Chapter 164: Bounty Hunter 3
Chapter 164: Bounty Hunter 3
I swallowed my mounting irritation and studied the three incarnations.
All three kept stealing glances at each other, trying to gauge whether I'd tolerate them brawling in front of me the way they'd been going at it before.
The eldest of the group, an old man, spoke first.
"Ahem. Greetings, Constellation. I hail from the Southern Continent—"
He looked exactly like a shaman out of some old Western, unmistakably Southern Continent stock.
The woman covered head to toe in tattoos and the girl made of liquid were both from the Western Continent.
Their purpose here was obvious: they wanted something from the storage room.
No one from the Eastern or Northern Continents had shown up. Were they keeping their distance out of deference to the Tyrant and the Sword?
I couldn't hold three separate conversations at once, so the two women introduced themselves and were escorted to another room, surrounded by a bristling escort of beastkin guards.
"To the matter at hand. My Constellation, the Solitary Kite Enduring Wind and Rain, wishes to propose a trade."
The old man resumed speaking once he'd confirmed the women were out of earshot.
Under normal circumstances I'd have invited him inside, offered him a seat at the table, poured him some tea. But the damage to my Origin had sharpened my temper, and I had no patience for pleasantries.
The old man remained at the door, polite.
What his shaman Constellation from the Southern Continent wanted was the beast-bone necklace I'd tossed into storage.
I don't even wear jeweled necklaces. As if I'd ever put on a bone necklace the length of my hand.
I'd assumed it was some hideous fashion piece, but he explained it was closer to a luck-invoking talisman.
"So. If I hand over this Ashen Wind Fang, what can you offer me in return?"
"Regrettably, we do not know what the Dream Demon might desire, so—"
The old man bared his yellowed teeth in a grin and drew something from inside his robes.
A scroll of antique elegance, utterly at odds with his gaudy, threadbare attire.
Soft leather. That was a first—I'd never seen a leather scroll before.
The list inside catalogued an array of items. Rare furniture carved from limited-edition Southern Continent timber. Ornaments like dreamcatchers that blended sorcery and magic, supposedly useful to a Dream Demon. Even a contract offering to dispatch one of his own shamans to Lee Ha-rin's research lab.
Not that I'd accept any of it.
"Plenty of intriguing things here. But didn't I already make it clear? I don't conduct business through gifts."
Even under my knife-edged tone, the old man chuckled amiably.
Then he produced something else from his robes.
Not bone and feathers this time—a dreamcatcher adorned with gems and woven with gold thread.
His eyes went glassy, and he spoke again, slower now. Far clearer and more distinct than before.
"Naturally, I am well aware. What I seek is priority in trade. Should the one who claims the storage room fail to emerge, or should you acquire another rare item as payment for healing, this is merely a bribe—to ensure you remember this old man."
"In that case, fine. What do I do with this?"
"Give it to your incarnation. She'll know how to put it to use."
His pupils, solid black without any white, flickered several times before his gaze clouded over again.
So he was a shaman after all—he'd descended and spoken through the old man directly.
Whether the old man had known the Descent was coming or not, he dipped his head in a deep bow and left.
I tossed the dreamcatcher—a little too large for a pocket—and the leather scroll into the back of my quarters and waited. The tattooed woman approached from the next room.
The beastkin guards must have been sending them in one by one.
The second visitor told roughly the same story. At least none of them were clueless enough to press me for a trade outright. The logic went like this: they'd sent rare items under the pretense of covering healing costs, which technically made them not gifts, and therefore trading was permissible.
No telling when items might overlap, or whose incarnation might get injured next. So the presents were meant to stamp their faces onto my memory.
The third was different.
"Huh. You're..."
"Yes—I am a spirit body."
The girl before me looked like a water spirit. I don't mean that as some greasy compliment. She was literally made of water.
By now, curiosity had overtaken my irritation. I'd seen beast-eared people, elves, werewolves—but a species this outlandish was a first.
"My Constellation wishes for the same thing."
What the old man had wanted was an ornament with shamanistic significance. What the tattooed woman had wanted were the plants and dyes in storage. This spirit-girl and her Constellation, by contrast, freely admitted they were only here to leave a mark on my memory via the stored items. She added that her Constellation was a priest-class of the water affinity—flawless in physical healing, but incapable of mending souls.
Come to think of it, the Endlessly Flowing Stream was the first to reach out to me specifically for healing.
'What does a priest even have to do with a spirit, anyway?'
A fantasy-world priest who served a water goddess. The mainstream religion had revolved around a water goddess who healed physical wounds—until a Demon King of plague and famine rose, and the faith was annihilated before it could even put up a fight.
The more I heard, the less sense it made. What possible connection was there between a priest who could mend severed limbs and shattered bones, and a girl made entirely of water?
"And... I have a personal request."
The water-formed face rippled and shifted. Not colored like a game sprite—truly transparent water. Hard to read.
"Is it possible... could I be healed as well?"
I couldn't make out her expression, but I could feel her emotions. Her voice was bright and clear, her demeanor cheerful, yet what a Dream Demon's instincts picked up was bottomless despair. Like a non-swimmer being dragged into the deep ocean—she'd thrown out the question mechanically, without a shred of real hope.
"Healed? Healed of what?"
Instead of answering, she extended a slender wrist.
Fine. If she wanted to communicate through actions rather than words, I'd play along. I gathered magic power into my hand and took her wrist.
What I felt was a staggering current of magic.
"...?"
"What the hell is wrong with your Origin?"
An Origin is supposed to huddle deep within, detectable only if you plunge into the unconscious mind. Yet the moment I simply held her wrist, hers blazed its presence, impossible to miss.
"You know the cause?!"
A spark doused in oil. A balloon hooked to a mechanical pump. I could feel her paltry hope swelling, inflating.
※
The Western Continent's priest Constellation, Endlessly Flowing Stream. And her incarnation, Ellis.
Her name was the Western Continent equivalent of something stodgy and unremarkable—the local version of being named Mary or Jane. Yet the girl who bore that common name possessed genius-level talent. Talent so renowned that even my beastkin guards knew who she was.
"You already knew about her?"
As I led Ellis toward an empty bed in the Healing Building, the guards flocked around us in protective formation. One of them, the chatty type, spoke up.
"Yes. She caused quite a stir at the Academy a few years back. That's why I put her last in the queue. It felt like she had something important to discuss..."
Just as Kim Ha-eun had a gift for handling Dream Demon magic, Ellis had a gift for water magic. Extraordinary talent, a loving family, and a Constellation as gentle as you'd expect from a priest. She'd assumed her life as an incarnation would be the envy of all.
Instead, her prodigious talent had turned on her like a curse.
"So it's possible to be devoured by your own talent."
"Yes, well... the Academy practically exploded over it at the time."
The beastkin guard's pointed ear twitched as she continued. Constellations whose names I'd never even heard had flocked to gawk, spamming the Academy's internal channels with undisciplined messages until the whole place looked like an unmoderated chat room.
A situation where talent was so overwhelming the body couldn't endure it.
Normal incarnations might have been startled. The Constellations of this world would have scoffed and dismissed it as impossible. This was an artificial world built for souls overflowing with talent. Our bodies, naturally, were vessels crafted by the Creator.
And even those vessels couldn't contain her.
Water magic, surging in reverse from somewhere deep within her soul. Instead of magic converging through the body into the soul, the magic had gathered on its own and begun devouring the body itself.
The void that once held only her Origin had filled to bursting. Magic had crammed the soul to its breaking point, then kept flooding backward until it consumed the flesh.
The result was a body of liquid. More precisely, a body formed from liquefied magic.
Put simply, she was a mass of magic power with a will.
If the magic I handled was a spool of thread, and the magic Kim Ha-eun had amassed was the curtain of a grand theater, then the magic that had gathered unbidden inside Ellis was the inventory warehouse of a textile mill.
The girl who held that vast magic and innate genius lay on the bed before me.
"In that case, you'll need to fall asleep first—"
"Will simply sleeping do?"
Eyelids of water closed over irises of water. The guards, who'd been chatting among themselves, fell silent, their gazes fixed on the strange spectacle. Even the beastkin found the liquid girl a marvel.
What she wanted was the restoration of her body. More precisely, the restoration of her lost senses. From her Origin to her organs to her skin, everything had dissolved into magic. Sight, hearing, smell, taste—every sense had been wiped away.
She had no need to eat, and no ability to taste. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. When her parents held her hand, she felt nothing. Her extraordinary magic let her perceive the world like sonar, so it didn't hinder her function, but the instincts carved into her when she was human refused to fade.
"I want to eat the eggs Benedict my dad used to make. With my mom's favorite maple bacon on the side—"
I wrapped myself in magic, dense as a diver plunging into the deep sea. The reward for this healing was too sweet to pass up. Besides, it might let me study an Origin.
Splash—
A sound I couldn't possibly have heard echoed against my ears.