The road stretched before them, dusty and quiet. Iris's boundless energy had settled into a humming, cheerful presence, but Kaito's mind was anything but calm. The pieces were starting to connect in a way that pointed a terrifying finger back at himself.
The Heart of the Abyss is somehow corrupted by his aura. The thought was a poison. The mutations, the blight, the despair—what if they weren't just consequences he was cleaning up? What if he was the source, a walking plague whose very presence twisted the world? And if that was true, who had guided that corruption to coalesce into something as specific and intelligent as the Heart?
『Author: he completely forgot. He forgot he is reason』
He stopped walking. Iris took a few more skipping steps before noticing and turning back, her head tilted.
"What's wrong? Tired already? We just started!"
"Why should I trust you?" Kaito asked, his voice flat. The question hung in the air, stark and direct. "You say you're from the King. Prove it."
Iris's sunset eyes widened, not in offense, but in delight, as if he'd just proposed a wonderful new game. "Ooh, a test! Okay!" She struck a dramatic pose, one hand on her hip. "My full name, for official royal business, is Irianna Sol'Keth. But it's stuffy. I hate it." She then held up her palm. A small, intricate symbol of a crowned sun flared to life above it, burning with a pure, golden light that felt fundamentally different from any magic he'd encountered. It radiated an aura of ancient, sanctioned authority.
"See? Royal Seal. Can't fake that!" she said, snuffing the light out. "And as for what I am…" She grinned, a flash of pride in her heterochromatic gaze. "I'm Half-Divine. Cool, right?"
The term meant little to him. "[Sage, define 'Half-Divine.']"
[Insufficient data for precise definition. Term suggests a transitional state between mortal and divine biology, explaining the high-energy, unstable signature.]
"What is Half-Divine?" Kaito asked, focusing on her.
Iris's expression grew animated, like a scholar explaining her favorite subject. "It's evolution! Like monsters getting bigger and meaner, but for people! But way better." She started counting on her fingers. "You need crazy-strong willpower and a ton of power to even start. But once you make it, you're nearly unkillable! You can get blown to dust, and poof! You come back. Someone destroys your soul? No problem! As long as even one tiny piece is left, you can regenerate the whole thing! Cool, right?"
Kaito processed this. It sounded like a lesser, more fragile version of his own Adaptive Immortality. He could be completely erased and come back, making any concept of a "piece" of him irrelevant.
"And that's not all!" she continued, her voice bubbling with excitement. "You get stronger, faster, tougher. The Grand Design gives you the basics: Half-Divine strength, crazy durability, a powerful aura… some people call it Haki, but it's just presence. And regeneration, like I said." She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. "And sometimes… you get a secret. A special power that's just for you. Nobody else has it. That's the best part."
She looked at him, her gaze suddenly sharpening, the playful child replaced for a moment by the ancient being she truly was. "The King has one. Kaelen has one. I have one." She winked. "But mine's a secret."
She was laying out the hierarchy of power in this world, a ladder he wasn't on. He existed outside of it, parallel to its rules. Her description of near-invulnerability only highlighted how his own was absolute.
"So, you're a messenger because you're hard to kill," Kaito stated.
"Well, yeah! And because it's fun!" she said, bouncing back to her cheerful self. "So, can we go now? The King is waiting to meet the man who 'un-happens' things. He's got a whole continent full of problems he'd love to make un-happen."
She turned and skipped ahead, leaving Kaito with a storm of new thoughts. He now knew the messenger was legitimate and powerful in the context of this world's system. But her revelation about Half-Divine evolution and secret abilities solidified a new, chilling idea. The corruption he fought was intelligent and powerful. Could its creator be someone on this "Half-Divine" ladder? Someone with a "secret" ability to twist the world, perhaps using his own monstrous aura as a catalyst?
He was no longer just walking to meet a king. He was walking into a den of near-gods, one of whom might be using him as a weapon. And his only guide was a chaotic, childlike, and terrifyingly powerful Half-Divine who saw it all as a grand adventure.
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CH74.5 The Weight of a Secret
The revelation of the Half-Divine hung in the air between them, a new lens through which to view the world. Kaito walked in silence, the dust of the road puffing softly under his boots. Iris, having unburdened herself of her grand secret, had returned to her cheerful humming, occasionally pointing out a interesting-looking bird or a strangely shaped cloud.
But Kaito's mind was a whirlwind. Her casual explanation of near-invulnerability and secret abilities had not impressed him; it had armed him with a terrifying hypothesis.
Someone was orchestrating the corruption. The Heart of the Abyss was too specific, too intelligent in its design—a factory for an endless, regenerating plague. It wasn't a natural mutation. It felt engineered. And the only energy source potent and alien enough to fuel such a thing... was his own.
He was the trigger. Someone else was the sniper, using the shockwave of his presence to aim a calculated shot at the world's weak points.
Iris's description of the Half-Divine painted the perfect portrait of a suspect. They possessed the willpower, the power, and most chillingly, the potential for unique, secret abilities. An ability to manipulate corruption, to twist life, to use another's power as a catalyst... it fit perfectly.
He looked at Iris's bouncing form. Her secret was her own, but how many others were there? The King had one. Kaelen had one. How many more Half-Divine existed, each with a hidden power that could reshape the world? The war with the Monster King was the obvious conflict, but was there a shadow war being waged between these nascent gods, using the continent itself as their battlefield?
And he, Kaito, had become an unwitting, walking weapon in that war.
"Your King," Kaito said, breaking the long silence. His voice was quiet, but it cut through Iris's humming. "What is his secret?"
Iris stopped and turned, her sunset eyes wide with mock scandal. "Whoa! You can't just ask that! A Half-Divine's secret is... well, it's a secret! Telling you would be like... like giving away the ending to a really good story!" She pouted, but there was a keen light in her gaze. "Why do you want to know?"
"The corruption I fix," Kaito said, choosing his words with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. "It's not random. It's intelligent. It uses power... maybe even my own... to create specific threats. It feels like a weapon. I need to know who forges the weapons your King fights against."
Iris's playful expression melted away, replaced by a startling, ancient solemnity. The shift was so abrupt it was jarring. The child was gone, and in her place stood the Half-Divine messenger.
"That," she said, her voice low and devoid of its usual lilt, "is the question, isn't it? The one that keeps the King awake at night." She held his gaze, the red-orange and purple of her eyes seeming to swirl with a hidden depth. "He has his suspicions. So does Kaelen. But a secret, once revealed, loses its power. And in a war of gods, even potential ones, you never show your hand until you're ready to win."
She leaned closer, the scent of ozone and wildflowers clinging to her. "You want to know who's using you? Find the pattern. The King believes you're the key to seeing it. That's why he called for you. Not to give you orders. To ask for your help."
With that, she turned and resumed walking, the solemnity vanishing as quickly as it came. "Now come on! If we hurry, we can reach the next town before dark! I heard they have a bakery that makes cherry tarts that are literally to die for!"
Kaito watched her go, the weight of her words settling upon him. The King wasn't just a ruler; he was a player in a divine game, and he believed Kaito was a new, unpredictable piece on the board. He was no longer a simple warden. He was being recruited as an investigator into a conspiracy of gods, and his first clue was the trail of his own corrupted power. The road to the capital had just become a path into a much darker and more complex labyrinth.