CH 151

[The Third Player, the Child of God]

“—Grargh?! A-Aagh?!”

As he was escaping from the cathedral by transferring to one of the puppets he had left in the city through the magic wire—the invisible line connected to the puppets under his control—Joseph was gripped by a fear of death like never before.

The golden sacred flames that Sakurai had swung down on him indeed possess such power, and nearly 80% of Joseph’s soul—which also was his main body after transforming into a demon-kin—had been extinguished in an instant.

The fact that Joseph survived could only be described as pure luck.

Had Ethel’s—the bearer of ‘Sacred Magic’—concentration power been stronger, and had the precision of the spell she cast been higher, the ‘Divine Flame Holy Sword’ would, without a doubt, have reduced Joseph to nothingness.

“Haa, haa… I must… retreat…! Must heal… my body… my wounds…”

In an attempt to heal his wounds no matter how slight, Joseph was collecting the pieces of his soul from the puppets under his control through magic wires at the same time as he was escaping.

It was synonymous with the destruction of his puppets. But to sustain his life, Joseph had no other choice.

“Damn it, damn it! Just you wait, Sakurai…!”

Not only he had lost Ayako, but he also had to abandon most of his pawns and run away with his tail between his legs.

It was humiliating. He felt so humiliated and pathetic that he felt like tears would flow down from his eyes had it been possible still.

Following that, anger welled up inside of him. He recalled Sakura’s verbal abuse, and it made his blood boil.

He stole his beloved daughter, and he hurled such hurtful insults at him, too.

Unforgivable, unforgivable, unforgivable! Joseph repeated the word over and over again in his head, and his anger towards Sakurai grew with no end in sight.

“I will kill you before I create the next Ayako… even if it means sacrificing all the people of the Elf Territory, I will kill you…!”

Joseph decided that there was no point in relying on the power of numbers.

Even if the quality of each puppet was improved, slightly stronger puppets would make no difference with the opponent’s skills.

His personal low combat skills were a concern, too.

Therefore, Joseph drew a conclusion.

What he should be creating was simply a single puppet with overwhelming physical abilities (specs) that rendered the difference in skills meaningless.

The simplest way to increase a puppet’s physical abilities was to increase its size, and the bigger the size, the larger the number of materials would be required.

To create the puppet he was thinking of—a 5m-class giant (Gigant)—he estimated that he would require 500 suitable humans and/or elves, even better if they were knights with excellent muscles and bones.

He had never created something like it before as he had been hiding in the shadows of society, which was why it would be effective against Sakurai because he should have no knowledge of it.

While he had never created a giant before, it was humanoid in shape. Controlling it should be no different from controlling a human. He was confident that he could control a human several times bigger than the average.

With his little bit of remaining reason—no, out of fear, to be exact, he didn’t take back the piece of his soul from one of the puppets inside the cathedral and had it pretend to be dead.

He could transform it into a small animal or another form to see Sakurai’s movements and location.

Depending on the situation, it would be possible for him to send the giant to his exact location and have it ‘Self-Destruct’, blowing him up along with the entire city.

A giant plus ‘Self-Destruct’ was a combo he had never tried out before, and if he used it, the world would find out about his existence, but he had no room to think about the aftermath at this point.

He could think about everything after killing that hateful man… Joseph thought so, confident in his abilities.

(Therefore, a body comes first! I need a body to move!)

Parasite Ghost—the monster Joseph had taken in to become a demon-kin—as the name suggested, was a monster that parasitized living beings.

Originally, Parasite Ghost needed another living being to live. And once it parasitized a living being, it couldn’t move away from it; kind of like a curse-bound spirit.

Joseph was able to solve the drawback by parasitizing his own puppet, however.

On the flip side, since its combat power depended on what it was parasitizing, a Parasite Ghost’s main body could be said to be almost powerless, with its only advantage being high physical resistance unique to ghost-type monsters.

Joseph had chosen the monster despite having a low compatibility rate with it in order to be closest to Ayako, to be one with her in both mind and body.

He had broken through the low odds with sheer willpower, but now he was regretting his irrational decision. As he was, he continued to proceed through the magic wire to one of his remaining few puppets.

“————. Ngh, this is… Terrence’s mansion.”

Joseph opened his eyes in an office in a mansion a little far away from the cathedral.

The name of the puppet he possessed was ‘Terrence Kendall’. He was the owner of the mansion, and he had left him sitting in a chair thinking that he’d never possess him again.

Because his mind had been focused on the sole thought of escaping and he had been collecting souls from the remaining puppets at the same time, he had chosen one to transfer to randomly, but to think he’d possess a person of authority. How fortunate he was.

Why fortunate? Some may ask. It was because it allowed him to take actions that were impossible for ordinary people, that was why. And since Terrence was an old man of power famous to be a part of the ‘Traditionalists’, he would have more chances to launch surprise attacks.

Moreover, as a part of their deal, Sakurai had testified that the saintess’ attacker was an unknown group and that Terrence’s guards had been killed by it.

Joseph had confirmed it as he was spreading false information, and since the bodies of the knights dispatched by Terrence were within the barrier, using Terrence’s body shouldn’t arouse any suspicion.

Which meant, he would be able to easily lower people’s guard, and use it to his advantage.

He could use Terrence’s authority to heal his body/soul then escape the city and disappear, or repeat the cycles of killing and making puppets as he did before to raise another puppet army. Either choice was fine.

It will still take some time for that scum to escape from the cathedral anyway, Joseph thought.

“In any case, I should find someone first.” Joseph headed for the entrance of the mansion while muttering as if to reassure himself.

As he did, he adjusted his tone and changed his walking style and facial expression to match those of Terrence.

As a result, his pace slowed down, but it couldn’t be helped.

To pretend to be someone else was not as easy as it might seem.

Learning from experience, Joseph understood that he had to follow a person’s habit down to the smallest details to truly become that person and that if he cut corners, his cover would most likely be blown due to a slight mistake he could have avoided.

(It would be nice if there were still knights on patrol. If they were moving in pairs, I could surprise attack them and turn them into puppets. Let’s head to the main street. If there were any civilians left, I would kill them and turn them into puppets. Thinking back, the reason why I ended up being cornered was that I was too passive, so if I’m going to kill Sakurai, I will have to be more aggressive…!)

By the time he was able to gather his thoughts, Joseph was already standing in front of the entrance doors.

After confirming that there was nothing off about his appearance, Joseph placed his hand on the handle of the door imagining as though he was clutching the hateful Sakurai’s neck and—flew into the air.

(Hm? Eh? Huh?)

By the time Joseph realized that his body had been blown back inside the mansion along with the entrance door, he bounced off the floor two to three times before slamming into the wall and then collapsing.

He had removed the puppet’s sense of touch, let alone the sense of pain from the beginning, making it dull to external stimuli, and in addition, his mind was filled with the thought of killing Sakurai, so he was not prepared for the sudden situation.

As a result, Joseph was left in a daze, and he could only unconsciously lift his upper body and put the person at the other side of the entrance into his vision.

“Haaaaa!! Mou! We’re finally getting the last one!”

“Hihiiin!”

“Thank you for your hard work, Freon-san. Now, let’s destroy it quickly.”

The young woman getting down from the horse with silver wings—the one who had likely blasted open the door with its front feet—what was her name again?

Joseph frantically dug up his memory to remember who the woman was as she was walking over to him while sweating as though she just did a strenuous exercise.

She was Sakurai’s friend.

“W-why?! Why are you here…?!”

“Huh? Ahh, the main soul has moved in. No wonder the ‘heat’ has become a little more intense.”

“Answer my question! Why are you here?! What did you mean by the last one?! What have you done?!”

Joseph knew that the woman in front of him, Iris, had magic eyes that could identify his puppets.

On top of that, her words suggested that she had been targeting and destroying the puppets Joseph had prepared.

(But that’s impossible! This woman’s identification range should be limited to what she sees within her sight, that can’t be!)

Even as his mind raced, he looked away from the possibility that crossed his mind.

However, the woman in front of her—Iris Niflheim—bluntly told him the truth.

“Well, to answer your questions, I was simply going around destroying your puppets that were infesting the city. Their ‘heat’ gave their locations away.”

“Hihiiin!”

“I worked hard together with Freon-san!” Iris puffed up her chest, leaving Joseph in a daze.

He didn’t know that Iris was a relative of Anubis, a god of the Netherworld.

For that reason, she had an even deeper understanding of the soul than Joseph. He also didn’t know that she had mastered ‘Soul Attack’, which allowed her to attack the soul itself.

His understanding of her magic eyes was only to the extent that it allowed her to “perceive the ‘will’ of living things within her sight as ‘heat’”, which was why she was able to distinguish puppets and living creatures apart.

He wasn’t aware that her identification range was proportional to the scale and intensity of the ‘heat’ which was synonymous with the strength of the will, and that thanks to it, she was able to tell individuals apart with pretty high accuracy.

Worst—at least for Joseph—he had such a strong ‘heat’ that the pieces of his soul he had embedded in his puppets radiated ‘heat’ as well, making it a piece of cake for Iris to locate them.

(Why, why didn’t I notice that puppets were destroyed?! Why didn’t I notice while I was escaping here?!)

The answer was very simple, his anger toward Sakurai had blown the thought of the puppets outside the cathedral out of his mind.

Another factor at play was that after being cut and burned by Sakurai, he had been reducing the number of puppets under his control at a tremendous pace in panic to heal his wounds.

Therefore, Iris’s destroying his puppets had escaped his notice. The unintentional collaboration between Sakurai and Iris drove Joseph into a corner.

“Well, since you’re here, I’ll be clear with you. I hate you, and I can’t forgive you.” Iris spun the long rod in her hand.

Joseph didn’t know about her ‘Soul Attack’. But his heightened survival instinct sensed a strong hint of death from that movement.

“I destroyed the puppets you left behind purely for my selfishness. To destroy your means of escape was only an excuse, while in truth… I just couldn’t forgive you. As for why, I can’t really put it into words.”

“You attacked for such a vague reason?!”

“Yes. So, I’m sorry. And—I will never say sorry to you again!”

“—?!”

At that moment, Iris, clenching her teeth hard, threw the long rod in her hand with all her might like a javelin.

A cone-shaped, sharp, and strong ice formed at the tip by way of magic, then the long rod pierced through Joseph’s—or more precisely, the puppetified Terrence’s—abdomen, pinning him to the floor.

“‘Soul Attack: Niouhakyaku (Lit. two deva guardians rend)’’!”

A triple shockwave occurred at the same time as a quake shook the mansion.

Joseph, being pinned by the long rod, had no way to dodge, and the shockwave stunned him.

And there was no way for the stunned Joseph to dodge Iris’ next move.

She pulled her right arm back as she drew closer. Her hand wasn’t in form of a fist, but that of an unclenched palm.

It was a preparatory move to unleash a technique that dealt damage to the deeper parts of the soul.

“‘Soul Attack: Ishukishou (Lit. one revolution dead spirit palm)’!”

The palm strike—which boasted the greatest damage even among the moves branched down from ‘Soul Attack’—tore the puppet’s head off its neck and sent it flying up into the air.

The blown-away head crashed into the bottom steps of the entrance and exploded. The limbs of the headless puppet lost strength, and ‘heat’ disappeared from it.

“Hihiiin?”

“Now every last puppet lurking in the city is gone. We just have to wait for the result, Freon-san.”

Iris’s magic eyes followed the mass of ‘heat’, on Joseph who was escaping driven by his survival instinct.

Which meant, Iris’s blow failed to finish Joseph off.

But unlike Sakurai, she stayed calm. After all, Iris knew perfectly well where he was escaping to.

Iris had crushed all his puppets that had been hidden in the city.

With that being the case, his only escape left would be inside the cathedral, where he had abandoned his puppet army to run away from Sakurai and the rest.

No, in fact, there was another puppet intact somewhere else.

Since Joseph wouldn’t foolishly go back to Sakurai and the rest, he would inevitably head to it.

She didn’t leave it alone planning to make Joseph escape this way.

But since things had gone this way… it might be fate.

While recalling the puppet that she had restrained but not destroyed, Iris gazed at the ‘heat to live’ radiated by the distant Joseph and muttered with a pout. “Have a taste of a real parent’s anger. Let’s go, Freon-san.”

“Bururu. Hihiiin!”

Iris straddled Freon and walked into the sky.

As they asked about the condition of each other’s tired bodies, the rider and horse gradually faded into the distance.