Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 24 - Chapter 7.2

Interlude:

Vita and Raxos

THE STICKIES were once called monsters. 

In the depths of a forest on the Demon Continent, there lived a species of slime creatures. They infiltrated fruit and the carcasses of animals, then parasitized creatures that ate them, forging a symbiotic bond with their hosts. These creatures were the forerunners of what would one day become Stickies. 

One day, one of the creatures was captured. The person who caught it did a range of experiments on it. They made it parasitize all kinds of creatures and absorb a variety of substances. The creature achieved sapience. Its captor was satisfied by this and released the creature back into the wild. It returned to its herd and shared its sapience with the other creatures. Thus, these formerly mindless parasites grew intelligent. Being smart didn’t mean they were all that tough, though. They were recognized as demons because of their ability to communicate and enhance the healing and disease resistance of their hosts. They greatly aided the demon kings and their upper leadership in the Human-Demon War, parasitizing their bodies to lend their bountiful intelligence. In celebration of this achievement, one of the creatures was even gifted a Demon Eye by the Demon World’s Great Emperor Kishirika and became a Demon King. Despite these achievements, they produced no heroic figures of the sort that history remembers…until the creature called Vita was born.

The Stickies were parasites. The strongest of them might survive to a degree without a host, but in general, they lived symbiotically with their hosts and died with them. They lent knowledge and advice to the creatures they parasitized, but they could not control them as they pleased. Taking over a body wasn’t impossible, but it required the owner to spend years and years without resisting. Unless the host were brain dead, it wasn’t possible to usurp a body’s rightful owner.

Vita was different: He was a Blessed Child. From the moment he was born, he was special. Using illusions, he could show his hosts dreams. The dreams he showed them could go on and on. He was able to put those hosts in years-long comas—a state of effective brain death. Vita was the first Sticky in history able to control his host. Yet he wasn’t born with any great ambition. He wasn’t even aware of his own power. The first time he discovered it was when, young and brimming with curiosity, he left the cave that was his home to go on an adventure and almost died. 

He encountered his first “river” and, driven by curiosity, he jumped into it. The flow of the water broke up his mucus, leaving only his core. The mucus forming the bodies of the Stickies is a vital organ—their hands and feet, their mouth and stomach, and even the skin that protects them. A naked core entering the body of another creature, unable to protect itself from the creature’s stomach acid, would simply die.

Unable to move and stripped of his protective mucus, Vita waited to die. He was washed all the way to the sea, where he found himself in the belly of a fish. As his awareness faded, Vita dreamed. In the dream, he met a god. With the god’s advice, he learned how to restore his mucus from moisture. The god told him of his true power. Vita sent the fish nightmares to make it vomit him up, then generated mucus from seawater. Then, when another fish swallowed him, he took over its mind and body. He made that fish get itself eaten by a bigger fish, then that bigger fish get eaten by a bird, and then that bird get eaten by a demon king, whose body he stole. 

He did all of this on the advice of the Man-God. The demon king whom Vita took control of was extremely powerful and had fought in the Laplace War.

Now I am almighty, Vita thought. Consumed by arrogance, he committed all manner of atrocities. He murdered and he stole, and he delighted in all of it. He hadn’t thought destroying things would bring him such joy. Perhaps it was the influence of his host’s nature. 

Vita’s reign of terror was to be short-lived. Someone came to stop him, and that someone was called Raxos.

Raxos was a servant of the tyrannical demon king Vita was possessing. The two had come through the Laplace War together as comrades. His strength was such that he’d earned the epithet “Death God.” He had been away on a long journey, but when he returned, he took one look at the tyrannical demon king and said, “Who are you? What did you do with him?”

Vita introduced himself. “That fool of a demon king is dead,” he said. “I am Demon—No, I am Abyssal King Vita.”

Furious, Raxos challenged Vita to fight him. Vita thought it would be an easy victory, but Raxos defeated him before he realized what was happening. The bout was over in the blink of an eye. Just before his host died, Vita transferred his core to another host and fled. 

Taking control of the new host gave Vita some respite. His new host wasn’t a demon king, but they were still powerful. Besides, possessing a demon king had allowed him to learn about people and their societies. He had ideas of how to get himself a superior host. He’d put the past behind him and start fresh.

Vita was forgetting something: when he abandoned his hosts, they regained consciousness. The demon king, despite sustaining near-fatal wounds in the fight with Raxos, was no exception. Who knows what Raxos said to the demon king when he returned to himself? The demon king must have told Raxos of his humiliation, for Raxos came after Vita. Wherever he went, Raxos followed. No matter who he made his host, Raxos saw through them all and killed them. It wasn’t until much later that Vita learned how Raxos had seen through his disguises. Raxos used a magical implement of his own design to detect creatures parasitized by the Stickies and kill them. As he continued, relentless and merciless, he came upon the cave of the Stickies where Vita was born. He massacred them.

This juggernaut struck fear into Vita. He’d created a monster. Despite his fear, however, he didn’t simply run. He was convinced that killing Raxos was the only way he could survive, and so he plotted. Even Raxos would be rendered helpless if Vita could only get inside him and cast his illusions. Confident in his plan, he schemed to parasitize a friend Raxos had already used the magical implement on, use them to get close to Raxos, then transfer himself to Raxos. That plan never came to fruition. Raxos’s friend was in possession of a certain magical implement—the Bone Ring. It was a ring Raxos had crafted from the bones of his friend, the tyrannical demon king, for the sole purpose of killing Vita. Vita nearly died. Fortunately for him, the friend was more lenient than Raxos.

“Raxos will kill me, but I was so happy seeing her again after all this time. Thank you,” he said, then let Vita go. 

Vita took a nearby dog as his host, then left, nursing his failure. He decided he would flee. While possessing Vita’s friend, he’d learned just how fervently Raxos was pursuing him. He was convinced that Raxos would kill him, and he didn’t have a plan that could stop him. He fled to the place where the Man-God’s hints led him. He shed the dog for a Wyvern, then left the Demon Continent for the Divine Continent, heading for the Hell Labyrinth. It was an inhospitable spot—the kind of place where, no matter who you were, you didn’t come out once you’d entered. But Vita was a Sticky. None of that mattered to him. Inside the labyrinth, he went from one host to another until he finally parasitized the guardian of the labyrinth. At last, he found some safety. 

A multitude of supermassive traps lay in wait within the Hell Labyrinth of the Divine Continent. It wasn’t the sort of place people simply walked into. Even Death God Raxos couldn’t make it all the way to the center. And Vita, terrified of Raxos, never planned on leaving. He could outwait Raxos.

After he made it to the guardian and took over its body, he let time slip away. Vita had all the time he wanted to look back and reflect on his life.

The Man-God told Vita that all of the Stickies apart from him and one other had been killed, laughing as he did so. “It’s your fault the Stickies all died,” he sneered, then snickered. Vita didn’t have any attachment to his own kind, but he was ashamed his own foolishness had brought about their demise. The old Vita would never have thought that way. Maybe it was thanks to the thoughtful nature of the monster that guarded the labyrinth. Whatever it was, Vita reflected on what the Man-God said and made up his mind to spend the rest of eternity in the labyrinth. 

That resolution lasted until the Man-God called on him again.

“Hey, sorry for laughing at you the other day,” he said. Vita wasn’t bothered. On the contrary, he was happy to see him—the Man-God had saved his life twice over.

“The truth is, I’m in a bit of a pickle and was hoping you’d help me out.” Vita hesitated at this. The Man-God had helped him, and now he was asking for Vita’s help. Vita knew it was only right that he agreed to do it. But he feared Raxos. 

“Raxos is already dead. You’ll be fine,” the Man-God said, then told him just how humiliating and ugly the Death God’s end had been. Vita wasn’t concerned about the humiliation and ugliness, but knowing of Raxos’s death did reassure him. He decided to help the Man-God.

The problem was, he was the guardian of the labyrinth, so he couldn’t leave the boss room. And even if the guardian, who had hosted him all this time, were to die, Vita couldn’t go anywhere by himself.

He explained this to the Man-God, who said, “Don’t worry. I’ve called someone to come get you. He’s handling the plan for me, so make sure you listen to him, okay?” Then he vanished.

Before too long, a demon called Geese showed up. Vita could scarcely believe he’d made it to the bowels of the labyrinth, but when he saw the demon was riding a strangely familiar demon king, he accepted it. Vita put the guardian to sleep, then made it spit him out and climbed into a bottle Geese had brought.

“You’re Vita? Nice to meet ya,” Geese said. “Whoops, can you hear me okay in there?”

Geese explained the outline of the plan along the way. They would go to the Superd village, seize absolute control over the villagers, then lie in wait for a man called Rudeus. Rudeus would undoubtedly try to cure the plague, but they would use that to buy time. Just when Geese and his allies were about to invade, Vita would shift to Rudeus and incapacitate him. That was it. 

Geese said one last thing, though. He came out with it suddenly, almost like Vita wasn’t there. “This plague, though. I dunno, ol’ Ruijerd saved my life back in the day. Coming back from the battle and finding all his people dead… S’all a bit much to bear.”

Vita thought about the Stickies, all dead because of him. He wasn’t attached to them, but he remembered how he’d regretted them dying out. As he reflected, he decided that if he could ensure the plan succeeded while still curing the Superd, he’d do that.

Little did Vita know that Raxos’s obsession would be the death of him.