novelraw Chapter 348
Chapter 348
Chapter 348
When I opened my eyes, I was gripping a blade in my hand. Ainsidel was holding his sword horizontally, blocking me. Blue-hued Magic Powers—two of them—erupted wildly between him and me. I could see the corner of his mouth twisted upward at an angle. A sensation I had felt at some point before, felt in a time already gone, dominated my entire body. Tears that had come reflexively from the pressure on my throat blurred my vision, but I could clearly see the blood flowing from Ainsidel's hand as he blocked the blade's edge to restrain me. No—I felt it. The Magic Power mixed in with it circulated inside my body. Just a little more, just a bit more and I could become complete. From what, in what regard? Thoughts swept through my head. I could see the Magic Power that had become mine gushing out wildly, pushing Ainsidel back. A man whose skill had long surpassed the rank of bishop was struggling with all his might before me—to stop me. Even that hollow face of his, examining me with fascination, couldn't erase the fact that he was being overpowered by me. It meant this powerful mage's Magic Power was now on the verge of becoming mine.
'…No.'
Even as I repeated that it mustn't happen, I thought about the blood that must lie beneath his skin. I didn't want to be governed by blood. Mecklenburg's blank expression was visible. His Wand was aimed at Ainsidel, but his eyes were pinned on me. That stung my heart.
'I said no….'
No matter that this was a time that would vanish the moment I opened my eyes, I didn't want to show this kind of reaction to someone who knew me. A cool voice reached my ears.
"You're thrashing with everything you have to avoid drinking the blood."
CRASH—!
Ainsidel's Magic Power, detonating right before my face along the blade, sent my mind reeling. The attack he'd unleashed as a signal to focus had instead pumped strength into my body. CREAK—the sound of his boot heels being pushed back slid in distinctly between the impacts.
"Normally, drinking this amount of blood wouldn't make someone this much stronger. So, on that point…."The Magic Power coursing through my body moved so frantically fast that time itself seemed to slow. My eyes drifted to Mecklenburg standing behind him. We were all predicting what word would leave his mouth. Even if our hazy minds hindered thought.
"As a fellow Pleroma, what do you think?"
Those words stabbed my heart once more. The hundreds, the thousands of torments I had spent a lifetime trying to distance myself from surged just beneath my chin. The line was right before my eyes. I wrung my throat.
"I don't know who gave you the right to call me Pleroma."
"No, you are Pleroma. Someone like you, who grows stronger by drinking blood—the world calls that a Pleroma among Pleroma."
One more step. I stared down from the cliff's edge and let out a sound.
"I don't care what others think of me."
Ainsidel tilted his head.
"Do you know what kind of face you're making right now?"
"……."
"You're wearing the expression I used to make. Someone once looked at that and said I didn't even have the semblance of a human being. Why? What should a human be? They made me feel this thirst, so am I not to become what they made me? Wasn't becoming anything at all what they wanted?"
That's what I thought. He let those words drift into the air while studying the grain of my irises. The Magic Power he was pressing in, the sound of his boot heels scraping, the sweetness the sound heralded as its outcome… the raw Magic Power pulsing through my entire body kept bleaching my vision white. The pleasure I'd already felt once flickered, and at the same time, sensation pulled away from me again.
'Stop.'
[I think I'm starting to understand…. Was it my misjudgment that you looked accustomed to killing? Why do you make that face and still not kill me and drink my blood?]
'Stop it!'
Sensation turned white as if every part of it had been smothered in Magic Power. Something severed once more, failing to reach my perception.
[Why won't you accept your innate strength, and what is it that makes you endure…?]
CRACK—
My throat was burning. The broken blade fell from my hand.
—Thus says the Lord of hosts.
Following a voice that sounded as though it belonged to someone else, pure white light blanketed the world. I slowly surveyed the emptied surroundings and watched a mage being hurled far into the distance. I saw it, yet I wasn't seeing it. I was speaking, yet the words weren't mine. I was walking, yet the steps weren't mine. The tip of the Staff dragged through the Monsignors' blood as it moved.
—On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more. I will remove both the false prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.
"……."
—Thus says the Lord of hosts. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me.
The sound of ragged breathing drew gradually nearer.
—Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones.
"This…."
—In the whole land, two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will put into the fire, and I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, 'These are my people,' and they will say….
"Now I think I understand."
A thin whisper barely above a breath.
"We were never in there together."
—Thus says the Lord of hosts….
"I met you on the outside."
—In this place that was desolate, without people or animals, and in all its towns, there will again be pastures for shepherds to rest their flocks, where they will lie down.
"What is the reason? Is this what they call conviction? If so, is it something different from what I pursue now?"
I slammed my Staff down into that mage's heart. I could feel Divine Power taking root in the opponent's soil, suppressing his Magic Power directly. He didn't even let out a mechanical gasp. None of us were in our right minds. That must have been the case. I couldn't comprehend anything, couldn't understand anything, couldn't react to anything. The hollow words he strained to utter simply passed straight through my head.
"I'll ask you the same thing you asked me earlier. What gives you conviction? We went through similar pasts, so why are the outcomes different?"
"……."
"Where do you think it went wrong?"
I said nothing to the man speaking words I couldn't make sense of and simply looked down at him. He gazed at the ceiling beyond me and spoke.
"So, I spent a long time thinking whether your declaration to destroy this order was a flippant lie to escape the situation or whether you meant it. I have my answer."
"……."
"So long as you don't want to kill me right this instant."
"……."
"May I make one proposal?"
***
I opened my eyes amid plants bathed in morning sunlight. I could feel the plants, set as a trap, creeping over my clothes. Having no strength to brush them off, I sat in the bathtub as I was and closed my eyes. I heard someone who had been in the bathroom hurrying out. After a long while, footsteps unmistakably belonging to royalty—measured and composed—approached, and a familiar voice flowed down from above.
"So this is where you came."
"……."
I nodded with my eyes still closed. You're the model student, so sleep through the night like one. Of course, I knew that no longer applied. I'd been in that world for about six hours in this world's time, so it was perfectly reasonable for Leo to be awake. After hearing Ainsidel's proposal, I'd stayed there two more days.
"Look up."
"You're quite used to giving orders."
I said that and looked at Leo. His face was pale white, exactly as I'd expected, so without another word, I stared at him unflinchingly as he'd demanded. Leo watched me in silence for a long time, then cast Sound Insulation Magic and asked.
"Do you want to drink blood?"
"……."
What?
I gaped at him in disbelief, but only for a moment. A sudden wave of self-loathing surged and I buried my face in the plants, at which Leo continued in an even tone.
"That's what was written on your face."
"Maybe I should create a facial expression reading license. I want to disappear, so don't say it out loud."
If my hands had been free, I would have buried my face in them. Even the crisp smell of greenery seeping into my lungs made me feel self-loathing when I thought about what human being it originated from. Leo didn't laugh at my humorless joke. Instead, he asked seriously.
"You went of your own will, right?"
"Yes."
Leo didn't ask further. Instead, after a long pause, he spoke.
"I can tell what you went to do. Looks like you went through more than I expected."
To you, it was six hours, but to me, it was a week. Still, I had no intention of ignoring the shock he must have felt during those six hours—though I didn't know when exactly he'd woken up, and in all likelihood it had been recently—even if the time was short. I looked him in the eye and apologized.
"I'm sorry. Next time, I'll at least leave a note before I go."
"So 'not going' isn't an option."
"That's… right. More importantly, you're not chewing me out as much as I expected."
In truth, what did it matter to this guy whether I went out or not? Not saying anything would be normal, but I knew full well that was hard to manage right now. We'd already faced danger too many times for that.
"I know what you risked danger for and went to do, so what good would blaming you do? In the end, your choice must have been for our safety."
Leo's face was composed. He was right, but I found myself wondering since when he'd been like this, so I studied him sideways for a while, then nodded.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. But the truth is I'm worried… If you weren't going to make choices like this, the only option would be to leave the imperial service."
Leo murmured as if asking himself. Isn't this basically telling me to resign from Eschet? And while it was true I'd caused worry, I'd never done anything reckless enough to be called 'a choice like this.' The sheer absurdity finally dissolved my tension and I laughed. I shot back with a grin.
"What are you talking about? Don't even bring it up unless you're going to bring me the Duchy of Anhalt."
"……."
Leo apparently had nothing to say to that either, and turned his head with a smile. I stopped paying attention to this hapless high schooler and gazed out the window. For now, I was relieved there hadn't been a major commotion. If a search order had been issued across all of Bavaria, things would have spiraled beyond control.
"How did you get out? I blocked warping from this room while you were here."
"Beats me…. More importantly, what? Even if you block incoming warps, you should at least leave outgoing warps open."
Leo didn't answer and only smiled.
'Would you look at this guy.'
It was obviously pointless to push further, so instead of making more demands, I told him the main point.
"Let's head out soon. I brought back information useful for entering Munich-Freising, and I need to organize it."
"Ah, sure. What do you need?"
What do I need? I need to be restored to normal. I jerked my chin at the plant stalks crossing the bathtub. Leo saw that and, still smiling, said only what he wanted to say.
"You just need a notebook and a pen, right?"
"Why do you talk like that? Those are obviously needed."
Leo casually flicked his finger to drag over a chair and set it down on the plant-covered floor. Having fetched a notebook, he sat in the chair and uncapped a fountain pen.
"Go ahead and dictate. I'll write it down."
"……."
A sense of foreboding swept over my entire body.
***
Being isolated for two days in a bedroom turned botanical garden with only a one-way—receive-only—communication artifact was truly a novel experience. Everything my friends chattered about with Leo was transmitted to me, yet I couldn't speak a word to them.
'Feels like listening to the radio.'
I thought that while killing time, finalized the strategy through communications with the command post delivered via the warp mailbox, and only when the final training session arrived could I meet the friends I hadn't seen a hint of for two days.
That's right. I hadn't been able to train until now, either. The thought crossed my mind that Leo's head needed fixing, but at the same time, Leo wasn't the type to make reckless high-risk decisions, which also meant he believed in my abilities at 200%. Either that, or he rated the danger of my research activities higher than the risk of not deploying me for training.
When I arrived at the training grounds, Heike spotted me and approached at a remarkably fast pace, quietly asking.
"Lukas. I heard you were sick. Where have you been?"
"……."
Where? Should I say or not? I gave up and answered with a dry chuckle.
"I don't even know myself…."
"Why?"
"Exactly. Why?"
At that, tremendous confusion bloomed across Heike's face. I watched that colorful expressionlessness—a contradiction in terms, but one that already made sense to me now that I'd grown close to Heike—and patted her on the back.
"Luka!"
Elias latched onto me like a sloth. Just as I was glad for this, since it had been a while since he'd pulled something like this, Elias narrowed his eyes as though he'd discovered something and spoke.
"Grass smell. This is…."
"Yeah~ that's right."
I quickly peeled Elias off, patted his back the same way I had Heike's, and approached Narce. Without me saying a word, Narce seemed to already know about the Leo-brand stubbornness I'd endured and immediately wore an expression that said 'you went through a lot'—which, ironically, only left me with even less to say. I let out an empty laugh and asked.
"How is it?"
Narce, instantly grasping what I was asking, corrected his expression and answered.
"I've been watching continuously. No variables caught at the moment. But…."
Narce leaned in close to my ear and spoke briefly. Right on cue, the 91st and 98th Classes all filed in, and the Mimesis activation tones began reverberating through the training grounds. It was time to begin the final training session.
Being deployed late posed no problem. I had participated in building the strategy, and I had reviewed every single one. Training went smoothly, and now only deployment remained.
And so, six hours after training ended. I stood before the dam on Bavaria's Isar River, where the 101st Class had assembled, and listened to the transmission.
[6:10 PM, the bishop has left his office. Entering via Corniviano coordinates 780:736:485, clearing ahead to y850. Entry route will be fully destroyed one minute after commencement.]
I looked at my friends. Their gazes touched mine and then shifted to one another. The evening sky was dark.
[101st Class, commencing entry effective immediately.]