Chapter 17 — That’s Cheating!
Long ago, the seven High Wizards had been defeated by a man calling himself the Great Sage. Izelda didn’t remember the details of the fight. He merely had a strong memory of being entirely helpless. It had been the first decisive defeat of his long life, an earth-shattering experience to one who considered himself not only the strongest of the High Wizards, but the strongest in the world.
Five of the High Wizards had survived the battle. The Great Sage must have considered the others utterly inconsequential, killing two of them almost by accident during their casual dealings. They were nothing to him.
The surviving five had all responded differently. One had given up everything—the glory, wealth, authority, and magic of the title—had thrown it all away and retreated into isolation, likely dying early on.
Another had aligned with the Great Sage, becoming a Sage himself. Perhaps his intention had been to seek more power, but from Izelda’s perspective, it had looked like running away. No matter how much stronger the wizard became, he would never be able to defeat their adversary.
The remaining three had sworn to overthrow the Great Sage, but they had each taken a different approach. One had begun blindly training. Convinced that he was superior, he sought further power only from within himself. However, as someone who had reached the rank of High Wizard, he had already surpassed his own limits. No matter how much he may have subjected himself to suffering, or how far he pushed his body, he no longer had any room to grow. Izelda didn’t know what had happened to him. He’d heard the man had challenged the Great Sage once again, but it had likely been an act of desperate self-abandonment with no chance of success.
One had sought a different kind of power. He’d researched ancient magics, the magic of the dragon language, the blessings of the Dark Gods, and the favor of the divine. Apparently, he had reached some degree of success, as his name was still remembered. He was known as Eglacia and had become famous for many legendary feats, such as the sealing of a Dark God and the construction of the walls that guarded the capital of Manii, but he had never reached the level of the Great Sage.
Regardless, Izelda felt that the powers they had known about up until then were insufficient for defeating the Great Sage. The power that would defeat him was the power that he, the Great Sage himself, possessed. The correct method was to use the Gift. It was a power that had overtaken the world in no time at all, completely changing its underlying principles. Through the inheritance of the Gift, a class would be assigned, and depending on one’s class, unique powers would emerge. This new system overwhelmed every other form of power in the world.
Izelda had obtained the Gift from the beings known as the Kouryu. The fallen dragons were connected to the root of the system and possessed the highest level of the Gift—one entirely unrelated to that of the Sages. Not even the Great Sage could interfere with the Gift from a lineage other than his own.
If one sought the Gift, they needed to get as close to the original source as possible. That had gone well for Izelda, but there was one problem: the Gift had a tendency to become more and more specialized as it was passed down through the generations. In short, being closer to the source opened up many possibilities, but those possibilities weren’t necessarily useful. So the power Izelda had acquired ended up being something that had no chance of defeating the Great Sage.
He then turned to reincarnation instead.
The rules that determined the kind of Gift that would manifest were still shrouded in mystery, but even so, the direction of its transformation as it was passed down through the generations was known to be decided by the “parent” providing it and the inheritor’s own nature. One’s natural talent for the Gift was decided at birth, and the only source available to Izelda had been that of the Kouryu, so no matter how many times he repeated the process, he would merely obtain the same Gift. In addition, one could only receive it a preset number of times, so if one filled their available space with useless Gifts, that would be the end of it.
However, if one’s talent for the Gift was determined at birth, they simply needed to be reborn. That would solve the issue of running out of space, allowing them to try again as many times as necessary. If one of his descendants manifested a useful Gift, he could reincarnate his consciousness into them and create a powerful new lineage of his own.
Izelda reincarnated himself numerous times in this way. Eventually, he came to decide that restricting himself to existing as a single being was unnecessary. Multiplying and fusing himself into multiple bodies was far more efficient. Increasing his number of subjects was vital to his success.
The descendants who carried Izelda’s essence spread out across the world. One of those was Hornet, so as with his other reincarnated bodies, Izelda’s consciousness lay dormant within him.
Hornet himself had no knowledge of this. He had been born and raised as himself, and if nothing had happened to interrupt that, he would have continued to live a normal life until he died. To Izelda, he was nothing more than a checkpoint on the road to ultimate supremacy. After having been reincarnated so many times, Izelda was no longer interested in experiencing everyday life. Hornet’s only job was to expand the bloodline, and that was something that could be left entirely to him.
However, Izelda’s consciousness had now been stimulated. He was always analyzing the people around him. If that analysis ever discovered a person of real ability, his consciousness would be brought out in order to conduct a thorough examination.
He had become curious about the girl that Hornet had met at the port. She didn’t possess the Gift, so her talent for it was unknown, but her body was deeply interesting. She possessed incredibly efficient sensory organs, nerves, and muscle tissue. It was a body that seemed totally unnatural, like it was the result of some sort of experiment.
Izelda had taken a deep interest in the girl. The power that he sought was not only that of the Gift. In order to defeat the Great Sage, a wide range of resources would be necessary. And so he manipulated Hornet’s consciousness slightly, making him take an interest in the girl, subtly pushing him to eventually make plans to connect with her, and then ultimately produce children. Acquiring such valuable specimens and adding them to the bloodline would produce ever more powerful vessels for him to reincarnate into.
It was something that Izelda had done many times before.
And so the former High Wizard now rose to the surface of Hornet’s consciousness to deal with the danger he was currently facing.
The stranger before them continued to deliver baffling, unimaginable attacks one after another. Izelda wanted to take those skills for himself. His only goal was to obtain greater power, so it hardly mattered to him what happened to the other passengers on the ship. Surfacing in Hornet’s consciousness would no doubt erase the other’s personality and social status, but to Izelda, the boy was only a single stone among the many that paved his way, and he had plenty of stones if needed. Acquiring Yousuke’s body at any cost was far more important to him than preserving the life form he was inhabiting. And so he made his decision.
“Hou?” Hornet’s mother’s voice called out hesitantly. She must have realized that something about him had changed.
“Preta’s Soul.”
Izelda brought his magic to bear. A black sphere appeared, covering the body of the fallen old man. Countless pinpricks of light encompassed it, giving the impression of the entire night sky being condensed into a ball. Then it vanished, taking everything within along with it. A chunk of the room had been gouged out, and the old man’s body had vanished.
“You said he was immortal, but it wasn’t enough to save him from being sent into Subspace.”
“What the hell is that? That’s cheating!”
Yousuke must have realized that if he were struck by the spell, it would be over for him in an instant. However, Izelda’s goal wasn’t to throw him into some unknown Subspace pocket forever. He needed to capture Yousuke alive in order to study him.
His first thought was to use some sort of gas. If he filled the area with a paralyzing vapor, there would be no way for the young man to dodge it. But Izelda didn’t have any relevant spells, so he decided on an alternative method.
“Insects That Dance Like Mist.”
He stretched a hand towards Yousuke, and it unraveled like it was made of string, spreading outward in a black haze.
“What’s that? Are those bugs?! No, bugs are definitely not okay!”
It was a cloud of tiny insects. A great enough number of bugs was just as good as releasing a gas. If they managed to infiltrate the target’s body, they could disable or paralyze it at will.
But Yousuke’s reaction was fast. Rather than futilely trying to combat the cloud of insects, he turned and ran. Perhaps, per his words, he was terrified of the insects themselves.
“Hou? Are you...” Hornet’s mother asked timidly. Hornet must have seemed to be in tremendous pain.
Izelda returned his arm to its original state, but the magical energy he had expended wouldn’t be so easily replaced. As a developing body, it wasn’t strong enough to provide for the needs of a High Wizard like himself.
“Hm. This level of magical energy is insufficient. My apologies, mother. Would you please provide some for me?”
There was no need to go through the trouble of speaking with her. If he wanted magical energy from her, all he had to do was wring it out of her. But Izelda waited for Hornet’s mother to grasp the situation, for her to realize that her son had disappeared, that the person standing in front of her was someone else entirely. Izelda wanted to see the moment her face twisted in despair.
“Who...are you?”
“I’m Hornet. Your son, right?” He used his freshly reconstituted left hand to grab her face. “How unlucky for you, mother. If nothing had happened, you could have lived out your life with your beloved son in peace.”
He drained the magical energy from her, turning her into a dried-up, desiccated shell. Then he threw her body to the ground like the garbage it had become.
“Now then. I suppose I don’t have much time to waste.”
Hornet’s body wouldn’t be able to survive Izelda’s presence for long. He would have to achieve his objectives before his current form was destroyed.
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