Chapter 414
414. A New World Without the Living
“Uhahahahaha! Drink! I said drink!”
Tonight, Reruze’s night felt especially long.
“Let’s drink like there’s no tomorrow!”
“Before we die, place your bets on who wins, then die!”
It felt like everyone living in Reruze had gathered with the city square between them.
Rowdy drinking parties broke out everywhere, and gambling dens sprang up, taking bets on tomorrow’s victor.
A terrifying cold raked the square all night, but no one left the perimeter, savoring the atmosphere.
As if a great festival had opened, the people of Reruze circled noisily around the square through the night, waiting for tomorrow’s “Black Star Scramble.”
“At last...!”
That excited mood spilled out even from Rengua’s laboratory on the edge of the frozen lake.
However, the reason the black shamans were excited was not the scramble, but the “huge coffin” before their eyes.
All the black shamans gathered in one place and stared at a single puppet set inside the opened coffin.
Every face looking down at the puppet was soaked in rapture.
A human-shaped puppet clad in a gloomy black armor stood two meters tall.
Smaller than Van Dyke, larger than the Red Knight.
Yet the value of the puppet before their eyes surpassed that of both Van Dyke and the Red Knight combined.
A moment later,
Vmmm!
Red magic circles blossomed all over the armor that resembled darkness.
At the same time, its red eyes flashed.
“S, success. Lord Rengua!”
“Congratulations!”
“Congratulations!”
The black shamans bowed toward Rengua, who was inspecting the puppet, as they showed their joy.
It was a puppet completed after countless trials and errors, by combining the chimera research journal of a mad wizard with the puppet-crafting of the “Shamans’ Nest” (a shamanic workshop).
The most perfect puppet as imagined by the black shamans.
The Black Knight.
Crude though it was, they were convinced no name fit this puppet better than Black Knight.
Four swords lay neatly across the Black Knight’s chest.
Special weapons that had lost their master with the death of Special Forger Richard.
Lightning Sword, Thunderer.
Trunk Sword, Indra.
Ghost Sword, Oras.
Phantasmal Sword, Karoru.
Rengua checked the functioning Black Knight and the four swords, then gave a slight nod.
Puppet and weapons.
The ultimate combination he had planned was set.
By a hair’s breadth, he had finished preparations for the defense that would soon begin.
Only, unlike the other black shamans, Rengua’s expression was weighed down, and, not knowing why, the black shamans were watching his mood.
After a moment, Rengua clicked his tongue shortly and spoke.
“Good work, all of you. The rewards for this will be given after the defense is over, so look forward to it.”
“Y, yes!”
What they wanted were rare materials needed for their own puppet-making.
Rengua intended to offer the corpses of the Star Shadows who would challenge the defense as compensation.
The black shamans withdrew with bowed backs, and Rengua once more examined the Black Knight.
The chimera bioresponse as recorded in the research journal, the soul linkage grafted into puppetry, all of it was perfect.
Which, in turn, only made Rengua feel stifled.
“The puppet before my eyes is perfect, then why...”
Rengua swallowed a groan and turned his back.
When he went to the wall and triggered a secret device, a hidden space opened and a staircase leading up revealed itself.
Rengua looked at the stairs for a moment, then slowly climbed.
At the top, a red door came into view.
The frozen lake.
It was a door connected to the space where his lord slept.
Rengua came out through the secret door and wandered between the wards set over the lake.
Entering the secluded ice chamber, Rengua looked upon a man and fell prostrate.
[.........]
He hoped the man’s voice would call to him, but the space was silent.
Rengua’s face twisted slightly, and he lifted his head to look at the man.
A handsome man sleeping within solid ice.
Frozen, disheveled black hair half-covered the man’s parched face.
Kamel Blazer, the Mad Butcher.
Rengua forcibly swallowed the word “my lord” and carefully inspected the man’s left and right hands.
In the left, the violet crystal sphere, the Bead of the Dead, and in the right, he clutched Kunta’s Soul-Binding Doll.
Uuung uuung—
In particular, Kunta’s doll emitted a soft light, showing a special reaction, and at present, the doll was drawing the energy of the dead from the Bead of the Dead to breathe vitality into the flesh.
A perfect body completed on the basis of the Black Knight.
Indeed, Kamel’s body looked as lively as if alive.
The proof of that was the heart.
Thump, thump.
Amid flesh that looked cold yet solid, the heart pulsed vigorously.
Once Lyon Martrein’s heart, and, through Lyon’s sacrifice, a heart that had evolved into a new heart for Kamel.
[Heart of the Frost Lord]
That heartbeat filled the ice chamber with a heavy presence.
Listening to the heartbeat, Rengua bit his lip.
Everything was perfect.
The body was completed, and within that body, his lord’s soul had settled perfectly.
As an offering to rouse the soul, tens of thousands of wandering souls had been prepared, and there was also Kunta’s doll to serve as the medium.
“My lord, what on earth is blocking your consciousness?”
This was why Rengua could not smile even after crafting the Black Knight perfectly.
The black shamans called the Black Knight the most perfect puppet in the world, but Rengua’s aim looked higher than a mere puppet.
The most special being in the world.
One who rules above all.
Rengua dreamed of the revival of that special existence, but the being before his eyes still showed no response.
“I have prepared everything. If you were to never awaken like this?”
In truth, Rengua feared that. He believed there was nothing more he could do beyond this.
“A new world awaits you, my lord. Please...”
Rengua prostrated himself again and quietly closed his eyes.
Whenever he found a spare moment, he came here.
Listening to his lord’s heartbeat was the only thing that eased his mind.
Thump thump thump—
Within the quiet space, only the heavy heartbeat echoed softly.
After a while, dim sunlight began to filter over the dark ice chamber.
Dawn passed, and a new morning began.
Rengua slowly dusted himself off and stood, then paid respects to Kamel.
“My lord, I shall go and return.”
The Black Star Scramble.
It was a day when his life could be at risk, yet no worry appeared on Rengua’s face.
Whether it was the Star Shadows or anyone else, Rengua did not entertain defeat.
Materials of five stars, and even the special armaments.
Rengua had that much unwavering faith in the abilities of the Black Knight he had crafted this time.
While Rengua gazed at his lord for a moment,
Kamel’s shadow, trapped within the clear ice, tilted faintly as it caught the sunlight.
Over that tilted shadow, a pale, ashen presence slid into view.
A vast sense of presence defined by the word “black” filled the space.
The presence stood by Rengua and quietly looked up at Kamel.
The appearance of a new presence.
Yet Rengua, at its side, did not notice it at all.
A presence Rengua could not sense.
“I will return with victory. Then.”
Rengua bowed to Kamel and slowly left the space.
Silence flowed through the ice chamber.
The presence that had revealed itself looked up quietly at Kamel, then slowly opened its mouth.
[Interesting.]
The presence steeped in shadow trembled finely.
It looked as if it were laughing.
Jess Milo, the King of the Dead.
Following the counsel of Bentu of Time and Space, who said she could meet an immortal, she sought out Prime Root (a criminal city in Hell Grime).
Then, upon discovering the being before her eyes, she took an interest and continued to stay here.
The obsession of a shaman seized by madness.
And the process by which one killed by that obsession was, in real time, reborn into a new existence was exceedingly fascinating to one who dealt in “death.”
It was fun.
Madly so.
[Not among the living, yet such a powerful yearning. How fascinating.]
She felt a deep intrigue as she looked at Kamel.
A special gleam like one cast upon an object more valuable than a mere toy.
She recalled her conversation with Bentu, who had sent her here.
[By the prophecy, it should have bloomed into a splendid flower steeped in blood, but it was trampled by a certain being before it could blossom and vanished. That one will play the guide you desire.]
The prophecy of Bentu, who governs time and space.
With a smile on her lips, she looked up at Kamel.
A prophecy related to her,
and the being before her eyes that had seized her gaze.
Only now did she feel she understood what it meant.
[So you are that trampled flower?]
Bentu, borrowing the prophecy, had said this.
That a special guide who would lead her would appear before her.
That she probably would not be able to refuse.
[.......]
She focused on the small doll clenched in the man’s hand.
[They called it Kunta’s Soul-Binding Doll?]
This world did not permit her to materialize.
Only by creating a “Death’s Territory” as a medium could she materialize in the world for a brief time.
In other words, as long as the medium was certain, she could materialize.
That doll looked like it could fulfill that role.
It also seemed to act as a vessel that held souls.
[Of course, that human must be able to withstand my presence.]
The doll was spiritually linked to a human.
If she were to possess that doll, the human would have to withstand the presence of an absolute being flowing from it.
[Hm.......]
She looked at the sleeping Kamel. No, to be precise, her gaze reached the special heart that human contained.
A human special in every way.
Somehow, if it was this man before her eyes, it felt like he could become her guide as the prophecy said.
If he were devoured by her presence and went mad?
[Then that would be the end.]
Her deliberation did not last long.
[Because either way, it sounds fun.]
It was a situation she had not experienced even once in a long age.
Had even the Immortal Retonicalus ever tried this?
The shadow that trembled finely soon burrowed into the ice.
Then it seeped into the small doll the human was holding.
A moment later,
Kiiiiiiiiing!
The softly glowing doll was shrouded in darkness, then began to change color.
The doll turned pitch black.
[Child.]
At that call, the hand clutching the doll began to tighten.
She awakened the soul of the sleeping dead man.
The doll trembled finely and spoke.
[Child. What world do you see?]
It was a sudden question, but the owner of the clenched hand answered her without hesitation.
Within the cold ice, parched lips stirred.
Kamel’s voice, heard only by her.
Soon,
[Hahahahahahaha!]
Hearing the answer, she began to laugh like a madwoman.
It was the most amusing thing she had ever heard.
She liked this human very much.
[A new world without the living....]
In a way, it was the same as her goal.
The symbolic existence of the living,
the complete death of the Immortal Retonicalus.
[I want to see that world too.]
Jess Milo became a black shadow and gently embraced Kamel’s body.
In that moment,
Twitch
Kamel’s eyebrows quivered, and he slowly began to open his eyes.