Chapter 128. Curious Superhero

I realized while watching this person’s back that I hardly ever needed to introduce myself to anyone. I was someone that was known by a lot of people, and I had never tried to strike up a conversation with someone from this position… But… I guess that there was just one way to do it.

I got a couple of steps away from this person and spoke. “Hello.”

“Wah!” the person exclaimed, jolting from the spot and quickly turning to look at me.

The voice, I noticed, sounded like it was coming from another place, as if it was ethereal, and the tone was deep, yet, juvenile, like a young man’s. All of this, combined with the white glow of the eyes, made me quickly realize that this young-sounding man was a skeleton.

He lifted his hand and placed it on his chest as he sighed. There was a glove covering it, so I couldn’t see the bony hands… and from a quick look at his body, it appeared to be muscular… despite there not being muscles on a skeleton. However, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to him.

“You scared me…” he said, taking a deep breath, “I thought that those villains had come to look for me, but I never expected any of them—or anyone, really—to sneak up on me like that.” He turned his glowing eyes my way. “How did you do that? You must be really strong.”

His voice sounded familiar… but the fact that he didn’t know who I was, was enough to show that I didn’t know him—besides the fact that I didn’t really talk to any skeleton in particular. Still, I shook my head to remove that doubt and properly answer him.

“I guess I must be… though, you seem to be rather special,” I said with my arms crossed under my chest as I gave him an obvious look from top to bottom.

He followed my gaze and turned to look down at his own body, before exclaiming and scratching the back of hooded head. “O-oh… hehe, well, this is just to show that I’m trying my best to do what’s right for the people. Didn’t you know? The police don’t really hang around these poor neighborhoods, so I do the job that they’re too afraid to do.”

“Is that so…? Aren’t there other mages that could help you?” I asked, tilting my head from side to side as if I was looking around him, while keeping my eyes on him.

“Ah… well… I don’t know about other mages. I haven’t seen anyone else around here doing magic like I do—I mean, there are, but none of them seem really interested in protecting the people,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “But you seem to be around here. Are you also one that fights villains on the streets?”

I shook my head. “No. I just happened to be around here when I noticed the kind of… magic… you were doing.”

“Aha! You saw it! Pretty cool, right?!” he exclaimed, placing his fists on his hips and puffing out his weirdly muscular chest. “It’s my superhero power! I will the power within me to deliver justice to evildoers and give peace to the innocent!”

“‘Superhero power’…?” I asked with a frown.

I had seen movies with those sorts of themes before, and I’d heard that there were people who liked to dress in flashy outfits to fight bandits on the streets… similar to the skeleton in front of me, though, the law of almost every place in this world seemed to not agree with these sorts of people. So I had never seen any mage or fighter actually doing something like that.

“That’s right!” he exclaimed, sustaining the same pose while nodding. “From the moment I have memory, I have been able to use that strange power within me to fight.”

“Is that so? Did anyone teach you how to properly use that kind of magic?” I asked, hoping to get some information about where he got the insight into Soul Magic.

“So you want to know about my origin story… Hm…” he pondered for a moment, dropping the stance as he pinched his chin while looking at me. I wondered what it was that he was considering, but after a moment, he nodded. “Okay, you seem to be a good one, so I’m going to tell you.”

“A good one?” I asked back with one eyebrow raised.

“Yes. Just the fact that you sneaked up on me but didn’t try to do anything is enough for me to tell that you’re good. And I can also tell it from what my gut is telling me.”

There it was again. He was referencing something inside—his ‘soul’, it seems—but he wasn’t saying directly what it was that he was talking about. I felt compelled to get that information out of him even more, but I just paused and waited for him to continue talking.

“Anyway. I’ll be honest with you… I don’t remember anything from before a few months ago, when I suddenly woke up inside a dark coffin. I panicked and gathered whatever strength I had and pushed myself out!” he exclaimed, punching up at the air. “Violet power burst out of my fist, and the coffin, along with whatever that was on top of that, was sent flying to the night sky! However…”

He paused momentarily, the white glow that acted as his eyes turned to look down, appearing like he was somewhat dejected.

“Turns out… that I was inside some sort of vault, or crypt, or,”—he chuckled—“Perhaps even a mausoleum for my heroism… though, not likely since… when I broke myself free… the poor dude that was resting on the coffin on top of me in that vault was also sent flying to the sky and… turned to ashes…”

That last bit he said with a low tone, nearly ashamed of it. I looked at him with narrowed eyes as his white glowing eyes shifted from one place to another. He cleared his throat and stood straight once more.

“D-don’t look at me like that! I-I’d like to think that I helped that fellow be closer to God by sending his ashes up to the sky!” he proudly exclaimed, but I couldn’t help but give him the same narrowed-eyed look.

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His proud stance staggered slightly, but he managed to maintain it.

Still, something else caught my attention. He mentioned ‘God’, which was the common way that the people of this place usually referred to their deity, even if they didn’t believe in it, so I was prompted to ask about it.

“You just mentioned God,” I said, causing him to turn calm once more. “Do you happen to know anything about the Holy Gods?”

“Ah…!” he exclaimed, nodding his head. “Yes, I’ve heard about it. Though, I personally have not been well acquainted with them. I know them from a few people that I’ve seen talking about it, but in my memories—or at least ingrained in my way of speaking—there’s only been a God… nothing about some Holy Gods. I think they’re from the people of the other world? But I’m not sure if I myself am from the other world!”

He laughed out loud and I just shook my head. So he has no idea even where he's from. “Going back to where you first woke up. What did you do after that? Did… someone pick you up… or…?”

“After that…?” he replied, tilting his head and looking up, trying to remember. “All I know is that it was night time, I was dressed in a black suit, and that there wasn’t anyone around. So I just panicked about the destruction that I caused and made a run for it, as far away from that cemetery as I could. Lucky for me too to wake up in the middle of the night, ‘cause that cemetery was also in the middle of the city! So if I woke at noon… boy, would I have been in trouble.”

“What about your use of magic? Did someone teach you how to do magic?”

“Hmm… No? I just ‘knew’ how to do it from the start,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Okay…” I said with a sigh. It seemed like there was no easy way to know how he uses Soul Magic… though, as I turned my eyes to the strange way he was dressed, another question popped into my mind. “Why do you fight bandits while dressed like that?”

“Oh! This is… this is just my calling, I think?” he replied while also looking at his clothes.

“You think?” I asked, narrowing my eyes once more.

“Yeah… Well, I’m not sure. Once I was done running and could finally catch my breath, I started thinking about all those things, like why I was there, where I was, and even who I was. By chance, I saw a poster in one street with someone dressed in these sorts of clothes and something clicked inside of me. Something screamed that I was supposed to be a hero, so I started doing the sorts of things that a superhero would do, from the way they dress to the heroic acts that they do,” he answered, taking once more the stance with his chest puffed out.

“Huh, so you don’t remember who you are? Then what should I call you?”

“You may call me…” he trailed off, looking at me directly with his white glowing eyes. “Super-Demon!”

“Super-Demon?” I exclaimed with my eyebrows raised. I’d never heard anyone named like that, much less name themselves like that, and there was another detail missing, “But you don’t even have the horns of demons.”

“Y-yeah? Well, that was the name of the man on the poster, so I figured I should use that name from now on as well,” he replied, his voice waving slightly and his pose faltering once more.

“Wouldn’t people get confused by that? Shouldn’t you use something that’s yours?” I asked, “Or at least a real name?”

“Hey! Don’t go judging other people’s names! Besides, you’ve not even introduced yourself!” he exclaimed, leaning forward and pointing at me with one finger while keeping his other hand on his hip.

“I’m Althea,” I replied with my head held high as I usually did when I introduced myself. I had also learned not to say ‘Hero of the Holy Gods’ right after, since I was so used to saying it, that I usually said it by habit.

However, he loudly scoffed. “That’s not a real name either.”

“Huh? That’s a perfectly common name from where I come from,” I replied with a frown.

“Yeah? I’ve not met a single person with that kind of name around here, so I think you also made up your name,” he followed up, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. “I think that being named Super-Demon should be normal for me as well.”

“But that’s not—” I stopped myself with this argument, and instead calmed myself and sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll call you Super-Demon.”

“That’s right. Besides, as a superhero, I should also use that to keep my real identity from being leaked. Like using this mask,” he followed up, tapping the black cotton-like mask that was covering his face, save for eyes.

“Would normal people be able to easily recognize who a skeleton was, though?” I questioned with an eyebrow raised.

He jolted from surprise, his white eyes glowing slightly brighter. “H-how do you know I’m a skeleton?!”

“It’s… obvious?” I replied, my expression getting more intense.

“Huh?!”

Was this ‘Super-Demon’ being serious with me? I couldn’t exactly tell if he really didn’t know that his voice and eyes weren’t normal for people, or if he was just trying to pull a prank with me, like in the videos that Mirlaneth liked to watch. However, judging from the stunned look that he was giving me, it seemed like he wasn’t aware of that, so I decided to point it out to him.

“Your white glowing eyes and ethereal voice give it away,” I said, pointing a finger at his eyes.

He quickly reacted by hunching, and covering his eyes and mouth. It appeared that he really wasn’t aware of it.

“T-that’s…” he said, but his voice remained the same, after which he removed his hands and sighed. “Okay… fine… you caught me…”

“That wasn’t my intention,” I said, looking at this skeleton with confusion due to his antics.

He looked back up to me, and I could feel that he was trying to be serious this time. “So, what is it that you want? You didn’t just come talk to me just because of the way I looked, right?”

“That’s right,” I said with a nod. “Do you know what kind of magic you use?”

He tilted his head to the side. “It’s just… I don’t know, it’s my kind of magic? I just summon the power from within me and send it out.”

So he doesn’t even know that he uses Soul Magic. That was going to be problematic. “Is that so? Could someone in your past, before you lost your memory, have taught you how to do it?”

“Hm… Maybe? But there’s no way to know that—at least, not right now,” he replied, shaking his head.

There was a moment of silence as I considered how I was going to get the information on how he used Soul Magic out of him. I looked at the sidewalk to my left, and thought about getting in contact with Asteora, but there was no way to know when I could see her. Perhaps I could ask the Emperor, or maybe even Salrak himself.

But as I was thinking about those things, he took a step back, causing me to look at him and his raised hand. “Well then, if there’s nothing else to do, then I’m going to go now. There’s still plenty of criminals to fight!”

“Wait!” I exclaimed, reaching a hand out to make sure he didn’t just break into a sprint. “I wish to have your contact information.”

“O-oh…!” he said with a bit of an awkward tone. “I-I’m flattered, b-but we just met, and… you might be really cute and all, but I think that as a superhero, it’s not proper for me to engage in these sorts of—”

“No! It’s nothing like that!” I interrupted, quickly stopping any idea that he had running in his skull from going any further. “I just wish to know more about the magic that you use.”

“Ah…” he replied, somewhat dejected, but then his eyes brightened once more. “Ah! So you want to be like my sidekick!”

“Sidekick?” I questioned. I’d never heard of something like that.

But he ignored my question and chuckled. “Very well. If that’s the case, then I’m more than happy to teach you the ways of the superhero!” He suddenly turned and started jogging. “Come on! Let me show you!”