Chapter 216 : Chapter 216
Chapter 216
"A parasitic demon?"
Rozalin blinked her wide eyes.
She sounded as though she'd never heard of such a thing in her life.
"Parasitic? So you're saying it lives inside a human body? Like those roundworms?"
The Spear God squinted, equally baffled.
"Parasites...... there are monsters like that too. The kind that latch onto a host's body. But I didn't know demons came in that variety."
Even Hati seemed to be hearing this for the first time.
If every single one of the regressors was reacting this way, this must truly be a newly discovered type of demon.
The three exchanged glances.
"Sounds like bullshit."
"You think it ain't?"
"That damn intelligence bureau bastard is running a con!"
Seeing all three of them unanimously declare it a lie, this must be an extraordinarily rare case.
"Let's change the premise. Are you sure a variant demon like this never appeared even in the final battle? Demons themselves always came in forms that were hard for humans to conceive of."
"Even accounting for that, this is unfamiliar."
Rozalin went quiet, lost in thought.
"What you're saying, Teacher, is that we could be wrong. And you'd be right. Even if we've experienced the future, we don't know every demon that exists."
"The World Eater showed up and died way ahead of schedule. So the possibility of new demons appearing sooner can't be dismissed."
"Even so, there's a basic framework."
The Spear God's irritated expression seemed to have already branded Blue Light a fraud.
"What is a demon in the first place? Why was that corpse-loving pinkhair able to predict demons in advance? Because demons are living creatures in their own right."
He was talking about Berlis.
She wasn't a regressor, but she'd known the demons would appear.
She'd eavesdropped on the demons' conversations.
And then she'd spent her time as a professor at Akarind Academy preparing for the demons' arrival.
"If such a demon truly existed, it wouldn't have existed independently—it would have had to parasitize a creature from the Demon Realm."
"You're saying it should have been parasitizing other demons."
"Exactly. And yet it came down to the human world and parasitized a human? That makes no sense."
So I turned to Blue Light.
He'd been present from the start of this meeting.
What he wanted wasn't asylum but a negotiation.
We needed to verify whether the cards he was putting on the table were legitimate before proceeding.
"So what do you have to say?"
"These three are regressors, I take it."
Blue Light glanced at the three of them and tossed the words out flatly.
It wasn't particularly surprising.
From the Duchy of Crownhardt to Abrahal.
Information about the regressors was no longer a secret.
Especially so long as the Academy's key members knew about regressors—maintaining that secrecy was bound to be difficult.
'There's not much point in hiding it, honestly.'
There was a time when the regressors' information had to be kept secret.
Preventing global panic had been necessary, and monopolizing the early Fantasies that demons dropped had also been necessary.
But now, concealing the regressors' existence served little purpose.
The knowledge that the world had been destroyed once by demons might strike fear into people.
But far more than that—
The knowledge that people who'd fought desperately in a world without Aura now possessed even greater strength and were swiftly dispatching formidable enemies.
It gave people powerful hope, and a sense of purpose that they must give their all.
"If even the regressors don't know this demon, it must've hidden itself very well last time."
"You said the demon is a high-ranking officer in Imperial intelligence? Then there's no way I wouldn't have known about it."
Rozalin's eyes narrowed.
She wasn't just anyone—she'd served as Grand General of a unified human army representing the entire Empire.
She would've had a handle on practically every intelligence agent of note.
"Showing my hand first isn't my style, but I have no choice. The one I'm talking about is Dark Moon."
"Dark Moon? That's the head of Dark Moon—the organization. That potbellied old man?"
"Not someone I know, then. The potbelly is probably one of the underlings working under the current Dark Moon. The one I'm talking about is a woman with long black hair."
"That's someone I don't know. You're saying it's a different person from what we knew?"
At Rozalin's words, all three faces turned serious.
With so many regressors making their mark, the information from the future kept shifting.
People who should've lived had died, and people who should've died had survived.
If Blue Light was right, this parasitic demon must be one such case.
"What does it do?"
"Once the parasite latches onto a host, it absorbs everything—the person's memories, behavioral patterns, even their trivial habits and quirks. Then it goes on living as if it were that person."
There was a similar monster.
"A doppelgänger."
"I also refer to this entity as a Doppelgänger."
Blue Light stuck another cigarette in his mouth and blew out a long stream of smoke.
"It uses those memories to throw the world into chaos. Did you notice any activity from Dark Moon, Red Moon, or Blue Moon while the Empire was falling apart this badly? You didn't. We were too busy cleaning up the mess that thing left behind. A shitload of it."
He was right—even as the Empire had deteriorated to this point, the intelligence units had been strangely inactive.
They hadn't even noticed the Wolf King rising through the ranks, or the Duchy of Crownhardt pulling out.
A few operatives had been dispatched, but after they returned in disgrace, no follow-up measures were taken.
From the Kingdom of Namress to Triban to Belmein.
All three kingdoms shared borders with the Empire to some extent.
For problems of this magnitude to arise in those nations without any response was bizarre.
"How did you discover the demon? You said it has all the memories and habits of its host. Maybe it's just someone who went mad. I mean, in a world like this—'I'm a demon! Roar!' Something like that."
Rozalin's tone dripped with mockery.
She clearly didn't trust Blue Light one bit.
"Hey, you. Put that damn cigarette out before you talk."
Mid-conversation, the Spear God's spear shot out and grazed Blue Light's lips.
The lit end of the cigarette was cleanly severed from the filter.
The wind pressure from the swing snuffed the flame out instantly.
Blue Light chewed bitterly on the now-filterless stub.
"Tch. You're covering the cleanup costs for this, right?"
"Oh ho. And why should I be the one cleaning up?"
"Well, since you don't trust me, I suppose I should show you."
He spat out the remnant of the cigarette and suddenly raised his right hand, beginning to draw up mana.
A form of mana manipulation utterly unlike Aura.
But one I'd encountered before.
Geis.
Except the way the mana moved was slightly wrong.
'Reversed?'
Geis was a form of sorcery that amplified one's abilities by placing restrictions on one's senses, body, or lifelong behavior.
But this Geis worked in the opposite direction—the more a specific action was performed, the more it constricted the user's abilities.
The keyword was cigarettes.
The moment the cigarette was severed, the shackles binding Blue Light snapped.
"Whew."
Demonic Energy began flowing from his right hand.
A black aura, visible to the naked eye, undulated as if alive.
It flickered like flame—serpentine, draconic.
"What the—!"
Its intensity was alarming.
There was only one thing capable of emitting Demonic Energy like this.
A demon.
We instantly put distance between us and drew our weapons.
"A demon here? Did you come to get yourself killed?"
"Gkh, just shut up and watch for a second."
Blue Light's left hand trembled, but with practiced ease he fished out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter.
The instant the flame caught with a hiss, the energy in his right hand flared up defiantly before gradually subsiding.
"Whew."
By the time he'd exhaled two or three puffs, the Demonic Energy had vanished as if it had never been there.
"This thing is the Doppelgänger."
"A moment ago you said it was parasitizing Dark Moon."
"Are you familiar with the doppelgänger legend?"
The doppelgänger was less an actual monster with physical form and more a kind of folk tale that had spread around rural villages and dungeon perimeters.
A young man left on a dungeon expedition and returned to his village after a long absence.
But the acquaintances he hadn't seen in ages treated him with startling familiarity, as casually as if they'd been together just yesterday.
When the young man asked about it, his bewildered friends asked him what he was talking about—they'd been with him until just yesterday.
A being that resembled him, possessed his memories, and perfectly mimicked his behavior.
Even at that very moment, the being was wandering the village in his likeness.
Terrified, the young man went home.
And some time later.
There came a knock at the door.
Who is it, the young man asked, and when he opened the door, there stood someone identical to himself, as if reflected in a mirror.
And shortly after.
A single young man continued his life in the village.
Whether the real one survived, or the fake.
If it was the fake that survived, then what became of the real one.
The folk tale gives no clear answer.
"The existence of the folk tale means there was a related incident. And that was—"
"This demon?"
"More or less, yes. The reason I identified the Doppelgänger was because it targeted me."
Dark Moon was the unit tasked with tracking the corruption of Imperial nobles to leverage their weaknesses.
An ideal position for sowing chaos within the Empire's borders.
But there existed a unit that kept Dark Moon in check by seizing on weaknesses within Dark Moon itself.
Blue Moon.
The unit Blue Light commanded.
Blue Moon was a unit under the Emperor's direct command, handling intelligence at a higher security clearance than Dark Moon.
"So the Doppelgänger started circling around me, trying to copy me."
"And your Geis reacted to it?"
"Heh. Ironic, isn't it?"
What Blue Light had offered up through Geis was his own health.
He constantly filled his lungs with cigarette smoke and degraded his own condition.
But when the Doppelgänger attempted to seize his body, a conflict arose.
"This damn Geis treats the Doppelgänger as something 'harmful' too."
That was why the Doppelgänger had chosen Blue Light.
Blue Light's ability strengthened whenever something foreign and detrimental entered his body.
And the Doppelgänger was a parasite that stole a human's body and mind.
So a Blue Light with the Doppelgänger inside him would exhibit power incomparably greater than what mere cigarettes could provide.
From that point on, Blue Light quit smoking.
He lasted several days.
But the Doppelgänger's energy gradually crept up through his right hand.
So he changed his approach.
"I threw everything at it. The finest medicinal herbs, potions of every kind, holy water—all of it."
A total mobilization of nutritional science, forcibly restoring his body to health.
That was what had kept the Doppelgänger's intrusion at bay.
But there was a downside.
"You've grown weaker."
"No shit. Why do you think I said I needed asylum?"
He smiled self-mockingly.
"There. I've shown you every card I have. If you want to use me and squeeze me dry, you need to eliminate that Doppelgänger completely. Otherwise, I could become a walking bomb right here and now—one wrapped in the Doppelgänger's body."
A desperation that hadn't been visible before surfaced in his eyes.
"Do we have a deal?"
I looked at the three of them.
Their gazes converged into one.