Chapter 9: 穢れ (Kegare)

After the mad girl had finished her wild presentation, she didn’t stop at theatrics. No, she gave insights. 

The prosthetics, she explained, ran on mana. Either from the user themselves, sucked straight out of their veins, draining them dry and defeating the entire purpose of “upgrading” or from mana gems.

And those mana gems, the very ones she had tossed so casually onto the stage, the so-called compensation for volunteering, were, not coincidentally, the best option. The strongest fuel. A single gem could support a family for a year if sold, but if slotted into her creations, it would take a long, long time to run dry.

“Of course, any mana gem works!” she had laughed. “But, ehhh, the cheap ones fizzle out too fast. So consider it an… optional luxury. If you’re fortunate enough not to need the money, you can just plug it right in. Easy-peasy!”

Then came her warning.

"Do not tell anyone. Not your children, not your parents, not even your lover. Because if they knew" she said with a mocking wag of her finger, "they’d show just how rotten people could be."

She also explained, with a kind of smug pride that turned Brank’s stomach, that all the data was being recorded live. Numbers, charts, results, her genius at work. But she swore, swore on that very genius, that she would never leak it. She would use it only to further her research. “And don’t worry,” she added, voice lilting like a lullaby twisted wrong, “I’m not in the business of blackmail.”

Then the plaza emptied.

The air still hung thick with the word she had left behind: Kaijin.

The Heretic sat at the edge of the stage, legs swinging absentmindedly, gaze tilted upward. Stars reflected faintly in her mask. Or maybe it wasn’t the stars she was staring at. Maybe it was something only she could see, far beyond the night sky.

And Brank, Mayor of Thidonno, speaker for his people, a man long used to swallowing grief and burying pleas, stood there, heavy with something he could no longer suppress.

“Elaister…” His voice cracked heavier than he intended.

The girl cocked her head, the violet lenses of her mask glinting. “What is it, Mayor?”

He swallowed, the words burned his throat. “…May I ask you for a favor?”

She chuckled, already spinning on her heel, coat flaring like a stage curtain. “Hmm? Three mana gems not enough for you? Ahhh, your rat side is showing, hehe~ Don’t worry, I don’t mind. In fact, I respect a good rat.”

“Not that…” His tone was firmer this time, near desperate.

Her boots clicked to a stop. Slowly, she turned her masked head back over her shoulder. “…So?”

He hesitated. Just one breath, but it felt like a lifetime. Then the plea spilled out. 

“Can you bring my Erste back?”

“…Back?” Elaister repeated. A chuckle laced with static. “Erste? It seems my presentation’s a roaring success. Barely a few minutes and I’ve already got an investor.” Her mask tilted, amused. Then her voice lowered, disturbingly casual, every word like a blade.

“I can puppet a corpse. But bring the dead back?” She shrugged, “I’m not a god.… Not yet.”

Brank’s breath hitched.

“No… Erste isn’t dead. Not yet.” His hands trembled at his sides, but he forced them open, forced his voice into a steady line. “I’ll show you. Follow me.”

Her head snapped up. Curiosity sparked, bright and unnatural, through the violet glow of her lenses.

“Oh? Now you’ve got my attention, Mayor.”

He turned,  leading the mad toward the hall that stretched deeper into the mayoral estate. Toward the locked room only he carried the key for.

And Elaister followed, boots clicking, that strange cube-hand gleaming faintly as if hungry for secrets.

The mayor led her down.

At the bottom lay a space far too vast for a “small-town” mayor’s basement. Hallways stretched outward into shadow, some caved in, others sealed behind rusted bulkheads. The walls bore scars of machinery long stripped bare, ghosts of some older, stranger purpose.

“This town…” Brank’s voice echoed low against the stone, “…was built atop an abandoned facility. Long before my time. When the kingdom raised Thidonno, they stripped this place clean, took everything of worth, left nothing but husks.” He rubbed his forehead, the gesture weary. “I became mayor years later. I don’t know what it was. I don’t understand it. But… perhaps, you might find something useful here.”

Elaister’s visor tilted as she scanned the walls, her gaze darting like a blade, tracing the ghostly remains of cables, conduits, shattered crystal veins.

“There’s nothing useful here for me,” she said offhandedly. “Except someone added new things here fifty years ago.”

“How do you know for sure there is nothing here? And fifty years… that’s oddly specific.”

“I’m genius, remember?” Her tone was playful but flat. “Though this place seems better suited to keep something in, or keep something out.”

Brank looked unconvinced, but he didn’t push further.

Eventually they arrived at a chamber sealed with thick iron doors. Outside, piled in haphazard stacks, lay mana gems, dozens, maybe hundreds. Dull compared to the brilliance of Elaister’s own supply, but enough to make the air hum with power.

Brank unlocked the door and oppened it with a hisshh.

Inside-

In the middle of the room, on a single bed, lay a girl. Her frame was thin, abnormal bulges sprouting from points of her body, her face pale. Around her hummed a forest of relics and magic artifacts, each faintly glowing with their own hues of crimson, runes pulsing in time with her fragile breathing.

Brank opened his mouth, but Elaister’s voice cut him short.

“Assumption,” she said sharply, raising a finger. “This town is stuck, unable to develop. Why? Because you’ve bled its veins dry. But not for yourself.” She tilted her head, gesturing at the room. “Your office was practically barren. You poured everything into keeping this little one alive, didn’t you?”

Her laughter came low and sharp. “Gahaha… The honorable mayor of a backwater town, shackled by love, bleeding his people dry to buy time for his precious daughter.”

Brank flinched but kept his gaze firm. “That much is accurate. But there is still more…”

His voice dropped to a ragged whisper. He stepped closer to the bed.

“She was always the frail sort,” he said, eyes on the pale shape before him. “From the moment she was born, Erste, she could not stand the cold, or the dust, or the noise. My wife would sit up half the night just to press a warm cloth to her brow. We built our lives around her. Whatever she needed, we found a way.”

He swallowed, fingers tightening around the hem of his coat. “Then that night came. They burned the eastern lanes. They took our grain stores, tore up doors. I was too late to save my wife, she sacrificed herself to protect…”

Brank closed his eyes, hand cleanching tight.

“And Erste…” His throat worked. “She wasn’t killed. Not then. But she was broken.” His hand hovered at the edge of the bed as if expecting the child to be thinner, quieter than a ghost. “Bones crushed, lungs flooded with smoke, something… wrong in her blood. The clerics came. They prayed. They laid hands. Their spells- Cracked when they touched her. It was like the magic refused to bind with her.”

The confession hit the chamber like a bell. “I couldn’t watch her die. So I used what I had. I sold what the town could spare. I stockpile mana gems when I could, used these trinkets to saturate the room with mana to keep her…”

A sound broke his speech, a breath, a stutter. “D–Dad…” Erste’s voice, thin and raw, slipped from under the web of runes and relics. She stirred, fingers reflexively reaching toward the ceiling as if for a sun she could not see.

Brank bent, voice trembling with an all-too-familiar tenderness, he took her hand on his own. “Erste… I-It’s okay. I found someone. This sister’s name is Elaister. This time-this time….” He tried for hope, but the syllables shook.

For a moment there was only the small, brutal honesty of the child. “Dad… it hurts… please kill me… I don't want this…”

The words dropped into the room like a stone into still water. Ripples of silence spread. Brank’s hand crumpled against the sheet. His face collapsed into an expression that made the years look like a map of suffering.

Elaister watched. She did not flinch. She did not reach forward with some grand speech. She was silent, the mask hiding whatever expression lay beneath. For the first time since Brank had led her down, she seemed to be listening rather than performing.

 “No,” Brank whispered at last, almost to himself. “No. Not now. I will not let you go.”

He straightened, voice steadier, the old mayoral posture returning as if duty could armor grief. “Elaister,” he said, tightening his grip on the edge of the bed, “this is why I brought you here. Because I have nothing else left to try. If there is any way, any way at all, you must tell me. I will pay what left of me to buy it.”

“Tch, who do you think you’re speaking to?!” Almost flippantly, her dramatic flair returned, chin lifted, voice booming. “You saw what I, the great Elaister, could do with your own eyes, yet you doubt me?”

“N-no- I just-”

But just as quick, the fire guttered. Her tone dropped flat. “We’ll talk about compensation later. I’ll see what I can do.”

She stepped into the chamber. The relics and artifacts that moments ago glowed with their own crimson shade began to flicker, crawling closer to violet, as if shifting in recognition of a stronger presence. The hum thickened, the air bent toward her.

Brank bowed his head. “…Thank you. I’m in your debt.”

“I accept that debt.” Her voice cut the air clean. Then, softer, but only in its target: “But just so you know, I’m not doing this for you.”

Her eyes, violet through the visor, never left Erste.

Right. Brank’s chest tightened. Just like back then. This girl definitely has a soft spot for children.

“Please leave the room.”

He hesitated only a beat. “I’ll be outside if you need anything.”

creak… shiiishhh-

The heavy iron door closed behind him.

(Elasiter pov)

“Can’t be healed with [Healing], huh? There’s no way this kid has the {Heretic} title like me…” I muttered, looking at the girl's body.

The girl blinked at me from her bed, voice thin and fragile. “Nee-san… your face… it’s scary… Are you here to take me to Mama’s place?”

I stopped. “Scary? Kids like you usually say my mask looks like a cool knight helmet, you know? Oh well…”

With a sigh, I raised my right hand to the lock on my mask. Fsshhh. The seal hissed, the mouthpiece splitting apart down the middle and sliding back. The rear clasps clicked free, and the whole thing slipped off like a carapace. I set it down on the table with a soft clunk.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Nee… you’re beautiful… like an angel… are you going to take me to where Mama is?”

I almost choked. Beautiful? This face? That was a first.

“What’s with your death wish, brat…” My voice came out harsher than I intended. “I’m here to rescue you. You’re insulting me.”

She shook her head weakly. “I don’t want to… There’s something scary inside me…”

“Inside you?”

She gave a faint hum of confirmation, her little fingers twitching against the sheets.

“Don’t worry.” I straightened, letting the old arrogance slide back. “For I, Elaister, the greatest artifact creator in this world, will certainly give you a new tomorrow.”

I placed Pandora gently against her forehead. “Sleep well, little one.”

Her eyes flickered, hesitant, but once Pandora’s connection synced with her body, her lashes fluttered closed and she slipped into unconsciousness.

Good.

This was the part I loved, the part everyone else would call impossible. Complex as coding a live server without taking it down, rewiring an entire operating system while it’s still running. That sweet, razor-edge tension where one wrong input could fry everything.

I smiled faintly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Time for maintenance.”

True to the mayor’s story. Her body is physically fragile, weak immune system, and the abnormal flesh growth, of course it’s from the mana saturation in this room, from all these devices. Physical problems like that, I can fix.

But that something scary she spoke of… and the fact she can’t be healed by [Heal] at all… that’s not something wrong with the body. That’s not even magic.

Something is wrong with her Entity.

Entity huh… what a foul memory

I remember that day. My hands were steady but my chest felt like it was caving in. The smell of iron, the taste of mana burned raw in the air. Even then, it slipped away.

A black haired woman, dying. Her body looked uninjured, yet her breaths were thin and fading. Few steps away, a man already split in half, bow in his arm, his torso crumbling as if time itself was eroding him.

“Elaister… it’s no use, my soul is already…”

“Stop talking, I can do this!”

“His body too… It’s rotting…”

“Stop mocking me, I can save both of you!”

“Elaister… my bod…”

Tch.

Brat, I hope your Entity is still intact. I don’t need you to become another reason for that me to linger on.

I pull Pandora back and instead press my bare right hand to her forehead.

Time for checksum.

Green circuit-like lines glow from under my skin and spread into her brow. Unlike Pandora, which only works on the surface, only on the body of this world, this is deeper. Not flesh. Not nerves.

This time I’m going into her soul. The lines aren’t even tangible, they ripple through the air like phantom threads.

...

...

...

...

-This is!?

When I came out of the brat’s room my mask was already on, though the mouthpiece still hung open so I could stick a giant bark-scorpion stinger between my teeth and suck it like candy. Bitter, acrid, numbing.

The poison wasn’t as strong as little Caramel’s dagger or that crazy Saint’s concoctions, and my filter was solid enough to keep it from becoming fatal. But it was strong enough to make me feel it slide under the skin like a hot thread.

Who would’ve thought I’d end up like this, addicted to my own brand of self-abuse in this life. Could this even count as smoking?

Brank was waiting in the hallway, body slumped against the wall, head drooped low, eyes glassy. He didn’t even twitch at the screech of the heavy door closing.

I walked past him toward the exit, boots quiet on the stone. When I reached him, I pressed my step down harder on the next step, TAP, just enough to jolt him awake.

I was already ahead when I heard him stir. A shuffle. The creak of his shoes. He hesitated, mouth opening, closing. Then hurried footsteps as he doubled back, the door creaking open again. His breath hitched, a sound like a strangled sob of relief. He must’ve seen it: his daughter’s skin clean, the abnormal growths gone.

Then his steps broke into a run as he tried to catch up with me. I kept walking.

“T-Thank yo-” He said, but my gaze was focused forward

“No, you don’t need to.”

“What do I pay you with?”

We stepped up the staircase.

“You already paid with your stupidity,” I said flatly, still moving. “Using mana saturation on her without any expertise or regulation.”

“W-What do you mean?”

I stopped. Looked him dead in the eyes.

“At most six months.”

His pupils shrank. He froze. “N-No- nononono!. you’re lying!”

I pulled out a rectangular-like device, something that would’ve passed for a phone in my old life. I held it out to him.

“Take this. You can call me if she finally wilts. I’ll need to remove all the implants I inserted. Also…” My voice didn’t waver. “It’s best to keep her inside this bunker. But if you take her outside, remember: bring everyone but her back inside when you return.”

I kept my instructions vague. Because I lied.

I lied that his daughter wouldn’t last long was his fault.

But the father was too shocked, too grief-stricken, to question me. His knees buckled, his feet turned weak beneath him.

He didn’t reached for the device so I force it into his shirt pocket and left him there in the stairwell, alone.

At least he'd try his hardest to make her happy.

When I left the manor the sun was already peeking over the horizon, like it knew exactly what I’d done and decided to crawl out just to glare at me. I slipped into a shadowed stretch of wall, leaning against the cool stone. My fingers flicked the drained stinger free, slotting it back into Pandora..

My fingers drummed across Pandora’s surface, adjusting its settings. A faint ring filled my ears, or more accurately, Pandora funneled the sound straight through my mask’s audio output. Like earphones, but with sharper treble.

Ah. It connected.

“Yo, Missile! Everything good there?!” My own voice sounded too chipper in the quiet street.

“Elaister… Update... Is it?” The voice on the other side was a woman’s. Once bright, now laced with machine-tones and a faint hostility. Well. My fault. Obviously.

“Long story short,” I said, grinning even though she couldn’t see, “I joined the hero party. Oh, and I found the second one of that. All in the same town! Crazy, huh? Town’s called Thidonno, by the way.”

A pause. Then her voice, flat. “Seed of Despair… Two out of seven… Has it awakened...?”

“Unfortunately, not. Killing the host would just make it jump to some random poor idiot.”

“Making it harder to contain…” she murmured. “What is the vessel this time?”

“…Just some random goblin,” I lied easily. “I already sealed it in some random cave. Perfectly contained.”

“You’re hiding something from me…”

I smiled thinly to the empty street “Am I? Then let me change the subject then. How about there? Has that insect awakened, become a general yet?”

“No…” she said after a beat. “But the amount of offspring it’s produced has increased significantly since you left… Thanks to this bow you gave, even a group of them hasn’t been a problem. But if it does become general…”

“The material I could extract from its body will be amazing.” My tone was bright, intentionally so.

“…Keep lying to yourself.”

“You offend me," I said lightly. "If it awaken, just call me.”

Silence followed, and then.

“Real na-”

“Hm? What’s that? I don’t quite get it.” I asked.

“Call my real nam-”

I cut the line.

The sudden silence was louder than her voice. The world was waking now, distant chatter of early merchants, the clop of hooves, the flap of a bird overhead, but it all felt muted, as though nothing could fill the hollow left in the static.

I plucked another scorpion stinger from Pandora’s compartment and stuck it into my mouth. And with it, I walked away from the manor as if nothing had happened.

The path back to the inn was quieter than usual, the early stirrings of townsfolk just beginning to paint the streets with noise. My steps echoed against the cobblestone. I was still savoring the bitter aftertaste when movement ahead caught my eye.

There he was.

The so-called Hero. Hiroto, striding back toward the inn with his ridiculous confidence, though the scene he made was less heroic and more… indulgent.

Caramel hung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her limbs limp, face painted with exhaustion yet oddly satisfied. On his arms, Blondie and Elira leaned heavily, both drained in their own ways, their bodies clinging to him as though they’d fall apart without his support.

The corners of my mouth twitched in a grin.

I slid the stinger back into Pandora, faint hiss snapping as my mask’s mouthpiece closed in place, sealing me whole again.

No hesitation. I raised my voice as i catch up to them.

“Amazing night, huh, hero?”

His head turned slightly,

He blinked, then grinned that irritatingly perfect grin. “Ah, my new party member, Elaister. The commotion last night, it was you, wasn’t it?”

I let out a low laugh. “You pay attention to me, even though you quite literally knocked up these girls last night. You’ll make them want to kill me out of jealousy, you know.”

He didn’t miss a beat. His grin only deepened, lazy and careless. “Not if you become one of them.”

Once again, I heard that advent in my ears "Nah, no thanks."

つづく