A Body Like Katan's

A rhythmic thudding echoed through the streets. From the corner of the intersection, Taylor spotted the five golem brothers lumbering into view.

"So you didn't blow those up."

"No. That was the plan, actually."

"What?"

At that ominous remark, Taylor took a closer look at the golems. They were hung with things like ornaments on a Christmas tree — every last one of them a mana stone bomb, along with mana circuits ripped out from somewhere.

As the golems closed in on the carapace, the transformed elf emerged from within. His body had swollen into a mass of muscle over five meters tall, though his head had stayed the same size, leaving it sunken deep between his trapezius muscles like a boulder wedged in a crevice.

The five golem brothers, each of comparable bulk, seized the elf in a crushing grip.

"Wh-what are you—"

Before an answer could come, a violent surge of mana rippled through the air.

"You can't be serious—"

The elf looked toward where Alan had been standing, but the spot was already empty.

KWAAAANG!

From his position far from the blast site, Taylor heard what sounded like thunder. The shockwave blew out every window in the vicinity, and buildings that had weathered the earthquake cracked apart, raining chunks of concrete down onto the streets.

"Money really is a wonderful thing. Did they just put in a few mana stones, or — no, did they pour the whole damn lot in to get a blast this big?"

Taylor looked over at Alan, who was standing quietly. He brushed the dust off his protégé's shoulders while he was at it, patting him lightly.

"Stings a little, doesn't it? Losing golems like that. Don't take it too hard."

"I can always build more."

Taylor glanced sideways at Box and Leopard trailing behind Alan. The two of them normally couldn't stand each other, but today they were clinging together like puppies caught in the rain.

Back at the battlefield, Alan beheld an enormous lump of charcoal. The thing had held its shape even through a detonation of that magnitude, which told him everything he needed to know about how brutal it would have been to face the elf's trump card head-on.

"Kgh!"

The elf, with components embedded in his muscle like machine parts, coughed violently. He looked half-dead already, but he was still breathing.

"C-come… closer…"

He murmured the words, fixing his eyes on Alan as if there was something he desperately needed to say.

Alan obliged the elf's last wish, walking over step by measured step. But as the distance shrank, the elf clamped his mouth shut instead. His eyes flew wide open.

"Planning a self-destruct, are we? You should have done it before the firewall weakened, then."

His left eye drank in light so intense it threatened to burn straight through the visor. The elf froze solid, like a herbivore before a prowling beast. In truth, he had already lost control of his own body.

— Chimeras (5) — End —

— Chimeras (6) —

In the crater the explosion had gouged out of the earth lay a five-meter suit of living armor. Its menacing days were behind it now; Alan hauled the elf out of a body that had been reduced to little more than charcoal.

The armor had preserved his overall shape, but horrific burn scars coexisted with regions blown apart outright by the shockwave. He had evidently inhaled the final flame the golem brothers had kindled, because his breathing was violently ragged.

"He'll be dead soon."

"Allow me to administer just a light treatment, Brother."

Even as the two of them spoke, Alan simply stared down at the elf, the blue returning flame flickering from his eye. At Shiva's words, the elf's jaw twitched as if to bite his own tongue, but Alan's hacking pinned it in place. Then again, even without the hack, a man at death's door hardly looked capable of the effort.

"Kill me… now…"

"That can wait. There's something I need to find out first."

Hearing that glacial tone — utterly devoid of any feeling he could read — the elf shut his mouth tight.

For his part, Alan had only said it to buy time; he couldn't afford to touch the man carelessly. Hadn't the treatment nuns tried to force-convert the Electo branch chief once, only to end up with a burst tomato on their hands?

While he was still weighing it, Shiva turned his gaze toward the encampment outside the city. The blue glow from his eyes that used to bleed out whenever he communicated had been eliminated by Alan's modifications, but his characteristic mana signal spread out in a faint pulse.

After about a minute, Shiva spoke.

"Brothers, communication has been restored."

"That's because we blew this place to pieces. A rewarding day's work."

"On Mother's behalf, I shall offer you praise. Father Danny reports that he led the citizens out safely as well."

"What about the citizens still in there? There have to be more."

"The Chimeras have lost their purpose and begun to wander aimlessly, he says. Their aggression has dulled as well."

"So they chase anything they see, but don't go hunting for it? Then only the citizens hidden away safely would have survived. They should be able to hold out for a while — and if the army has any sense, they'll move in to clean up soon."

"Yes. They will advance at first light. It won't take long."

Taylor stepped up beside Alan and their eyes met. The blue returning flame was still writhing behind the visor.

"Finished deliberating?"

"It should work if we deceive the signals between the device and the brain. While I serve as the relay, the sisters can extract the device."

"Couldn't you just do it right here? Ah — no, of course. Can't kill him yet."

A lifetime of accumulated experience let Taylor read Alan's intent at a glance.

The device would still hold memories and data, but it could be doctored any number of ways, so blind trust was out of the question. Which meant they needed to keep the elf alive and verify whatever information they extracted from the device against him.

"There's no need for an exhaustive interrogation. We only have to confirm whether what it says is true or false."

"How?"

"His body's reactions and the fluctuations in his mana will tell us."

An elf mage would have the skill to deceive such scrutiny — but in his current state, half-dead, that option was closed to him. Even a casually probing question would set his heart hammering like a rabbit's.

On the way back to the encampment, the sun began its slow climb. The army was advancing at a leisurely pace with the sunlight at its back.

Chimeras drawn by the massive noise came spilling out of storm drains, derelict buildings, and back alleys — but with their command node destroyed, they were cut down helplessly, one after another.

When Alan laid out the situation, Father Danny gathered the clergy together, and surgery began in a single tent being used as a treatment room.

To keep the elf's head from exploding, they needed to fool both brain and device into believing they were still connected — which meant the signal had to be continuously relayed. The spiders latched onto the elf's skull.

Before Alan began reading the device, several priests surrounded the elf while others formed a circle and raised a white sphere into the empty air. The sphere unspooled threads of the same pale color and brought them into contact with the elf's head.

When Alan's gaze drifted that way, Shiva spoke up.

"A method once used by the inquisitors of old."

"A technique, rather than a holy rite?"

"The process of forcing confession breaks the mind. It is a shadow we would rather forget, but its utility is undeniable, so it has been kept."

The members of the Mother Church were people too, and their history held chapters they preferred buried. The heretic inquisitions and the indiscriminate burnings, for instance.

Of course, in this day and age, burning anyone in the name of an inquisition would be splashed across every headline on the continent.

Truthfully, judging by what went on here and there in the world, mind domination was hardly anything remarkable anymore — but people had always taken a keener interest in the sins of the exalted than in the sins of everyone else.

The work began. Signals amplified through the spiders began permeating the elf's mind bit by bit. The fabricated signals displaced the originals, filling the gaps they left behind.

Fragments of scenes, scraps of phrases, were relayed to Alan. Whether the elf's defenses understood that this was no legitimate access, even the smallest shards dissolved almost the instant they surfaced.

It felt like climbing a mountain on a moonless night. One misstep meant injury; a lapse in concentration meant losing the path. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Naturally, his focus was being ground away at a rapid clip.

Alan pushed himself to the limit. Only five minutes into the connection, sweat was already pouring down him. Even through the strain, shards of memory flickered across his mind.

The Tailor of memory — her face blurred beyond recognition — was absorbed in something, never once glancing his way. She only waved a hand, as if shooing away an annoying fly.

When Alan surfaced with a handful of salvaged facts and opened his eyes, Father Danny and Sister Alana had drawn near.

"Young Brother — hast thou learned aught?"

"There's good news. Whatever happens in Kamiro, the Tailor will not lift a finger."

"Is that truly so?"

"The elf mage and a handful of his fellow disciples are the instigators of this entire affair. They intend to obtain results from a certain experiment and use the fruits of it to win their freedom."

"To break away from the Tailor herself? A bargain requires that the other party be aware of it — so the Tailor knows of this plan as well. Wilt she simply stand by if her disciples fail?"

"Her voice was remarkably cold. Within it, I couldn't find even a sliver of expectation."

"Hoo…"

Danny let out a long sigh. It must have been suffocating, to realize that such tremendous destruction had been wrought not by the Tailor herself, but because ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of her disciples.

"What manner of experiment could possibly warrant sacrificing an entire nation…"

Kamiro was a small country, true — but a country was still a country, not something a handful of individuals had any right to challenge. And yet, in a world where mana and mystery existed, Alan could understand it, in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way.

"Dost thou know what that experiment is, as well?"

"No. Not that far—"

"Thou hast learned enough. Grieve thyself no further. The elf yet lives — we shall ask him."

Alan laid out everything he had gathered: where the elf's comrades were hiding, what they were scheming, how numerous they were, and so on.

When he finished, Danny nodded.

"My thanks. Then it is now the elf's turn to answer questions."

"Kghhk—!"

The instant Danny finished speaking, the elf let out a scream. A dying man's last words, rendered purely as sound.

The priests rushed to him and poured out their divine power in a desperate attempt to save him — but does holy light raise the dead from a corpse?

With the investigation wrapped up for the moment, a rest period was granted to those who had labored through it. Alan and Taylor returned to their tent, while Shiva went off with the other Mother Church faithful to tend to the wounded citizens and soldiers.

Alan had just finished a shower and taken a seat on a field cot when Taylor asked in a studied, offhand tone:

"You really don't know?"

"No."

"Sure about that? You've got that unreadable poker face, but you've got a tell when you lie. Anyone but me wouldn't catch it, so don't worry."

A year spent at Taylor's side. They hadn't merely seen each other's faces — they'd bled and sweated together through thick and thin, and knew each other inside and out. The same went for Alan.

"It's not a lie."

"Suit yourself."

Just as Alan had predicted, it had been a probe. A tell? There was no such thing. If one existed, he would have catalogued it himself long before Taylor did.

"So what's their objective, then? What kind of experiment justifies wrecking a whole country like this—"

"Actually, I do know."

"You just said you didn't."

"That was the lie."

"······."

Before the wrinkles on Taylor's face could deepen any further, Alan shared what he'd learned.

"They want to build a body."

"Given how many people they fed into the thing, I suppose an ordinary body wouldn't do. What kind, then?"

"A body identical to Katan's."

"What?"

Taylor's eyes went round. A name of that magnitude had come out of nowhere.

"When Katan died, the corpse vanished. There's a rumor in certain circles that the big organizations carved it up between them — did the Tailor grab a piece too?"

"It seems that way."

The world called him a great magitech engineer, but honestly, anyone who'd earned a title like that was functionally a mage in his own right. Who would turn up their nose at the unclaimed body of such a being?

Katan had raised disciples, but never anything close. He had no family, no organization dear to him, nothing of the kind. So who, exactly, would have been there to lay his remains to rest?

"Set morality aside, and it's the kind of prize that'd make mouths water everywhere. The Tailor was no different, I'd wager."

One look at the False Name incident or the Chimera disaster made it plain what field of magic she'd been burrowing into. Life magic, clearly, was her specialty.

"Hold on. If she snagged a piece, couldn't she just grow one from his extracted genes? With her magic, that should be simple. Ah — I suppose that's why she's egging the disciples on. It won't take."

"Katan's body apparently carried genetic material from every race that can be called people — beastfolk, Lycans, humans, orcs, goblins, dwarves, elves, and more, each in small measure."

"What?! All this time I thought the man was human — you've seen the photographs yourself. There's not a trace of any other race's features on him."

"I know. But it seems a body made from his genes alone doesn't come out right. Which meant experiments were needed — and the citizens of Kamiro became the sacrifices. The Mother Church was an obstacle, so they tried to sweep it aside."

"Spellcasters, I swear. What they need is an axe buried in their skulls."

"Where did the axe come from all of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a sudden?"

"Back in the day, in a cold corner of the Western Continent—"