Vestia, who had been holding up the Grand Duchess, saw him and came over.
"Um, Young Master...... I've prepared your bedchamber so you can rest after your journey."
She wiped at her reddened eyes as she spoke.
"We'll need to call the healer, though. In the meantime, I think it would be best if you went to your bedchamber first. I'll show you the way."
Those were welcome words. Raizel nodded.
He followed Vestia up to the castle's second floor.
"Please don't take it too hard......"
Once they had left the first-floor hall and climbed to the top of the stairs, Vestia spoke.
"His Highness the Grand Duke only said that because he's hurting too. You're meeting again after seven whole years, so there's no way His Highness isn't glad to see you. He's just very, very upset, so he spoke a little harshly. The moment he heard you were coming back, he ordered the room you used seven years ago to be made ready......"
Tears welled in her eyes.
"There might be a way to heal your mana heart. What I mean is...... it's too early to give up."
She talked as they walked. A little later, they arrived in front of the bedchamber.
After opening the bedchamber door, she bowed her head.
"Even so, I...... Whatever state Your Grace is in, I swear that I, at least, will never leave the Young Master or the Grand Ducal Castle. You can overcome any misfortune that comes. I mean it."
Raizel did not go into the room right away, but gazed steadily at Vestia.
'......'
Something about it made him uncomfortable.
The one she was pledging such loyalty to was not him, but the original owner of this body.
Noticing the subtle look on Raizel's face, Vestia lowered her head.
"I presumed to guess at the Young Master's feelings. I'm sorry."
He walked past Vestia into the bedchamber.
"Please rest."
Thud.
The door closed, and he was alone.
The moment it grew quiet, the Heavenly Slaughter Star's voice rang out, as if it had been waiting.
「You are not flustered.」
A voice laced with mockery.
At the sound of it, Raizel frowned.
'Get lost.'
「This venerable one graciously found you a usable body...... and not a single word of thanks? It seems you do not find it strange that you can converse with the other lower-realm mortals?」
Judging by what the Heavenly Slaughter Star said, his ability to understand the language others spoke in this unfamiliar world seemed to be the star's doing.
But he did not feel the least bit grateful.
Had the Heavenly Slaughter Star wanted thanks, he should have let him die.
Raizel looked around the bedchamber once, then sat down on the rug spread in its center.
「Do you mean to begin qi circulation?」
Of course, he did not answer.
Instead, he sat in the lotus position and closed his eyes.
「What nerve, with no one to stand guard over you.」
It did not matter.
Even if someone disturbed him during qi circulation and his qi and blood twisted until he died.
「Of course, no matter how many times you die, this venerable one will bring you back, but the pain is yours alone to bear, is it not?」
He had expected as much.
The Heavenly Slaughter Star laughed.
It was a voice that made the skin crawl.
「Still, it seems the desire to grow stronger remains in you. Good. Will you finally kindle the cataclysmic fire this time?」
Ignoring those words, Raizel settled into the lotus position. He straightened his back and rested his hands on his knees.
At that, the Heavenly Slaughter Star's voice was heard no more.
Qi circulation was the one thing the Heavenly Slaughter Star never interrupted.
He breathed in slowly and deeply. Then he let it all out again in one long breath.
The sensation of a qi center as empty as a newly bought jar felt strange to him.
He began to breathe, running the Heaven and Earth Heart Method.
The Heaven and Earth Heart Method.
The very first heart method every martial artist of the Murim learned upon taking up the martial arts.
It was the process of awakening the qi center before learning any other inner arts method.
He breathed in and breathed out, again and again.
His emotions settled into stillness. At the same time, the noise around him gradually faded into the distance.
Like a breeze drifting down a valley deep in the mountains, the energy that entered his body with each breath gathered in his qi center.
A little later, Raizel opened his eyes to slits. A thin sliver of silver showed between his eyelids.
About a quarter of an hour had passed.
'A qi center no different from a newborn babe's.'
Only then could he sense the energy around him a little more clearly. Of course, to him, it was about the level of a newborn just learning to hold up its head.
Still, it was enough to catch the footsteps coming from outside.
Two presences.
One was Vestia, and the other was a stranger.
There was still no killing intent. He recalled what Vestia had said.
'That woman said she would call a healer.'
Raizel glared at the door from where he sat on the floor. Soon, Vestia returned with the healer and knocked.
"Young Master, it's Vestia. May I come in?"
Raizel did not answer right away, but thought.
'She seems to have known this body's owner. Seven years apart, was it? She must simply think his personality changed as he grew up.'
There seemed to be no particular need to watch how he behaved.
Still, he was not at all pleased with what he had worked out.
In effect, he had stolen the body of someone who had lived a life of his own into his mid-teens.
'So I am not the only one being toyed with.'
He offered a brief moment of mourning to the 'real' Raizel, who had lost his life.
'I will not let your life go to waste. That is separate from my revenge.'
Revenge as the Heavenly Demon Seo Seon-ju was revenge.
And his life as Raizel Esselklein......
'I will do everything in my power to give you the life that would have been most ideal for the original you.'
Once his mourning was done, he opened the door himself. After all, he could not so much as tell them to come in.
Aphasia was not so hard to cure. He simply needed more inner arts training. If he could obtain an elixir, the time it took would be shorter still.
"Y-Young Master."
When Raizel opened the door himself, Vestia was flustered. Then she remembered that Raizel could no longer speak, and her face fell.
"Sir Elden, I forgot to tell you. The Young Master is...... going to have difficulty speaking for himself for a while."
She had put it as delicately as she could, but in the end, it meant he was mute.
"Is that so?"
The healer replied indifferently. He was a tall man with a cantankerous face.
For someone whose profession was treating the wounded and the sick, his own complexion was a sickly bluish gray.
'Suspicious.'
However.
Raizel glanced at the bag the healer had brought.
The faint, uncanny energy peculiar to elixirs was seeping out of the bag. In that case, the claim that he was a healer was probably no lie.
The healer bowed his head in silent greeting, then spoke, blinking slowly as if drowsy.
"I am Gowen Elden. May I take a look at the Young Master's condition?"
He was suspicious, but if it came to that, he could simply kill him. The healer did not look particularly strong. Raizel nodded and sat down in a chair at one side of the room.
"This may be unpleasant."
The healer took hold of Raizel's wrist. Then he let his mana flow in.
Drowsy-eyed, the healer used the mana he had sent in to probe every corner of Raizel's body.
Just as he had warned, it was a very unpleasant feeling.
Unable to bear it, Raizel finally used his inner arts to push the healer's mana out. It was only a feeble amount of inner arts, but enough to make contact with the mana the healer had sent in.
At that, the healer's listless, tired expression turned to shock.
"Th-this...... This cannot be......!"
"What is it?"
Vestia asked, her eyes gone round. The healer looked at Vestia once, then at Raizel once, and answered.
"Did you just use mana to repel my mana?"
Mana.
He could take that to mean inner arts.
'They call inner arts mana?'
Roughly grasping the context, Raizel nodded in answer.
"But I was clearly told......"
The healer looked at Vestia again. It was as if he were demanding to know whether she had lied.
Of course, Vestia was innocent.
"......No, of course not. That his mana heart was damaged and he could no longer use mana was the imperial physician's diagnosis...... But...... This is truly strange. By my own diagnosis as well, his mana heart is not moving at all."
His eyes were full of confusion. The healer rambled for a moment, then gave a hollow laugh and spoke.
"I will report this to His Highness the Grand Duke first."
Do as you like. He had not even understood what a mana heart was in the first place.
The place where inner arts accumulated was the qi center.
To stray from that obvious principle and store inner arts in the heart was an oddity he had never even imagined.
Raizel nodded absently, then raised a hand and pointed at the healer's bag. Then he crooked his fingers.
"Are you pointing at my bag?"
Raizel nodded.
"Is there something you need?"
He nodded again.
Eyeing Raizel with suspicion, the healer opened the bag. Inside, just as Raizel had expected, was an elixir.
It was wrapped in a shabby cloth pouch, but did a lotus ever lose its noble nature for being buried in mud?
Since he could not even ask for it, he simply reached out and snatched the pouch holding the elixir.
"That is,"
The healer looked troubled.
He pushed his glasses up with a finger as he spoke.
"The bag was not even open, so how did you know? And the most expensive one, of all things......"
But the Young Master was the Grand Duke's son either way, was he not? Scratching the back of his neck, the healer gave up on getting the elixir back on the spot.
"......Very well. As you wish. I will bill His Highness the Grand Duke for it separately."
If it were not allowed, that maid called Vestia would have stopped him. But she stayed quiet.
'I am supposedly his son. Surely he will not begrudge his own child something to eat.'
And if he did begrudge it...... Even so, it could not be helped.
Before long, the healer left the room with Vestia.
"I will be back soon."
It would be good if he brought elixirs next time too.
Once the door closed, Raizel sat on the floor again and took the lotus position.
He took the elixir out of the cloth pouch. An elixir in pill form, with a smooth, milky surface. It was a little bigger than a thumbnail.
Crack.
Gulp.
He chewed the elixir and swallowed it.
Hsssss......
Right after, he felt a powerful energy sweep through his body.
He ran the inner arts method he had created after nearly twenty years of deliberation.
Hummm......
The elixir's energy melted into him.
It headed for his qi center and gradually turned into Raizel's inner arts.
There was nothing difficult about it. It was a heart method he had created himself, one that only he used.
A heart method no one knew but its creator.
The masters of the Murim who had ever met the Heavenly Demon called that heart method the 'Heavenly Demon Divine Art.'
For in their eyes, the Heavenly Demon's martial arts were close to divine skill.
But the name he had given his heart method was not the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
It was the Dust-Transcending Sutra.
A heart method born of his longing to sink into the realm of no-self and forget the mundane world.
Thump, thump, thump......
As his blocked meridians opened, the elixir's energy made one full circuit of his weakened body.
After absorbing all of the elixir's energy, Raizel slowly opened his eyes.
He stood up and looked around. The first thing to catch his eye was the mirror hanging on the wall.
When he stepped in front of the mirror, he saw his face. Unlike his original self, who had had black hair and black eyes, the boy there had silver hair so pale it was nearly white, and blue eyes.
When he turned around, there was a window. Beyond it spread the view of a training ground.
Raizel headed for the training ground.