The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

Proofreader: Xemul

"E-eh? This is strange. I've just talked about important things, but you don't seem to be interested at all?"

Ivy wondered if she had misheard, but Loren answered her question firmly.

"You quit being the Evil God of Envy, rebuilt your body, and changed your name, didn't you? The rest are trivial."

"Oh? I still have some power left… But it is true that I can no longer use most of the powers of an Evil God, and I don't really feel the urge to be jealous of anyone anymore."

"Well, whatever. At least you're less dangerous than these two. What's more important is the information about the ruin where you rebuilt your body in. If someone has the… materials, they can make a new body and transplant their soul into it, right?"

"Yes. Well, do you know anyone who needs something like that?"

The first thing that came to Loren's mind when he heard Ivy's story was the Shayna that was still sleeping inside him.

Originally the daughter of the head of a city-state, Shayna had been transformed into the 'King of Death', the highest ranking undead, in a quest that Loren was involved in. In a battle with his group, however, she was defeated and her physical body was destroyed. If she had remained in it, her spirit would have perished along with her body, but she was saved by Loren, and now she maintained her existence by dwelling in Loren's soul.

Loren thought that if the ruin Ivy mentioned could be used, it would be possible to create a new body for Shayna and transplant her soul into it, even though getting the materials was still a question.

"It seems like there's a lot going on here. Is it something to do with your strange mood?"

"Is that relevant right now?"

Ivy's gaze, which seemed to be observing the change in Loren's expression, made him feel alarmed. But after staring at Loren for a while, Ivy shook her head.

"Probably not. But it's information I can't share with people who might want to misuse it."

"There's a girl I want to resurrect. Her soul is here."

Poking his own chest with his index finger, Loren confided his reason to Ivy.

"It seems that she is able to maintain her existence by being inside me, but I don't know how long she will be able to continue doing so. I want to build a body for her."

"I see, I see. But the child inside of you is…"

Ivy's eyes, which were trained on Loren, turned dark purple for a moment. Loren reflexively leaned back, but Ivy pointed to his chest with a wry smile.

"An undead? And quite high-ranking."

"You can tell?"

Loren was surprised that she was able to tell just by looking.

Ivy nodded her head with a proud expression on her face, perhaps feeling good about having surprised Loren.

"I'm the self-enhancement type, so I've basically been trying to improve my abilities. That includes knowledge and judgment."

"Hey, did you hear that, you two?"

If anything, both Gluttony and Lust carried a heavy pleasure-seeking connotation.

When Loren pointed out that they had not been trying to improve themselves as much as Envy, Gula replied with a composed face.

"I'm the emanation type."

"I'm also the emanation type. We're different. You know already, so please don't look at us like that."

Loren felt a slight anger at the two Evil Gods, who replied with no concern whatsoever. But they were not likely to think of correcting their own behavior even if he pointed it out to them, so it was futile. Loren turned his attention back to Ivy.

"Even if you create a body and transplant a soul into it, she will only be revived as an undead…Oh, no, will it be, though? Since the newly-created body is a living organism… Hmm?"

"What do you mean?"

Loren asked Ivy, who had been lost in thought, but she didn't return from her contemplation to answer him. Instead, Lapis, who was sitting next to Loren, poured the contents of her glass down her throat and replied while picking at the food on her plate.

"I think a body created at that ruin will be a living body. Otherwise, it would be meaningless to transplant a soul into it."

"What does that mean?"

"The undead are beings that have no life force. The dead are dead, so it is only natural that they have no life force. What do you think would happen if such a being was transplanted into a body with life force?"

There was no way Loren could answer the question of what would happen. Even though he was formerly a mercenary and currently an adventurer, such skills and knowledge were completely outside his area of expertise. He did not have even a cursory for knowledge of this subject.

"In my opinion, in the worst case scenario, the soul and the physical body would be reduced to zero, and both would cease to exist."

"Isn't it more likely that the power of the undead part would be so strong that it would only end up destroying the physical body?"

"Then the soul would remain, so it would not be the worst case scenario."

Ivy, who had made her own guess at Lapis' idea, nodded her head in agreement when she heard Lapis' reply.

"But with this line of reasoning, there is no solution at all."

With downcast eyes, Lapis said while placing the glass she was sipping from on the round table.

"So you compare the soul with the body. If the soul is stronger, the physical body will perish, and if the physical body is stronger, the soul, as an undead, could perish. If both are equally strong, as I said earlier, both could perish."

"Damn… It doesn't seem like such a good idea…"

"If you just transplant the soul into a corpse, it won't be not a problem."

A corpse was originally lifeless, so there would be no problem in transplanting Shayna's spirit, which was also lifeless, into it.

However, Lapis confirmed that in that case, it would simply create one powerful undead, which was not what Loren wanted. If possible, he wanted to return Shayna to how she had been when she was alive, not to create a King of Death by expelling her from inside him.

"There is another possibility."

After uttering such a preamble, Ivy looked at Loren, but he did not understand the meaning of her gaze. She continued.

"I've never heard of an undead being dwelling inside a human's soul. We can't rule out the possibility that this has caused some kind of mutation in the undead's soul."

"I agree. If what resides inside Loren was just the soul of an undead, it would have caused tremendous damage to its surroundings with its thirst for life, which is true of undead in general."

As far as Lapis could see, she had the impression that Shayna was very quiet when she was shut away inside Loren, and even on the rare occasion when she came out, she used her own abilities rationally and did not go on an uncontrolled rampage. She believed that this was proof that Shayna's rationality was still intact, and that she was a little different from the undead, who indiscriminately targeted the living and tried to take their lives.

"I have to admit, though, that we won't know for sure until we try."

Ivy leaned forward a little and put her elbows on the round table, looking at Loren.

"Do you still want information about the ruin despite that?"

"Yes, tell me anyway."

Ivy blinked her eyes at the immediate answer.

"Hm? An immediate answer?"

"I'll ask her if she wants to do it or not later, but give me the information. I need to show her the thing first, in order to talk about it."

If he asked Shayna what she would do in the current situation, she might answer that she would not do it because she did not want to cause trouble for Lapis and Gula. However, if he asked the same question after creating a situation where the actual thing was in front of her and she might be able to get her body back, her answer might have been different.

If she still said she would not do it under those circumstances, they would just have to come up with another way. Still, they needed to create those circumstances first, no matter how things turn out.

Ivy, on the other hand, had asked Loren this question, because she believed it would be better to think it through first. But his unexpectedly quick response made her speechless, and she fell silent.

Eventually, seeing that Loren's resolution seemed firm, she moved her elbows from the table and sat straight up.

"I understand. Then I will tell you, but I would like to receive a fee for the information."

"Don't ask me about the Evil Gods."

"I don't want information. At any rate, I'll answer what you ask, so there's nothing complicated here."

"So money?"

Loren thought that if she asked for money, he would have to ask Lapis again, but Ivy shook her head at his words.

"What I need right now is labor. So please pay me with it."

"I don't get what you mean by that."

"I'm asking you to pay me with your body."

As soon as Ivy said this to Loren with a smirk, two things happened at the same time.

One was that Gula grabbed Luxuria by the neck as he was getting up and forcibly pushed him back into his chair.

The other was that Lapis' hand, in a movement so natural that even Loren could have missed it, threw the fork that was in her hand, which she was using to eat, at Ivy.

Ivy, too, with a very natural move, smoothly used the glass in her hand to defend herself from the fork that aimed straight for her brow.

She gently put the glass with the fork still stuck in it back on the table, looked alternately at Lapis, whose gaze was stern, and Luxuria, whose gaze was also stern for some reason, then muttered with a sigh.

"You misunderstood."

Ivy's expression was calm, but Loren could see that her hands were shaking, if only slightly, when she put the cup back on the round table. In other words, Lapis had apparently launched a real attack, not a joke.

"Just say it properly. As you can see, I can't do anything to stop them."

"I want you to accept a commission from the Adventurers' Guild through me. I have a commission that is getting a little stale, and I've been looking for someone to take it."

"That depends on what the commission is. If it asks me to kill someone or steal something, I can't take it."

"The Adventurers' Guild is not a crime syndicate, you know?"

Ivy puffed up her cheeks as if to say that she was offended.

"This is a commission for research and exploration in a certain city. If you accept this request, the Adventurers' Guild will provide you with information about the ruin you are asking about, in addition to a reward. What do you think?"

Loren had no choice but to nod in response, and Lapis and the others did not try to stop him either.