"You're saying these are people you know?" I asked.

Naneow nodded. "The Melody of Autumn, Drac Noir. Born 925. A famous bard. Everyone thought he lived to eighty-three and died peacefully... but here he is, fresh as ever."

She pointed toward a man carved like a sculpture. He was shorter than Naneow and had delicate features, eyes closed in repose. His long auburn hair drifted softly in the clear fluid.

Isaac scoffed. "Hmph. Bard, my ass. More like Dissonance, Drac Noir. If you heard him strum a harp, you'd bleed from seven holes. Don't tell me this kind of trash is your type?"

"That only happened when he faced scoundrels. For ordinary folk like me, his music calmed the heart. It even helped heal."

"You were actually a fan?"

Naneow ignored the crow's incredulous tone and went on. "Let's see... Architect Dalsim Garmion. The Fool's Gambler Nia Colson. Prophet Elisha. Althera's Flame Emperor Okhozma. There's Piker Lin, Scarlet, Betty Murick... aren't those Kiyan and Hiiragi? Those are all the familiar faces I see."

The list went on, name after name, but naturally, I recognized none of them.

How could I recognize faces from hundreds, or even decades, of years past?

Naneow traced the numbers etched on the chambers.

"7,906... 8, 911... The first number must be the order they were laid in. The second is the year they were sealed. A few are missing in front."

"Failures, no doubt. Curse the imperial bastards... doing something this entertaining and not inviting me," Isaac muttered bitterly.

Naneow shot him a look. "Didn't you already have your fun? They say you created bodies by the dozens. You, of all beings, don't need this experiment. Still... to make eighty or ninety-year-olds young again... I admit the technique intrigues me."

She rapped her knuckles lightly against a nearby chamber. "Burning through lifeblood, replaced by Lurium. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells were manipulated with Apontium extract to keep the flesh taut. And here you are, acting like it's nothing."

Isaac bobbed his head. "I did make bodies, true. However, they lasted at most a year."

"A year?"

"Yes. No matter what I tried, they were disposable. At best, they collapsed within a year. Flesh and organs rotted in sequence, even if the outside looked convincing."

"Then you mean... you didn't deliberately destroy those corpses every time?"

He shook his head. "They were bound to rot. Better to savor every pleasure to the limit while they lasted. It's common sense."

"What twisted world has that kind of common sense?" Naneow muttered.

I left them to bicker and walked past the rows of chambers. Each held an idealized human form. I felt nothing until I froze in front of one face.

"...!"

The stench of blood filled my nostrils, sharp and suffocating. I staggered back a step. My heel scraped rubble, stone cold beneath me. My sword thrust forward before I realized it. The point struck the chamber, but it bounced harmlessly.

Clang!

I stabbed again, aiming for the forehead, heart, throat, and stomach.

Bang!

Each strike rebounded. Pain lanced only through my memory and my heart. I struck faster and harder. I carved an opening with inventory space, funneled the weight, and smashed it down like a hammer.

Bang! Bang! BANG!

Blows rained like a storm.

"You, what are you!"

Isaac's words blurred into nothing. The man floating in that chamber had to die, and I had to kill him. The transparent wall didn't so much as scratch.

What else could I expect if Naneow's scythe failed too?

Regardless, it didn't matter. No matter what method it took, he had to die. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Crash! Crash! Crash...

I focused on a single spot and hammered it repeatedly. The sword hilt dented under my grip.

Isaac's voice pierced my mind, jolting me back. "Calm yourself. It's only a shell."

I throbbed all over from the recoil. My hand trembled, and I was uncertain how many times I had already struck. I caught the falling blade out of the air while its point still hovered near the chamber wall.

I must kill.

"..."

I had no doubts that the man inside was the very hero who murdered Lady Succubus. He had twisted a blade into her belly and clutched her slender throat as she drowned in her own blood, savoring her last tortured breath.

I could still see the great boot that crushed my skull as I lay dying, the exact image burned into my vision. However, the atmosphere was entirely different. The man floated unconsciously in the chamber, yet it was hard to believe he was the same man.

A steady voice rang in my head. "Calm down. Listen."

I slowly lowered my blade.

"Who is he? Someone you... know?" Naneow peered closer. "Isaac, do you recognize him? Looks simple-minded, though he's built like a wall."

"..."

Naneow shrugged, uneasy.

The crow shook his head. "I don't know him. That means he wasn't exactly famous."

"Really? Then what do you mean by shell?"

That was the exact question I wanted to ask. I looked up at Isaac, perched lightly on top of the chamber.

"Hmm... Can I tell her everything?"

It didn't matter. Naneow already knew the broad strokes, from my return to the essences I had absorbed.

When I nodded, Isaac explained the timeline from the war to the Demon Kings and Heroes. It was a future I hadn't told her in detail.

"A script," she murmured. "Meticulously staged for incoming heroes. If these are the vessels for those heroes, it all fits."

Staged?

I had never considered the Heroes that way. However, if the Heroes were prepared in advance, and the world then shaped to need them... As Isaac said, it was a convincing answer.

"These bodies, though... they couldn't possibly defeat a Demon King."

I agreed. "Isaac, could any of them be stronger than you?"

By his own measure and others', Sorcerer Isaac Bel'Homec had been unmatched for at least three centuries. Even he had never claimed he could defeat a Demon King. He had become a Demon King's sorcerer to see beyond the world.

"Pfufufu..." The crow shook his head with arrogant ease. "What have you seen and felt so far? Even if these came at once, they'd be nothing to me."

"Then..."

He tapped his feathers with his beak. "I'm merely a doll."

Isaac telepathically added, "Do you think anyone could wield such power with a body like this?"

Fwoosh!

Dozens of blue flames blazed through the air. Even Miyu, scraping the floor to track Leandro, lifted her gaze. The blue fire licked the black vault and stained it red, then guttered out in perfect circles one by one. The display was almost solemn.

"A fireworks show... I get your point."

"Indeed. This crow is only a doll. Because I dwell within it, I am Isaac."

"..."

"Hear me. I read the world's underside and its outside. So I can change bodies and still use my power freely. I can hang my strength behind the net."

I understood what he meant.

"So when you call them shells..."

The crow gazed at me with his red eyes. "If those who cast the net, beings from beyond this world, descend into them, what then?"

"You mean... guests?"

Kevin Ashton had written that this world consisted of residents and guests. There was the special blue window that only I could see, along with the Hero Points and the Hero Shop. If such things appeared, and unlike me, if they could be freely controlled, how strong could one become? Naneow had already grasped it. She clenched her fist.

Silence and assent settled between us. Until the possession took place, the bodies before us were, as Isaac said, shells. The Hero who murdered Lady Succubus... had not yet descended into this world.

"So they've loaned out their bodies. Disappointing, Bard."

"Hardly a joke. If it offered escape from death, sharing a body might be sweet, especially if your partner was from outside."

Naneow frowned. "Sorcerer, tell me you're joking. Are we truly talking about creators?"

"Yes," the crow said, nodding.

"You're too serious for you."

She swung her scythe in loose arcs, trying to shake off the tension.

"If, by any chance," Isaac went on, his red eyes never leaving me, "the trouble below ends with only you alive, then return someday and break this."

"I thought it was impossible."

"I saw a chance. The crack you made was deeper than Naneow's bullet."

"He's right," Naneow said. "You used the pocket-space you turned against the angels."

"With the compound Lurium here, we could secure a massive haul. And if our guest hypothesis is right, shattering this would shake the core of their plan. It's a gamble, but it's worth it."

"Yeah. When would we ever see this place again?"

The problem was, I couldn't recall how I'd used the inventory to strike the chamber a moment ago.

"Neigh!"

Miyu had already cleared the wreckage and set a course along the marquis' trail.

"Let's move for now."

The Hero who murdered Lady Succubus, shell or not, belonged to a future not yet written. Even if I ignored that and tried to kill him now, I didn't have the means to break the chamber.

We had to pursue the marquis. I had slipped into the imperial reliquary to save Leandro. The deeper I went, the more the reliquary itself consumed my curiosity.

The fifth floor held a counterfeit heaven. The fourth had one hundred volumes written by Ashton. The third had chambers granting immortality to champions of the past.

What awaits on the second and first floors?

Naneow walked straight on, reading the marquis' traces without disturbing the debris. Miyu followed meekly, and Isaac rode the wide saddle. I took the rear. Even after a long march, I sensed no presence. Naneow made no sound at all; without the horse's tread on rubble and the crow's bored wingbeats, not even a wisp of wind would have stirred in that cavern.

Instead, tension tightened like a bowstring. I almost wished for the usual traps in the floor or ceiling to break it. However, there were none, not even a hint. We kept stepping over heaps of ruin. The space widened, and the piles of debris thickened with it. The wreckage grew blacker, damper, and more ominous.

"I think... this is it," Naneow said.

Her voice didn't echo. It spread outward. The space before us opened vast and clear.

Flutter!

"The ceiling's wide as well."

The wreckage in the colossal hall looked darker, stickier, as if it had been raised from a bottomless pit of malice. Elsewhere, the ruins had seemed like fallen vines; here, there was a plaza of hardened shadow, shattered and black.

"Garbera..." Naneow whispered. "I wasn't sure... I've never seen one this big."

She traced the floor and walls with her fingertips. "Burn marks. Cuts. Nasty."

"The marquis," I said.

"Right. If he'd gone this hard when we fought, I'd have been in real danger. When the core died, the vines woven through the cavern collapsed."

Then suddenly, the crow winged its way up to the dome and cried out. "Caw! Caw! Here!"

We looked up to where Isaac's voice echoed. There, the upper half of the effeminate duke, smiling brightly, was pinned to the ceiling with his charred entrails spilling out.

Beside me, Naneow stepped back a pace and murmured, "The Empire's foremost blade... has changed."