Infinite Dendrogram: Volume 16, page 14
part #16 of Infinite Dendrogram Series
“...There there,” Cyco said as she consoled me with a pat on my head — though she was still tired and barely able to move.
“Truly, nothing is beyond her. How terrifying,” said a voice coming from behind us.
I turned around and saw Persephone.
“Persephone?” I asked. “When did—? No, where were you?”
“Hmm... In hiding.”
“From Emily?”
“No. From Ace, more like.”
From Teach? I thought.
“From what I could tell, that woman would have murdered me on sight purely to make it easier to take the Orb from Master Dearest,” she explained.
Oh no... After seeing Teach grab Emily and fly away, I could easily see her doing just that.
“So, you finally showed yourself because she left?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure she’ll come back soon.”
“I understand that, but I feel that I must give you a warning.” ...A warning? “Well, the matter of the Murder Princess is solved now, but...” she said with a tired shake of the head. “Something worse will soon show itself.”
Those words were laden with certainty.
“Huh?” Something worse than Emily? “Persephone, what are you talking about?”
“Hm...” She gave no proper response to my question. Instead, she merely looked off into the distance — in the direction of the mayor’s manor.
◆◆◆
City of Commerce, Cortana, Mayor’s Mansion
“Aieee...hieee...!” Douglas Coin, the mayor of Cortana, was running frantically through his mansion.
“Sir, what is the matt— AAAAAHHHHHHH?!” The maids that saw him shrieked in terror as their eyes fell on his legs, severed by Aragorn and now replaced by countless writhing maggots.
However, he ignored them and continued running, as though unaware of his own state. His destination was the mansion’s dungeon — the place where many homeless people and slaves had met their ends, turned to corpses for the mayor’s dark ritual.
“I-I just need...to finish the ritual...!” The fear of incoming death made him lose his mind, as well as gave him the strength to keep running.
He didn’t want to die.
That was the mayor’s main motive, as well as the reason why he now wanted to carry out the ritual of the Orb of De Vermis. This motive, however, had its roots in a time before he’d acquired the Orb at all.
◆
About a year ago, his body had been overcome by severe illness. His old age and the many years he’d spent living large had begun to take their toll on his vital organs and overall health. Life became difficult for him, and the idea that he might die soon became an obsession.
Perhaps because death felt so close, the Mayor had begun seeing visions of the many people he’d tortured and killed in life.
Dying would have meant losing everything he’d attained, and it wasn’t clear what would happen after that. Many stories of old said that those who incurred the grudge of others in life would suffer immensely after death. This had been all but confirmed by the observations of various necromancers.
The mayor had once laughed these stories off, but that amusement had turned into fear as his death drew closer and closer.
After illness had taken hold of him, the mayor’s nights had become filled with teeth-chattering terror. He buried himself deep under his sheets, because otherwise he would see things he didn’t want to see: his own disease-stricken, dying visage, as well as Fria — the wife of one of his political opponents.
During the mayoral election some years ago, he’d ruined a couple who opposed him by having the man accused of crimes he did not commit. Following that, he took Fria as a slave and eventually murdered her...but now, her face was coming back to haunt him. It was as though she was waiting for him to finally die.
That was far from the only misdeed he’d committed. He’d done many vile things as both a merchant and a politician. He’d even accepted money from the Gouz-Maise Gang that had operated on the border with Altar, keeping the Altarian army at bay and supplying them with magic items in exchange for their payment.
Many children and the people who’d tried to rescue them died as a direct result of his actions, but Douglas didn’t care as long as his wealth continued to increase.
He’d been committing such crimes for decades now.
However, as death drew near, he’d begun to selfishly fear the retribution he could face.
These days had seemed endless.
“No... I don’t want to die... No... Nooo...” Crying like a child, the mayor had continued to panic over the prospect of his impending death.
He felt that if he strained his ears, he could hear his subordinates and servants talking about what they would do once he was dead.
“I-I... I can’t die yet... I don’t want to die...!” He’d begun life as a merchant, become a politician, and eventually rose to become mayor of the second most important — if not the most important — city in Caldina. His word in congress carried more weight than anyone’s save maybe the president. It would have been accurate to call him the “vice-king” of the union.
However, all the wealth, glory, and power he’d gathered would all vanish the moment he died.
And beyond the grave, there would be nothing waiting for him but the vengeful victims he’d murdered for his own ends.
“Aaaahhhh... Huh?” As the idea of such a future paralyzed him with terror, something moved the sheet that he had pulled over him.
It was the wind flowing into the room.
The window was open for some reason, letting in the night breeze.
“...Ugh!” For a moment, he considered calling a servant to close it, but he didn’t want anyone to see him crying, so he decided to do it himself.
His limbs shaking, he took his cane and slowly walked up to the window...and then noticed something odd on the floor.
“...What is this?”
It was a crystalline Orb. Below it, there was a piece of paper saying, “Present. This is what you seek. Place the Orb under the pillow, wish for health and youth, and they shall be yours again.”
He looked at the Orb in suspicion, closed the window...and picked it up.
His suspicion was no match for the temptation presented by the Orb and the mysterious letter.
Someone had clearly left the Orb after breaking into his room, but he felt that doing as the letter said was the correct course of action. So, he placed the Orb under his pillow.
“A healthy body...and youth... Heh heh... What am I hoping for...from this thing...?”
He chuckled in self-derision at his own actions, but he still went to sleep with the Orb beneath his head.
And when he woke up the next day, he was so healthy that it would have been hard to recognize him.
The shadow of death that had hung over the mayor before had all but vanished. His face was full of life, and there wasn’t a hint of pain or trembling in any part of his body.
The mayor felt freer that day than he had in decades.
“Ha...hah hah hah,” he laughed in disbelief. “What...? What is this...?!”
“I-h-a-v-e-m-e-n-d-e-d-y-o-u-r-b-o-d-y-w-h-i-l-e-k-e-e-p-i-n-g-i-t-s-s-h-a-p-e.”
“Ah?!” The mayor jumped as an unfamiliar voice rang out in his head.
It wasn’t an auditory hallucination. It seemed more like someone nearby was talking to him.
“Wh-Who is there...?! Where are you?!”
“I-a-m-D-e-V-e-r-m-i-s. T-h-e-o-n-e-s-e-a-l-e-d-w-i-t-h-i-n-t-h-e-O-r-b-y-o-u-p-o-s-s-e-s-s.”
“What...?”
De Vermis then began speaking about itself.
It revealed that it was a UBM that had been sealed away in the Orb by the Draconic Emperor over six hundred years ago, and that someone had taken it from Huang He and brought it here.
Perplexed by those words, the mayor looked at the letter.
Who, exactly, had left him a national treasure of the Huang He Empire?
He wondered what their goal could’ve been, and guessed that by giving it to a powerful Caldinian, they intended to spark a war with Huang He.
The idea made him shiver. He wondered if it was best to return it, but De Vermis told him that if he were to let go of the Orb, his body would not stay mended. Without the Orb in his possession, the mayor would revert to his sickly, aging state once again.
Upon hearing that, the mayor remembered the fear he’d felt every night, and he couldn’t bring himself to give the Orb up. Ultimately, he decided to keep it himself and hide it from everyone else.
Afterwards, he had some slight trouble proving who he was to his servants. He ended up telling them that he’d “used a special item” — which wasn’t the full explanation, but also not a lie in the eyes of Truth Discernment.
After a day of particularly good health, De Vermis spoke to him once more.
“M-e-n-d-i-n-g-y-o-u-i-s-n-o-t-m-y-o-n-l-y-p-o-w-e-r.”
“What...?”
“M-y-p-o-w-e-r-i-s-w-h-a-t-y-o-u-c-a-l-l-i-m-m-o-r-t-a-l-i-t-y.”
“What?!”
De Vermis then told him of the ritual for immortality.
First, it needed between a hundred and two hundred dead bodies. And second, after they’d been killed, the bodies had to be kept in one place for a certain amount of time.
With that, the preparations for the rite of immortality would be done.
It would come at a cost of many lives, but with the mayor’s wealth and power, this was easy to accomplish without anyone being the wiser, especially if he only targeted vagrants and slaves.
“I-b-e-l-i-e-v-e-I-c-a-n-p-e-r-f-o-r-m-t-h-e-r-i-t-u-a-l-w-i-t-h-y-o-u-r-a-i-d. W-i-l-l-y-o-u-a-s-s-i-s-t-m-e?”
“If I do...?”
“Y-o-u-w-i-l-l-a-l-s-o-b-e-c-o-m-e-i-m-m-o-r-t-a-l.” Magic and necromancy were real in the world of Infinite Dendrogram; this was a wicked and suspicious offer.
However, the mayor accepted it, mostly because De Vermis had already demonstrated its power on the mayor’s own body.
“Immortality... If I become immortal...” If he became immune to death itself, he would never again have to feel the fear he’d experienced when facing the prospect of his own demise.
And there was nothing he wanted more than that.
He accepted De Vermis’s offer and began doing whatever was necessary to become immortal.
◆
The one who’d given him the Orb was none other than the sub-leader of IF, Zeta.
She believed that a greedy, influential politician who was on the verge of death would use the Orb in a way that would attract many powerful figures to the city.
In some sense, it went exactly as she’d expected.
But whether the ultimate outcome was something she’d accounted for was another matter entirely.
◆
And so, the mayor arrived at the dungeon — the place of the ritual.
“Hee...heeeee... I am here! I lost them, and I made it!” he said out loud. The dungeon was full of bodies — all belonging to the nearly two hundred people he’d killed.
Despite that, the place did not smell badly at all, strangely enough.
All the corpses looked fresh, and even the wounds that had caused their deaths had stayed as clean holes in their flesh.
The mayor took out the Orb of De Vermis and said, “Now! Start the ritual!”
“T-h-a-t-I-w-i-l-l.”
A moment later, the mayor’s hand moved against his will and threw the Orb to the floor, shattering it.
“...Huh?” The mayor had no intention of doing that, but he had thrown the Orb on the ground as though spurred on by some unknown force inside him.
The UBM-sealing Orbs, created by the greatest Draconic Emperor in history, were potent treasures that allowed the holders to wield the powers of the UBMs within, but that didn’t mean that the orbs themselves were difficult to break. Just a few years ago, an Orb in a certain land was shattered, releasing the UBM within.
And here, it had just happened once again. The Orb shattered, releasing the sealed UBM — a small fly.
It seemed hard to believe that this pitifully small creature possessed immense power, but it was undoubtedly an Ancient Legendary UBM — The Rebirthing Infestation, De Vermis.
“This is the first time we have faced each other like this, is it not, Douglas?” De Vermis spoke to the mayor with a voice far clearer than it ever had before.
The mayor, however, said nothing in response. He did not even move from where he was standing, for he was too shaken and overcome by terror.
“E-Eek...!”
All their exchanges thus far were based on the premise that De Vermis was sealed in the Orb and could thus be controlled.
But now it had been released.
A tian facing an unbound UBM was a death sentence.
Thinking that he’d been simply manipulated into freeing the UBM, the mayor almost despaired...
“Please do not be afraid. I have no intention of harming you.”
...but De Vermis spoke to him in a gentle tone.
“What...?” the mayor said.
“As I said, I will now perform the rite of immortality. As a friend, you will be part of it. Let us live together, eternally.”
There was no hint of malice or deceit in that voice. De Vermis just saw the mayor as a friend and wished to grant him immortality.
Realizing that the UBM had nothing but good intentions, the mayor relaxed.
“I-I see! Then let us complete it before King of Tartarus comes.”
“That would be for the best. Let us begin.”
A moment after De Vermis said that, the corpses lying in this room began to move.
The remains of the slaves and beggars killed by Douglas’s private soldiers began to rise, with bodies so healthy-looking it was impossible to believe they were actually dead.
“The corpses...!” the mayor cried.
“They are not corpses. They are alive,” De Vermis insisted.
“...What?”
“Oh, I suppose I should explain. The fragment that I created when I mended your body had a limited ability to speak, so I could not convey all of the information to you. I will tell you about it now while I create the immortal body.”
De Vermis’s words raised some questions in the back of the mayor’s mind, but before he could ask them, the UBM began explaining its abilities.
“My power is called ‘Reinvigorating Rebirth.’ It is a skill that targets flesh, bones, and organs damaged by wounds or illnesses and replaces them with fragments of myself.”
“Hm...?”
“The fragments act exactly as the organs they replace, and they also improve anything that passes through them. Blood, for example. Additionally, since they have the power to grant vitality, anything that has part of its body replaced by my fragments becomes even healthier than they were before. This reinvigoration is perpetual and does not degrade with time, making eternal life possible. Even if ninety-nine percent of such a body is destroyed or burned, the damaged cells can be replaced. Oh, and since your entire body was so decayed, a very large amount of you was replaced, which greatly improved the effect and made you look far younger.”
“Wait, what are you saying? I...”
“To put it simply, I use the failing parts of others’ bodies to create fragments of myself. Those fragments then make their bodies healthy.” With that simplified explanation, the mayor finally understood how De Vermis’s power worked.
However, he now had another question.
“What do you mean by ‘fragment?’” he asked.
The best answer to that question was no doubt the mayor’s own legs, replaced by countless maggots.
However, De Vermis didn’t point that out. Instead, the mayor looked at the walking dead surrounding him.
The corpses that the UBM had said were alive gathered together in one place and began to collapse there. As they fell, they looked unnaturally limp, as though they had no skeletons or joints.
And from the many holes all over those bodies, innumerable amounts of maggots began to pour out.
“Those are my fragments,” said De Vermis. Upon seeing that, as well as noticing the maggot-legs he now possessed, the mayor was completely unable to speak.
However, De Vermis continued talking, ignoring the mayor’s emotional state.
“The bodies of people dying from heart and lung failure are the optimal bases for the creation of my fragments. First the killing wound, then the dying brain cells, then the decaying body... I can replace them in that order.”
The UBM was speaking as though none of this was remotely out of the ordinary.
“I would have preferred to keep replacing parts for a few more days and increase the number of fragments, but now that there is someone who would take my power away from you, this seems to be the best I will be able to do.” The maggots overflowing the pile of bodies were now leaving behind the parts they hadn’t replaced — the cells that were still alive — like food they hadn’t had time to eat. The writhing mass then began to gather into a single place.
These maggots born from human bodies might’ve been made of human cells, but they were clearly not human.
The maggots abandoned their original form as disparate parts of many corpses and began to gather and assume a different form.
Maggots born from certain corpses became fingers, others became toes, and the majority of the creatures merged together into a most fitting shape — a maggot.
Born from nearly two hundred corpses, the writhing bugs created a freakish form akin to a giant maggot with multiple sets of human limbs — a sight most ordinary humans could scarcely bear to look at.
Perhaps if it were some sort of artificial creation, it wouldn’t weigh so heavily on an onlooker’s sanity. However...it was alive. It pulsated as a single creature.
The maggots born from the corpses became a new shape...a new life-form.
The sight was unbearably repulsive. If the wicked dead were given a choice between this and hell, most would certainly pick the latter.
Perhaps if Ray Starling or Hugo Lesseps had been there, this creature would remind them of the great manifestation of grudge — The Revenant Ox-Horse, Gouz-Maise.
However, the essence of this creature was nothing like that at all. In fact, it was completely the opposite.
