A Lich Moved In
The cheerful man's voice came so abruptly that Alex's gaze dropped straight to the glass marble in his hand.
Twelve years of adventure alongside the Hero's party (though the party itself had never known he was there) had taught him one thing: incidents like this were usually caused by a suspicious object.
And as if to prove the point, the wisps of green smoke—or flame, or whatever it was—that had been swirling inside the marble were gone.
This is kind of ominous….
No. Not kind of. Very.
Things that vanished after you touched them had a way of latching onto the person who touched them, nine times out of ten. Like a curse.
"Huh? My vision just got narrower?"
"I think I've ended up inside this otherworldly human friend's body?"
Just as Alex had predicted, that bright, cheerful voice wasn't coming from the marble anymore. It was coming from inside his own head.
"Well, thank goodness for that! I honestly thought I'd be staring at nothing but sky and trees and grass forever."
"How is it that not a single person passes through here?"
"Animals come by now and then, but they're so skittish they never get close."
Alex, whose body had somehow been restored to working order, sat himself up on the ground and pressed a hand to his forehead. He hadn't even had a moment to celebrate being alive before the headache set in.
It seems I survived because of this guy….
He had no idea what the thing was. Even the word it kept using—otherworld—was bothering him. The fact that it had called him "human," on the other hand, didn't bother him at all. One look was enough to tell it was nothing remotely human.
"What are you?"
"Oh, me? I'm Lee Baek."
"I used to be called Subject 200, but Big Brother said that's not how names work, so I changed it."
"Neither of us had any talent for naming things, so I just dropped the 'Subject' part!"
Nothing about that name boded well.
"So what's the otherworldly human friend's name?"
Otherworld.
He'd heard that word once during the Age of Ruin, back at the Magic Tower Federation.
One of the mages had proposed escaping the continent entirely and evacuating to another world. But no one could prove such a world existed, and no one had the means to get there, so the idea had been buried where it stood.
To think I'd end up confirming the existence of another world like this.
If only he'd agreed with that proposal back then.
Of course, even if ghost-Alex had raised his hand, nobody would have heard a word of it.
But right now, the otherworld could wait. What he needed to understand was this being called "Lee Baek."
I want to go to Leo right now, but….
He couldn't show up hauling a suspicious entity like this along with him.
"What exactly are you?"
"Aw, come on, otherworldly human friend."
"Conversation goes both ways. I answered your question, so now you have to answer mine."
Lee Baek clearly wasn't going to answer anything else without an exchange, so Alex narrowed his eyes slightly and spoke.
"I'm Jayden."
He wasn't stupid enough to hand his real name to something this suspicious, of course.
"That's a lie!"
He was caught immediately.
"It's the truth."
Alex answered shamelessly anyway.
"Nope."
"I can literally feel you lying right now."
"See? I am three hundred!"
And in that very instant, Alex could feel with absolute certainty that Lee Baek's statement was false.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
It seemed that when this suspicious entity—Lee Baek—had entered his body, some kind of lie-detecting function had come along with the package, working in both directions.
"…It's Alex."
"Oh! That one was true! Nice to meet you, Alex!"
"So what are you?"
"I'm a lich."
"And the thing in your hand is my life vessel."
"…A lich?"
Alex's face went rigid.
A lich.
A being born when a black mage at the very pinnacle of their art transfigured themselves into a monster in pursuit of an even higher plane of existence. An inherently dangerous creature.
And a lich severed its own soul and sealed it inside something like a glass marble—a life vessel—then hid the vessel away in a secure location, wrapped in every protective and offensive spell it knew.
Because as long as the life vessel remained intact, a lich could always trade bodies and rise again.
A lich that came back no matter how many times you killed it had been one of the Hero's most formidable enemies in the Age of Ruin—which meant it had been Alex's enemy too.
"A… a lich, you say?"
"Yep!"
"Ever seen one before?"
Whether it simply failed to notice Alex's voice cracking, Lee Baek answered breezily.
"A lich is—"
Alex's gaze dropped to the life vessel clutched in his hand.
"—inside my body right now…."
His heart began to pound.
But the hardened nerves and cold judgment he'd forged in the "future," running with the Hero's party, brought his thoughts to a swift conclusion.
"I should die."
Alex's green eyes glinted with something unsettling.
"I should die before I become an obstacle on Leo's path."
Alex believed he was being perfectly level-headed. He was not even slightly level-headed.
"Whoa—"
"Hey, human friend? Alex? Calm down. Calm down!"
Lee Baek hurried to soothe him, reacting as though he'd stepped on some deep-buried trauma.
"I'm not that bad a lich, honestly."
Alex ground his teeth.
"Ha! Not a bad lich? I've never once met something that called itself 'not bad' and didn't stab me in the back."
The low, rough voice made his anger plain.
Alex had lived in an era where black magic was evil, and monsters and demons were things you killed on sight.
Those same monsters and demons had put Leo and his friends through absolute hell, too.
And now one of them is inside me.
The mere thought that a lich might puppet his body into attacking Leo was enough to make Alex want to die on the spot.
Seeing his state, Lee Baek offered an explanation.
"A bunch of lunatics in my world used to run experiments on people. I was subject number two hundred."
At the sight of Lee Baek telling the truth, Alex's expression—that of a man ready to drop dead on the spot—loosened, if only a little.
Even in the Age of Ruin, there had been those who abducted people for experimentation. Remembering the wretched state of the humans and demihumans he'd seen caged in those laboratories, Lee Baek had been nothing more than a victim.
"Of course, becoming a lich was my own choice!"
…Or maybe not.
Alex's face hardened again.
Lee Baek hurried to add:
"No, wait—I was trying to get revenge, but there were just too many of them! Killing them all with a human body was impossible!"
"So I became a lich."
"But I never killed a single good person! Not one!"
Feeling the truth of it through his soul, Alex felt a wave of revulsion—and yet, on some level, he understood.
Even in the Age of Ruin, there had been people willing to make irreversible choices for the sake of avenging family, lovers, friends.
I would have, too.
Given the chance, Alex would have done the same—demons, monsters, it didn't matter. He would have given up his own soul, become a tool if that was what it took, if it meant helping Leo.
"Besides, you're alive thanks to me coming into your body."
"What?"
"The spell that killed the wolf and healed you."
At Lee Baek's words, Alex remembered the green fire that had consumed not just the wolf but his own blood, and the magic that had closed every wound on his body.
"I'd layered all sorts of spells on the life vessel to protect it."
"When my soul transferred into your body, those spells mistook you for the protected target—in other words, the life vessel—and triggered."
"So it was basically: die to the wolf versus share a body with a lich's soul!"
"Which would you pick?"
"Neither."
Alex answered with a look of pure disgust.
…Still, forced to choose, it would be the latter.
Because I have to be alive to see Leo.
The knowledge that Lee Baek had saved his life, and that Lee Baek apparently wasn't an evil lich, did soften Alex's hostility considerably.
"Well, can't help it if you hate it."
Lee Baek chuckled at the look on Alex's face.
"All you have to do is move me back into the life vessel."
At the offer—so readily given, so obligingly packing up to leave—Alex decided that this really wasn't such a bad lich after all.
"Okay, transferring my soul back into the marble… huh?"
"…!"
Then it happened.
The glass marble in Alex's hand began to crumble into powder and vanish.
Before a startled Alex and Lee Baek could attempt anything, Alex's hand was completely empty.
"…It's gone?"
"…Unbelievable."
The vessel meant to hold the soul of Lee Baek the lich had simply ceased to exist.
Alex asked, his voice tight with anxiety.
"Can't you remake it with magic?"
"Hmmmm."
"Nope."
"Ugh. None of my other spells are working either."
Lee Baek answered with complete honesty.
Admittedly, he had been suspiciously honest from the very start.
"Probably because I'm inside your body, Alex?"
Alex clutched his head in both hands.
"So I'm just supposed to live like this? Sharing one body with a lich?"
Thoughts raced through his mind in a panicked flood.
He'd made it back to the past. He'd survived the wolf. All that remained was to make Leo happy—and now there was a lich living in his skull.
The moment the Solenium Church found out, he'd be attacked and killed without question.
And worse….
Leo might end up paying for the sin of having an uncle like him.
No. Absolutely not!
He'd survived, made it all the way back to the past, only to be hunted by the Solenium Church now.
Where Alex was spiraling, Lee Baek—despite having just been condemned to live inside another man's body—looked less than at ease. He looked downright delighted.
"Ooh. An otherworld life, and I didn't even get hit by a truck for it."
"This could be fun!"
After all, for a lich like Lee Baek, whose soul would never perish and who would live for eternity, the few short decades of a human's span were less than the blink of an eye.
"And when you die, I'll take good care of the body."
"Looking forward to it, Alex!"
Alex—somehow now doomed to lose his very body after death—felt the world go dark before his eyes.
* * *
"…I'll deal with it later. Let's just get back for now."
Alex stopped thinking.
A lich who couldn't use magic couldn't possibly harm Leo, so for the moment, he could breathe easy.
If I dig through my memories of the future….
Maybe he'd find a way to drive this lich out of his body.
So for now, he decided to return to the village.
In truth, he'd been aching to see Leo—his nephew—since the moment he woke, barely able to hold himself back.
Only when he laid eyes on Leo alive and whole would going back in time feel real.
"Oh!"
But first, he needed to prepare.
He had to wash the blood off his clothes and his body so that neither Leo nor the villagers would worry.
If he strolled back into town looking like he'd hemorrhaged half his blood away, it would cause nothing short of an uproar.
Fortunately, the green flames had burned away every trace of the blood that had pooled where the wolf attacked him—not a single drop remained—so there was no mess to clean up.
He had no idea what kind of spell it was, but it was certainly fitting for black magic.
Alex hauled himself unsteadily to his feet and walked toward a nearby stream.
"Why are you staggering?"
"Haven't walked in a while."
For twelve years as a ghost, he'd flown everywhere he went, so using a physical body felt strangely awkward.
But that, too, passed quickly.
When he reached the stream, Alex washed the clothes he wore and scrubbed the crusted blood from his skin.
"Ack! That's cold!"
"…?"
"Wait. Did I just say that's cold?"
"Holy crap! I haven't felt a single sensation like this since I became a lich!"
"I guess I can feel everything you feel, Alex!"
"Then… can I taste things too?"
"We have to eat something good! Meat! Let's eat meat, Alex!"
Just as Lee Baek the lich—nothing but bare bones, bereft of all sensation—was marveling, Alex, who had lived as a ghost, found the touch and chill of the water foreign and wondrous after so long.
But there would be time for such musings later. Seeing his nephew Leo came first.
Clothes cleaned, Alex set off in the direction of the village.
His steps, calm at first, quickened little by little—until at some point he was running outright.
"Leo!!"
Shouting the name of his beloved nephew—who was alive in this world—Alex ran with everything he had.