The Empty Shell
In the end, the gathering simply dissolved where it stood.
There was no longer any mood for further talk, and Shin Na-rae seemed to have found her own answer. Yet her curiosity toward Echidna had only surged higher, so she volunteered to accompany Comet and Echidna on their planned visit.
Sena Bright trailed them from a slight distance, following like a shadow. Needless to say, her face remained stiff the entire time.
Ban Taewung, who had been fidgeting and unable to focus at the sight of them, was forcibly led away by Lucia and Onohara Erika to somewhere else. They would tour the workshop focusing on whatever each of them needed, just as originally planned.
Left behind were me, Shirogane Rui, and Shirogane Tohru. The reason was simple: a meeting with Shirogane Ichiro had been arranged.
“...This way.”
Shirogane Rui’s attitude had grown a little more expectant. The power Echidna had displayed earlier must have pleased her quite a bit.
The place we arrived at resembled a hospital. No—more precisely, it was closer to a single-person sterile room, like a laboratory. A few details oddly matched memories from my previous life, which left me feeling unpleasantly irritated for no good reason.
“Sorry. It’s a bit complicated, isn’t it?”
Perhaps my feelings had shown on my face, because Shirogane Rui spoke with a bitter smile. There was no need to hide it, so I answered with a slight nod.
It was still complicated. Getting here had involved going up, then down, walking through windowless corridors, and every other ridiculous detour imaginable.
At this point I was starting to wonder what the hell that disease even was. Regardless of how critical it might be, this level of secrecy only made sense if keeping it hidden was a matter of life and death for the entire organization.
More than that, what puzzled me was the preparedness.
Perhaps what Shirogane Ichiro was shouldering was not a simple “illness”? And not something that had suddenly befallen him, but something he had known would happen from long ago?
“...Here.”
The answer to that question now stood before me.
I stopped in front of a massive door. Even from outside, thick mana flowed out from within the door that looked quite heavy at a glance. The emotions tangled in that mana were nothing but gloomy things—fear, sorrow, and screams.
Above all, the faint, agonized groans that reached us were closer to a beast’s than a human’s.
Beep-beep.
Shirogane Rui stood before the door with a calm face and began the release procedure for entry, while Shirogane Tohru clenched his fists with a furrowed brow, as if desperately enduring something painful.
Clunk!
When fingerprint and iris recognition were added, the lock finally released and the door opened.
“Be careful, Shinwoo dongsaeng.”
Shirogane Rui murmured that quietly.
Careful of what? Before I could seek an answer, she turned the handle. The moment a gap opened in the tightly sealed door, the mana that had been seeping out until now exploded outward in a torrent, as if the previous flow had been a joke.
It was like opening a closed floodgate. Even wrapping my body in mana to keep from being pushed back, I still staggered a little.
But that was only true for me. The other two stood there normally, as if nothing had happened. No—more precisely, the mana simply did not reject them.
So that’s why there were no people around.
At first I thought they had cleared everyone out in advance so there would be no signs of life. I immediately realized that was wrong. From the beginning, it had never been a situation where people could approach.
After glancing back to confirm I was fine, Shirogane Rui went straight inside. Shirogane Tohru followed her, and I headed in as well.
The interior was bleak. In the space that anyone would recognize as a hospital room, only a heart-rate monitor and a humidifier for adjusting humidity were running. There were almost no traces of human hands having touched anything. Yet the constant operation of things like CCTV showed it had not been completely abandoned either.
More surveillance than treatment, huh.
That was my impression upon checking the room.
“This person is our dad, Shirogane Ichiro.”
Shirogane Rui pointed to the aged man lying on the bed in the center of the room. My gaze, which had been surveying the surroundings, turned there as well.
It had not even been three months since Shirogane Ichiro stopped appearing in official settings. Adding the expedition period, it was four months.
The healthy, copper-skinned giant of a man I had last seen in records was nowhere to be found. What lay on the bed now had a body as thin as a malnourished child’s, even being generous.
His skin was pale to the point of bluish. It looked as if something essential had been sucked right out of the man named Shirogane Ichiro.
No—in my eyes that could now see the concept of souls, Shirogane Ichiro’s current body was nothing more than a shell.
Like a butterfly or cicada casting off its husk and taking flight, Shirogane Ichiro’s essence had abandoned the shell of his body and gone somewhere. Yet the connection had not yet been severed. It was at a level where it would not be strange if it broke at any moment, but it was being forcibly held by mana.
Since he had neither talent nor aptitude related to souls, trying to resolve this with brute mana force had naturally caused his body to wither like that. The price of wielding power beyond one’s station was more disastrous than one might think.
“Do you know the exact cause?”
It was Shirogane Tohru who answered my question.
“...I heard he was bitten by a bizarre snake that made bodies transparent during the frontline expedition. At first there were no abnormalities, and even later poison tests showed nothing wrong, so we just thought he had resisted the poison and was fine.”
But as time passed, abnormalities began to appear outwardly.
At first it was simply that his sleep time lengthened. Since this expedition had been particularly hard, everyone assumed the tension in his exhausted body was finally releasing after returning.
That increased by one hour, then two, and no matter how much he slept the fatigue would not lift. When he started sleeping half the day, everyone felt puzzlement and worry.
When Shirogane Ichiro, who had fallen asleep like that, no longer opened his eyes, the puzzlement became seriousness, and the worry led to self-reproach.
“Everyone in the workshop threw up their hands. We used connections to hire renowned doctors, but it was meaningless. Then things blew up.”
When he had been unconscious for about two months, Shirogane Ichiro’s body moved. At first they thought he had finally come to, but no. Only his body moved and began spewing mana indiscriminately toward the surroundings.
There was no way there would be no damage from indiscriminate attacks. His body was not ordinary. Because of that, they could not even call people of mediocre skill. As the conditions grew strict, the people they could obtain naturally decreased.
“Judging that things would go wrong at this rate, Mom remodeled a secret warehouse used since the previous generation into a hospital room. She desperately tried to identify the disease as soon as possible, but every result was a dud. Honestly, now I just want to grasp at any straw.”
I see. So that was how I had been able to come this far.
Though not my intention, the only name I could put forward externally so far was Lee Se-rin’s fiancé. No matter how much those in the know already knew the information, the fact that the results of Project Exile and its owner were me was not yet something companies like this would know.
At best, only the government and various countries, right? Or further, the extremely few people who could exert influence enough to move the world.
This company was cornered enough to cling to a mere student like me. Or perhaps by showing me this sight, they wanted to obtain something.
They seem to be under some misunderstanding...
Unfortunately, even if they appealed to my emotions like this, Lee Se-rin’s movements would not change. If she had decided to do it in earnest, she would achieve it no matter what variables arose. From what I had casually checked, she had already seized the position of major shareholder of the Shirogane Union.
Even if I resolved Shirogane Ichiro’s matter, Lee Se-rin would proceed with swallowing the Shirogane company as is. Therefore my actions were not for the sake of the Shirogane company, but to make the individual Shirogane Rui mine with my power.
In the eyes of those who did not know the inside story, even my actions would all be seen as the will of Lee Se-rin and the Dragonia Group. Perhaps feeling a sense of crisis gradually, they had shown me this scene in a “whatever, let’s just do it” kind of way.
In this case it was not that they trusted me, but that they trusted the eye of Shirogane Rui, who might sit in the next head’s seat. Even if articles about this matter broke later and the Shirogane company’s stock price plummeted, it could not be helped.
That was the limit of the person named Shirogane Rui. The price for judging the eye of the next head was far too great, but they might sincerely think that rather than entrusting the future indefinitely to someone with no hope, it would be better for it to collapse as is.
I can’t tell if she’s cold or trusts her family.
Thinking of the “acting head” and Shirogane Ichiro’s wife who would be watching this place from elsewhere, a sigh came out on its own.
I am sensitive to gazes. Having been constantly exposed to them since childhood, it naturally became so. It is not something one-dimensional like simply sensing a presence. It has grown to the point where I can distinguish the gazes directed at me in real time and tell whose they are. As my skill stats increased, it only became clearer, not less so.
Two... no, three.
One was Lee Se-rin, and another was something wriggling inside Shirogane Ichiro. Then what was the remaining one? The answer was set. I raised my head toward the CCTV and met the gaze.
Whirr.
In response I could clearly see the camera operating. Evidence that the screen had been moved to zoom in on me. If she was worried enough to watch like that, she should just come out and look herself. What a foolish woman.
For a moment I considered filling this place entirely with shadows out of annoyance at her daring to try and gauge me, but I stopped. Soon this company would fall into Lee Se-rin’s hands. That meant it would become one of the means I could use. I did not know when, but there might be a time when I would have to face her, and I did not want to create unnecessary grudges or things that would make her face red separately. Dealing with the emotions of strangers I had no interest in was labor more tiring and bothersome than one imagines.
“I roughly understand.”
“...Please, Shinwoo dongsaeng.”
Pretending not to hear her words and letting them slide, I closed my eyes once and then let out a long breath. Honestly, I was afraid.
It’s like I obtained power that fits perfectly as if I knew this would happen.
Agony of Arsan.
The opportunity for me to obtain power related to the spiritual, and something that seemed like someone’s scheme. How far had the being who gave me this read, and handed this to me?
Humans fear the unknown. I felt fear toward what I did not know. Did Lee Se-rin know this? I did not know. She might know. Or she might not. She had not known about the Book of Summoning either. No—even that might have been an act.
My head spun. It felt like I was left in the middle of suspicions chaining into more suspicions and all sorts of schemes swirling. Doing my best while knowing nothing and struggling hard was the best. If even that stopped, I would fall into the middle of it and drown as is.
Laziness covered my eyes and ears. Frustration choked my throat and grabbed my heart as if trying to forcibly stop its beating. My insides felt nauseous and irritated.
So I moved my mana. I forcibly cleared away this bothersome mana that was determined to suppress me. Rather, I chewed and swallowed it, making it mine.
The basic tendency of Reaper is to harvest things as mine. The skills within it have been used that way until now, and that will not change. This is a concept a little different from usurpation. It regards the world as centered on me, and everything else as things I rightfully should take. An extremely arrogant skill. But it is also the power I wield.
Therefore I do what I must do. Like swinging a sickle to harvest wheat, I swing my power to make that mine.
Slash.
I naturally engraved mine into the overflowing mana around. From the inserted mana it gradually eroded the surroundings and turned everything into mine. Normally it would resist this. But the owner of this mana was currently unconscious. More precisely, he was located somewhere other than here. It was not even facing me head-on; there was no way I could not take the mana just being spewed unconsciously.
Crunch!
Shadows devoured the mana. Slowly opening my eyes, a scenery with brightness lowered by a level entered my eyes. Evidence that my mana had completely encroached on the surroundings and even made Shirogane Ichiro’s mana mine.
“Grrraaaaaah... Uwaaaaaaah!!!!!”
As soon as the mana that had been protecting his body disappeared, Shirogane Ichiro’s figure thrashing madly on the bed also came into view. At the same time, something a little different appeared in my eyes.
The figure of the illegal squatter who had arbitrarily taken residence aiming for the empty shell began to separate and appear around the thrashing Shirogane Ichiro’s body like noise occurring.
To evaluate with an honest impression, it was extremely shabby. Perhaps because it had been made solely for the purpose of weakening the vessel’s power, it was a simple and also violent fellow. Rather than a concept related to erosion, it was a beast itself trying to covet what was there.
Probably the being that tore Shirogane Ichiro’s soul from his body had injected this to completely separate the connection between body and soul. Conversely speaking, it meant that even now, having fallen from his body, Shirogane Ichiro was desperately struggling to return to his body. The evidence was that he had been unconsciously using mana to suppress as if protecting his own body.
In fact, as soon as I encroached on his mana, the parasite, sensing an opportunity, began to move and roughly moved the body as if self-harming.
I stretched out my hand and grabbed it. And then, extremely naturally, I pulled it out.
Crack, crunch.
[Kieeeeeek...?!]
“Ugh, ugh...”
Then the fellow who could not accept the fact that it had been caught belatedly panicked and struggled. But since more than half of it had already been pulled out with the first extraction, Shirogane Ichiro’s body only let out bizarre groans as if the soul was escaping, and did not move its body separately.
Thud!
When I completely tore off the thing that had a form closer to a parasite than a snake, Shirogane Ichiro’s body went limp. If until now it had been closer to a sleeping person, now it was pale as a corpse that was alive only because it could not die.
This was natural. Because what should originally have been inside the body had come out. Rather, it was a miracle that it had been alive until now. If left like this, at latest in seven days, at earliest not even a day would pass before this body died.
Until now this parasite had been substituting for the minimum necessary role to occupy this body, but with its existence pulled out, it could no longer function properly. No matter how much the soul endured, if the body to return to died, it became meaningless. High probability that Shirogane Ichiro’s soul would be used as the one currently toying with him wished. That the end would not be good was self-evident.
That won’t do.
Then Shirogane Rui would end up shouldering unnecessary baggage. Not as a single sword, but the weight of the human “Shirogane Rui” would increase. The possibility of me being able to use her would also become slim. That was not what I desired.
The best I could think of was for Shirogane Ichiro to rise as is and lead the union to buy time, and in the meantime completely make Shirogane Rui mine. Even if she inherited the company, make it so that she could willingly use it not for the company but for me. This was the foundation for that.
I gathered mana in my fingers and flicked. What I called forth was the guide of the dead. The chief of the wandering dead of the nine heavens.
“Shiz.”
Snap!
At the resonance of mana, the shadow at my feet stretched, and a lantern with the sparkle of hellfire and black cloth took place. Looking with eyes that see souls, Shiz’s appearance also looked a little different. If until now Shiz’s appearance had been cloth and lantern floating in the air, now it was a semi-transparent woman covering herself with black cloth like a feathered robe and holding a lantern.
It seemed I had come to understand a little more about this power. Once this was over, I would be busy for a while again. Since it was a necessary matter, a sigh did not come out, but I could not help my mind going blank.
As if turning away from the gloomy reality, I roughly handed the parasite in my hand to Shiz and at the same time received a fragment of the soul.
Whoosh.
When I refined the transparent fragment shining brilliantly in the form of an unpolished raw stone with the power of Reaper, it compressed in an instant to the size of a bite-sized candy. I added my mana to it.
To the one coated in black, I used the power of Engraving Technique. What I bestowed was a system. Like what that parasite had done, make the body able to function properly even in a state where the soul was separated. It was a temporary measure, but better than dying right now.
It was a feat possible because I had completely grasped the structure of the fellow while tearing off the parasite. To be precise, Reaper and Book of Salvation activated simultaneously, and the moment I tore the fellow off, everything about its existence and function was instantly dug up and the information forcibly engraved into my mind.
There was no pain. Like something forgotten naturally coming to mind, I knew it extremely naturally, and also understood. So I could make this as naturally as water flowing.
If I constructed a system like a computer, it could move as is, and I named it Artificial Soul Essence. I bestowed it on Shirogane Ichiro’s body using Engraving Technique.
Experimentally, I added Aura to fix it in a form like a defensive barrier so that no more nonsense could be done. It could not enjoy the exact same effect as the Aura I used. Besides being improvised on the spot, this man was a complete stranger unlike my summons, so the effect would be further reduced. At best he would not even enjoy ten percent of the effect. But from here on, the body would no longer die. Rather, I thought it might return to its original body.
Since he was the head of the union, I engraved the mark in the form of a tattoo that yakuza from my previous life would do, based on feeling. From the black bead placed on the forehead as the starting point, shadows wriggled and spread over Shirogane Ichiro’s body.
“...Sss...”
Eventually, when the Artificial Soul Essence completely settled, Shirogane Ichiro’s complexion became noticeably more comfortable. Should I say that what could have died at any moment without it being strange had now changed to look somewhat like a living person?
At that fact, Shirogane Rui and Shirogane Tohru, who had been holding their breath and watching from behind, could not hold back and approached.
“...How is Father’s condition?”
“No immediate worsening.”
“No worsening ‘is’ it...”
I answered Shirogane Rui’s words, who immediately caught the important point of my words, by nodding. Yes, there was no more worsening, but neither was there improvement.
The cause of Shirogane Ichiro collapsing now was the absence of the soul. The only way to resolve this was to retrieve Shirogane Ichiro’s soul. Also, since the parasite had already loosened the connection between body and soul, the connection would weaken as time passed. If the connection with the body weakened, the soul suffered that much.
Even if he endured with the mental strength of an S-rank superhuman, there was clearly a limit. No—this man was already close to the limit.
If the body was a vessel, the soul was like the water contained in that vessel. His current state could be seen as forcibly scooping out the water contained in the vessel. The vessel desperately endured to prevent that. The water lost in that process did not return.
Probably, even if the soul luckily returned to the body as is, some of the memories would be lost. Important things like habits and beliefs would remain unconsciously, but starting from the most useless things, things with low priority like things one wanted to forget would naturally be deleted from memory and become unable to be recalled even if one wanted to.
It could be seen as having blanks in memory like a sponge full of holes, while recognizing the fact that there was a blank, but being unable to know what it was or why it was blank. Such disharmony and incongruity would gnaw at this man’s mind and gradually make him anxious. His personality would probably also change little by little from before. Because humans are creatures that greatly rely on memories and emotions.
Somehow dealing with that was the share of those who remained by his side afterward.
“So how about putting away that knife?”
I directed a coldly cooled gaze toward the woman who had at some point taken place by my side and was pointing the tip of a small dagger at my vital point.
“...There is no falsehood in those words, right?”
Instead of responding, I moved my chin to point toward Shirogane Ichiro. At the sight of the complexion that had become more comfortable, the knife tip directed at me shook a little.
Since she had been speaking to me while her eyes kept going to Shirogane Ichiro, I just laid the board for her to look comfortably. Because the evidence that she had suffered quite a bit mentally and her nerves had sharpened was clearly revealed in her facial expression. Her breathing was a little disordered, so it was obvious that she had been startled by the gamble I openly threw and then Shirogane Ichiro thrashing, and had run over herself.
“...I had given up because no one could fix it...”
The ferocity when directed at me was gone, and the appearance remaining mixed with worry and relief was exactly that of someone worrying about the health of a loved one.
A white woman to the extent that one could immediately know where Shirogane Rui and Shirogane Tohru’s pure white hair came from. Her sharp eyes and cold way of speaking were cold enough to naturally bring the word snow woman to mind. An image like forging a knife using the hardest and coldest ice.
Shirogane Hanabi. Former surname Yashiro Hanabi.
Wife of Shirogane Ichiro, and a woman capable enough to be designated as a candidate for the next head of Yashiro, which was known to hold the number eight among the families with the greatest influence in Japan. That talent was mainly concentrated on “assassination” and “security” to block it.
Originally she only handled “security,” but the first Yashiro’s thought was that to block assassinations, one needed to fully understand them, and by making a marriage alliance with the assassin family that handled the densest darkness of that era, the current Yashiro was formed.
For assassination, one needed to make various weapons suitable for the situation, and at the same time one also needed to compound tricky poisons. For security, one needed sturdy armor that could step forward and block even with sharp blades in front, and weapons to fight against, and if injured, medicine to recover.
By the matching of interests of the two families, metallurgy and medical arts naturally developed, and that could be seen as the prototype of the current Shirogane Workshop. In other words, the secret story of the unique diversity of the Shirogane Workshop could be seen as the result of the past of Yashiro, where the orthodox path and the heretical path walked together, being fully melted in.
Yes. Shirogane was a subcontractor of Yashiro and at the same time corresponded to a branch family, and Shirogane Tohru and Shirogane Hanabi were cousins on paper. There was no problem under Japanese law. Even if cousins, if at the branch family level, other blood had been mixed for a long time.
I tried to call Hive taking advantage of the gap when Shirogane Hanabi’s knife tip shook, but someone jumped out faster than that.
Ting!
“Mom!!!”
What blocked her action was none other than Shirogane Rui. As she struck the blade with her hand and stood in the way as if to protect me, Shirogane Hanabi narrowed her eyes and put the dagger away into her bosom.
“...It seems a long conversation is needed, so let’s change locations.”
There was no one to object to those words. I just wanted to be freed from this bothersome matter as soon as possible.