Even a Mastermind Has a Story (7)
In my past life, they called me a mad scientist.
I had been trying to save humanity by the most efficient means available, and at the time I could not understand in the slightest why that should have earned me such a slur. It was no different after I was reborn. In the ordinary days I spent with Folton, the person I had once been was fading, little by little.
Now, though, I thought differently.
Looking back, I was not quite like other people. I could not sympathize when someone else was hurt. I could not feel guilt over a sacrifice made for my sake. I could not be grateful for another person's kindness.
I had, without a doubt, been mad.
"Three days."
"...Three days? Since Folton died?"
"Since you last ate anything."
Three days had already passed since I took possession of the laboratory beneath Folton's gaze. I had watched him where he hung, all through the day, and turned his papers over one page at a time, chewing on every line. Hunger was something I had forgotten long ago. I was only letting the hours pass, clinging to research that belonged to a meaningless past.
"I'm not really hungry."
"Keep living like that, and your body will give out."
"I know. If three days have passed, I ought to be able to make another one."
On the day I faced Folton, already gone cold, I had created a spirit. I didn't know why. I had only felt, then, that it was something I had to do. Three days had passed since, so I could create a spirit again. It was no different now.
To bring a new spirit into being, I took the Spirit Stones from the box and set them out, one by one.
"You know what this will do. Why persist?"
"I can't eat anything."
"Is this what humans call a matter of the heart?"
"I wouldn't know."
I do not grieve a death. From the beginning, I had never known how. Even so, the tightness lodged in my chest would not ease. That alone kept stacking higher, wearing me down by degrees — just as Folton, shut quietly away in the laboratory, had come apart a little more with every passing day.
"Spirit Creation."
I reached out and murmured the trigger phrase into the empty air. A moment later the familiar sight began to unfold before my eyes once more. Light spilled from the Spirit Stones, tangled together, and wove itself into a single form.
You have created Spirit of Frenzy, Renat (Supreme-Grade).
Spirit Creation cannot be used for 72 hours.
The Spirit of Frenzy, Renat. What Spirit Creation had yielded was a new Supreme-Grade Spirit — the first I had faced since Arthes. The Supreme-Grade Spirit I had waited for so long had only now appeared, and the feeling it left me with was strangely hard to name.
"I sense mana far from ordinary. This one... is a considerably powerful spirit."
"Came out well. Arthes, can you eat it?"
"As things stand, there should be no difficulty."
"Yeah? Then I'll make the contract now."
The name Spirit of Frenzy grated on me, but it was Supreme-Grade all the same. Surely it would prove useful somewhere. The moment I set my hand against the cage that held the spirit, violet mana surged from Renat and wrapped my arm in an instant. A newborn spirit was reaching, by instinct, for a contract with a human. True to the word frenzy, the violet mana that had seized me began to thrash like something unhinged — and then, as if to swallow it whole, slender chains took shape over the top of it.
"It will be over soon."
"Yeah."
"That aside. How long do you intend to leave that human as he is?"
I lifted my head and met Folton's eyes. They were cold, and empty. Decay must have set in at some point; unlike the first day, a stench that stabbed at the nose was spreading through the room.
"It's fine. I can bear it."
I knew perfectly well that leaving Folton like this was no good thing. Even so, I wanted to keep that sight in my eyes a little longer. Over those eight years, I had grown attached. That much was certain.
Arthes paid my answer no mind at all, and pressed me as if demanding an account.
"I am speaking of propriety. To go on leaving him like that would be an insult."
"......"
"In your eyes, is that human someone who deserves to be insulted?"
All the time I had spent looking at Folton Raynant amounted to eight years, and no more. I could not, from my gaze alone, call him a flawless scholar. And yet there was one thing I knew for certain.
"...As if he ever could be."
Folton had been my colleague. He had celebrated the day I was born with everything he had, and tried to show me every good thing within his reach. To a man like that, I had to offer the greatest respect I could.
"If you do not face it properly, you will never be able to move forward."
"Don't lecture me."
"My. I have overstepped."
"...Fine. I'll clear him away."
He had said that much. Refusing to move would have been a problem of its own. Left with no choice, I reached toward Folton with the hand that wasn't bound. Of course it never reached him. I was too short. It was enough all the same. What was about to happen would be no trouble even if my hand never touched him.
Fwoosh.
The flames Arthes raised swallowed Folton's body. It was the power of the Upper-Grade Spirit he had devoured months ago. A spirit's fire burns hot, yet it never caught on the laboratory. It blazed for Folton alone, bright and violent.
"Far better, is it not."
Burning ash swept past my eyes. Like a flower that blooms and withers in a single moment, the young genius burned himself away and scattered into ash. That pure white, blotting out my vision, was dreadful and beautiful at once.
"...I won't be able to see him anymore."
"No."
"What am I supposed to do from now on?"
"You had a plan, did you not."
A plan? I certainly had. Earn Folton's recognition, enter academia at his side, and become a giant of spiritology who held the whole field in my grip. Before I came of age, I had meant to leave him and raise a laboratory of my own. In the end I would take investment from the world's great fortunes and lay hands on Spirit Stones beyond counting. Folton's death had thrown every part of it off course.
"It was already over."
"Is that so."
From here on, I would have to handle everything alone. Earning money, preparing meals, keeping the house — all of it. What met me first would be nothing but trivial things. But once they stacked, one upon another, I would come to feel a void too vast to bear.
"What do you think I should do?"
"I have said it from the beginning. What I want has always been one thing."
"Do what you wish to do."
What I wanted to do. Even reaching for it now, nothing much came to mind. Revenge for Folton's death, and little more than that.
"Revenge?"
"If revenge is what you want, then that will serve."
"What kind of revenge? And how?"
"Have you decided upon whom?"
Even thinking of revenge only in outline, I couldn't see what I was supposed to do. To begin with, I wasn't sure whom it ought to face. The society that had rejected Folton's paper and doubted its accuracy? The press that had exposed the truth and steered public condemnation toward him? The masses who had torn him down while knowing nothing at all?
I didn't know. All of them were wrong. The people who could not understand a genius, and the world that had shown me no kindness — every last one of them was wrong.
"I don't know. There are too many places I want to be angry at."
"Is it truly that you do not know? I see nothing here worth worrying over."
"What are you saying?"
"If there are many upon whom to take revenge, you need only take it upon every one of them."
In that instant a thought cut through my mind, and my eyes felt suddenly clear.
He was right. If I hated too many people, I had only to overturn humanity itself. If the targets of revenge were many, I had only to rule their world. I had the power for it. I had the mind for it, too.
I am a genius. I was a genius in my past life, and I am a genius now. I will be a genius from here on as well. Whether the world understood, or failed to, did not matter. I only had to beat it into their bodies until even a fool could grasp it.
"...That's a good idea."
A goal took shape as well. The seven Primal Spirit Stones scattered across the whole of Eustonia. I would gather every one of them and, with my own hands, resurrect Creation Spirit Irelion. With that, I would prove to the world that the final research of my brilliant colleague, Folton Raynant, had not been wrong. And with the power of the Creation Spirit thus awakened, I would remake the world into the shape I wanted.
"Is your resolve set?"
"Yes."
What I wanted, where I wanted it.
I would simply reign as a new master over the crowd that refused their creator.