Chapter 163

I brought her into my room. The matter we were about to discuss was a bit inappropriate to be overheard by anyone else.

The moment I opened the door and walked in, Shia, who had been rolling around on my bed reading a book, let out an appreciative “Oh.”

“You have returned. It has been a while since I last saw the Saintess of that side as well.”

“Uu… Lady Shia…. Hello….”

“It feels as though you have not stepped out of your room for about three days. Does it not get suffocating to remain cooped up like that?”

“No…. Not really….”

As she shook her head, her bangs—which covered about a third of her face—swayed slightly.

Beholding that sight, Shia knit her brows marginally.

“Those bangs… would you mind terribly if I trimmed them for you?”

At that, she vigorously shook her head and spoke with absolute resolution.

“Nooo…. This is like a protective barrier that shields me from the world, so….”

Shia tapped her own chest as if feeling thoroughly blocked up.

“At this point, I am beginning to wonder if those bangs possess some sort of mental attack capability. Even I, who remain completely unfazed by most occurrences, feel as though I am suffocating to death just by looking at them….”

“Ah, I entirely agree with that.”

“Uu… I am so sorryyy….”

“Good grief, how suffocating. My dear, I shall head outside, so call me back once your business with the Saintess is concluded.”

“Sure.”

Click!

The door opened and closed, leaving only her and me in the room. She cut a somewhat shrunken figure.

“Um… so, if it is not an issue regarding the West Demon King, what on earth would you need from a creature like me….”

“Ah, it actually is about the West Demon King.”

I recalled the conversation I had shared with Lumina during a previous dream.

• Word of the Demon King’s death must not get out yet. If this news becomes known, warfare will consume the entire continent in flames.

• We need time to ensure a soft landing. Please act as the West Demon King in the Demon Territory—no, on Bordeaux Island.

• Many nations will attempt to investigate the Demon Territory. Therefore, camouflage is necessary. You must resurrect the monsters of the Demon Territory and manufacture doppelgangers to conceal the Demon King’s absence.

• The Demon King can be replaced by the Second Shadow Saintess, whose original purpose has been rendered obsolete thanks to you.

• That child is a vessel. A vessel vast enough to contain even me. And a vessel can contain anything. Even if that anything happens to be a Demon King.

And… the Second Shadow Saintess mentioned in that conversation was none other than this gloomy young lady dressed in cleric vestments standing right before my eyes.

When I first rescued the priests during the territorial war and brought her along, I assumed that would be the end of any tedious complications.

While the Saintess’s personality being far darker and more melancholic than anticipated was a minor concern… well, I figured if I threw her among the women at the mansion and asked them to reconstruct her character a bit, they would handle it perfectly fine on their own.

However… once I actually sat down with her to discuss Descent (in Lumina’s case) or possession (in the case of regular souls or residual will)… it turned out this wasn’t such a simple matter after all.

A dozen or so days ago.

“So… if Lumina makes her Descent into your body… you will completely exhaust all of your life force once the Descent concludes?”

“Uu… I am grateful for the grace of you saving me…. But calling Lady Lumina’s name plainly without any honorifics, as if she were a next-door neighbor, is a bit….”

“Disregard that. It’s perfectly legal for me anyway.”

“P-Pardon?”

“No, forget it. At any rate, does that mean you die the moment the Descent finishes?”

“Yes. Well. But that is only natural, so… wouldn’t it be far stranger to play host to someone like Lady Lumina and remain alive…?”

“And you are completely fine with that?”

“I have lived my entire life solely for that singular purpose…. If anything, I harbored a desire for that day to arrive even a single day sooner….”

Along with those words, a chilling glint momentarily flashed across her eyes.

And I picked up on two critical facts from that brief exchange.

‘Ah, she isn’t sane either.’

And,

‘This girl… dislikes me.’

Hmm, now this is a rather rare reaction, isn’t it?

No, of course, I am not trying to make some unhinged declaration that every woman alive must automatically swoon over me.

However, according to Shia, the primary reason the women around me harbor strong positive impressions is fundamentally due to the spiritual pressure constantly radiating from my being. And since she specified that the spiritual pressure merely elevates indifference to interest and amplifies existing goodwill, rather than flipping negative emotions into positive ones….

‘The gist of it is that she intensely disliked me even before she met me… but why? What did I ever do to her?’

“At any rate, is it possible to accept entities other than… Lady Lumina without sustaining a penalty?”

“That… varies slightlyyy. If it is a common soul or residual will, I would probably only have to offer a few hours to a few days of my lifespan… but if it is someone on the level of the West Demon King, I will likely have to consume my lifespan in units of years. Um… probably ten years at the lowest, and fifteen years at the highest?”

“…So, every single time you summon the West Demon King, your remaining days on this earth shrink by at least a decade?”

“Yes.”

For the record, this girl is a human. And just because this happens to be a fantasy world doesn’t mean a human’s lifespan is particularly longer than that on Earth.

Which meant, assuming her remaining lifespan was roughly fifty years….

“Good grief… doesn’t that mean if you summon the West Demon King five times at most, or a mere three times at worst, you drop dead?”

“Uu… I agree that is a problem… From your perspective as well, Sword God, you went to all the trouble of saving me, so you wouldn’t want to only get three or four uses out of me, right…? Therefore, if possible, I highly recommend that once you summon it once, you avoid switching it back out… obediently….”

“No, this isn’t a matter of whether I get use out of you or not… are you truly fine with that?”

“With what…?”

“With dying.”

“Ah… if it is about that, I am fine… As I mentioned… I have lived my entire life up until now precisely for that purpose… though it is a bit of a shame that the object of the summoning is the West Demon King instead of Lady Lumina….”

And naturally, I had refrained from possessing her with the West Demon King.

I’m not some kind of psychopath; how on earth could I listen to something like that and casually go, “Oh, is that so?” and proceed to exploit her as a substitute for the West Demon King?

However, if I wanted to clear Lumina’s request, and if I wanted to protect the Kingdom of Bordeaux—which had now fallen under my possession—from other nosy bastards….

‘The monster invasion, which serves as the signature trademark of the West Demon King, must actively be maintained. Oh, and the doppelgangers as well.’

And for both of those tasks, the West Demon King was an absolute necessity.

‘There are two methods. Either find a way to possess her with the West Demon King while preserving her lifespan….’

‘Or find a substitute that can play host to the West Demon King’s soul instead of Veloa.’

Consequently, I had sought out Shia, who was far more knowledgeable in these matters than I was, to request a consultation.

“Hmm… a vessel capable of holding a soul of the West Demon King’s caliber would, as you said, be limited to the likes of that Second Shadow Saintess, the genuine Saintess, or perhaps the Pontiff. Would it not be exceedingly difficult to discover an alternative among living humans?”

“Yeah… what should I do?”

“Why not directly consult the individual in question rather than me?”

“The individual?”

“The West Demon King. That Disis wench. Is she not currently inside you?”

“Ah, so in short, you want to bring me outside to borrow my capabilities as a Demon King? But if you possess her with me like that, it will cause a problem for the lifespan of the child acting as the vessel?”

“Yeah. So I figured since you’re the individual in question, you might have some sort of alternative solution.”

“Mmm….”

“Why? Is it too difficult?”

“No, quite the contrary. Why are you agonizing over such an easy problem?”

“Huh? Easy?”

“Previously, didn’t you manufacture doppelgangers and deploy them when you fought against me? And at the Principality rank, no less. Five bodies, at that.”

“Ah, right.”

“Even if you just kneaded and fabricated something like that, it would be more than a vast enough vessel for me to inhabit, you know? A doll forged from mana… where else could you find a better vessel than that to contain a soul?”

I shook my head at Disis, who was staring at me with an expression that asked what kind of idiotic worry I was agonizing over.

“I can’t make it.”

“…Pardon?”

“Did you forget that I’m a mortal right now? That’s a trick I can only pull off when my seal is undone and I ascend to the Potestates rank.”

“Ah… the seal. Right. That’s true. The impact from back then was so intense that I had forgotten.”

“Yeah. Right now, I don’t have that kind of mana, but more importantly, I don’t even know how to make it. A doppelganger… how on earth did I manufacture and manipulate those things? It makes me wonder if it was truly me who did it.”

“My goodness. How vicious. A seal that even blocks away one’s own enlightenment….”

“It’s more accurate to call it thorough rather than vicious. If they hadn’t done that, I would have restored my domain through my own strength, entirely separate from the seal. Ah, by the way, what happens if I undo the seal? Since the Potestates rank would be doubled, would it count as the Defiance Heaven rank?”

“…I have no words. You truly possess a crazy talent.”

“Anyway, so? Is there nothing else?”

“Hmm… it feels like we still have to find an answer in that direction somehow… Ah, by any chance, can you do something with pure spiritual power? Lately, I’ve been restoring my strength with that whenever I hunt mobs… so if you can just create a vessel, I think I can squeeze myself into it….”

I knit my brows slightly at those words.

“Sigh… that stuff obeys my control to a truly dreadful degree. It’s completely useless for anything other than concentrating it in one spot to reinforce my flesh or weapon. In the first place, I have to be able to separate it outside my body to create a vessel or whatever… but since even that basic step is impossible….”

“Separating… separation, huh…. Ah, then what if you try to substantialize that pure spiritual power into matter?”

“Substantialize it into matter?”

“Yes. When I manufacture doppelgangers, I go through a similar process.”

“Explain it in a bit more detail.”

“Hmm… my process for manufacturing a doppelganger goes like this.”

“First, I form the shape with mana, and next, I substantialize or materialize that mana to anchor it in reality so it won’t disperse even after separating from me.”

“And finally, I inject the information of the original target in the form of a residual will.”

“Substantialization, materialization… certainly, if we do it that way, it can become a separate entity distinct from me. But… how do you do that?”

“Who knows?”

“…Hey.”

“Ah, well… for me, that falls under the realm of instinct, so it’s something I do as naturally as breathing… you don’t exactly go out of your way to research how you breathe either, do you, Sword God?”

“Then can you show me?”

“I am already dead on the outside, remember? How am I supposed to show you?”

“…You’re not of any help at all. Should I tell Sis and Bel to kick you out?”

“Wow, look at you talking like that after listening to everything you needed.”

“No, I’m joking. It was helpful in its own way.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Since you can’t show me, I’ll have to look for someone in reality who can do something similar.”

“The place you are currently staying at is the Baran Empire on the Northern Continent, right?”

“And?”

“Mmm… if it’s there, try looking into a guy named Orléans.”

“Orléans? Duke Orléans? The Grand Master?”

“Yes. From what I’ve heard down the grapevine, that fellow can do something similar. It managed to reach my ears across the sea, so it probably isn’t classified information. If you investigate moderately, won’t you be able to confirm whether it’s true or not in no time?”

And as the saying goes, ‘might as well perform the sacrificial rite since the rice cake is prepared’… thanks to Duke Theodore’s meddling, I was spared the trouble of traveling all the way to the Grand Master’s estate. I was able to witness the Grand Master’s demonstration, and after applying the knowledge I gained to my pure spiritual power, I finally succeeded in materializing it.

“…Wow, this actually works. Materialization doesn’t result in mass being created, but rather, when mass is granted, the substantialization and materialization take place accordingly to match it?”

Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to complete the vessel. To settle a soul inside, the vessel had to be tailored to that soul as much as possible.

According to Disis, if you just roughly crammed it in without doing so, its performance would be extremely restricted.

“What exactly do I have to match?”

“The best thing is to perfectly replicate the flesh from when I was alive.”

“By what miracle am I supposed to do that?”

“Skillfully?”

“That does not fall under the realm of ‘skillfully.’ How on earth am I supposed to know how thick your ribs were, or what your ilium or pubis looked like?”

“My, how scandalous.”

“Would you shut your mouth? Otherwise, I’ll call Sis and Bel and have them torment you from morning till night, got it?”

“Ah, that’s a bit… those guys are kind of scary. They truly show no mercy….”

“Then hurry up and tell me another method.”

“In truth, you don’t need to match the shape of the bones or internal organs. Just match the appearance that the soul or residual will perceives as ‘themselves’—meaning the exterior—as accurately as possible. That will be enough. Even if you don’t know the shape of the ribs or pelvis, you can accurately replicate the chest or hip sizes, can’t you? Since you have a reference model right here.”

And so, having returned from the Imperial Capital, I invested nearly ten days and finally succeeded in sculpting the pure spiritual power into Disis’s form. As a bonus, I even crafted the forms of Kelly and a ‘few others.’

Zzzzzzzt…

“Hi—Hieek… there was a flash and suddenly a person materialized out of empty space…!? W-Who are you?”

“Disis.”

“…Pardon?”

“The West Demon King, Disis. That thing is. Though it’s still just an empty shell for now.”

“Uh… uh-uh?”

Letting out a smirk, I made a slicing motion across my neck with my hand.

“So, you’re fired.”