Chapter 30
#030
1.
In this world, wine is a luxury ordinary people can't even dare to imagine.
Simple enough.
A grape farm in a cramped world that holds all of humanity?
It's basically a luxury building in itself.
Even in Arden it's classified as a luxury good, so in Necropolis there was nothing more to say.
“It’s good wine. Drink up. Ah, what’s your name?”
“Cedric.”
In other words, Ceres inviting me to her home and serving me wine meant...
that she was treating me as an honored guest.
Kind of unfamiliar.
This was the first time Ceres had ever acted like this, across all previous runs.
The line was originally supposed to be, 'You have nice eyes. Crazy eyes.'
My understanding of death too—was this because of that?
Was this related to the necromancer skill tree?
“If you've come all this way, that means you had a purpose.... What brings you here?”
“Before that, I'm curious why you'd hire me.”
“In a negotiation, the weaker side shows its hand first.”
“Hmm, fair enough.”
I'll learn the details in due time.
For now, I need to focus on the situation at hand.
“I came to make you an offer you can't refuse. But first, how about we build a little trust?”
“Trust?”
Ceres is a very suspicious person.
I need to break that suspicion first if the conversation is going to go anywhere.
I summoned an accomplice.
“Please summon escort knight Julien here. I’ll show you something interesting.”
At my unexpected request, Ceres pressed the communicator button, intrigued.
“Did you call for me, Director?”
From there, it was a familiar turn of events.
“Naming a goat after you and fucking it? Absolutely not! That never happened!! Are you questioning my devotion?!”
“...Yeah, because your reaction is way too suspicious....”
Julien, the goat-fucker whose filthy perversion had been exposed, was deleted with a single wave from Ceres.
“Cedric, was it? I'm surprised you somehow found out about my subordinate's little escapade.... But you came all this way just for that?”
“No, this is more like a deposit to earn your trust.”
“Then?”
“I intend to stop Project Z.”
Right to the point.
“You, Director Ceres, also leaked company secrets in order to stop that project.”
It was, in my own way, a trump card of a shocking declaration.
And yet Ceres remained calm, utterly unmoved by my surprise announcement.
If I didn't have future knowledge, I'd have thought I'd gone barking up the wrong tree.
“Go on.”
I continued without hesitation.
“You leaked the materials to Yiming of the Hyun-gwi family, hoping Overnus Pharmaceuticals would step in.... But that bastard betrayed you. He tipped off Director Gisela instead.”
Ceres still didn't change expression.
Instead, she slowly took a cigarette from the case and exhaled a long stream of smoke.
The lipstick on the filter was indecent.
“Hoo... and?”
“I can't say for certain whether the other board members know, but Gisela definitely does. Before long, the two of them will join hands and try to take you down, Director Ceres.”
“Ahahaha! Those two? Me?”
Ceres burst out laughing.
It was laughter that said it was utterly absurd.
Hey, listen! Jesus, this isn't the time to laugh!
You're seriously going to die!!!
I was getting a little anxious.
Ceres wants to stop Project Z.
I'm going to piggyback on that and make this run a little easier.
But the important thing is this.
In truth, all of this is only half a gamble.
I don't know how strongly Ceres is motivated to stop Project Z.
For me, it's tied to my long-cherished dream of dressing Arbel in a reverse-bunny suit....
But for Ceres, it may just be something that'd be nice if it worked and fine if it didn't.
Even last run, the only 'effort' Ceres made to stop the project was leaking information.
It can't be helped.
Ceres doesn't know this is directly tied to her life.
I need to make her more aware.
“Of course, I know you're strong, Director Ceres.... But I was also thoroughly prepared on my end.”
“Hmm, did you prepare poison or something?”
I flinched.
Could it be Ceres already knew about the formless poison?
“Why are you so surprised? Everyone knows the Hyun-gwi family uses poison, don't they?”
So they were the Tang Clan.
Then the bastard knew and still stuffed whatever he wanted into his mouth until he died?
“So what is this offer?”
“Yes. Let's stop Project Z together and build merit so we can reach nirvana.”
Ceres ground out her cigarette, thinking it over.
“Thanks for bringing me interesting information. But I'll refuse.”
After thinking it over, that was her answer: no.
“There are three reasons. First, there's no reason for me to take the word of someone I met today at face value. You seem to have picked up good information from somewhere, but all you have is words. No supporting evidence.”
“Second, I do think it'd be nice if I could stop Project Z, but I'm not desperate enough to go head-on against Twilight Resource Development.”
“Third, lastly. Even if I did want to stop Project Z... why would I need you as a collaborator?”
Yeah. Fair enough.
If she'd used that brilliant brain for something other than not picking things up off the floor, Ceres mama from the previous run would've survived.
Agh!!! This is seriously frustrating enough to kill me!!!
Why are you acting so smug? Keep posing like that and you'll die, you bitch!
Here, saying 'I saw the future! You're really going to die!' is the wrong move.
First of all, that line isn't credible, and genre-wise it's out too.
A regressor blurts out their cheat-like regressing ability to everyone and spills the future?
There's no way that ends well.
She could torture me until I scream that I only know two weeks' worth of the future, or turn me into brain-in-a-can.
Instead.
“Then, in exchange for stopping Project Z together, I'll break your precept.”
Just offer the carrot.
“Who are you?”
With that line, the relaxed atmosphere around Ceres shifted viciously.
The pressure closing in on my heart. The overwhelming force.
Hostility reflected in her eyes. Wariness.
My lips went dry.
“I'm Cedric. Eldest son of the Count Montravien family, exiled from Arden. The man who will end Ceres's bondage play. And a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
I had more or less guessed it.
What I'd peeked at with the monocle was her complex, or something she absolutely wanted to keep hidden.
To Ceres, I'm a suspicious man who can instantly see through a secret she's been hiding and propose a solution.
“I hear you've been secretly researching how to break a precept. Am I mistaken?”
In other words, that made me seem all the more mysterious.
From our first meeting, I exposed the escort knight's deviation.
I brought up Project Z and narrowed down the list of traitors.
And I even saw through her hidden desire to break her precept.
Did you see it?
This is why ants can't beat a government agency.
The quality and quantity of information are on a different level.
Ceres twisted her lips in displeasure.
“You're really getting on my nerves. A mage's precept is absolutely impossible to break. Do you take me for an idiot?”
Wow, thank God.
The worst-case scenario would've been if Ceres didn't even take 'precept' seriously.
But that line just now made it clear.
“So you're saying you didn't kill me right away because you wanted to cling to even a thread of hope?”
“......”
For Ceres, breaking her precept was a major issue.
“I swear it. I will definitely break your precept, no matter what it takes. Of course, no prepayment. If you're thinking of threatening me into somehow making it happen, give up. I'll kill myself right away.”
In the long silence.
Ceres, who had been staring directly into my eyes, spoke.
“Fine, I'll play along. But if you were trying to make a fool of me with that flimsy silver tongue of yours....”
“You'll have me castrated and sent to male prostitution street.”
Perfect right down to the closing line.
“Deal?”
Ceres took the hand I offered.
“Male prostitution street won't be enough.”
“What happens, then?”
“I'll make you regret being born.”
Hmm. That's something Chairman Yeonjun used to say from time to time.
...But seriously, what is Ceres's precept?
2.
Anyway, the joint front with Ceres to stop Project Z was successfully established.
Now it was Ceres's turn to solve my curiosity.
“Can I start asking now? Why did you try to hire me when we met earlier? We were complete strangers.”
I've really been curious about that from the start.
She'd even said things like she liked my eyes.
But this run was definitely different.
It wasn't 'Your resume and interview were impressive'—she went straight to a scouting offer.
And without even gouging out my eyes, no less.
“Because you have an aptitude as a mage.”
“A death-type aptitude, by any chance?”
“Yes.”
“That's great. I haven't told anyone, but ever since I was little, my dream was to be a necromancer.”
Ceres tossed that out casually, as if it were nothing.
“Want to learn?”
“Really?”
What is this?
Seriously? She just laid the groundwork, and it's this easy?
Is this the wizard class-change event for pathetic rank-9 fixer Cedric?
“Just personal curiosity. I'm curious too. How far you can go.”
This is an opportunity I can't let slip by.
“I'll teach you a simple Tier 0 spell.”
“Not even sleight of hand, actual magic! Can I really learn something like that?”
“You're a noble, so you should have mana circuits, at least, right?”
“I don't have the talent. I can't use any magic at all. I can't even use tricks.”
I already tried when I first came to this other world.
But magic isn't something you can just click a button for if you have mana circuits and mana.
They said it starts with feeling the flow of mana....
I gave up after about two days.
For me, it was as ridiculous as asking me to feel the blood flowing through my veins.
“That's possible. I can't use any system that's contrary to my aptitude either. Do you know the three elements of magic?”
“Mind, technique, body, right? I know the basics.”
The three elements of magic: mind, technique, body.
Right, that whole mind-technique-body virgin theory thing.
“First, the body.”
No matter how grand a magic may be, it ultimately begins with the human body.
A bloodline that has developed by carrying on years and history.
The innate 'mana circuits' woven within it are more important than anything else.
So much so that even the same spell can produce completely different effects depending on the shape of the circuits.
That's also why crude artificial circuits can let you do tricks, but can never reach the level of what we'd call magic.
“At the very least, you're standing on the starting line. As a noble, you must've come from a proper mage family.”
Next is technique.
It means skill, finesse, and the like... and it applies exactly the same in the mind-technique-body theory of mages.
“Magic is a stairway to transcendence, but also a miracle performed through understanding. It's never the product of chance. No matter how good your bloodline and constitution are, if your reason can't control it, you're just seating a child on top of a fine steed.”
“Even if two people have the same mana and the same level of circuits, the difference in technique can make one of them Tier 0 and the other Tier 2.”
A simple example is a piano.
Even if the keys and tuning are the same, a pianist and a regular person are worlds apart.
Last is mind.
Mind means the heart, the image in your head.
“Magic is the act of imposing your own world upon the world. But 'you' are far too small.”
“If this real world is the sea, the world an individual can hold is only about a drop of water, right?”
“To shake the surface and raise waves with that single drop... you need a fiercely strong 'you.'”
“An unshakable, vivid image of your mind must be projected onto the world.”
It's something I knew in theory.
That's also why mages are out of their minds.
Think about it.
They're the sort of people who free-fall without a parachute and visualize themselves flying without a shred of doubt.
They're the sort of people who can stick their hand into scorching molten metal and think, 'This is cold.'
“Then let's do a simple aptitude test.”
Ceres stood up and covered my eyes with her hand.
Her hand was cool, and it still carried that fresh lemon scent.
Something soft touched the back of my head.
“Oh.”
We weren't this close in this run, were we?
I'm not complaining!
“From now on, for one minute. I'll show you 'death.'”
“Huh?”
At those chilling words, I reflexively asked back.
The moment I did, all five senses vanished as if the power had been cut.
Smell, hearing, sight, touch, and even my sense of direction.
Then it felt as if I'd been kicked out of reality and exiled to an unfathomable abyss.
Before I knew it, I had been thrown into pitch-black darkness.
The sensation of my thoughts spinning uselessly and my own existence becoming very, very small and meaningless.
“What? Did I die?”
This is it.
That place you go to before regression.
Did she twist my neck from behind, no way?
For that, the run summary hasn't even popped up yet.
While I was briefly panicking, my vision came back.
“How was it?”
Ceres was smiling in front of my stunned face.
“You asked for it, so I'm not going to resent you for it.”
A smug grin, like she'd just given a puppy a proper lesson.
So that was what she meant by showing me the image of death?
That was what I just saw?
“Yeah, well. That was a good show. So does this mean I can use magic now?”
Right after I answered.
For the first time since I came to know Ceres.
I learned for the first time that she could make that kind of face too.
“……???”
I mean, that blank, slightly stupid, mouth-hanging-open look.