The Boy Who Became Shylaz
There once was a boy.
He was born into a modest but comfortable family in an age of chaos, wanting for nothing that truly mattered.
But—
"Senecta! Where are you!"
His father was a devil.
His father's name was Shylaz Bisavar. A necromancer — precisely the kind of creature the world sneered at and called a corpse-handler.
When the boy was barely three years old, his father declared it would be better for him to open his Core early, and forcibly performed the Core implantation surgery on the child's tiny heart.
But Shylaz's skills were wretched, and a Core implantation was an overwhelming burden for a body so small. The boy's Core was ruined from the start, and he was condemned to spend his entire life wracked by pain radiating from his heart.
The side effects were horrific. A boy of only three became covered in wrinkles like an old man, his flesh swelling until it split. Inflammation and tumors burst out across his body, and twice every hour he vomited blood.
On the faces of the maids who had once kindly bathed him, an involuntary expression crept in — the look of pure revulsion, as if at something repulsive.
His mother wept for a long, long time, holding the boy the surgery had twisted into a monster. But Shylaz, his own father — the one responsible — only beat him, sneering that his son couldn't even endure this much.
The boy's father.
Shylaz Bisavar was a 'dog'.
He violated the mansion's servants several times a day — regardless of sex, regardless of species — and did not even spare his own family. His daughter, four years older than the boy, chose death by her own hand.
He bought up slaves and war orphans without restraint, used their bodies at will, and when they grew weak, he impaled them on skewers and let them die.
The boy's father had a hobby of drinking wine while watching the slaves die in agony. He was a devil.
A childhood like hell itself.
At ten years old, the boy was still suffering from the aftermath of his father's failed Core. He thrashed and fought to escape the pain in his heart. He devoured every black magic text in the mansion, and hunted down and read the ones he couldn't find on his own.
One conviction drove all his effort: unlock the secrets of the Core, and escape this agonizing torment.
Some days, the corpse-handler lurking in the shadows would attend academic conferences himself, hungry for knowledge.
And then, to that boy—
"What an interesting theory."
One person extended a hand.
"I'll provide the funds. Conduct your research however you please."
With Shylaz squandering the family fortune on wine and women, a man offering to fund the boy's research was nothing short of a savior.
Dodging his father's eyes, the boy converted a warehouse into a laboratory and threw himself into countless experiments on human bodies. There were already corpses rotting in abundance within the family estates, and no shortage of rare species and monsters that had fallen victim to his father's 'play'.
Five more years passed like that. On the boy's fifteenth birthday—
He completed the forbidden black magic.
The technique's name was Predation.
He had drawn his inspiration from monsters that shed their skins and changed their forms. By consuming another's blood, flesh, and bones, then reassembling them within his own body through black magic, he could shed himself and be reborn from the exact same components as what he had devoured.
"Where are you! My son Senecta! Today is your birthday — I shall drink with you myself!"
Drunk and swaying from midday onward, his father Shylaz came looking for him, smashing open the door of the boy's laboratory in the converted warehouse.
"What is this! What is it!"
The boy's expression went cold.
He had begged the servants, begged them, to keep this laboratory a secret. And this was how they betrayed him.
"Answer me, Senecta! What have you been hiding in here? What have you been doing?"
The boy smiled.
"Father."
"Wh-what?"
"Thank you for the meal."
From that day on, the boy became Shylaz.
"……"
He walked the halls of the mansion, and no one recognized him. Not the maids who had bathed his body — not even his mother.
"Master. The meal is prepared."
The maid spoke with careful formality. When the boy turned his gaze on her, she reflexively let out a 'hyeek!', threw both hands over her head, and trembled all over.
Just how many beatings had it taken to break her like that?
The boy extended a gentle hand toward her. Tears welling in her eyes, the young maid soon lifted her head to look at him.
Smack!
And the boy slapped the maid across the cheek with all his strength.
"Worthless thing. Why did you flinch?"
"F-forgive me!"
He could not be discovered.
"Master. What shall we do about this afternoon's execution?"
"Proceed without delay."
If it ever came to light that a son had murdered his own father, the family would collapse.
"Honey — where is our son Senecta?"
"Forget him."
The boy treated those around him with the same ruthlessness as before.
Partly, of course, to protect his identity.
But there was rage, too.
Even Predation could not touch the heart or the brain. He could reproduce his nails and the blotches on his skin perfectly, but thanks to his ruined Core, the pain remained.
If I have become Shylaz, there is no reason those who betrayed me should be freed from suffering.
Why should I be the only one in pain?
The boy was more faithful to the role of Shylaz than anyone. Day by day, Shylaz's atrocities spread wider across the world.
"That man is Shylaz?"
"…The slaughterer."
"I hear he kills slaves and orphans for his experiments."
"Dreadful."
At banquets, the nobles traded tales of the boy's crimes.
Shylaz. Shylaz. Shylaz. Shylaz.
It felt good, hearing people curse and gnaw at his father's name.
Yes. More.
Curse him harder.
More people must learn of my father's sins than ever have before.
The boy flaunted his research and his experiments on corpses. And in time, he devised a means of managing his ruined Core.
The Blood Core.
Unlike an ordinary Core, anyone could perform the implantation, and anyone could receive it — but it carried countless handicaps, and it shortened the caster's lifespan.
Yet it was specialized for hemomancy black magic, and its output was exceptional.
"A technique truly worthy of becoming a foundation."
He met again, after decades, the man who had funded him since boyhood — the man still bankrolling him even now. The man, too, had not aged a single day.
"Won't you join hands with me? For the sake of this world's truth."
The boy was deeply moved by the man's words.
Everything the man spoke of was the world the boy had always wanted. He believed it was worth staking his life on.
And so the man and the boy joined hands.
The Blood Sky Cult was born.
In the cult's name, Shylaz committed atrocities and experiments without number.
Until this damnable pain in his heart finally ended — so that more and more people would gnaw at the name of Shylaz — and so that he could reach the truth.
And as Shylaz's body drifted toward old age, the boy established a new rule for the Bisavar family.
"The head of House Bisavar shall be Shylaz Bisavar alone."
"Should the head die, the heir who becomes the next head shall inherit the name of Shylaz."
This, of course, was the device for keeping the name Shylaz Bisavar alive.
The boy sired many sons, and ate the one in the best condition, becoming Shylaz once more.
Son, grandson, and his descendants' descendants after that.
The boy — and Shylaz Bisavar — continued without end.
Immortality.
And the only one in the world who knew all of it was the boy himself.
At some point, without even realizing it—
"Kill them all."
"Bring in the next corpse."
The father he had so despised. Shylaz Bisavar.
He was becoming the man himself.
So the long ages flowed on, until came the era of necromancers and priests. Shylaz Bisavar the 'Sixth' took up his post as Professor of Hemomancy at Kizen.
The times had changed. The image of a horrifying experimenter had transmuted into the renown of a great lineage of hemomancers.
"What I need as sacrifices are hearts and Cores — young ones, brimming with vitality."
To offer up the finest hearts as sacrifices.
To launch the 'Apostle Resurrection Project' he had awaited for so many long years.
He served at Kizen for twenty years.
And just as he was finally about to begin his plan to sacrifice six hundred first-years, Kizen abruptly dispatched Shylaz on a mission to disable a Blood Ring.
It was an unforeseen development, but Shylaz moved with lightning agility. He devoured the body of 'Walter Hahn', the successor professor he himself had recommended, and returned to Kizen.
That brat Simon got in his way here and there, but with centuries of accumulated experience and Blood Sky Cult secrets even Nephthys knew nothing of, he slipped free.
And so, in the very moment his long-cherished desire was finally coming to light—
"I'm not much for the binary idea of good and evil."
The one who came to stop him at the last was that same Simon Polentia who had obstructed him at every single turn. And the boy carried even the power of a Legion Commander.
"You are the most horrific evil on this continent, Shylaz Bisavar."
Shylaz answered with a grin.
"I think so too."
Simon pressed his lips into a flat line and stared at Shylaz in silence.
He looked pleased.
Just how twisted could a man be inside? To someone that evil, did words like these actually register as a compliment?
But setting all that aside — something fundamental in that man had gone crooked, somewhere deep.
'I think so too,' he says.
Simon shut his eyes tight, then looked at Shylaz again.
"You must have worn through bodies I can't even imagine, across spans of time I can't conceive."
"…?"
"I'm not speaking to that shell."
Simon's eyes went wide.
"I'm speaking to you. Have you even forgotten how a human talks to another human, properly? Wraith."
At that single sentence from Simon, a shudder rose from the deepest part of Shylaz's chest.
'Insight that pierces to the essence of all things. Remarkable.'
It had been a long time since his heart had lurched like this. He let his arms hang loose at his sides.
"By the way — I still haven't heard your answer to my proposal, Simon Polentia."
"I refuse."
Simon said it as though he were chewing the word up and spitting it out, pushing Herseba forward.
"Whatever it takes, I will stop you."
"I see."
Shylaz spread both arms wide, his face gone cold as ice.
"Then die here."
Blood Stone Castle
GRUUUUMMMBLLLLE!
Behind Shylaz, a castle began to rise from the earth — a blood-red ore like gleaming rubies, built entirely of blood.
"I'll tear you apart so thoroughly that not even a scrap of corpse will remain to be found."
Black magic that demanded preparation time.
Simon knew, in his bones, that the moment that castle was complete — it was over.
"Herseba! It has to be the 3rd Authority, right now! Please!"
[Oh, come OOOON!]
She shook her body as though she herself were in torment.
[I don't even know if I can do this anymore!]
SHWAAAAAAA—!
Golden sand came pouring out of her body, and Simon moved the wand to control it.
'That sand is no ordinary thing.'
'I have to finish the dungeon before his castle is complete!'
The two men glared at each other as they readied their black magic. Before long, Shylaz's Blood Stone Castle was complete — and the entire surroundings turned a ghastly crimson.
A spell of ultra-massacre, evaporating all blood within a one-league radius to annihilate every living thing.
And then—
SHWAAAAAAA!
Herseba's vast golden sands spread out across the area, swallowing the bodies of Simon and Shylaz both.
World of Sand
As the Blood Stone Castle scattered its blood-red radiance in every direction, the bodies of the two men sank away into the sand.