The Transaction

Lately the community had been seeing posts now and then claiming that some monster's corpse had dropped from the heavens, or that a meteor shower had rained down. Naturally, plenty of users reacted to all of it with open skepticism.

The overwhelming majority dismissed it all as community tomfoolery — people riding a trend, bandying about claims that they too had glimpsed something similar. Virdel was no exception, though she had nonetheless compiled the reports and filed them with the Juddak, just in case.

Shutting down the community boards, Virdel — she who bore the somewhat childish epithet of Demon King — let out a long sigh. Of late, she had been sorely neglecting the quality control of the community, and the guilt gnawed at her. The Administrator had given his blessing, yes, but her conscience remained uneasy.

Mmph. The answer had been so offhanded that she nearly felt a tiny sting of disappointment — but then, another message arrived.

He was respecting her own judgment. How could she possibly feel slighted over that?

"Whew…."

Her eyes gleamed as she looked up at the great stele of the Heavenly Demon Tomb.

"What is it…?"

A long, massive stele, faintly glowing with pale blue light, was enshrined at the very center of the Heavenly Demon Tomb. Given how long it had been buried in the treasure vault, it should have been caked in dust — yet not a speck showed upon its surface. For ages, since no efficacy had ever been discovered in it, the stele had been written off as nothing more than an enormous lump of nameless jade. That much was recorded even in the annals, which noted that only the successive leaders of the Heavenly Demon Cult had ever been permitted to enter its chamber.

"Hmm."

Both the front and back of the stele were densely engraved with characters fine as grains of sand. They were not the script used in Gangho's Murim, where she now stood — nor any writing she recognized. Mysterious, wholly indecipherable glyphs. She had intended to pass them by without a second thought, but—

Winc—

As she quietly gazed at the stele, a strange sense of déjà vu crept over her, as if the meaning contained within were only barely beginning to come into focus. The longer she read those untranslatable sentences, the more it seemed as though some hidden truth was seeping through to her. It was an ineffable sensation, impossible to put into words.

The Sacred Flame of the Heavenly Demon Cult was the same. Upon the flame altar, a blue fire burned low and steady. Its heat was so intense that approaching within arm's reach felt impossible — yet the moment one drew close and touched the flame, no heat greeted the hand at all. Rather, the Sacred Flame rippled vigorously, almost as if welcoming her. No one else had even been able to approach it.

And so she spent days without number studying the stele and the flame of the Heavenly Demon Tomb. The tomb and the flame altar stood some distance apart, so she had simply given the order to have the altar relocated to the tomb's grounds. She began her research into the two things that had nagged at her from the very first sight of them, and slowly, results seemed to be emerging.

She rose from her seat. Gripping the crude, elongated Heavenly Demon Sword said to have once been wielded by the First Heavenly Demon, she began to move.

Wheeerik—

Following each spark of inspiration as it came, she swayed her body through the motions. It was neither martial art nor dance — something in between. Even she found the result baffling. This half-formed swaying was hard to reconcile with the woman who had once been obsessed with nothing less than the most efficient possible movement. But there was nothing to be done. Every time she looked upon the stele, something seized her inspiration with terrible force, and in the end, what had begun as her attempt to express that stirring through the martial forms she knew had arrived at this.

Ssssaaaa—

As she raised the blade and began a sword dance, the Sacred Flame nearby leapt up with a whoomph, as if dancing in turn.

Ssssaaaa—

Whoomph—

She felt she could grasp it with certainty — if only she broke through a little further. For now, though, she remained at the stage of merely catching the feel of it.

Ssssaaaa—

Whoomph—

Every sweep of the sword sent the Sacred Flame whirling. She swung the blade on and on, oblivious to the passage of time.

The reason she strained herself so was this: she had confirmed that the training resonated, however faintly, with the silver flame slumbering deep within her body. Almost. Not quite. Hazy. Unclear. Could it perhaps be connected to dimensional travel? Everything was still shrouded in a thin fog — but the more she swung the sword, the clearer the shape of it became.

"Just a little more…."

Not even knowing what it was she trained in, she sank deeper and deeper into it.

Kuuwoong—

Space tore open in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠midair, and a woman in half-shredded white garments tumbled out of the rift. Ahh… silver divine blood streamed down from every part of her body.

Damn it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all!

Why did I have to stick my neck out? I should have just stayed quietly rooted in place.

She had only set out from the sanctum to trace the whereabouts of the vanished Fine Roots, and for that, she had suffered every conceivable torment.

She examined her wounds and found no hope of recovery. Her attacker must have been a considerably high-grade monster, for the injured flesh had turned purple, rotting and sloughing away. Her whole body trembled. The memory of that battlefield surfaced, and the trembling came unbidden.

The Dimensional Pathway there had been a sea of blood and carnage — a sea of monster corpses and the Holy Blood of the Sefirot Clan. Chaos coveted the clan's Holy Blood, and the clan, in turn, made a routine business of harvesting the corpses of the Chaos spawn. Which meant that merely sweeping up the spoils still littering the battlefield would have yielded an enormous harvest, and yet…

But the battle had spiraled far too desperately for either side to spare a thought for plunder. And combat in the Dimensional Pathway carried a casualty rate so absurd it defied belief. The battlefield was swelling into something vaster even than she had feared. Reinforcements had arrived even from the Branches — ranks far above her own Roots — and the Chaos side had done the same. Each side calling up fresh legions, the theater of war grew ever larger.

She had barely managed to slip her body free of that place. Had she kept fighting there without end, who knew when death might claim her. Someone might sneer and call it desertion, but it couldn't be helped. The Roots had never been a combat caste in the first place — supply duty, perhaps, but nothing more.

The role of the Roots was to administer the manifold worlds, secure the raw material of Holy Blood, and refine that material into the blood itself. Wars against outside powers belonged to the Stems or the Branches. None of it had ever been her charge.

Crck—

Besides, battles in the Dimensional Pathway were perilous beyond measure. Her blood had frozen; she had thought she would die of sheer terror. As it stood, both the Great Sephiroth and Chaos seemed to be pouring troops heedlessly into the danger zone. How had it come to this…? How much wider would the war spread? And in the midst of it all, she had been ambushed. She had barely escaped with her life—

—but only after taking wounds so grave that recovery was already beyond her.

I knew this would happen…! I should have pulled out from the very beginning!

She gazed in bitter regret at the Holy Blood streaming down her body, then bit her lip. She could not allow herself to vanish in so absurd a fashion.

She lifted her head and surveyed her surroundings. Where in the worlds was this?

It wasn't unheard of for a member of the clan to make a forced landing mid-translocation. But—

Whatever the case, this was a dimension outside the Sephiroth.

A translocation through an unstable pathway, executed amid a desperate flight. Her body could have been shredded in the seams between dimensions and no one would have blinked. That she had arrived, intact, in a living world might well count as a blessing of fate.

Her physical form was beginning to fade at the edges. Time was running short.

If she left it as it was, the corruption would spread through her entire frame, and annihilation would be unavoidable.

Closing her eyes, she began to resonate with the world. Fragments of the world's information came pouring in, layer by layer.

Hm? What is this?

Warriors clad in wide-sleeved robes were donning all manner of machines and waging battle in the skies above. That manner of flitting about through the air… altogether mismatched with this world's level of civilization. But this was an emergency. There was no time to fret over such trifles. Whatever the anomaly was, it could wait until a new body was found.

Ah…! There.

A single human of exceptional resonance capacity was caught in her senses. And curiously enough, the faint scent of her own clan clung to it.

With a body of that caliber, I could recover in no time at all.

Her flesh erupted into silver flame with a whoomph, transfiguring into a small, round mote of light.

Losing her body and hauling out nothing but her naked soul was never going to feel pleasant. But to preserve what remained of her old body's strength and essence to the utmost, there had been no other way.

The mote of light streaked in an instant toward the body with the highest resonance in this world.

There she is.

A woman in crimson armor. The closer she drew, the more her admiration overflowed. Finding a possession-vessel this perfectly suited was a feat bordering on the impossible.

The silver mote closed on the girl in a heartbeat and attempted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠contact. And in that very instant—

"?"

Beep—

Beep—

Virdel, who had been trading a few words with Namgung Jin during his visit to the cult, tilted her head. A voice had sounded from the armor bestowed upon her by the Administrator.

"…."

"What troubles you, Elder Sister?"