Corpse God

The Corpse God (屍神殿 Kabane Shinden), born Rizdilusia Redrazalf, dubbed the Emperor Killer, and eventually reincarnated as Polka Shinoyama (四乃山ポルカ Shinoyama Poruka) on Earth, is the main protagonist of Dead Mount Death Play. He possesses the Evil Eye.

Undead
In his early years as an undead being, Polka walked the earth as a humanoid skeleton of adult stature, wreathing himself in a long, light-colored cloak with a hood and capacious sleeves.

Polka's final form as the Corpse God, a century after the empire falls, is unrecognizable from his humanoid skeleton of yore: the Corpse God is white and bestial, resembling Earth vertebrates in some respects but too different to be directly analogous to any one creature. The horns adorning his cranium are bullish, and his hands have opposable digits.

However, while his axial skeleton has familiar paired ribs and his thoracic vertebral column familiar dorsal spines, he has three pairs of arms whose extraordinary length seem to compensate for the unusual caudal position of their (presumed) pectoral girdles; unusual, that is, when compared to those of hominids. Whatever lies below his lumbar vertebrae has been cloaked alternatively in cloth and shadow.

It is also unclear to what extent his skeletal form is reflective of creatures unique to the Other World, and how much of it is the result of necromancy magic. The ventral side of his rib cage displays unusual armored plates instead of the long, flat sternum typical to primates, behind which he keeps—kept—his true form: a human brain, contained in a chain-suspended jar; considering the comments of Shagrua and his comrades, the armored plate could have been a custom design on his part to better protect his true self.

Reincarnation
As the human "Polka Shinoyama," Corpse God has stayed true to the real Polka's hairstyle and fashion choices. The neck wound that ended the real Polka's life has raised and wrinkled due to sudden skin regrowth; it is stark against his throat. Additionally, a lock of Polka's bangs has turned black. Thus, any photographs or videos depicting Polka with an unblemished neck and white bangs is likely depicting the real Polka prior to the murder attempt.

Corpse God's usual outfit comprises the following: a sleeveless double-layer top with a black-and-white hooded wrap over the white inner layer; blue trousers with a red cross on the right sleeve and the English word 'FEAR' etched on the left; a red belt; red-and-black sneakers; and a simple tooth wheel & cross-shaped necklace. When he needs to hide his neck scar, he wears a hooded jacket over a button-up top with its collar buttoned.

His fortuneteller guise consists of a long v-necked robe, a headdress that covers his eyes, and an outer shawl with a hood he wears over the inner headdress.

Personality
Above all else, Corpse God desires a quiet and peaceful existence and will go to extreme lengths to protect that peace. However, while he operates outside of human values, he is not without values and moral limits of his own—foremost among them his extraordinarily soft spot for children and inclination to protect them. He may view human souls as 'toys' but, since toys make children smile, has decided to treat human lives as 'precious' and will use them or protect them as he sees fit. His protective instinct has undermined his ultimate goal of a peaceful life on at least one occasion, as seen when he rescues Misaki Sakimiya from Lemmings.

Though Corpse God carries himself with a serious, confident air befitting of his true age, he is not without emotional expression. When he realizes he accidentally killed Misaki, he is visibly surprised and buries his face in his hands inn exasperation; when he is trying to pass himself off as the real Polka to Rozan Shinoyama, he smiles and chats away like a 'typical' teenage boy.

His behavioral differences to the real Polka are notable enough that multiple Shinoyama family members have commented on it: where the real Polka is incredibly timid around women, 'our' Polka speaks to them without problems and is unaffected when he finds himself in compromising situations with them. At the same time, Takumi and Hosorogi have observed that merely being in a teenager's body has caused the Corpse God to regress to some degree.

Easlies Swordfrail, the Corpse God's necromancy master, regards the Corpse God as one who is an eternal boy at heart and believes him to have "almost no senses of independence," someone who "devotes all of himself to those he considers kin." She argues that this is why he does not mind shouldering blame for anything, and why he is incapable of showing restraint when the "place where he belongs" is disgraced.

Pre-Reincarnation
The Corpse God—not yet known as such—is born as Rizdilusia Redrazalf to human parents in the Other World. He spends the first decade of his life with his family: his parents, his little brothers, and his little sisters. While Rizdilusia and his family are naturally able to see Elementals, Rizdilusia is the only family member to possess the Evil Eye; when this proves too much for his family to bear, his parents sell him to the imperial army of the Byandy Empire.

Shortly after becoming the imperial army's property, Rizdilusia meets the mentor to whom he has been apprenticed: Easlies Swordfrail, a fellow Evil Eye possessor who serves the court as its second-rank Imperial Court Sorcerer. Easlies explains that she will teach Rizdilusia in the ways of necromancy; sensing that he might resent serving an emperor he has never met, she adds that she will arrange a meeting between them on the morrow.

At some point after the meeting, Easlies and Rizdilusia approach a grand staircase over which a tapestry hangs. Easlies informs Rizdilusia that the tapestry displays the imperial crest; not a moment later, the child emperor himself interjects that the crest's original design, courtesy of his father, was "dull and simplistic." As he sweeps past them, he boasts that he took it upon himself to redesign the crest once he ascended the throne; so saying, he proudly shows off a scribbled prototype of the emblem.

Rizdilusia will go on to befriend the child emperor and other members of the imperial court during his studies, including Romelka Rimelka, Leuf Vellize, and Utsurojuza, who will come to regard him as a younger brother. He is also afforded the opportunity to learn from his peers: on one occasion, he learns from Utsurojuza the knack behind Alternate Dimensional Storage magic ; on another, he and Easlies closely observe Arius Sabaramond eat an Elemental and thereafter vanquish an enormous entity terrorizing a forest.

Alongside such lessons, Rizdilusia becomes proficient in necromancy under Easlies' tutelage. Included in the necromantic skills he learns are the 'construction of a temple' and 'synchronization with the dead', the latter of which he will eventually be able to achieve at a higher level than his mentor can achieve. The more he uses necromancy, the more the manner of his usage differs from that of his master.

When Rizdilusia eventually becomes an Imperial Court Sorcerer alongside his master, he is one of only a handful to have ever been inducted on sheer ability alone. Although it is unknown what rank he is at the time of induction, he will come to be regarded as the fourth-most-capable necromancer, and, out of the few necromancers the empire has, take on the second-highest position as the fourth-highest-ranked Imperial Court Sorcerer. As an Imperial Sorcerer, Rizdilusia will come to be known as Corpse God.

Per the duties expected of his station, the Corpse God is often deployed onto Byandy's battlefields to act in his capacity as a necromancer; on the battlefields, he acquires a fearsome reputation. He especially makes a name for himself in the empire's latest war, sometime after which he receives a letter from either his mother or paternal grandmother requesting they meet at a certain graveyard. It is Corpse God's father, however, who greets him, shamelessly demanding Corpse God "pay him back" for everything—if not on his own behalf, than that of Corpse God's hungry mother and sisters. Still turned away, Corpse God grits his teeth, procures his wallet—and his father literally stabs him in the back. With a chuckled apology, the father says fellows from Nyanild offered him drugs on the condition he killed his son. Upon withdrawing the cursed dagger—causing Corpse God to collapse—the man continues that "the wife...and your little brothers and sisters [...] They all fetched a decent price. The whole family's been of use to me till the very end... Shouldn't you be thankful?" These are the last words Corpse God hears before he loses consciousness.

The curse afflicting Corpse God is designed to be thorough: not only is it designed to dissolve and destroy a body beyond viability for revival, it has been supplement with a technique to destroy one's very soul. By the time the child emperor, Utsurojuza, and Easlies retrieve and/or discover Corpse God, the curse has irreparably dissolved all his flesh and tissue and is on the cusp of doing likewise with his brain—which Easlies makes into Corpse God's 'soul core' and thereupon pleads with Utsurojuza to save him; Utsurojuza successfully curbs both curse and poison before they can destroy Corpse God's brain, which those present then secure in a glass jar.

When Corpse God wakes on a laboratory floor, in the center of Easlies' spell, he wakes an unclothed skeleton. The onlooking child emperor, flanked by Utsurojuza and Easlies, asks him, as he sits up, how it feels to be a necromancer-made-Undead. While Corpse God clutches his jarred brain to his chest, Easlies imparts what she has gleaned from the curse-cum-technique as well as her suspicion that it was prepared by a corrupt holy woman of the Geldwood cult. She advises Corpse God to bring a bodyguard next time he meets his family and to remember that she only revived him on a 'whim', The child emperor cheekily recalls both Easlies' aforementioned relief and pleas, much to Easlies' denial. When Corpse God attempts and is unable to speak, Easlies informs the child emperor that Corpse God will need some time before he can produce a voice; on his behalf, Easlies infers Corpse God's surprise at the child emperor's nonchalant attitude, and Corpse God's fear that the emperor would sever their ties over his newly Undead status. The emperor assures Corpse God that he and the empire will always be on Corpse God's side.

By or after whatever time Corpse God redons his clothing, he alone is left in the child emperor's company. The child emperor leads him down a long flight of stairs to a sturdy set of doors, behind which Utsurojuza and Easlies loom over the grotesque, myriapod figure of Corpse God's father. At the emperor's calling of her name, Easlies censures father Redrazalf's pleas for clemency by piercing him with her hat's bony tassel; Utsurojuza, in the subsequent quiet, objects to the emperor having—against Utsurojuza's wishes—brought Corpse God along to witness this—let alone witness Utsurojuza's desired obliteration of Corpse god's father. Father Redrazalf's resumed pleas are again cut off, literally, when the emperor stabs Redrazalf's flesh with his sword; the emperor declares that "taking on the people's dirty work" is his duty, and, therefore, Corpse God need not sully his own hands.

Corpse God returns to his imperial post during a time of conflict for the empire—though Byandy Empire was, it must be said, rarely not caught up in conflicts. Such conflicts may have contributed to the empire's swift downfall, which took place over the course of a single year; crucial factors such as the emperor's assassination, and the Corpse God's acquisition of the Emperor Killer moniker, have yet to be placed on the timeline. It is during or at the culmination of this downfall that Corpse God wakes to the sound of shouts outside his room: the army has been swallowed whole; General Daryl and the Imperial Gorgeous Unit have been carried away by the homewrecker dragon Malfy; moreover, the annexed principalities are rebelling.

The Corpse God dresses and is about to leave the room when Easlies stops him, explaining that, were it not for her perception-jamming force field, both of them would have already been dragged out to the front lines. She does not intend either of them to accompany the others in their self-destruction; as for their acquaintances, she has left them to Romelka's protection. So saying, she asks the Corpse God if he is ready to be liberated from the empire and live as a free man.

Corpse God strikes out into the world in pursuit of that which has eluded him and the empire: a quiet, peaceful existence. Eventually he takes refuge in a cave, whereupon he realizes five hungry youths—three boys and two girls—have had the same idea. He earns their friendship by leaving out offerings of fruit, and, over the years they together live in harmony, their familial affection; as time passes, he begins keeping a child-rearing journal. The eldest human settles into adulthood well before the other four, and, gradually, she and the Corpse God fall in love. These halcyon days come to an end when the six are discovered by Geldwood soldiers, who, believing the humans have been corrupted by a necromancer's companionship, grant them 'salvation' through their deaths. With the four children impaled and set ablaze, and his love dead in his arms, Corpse God takes immediate revenge on the soldiers and for a hundred years after.

The combination of the soldiers' screams and the Corpse God's dark magic transforms the abandoned coal mine—that he therein retreats—into a "labyrinth of writhing dead," where he waits out the next many decades hoping someone able to kill him will arrive, for he is longer capable of suicide. During said decades, he pens numerous essays "exposing the underbelly" of the church in ink exclusively visible to the Evil Eye. When rumors of the feats of Geldwood knight Sir Shagrua Lugrid the Calamity Crusher reach him, he begins to hope that Shagrua just might be capable of ending his life. In the meantime, the labyrinth continues to expand.

Eventually there comes a day of reckoning: the Geldwood church sends at least one subjugation unit into the labyrinth to defeat the Corpse God; Recuria Lofilardo is among the priestesses whose purpose is to directly support Shagrua. The Corpse God easily holds his own against Geldwood's men until Shagrua arrives to directly challenge him; during Shagrua's assault, he manages to shatter one of the Corpse God's armored plates and thus expose Corpse God's true form: his jarred brain. The Corpse God suggests that the two of them are similar in that they both take lives for fun, meanwhile preparing a secret reincarnation spell; Shagrua charges forward to strike a killing blow, and as he strikes—the spell activates.

Reincarnation
To be added.

Abilities
To be added.

Trivia

 * Early chapters established that Corpse God's real name is unpronounceable in Japanese. However, when Civil A. Sabaramond utters Corpse God's name in Chapter 70, no speech marks are used to indicate he is speaking in a different language.