The Souls Of The Five Heroes

The surge rising from the body of the guy sprawled on the floor. It wasn’t the feeling of divine power. A bit lighter and more primal. A presence like a spirit had risen.

But light and pure did not mean it could be dismissed. The force he produced was enough to make one step back involuntarily.

That presence vanished in an instant with the bright woman’s voice. As if a glamour spell had been lifted.

I turned toward the sound and saw the woman who had first grabbed my arm—the same woman who in the memory of the Sword’s Wail had uprooted a tree and rubbed it to burn with her hands—now walking toward us with a furrowed white brow.

“Why do you talk so much?”

She walked lightly and smacked the dazed guy hard on the back of his head with a loud crack.

His soul shoved its face into the floor from the impact. For a moment it almost seemed pitiful.

“A guy who’d keep flapping his mouth until he dies.”

“W-what, how… how can someone self-destruct using souls…?”

Not because he, like me, had no idea what had happened, but perhaps because he knew something. He still stared wide-eyed at the woman as if he couldn’t understand.

“You still can’t figure out whose consciousness this is? That’s dumb. Here, priority one is Kim Han, then us who have the gods’ permission, and after that you’re the uninvited guest, you idiot! Just because Kim Han isn’t used to this situation yet, did you think we’d sit around like morons?”

She smacked the soul on the back of the head after each sentence. Since the man was stuck to the floor, she crouched and smacked him with vigor, like a high school bully.

“Huh? But why is this soul in such a state?”

“A sane guy wouldn’t leap into someone else’s unconscious like that, would he?”

“No, it’s that for a soul it’s too murky. It’s full of impurities?”

“A soul?”

“Yeah. Hmm… Well, Sophia will look into and investigate it. For now… shall we tidy it up? Gather.”

I couldn’t follow the conversation between the woman and the Sword’s Wail. No, I didn’t want to follow it.

And the other heroes didn’t seem inclined to explain it to me.

The soul that had been beaten into a humiliating posture and sprawled on the floor began to shrink under the woman’s “gather” command.

It shrank quickly as if a plastic bag were being burned in a campfire, and the guy screamed in horror.

“Ugh!! Eek!! Wh-what is this! Y-you, you-you-you! Y-you guys, no way!!”

The soul that shrank with the scream shrank even faster and became the size of the bead the Sword’s Wail had handed me.

I was so astonished my mouth wouldn’t close. It looked as if a person had been turned into a bead.

“Oh my? Cute expression. Hoho, Kim Han, you can do it too. As I said to this guy, the owner of this place is Kim Han. Here, this. Hold onto it and hand it to Sophia or Kim Han’s responsible god later.”

“Huh?”

“After you leave here, you’ll be able to take it out just by the will to do so.”

She handed me the bead with a fresh smile on her face. Completely different from how she treated the soul who had pretended to be Manus earlier.

“…Is that so?”

“That’s right. Even beings called gods can’t go against your will here. That’s why Sophia built this environment with the cooperation of your responsible god. By the way, if you’re not busy, I’d like to have a brief conversation.”

I nodded at the Sword’s Wail’s invitation but then hesitated.

I had definitely passed out before coming here. While hearing the frantic voices of my party…

“I’m afraid my party will be worried…”

“Ah! Right. Your party. But don’t worry. Time here flows differently than there, so even if you talk with us at length, it won’t be that long outside.”

“Then I ask you, please.”

My tone had somehow become politely formal.

For one thing, even if only half of their recorded deeds are true, these people deserve respect. How many even use their power for others?

And above all, they are strong.

I might stand up to Aetas, but with these people I don’t even get the thought.

The aura that poured out when the girl who looked like a high schooler scolded the idiot and exerted force sucked such thoughts back in once again.

“Hee! I hate formal speech! Opposed! Opposed!!”

“Right! Right!!”

My tone had become polite without my realizing it, to the point those two women reacted strongly.

“Don’t mind those idiots. More importantly, your technique is unusual. As that guy said earlier, techniques that strike souls are like a double-edged sword. You must be careful.”

“Ah… to be honest, it’s not a complete technique yet. And when I learned it, I never heard that it could strike the spirit.”

“Hmm… If it’s not rude, could you explain as much as possible how it’s operated? Oh, don’t misunderstand. We’re utterly sick of fighting now.”

“Yes, I won’t misunderstand. So…”

I explained as fully as possible the operation and characteristics of Deicide and Destruction. Words ordinary people wouldn’t understand. Even I didn’t exactly know what I was saying.

I rambled out explanations as they came to me, and the five heroes each nodded or expressed admiration.

Unable to bear it, I asked halfway through whether they understood.

“Huh? Of course. If you couldn’t understand after such a detailed explanation, you’d better drop the sword from your hand.”

At Sword’s Wail’s remark, the other heroes nodded too.

Suddenly the faces of Talis and Bioss, who usually scolded the Rebound Legion members for being slow, flashed through my mind.

When the long explanation ended and everyone was lost in thought, Sword’s Wail spoke first.

“I think that dumb guy was right. It’s certainly a technique that strikes souls. It’s just that your achievement hasn’t reached that level yet, so you didn’t notice. As with most martial arts, it ultimately becomes a blow no one can stop. Isn’t that what one strives for?”

“I suppose so.”

Direct and factual, but he was right.

Some martial artists might say they train to approach the Tao, the source of principle. But the Dao they imagine is still a single slash or punch.

An attack that cannot be blocked no matter how prepared the opponent is—one that breaks the will to fight.

“This is just my personal opinion. As for your Deicide? I think this friend here will explain it better. And as for the magic called Destruction, of course that idiot over there will explain it.”

“Who’s the idiot!!”

The woman who just turned a soul into a bead. He pointed at her as if she’d explain the magic.

That meant the bright, tinkling girl who looked like a high schooler had the terrifying epithet ‘Disturber of Repose.’

“Disturber of Repose?”

“Yeah. Hehe, that’s me.”

The girl said cheerfully that she was called the Disturber of Repose. A necromancer who could command tens of thousands of undead.

Unless you counted the sullen figure sitting over there, who was hard to tell male or female, you wouldn’t expect this bright and cheerful girl to have such an epithet as a necromancer.

“I think similarly. The difference is what they target. If the art called Deicide strikes the soul, Destruction, I think, affects the ‘back’—the corporeal—more heavily than the soul. Even so, both undeniably affect the soul. In our age, all the superhumans’ attacks were like that—more damaging to the spirit than the flesh… only differing in method. Hehe.”

“…Crude. Will is important. That’s why I chose focus.”

The figure dressed entirely in black, who had been silent until now, spoke. Of course I couldn’t understand.

“So what our ‘Death’ means is that it’s cruder than the techniques of our age. It’s a technique that pays no attention to the attacker’s protection. Isn’t that why situations like this occur? You can’t really argue when someone calls it crude. Anyway, because it’s crude it must concentrate on one thing rather than many attributes. In Deicide’s case it focuses on the soul’s death; for Destruction it’s concentrated on the body’s annihilation.”

I hadn’t expected such intent hidden in Deicide and Destruction. I only thought they were techniques comparable to powers that could strike beings beyond ordinary measures due to differences in caliber.

Would the two transcendants even know that such characteristics were hidden in their techniques? Wait…!

“Death? Could it be that that person is the Flower of Death?”

“Yes. Isn’t our Death cute? If they took off that mask they’d be so cute. Hehe.”

A somewhat short being, impossible to tell male or female. They don’t speak much, and above all their voice is androgynous.

“Problem. It’s become accustomed to your body.”

“What ‘Death’ means is that Deicide and Destruction have become fully accustomed to Kim Han’s body and are in a state that can’t be controlled. So we must compensate by other means. You need strong Training of your conscious world. So that anyone who invades can be suppressed easily. Or better yet, if you could absorb or annihilate them outright, even better.”

“Then how do we do that Training?”

At my question the five beings fell silent. Even the Disturber of Repose who had been chattering didn’t open her mouth.

Something flicked across my mind in the strange atmosphere.

I remembered Naruan having trained in the imagination with the fighting-obsessed man for six months after consuming the soul stone.

“Is that method perhaps training together with the five of you? Here?”

At my words the five heroes’ expressions noticeably hardened. Was I wrong?

“It is so. But we do not want it.”

They don’t want it? In the footage they seemed to prefer being here to being in the soul stone. Yet they say they don’t want it.

“You don’t want it?”

“Yes. It could have a harmful effect on you. If you had absorbed soul stones it would be different, but in this state, the places we would have occupied—parts of our souls—will leave empty spaces. For such spaces to exist deep in your soul and consciousness is to give other beings the chance to pry in at any time.”

So they said they didn’t want it out of concern for me.

Truthfully, his words made me worried. He meant incidents like this might happen often.

“I’ll solve that problem for you.”

Suddenly a voice filled the space and a woman appeared. A woman with a gentle smile holding a book in one hand. It was Sophia.

“It’s Sophia!”

“Welcome.”

“…”

The heroes each greeted Sophia in their own ways.

Though Sophia is an Ancient God and a High God, she bowed politely to the five heroes to greet them.

Then she turned her gaze to me, who had business with her.

“Now you’re coming in too? Is this some kind of town hall?”

“Anyway, I’m the one who arranged for the five to be able to enter Kim Han’s consciousness. Ah, of course I asked Ludicer for permission. Ludicer said he was too shy to come.”

“Who says he couldn’t come because of that?”

“Hoho, let’s skim past that. I can offer this to Kim Han as compensation. I don’t know why incidents keep happening only to Kim Han, but since the crime originated in the divine realm, compensation is only fair.”

“Compensation?”

“Yes. Weren’t you surprised that even though you caught that strange fellow, no particular message was output?”

Now that she mentioned it, we had defeated the guy who claimed to be a god, and even the useless title message you get for hitting Caelum hadn’t popped up.

“Currently the divine realm is a bit chaotic due to Manus’s problem. So the Setting has been put on hold. To give the most appropriate compensation to the victim, Kim Han. The representative who attacked Kim Han went to follow Manus by their own will and died like that, but Kim Han is a completely innocent victim.”

“…Continue.”

“But Manus and those who collude with him are more malicious than we imagined. They attempted to invade Kim Han’s consciousness. Then, thinking differently, we realized it was a dumb move. And upon learning that Kim Han currently holds the five people’s soul stones, we came up with an appropriate compensation.”

“Is that to have the five of them remain in my consciousness?”

“Yes. If anything is forced, it causes problems. But if it proceeds naturally, it isn’t a problem. As your consciousness has expanded with increased physical grade, we’ll let a very small portion of the five’s souls reside there. But there’s a term. Six years.”

“Six years? Haha.”

Six years… what a strange period. Not five, not ten. An awkward six years.

Manus said it would take six years to finish all preparations. In short, it’s like saying we’ll support you, so go stop Manus.

“If you consume the soul stones before then, the five’s souls won’t be able to remain. In other words, the compensation ends early.”

“Understood. But shouldn’t you ask the five for their consent before me?”

I asked Sophia as I looked at the five heroes; she smiled and nodded. Then she chatted with the five for a while.

In the meantime a question popped into my head, so I asked Sophia.

“Sophia, how are the members outside doing?”

“Huh? Ah! Pfft! The legion members are out there standing the most serious guard of their lives, not realizing Kim Han is here enjoying himself. Hoho.”

“What?”