Chapter 264

I didn’t do anything that Melvis would consider interesting…I think.
Besides, this was the first time we had even met.

“Surely you have no interest in one of your lowliest subjects?”
It’s a misunderstanding, right? I tried to suggest, to no avail.

“What does it matter if you’re a lowly subject or an enemy? I am interested. Do you have a problem with that?”
“…No.”
“…No.”
He glared so hard that you could almost hear it.

It wasn’t just me, but the other me also became docile.
Us and Melvis.
How big was the difference… No, even thinking about it seemed foolish.

“Someone who defeated multiple Lesser Demon Kings is not without significance. …And strange people sometimes appear in the Demon World.”

In other words, he was saying that Kyuka wasn’t so weak that some lowly subject could have defeated her. And so it was only natural for him to take an interest in us.
And I suppose he was saying we were strange? I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“I’m just your average soldier.”
Well, I had evolved. But I was originally just an Ogre.

But surely that difference was practically nonexistent to a being as powerful as Melvis.

“Nevermind all that. …I want you to tell me about this Yamato that you encountered as a child.”
So that’s what he was interested in.

“My memories are quite foggy. He didn’t have a particularly unique face. But if I had to say…”

If he wanted me to talk about it, I had no choice but to do it.
Not that it was a secret or anything.

However, I had been on the brink of death at the time.
And since I was thinking about the vessel and mana, I didn’t really remember the small details.

Still, I told him how we had met, and about his appearance, the way he talked, and his personality.
And I told him everything that I remembered about his advice.

That advice saved me.
And it was a turning point. The other me was awakened.

While I was the one who was attached to his soul, I did not know it at that time.

“Very similar. To King Yamato…but why?”

I could clearly hear Melvis muttering to himself.
That was probably why. I couldn’t help but ask, ‘what do you mean?’

“I believe that King Yamato is in the Human World. After all, I have searched every other place.”
“…”

According to Melvis, he could not break through the barrier around the Human World no matter how much he tried. And so he could still not pass through.

Only the soul could move between the different worlds, and so he thought that he needed to become a soul in order to go.
However, the souls of residents of the Demon World were inside of the Orb of Control. And it could not be extracted unless you died.

And so Melvis had apparently spent a lot of time searching for the so-called ‘In Between’ that was neither the Celestial World, Human World, Demon World or Under World.

What did that mean?
To put it simply, the different worlds were not stuck together.

They existed separately, but there was also nothing between them.

How could they be separated if there was nothing between them? I wondered. But apparently, there was a conceptual ‘In Between’ that existed, though not in any physical sense. What the hell?

And so Melvis had searched everywhere for this conceptual space, but was unable to find it.
The only place left was the Human World and Under World.

As you could only go to the Under World as a soul, Melvis separated from his soul and headed there.
So it is possible! Didn’t he just say that it couldn’t leave the Orb of Control?

“I was able to go as a conscious, but was still barred from the Human World.”

What did he mean by conscious?

Perhaps because of my past life, I thought with my head. In other words, that’s where my consciousness was.
To be precise, I thought with my brain.

‘That’s quite obvious!’ one might say.
However, it was the result of involuntary training.

If I thought too much, my head would feel hazy, and when troubled, it would get heavy.
My consciousness was affecting my body.

The heart was similar.
It fluttered when you were in love, and you felt a pain in your chest when rejected.

While it all affected your body, it was, in fact, a deception.
We believe that we think with our heads and feel with our hearts… We are made to think that way.

As evidence of this, you could look at the Edo era.
Back then, people believed that you thought with your ‘stomach’ instead of your head.

After all, there were a lot of important organs near the stomach.

And so someone who thought of bad things was said to be ‘black-bellied,’ and when you wanted to exchange opinions without reservation, you would say, ‘speak with your belly open.’

If you wanted to know what someone was thinking, you ‘searched their stomach.’ And when no amount of thinking would reveal the person’s thoughts to you, you ‘couldn’t read what was at the pit of their stomach.’

Of course, Melvis did not know about these sayings.
I didn’t know if it was through experience or some unique sensibility, but he had succeeded in removing his consciousness from his body.

If you thought with your head, maybe you can think outside of it?
Something like that. …Was it possible?

Like that, Melvis’s consciousness… In other words, his soul, went down the road that dead souls go.
And so he descended into the Under World while still alive.
It was a cheat.

And there, he searched for Lesser High King Yamato. But found nothing.
That just left the Human World.

And so he concluded that Yamato must be there.

“I then tried to go to the Human World, but only purified souls can go there.”
He sounded disappointed. I thought it was insane that he would even attempt such a thing.

I imagined that the Under World was like a giant pool.
And there was a drain with a filter that caught foreign substances.

Melvis’s soul wasn’t pure, and so he could not pass through.

“Was the person I met the real King Yamato?”

“I’m not sure. …But it is possible.”

Apparently, Melvis had a reason to believe that it was the same person.

Next Chapter

Makai Hongi