The Money-Obssessed Archmage's Second Life As A Broke Duke-Chapter 84 - What Is The Name Of The Soul?!

Chapter Eighty Four

"Akira!"

A male voice filled my ears while my vision dimmed as vines emerged from the ground binding Akira and pulling her away.

"Haaah!" I gasped, clutching onto my chest trying to stand straight.

"Elder brother Noctrayel!" Ignis yelled in his frozen state that the Spirit King had finally showed up.

I lifted my face as my gaze was graced with the blurred vision of five different men. Most probably, the five spirit kings. Air, Water, Fire, Ice and Nature.

"Let me go, Noctrayel! You knew it! You knew it, didn't you? Our daughter... My daughter... is alive! How could you abandon your own kin, Noctrayel!?" Akira yelled, her voice echoing.

"Akira... It was for her own safety."

Noctyrael's voice wasn't the roar I expected. It was a low, resonant thrum, like the wind moving through an ancient forest. He stood at the center of the four other men, his presence so grounded it felt like the entire fire valley revolved around him. His hair was a cascade of silver and moss-green, and his eyes were deep, swirling pools of emerald light.

"Really?!" Akira shrieked, her nine tails thrashing against the glowing vines that pinned her to the soot. "Was it for my own safety then, that you pinned me to the ground like a common beast?"

"Yes! It was!" Noctyrael stepped forward, the earth blooming into life beneath his bare feet despite the desolation and soot. "If you had dug too deep into his memories, you would have been turned to ash like the Weaver of Low Paths!"

...Wait. What?

I clutched my chest, my lungs burning as I tried to process that. I didn't turn anyone to ashes. The Weaver definitely went poof by herself. Isn't that right, Sysi?

[Ping!]

[Definitely. Host didn't do anything.]

Yeah!

"Hey! Don't accuse me falsely! I didn't do anything to that Weaver!"

"Silence, mortal!" Ignis barked, his orange hair flaring into actual tongues of flame as he strained against his frozen state. "The Weaver was an entity of the Void-Paths. She doesn't just 'go poof' because of a stiff breeze! Only a direct rejection from a higher Source could have incinerated her existence. You are definitely someone sent by that Evil Empress."

Haah... It's impossible to get through this guy.

Noctyrael didn't look at Ignis. Neither did the other four men. Their eyes were fixed solely on the space between my brows, narrowing as if they were trying to calculate a sum that refused to add up.

"Noctyrael, I can't see through," a man muttered. He looked like an older, much more elegant version of Ignis, with hair like liquid gold and eyes that glowed like molten copper.

He definitely must be the Spirit King of Fire, Vyranthos.

"Neither do I," said a man whose form seemed to vibrate with the hum of a thousand storms. His messy, wind-swept hair shifted between shades of grey and pale violet.

He definitely must be the Spirit King of Air, Zephryx.

"Nor do I?" added a third, whose hair was as white as a mountain peak in mid-winter. He was draped in furs that seemed to grow frost despite the surrounding heat, and his gaze was as sharp and cold as a jagged icicle.

He definitely must be the Spirit King of Ice, Cryovael.

"Hey, Noctyrael! Remember the Lord's last words!"

The fourth man, with hair the color of a deep, midnight ocean and skin that had a translucent, pearly quality to it, stepped forward. His voice sounded like the shifting of deep currents. "Just ask him his name. Everything else will clear up on its own."

...Clear what?

"I agree with Abyrion, Noctyrael," Vyranthos murmured, his copper eyes never leaving mine.

"Me too!" Zephryx chirped, his voice echoing like a gust of air.

"I do too," Cryovael finished, his voice a chilling whisper that made the soot on the ground crackle.

I stood there, feeling like a specimen under a microscope.

My name? They want my name? Sysi, what's going on? The way these five powerhouses are looking at me is making me feel like my name was the key to a door I wasn't sure I wanted to open.

[Ping!]

[Just tell them this body's name, host.]

Are you sure that will work, Sysi?

...

How can you just abandon me like that?!

"Human," Noctyrael said, pulling me out of my head as his voice dropped to a low, reverent tone that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Tell us. What is your name?"

The weight of his gaze was like a physical pressure against my skull, making my thoughts feel sluggish and tangled. I opened my mouth, but the answer felt like it was miles away.

"I don't know?"

"You don't know?" Noctyrael's emerald eyes flickered, the nebulae within them swirling faster as his expression shifted from I know the answer to a simmering, dangerous confusion.

The vines holding Akira pulsed with a sympathetic rhythm to his heartbeat, tightening just enough around his wife to make her hiss in frustration.

...Are they into bondage or something?

"A man with no name is either a god, a corpse, or a liar. Which are you, mortal?"

Haah... What's the point in lying when they'll find out either way? These guys are literal forces of nature. I shouldn't dig my grave any deeper than it has already become, especially since the ground is already moving beneath me.

"A liar?"

"Are you asking or telling me, mortal?" Noctyrael's brow twitched, a spark of pure emerald light dancing across his knuckles.

"Telling you?" I replied, the rising inflection betraying my utter lack of confidence. All my Archmage energy evaporating.

Honestly though, even if I was an Archmage like my previous life. I'm no match for a Spirit King in the Spirit Realm. Archmages are like top of human chain. Not top of Spirit Realm chain.

"Are you serious?" He leaned in closer, his scent of crushed pine and ancient earth filling my lungs. The sheer absurdity of the moment seemed to be short-circuiting his divine brain.

"Yes?"

"What is wrong with you?!" he hissed, the frustration finally boiling over. "Just end it as an answer, not a question, mortal!"

"Okay?"

Noctyrael pressed his lips into a thin, irritated line, staring at me with the kind of look a professor gives a student who just tried to eat their own exam paper. He looked genuinely pained, as if my inability to make a declarative statement was causing physical damage to the fabric of reality.

"It is okay," he gritted out, taking a deep, stabilizing breath that made the flowers around his feet wilt and bloom in rapid succession.

"Okay."

Am I receiving grammar lessons from a Spirit King?!

"Better! So, tell me once more, without the inflection. What are you?"

"A liar?"

Noctyrael just blinked, completely dumbfounded. He stayed like that for a good few seconds, his mouth slightly agape, looking like a statue of a god who had just been told the universe was actually made of cheese. Behind him, the other four spirits shared a collective look of absolute bewilderment.

Vyranthos, the Spirit King of Fire, rubbed his temples with his gold-flecked fingers. "Noctyrael, I think we broke him."

"Honestly, I think he's just dumb." Cryovael added.

"I'm vouching for peculiar!" Zephryx chirped.

"How can a being be this... indecisive?" Abyrion squinted his eyes at me.

"It's not indecision!" I barked, finally finding a bit of spine finally, feeling offended at Abyrion's words. "It's a survival mechanism! Do you know how many times I've been nearly killed today? My brain is currently seventy percent soot and thirty percent 'please don't go into my brain and kill me later.' You want a firm answer? Fine. I'm a liar. I lied about the robe, I lied about how I got here. But, I didn't lie about Lune."

"What's the point in playing that game when you're going to confess that you're lying?"

Noctyrael's voice was as dry as parchment, his emerald eyes boring into mine with a look of fatigue. It was the look of a man who had spent three thousand years pondering the mysteries of the universe, only to be confronted by a mortal who couldn't even commit to a proper deception.

"I don't know, man," I sighed, the weight of the day finally crushing whatever was left of my pride. I slumped my shoulders, feeling every bit the exhausted babysitter I was. "I'm honestly tired."

"Then just make it quick," Noctyrael commanded, his voice vibrating through the soles of my feet. The patience of a Spirit King was clearly a finite resource, and I was draining the reservoir.

"Fine," I muttered, bracing myself.

"So," he leaned in, the scent of ancient pine and rain-drenched earth intensifying. "What is your name?"

"Veryon Halcrest."

The name felt heavy on my tongue, but as soon as it left my lips, the five spirits didn't look impressed. If anything, they looked even more annoyed. Zephryx let out a sharp whistle of air through his teeth, and Vyranthos's copper eyes flared with a flick of heat.

"Not that!" Noctyrael snapped, his hand twitching as if he were fighting the urge to turn me into a topiary."What's the name of the soul residing in that body?"

Of course, they knew...

I sighed, tired.

"Kion Yeun."