I nodded slowly. “Alright. That explains most of it. But what I don’t get is… How did you end up all the way out here? The farthest corner of the west?”
“After the village fell,” she said, eyes distant, “I was summoned to the capital. They enrolled me in the Academy of the Shadow Path.”
Of course they did. If they couldn’t use her as a vessel for divine descent, they’d try to repurpose her. Mold her into something else.
“They figured that even if I couldn’t summon the god anymore, I was still a Saegusa,” she said. “So I had to be magically compatible with something.”
That was pure madness.
Saegusa wasn’t like ordinary spellcasters. Her mind, her body, her entire being had been built from birth to host divinity. Her internal circuits, her spiritual pathways, everything had been shaped for one purpose: to channel gods. Trying to overlay conventional magic onto that kind of system was like trying to load a ballista bolt into a crossbow. It didn’t just fail; it broke things.
Clearly, the so-called Hero of the East, the current heir of the Shadow Path, was every bit the bastard I suspected.
“What happened then?” I asked, though I already knew.
She smiled bitterly. “Do I look like someone who can cast standard magic?”
No. Not even close.
“I couldn’t do anything. I made a fool of myself over and over… and they made sure everyone saw it.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? They made you a spectacle?”
“The first daughter of the legendary Saegusa line, said to carry thousands of years of divine blood, couldn’t even cast a basic spell,” she whispered. “And they made sure that fact was on display for the whole academy.”
Right. Because why waste a good chance to humiliate a political rival?
The truth was, Koharu had always belonged to a unique skill class. She wasn’t built for conventional combat but for a singular, divine role. Judging her with the same rubric as an everyday mage was absurd. But that was the point, wasn’t it? They’d set her up to fail. To remove her from the board.
Because someone with a lot of power and a fragile ego needed to be the uncontested strongest in the east. And she’d been in the way.
“So,” I asked at last, “how did you end up here?”
At that, she smiled faintly. A fragile, hollow kind of smile that barely reached her eyes.
“My lost power, the strength of the Saegusa bloodline, was never mine alone,” Koharu said, her voice steadying with conviction. She clenched her fists, her knuckles paling. “That overwhelming force was not something I earned. It was the legacy of ancient covenants sealed by my ancestors with the gods. I’m merely the vessel chosen to bear it, not to own it.”
She inhaled, then continued with renewed intensity. “I just happened to be born the eldest daughter. That’s all. This power wasn’t gifted to me; it was entrusted to me on behalf of everyone in my clan. I’m just the one who inherited it.”
“And?” I asked quietly.
“They all died to protect that power, you know? To protect me. Because they understood what I carried, that I wasn’t just myself but the future of our bloodline.”
I nodded slowly. “That… might be true.”
Her gaze dropped. “But now? In the Eastern Kingdom, the name Saegusa has become synonymous with failure.”
I leaned forward, my patience wearing thin. “I got it. Now answer the damn question. Why are you all the way out here, at a western magic academy?”
“Because the spells are different here,” she said simply. “If eastern magic failed me, maybe western magic won’t. The Saegusa clan were sacred defenders, the chosen battle priestesses charged with sealing calamities. Even if I can’t descend a god anymore, if I train hard enough, I can reclaim that legacy. I can prove them wrong.”
I let out a long breath. She really was just a fool. Noble, but still a fool. “You seriously don’t get it, do you? What you’re trying to do is beyond reckless. Your body was made to host a god. You’re already overloaded with a divine channel. Trying to stack common magical circuits on top of that? That’s not ambition; it’s insanity.”
Her face tensed, but she kept her resolve. “Then tell me. If a curse just locks away all this power, why hasn’t anyone removed it?”
“If you could have, you already would’ve. I’m guessing you’ve seen every healer, exorcist, and expert out there.”
She nodded faintly, her voice quiet. “Yes. No one could help. Every single one of them said the same thing. The curse can’t be undone.”
She hadn’t come to the Western Frontier for herself. She’d crossed the entire continent, east to west, for the sole purpose of reclaiming her clan’s honor. Honestly, I had to respect the sheer grit it took. And truth be told, I wasn’t in a position to mock anyone scraping by on desperation. I’d crawled through plenty of filth to get where I was.
“Guess I’ve got no choice.”
I studied the curse clinging to her shoulder. If I had to rate it, this thing was a solid seven out of ten on the dark arts scale. A real piece of work. Whoever cast it had gone all-in: layered rituals, long-term corruption, maybe even ritual offerings. No wonder every healer and spiritualist she’d seen had thrown in the towel.
No ordinary magic was going to touch this thing. And since my cultivation arts required Lilith to channel them and she wasn’t exactly here or compatible with the current state of Saegusa’s spirit, I had one option left.
“Guess I’ll just have to eat it.”
I flexed my right hand, extending it slowly toward her shoulder.
“Huh? Ryuto-kun?” Her voice wavered.
“Shut up and stay still.”
With my focus honed, I unlocked the seal inside my palm, deep in its center, and the sleeping monster stirred. The moment it awoke, a foul black miasma erupted from her shoulder, curling through the air before being sucked directly into my hand.
She flinched, staring. “Is that… an eye? On your hand? Ryuto-kun, what did you just do?!”
“I broke the curse that was binding the Divine Vessel Priestess,” I said flatly.
She blinked, then slowly glanced down at her shoulder. The wound remained, but the malevolent energy, that suffocating curse, was completely gone.
Mouth parted, she took a breath, then asked, “But… how?”
“I ate it.”
She froze. “You… ate it?” Her voice cracked, then pitched up into near panic. “Wait, what?! That curse… It stumped every expert in the Eastern Kingdom! I went to healers, shamans, shrine elders, and you’re telling me you just… ate it?!”
I scratched my cheek awkwardly.
Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.
“Well, trying to explain it would just make things even more complicated…”
Beelzebub devoured magic.
And because I had formed a contract with him, his powers flowed through me by default. That meant most mages’ attacks were utterly meaningless against me. Their spells fizzled out before they even had a chance.
Lilith had long since resigned herself to calling it a cheat.
Not that I could blame her. She was a mage herself, after all. This kind of ability, something that rendered magic outright obsolete, must have rubbed her the wrong way on a fundamental level.
And now I was dealing with Koharu, a girl who knew just enough about divine possession to be dangerous.
But the truth? I wasn’t about to explain it to her. Not the real version. That I’d tamed Beelzebub himself, a high-ranking godlike entity, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. That kind of revelation would blow her mind clean off. This wasn’t some friendly pact with a helpful spirit. I was harboring a demon lord in my body.