The Vessel of Siren
Raon turned all the way around. He gave his scabbard a couple of idle taps as he studied the locked door of the Frost Branch.
What was that just now?
An ominous presence had rolled off the manager he'd passed only moments ago—a quality his sixth sense, something that lived beyond the five ordinary senses, had caught and refused to let go.
Nothing seemed particularly off.
The manager's face, his eyes, his gait, his way of speaking—every gesture had been identical to usual. The same man Raon had seen every time he visited the Frost Branch.
But what lay beneath the surface had changed. It felt as though some unidentifiable mass had draped itself in human skin.
A trick of the mind? Have I been stretching myself too thin lately?
Raon pressed his temple, frowning. He'd been pouring so much of himself into imitating the blonde swordsman's technique that he might simply have imagined it.
No. It can't be a mistake.
Whatever else might fail him, the sixth sense of someone cultivating the Ring of Fire could not be wrong. Misreading something at this close a range was simply impossible.
"Hrm."
Wrath was staring at the Frost Branch as if to confirm it.
Right.
Raon circulated Glacia. Across the Sea of Senses spreading in concentric rings, a small wave surged.
It was the presence of the manager who had just gone back inside the tavern. Not the warm, gentle undulation Raon had always felt in the Sea of Senses, but a mechanical tremor, as if emotion itself had been erased.
I knew it.
Raon clenched his fist. His instincts had not been wrong. Some unknown existence was wearing the manager's skin.
"Sir Raon? Aren't you coming?"
Dorian, who had been heading for the lodgings, came back and tilted his head.
"Dorian. In a little while, run toward wherever you hear a loud noise."
"Huh?"
Leaving the bewildered Dorian behind, Raon sprinted around to the rear of the Frost Branch.
"Why not go in through the front?"
If I move through the door, that thing might take Yua as a hostage.
Until he knew exactly what he was dealing with, he couldn't afford to be reckless. He slipped around back without a sound and took his position against the wall Yua was leaning on from the other side.
The moment anyone let their guard down was always when they moved to strike. That was the instant Raon was waiting for.
A crackle of warped energy split the air. The thing wearing the manager's face reached for Yua. The instant that strange power unfurled like a spreading cloth, Raon ignited the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames and smashed through the wall.
The wall burst apart. In the heartbeat the creature flinched, Raon pulled Yua behind him and drew his sword.
"What the hell are you?"
Through the drifting gray dust, the thing's face came into view. It was the manager's, eyes wide.
"Why! Why are you doing this?!"
His lips trembled as he stumbled backward, as if he couldn't begin to understand.
"Hide that hand before you talk."
Raon smiled, cold as frost, and pointed at the manager's hand. A huge black maw had sprouted from the massive palm, opening and closing with wet little gulps.
"How did you know? How? How? How? How?"
The manager's mouth split wide as a crescent moon, and his head swelled and collapsed like a jellyfish, over and over. It looked like neither a human nor a monster.
"Ah…"
Tears welled and fell onto the back of the hand he'd wrapped around Yua's shoulder. Raon's grip tightened of its own accord.
"Gyaaah! Wh-what is that thing?!"
Dorian's mouth fell open at the sight of a monster that looked as if it had been mashed together from clay or mud.
"What is that monster?!"
"Take Yua and stay back."
Raon handed Yua off to the recoiling Dorian and stepped in front of the creature.
What is this thing?
"A doppelganger."
A doppelganger? A doppelganger's transformation isn't supposed to be perfect.
Doppelgangers were monsters that ate humans and took their form—but only the appearance. Their speech and mannerisms were distinctly, obviously wrong. He couldn't believe that this thing, which had matched not only the look but every word and gesture, was a doppelganger.
"It is a creature modified by black magic. They shredded the dignity of life itself to fashion a new species. Only the foundation is a doppelganger—what stands there is no different from a chimera."
Wrath muttered that even demonkind would not stoop to such a thing, and glared at the doppelganger.
"The Vessel of Siren. The Vessel of Siren must be taken, by any means necessary."
The doppelganger wasn't looking at Raon, who was pouring out killing intent. It flicked a gray tongue toward Yua, standing behind him.
That single phrase was enough.
Eden had sent this modified doppelganger—and what they were after was not a mana stone. It was Yua.
"Vessel of Siren!"
The doppelganger let out a grotesque laugh and reached. Its arm stretched like rubber and shot toward Yua.
"You're looking down on me a little too much."
He'd been expecting this from the moment that arm had gone slack and begun to writhe.
Raon cut across the arm's trajectory and drew his blade. A sword stroke falling like a thunderbolt sheared the doppelganger's arm off at the midpoint.
"The Vessel of Siren must, without fail…"
Even with its arm severed, the doppelganger didn't let out a single groan. It simply kept staring at Yua. They had erased even its sense of pain when they modified it.
The severed arm sprouted back in an instant. Its regenerative power surpassed even an Ice Troll Lord's.
"Do not interfere."
The doppelganger's left hand swelled like a boulder, and its right became a barbed whip that snapped and fluttered.
"Kyaaaaah!"
It kicked off the floor and charged, bringing that enormous fist down. A terrifying pressure crashed toward him, but Raon didn't give ground. He drew his sword back.
In the instant before the doppelganger's fist reached his head, his blade surged upward. The thrust with which the blonde swordsman had severed the Orc Lord's arm manifested in the world once more, borrowing Raon's body as its vessel.
A dreadful shockwave erupted, and the doppelganger's entire left shoulder was blown away.
"Vessel of Siren!"
True to a monster that felt no pain, the doppelganger immediately lashed out with the whip in its right hand. The barbed lash coiled around his whole body like a snake.
Raon raised the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames toward the direction the whip was bending. Petals that had been dancing along the edge of his blade scattered in a drifting swirl.
Blossoms of flame bloomed and raced up the length of the whip, engulfing the doppelganger's upper body in fire.
He thought he could pin it down like this. He was wrong.
"Kiii."
The doppelganger cut away its own burning flesh and regenerated its body as if time itself had been rewound. The speed of it was such that an ordinary person watching would have thought nothing had happened at all.
"Siren. I must bring back the Vessel of Siren."
As if that were the sole purpose of its existence, the doppelganger repeated the same words from beginning to end.
"Kyaaaaaah!"
It shrieked. Both hands transformed into greatswords, and it came on swinging wildly. There was no principle of the sword in it whatsoever, but the sheer power and speed behind the blows could not be ignored.
Raon took in every one of the doppelganger's movements, then stepped forward. He tore both descending arms to shreds and split the creature's chest.
Gray blood gushed from the wound carved by the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames—but only for a moment. The gash in its chest closed over in an instant as well.
"Kiiiiii."
Burn it with fire, cut it with a blade—the doppelganger's flesh kept growing back like a lizard's tail. The thing felt no pain. At this rate, there would be no end to it.
"It's been a while since I used my fists."
Raon sheathed his sword and closed his hands. The aura of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames wrapped his fists like a pair of heavy gauntlets.
"Kyaaaaah!"
The doppelganger's hands became iron maces, and sharp spines erupted across its entire body—as if it meant to make anyone who attacked it pay in kind.
"You think that's going to be enough?"
Raon stamped his foot and drove into the doppelganger's space. Maces the size of a grown man's torso came screaming in at his head and heart, attacks packed with a fierce will to erase the interloper as fast as possible.
Which made them easy to read.
He deflected the first mace with the back of his hand and drove his left fist forward. A punch steeped in the energy of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames and the spinning force of the Empty Tiger Fist shattered the doppelganger's mace completely.
The right fist that followed drove into the doppelganger's right side. The creature honed its spines to a finer point, but the colossal energy packed into the blow crushed the spines flat and burst its upper body apart.
"Now it begins."
The energy of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames bloomed to fullness in his loosely held fists. Fist-force burning like a heat haze became a storm and hammered the doppelganger's entire body.
Faced with an attack of surface rather than line, even the doppelganger's regeneration couldn't keep up. Its clay-like flesh began to vanish as if an eraser were wiping it away.
"Vessel of Si—ghk!"
Raon smashed the doppelganger's babbling mouth and slammed a blow into its chest. It felt no pain—but fear, it seemed, had not been erased. Its pupils began to tremble.
"N-no, don't!"
Just before the doppelganger's upper body was completely destroyed, Yua's scream cut through the air.
"G-Grandpa! My grandpa is still alive in there! Please, save him!"
Yua dropped to her knees and burst into tears.
"S-Sir Swordsman!"
"Kiii!"
The instant Raon's gaze flicked toward her, the doppelganger lying flattened on the floor stretched its body long as a snake and shot outside.
Raon said nothing. He met Yua's eyes—eyes full of desperate hope—and ran in the direction the doppelganger had fled.
"You let it go on purpose."
I couldn't kill it in front of that child.
Monster or not, it was still wearing her grandfather's face. He hadn't been able to land a finishing blow in front of Yua, and at the end he had deliberately let it escape.
Not that I'll lose it.
Raon had already grasped the doppelganger's nature. No matter where it ran, he would find it.
Leaving the castle, is it?
The doppelganger had fled the castle and was racing north, toward Sterin Mountain.
Raon mounted the ramparts and saw it—still wearing the manager's shape, running across the snowfield like a wolf.
Where do you think you're going?
He stamped down hard enough to crack the stone beneath his feet. His body shot forward like a boulder from a catapult and smashed into the doppelganger's back.
A sound like bursting flesh, and the doppelganger was driven face-first into the snow.
"Kiiiiii!"
It was on its feet at once, the ruptured flesh already beginning to regenerate, but naked panic showed clearly in its gray eyes.
"This is as far as you go."
Raon drew his sword again. He dropped into a low stance, raising the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames to its peak. He wanted to kill it then and there—but Yua's eyes from a moment ago rose in his mind, and the blade would not move so easily.
Is there no way to save him?
Doppelgangers were exceedingly rare monsters. Few people had ever even encountered one, and he had never heard of a method for dealing with them, nor of anyone who had been eaten and then saved.
"Pathetic."
Wrath snorted and popped out above the bracelet.
"Did the pineapple girl not tell you? She said the old man is still in there. That much is true."
What?
"Circulate Glacia and examine that thing closely. Not the outside—the inside."
Raon glanced down at Wrath, then circulated Glacia. He focused the Sea of Senses spreading in its widening circles on the doppelganger alone.
"Kyaaaaah!"
The doppelganger threw a fist the size of the boulders that made up the castle walls. Raon slipped aside with the Garam Footwork and kept his concentration locked on the Sea of Senses.
The creature's energy, its nature, the body that flowed like liquid—all of it came into his grasp as if he could close his hand around it.
What am I supposed to be sensing… wait.
Inside the doppelganger's body, sloshing like water in a bottle, a faint energy stirred. It was not the creature's. Dim as a candle burned down to the wick, but unmistakably a human's Life Essence.
"Now you understand. The old man from the tavern is still alive. That thing has been rolling him around in its mouth the way a child sucks a piece of candy down to nothing, pulling his memories out and devouring them."
How do I save him?
Raon adjusted his grip on the sword. He owed Yua a great deal. If there was no way, that would be one thing—but if a way existed, he wanted to save the old man no matter what it took.
"It is beyond you as you are now."
Wrath shook his head, uncompromising.
"To kill only the doppelganger wrapped in black sorcery, and not the old man inside it, your current realm will not suffice."
What realm are you talking about?
He let the doppelganger's fist slide past by the width of a sheet of paper and asked.
"In human terms, the state in which weapon and spirit become one…"
Unity of Sword and Self?
"Correct. You must become one with the sword and cut only the doppelganger, and that is beyond you as you stand. The slightest error, and the old man dies with it."
That much is fine.
"What?"
I couldn't do it alone. But if I have help, I can.
Raon sheathed his sword and drew the Requiem Sword from where it hung at the small of his back. He raised the crimson blade, fiendish energy coiling off it, and asked,
"I want to save the person inside that thing. Will you help me?"
The Requiem Sword burst with a clear, ringing cry, as if to ask what kind of question that even was. Fiendish energy flared along the blood-red edge like a heat haze.
The fire of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames and the sword's fiendish energy twined together, and a blood-red aura wrapped Raon and the Requiem Sword as one. As a river flows down to become the sea, the Requiem Sword's malign power merged into the energy of the Ten Thousand Flames.
"Hah. So it is not Unity of Sword and Self achieved through realm—but Unity of Sword and Self achieved when sword and human share a single will?"
At the natural harmony of aura and fiendish energy, so complete they seemed to have become one, Wrath let out a short, incredulous laugh.
"Not to This King's taste—but it should be possible."
Raon nodded at Wrath's confirmation.
"Now all that's left…"
was the question of what to cut.
He had to sever only the doppelganger's soul, which meant the where of the cut mattered more than anything.
"You have but one chance. The old man's condition will not endure more than that. Choose carefully what you will cut."
I know.
Raon nodded. The manager he had sensed through Glacia was in a state where it would not have been strange for his breathing to stop at any moment. The cut had to be clean, instantaneous, and without shock.
"Kyaaaaargh!"
While Raon, deep in concentration, studied the doppelganger's entire body, the creature shrieked and flung its arms wide.
Its sloshing flesh began to swell, stretching like rubber that had been bunched tight and then released. In an instant it had grown to nearly six meters, and a fist the size of a house came crashing down.
Raon ignored the colossal fist blotting out the moonlight and resonated the Ring of Fire.
Ring of Fire — Resonance
The world slowed.
In that near-still field of vision, crimson eyes swept through the doppelganger's interior.
Found it!
Near the doppelganger's left waist, a spot no bigger than a bean—no, smaller and thinner even than a grain of rice—was jetting empty energy like a fountain. That grain was the very source of the doppelganger's power.
Raon reversed his grip on the Requiem Sword.
The energy of the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames and the fiendish aura blended as harmoniously as two colors of ink dropped into water, and a blood-red radiance surged up the length of the blade.
Unity of Sword and Self was, by nature, a state of oneness that a swordsman reached through realm alone. But here and now, he had achieved Unity of Sword and Self in the truest sense—his will made one with the Requiem Sword.
He drove his foot down in a true step and extended his hand. The Requiem Sword moved forward as naturally as if it had become his own arm.
Sensing its death, the doppelganger shifted the core inside itself—but senses honed to their utmost extreme did not miss even that minute movement.
A flash of deep crimson bloomed from the tip of the blade and pierced through the doppelganger's soul.