Modified Habit Corps Captain Lianna (1)
A room swallowed whole by darkness.
In a place where opening or closing one's eyes made no difference at all, a man sat alone. Legs crossed in his chair, he drummed his fingers against the armrest without pause.
Ordinarily, that was the sort of thing people did when they were restless. But right now, the man was the opposite—swollen with anticipation. On any other day he sat as still as a statue; today he was twitching not one finger but two. There was even a kind of rhythm to it. Anyone who knew him would have said he looked almost as if he were dancing.
The soft tapping went on for a while, then cut off without warning.
"Butler."
The voice carried a clear edge of displeasure. Unlike a moment before, he was holding anger down by force. The butler, who knew that better than anyone, hurried to his side.
"What is it, my lord?"
"Kbalt is dead."
News no one had expected. The butler fought not to let the shock show on his face.
"You mean all several thousand of the Kbalts are dead?"
"Yes. Wiped out cleanly."
"How could that even…"
It was absurd. To erase every Kbalt at once required two extremely difficult conditions to be met together: holy power pure enough to rival a pope's, and an unmatched mastery of aura. Without either one, Kbalt was harder to kill than any other demon. Who on earth could have exterminated him?
Someone had done what even the highest holy knights and inquisitors of the present age could not.
"The excommunicated Saintess did it," the man said, supplying the answer to his still-reeling butler. "The former Hero from another world told her the weakness, but she was the one who carried it out."
"I see… Forgive me."
"Forget it. I didn't expect that silver Hero to cross over either."
Making no effort to hide his foul mood, the man sank into thought. For the butler, the silence that followed was like sitting on a bed of nails.
"We're changing the top priority," the man said abruptly after a long stretch of silence. "Eliminate the former Hero from the other world."
"Understood."
The butler bowed deeply and withdrew from the room.
This has gotten troublesome.
A fully awakened former Hero from another world was not an opponent one could take lightly. Even throwing demons and monsters at him in droves would not be enough to put him down. Some clever scheme would be necessary.
Without hesitation, the butler set off toward his own quarters, turning the problem over in his mind the entire way. If he was going to recover the honor lost with Kbalt's defeat, this time he absolutely had to succeed.
Three days had already passed since we dealt with the Kbalt possessing Liam. Fortunately, unlike some religious figure, Kbalt had not risen again on the third day. I truly never had to look at that face again. Relief stirred like a soft breeze in a corner of my heart. If you cranked the feeling of a weight lifting off your chest all the way up, it would probably feel something like this. I was genuinely glad to have parted ways with that gloomy demon for good.
That said, the clean feeling and my actual situation were two different things. I was stuck in a corner of my room, forced to rest. The culprit was the holy power I had used to drive Kbalt out. I was happy the Goddess had answered me—but the problem was that I was still an excommunicated woman. To me as I was now, holy power was poison. More precisely, using it myself was hideously bad for my body. As a result, my right arm was still stained an ugly red. The unsightly look was a minor side effect. The real issue was that it hurt like hell—exactly the same as when Sun-bask siphoned my holy power to use in my place. Without Eluke's care, I might have made a pathetic spectacle of myself, tears leaking out from the agony.
"It isn't improving," Eluke said, carefully examining my right arm as I lay there. "If anything, it seems to be getting worse."
"Holy spells won't do anything either, I take it?"
"They might even make it worse. We must be careful."
Holy power was ideal for healing, of course—just not for me. If even a pope couldn't fix it, the Church's priests were unlikely to be any help.
"We should look for another solution."
Should I dig through my knowledge of Apolis Tales? Moments like this always made me resent not being a hardcore veteran. Honestly, living in this world itself was satisfying enough. The place I had come from had been a two-pyeong hell for me. I never wanted to go back. At first I hadn't adjusted, but now I wanted to bury my bones here, where the Goddess was. And yet the reason I still felt a pang of regret was, well, regret. If I had brought a broader store of knowledge with me, wouldn't body and mind both be more comfortable than they were now? Of course, this was a world before the main story even started, so it might not have meant much anyway. But having something to blame felt good, so I decided to keep feeling wronged about it.
"Clitia, does it hurt a lot?"
While I was briefly lost in idle thoughts, the blonde head beside Eluke tightly clasped my right hand. A queasy sensation crawled up my arm and raised goosebumps.
"Let go."
I shook the hand off coldly, but my counterpart paid no mind and reached out with both arms to grab it again. I hadn't wanted to scold anyone, but it looked like I needed to issue a serious warning around here.
"Don't you think you're sticking a little too close after ending up like that?"
I locked eyes with the walking headache who now wore the exact same face as mine. Soft words never got through, so I deliberately made my tone as frosty as I could.
"Liam, cut it out. And stop sneaking touches."
Honestly, who needed enemies with this one around? Our former Hero had changed only in appearance; the personality was intact. Even now, my words bounced right off.
"You're so kind…"
Instead, a look of pure emotion crossed that face, and the smiling only got brighter—a mischievous expression that stood in stark contrast to Eluke right beside us.
"What are you so happy about?"
"Back in the Hero party days, you always scowled the second you saw me. Compared to then, we've gotten so much closer. It makes me happy."
"……"
At this point, even open rejection seemed useless. I was almost afraid to try hurling real insults—what if that only made things worse?
How was I supposed to make this one behave? This was a human no ordinary method could rein in. I had absolutely no idea where to start.
"Clitia, please don't be too hard," Eluke said quietly, a faint smile on her lips as she watched Liam still grinning away. "Compared to being a half-and-half undead, being a 'different-color version Clitia undead' now is better, is it not?"
"Who said it was bad? I just wish you'd calm down a little, like her."
That eternally frivolous personality had always grated on me—original form or current one. Even the awakened version from another world acted more or less the same, so it was probably an incurable nature.
"Like me, you say. Then there is an excellent method."
"What is it?"
Eluke smiled sweetly and pointed at herself.
"You already know, do you not? To make someone like me, there is only that."
I had almost taken the bait for a second. I mentally slapped myself.
"You stay out of this too."
"Understood."
Eluke left me with a quiet suggestion to give it serious thought, then fell silent. Even that serene pope was not entirely reliable in every respect.
In the end, I decided to handle Liam the way I always had during the Hero party days. I had plenty of experience already. It would work out somehow.
"Liam."
"What?"
"From now on, drop the formal speech."
An extremely simple behavioral correction. A stopgap, but not a bad one.
"Got it."
Liam answered like a well-behaved child and nodded hard.
"You hated hearing the old voice, right? I'll ask Remiraen to change it."
"That's not…"
I had wondered why the sudden obedience—turns out my words had been twisted into whatever conclusion suited best. I tried explaining a few more times, but nothing stuck.
"If anything else bothers you, just say so. I'll fix all of it."
It was not exactly welcome, but the attitude of trying to correct the problems was something I could appreciate. At the very least, it was a clear improvement over the old delinquent days.
"It is good to see," Eluke said, looking just as pleased as I felt. "At this rate, has the heart not become rather similar to our Liam's?"
In terms of mindset, yes. The appearance, on the other hand, seemed destined to walk a permanently different path. The other world's Liam had reacted as if unable to understand why this Liam was so happy about it. I had worried a four-Clitia former Hero party might form, so this was a relief. From here on, I just hoped nothing else wearing my face would keep multiplying. There were already far too many "Clitias" in the Clitia Volunteer Corps village.
"Ah, looks like they brought it."
Still beaming, Liam suddenly stood and threw the door open. A group filed in, a red coffin balanced on their shoulders. Every last one of them was dressed in pink nun habits—cut off below the knee to someone's taste, with holes punched to emphasize the cleavage. Even without that, freely remodeling a nun's habit was sacrilege enough to sour my mood. Their faces were worse.
"Liam, throw all of them out."
"No way. How am I supposed to throw away kids who have your face?"
"I'm going to lose it."
I could not stand looking at them. The true identity of this suspicious Modified Habit Corps was the vampire Clitia corpses that had swarmed us before. Corpse Locusts were still parasitizing them from the inside, of course. They were no longer death knights, but they were still playing the role of locust captains just fine.
"Good work. Leave it and go."
At Liam's word, the pretty corpses set the coffin down and filed back out in unison.
"Well?"
For reasons unknown, Liam planted both hands on hips in a triumphant pose. If that had been the original face, I would have wanted to punch the jaw on the spot—but doing it with my face somehow made it fine. I even thought it was cute. I was losing my mind. I was finally learning just how much outer appearance mattered.
"Clitia, this village doesn't run without me anymore."
"So what."
"Tell me I did good again."
"…You did good."
Had the charm of doing good deeds finally sunk in, however late? Every day now, Liam came looking for me just to demand praise.
"Keep it up like that. Don't go crooked again."
It was annoying, but the fact that Liam had become diligent was real. Just as claimed, without Liam the Clitia Volunteer Corps village would not function. The ongoing village expansion and wilderness reclamation were all handled by Liam's corpse troops—inexhaustible laborers with infinite stamina. After passing through Remiraen's hands, they did not even smell, and in a mere three days they had become proper village workers. Looking like me was a problem, but the villagers, Dwain included, were satisfied. The reason was simply that they looked exactly like their guardian Saintess. How on earth had things gotten to this point? At this rate we were headed straight for 1 Household 1 Clitia.
"Shall we open it now?"
Still drunk on praise, Liam tapped the red coffin. I nodded for the go-ahead, and the lid came off at once.
"……"
Inside lay a vampire bound in ropes of holy power. An elderly grandmother vampire with slightly wrinkled, pale skin.
"Lirasia. Have you reflected?"
The moment I removed the blindfold covering her eyes, Lirasia thrashed violently.
"How old do you think I am, treating me like a child?"
"You said you were twenty."
"You already figured it out and you're still pretending you don't know?"
Judging by the way that mouth kept running, there had been zero repentance.
"This is really too much."
"You're the one who's too much."
I looked down at Lirasia with cold eyes. This ancient vampire of several thousand years had committed a very serious offense.
"You said you'd tell me what happened the day our Hero party lost to the Demon King."
"……"
"And now you claim you don't know? Are you joking?"
The promise Lirasia had made me had been a lie to stay alive. On top of that, she had tried to sneak away and gotten caught.
"So I said I was sorry. What's the problem?"
Apparently still failing to grasp the situation, she kept resisting to the end. I had endured enough. Time to decide.
"Liam."
At my word, Liam gathered venomous energy in one hand. A thick-bodied locust took shape.
"That… you're going to control me however you like?"
"You think it'll end with just that?"
I took the Corpse Locust and set it on my palm.
"I'm going to make you a member of the Modified Habit Corps."
"……"
Stripped of free will, turned into a Clitia in appearance, and forced to serve the village for life. Even I had to admit it was a terrifying sentence.
"Prove your value. Right now."
I slowly brought the obedient Corpse Locust on my hand toward Lirasia's mouth. The closer it got, the whiter her face became. Terrified, Lirasia thrashed against her bonds and finally shouted.
"I'm close with an elf who might know what happened that day!"
An elf. Someone came to mind for some reason.
"A mutant elf named Euris—lived as long as I have! I'll put you in touch!"
I considered it, then set the Corpse Locust down by Lirasia's head.
"I'll let it slide this time."
If it was my master's friend, I could overlook things once. Next time, of course, there would be no exceptions.
"Be careful from now on."
Lirasia stared in horror as the Corpse Locust by her head inched closer.
"Close it."
Liam shut the coffin lid again. We ignored the screams coming from inside.
"Will you go to meet Euris?"
"That's the plan."
It was time I paid my master a visit after so long.