The Cursed Child (1)
This boy had been about to hang himself.
That was the moment I possessed him.
I had no intention of dying the instant I came to my senses, so I jerked my neck back in a panic.
I hadn't realized the boy had been standing on a chair. I lost my balance and crashed to the floor.
"Ugh…"
I didn't bother forcing my aching body upright. I simply lay there on the dirt and stared at the sky.
I had no idea what was going on — but still.
"Let's stay calm for now."
As I lay still, fragments of memory sorted themselves out inside my head on their own. My own memories, and the ones left behind in this body.
"Karl Manfred."
That was the name of the boy I had possessed. Second son of the Manfred baronial house. Sixteen years old. He had spent long years locked away in a sanitarium, tormented by hallucinations since early childhood.
"The Curse of Illusion."
Karl had been born with a curse. Every day, he had watched the world fill with grotesque things whose nature no one could name.
That must have been why I was seeing this now.
There were no stars in the night sky. An unnaturally black expanse stretched overhead, blanketed in bloodshot eyeballs. Every one of those enormous gazes was fixed on me. They wept red tears.
I couldn't breathe. My body wouldn't move. It wasn't so much that the sight itself was terrifying — it felt as though fear were being forcibly injected into me.
The method for weakening the Curse of Illusion was surprisingly simple.
"Recognize that the illusions are not real."
That alone reduced how often they appeared. I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated it inwardly.
Those things are not real.
Before long the horrific visions vanished, and the starlight returned.
Karl hadn't been ignorant of this method — he simply couldn't put it into practice. Born seeing illusions from the start, he had never known where illusion ended and reality began. Day by day his mind had worn away, until at last he reached his limit. He had planned to end his life, and only moments ago he had tried to carry it out.
This sanitarium boasted security so shockingly lax that Karl's plan had gone smoothly. But Karl would not have died today — not even if I hadn't possessed him.
As I sifted through his memories, I realized where this world was. I knew this boy's future.
Demon worshipper. Spawn of a wastrel. Prophet of ruin. The Demon King's right hand.
That was the Karl Manfred who had appeared in the game I used to play. That Karl had been at least twenty years old. This was a point in the past of that game's world — which meant Karl had not died today.
"Luke's Biography."
A classic-style RPG with a tired plot — in the beginning the celestial race and the demon race did such-and-such, a hero defeated the Demon King, and so on. I'd started it on a sudden craving for that old-school flavor, and it hadn't been bad. It was fun enough.
But Luke's Biography was notorious for its shoddy production values. It was the kind of game that patched over its failings with endless expansion packs while bleeding players dry — and the quality of those packs only got worse over time. The latest expansion had drawn a flood of negative reviews for a story that completely abandoned coherence.
In the end, the demon-worshipping Karl had fallen… except Karl was so overwhelmingly powerful that no one could figure out how to beat him. Then, in the middle of that hopeless mess, he simply dropped dead on his own, and the story just ended.
I hadn't been able to take it either. I'd left a scathing review on the latest expansion.
"…Don't tell me that's what caused this possession."
"Excuse me? Have you given up?"
I rolled my eyes toward the voice. A girl with silver hair and violet eyes stood over me, smiling. A familiar face.
"Maria Caligosa."
The illegitimate daughter of the Caligosa ducal house. Abandoned by her family and locked away in this sanitarium. I knew this girl's future as well.
The Demon King. The Witch of the Apocalypse. The being who would take Karl as her right hand and devour half the continent.
"So the two of them met here."
"Why do you keep muttering to yourself?"
She tilted her head and asked. I hadn't been trying to speak quietly, but Karl's voice had simply been too soft. I pushed myself up and put some force into my throat.
"I have a habit of talking to myself when I'm organizing my thoughts. Please pay it no mind."
"Hmm. So — you've given up on dying?"
Maria pointed at the rope still hanging from the thick branch.
"I have."
The smile remained fixed on her face. It wasn't natural — she was only imitating other people's expressions.
The Curse of Emotionlessness.
Separate from being abandoned by her family and locked away here, Maria was genuinely cursed. A curse that dulled every emotion. Those afflicted by the Curse of Emotionlessness grew easily addicted to intense stimuli — and just as easily bored by them. They chased ever stronger thrills until, eventually, they began destroying everything around them. That was the official reason Maria had been sent to the sanitarium, and the reason that, once she gained power, she would become the Demon King.
"…Ugh."
My head throbbed. Maria's entire body was shrouded in shadow, something with flashing violet eyes. An illusion. My body, which I had just calmed, locked up again. Breathing became difficult. It was the terror etched into Karl's flesh. Regardless of my mental state, the moment I saw an illusion, the body reacted on its own.
"Are you all right?"
She asked with a face that held not the slightest concern. I steadied myself with deep breaths, and Maria returned to being a silver-haired, violet-eyed girl.
"…Yes."
Exhaustion washed over me. I needed to get back to my room and rest. Retrieving the rope Karl had meant to hang himself with would require climbing the tree, but my hands had no strength left — they only trembled. He must have spent the last of his stamina getting the rope up there. Having spent most of his sixteen years in bed, of course he was frail.
"I'll help."
When I just stood uselessly beneath the tree, Maria giggled and climbed it with practiced ease. She soon untied the rope and dropped it down.
"Thank you."
I shoved the chair roughly against the wall, coiled the rope and hid it inside my clothes, then headed into the sanitarium building. Maria followed behind me. So I picked up my pace.
I have a habit of assigning meaning to everything. If I stayed close to this girl, the destinies of Demon King Maria and demon-worshipper Karl might come to pass. Perhaps being possessed at this particular moment meant I was supposed to stop that future.
But accelerating with this feeble body was pointless. While I grew increasingly short of breath, Maria trailed after me as leisurely as if she were out for a stroll.
"So what are you going to do now?"
"Sleep."
"Hmm. Why the rush?"
"Because I'm tired."
"What's your name?"
"Karl."
I answered quickly and curtly, without even meeting her eyes. Responding that way was hardly proper etiquette toward a noble — but I had no intention of getting friendly with this girl, and she wouldn't take offense anyway. She barely had the emotions for it.
"I see. I'm Maria. My family is…"
"I know. You're a young lady of the Caligosa ducal house."
"Oh? How did you know?"
"It would be stranger not to recognize you."
"Is that so? Heh."
The silver hair and violet eyes of the Caligosa dukes were famous. No matter what other blood mixed in, anyone of the Caligosa line was born with silver hair and violet eyes.
"Did you know? Nine people have already hanged themselves from that tree. Karl…"
"So I nearly made it a double-digit tally."
"Oh. I was just about to say the same thing. We seem to get along well."
"Is that so."
Even though I cut her off, Maria seemed pleased by the exchange. I wasn't sure about myself and Maria — but Karl and Maria truly would have gotten along. That was how they had been able to stand side by side as enemies of the world.
"Your room should be that way, miss. Mine is this way, so I'll take my leave."
"Karl. Karl… Manfred."
"Yes."
I answered first — and only afterward felt a chill. Had I told her my family name?
"You keep trying to avoid me."
Unlike the Caligosa dukes, the Manfred barons were utterly obscure.
"That's…"
"Stay still."
Maria caught my wrist as I tried to walk away.
"Heh. You're awfully weak."
Hopeless. Who would have thought a character so brokenly overpowered in the game had been this frail as a child. She looked me up and down, studying my whole body. The suicide attempt was over, yet something about me still seemed to interest her.
"I'll let it slide for today. I'm sleepy too."
But starting tomorrow, no more.
She whispered that against my ear. Then she smiled, spun lightly on her heel, and vanished in the direction of her own room.
I stood frozen in place for several minutes, unable to let the tension go. It seemed I had caught the eye of a girl who might become the Demon King.
Suddenly, a few lines of text flickered through my mind.
The Beginning of Fate
Continue your encounters with Maria Caligosa.
"No."
I never accepted anything. The thought of abandoning this quest crossed my mind.
"Status window. Status window… Status… Quest…"
I tried saying the things protagonists always said in the novels and comics I used to read. But nothing appeared — no status window, no quest log, nothing at all.
What was the intent behind this quest? Why push the meeting between the Demon King and the demon worshipper?
Was the meaning of my possession not to prevent the world's destruction, but to bring it about?
Surely not.
Games always had choices. And now that the world inside one had unfolded before my eyes as reality, freer choices than ever before would be possible.