-It's me, me. Don't you remember?
The voice spoke again.
This was an auditory hallucination.
I'd experienced them before regression, during my years as a slave.
Imaginary friends who had comforted me in hopeless situations, amid hellish agony.
The only difference this time was that the voice was a bit more sinister.......
What I had to do was clear.
Ignore it.
If I refuse to look at it, refuse to listen, what can it do?
They're nothing more than phantoms, incapable of exerting any physical force whatsoever.
-Surely you're not going to tell me you don't know who I am?
The voice was definitely familiar.
No, I knew that voice.
In truth, there was no way I wouldn't.
The Lich I'd killed before the regression.
His name was probably Velkarion Asengrave, wasn't it?
Ha, my imaginary friend is a Lich.
That's just about as absurd as the world gets.
Anyway, if it's a Lich, all the more reason to ignore it.
-Khehehe, now that you're in a pitiful body, you're finally afraid of me, is that it?
The hell is it on about?
Ignoring it is definitely the answer.
If I keep ignoring it long enough, it'll fade into white noise and filter itself out.
So the best course is to ignore it from the start.
Besides, I'm not nearly idle enough to waste time reacting to every word that hallucination spews.
The invisibility spell lasts ten minutes.
Before it ran out, I needed to slip past the surveillance surrounding the house.
I hurried out of the basement and up to the ground floor.
But I couldn't leave immediately.
Invisibility didn't erase my presence or the sound of my footsteps.
Assuming those guards were reasonably skilled martial artists, trying to slip between them might get me caught again.
So I needed to draw their attention.
I quietly rummaged through the cabinets and pulled out whatever I could find.
I hung the other end of a thick rope fixed to the wall over a ceiling beam.
From the dangling rope, I hung the large pot and various utensils.
Lastly, I lit a candle beneath the rope tied to the wall.
A simple timed device.
Once the candle burned through the rope, a tremendous crash would echo through the house.
I slipped quietly outside and crouched, counting the seconds.
About two minutes passed.
CRAAASH—!
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!
A thunderous noise erupted from inside the house.
The masked men surrounding the house turned toward it as one and launched themselves forward.
"What's going on?!"
I didn't miss that opening.
The masked men rushed toward the house in a disordered scramble.
Their random movement opened a wide gap.
I sprinted through it.
-Oho, so you really have been through the wringer in the field, just like you said? Not something those desk-bound mage bastards could do.
The self-proclaimed Velkarion babbled on, but I continued to ignore it.
***
-Hehehe, are you afraid?
Two days had passed since my dramatic escape.
The hallucination was still spouting bullshit.
-My goal now is to steal your body. Don't let your guard down. I will find a way to take your body and devise another path to eternal life.
On top of everything, this bastard had an eighth-grader complex.
The concept was childish, and the way it tried so hard to play the big shot was laughable beyond words.
This from a creature I'd captured and used as a sacrifice.
-You know full well that ignoring me out of fear is no solution, don't you?
Total disregard. Still the answer.
***
Velkarion Asengrave.
In life, no, before the regression, he had been a Seventh Circle dark mage.
The Seventh Circle was a dizzying realm called Grand Mage in magic and Master among martial artists.
A Grand Mage of Dark Magic, and a Lich who had achieved eternal life.
That was what Velkarion had been.
-You know full well that ignoring me out of fear is no solution, don't you?
He was trying to intimidate Kalian Facial.
But the truth was, he was the one consumed by anxiety.
Trembling with fear, again.
'This is impossible!'
It was absurd.
Velkarion had had his Life Seal Orb seized and been annihilated as a result.
More precisely, his soul had been sealed within the orb.
The problem was what happened next.
Aizel Renhardt, the one who had killed him, had used regression magic.
'Is a true genius really a monster of an entirely different order?'
Velkarion himself had been called a genius mage.
Even among dark mages, one cannot ascend to the higher Circles without talent.
To become a Lich and achieve eternal life within that domain required genius among geniuses.
Yet even Velkarion had never dared to venture into one realm.
Time.
But Aizel Renhardt had tampered with time itself.
A dark mage able to use a Lich's Life Seal Orb as a medium, or as an offering, was practically a tactical weapon.
And this was an enormous Magic Circle that consumed no fewer than three such Life Seal Orbs.
Dozens, no, hundreds of Mana Formulas linked together and cycled endlessly through one another to finally produce a magic without precedent in history.
A Magic Circle that even Velkarion, hailed as a genius, could not fully comprehend.
That magic had activated, and Aizel Renhardt had regressed into the past.
The problem was that Velkarion had been swept along.
Another problem was that, having been dragged here as a soul alone, he could project no power whatsoever toward the outside world.
And the last problem was that he could not go more than ten meters from that human, that bastard, whether he was Aizel Renhardt or Kalian Facial.
His soul had been bound completely.
But problem after problem continued piling up, and yet another emerged.
'He can't hear me?'
He was terrified.
Oblivion.
To exist and yet be perceived by no one.
This meant being utterly excluded from the laws of the world.
And to be unperceived was to not exist.
A paradox of existing and yet not existing.
Oblivion admitted no change.
No aging.
Not even dissolution.
In other words, if he had become 'oblivion'.
'I-I'd have to face eternity in this state?'
Existence gained value through being recognized.
But to live forever without being recognized or perceived.
'Eternal torment!'
-No—!
Impossible.
It couldn't be.
Velkarion deepened the menace in his voice and cried out.
-Hehe, go to sleep. The moment you drift off, I'll claim that body of yours completely.
He tried to frighten him.
But.
The human still showed no reaction.
'He really can't hear me?'
Velkarion's soul trembled with dread.
***
Five days had passed since escaping that isolated house.
I was currently crossing a mountain whose name I didn't know.
I'd been running nonstop the entire time.
When I left the house, I'd minimized any trace of my escape.
But there might still be pursuers.
Rapid movement was essential to shake them.
Direction: southeast.
The reason?
To go to House Renhardt, the Renhardt domain.
My original purpose was to prevent the annihilation of House Renhardt.
So that was where I needed to go.
There was one more reason I had to go.
Aizel Renhardt.
The name still far more familiar to me.
The name of the soul residing in this body of Kalian Facial.
What had become of the Aizel Renhardt of 1323, the year I regressed to?
I needed to find out.
Three possibilities.
First.
Separate from me, the regressed soul, the original fifteen-year-old Aizel Renhardt might still be alive.
Second.
At the moment of my regression, Aizel Renhardt might have died.
Third.
This was the one that would really be a headache.......
Aizel Renhardt's soul entered Kalian Facial's body, and Kalian Facial's soul entered Aizel Renhardt's body.
In other words, a body swap.
I needed to confirm which scenario it was.
-Hehe, go to sleep. The moment you drift off, I'll claim that body of yours completely.
That again.......
Whatever else it is, that thing definitely has an eighth-grader complex.
What do I do about this?
Normally, hallucinations like these manifest when something buried within me breaks to the surface.......
I have an eighth-grader complex inside me?
-If you're scared, just say so. But you'd better not let your guard down. You never know when I might seize your body, kehehehe.
Shut up.
Argh, this is embarrassing!
"KYAAAAAH!"
I stopped dead in my tracks.
A piercing scream.
I dropped flat to the ground on reflex and turned toward the source.
It came from beyond a low ridge to the left of the hillside I'd been climbing.
The scream had been a woman's voice.
What followed was a man's rough snarl.
"Kheheh, you made it pretty far!"
What's with this horrendously cliche line?
I crawled on my belly up to the ridge.
A careful peek over the top revealed the scene.
A large man had grabbed a woman by the hair and was holding her aloft.
The woman kicked and thrashed in the air.
Her clothes were ragged, and her bare feet were scraped, torn, and covered in blood.
The menacing man, meanwhile, wore a leather breastplate and had a large blade strapped to his back.
An utterly predictable situation, one I must have seen a hundred times before the regression.
Bandits had probably raided a village somewhere and dragged people back.
That woman must have escaped along the way.
However.
"I deliberately left you an opening, and sure enough, you ran right into it. Heh, perfect."
The bastard had let her escape on purpose.
The intent was obvious.
He wanted to satisfy some urge of his, alone.
Before the regression, I used to drag scum like this around and use them as offerings for Dark Magic.
The bandit stroked the woman's cheek with a vile grin.
I carefully felt the ground and picked up a stone.
Over the past five days of running, I'd learned something.
A knight's body was nothing like an ordinary human's.
The body itself was a weapon.
That bandit might have been large, but he wasn't a trained martial artist.
Meaning I could take him down in one strike.
"KYAAAAAH!"
The woman screamed again.
The bandit had grabbed the front of her clothes in a fist.
That was when I threw the stone.
WHIIISH, CRACK!
The bandit's head snapped sideways from the impact.
THUD!
With a heavy sound, both the bandit and the woman collapsed to the ground.
I kicked off and launched myself toward the bandit.
A leaping arc, and I drove my weight down onto his body.
But no follow-up was needed.
He was already dead, his head burst open.
Blood and brain matter pooled on the ground.
"Hm!"
I raised my hand and studied it anew.
I'd known this was no ordinary body, but I never expected it to be this much.
Kalian Facial seemed to have been a knight with considerable martial talent.
"Hic, hiiic!"
The woman trembled, whimpering with fear.
I looked down to find the dead man's hand still clutching the front of her clothes.
She was desperately pulling the intact portion of her garment closed, shaking violently.
I pried his hand open.
"Are you all right?"
"P-please, spare me! Please!"
Her voice was drenched in terror.
Of course, after seeing a man's head burst right in front of her, she couldn't help it.
"I'm trying to help you."
With that, I stripped the breastplate off the dead bandit.
RIIIIP!
I tore his clothes into long strips and wrapped the woman's bloodied feet.
I also pulled off his shoes and handed them to her.
"Th-thank you!"
Relief finally crossed the woman's face.
As she put on the shoes, I asked.
"Where's their hideout?"
The woman froze mid-motion.
I froze too.
A strangely puzzled expression had flickered across the woman's face.
Odd, given the situation.
Why was she doing that?
But it lasted only a moment before the woman pointed in the direction she'd come running from.
"I-if you go over the ridge up there, the bandits' base is on the other side."
Bloodied footprints traced her path across the ground.
Following those alone would give a clear direction.
"How many bandits in total?"
The woman thought hard, then answered.
"About twenty."
Similar in scale to the average bandit crew I'd encountered before regression.
I nodded.
"Then head on down carefully."
I picked up the dead man's blade and rose to my feet.
Lucky me.
A supply depot to fund my travels, turning up at just the right time.