22 To Noblesse Oblige

The four of them embarked into a journey of conceptual liberation. One that wouldn't be referred to as a catharsis. One that shouldn't indulge in the chassis of hunting for the means to an end.

It was a realization, where the lies were buried under the pile of excuses, so that the truth took its roots and grew high and greeted the sun.

To put it simply, they were just doing whatever they wanted.

"As much as I want to maintain the hierarchy of order, there are only four of us in what can barely be scrapped as an army. So please refrain from calling me 'master' or 'esteemed puppeteer' anymore, Serja." Lothair tossed up the contents of the one-meter-wide pan that was scored over the woodfire stove. The half-cooked egg churned and fell upside down, and then immediately scrambled right after to prevent it from clumping. "Do any of you have a problem with spice?"

"No problem here, leader!" Daiyan shouted from the top of the glacial red tree, scouting the surroundings from an improvised platform made out of native woods. Her silver cape atop her grayish black frill dress fluttered against the wind. "There is no 'guise' sighted from here!"

A view of what could be described as the colossal form of nature existed beyond a clear line from the current part of the contrastingly colorful forest. It was an unfathomable garden, with bushes and tendrils rising hundreds of kilometers into the sky, covering the enormous supreme forest that seemed to have risen above the atmosphere.

"Our esteemed exploration leader said 'spice', not 'guise', Daiyan." Serja rallied to the weapon-mancer from the ground.

"You really like to put in the word 'esteemed', huh."

"Oh, I'm fine with spice!" Daiyan's face reddened, along with the volume of her voice. "Actually, just put three times the amount! Garik would most definitely love it!"

An echo from the nearby river could be heard. "You stupid fish demon, you want to kill me!?"

6 months had passed since the annihilation of the Holy Witch's army. While the Epithet were still known widely amongst the demons and the upper echelon of the society, the fear began to subside as the rumor circulated amongst those of nobles that the unhinged puppet master was dead.

Of course, while it was far from the truth, it was still an anomaly. Especially since Lothair won't stop terrorizing every village and town that he visited, albeit, on a much less destructive scale.

It was clear that the gap between him and the Overlord were still far too wide, and that an army of loyal and relentless puppets were barely a factor when he encountered one of them in the future.

So instead of putting more resources and time into building power in number, Lothair decided to pursue the limit of his healing power down to the roots of intricacy, anything that he could acquire to open a new path for Overheal.

"Alright, breakfast is served!"

So far, there were a couple of notable pieces of information that he learned about his healing prowess.

Sometimes, the healing factor would choose one of the two states when channeled without any objective.

The first one, the state of 'Restoration', where it would automatically assume the former condition of the object it was exposed to before beginning the process of repairing the said object. It applies to both organic and inorganic matter. It was the expected healing phenomenon, one that could be deemed as the true act of 'healing'.

And then the second one, the state of 'Unstable Restoration, also known as 'Overhealing', where instead of reverting any damage back to its undamage form, the healing factor went beyond volatile and began to apply a new trait in its restoration process to any matter it made contact with. The applied trait is random, and sometimes can become outright demeriting or impossible to comprehend.

With how Lothair was able to choose between two states and its scale with enough comprehension, the potential of this healing prowess was limitless. Especially the 'Overhealing' state, where it was shown to be breaking the law of physics on many occasions.

But so far, Lothair was only capable of willfully using two types of Overheal.

Addition, and Duplication.

"Leader, can you pass me the ketchup?"

"Oy, pungent pup, how dare you command the leader to do such a meaningless task!?"

"Now, now."

Addition Overheal is where the healing factor decides to incite and extend the state of the matter that it was subjected to. It happened to be found when Lothair noticed that sometimes, his victim of unstable restoration began to explode or just downright bleeding an impossible amount of blood.

It was found out that the unstable healing factor had made the matters, or in this case, cells, to reproduce more than intended, just like how the blood marrow produce an unholy amount of blood without any resource nutrient such as iron and protein, and like how he was able to overgrown the roots below to ketchup container, delivering the condiment to Garik without needing to get it himself.

"Almighty thanks. leader."

"Next time, get it yourself, you nasty pup."

This type is synonymous with 'force grow' or 'force stimulation'. In other example, this type of overheal could also be used to make extremely solid matters like steel and bronze to melt by making the atom energetic enough to the point where it produces a high temperature of heat.

"AAACK! My spoon! That fanged squirrel stole it from me!"

"Heh, that's why you shouldn't play around with your eating utensils, you dumb fish."

Duplication Overheal is as literal as it sounds. Instead of merely restoring a matter, it duplicates them! And at some point, sculpt them into any desirable form akin to three-dimensional printing! However, this only works with a single type of matter for each process. So if Lothair wanted to make a hammer with his bone for the head and wood for the handle, he would need to do two separate casting action to create the handle, and then the hammerhead - not very efficient than just make the whole hammer out of bone.

And because the process of duplication worked similarly to how eukaryotic cells perform mitosis, Lothait needed the sculpting to happen directly from his catalyst. Because of it, he couldn't just grow a spear from the ground 10 meters away from him.

So if he wanted to make a spoon and gave it to Daiyan, he couldn't just transport the printed object directly to her hand.

"Urgh, I'm so sorry that you need to do this, leader."

In some way, the Duplication Overheal appears to be the superior version of Addition Overheal with how similar they are in nature. But to Lothair, those two types of Overhealing were different enough in its utility and uses that he separated them into two types.

Even then, with these two types alone, Lothair should be able to achieve an endless amount of significant feats with enough research and training on his healing control. At the same time, he was also searching for the next type of Overhealing to further amplify his arsenal. It's just that, it proved to be extremely hard when attempting so, even with his impeccable photographic memory.

With that, Lothair and his three dorks of puppets began to travel from Nether Country to Nether Country to learn about their magus culture while grabbing some 'experiment' subjects there and there. Opposition appeared left and right like usual, but with how there were only four demons in the team, it was much easier to navigate and move around from location to location without getting a roadblock.

Unlike the time he marched with a huge wave of relentless army, this current odyssey of his was much more personal and fruitful. He would sometimes offer the owner of the land to strike some deal with him, preventing the dreadful increase in notoriety with someone backing his group. On other occasions, he would just barge into the city and begin to discriminately heal every demon he could find just so that he could see their disgust and anguished expression.

Underground scene and upperworld alike, Lothair and his three followers steadily gained a new form of infamy and followers. Some of them even declared the Holy Witch as the 'Savior' and other cult-like titles to his name. He really didn't care much about them though, as they could serve as decoys for those who wished to pursue him.

Afterall, it wasn't like he gained more allies than enemies in every place he visited.

It was at this point where the Holy Witch acquired numerous new Epithet in his wake.

The Apostle of Redemption, The Great Menace to the Netherworld, The Undying Plague Doctor, and many more absurdities that went into Lothair's left ear just to exit on the other.

So instead of just using whatever the title that others gave to them, the four of them decided to get themselves some group name and logo.

Their silver cape began to adorn a symbol consisting of two intersecting short arcs, with the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble an X with stretched left side, and at the same time, a headless fish.

That was how the Headless Ichthys was born.

The group never acquired another new member. Instead, the available members needed to become even more stronger to prevent the need of a new travel mate.

Serja had been raised to the rank of Grand Magus, capable of casting all sorts of high-rank spells without chanting.

Daiyan had accumulated enough mastery and weaponry in her private dimensional space where she was able to fight one thousand enemies simultaneously at one thousand different places.

Garik also had his own version of power up. Though his strength and fighting capability was on par with the demon general within a Nether Country, he would still be able to be taken down with enough pressure. So to make him more of a beast than he currently is, Lothair commenced a special operation that allowed him to increase the size of his body at will, while also giving him the capability of using more than one body at once, as his natural regeneration got amped up to the level of multicellular-organism mitosis.

The strength of their group then came to a level where even the Overlords of its respective Nether Country began to get wary of them. Although, not at the level where they would directly hunt it themselves.

It was all fun and games until Lothair became much more susceptible to an increase of sanity, to the point where he needed to inflict ten times the amount of pain to reduce the usual amount of sanity he gained from casting a healing spell.

Since then, he wasn't able to move and think clearly without wearing his self-tormenting gown.

After 40 years of adventure, Lothair and the rest of Headless Ichthys decided to split up and went on with their way until things began to calm down.

The group's activity had also dwindled into a twinkling spark.

Hundreds of years had passively passed since then.

Still, the members of the Headless Ichthys would often gather once every few years. Meanwhile, Lothair's 200 years promise with Terma had gone unfulfilled, as the current time-manipulating sheep magus was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard Lothair searched.

Eventually, Lothair began his in-depth research inside a terrifying biome known as the Poison-King Forest, calling it a seclusion and that the other Headless Ichthys member shouldn't be intruding him until it was done.

While in reality, it was just an excuse to cover up the fact that his demonic side began to wane out of control. He was afraid that it would affect his decision making and that it would result in hurting his precious companion.

After all, Lothair didn't really want to give up on the potential of his Overheal. He still kept on with his experiment and research from time to time, while using the endlessly produced deadly poison of the forest to keep himself sane.

It was until one day where someone barged into his peaceful garden. The sky turned crimson red. Along with it, numerous meteors were sighted lining up in diagonal formation near the limitless horizon.

Lothair admitted that his seclusion wasn't even a real one to begin with, that he had been going around the region to kidnap other demons for his experiment.

He also ensured that his track remained untraceable. Although, now that this kind of thing happened, it wasn't really the case anymore.

Lothair's eyebrows crinkled as he put on an annoyed smile.

"Sounds like someone wants to start a barbeque party without my consent."