The Grant Department Store
The Grant Department Store. Once a thriving hub of rapid growth, the towering building had shuttered its doors in the wake of a terrorist attack just days earlier. The Grant Trading Company's dream of establishing a foothold in the capital, using this very department store as its starting point, had been utterly shattered by that incident. Unintentionally, it had also saddled the company with a negative public image, turning the event into a nightmare that haunted both the victims and the Grant family alike.
“As expected.”
In front of the now-closed Grant Department Store, police had cordoned off the area to prevent civilian access. While officers still bustled about in every direction, Ern Benedict stepped out of an automatic carriage that had pulled up before the building. He glanced around the perimeter with a slow sweep of his gaze and gave a small nod.
“An Inner World was deployed here.”
Mages and spiritists were beings who fundamentally exercised their power within the laws of this world. In contrast, there existed those who defied those very laws, imposing their own rules upon reality. Dark mages—and the term Inner World—referred to the spaces where their personal laws overpowered and supplanted the natural flow of the world.
Naturally, only a rare few dark mages possessed the strength to manifest their will so openly upon the world. To do so required at least 5-star, expert-level ability.
“…….”
The culprit behind this incident was identified as Dekken Nasara. Every survivor had confirmed him as the perpetrator, and the evidence was irrefutable. The department store’s internal CCTV had captured his crimes in full detail.
The problem was that before the police could apprehend him, he had already been murdered by an unknown party. And not just killed—ripped apart in an utterly gruesome manner.
‘There were gaps in the memories of the survivors from the ninth floor, including Nel.’
Just what was that culprit? To find out, Ern Benedict had personally reviewed the police investigation files. He had even replayed the recorded interviews with the victims multiple times. From every account, he had noticed a common void.
Once he caught on to that, he immediately rewatched the CCTV footage. Just as he had sensed from the victims’ recordings, portions of the video appeared unnaturally fragmented, as if someone had edited them out.
Feeling both suspicion and a growing sense of foreboding, he had canceled one of his duties as chairman—a congratulatory speech at the academy entrance ceremony—and rushed straight here.
His instincts as the Magic Sovereign were sounding a clear warning.
‘It’s Dark Heaven.’
An Inner World was a skill any dark mage of 5-star or higher could use. However, the lingering traces of mana left behind in this place told him this was no ordinary deployment. There weren’t many dark mages in the world capable of creating an Inner World of this caliber—one that could impress even him.
‘Nasara… was it?’
He had been utterly shocked when he first heard the culprit’s identity. The Nasara Trading Company was an organization the Death King had personally erased from existence. Could it be that the Death King had appeared here precisely because the perpetrator was a Nasara?
‘Just what kind of grudge is this?’
It was a well-known fact among the powerful that the Death King would repay even the smallest slight without fail. Recalling that reputation, Ern Benedict thought of the Death King Dark Heaven—a name he had never once encountered in person—and let out a bitter smile.
‘I can only hope this storm passes without incident.’
The Death King was, surprisingly, a rather mild absolute being toward those who did not provoke him first. Tugwi and the Empress had both suffered greatly at his hands, and the common thread was that they had touched his forces first. Of course, it was also true that the Death King had swallowed the underworld whole and extended his reach into their territories. Yet strangely enough, the underworld under his direct rule had seen far fewer incidents and accidents than before.
More precisely, they simply no longer exposed their activities to the outside world. Light and darkness were now strictly divided, like the two sides of a coin.
In Ern Benedict’s opinion, that arrangement was preferable. Civilian casualties had dropped dramatically, and he had zero desire to poke a hornet’s nest only to end up in the same disastrous state as the Empress.
So this time would be no different. He would simply bury this incident.
Even as he made that decision, Ern Benedict slowly raised his smartphone and sent a text to Nel.
That was one thing; this was another. He had no intention of antagonizing the Death King first, but he couldn’t simply leave a bomb sitting in the middle of the kingdom without any precautions. For now, he would inform the king that the Death King had appeared and mobilize the intelligence department to track his movements.
“Haa.”
He was already drowning in work these days, and now more had been added to his plate. Letting out a long sigh at that fact, Ern Benedict climbed back into the automatic carriage that had brought him here.
Meanwhile, at that very moment, the Death King whom the Magic Sovereign was so warily monitoring was currently enjoying an early dinner with his niece.
“Anyway, that’s what happened……”
Arina, having finished her first day at the academy and returned home, chattered away while eating dinner across from her uncle. Tonight’s meal was simple: grilled mackerel that Arina had bought from the market on her way back from the academy—which had ended early on the first day—along with a light miso soup made with tofu.
“…….”
Kain listened to her in silence, picking up a piece of grilled mackerel with its bones carefully removed and chewing thoughtfully.
‘So that’s how people view absolute beings, huh.’
He had mostly let the lecture go in one ear and out the other, but a few topics had still stuck in his mind. One of them was Magnus’ explanation of absolute beings. It was information normally only accessible once one reached the 8-star transcendent realm, yet the professor had already grasped it. Although Kain had only heard it secondhand rather than witnessing it himself, it seemed that Professor Magnus possessed quite considerable skill.
‘Of course, not everything he said was correct.’
An absolute being was an existence that had transcended humanity. That much was true. Those who had broken past the limits of the stars. In other words, an absolute being’s very body became a star unto itself. The eight stars previously engraved within the body vanished, replaced by a vast ring of circulation that extended outward. While ordinary humans stored external mana inside their bodies to use it, absolute beings could wield external mana infinitely and without limit.
Beings who had stepped beyond humanity—ones who could rightfully be called gods from a human perspective, with no exaggeration.
But they did not know. That the seat of an absolute being was not an end, but merely a starting point.
‘They’ve only just been freed from the shackles of being human.’
Those who had escaped the finite vessel of a human body, with its predetermined limits of growth, and gained the right to grow infinitely strong. That was the true meaning of an absolute being. It was also why their aging slowed and they became partially free from the constraints of lifespan.
Kain knew this, but he deliberately chose not to explain it to Arina. After all, it was something everyone naturally came to understand once they became an absolute being. Moreover, not knowing it was essentially the same as saying one had never possessed the aptitude to reach that realm in the first place. On the contrary, learning this truth and then coveting the seat of an absolute being even more would make it impossible to ever shed one’s human shell. Greed always prevented people from letting go of something.
Well, that wasn’t exactly something Kain—who had been born with a monstrous amount of talent that heaven had accidentally spilled all at once, and who had sailed straight from his first awakening to the seat of an absolute being without encountering any real obstacles—should be saying.
Slurp.
Kain washed down the fishy aftertaste of the grilled mackerel with a sip of the perfectly seasoned, spicy miso soup. Watching him, Arina continued chattering away without pause.
“And then Marily said……”
Yes, even the princess who had once felt awkward when first addressed by name now flowed out of Arina’s mouth quite naturally, as if she had been practicing. That in itself left quite an impression.
She had gone against his intentions? He had used dark magic to manipulate memories, yet she had used those very gaps to deduce what happened that day in an instant. He still wasn’t sure whether she possessed the creativity and quick thinking required of a mage beyond mere memory, but at the very least, he was certain from listening alone that she had the makings of a great magic scholar who could stand tall across the continent.
If that talent were nurtured properly, she might even grow into someone nearly on par with Pride.
‘Looks like I was a bit sloppy after all.’
Perhaps because he rarely moved to hide anything himself. He had usually left the task of erasing traces to his subordinates, so some mistakes must have slipped through. If even a twelve-year-old princess had noticed, then the Magic Sovereign would have picked up on it as well. No matter how brilliant the princess’s mind was, she couldn’t compare to the Magic Sovereign.
It seemed the Elemental Kingdom’s intelligence department would soon begin moving to uncover his identity.
‘Well, does it even matter?’
It wasn’t as if he were dealing with Tugwi, who challenged him to a fight every time they met, or the Empress, who ground her teeth and flew into a frenzy at the mere mention of the Death King. He had never directly clashed with the Magic Sovereign, but according to the information he had gathered, the probability of the man becoming his enemy was extremely low. Among the absolute beings, he was almost the only truly sane one. He was on a completely different level from the other scoundrels who picked fights for no reason.
In fact, one of the reasons Kain had decided to settle down in the Elemental Kingdom was precisely because of the Magic Sovereign’s personality. He had no intention of revealing his identity, but even if it were discovered, perhaps they could resolve things through conversation.
“So.”
Kain set his empty soup bowl down on the table with a clink, cutting off Arina mid-sentence as he spoke.
“Is there anything you want to do or become later?”
Behind his thick glasses, his languid eyes turned toward her. Though he had asked the question, his indifferent expression suggested he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer. To be precise, it was the face of someone who had never intended to open his mouth in the first place but had forced himself to ask after reading in a book that spending time talking with children was important for parenting.
It was practically the level of a half-hearted question thrown out while lying face-down, but perhaps that was enough. The smile on Arina’s face grew even brighter at Kain’s words.
“Hmm. For now, I think my goal is to make lots of friends?”
“Well, that makes sense. Connections are a form of power too, after all. You’ve already won over a princess on the very first day, so if you keep at it, you might even aim higher.”
“……No, I don’t have any grand ambitions like that?”
Arina set her chopsticks down and stared at him with a dumbfounded look.
“Still, that’s just a natural side effect that comes with strength. I don’t intend to meddle in other people’s dreams, but you should at least set one more goal for yourself.”
Once one reached the level of an absolute being, people would come groveling without any effort to build connections. If he visited the Elemental Kingdom without permission right now, wouldn’t the king drop everything and come running barefoot?
“I told you I don’t have any grand dreams like that.”
She had simply wanted to make friends in earnest. Shaking her head at Kain’s words, Arina lifted a bite of rice with her chopsticks and brought it to her mouth.
‘A goal for myself, huh.’
Both Professor Magnus and her uncle kept emphasizing the importance of dreams, which made her thoughts turn serious. She was still young and didn’t know much about the world. But the things she had experienced had forced Arina to grow up quickly, allowing her to take their words to heart.
Well, she still couldn’t think of anything specific she wanted to do, and setting a concrete objective felt too difficult for now. Still, perhaps attending classes at the academy would help her discover what she truly wanted. She felt a baseless certainty about that.
“Um, then how about I work hard to become a great mage like you, Uncle? What do you think?”
“That’s quite an ambitious dream.”
Kain let out a small chuckle at Arina’s words. Setting aside whether or not he was actually a mage, aiming to become an absolute being was such a childish, naïve aspiration. She didn’t know it, but Togun Masao had boldly declared in front of everyone today that he would become an absolute being. Arina had just presented Kain with a goal even more absurd than that boy’s.