Peek-a-boo (2)
Isaac's appearance had changed.
The moment Isaac looked down at his own right hand, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
Is—is that a BONE?!
As he absorbed the mana, Isaac's right hand had turned into bare bone. The sight of that all-too-familiar shape popping out at him like a game of peek-a-boo drew a silent scream from the depths of his soul.
You cursed bag of bones!
That wretched husk of a body that couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything! The one that cracked and weathered apart in the cold wind, snapped clean off the moment he tried casting a spell, and drew drooling dogs chasing after him like he was a chew toy!
And why on earth was it here, of all places?!
"AAAAH!"
Staring at his own hand, Isaac couldn't hold back the scream.
What the hell is this?!
For a moment he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but no matter how many times he looked, looked again, and looked once more, the skeletal hand remained as bony as ever.
Whisper, too, seemed utterly flustered.
[M-Master? Did you miss your skeleton body that much?! If you'd simply said so, I would have turned you back ages——]
Why the hell would I miss it, you little punk?!
Isaac closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Right. Calm down.
It was the Harmony, the adoption business—everything had been going too well lately. He must have been seeing things for a moment. He'd just laid eyes on that idiotic fool of a Saintess Melissa, so naturally, that was it……
Wriggle, wriggle.
…Son of a—my eyes are not deceiving me!
Isaac checked his hand again, but the beloved old skeleton seemed determined to make itself seen, waving hello as cheerfully as you please.
By that point, Isaac was pinching the bridge of his nose, but he'd already sized up the situation.
Fine… So that means the cause is this.
Isaac looked at Whisper, who was now far more powerful than before. His face had grown even more ferocious than it had been, and he'd swelled so large he filled the entire room.
Well, it's a simple problem.
No—honestly, this should have happened long ago.
After all, hadn't Isaac carried a curse that even the gods themselves feared?
The symbol of terror that had made the Skeleton King known as the strongest Demon King in history.
⸢Life-Death Inversion⸥
The supreme curse that turned everything living into death itself.
So has the curse's power finally swallowed this body?
No. That wasn't it.
This body was, whatever anyone said, the finest vessel he'd ever had. The strongest Demon King hadn't chosen it on a whim.
Then why did part of me turn into a skeleton?
It was a simple matter.
My mana grew stronger than my holy power, which temporarily strengthened the curse.
Until now, his holy power had been greater—or at least holding even with his mana—which kept the curse suppressed.
In short, balance is everything.
Which meant the solution was simple too.
Just grow my holy power strong enough to push the curse back down.
In other words, he just needed to accumulate holy power.
Yeah, fine. Holy power was the kind of thing you could just gather up, after all. He could play the Saint he so thoroughly despised—say some prayers, do some faithful little religious activities, scrape together enough however he had to……
But if I get caught first, it's over, right?
[Do you really think 'over' begins to cover it? It's execution! EXECUTION! You'd be advertising to the whole world, "The Skeleton King is here!" ]
Ha. Ha ha. Yeah.
Before he could gather a single shred of holy power, the kids in the Blue Living Quarters would catch him first.
With a scrap of faith this tiny, he'd be found out by everyone around him—no, by Shuri—long before he managed to gather any.
And the moment he was caught, execution. Simple as that.
[Of course! Even if the clergy are utter morons, they'd notice! A living body turning into bone—what else could that possibly be but the Skeleton King's trait of Death?! Even the Blue faction can't shield you from this one!]
Isaac flexed the skeletal fingers he hadn't seen in so long.
Well, my mana did get absurdly stronger.
[There IS a way, you know!]
Oh? What way?
[Abandon this body and become a skeleton once more! Be reborn as the Skeleton King!]
Not a chance, baby!
Give up the perfect body he'd searched so hard to find? Please.
Isaac absolutely despised the skeleton body.
The worst part was that he couldn't feel emotion. Ah, well—thanks to his Survival Origin, perhaps, the raw instinct of "I hate this" had remained intact.
After all, the law of survival was to selectively discard the inferior and the unpleasant, evolving again and again.
That was why, when a subordinate he'd personally raised died, the sight of himself recognizing them in an instant not as a loss but as "trash to be discarded" had been chilling enough to make his nonexistent skin crawl.
And that wasn't all.
When an undead is destroyed, it just revives as an undead again.
And not just any revival.
Revival at the absolute bottom rank! Level 1!
In a word, everything—all the magic he'd learned and his very Magic Core—would be wiped clean!
How do I know that?
How do I know? Because a priest bastard killed me and I revived at level 1, that's how! ARGH!
No wonder the other high-tier undead went berserk on sight of clerics. It wasn't for nothing.
Well, it's not like there's no way out.
This Saint's body automatically converted mana into holy power. If he simply left it alone, the balance would right itself eventually.
The only problem was……
When, exactly?
The surge of new mana was substantial. Relying entirely on the body's passive conversion could take forever.
And then there was the other option. The Holy Spirit could also convert mana into holy power, so he could hand it over to him, but——
Honestly, both options suck.
Why?
Because you want me to convert mana that was THIS hard to gather into holy power?! ALL of it?!
Holy power was already scarce enough in the Holy Empire! It'd be a waste to the point of death! If it came to that, he'd rather just raise his holy power and rebalance the scales instead!
Minimize the loss. That's the name of the game.
And so Isaac's eyes gleamed.
Let's rip some holy power out of someone.
[Well, if that's the goal, Saintess Melissa did happen to leave you her rosary, so perhaps——]
NO! That's too precious to waste!
All he needed was quantity, and Melissa's power was far too high a quality!
That's staying in reserve as a substitute for offensive holy arts! My trump card!
And above all, there was the matter of affinity.
A Saintess's holy power is, by its nature, a power that kills the demonic. Now imagine that flowing into MY body.
At those words, Whisper—himself made of mana—was, for once, visibly terrified.
[Then… then I might die before you do, Master?!]
Exactly. You might just cease to exist.
Of course, Isaac didn't want that either. It might even weaken the Skeleton King's mana.
In other words, the Saintess's power was an incredibly precious thing—immensely valuable as a weapon or item, but far too risky to put inside his own body.
[Then is there a way to increase your holy power?]
There is. Through a perfectly devout religious life, no less.
[…Hrk, don't tell me—you're going to PRAY?!]
Who, me? There's an exam in the Pentagon trials where that's possible.
[I'm sorry, what?]
Isaac grinned slyly.
The ways a cleric could increase holy power: prayer, reading scripture, pilgrimage… and one more.
The Heresy Inquest.
Well, all things considered, this works out nicely.
If he was going to become the Saint, he ought to bulk up his holy power while he was at it.
Though first, he needed to hide this bony hand.
Just as Isaac went rummaging for bandages——
"Isaac! What are you doing in here?!"
"!!"
The door burst open and Shuri strode in. Isaac hastily shoved his hand behind his back.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
Isaac was, for once, genuinely rattled.
No way. Even if the Eshua lot are idiotic pushovers, there's no way they can't recognize this.
If it reached the Blue head of house's ears, it was all over. As Isaac's voice shrank back, so did his entire body—
"Ah, it's nothing."
"Since when do you stumble over your words like that… Did you hurt yourself? What is this, why is it all wrapped up—— AAH!!"
Shuri had brushed against Isaac's hand and recoiled in horror. He hadn't even seen it, but the texture at his fingertips!
Bone?
Shuri stared at Isaac, blood drained from his face. The gaze of a Blue faithful looking upon something he refused to believe.
Worse—his face was full of betrayal.
"B-bone? Don't tell me… you're not……"
"!"
Isaac went pale, the very picture of a cornered man. Whisper let out a shriek of his own.
[Memory-erasing magic…!! No—you can't cast that yet, so the traditional demonic method it is!]
The traditional method being WHAT, exactly?!
[I shall smash his skull in—!]
You absolute lunatic, MY skull gets smashed too in the process!
Damn it, what now? Do I actually have to beat the memory out of him? Forcibly give him amnesia?!
Shuri seized Isaac by the arm with a fierce glare.
"Isaac, you—!"
Damn it, look at his eyes! This bastard figured it out after all!
"Did the Skeleton King's curse start rotting your body?!"
YES! There it is! He figured it——
"……?"
…What was that, kid?
"It's rotting, isn't it? RIGHT?!"
Rotting?
How did you land on THAT conclusion?
But Shuri just shook Isaac, his face twisted with betrayal.
"You—were you not actually a defective character after all?!"
De… defective WHAT, kid??
"Good heavens! To think Isaac's flaw wasn't his personality, but his BODY!"
Isaac wanted to ask what utter nonsense this child was spouting, but then it hit him—ah. He sighed in realization.
That's it. The Eshua men's "flaw."
The sons of House Eshua were all-or-nothing. Either fatally untalented, or gifted with talent in exchange for a flaw.
And that flaw came in two flavors: a defect of the body, or a defect of character.
And sure enough——
"So THAT'S why your rotten personality was always collapsing—because you were in pain all along?"
My WHAT was collapsing, kid?
"There was an Eshua elder who was a genius, but he passed away with his body rotting like that. And Third Uncle's health is failing right now too——!"
Shuri trembled like a man staring at a terminally ill patient. He seemed utterly unable to contain the tidal wave of betrayal washing over him.
"Everyone always assumed you were obviously the character-defect type! Why does an irredeemable degenerate like YOU get the incurable disease!"
Why does this kid keep saying character defect, character defect?
Isaac couldn't tell if it was an insult or sympathy, and his face twitched—but by then, his eyeballs were already rolling slyly in their sockets.
This stings weirdly, but… this is actually a good thing… right?
Anyway, this idiot thinks it's a terminal illness, not the Skeleton King's trait. Correct? Right?
Driven by that thought, Isaac flopped straight down onto the spot.
"You're right, big brother! My hand suddenly hurt so much, and when I came into my room, my body started rotting! I'm scared!"
Technically, it hadn't rotted—it had turned to bone—but that was a secret. If it ever got out that his body turned skeletal, it would scream the Skeleton King's signature ability, Life-Death Inversion, loud and clear.
That particular fact was famous enough to appear in academy textbooks on any continent.
Isaac wound the bandages even tighter and trembled with childlike terror.
"What do I do, big brother? Am I… am I going to die like this?"
That even after becoming human, he still hadn't learned how to shed a real tear might just be the tragedy of the century.
"Am I going to be dragged off by the inquisitors now, because I'm cursed? Tell me that's not it. Tell me!"
"……!"
Shuri flinched, his words dying in his throat.
No. The possibility was very real.
There had been an Eshua elder whose body decayed in the past—one whom the Red faith had treated like a plague carrier and eventually dragged off to prison.
Damn it. Grandfather's been at ease this whole time because he thought Isaac was the character-defect type.
Right—come to think of it, he should have noticed something was off ages ago.
The brat had eaten the Skeleton King's bones and grown that fast. Of course there would be consequences in his body.
"F-first, let's tell Grandfather and get you treatment——"
Grab.
Isaac clamped a firm hand around Shuri's arm. The words 'tell anyone and you die, bastard' made it all the way to his lips before he swallowed them, doing his best to look like a boy struggling to breathe.
It was lucky this one was a good-natured Eshua. Children might not catch it, but the adults would see through him in an instant.
"Don't tell Grandfather or my uncles…! Only you can know, big brother. I don't want to worry them!"
"……!"
Shuri looked stunned.
Even without Isaac saying a word, Shuri knew better than anyone how deeply his grandfather secretly doted on the boy. The other Eshua family members were the same.
Terminally ill—the shock of hearing that would be no small thing for any of them.
"B-but……"
"Besides, what happens to the Pentagon if I drop out? As one of the Blue faithful, I want to at least execute the Skeleton King's minions before I die."
"Isaac……!"
So this kid actually took the Blue faction's mission that seriously.
Yes. Say what you would—the heart of the Blue faith was the unshakable heart, righteous fury, and the expulsion of demons.
This kid stood closer to the true essence of Blue than anyone else alive. And here Shuri had been thinking of him as nothing but a character defect.
"Damn it, that accursed Skeleton King! That filthy, disgusting son of a—— GAHK!"
Mid-curse, Shuri took a slap from Isaac.
"A-Isaac?!"
Isaac's hand had flown out before he could stop himself at the insult to his former self. He winced—oops—then quickly forced an awkward smile.
"Well… blaming others doesn't change anything, right? Let's do something more productive instead."
"!"
"And don't worry, big brother. I have no intention of dying that easily. It's not like there's no way out."
"A way? There's a way?"
"I'll have to try, but I'm pretty sure there is. So listen carefully, big brother. From now on. I have a favor to ask. And no one else can know about it……"
"Yes—damn it all, if the inquisitors find out, it's over! Isaac! I'll help you, so don't you dare die!"
As Shuri wiped his tears and gripped Isaac's arm tight, the corners of Isaac's mouth curled into a sly grin.
Hooked. Got him.
"In that spirit—go call the rest of the Blue team."
And then——
"There's something big brother needs to deliver to the Cardinal of Red."
Shuri, who had been holding his little brother close, stared back at him in open bewilderment.
…Why on earth would we need him?