My Servant Is An Elf Knight From Another World

Chapter 415 - The Impostor In The Room, Part 2

"There exists a certain… process," One at a time, Irene snapped shut the blinds to her windows. "You see, in our world, being immortal, ever-living, is something that's usually unattainable, with a rare handful of individuals being the sole exceptions. Ria's one of those beings, your parents are also another, and obviously, there are also the Seven Divines, the most renowned of these exceptions." 

Amelia sounded a sluggish, disinterested yawn, whereas her sister had already entered a nice, comfortable slumber against her shoulder, leaving only me in sole attendance to the Succubus' lecture.

"The cycle of life and death is one that many species, demon, and man, had sought to conquer through many centuries and attempts, that was until the Seven Churches came and deemed any further advances towards immortality a sacrilegious act and had it banned throughout the realm. If anyone could so easily replicate the power of Gods, and not just immortality too, creation, divinity - then can they truly be called Divine? That's the idea at least." 

Irene circled back to her desk, and briefly, her stare turned a disdainful one, "But obviously the threat of death could not deter the ambitious, the greedy, the curious, and because of that, because of them, that is how we ended up with cases like… him," disdain turned to annoyance, the way her phone was tossed so haphazardly onto the desk, with little care or regard. 

"The battery died again, Detective," Harry said, shifting restlessly in his seat. "Why aren't these things designed to stay alive forever? This seems like an obvious major flaw. It stays alive by electric, right? Can you replace the electric when it dies? With a new one? Sounds like it'd be very simple."

Irene took her phone back, ignoring him, then after briefly assessing for any dents and bruises, quickly pocketed it, and continued on with her explanation side-eyeing him all the while.

"One particular individual from long ago, a talented sorceress… healing magic. She theorized that while our physical bodies will eventually cease to be, our souls do not, they stay as they are, lingering intangible, until Lady Enstar arrives to bring us to her domain. But say, what if one were to somehow transfer one's soul, and implant it into a more abled, more youthful body? While you're knocking at death's door, be it from illness, injury, you could just transfer to another physical body, dead, but free of any ailments. In a way, unconventional as it may be, so long as you continue repeating the process, you'd be immortal, wouldn't you?" 

I heard her words, and then I heard Harry over there, rapping his knuckles, swinging his head, bored out of his mind, and I swallowed heavy the realization, "So, you're saying Jay transferred his soul over to Nick's father?" 

"Perhaps if you were to learn from your mother of our history, you wouldn't need to be caught up to speed so often," Amelia sniped from behind, and admittedly she raised a fair point. "If you had, you would already know this far-fetched theory never came to be… at least not in the way it was intended to." 

I looked to Irene for further clarification, and she wasted no time filling me in on the details, "Removing one's soul whole is impossible. Many have tried, and many have died, but at most… one could only hope to fragment a meager fraction of their soul separate, and that's too small a piece to ever sustain and utilize a complete physical body, you'd just die anyway, that is, unless…"

"Unless?" I urged her on. 

But before she could speak, the sound of wooden legs scraping loudly against the floorboards, spun a polite, wrinkled pair of eyes over towards me, and Harry spoke, "Unless that small little fragment is able to first share and fuse with another living soul first, inhabiting the same body, the same mind, together at the same time, before, in time, completely consuming it whole for its own - thus, achieving the same effect in the long run," then added with an almost prideful smile. "Jay taught me that, the first thing he taught me… or wait… maybe I should say, I taught myself that?" 

A shiver shot up my spine - for a moment, for a second - he looked different, smiled different. His mannerisms, the way he spoke, it was almost like Jay manifested. 

Irene slowly came into view, obstructing him from sight, guess she wanted to spare my mind from any more of this madness before it imploded. 

"Goes without saying," She said, sighing. "You can probably see why such a process was immediately rendered heresy by the Seven Churches, and why it was completely forbidden from use." 

"Yeah," I nodded, doing my best to try and wrap my mind around it towards any sort of common ground. "So, in a way, Jay's soul is like… like a parasite of sorts? Taking over the mind, the body? " 

"A mundane summarization of the complexity of it," Amelia spoke in the midst of tenderly stroking her sleeping sister's silky gray locks. "But not entirely inaccurate, I suppose." 

"So what happened to the original soul, Nick's Dad?" I asked, weaving my eyes around Irene, watching Harry go back to his listless pastimes of rapping his knuckles. "He's - he's still in there somewhere, isn't he? I mean, last night… he was fine last night. He was talking to Nick just fine." 

"He's still in there," Irene gently affirmed, hearing the building worry in my tone. "He's fighting it, trying to break free from Jay's growing influence. I've been helping - these past few days you haven't heard from me - I've been thinking, trying, and sometimes, I've been successful. I'm able to bring him back, but it doesn't last, and his time is only getting shorter. Last night, one of the rare instances he was lucid, he asked to see his kids. He was scared that the next time, there wouldn't be a next time for him, so I complied, I brought him to your cafe… he didn't stay long, I told him not to. Just in case. " 

"A soul as weak-willed as his has no chance of expelling this parasite, even with aid," Amelia was watching him too, except instead of disdain, of hatred, she only looked on at him with mere amusement, a wry smile forming so faint. "And once he is wholly consumed, now you'll have two too capable Magi's to fret and worry about. How relishing a prospect, hm? That is unless you wish to save us from all the trouble, and kill him now as you've originally planned from the start."

"Kill him?" I threw glances everywhere. "We can't…"

"Oh, she'd anticipated you'd say that," Amelia interjected. "Your kindness, your cowardice, she expected it, and no doubt it would be our undoing, really.. Perhaps it's partly also the reason she desired your non-involvement in all this."