Okay, time to get down to business. I blast through my usual training regimen in the forest. I’ve got something special planned today.
I heard that rogues have taken up residence in the ghost town nearby. According to my investigation, it’s a large gang of thieves—and the perfect opportunity to test my new weapon.
I take down bandits here and there. But a whole group of criminals? That’s the event of the year. And I’m always short on sparring partners, so I welcome evildoers with open arms.
Oh, please, please, please infest this place with more crime!
I think it’s standard for villages to try to deal with offenders on their own terms, but they mostly get away scot-free. I mean, our judicial system is in the city, which is why I’ve decided to take the law into my own hands.
Today marks the historic day of my first official battle with my newest weapon. I’ve been experimenting with it for months and call it the “slime bodysuit.”
Allow me to explain.
We can use magic in this world to strengthen our bodies and weapons, but there are energy losses when it’s transferred from one form to another. For example, if I run one hundred currents of magic through an average steel sword, only 10 percent of them will be of use in combat. A whopping 90 percent is lost. Even a mithril sword, which is known to be compatible with magic. It’s considered high-end if it performs at 50 percent capacity.
That’s when slimes caught my eye. A slime is a magical being that uses energy to change form and wobble from place to place. According to my research, I’ve found they have a conductivity of an astonishing 99 percent. On top of that, they’re in a liquid state, which means they can change their shape at will.
I started testing slime jellies after capturing and crushing their cores—easily more than a thousand of them. In fact, I pushed them to the brink of extinction in my area by killing too many and had to go on an expedition to find more.
The jellies are easy to handle and strong, to boot. I successfully molded the slime into a wearable bodysuit, which is super-lightweight and silent, unlike armor. Plus, it almost, like, supports my movements? And I’ve given it killer defenses, of course.
As for right now, I’m wrapped in a black slime bodysuit. It’s a simple, no-frills getup that fits my body perfectly, except for eyes, nostrils, and mouth. I’m virtually indistinguishable from the criminal in a certain famous detective manga.
I might want to think up a more suitable design when I’m intervening in a scheme as a full-fledged shadowbroker.
I manage to arrive at the ghost town late into the night, but I can see a few lights in the darkness. The thieves seem to be having a feast to celebrate their robbing of merchants. Wow, I’m super-lucky.
You see, thieves aren’t good at planning, and they immediately squander what they steal, which means they only have something decent right after a successful attack. And one man’s treasure is another man’s treasure. What’s theirs is mine. This is how I’ll get the funds to become a puppet master.
Anyway, I crash their feast, excited as all hell—not with a surprise attack, because that won’t make for a good practice session.
“Yahoo! Hand over the loot, scumbags!” I shriek in the middle of their banquet.
“Wh-who the hell is this puny dude?!”
I mean, I’m only ten years old. Like, duh. It’s only natural that I’m short.
“You heard me! Now fork over the goods!” I shout, punting the rude man across the room for calling me small.
The other thieves finally draw their weapons.
“Hey, keep it up, and we ain’t gonna hold back, you bra—…!”
“Take that!” I exclaim as I slice through his neck, severing his head from his shoulders midsentence.
That’s right. My sword is made of slime, which means I can draw it from my bodysuit when the situation calls for it. And it has a bunch of nifty functions.
Number one. It can elongate.
“Take that! And that! And that!” I extend my sword and slay all the dinky thieves in the vicinity.
I stretch the slime out in the shape of a whip with edges as sharp as a sword. It’s my first time wielding it, so I’m a tad nervous, but I can totally see how it might come in handy.
“And that! And that! And…huh?”
I notice the room has gone all silent as I get a little too carried away with slashing and slicing around me.
Wait, is there only one guy left?
“Wh-who are you…?”
“Eh, I guess you’ll be my guinea pig for function number two.”
“Th-the hell do you mean…?!”
“To break it down, you look stronger than the rest of them. I’m assuming you’re like their boss or something, right? Your chances of winning are squat, but if you let me practice on you, I bet you’ll live for, like, two extra minutes. Good luck.”
“S-stop playing, you brat! In the capital, I’m the—…!”
“Hey, you. Skip the speech and come at me.”
“Die, dammit!” booms the Boss (or whatever) as he closes the distance between us, taking his sweet old time to swing at me, and I obviously…don’t budge.
His sword plunges straight into my chest, and I’m thrown to the ground on impact.
“Ha-ha! That’s what you get for messin’ with me! I’ve mastered the Royal Bushin method, and… Wh-what?!”
“Ta-daa! …You couldn’t even scratch me.”
I rise to my feet as if nothing happened, and wow, I couldn’t be happier with my suit’s defenses! I mean, these weak-as-shit attacks can’t even touch me.
“I’ve heard it seems to be all the rage in the capital. Show me.”
“Damn you!” swears the Boss as he strikes me.
Yeah. No sweat. As he swings his sword with all his might, I don’t even ready mine, sidestepping and ducking to dodge him, no problem.
The Royal Bushin method, was it? I could get into their ways of wielding the sword.
I mean, it’s not every day you get to see someone fighting over something other than spirituality, old-fashioned standards, or personal beliefs in this world. This was a fight motivated by logic. I can see it from his clumsy set of attacks.
In the length of a second, a small step forward.
I see him calculate his next strike and take creative approaches. That said, his attacks leave a lot to be desired, and in the next free moment, I step just out of his range.
“Wh-why…why can’t I hit you?!”
“I mean, you’re weaker than my old man. Though I guess you’re stronger than my sister. Not that it means anything. And I bet she’ll whup your butt in another year.”
“You little shiiiiiiiiiiit!” he screeches, frantically bashing his sword in my direction.
I parry his advances before kicking him lightly in the shin—snapping my leg forward quickly as though on reflex.
“Gwah, ah! Why…?” the Boss whimpers, curling into a fetal position and clutching his leg.
Blood drips from his shin and pools on the ground.
It’s a cheap trick, you know. I have a blade as sharp as an ice pick sticking out from my toes.
The second handy-dandy feature of the slime sword is that I can wield my blade from wherever and whenever I want. I thought this tactic showed the most potential. All I have to do is get in front of the enemy and slash him with the sword in my shoe, since lower-body attacks are hard to block. I parry hits, lock blades, and give my opponent a kick. It’s nothing flashy, but it gets the job done.
“I guess we’re through.”
“W-wait…!”
“You didn’t even last two minutes,” I note before kicking the Boss in the chin with the blade on my foot.
Death by impalement.
He twitches as I roll him to the side and rummage through his loot.
“Artwork? I can’t sell that. Hard pass on food. Come on. Where are the cash, jewels, and precious metals? Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
There are several carriage
s’ worth of spoils. And many dead merchants.
I whisper to the corpses, “I’ve avenged you. Now you can rest, knowing your treasures will be put to good use. I hope you make it to heaven.”
I gather my haul and pray in silence. I’m guessing I found about five million zeni. One zeni is more or less equal to one Japanese yen. All this will help fund my activities as a shadowbroker. You know, the world would be a much better place if it were overrun by criminals. Oh, how I wish life were like a video game and I could encounter enemies by walking down the street.
“Please wreak more havoc in your next life,” I say to the Boss, giving him a thumbs-up, when I notice…something past my fingertip.
“Is that…a cage?”
It looks sturdy and pretty big.
“Did they have slaves? Eh, hard pass on anything I can’t trade for cash.”
But what if there’s something valuable inside? I lift its cover.
“Well, this is…unexpected.”
I’m not sure how to describe it, but this cage holds…a mound of rotting flesh. I can kinda tell it’s human maybe, but no clue as to its age or gender.
But it’s alive. Wait, it might even be conscious. I peer into the cage, and the flesh jolts all of a sudden.
I’ve heard of the Church executing these creatures. I think they’re called the “possessed.” They’re born as normal humans until their flesh rots out of nowhere, fated for death. But the Church goes out of its way to purchase them, executing them in the name of purification. They claim they’re exorcising demons, but they’re really just murdering the sick. But the ignorant masses applaud and praise them for keeping peace on earth. It’s just as you’d expect from the Middle Ages. What a friggin’ downer.
I bet I’d get more zeni than this entire load of spoils if I were to sell this to the Church, but that’s pointless to say since I can’t sell it.
Well, I guess I should put it out of its misery.
I stick my slime sword into the cage…when I notice something else.
Namely, this mound of flesh contains an abundance of magic. I’ve been training my magic since childhood, but this surpasses mine—it’s honestly beastly. And this…
“Is this wavelength…the effects of a magical overload?”
I guess a magical overload must be the reason this turned into a pile of flesh. I’ve suffered its effects firsthand before. If I hadn’t gotten it under control back then, I might’ve ended up suffering the same fate.
I know magic has certain effects on the body, which I felt all too well that fated day. I could sense its potential to raise my tolerance for magic and allow me to handle more of it, but it would be too dangerous to induce a magical overload. I’d tossed the idea.
But if I were to hypothetically conduct experiments on a product of this phenomenon…I can get closer to being a shadow commander without any risks.
“I can use this…,” I say as I reach out to the flesh and infuse it with magic.
Wow, it’s been a whole month, huh…? I think as I recall my first encounter with the mound and heave a sigh, back in the same abandoned village.
I wonder why things turned out this way.
All my experiments on the flesh were going swimmingly—well, until recently. I spent my days pumping the flesh with magical energy. I mean, it wasn’t my body, so I could go buck wild on it. I was plugging away at my little experiment, testing this and that. In all honesty, it was fun. After all, one of my greatest joys in life is sensing that I’m getting closer to the essence of magic and watching my power grow before my eyes. I pushed forward, inching toward the boundaries of magic with more precision, power, and detail, until I finally had the magical overload under the tip of my thumb when…a blond elven girl appeared.
I guess it would be more accurate to say I was too fixated on improving my command of magic to notice the flesh was a blond elf until that moment. Huh. To think that stinking pile of flesh would return to its original form. I tried sending her off with a lighthearted farewell—you know, the typical You’re a free elf and Happy trails and You’ve got a bright future ahead of you. But she said she didn’t have a home, insisting on repaying me for saving her life, which, er, I didn’t actually do. It was all a coincidence.
I considered ditching her before things got annoying, but I ended up making her Shadowbroker Subordinate A. I mean, she doesn’t strike me as the type to betray me, and she seems smart… There’s something about her that makes me suspect she has too much talent.
And even though she’s also ten years old, she’s more than enough proof that elves develop faster mentally than humans.
“And from this day forward, you will be Alpha.”
A or Alpha. Either works.
“Understood,” she replies with a nod.
She’s your stereotypical elf—a beauty with blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.
“And your job is…” I stop to think for a moment.
This is a big one. Her job is to be the assistant to a shadow commander. No mistakes there. Which means I gotta set the scene by answering some basic questions. Like, what exactly is an eminence in shadow? And what purpose do they serve?
Flushing out the appropriate narrative is key. I mean, if I said I was fighting to get revenge for losing at pachinko slots, I wouldn’t seem too cool, right?
I have to choose wisely. I mean, all my daydreams are filled with puppeteers from even before I came into this world and certainly after. I’ve mixed and matched thousands—no, tens of thousands—of possible scenarios in my mind. And I have the perfect one for the occasion.
“To hide in the shadows and prevent the resurrection of Diablos the demon.”
“Diablos the demon…?” Alpha cocks her head in confusion.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of him. You know, the stories of long, long ago. Diablos brought our world to the brink of destruction when three brave warriors—a human, an elf, and a therianthrope, or a hybrid beast—teamed up to destroy him and protected the world.”
“Oh yeah. But isn’t that a fairy tale?”
“Nope, it really happened. But the truth is way more complicated than that…,” I continue, as a small, wry smile appears on my face. I mean, getting to my level and twisting out a scenario from a legend is a piece of cake.
“Just before the heroes slayed the demon, with his very last breath, he put a curse on them, which is known as the Curse of Diablos.”
“The Curse of Diablos? I’ve never heard of that before.”
“Oh, but it exists. It’s the curse of the possessed…and the very disease that ravished your body.”
“What? No way…” Alpha goes bug-eyed in horror.
“The descendants of the heroes have suffered from this illness. Back in the day, the Curse of Diablos used to be curable. Just like yours.”
No one would believe that Alpha was possessed until recently. Her smooth and unblemished skin is evidence to back up my story.
I mean, even though this is a big fat lie.
“It’s proof that one is a descendant of the heroes who saved the world. You know, the possessed used to be lauded, appreciated, and protected—in the past.”
“But no one appreciates us anymore, let alone…” Alpha trails off, screwing up her face.
“There’s someone out there who twisted history—erasing the truth about the lineage of the possessed and hiding the cure to the curse. What’s worse, these people became targets of shame.”
“Ngh…! Who would do such a thing?!”
“Those who scheme to resurrect Diablos. That’s because those with the curse carry the bloodline of the heroes and high levels of magical energy. In other words, they serve as a major military force for us. On the flip side, they’re a nuisance to his supporters.”
“Which is why we’re called the possessed and disposed of…”
“Exactly. You lost your hometown and family—all because you’ve been accused of committing a false sin. Aren’t they despicable?”
“Yeah. There’s no way I wouldn’t find them absolutely detestable.”
“The Cult of Diablos. That’s our enemy. They only work behind the scenes, which is why we must conceal ourselves, too. Lurk in the darkness and hunt down shadows.”
“I’m guessing they’ve gotta be formidable if they have enough say to pull the strings behind the scenes. Which means that our enemies hold positions of power…and that hordes of people under their control don’t know the truth…”
I nod seriously. “Our journey may be perilous. But we must go forward. Are you with me?”
“If that’s what you want, then I’ll devote my life to it. We’ll punish these sinners with death…” Alpha stares at me with her intense blue eyes and smiles defiantly. Her face is lovely even in its youth and teems with determination and resolve.
I fist pump in my mind. Whoo-hoo! This elf girl is super-gullible!
Obviously, the Cult of Diablos doesn’t exist, which means we’ll never find them. It also provides grounds for me to accuse and slaughter any thief syndicate in the area for being in the Cult. And I bet we can stake out battles between fighters and intervene as shadow commanders. And—and we can say fake-deep stuff for our parting words! Like The end is near… Or The resurrection of the demon is nigh… And it would be so cool if we could arrive with the wind on a battlefield, saying You fools… You’re being controlled…, before completely wiping everyone out…! Wow. I could honestly go on and on.
Right. I almost forgot. The most important part. This name of this organization…
“We are the Shadow Garden… We lurk in the darkness and hunt down shadows…”
“The Shadow Garden. That’s a nice name.”
I know, right? It’s sick.
This is the very moment the Shadow Garden and the World’s Greatest Enemy—the Cult of Diablos—is born. I move one step closer to becoming a mastermind.
“I guess we can start by wielding our magic and practicing sparring with each other. I’ll act as the main fighter in battle, but you’ve got to get stronger to wrangle in the small fry.”
The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 1 (Light Novel) Page 2