
With this, my total mana will finally surpass my total holy power! I can throw high-tier magic around like it's nothing!
And then—
[Gasp, my lord! That appearance—!]
Reinvigorated by the surge of power, Isaac was startled by his own reflection.