Chapter 90. What Did You Just Say? (3)
Disaster Annihilation.
It was the worst of all sealing spells, the one the gods used to cage those who dared oppose them.
And more decisively, it was the very reason Isaac had been sealed inside that maggot and reborn into this body.
Well, I still have no idea why, of all things, I had to be born into a Saintess family, though….
Sealing him into the family of his sworn enemies felt like a bridge too far, didn't it?
To be fair, Isaac had spent ten years investigating, and there was still plenty he couldn't understand.
Why it had to be this family.
Why this child's name happened to be exactly the same as his own.
Isaac… no, wait, is the name Isaac that common?
Dammit, thinking about it just made him angrier.
If it was such a common name, they could have stuffed him into some other Isaac's body, couldn't they?
Right! If they were going to do it anyway, why not some clean family instead of the filthy Saintess line? The Crown Prince over there, for instance! Or that rich duke's household!
Then he could have outpaced every traitor in history and brought the family and the country crashing down! Dammit! Why did it have to be a starving priest family of all things?! Argh!
Granted, there had been unexpected benefits, and thanks to that he'd been lucky enough to slip out of the seal. But the fact remained: Disaster Annihilation was a sealing spell that the original Isaac should never have been able to break.
This is a supreme-tier spell.
Which meant, roughly speaking, a spell on the level of the Supreme Gods—Holy Arts of the Transcendental Tier.
Why did he think every absolute being who had once defied the gods had simply vanished from history?
Whatever the reason, the point was that a holy art of that caliber could never lose track of a soul. If it could, the world would never have known this much peace.
Right. It's been 150 years. If they'd realized I was gone, wanted posters would have gone out to every priest on the continent ages ago.
The angels—messengers of the gods—would have been combing the mortal realm with their eyes blazing.
And the Blue Faith family, the ones tasked with fighting demons, would have been the first to know.
Which meant…
…Don't tell me someone else is in there in my place?
Seriously??
…No, that can't be right.
Those bastards hadn't become gods for nothing.
Well, to be fair, while they had feared him, the Skeleton Demon King had acknowledged their strength as well.
The lesser gods were, frankly, decent foot-wipes… but the higher gods, especially the Chief Gods and above, were no joke. They wielded the power to wipe out an entire legion of demons in a single stroke.
Though part of that was because I was a skeleton, weak against holy power.
Now that that weakness was gone, who knew how things would stack up?
Anyway—if something else is sealed in that maggot in my place…
Who?
What kind of creature could it be?
A higher being with mana? Or a great calamity bearing a name eerily similar to the Skeleton Demon King?
Or, don't tell me… a god?
At that thought, the corner of Isaac's mouth curled up in a grin. It was the most gleeful smile he'd worn all day.
I absolutely must verify this part.
“150 years ago—did the gods happen to suddenly vanish or anything like that?”
“Ah—yes…! After Your Majesty attacked the God Realm, quite a few gods are said to have been wounded. Some went missing entirely, but I believe most of them have been recovered by now…”
Puhet!! There it is! That's it!
A god really could be locked up in there in his place!
Even better—these bastards had been caught up in his self-destruction and had no idea what happened to the maggot!
They hadn't even had a spare moment to worry about the outside world!
Aigoo, he'd only blown himself up because he didn't want to die alone—he'd even left a corpse behind as a decoy. Turns out he was quite the seasoning sprinkle after all.
Anyway, the fact that they hadn't noticed the Skeleton Demon King running amok inside their own inner sanctum—this was deliciously thrilling.
If they didn't even notice I was gone, then whatever's in there could be a fairly high-ranking god.
After all, it would take a being capable of standing in for the Skeleton Demon King for the substitution to go unnoticed.
So Isaac's lips split into an even wider grin.
Where was it? Which faith's god was it?
Gold with its screws loose? Red? White? Black?
Or, failing that—one of the minor faiths outside the Five?
Well, one thing was certain: it wasn't some pipsqueak god.
Not that that meant he could let his guard down.
Chief Gods especially are not ones to take lightly.
He refused to end up snuffed out before he even got a chance to fight back.
Which meant he needed to raise the Saint's power until those gods couldn't so much as lay a finger on him.
“In that spirit, you're actually going to be useful.”
Isaac looked at Ash.
“You're going back to the demons. You'll be my eyes and ears.”
Daring to collude with the gods and sell off my property? You think I'd leave either the demons or the gods be?
And by tracking the demons' movements, he'd gain intel the holy faction had no way of accessing. The information could be cross-checked against the facts he already had.
At Isaac's words, Ash came back to life, the corner of her mouth finally sliding upward.
Offering her neck had been worth it after all!
There had been a moment when she'd thought it was all over—but maybe this was an opportunity. A golden chance to climb even higher, if she played her cards right.
The eyes that had been frozen in terror just moments ago were now rolling with cold calculation.
“O Great King, I pledge my loyalty. So long as you spare my life, I shall do anyth—”
“Don't flap your lips.”
“!!”
At words that felt like an awl driven into her brain, Ash stiffened all over again.
Isaac looked down at her with frostbitten eyes, as if he were already reading every thought in her head.
“If I spare you, you say? Who do you think you are, setting terms with me?”
“…!”
He glared at her with an icy face, as if to say: don't get any clever ideas with that mediocre little brain of yours.
“Don't confuse your position. You'll do whatever I say whether I spare you or not.”
Ash, who had briefly dared to dream of a promotion, squeezed her eyes shut like a beast with its tail between its legs.
Of course. He saw through everything. She must never forget that.
She was not his equal in a transaction. She was merely being kept alive as a spare set of hands and feet.
No—even calling herself his hands and feet was too generous. She was nothing more than a splinter of kindling for starting a fire.
Firewood for setting the world ablaze was abundant and overflowing. She had simply happened to be lying before his eyes. And because fetching another piece would have been a bother, he had chosen her. That was all.
She must never forget her place.
This was the great Skeleton Demon King.
The one who would be made an example of before all demons.
“I shall bear it in mind, Your Majesty…”
“You dared send a knockoff of me—an illusion of mine—to the Ordination Ceremony?”
Ash flinched and pressed her head to the ground.
“Th—that… I… even with ten thousand mouths I could not excuse myself! Had I known the one in the fortress was a fake, I would never have—”
“Because of you, I nearly died for nothing at my grandfather's hands!”
“…I would never have…”
“Damn it! Because of you, Grandpa put me on a fast after that, and I couldn't even eat snacks, you brat!”
“…I would never…”
“And now, because of you, that old fart Shuri has banned candy on top of everything just because I had to go out and come back!”
…Something about this feels a little off?
“So from now on, you're buying me five hundred pieces of candy.”
This is really okay, right??
“Thank you beyond what words can express!”
“We owe Lord Isaac a debt we could never repay in a lifetime!”
Isaac raised an eyebrow.
Right. So the filthy paladins are lining up to thank me. On their knees, no less, faces buried in the dirt.
“To think you felled that monstrous beast all by yourself!”
Well, technically I didn't fell it, but sure.
“And to carry us all that distance single-handedly! To be moved by the precious hands of the Saint himself—what an honor! All that filthy demonic taint must have been blasted clean away!”
It wasn't my hands, actually. A demon kicked you the whole way there like a rolling ball.
“You even left water out for us! And it tasted wonderful!”
I never left any water out.
What on earth did you people drink?
It wasn't the monsters' piss, was it?
At any rate, the paladins rescued by Isaac were profoundly grateful. The captured couriers, in particular, had never once imagined that priests would come to save them.
They were mere deliverymen, replaceable at any moment. It had never occurred to them that precious priest manpower would be spent on their rescue.
And yet…!
“And not just anyone—the direct heir of Eshua himself…!”
They could barely find the words.
Honestly, it was astonishing.
Eleven paladins had been captured in total. Three of them were somewhat badly injured, but the Holy See's healers would patch them up fine.
The senior Blue Faith knight who'd been taken had knelt before Isaac in shame.
“We caused you great trouble, my lord.”
Unbelievable—they even grabbed a senior Blue knight. The leader of the couriers knelt as well, unable to lift his head.
“How could we ever repay this debt to Lord Isaac?”
“Forget it. Don't worry about it. It was part of our mission anyway.”
But the courier captain was moved to tears, declaring, 'That is just like a man of the Blue Faith.'
“No, we will repay this debt, no matter what. I, Derek, knight of the 7th Tier, and every courier under my command—from this day forward, wherever Lord Isaac commands, we will ride.”
At those words, the senior Blue knight was, for once, visibly startled.
Good heavens. The couriers swearing fealty to someone?
Derek's tracking abilities as their captain went without saying.
The couriers have roots planted across the entire continent.
They were masters of information, the finest brokers of intelligence anywhere. And their mobility was the strongest in the Empire. Through the mouths of those wanderers, the story of Isaac would spread to every corner of the continent.
The ones even the Holy See couldn't tame.
When he reported this, the head of House Eshua would be overjoyed.
At the same time, Isaac felt he understood why the Holy See had moved so sluggishly on this mission.
And why they'd dumped it on the apprentice priests as if failure wouldn't matter at all.
“The people they took really are ones the Holy See wouldn't care about.”
Couriers. Blue knights. Apprentice knights.
To the Gold Faith, beings not worth the expense of sending manpower. It meant that letting eleven of them be devoured was cheaper than funding a rescue party.
“So in the end, Blue cleaned up after them, is that it?”
But for some reason, the couriers laughed cynically.
“It's more than that.”
“What?”
Why was it, then, that they'd been wearing the faces of men who'd witnessed a feat far beyond anything Isaac himself had imagined?
He found out when he learned that among the survivors was a child.
A little kid?
Nine years old or so, judging by a glance. And for some reason, the child had been staring at Isaac with shining, admiring eyes this whole time.
“If you knew who that child was—and what that child is carrying—you'd be shocked. Even those of us imprisoned alongside them were stunned.”
“What? Who is he? An apprentice knight? He's too young for that… a knight's page, maybe?”
At those words, the senior Blue knight began, oddly enough, rolling his eyes and fidgeting, his face betraying reluctance as if unsure whether he should say it at all.
“Well… I ask that you not be angry, my lord.”
“Why? Who is it?”
“He is the Imperial Prince.”
…What. Huh? Who?
“The youngest Imperial Prince! Of the Magic Empire!”
…Dammit, what did you just say??
Why was HE among the kidnapped knights?!
At the same moment, Isaac realized his mistake.
Don't tell me the mages were encamped so thickly out there because their prince had been kidnapped?
And if it was the Magic Empire's youngest prince—the fraternal twin known, alongside his sister the Imperial Princess, as the most prodigiously gifted mage in the Empire's history—then…
But the Blue knight whispering to him shook his head.
“They probably don't even know yet that their prince was taken. He was traveling incognito when the raid hit. We rescued him without realizing who he was…”
“…Why did you rescue someone from the Magic Empire?”
“Th—that's why I asked you not to be angry…!”
Ah.
So basically, because we're the Blue Faith, we couldn't just leave him be.
Ah. The sucker faith, as expected.
Well, it tracks.
And that's why such a strong senior Blue knight got captured—he was protecting the kid and got dragged off with him.
“In any case, you saved not only the knights but the prince himself. That alone will raise your renown considerably, Lord Isaac.”
Well, that's true.
Already an achievement that puts my Gold Pentagon record beyond compare.
Yeah, sure, but…
“Big brother! Are you the famous Isaac Eshua everyone talks about?!”
What in the world kind of rumors are spreading, that a Magic Empire brat looks at me with eyes like that?
“I thought all you Holy Empire folk were worthless trash, but I guess there are people like you too! Thanks to you, I kept my life, big brother!”
Right. You kept it. Glad to hear it…
“I heard all about it! The Holy See guys are total garbage, aren't they? Their own people get kidnapped and they don't even send a rescue team—they just make it an apprentice test instead! That's practically throwing them away! And the Gold Faith calls itself clergy after that?”
Oh, this kid. Young as he is, he's got a good head on his shoulders.
“Compare that to the Blue Faith! A Blue knight came to save me the very day his comrades fell to demons and he was left all alone! Even knowing I was from the Magic Empire! Big brother, you have to let me repay this debt!”
The corner of Isaac's mouth crept upward.
“Oh? Then will you help me with something?”
At that expression, Shuri, who had been waiting outside, crept closer with suspicion written all over his face.
“Hey. Everyone's busy thanking you, and you're making that face again—what weird scheme are you cooking up now? And who's this kid?”
The corner of Isaac's mouth curled even higher.
If you find out who this kid is, you're going to faint.
“Everyone's thanking me, you say? It's a bit early to celebrate.”
“Huh?”
“There's probably a trap waiting on the road home.”
“What?! A trap—what are you talking about?!”
What am I talking about, he asks.
This was the Gold Faith that had rolled out the red carpet with such fanfare. As if those bastards would just let us return from our mission in triumph!
In other words, they would surely have laid traps in advance to make sure the team never made it back.
The mages stationed in wait, the way the name of the fourth uncle of House Eshua kept coming up—it might all be connected.
No. It was all but certain.
And the trap?
Well, high odds it's an accident or an ambush…
Isaac smacked his lips, eyeing the little brat who was the Magic Empire's prince.
“Shuri. I'm done with just taking hits. From now on, I intend to pay back every single fight anyone's ever picked with me.”
At that, Shuri's expression turned extremely strange.
…When have you ever not?