My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! - Volume 10 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20 — Interlude: If I Can’t Turn Them Back to Normal, I’ll End Up Breaking My Promise Again

The Sage Van sat across from Alice in a room in her luxurious castle, which was built within her world. They were having a meeting of Sages. As this was Alice’s world, she was there in the flesh, but Van was only an image.

“This is it?! Why are you the only one here?!” Alice had requested the meeting, asking all Sages to join.

“Ha ha ha. I don’t normally go to meetings like this, but I figured I’d come say hi to everyone. Things would have been pretty lonely if I hadn’t shown up, huh?”

Participation in these meetings was voluntary, and nothing decided here would be able to compel the others, so there wasn’t much meaning to it. It was more like, “If you’re free, let’s get together and talk.” Van had come this time because he remembered he had said he would try to create new Sages himself. Of course, he had totally forgotten about that, so he hadn’t made any progress. Still, he had made a promise to Sion, so he had wanted to at least give an excuse for his lack of progress.

“Sion normally comes to these kinds of things, doesn’t she?”

“Sion’s dead, you know.”

“Oh, really? There was someone strong enough to kill her?”

Sages normally took no interest in the actions of other Sages. Sion’s attempt to take leadership over the others was a notable exception. If even she wasn’t going to be there, their incoherent meetings could become even more chaotic, although with such low attendance, there wasn’t much fear of that happening.

“There was a guy collecting Philosopher’s Stones. Yeah, let me fill you in a bit.”

At their previous meeting, they had heard that Santarou was dead. Shortly after meeting Yogiri Takatou, Lain, Sion, and Raiza had also died. Some flashy woman with Yogiri had taken Alice’s own Philosopher’s Stone. Shigeto had then showed up in disguise as Yoshifumi to attack Alice, so Yoshifumi was likely dead as well. Afterwards, Shigeto had summoned three Philosopher’s Stones. He’d said he picked them up from nowhere in particular, so they may have been taken from Sages who had already been dead, but it was also possible three more Sages had died at some point. As such, at most, nine Sages had either died or lost their powers, she reported.

“Nine, huh? That’s kind of a big deal. I don’t remember how many Sages there are, but that’s almost all of them, right? At worst, we might be the last two left.”

“You make it sound like it has nothing to do with you.”

“Doesn’t it? All we do is look after our own territories, right?”

“But what are we going to do? With the others gone, there’s no one to protect those regions anymore. If an Aggressor shows up, we’re done for, right?”

“Gramps says there’s nothing we can do about that. We can’t change the size of the areas just because a Sage dies.” The Great Sage neither attempted to make new Sages nor gave the areas to another Sage when one died. The decision of how to deal with undefended areas had been left up to the Sages themselves.

“Speaking of which, what did you call this meeting for?”

“Nothing in particular. I lost my Philosopher’s Stone, so I was just wondering what to do.”

“I guess that makes sense. But you made this room with your power, right?”

“This kind of papier-mâché is the best I can do. I’m not even invincible in this world anymore. If someone attacks I’m a total goner.”

“I have a bunch of Philosopher’s Stones. Do you want one?”

“I don’t know if I can trust you not to forget you promised me one right away.”

“Ahh. Yeah, sorry. I forgot about my promise to make more Sages. I came here today to apologize to Sion about that.”

“Why not try to make some new Sages now? You can just toss them into some of the empty areas.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll think about it.” An M unit from Belm would probably be strong enough to work as a Sage outside the continent. That’s what he had thought of when Sion had asked the same thing of him.

“Not like I’m going to bet on it, though.”

“Your lack of trust kind of hurts. Anyway, for now, I’ll bring you a Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Speaking of which, why do you have more than one?”

“You don’t know? Gramps asked me to take care of all the extras. Whenever a Sage candidate becomes a full fledged Sage, I go and give them one.”

“Oh yeah, I guess you gave me my first one too. I thought you were just there as a representative of the Great Sage.”

“Do you think that’s unfair?” Van asked.

“Not really. Having more than one is just a waste for me. One is good enough.”

“Where are you right now?”

“The island where the Empire of Ent is.”

“I guess I’ll be able to find you if I go there.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” Alice said. “Doesn’t look like anyone else is coming, so I guess we can call it a day.

“I’ll bring it. I swear.” Their meeting over, Van returned his consciousness to his body.

He opened his eyes. He was surrounded by walls of flesh. They were like bare muscle, like he was inside the digestive tract of some enormous organism. The floors and ceiling were the same along with the sofa he was sitting on and the table in front of him. He was within the ever-expanding Seyla. Van was giving direction to its growth, using it as material to build.

He decided to get the Philosopher’s Stone ready before he forgot. Standing up, he approached one of the walls of flesh, which parted for him. The gap revealed a hallway made of the same material, which he walked down.

As he walked, the hallway changed shape, creating a path to his intended destination. He arrived at the core of the Seyla. There was an almost human shape stuck to one of the walls inside. Reaching out a hand, the figure split open, and something like a tongue emerged from it. On that tongue were ten transparent stones. They were the entirety of the Philosopher’s Stones the Great Sage had left in his care.

As he reached out to grab one, he realized something was wrong. The stones were all connected to each other. Though they had been ten distinct stones before, they had started fusing into one. As he watched, they began to transform. They melded together and grew, taking on the color of skin before growing arms and legs, taking on a human shape.

As it grew heavier, it slipped off of the tongue and struck the ground, still growing. As Van watched in shock, the stones finished their transformation into a girl who looked to be fifteen or sixteen years old.

“Oh, I see. That’s why we’re supposed to keep them inside living things to store them.” Nothing like this had ever happened when he had pulled the stones out before, so it may have been a just-in-case kind of warning.

The girl sat up on the floor of Seyla. She had unconsciously formed a barrier to block the Seyla from infecting her. She looked up at Van in confusion.

“This is bad. If I can’t turn them back to normal, I’ll end up breaking my promise again...”

More than the fact the stones had transformed into a girl right in front of him, he was concerned about no longer being able to fulfill his promise to deliver a Philosopher’s Stone to Alice.