Chapter 100
*
“Are you feeling better?”
Simeon came to his senses an hour later.
He opened his eyes, collapsed again.
He got back up, then fainted again.
Only after repeating that about eight times did Simeon finally calm down.
“May I call you young master…?”
“When it’s just the two of us, that’s fine, but outside please address me as before...”
“Is there some reason for that?”
“I’ve ended up accumulating quite a few debts and grudges while carrying out various tasks in accordance with my parents’ wishes. So please, keep this secret for my sake.”
After that, we spent some time correcting the misunderstandings Simeon had been laboring under.
“Earlier, you said there was no one to carry on my parents’ wishes. What did you mean by that?”
“I knew the masters had a child. But no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the young master’s whereabouts.”
As expected of the Inspectorate.
To think even deliberate efforts to find him would come up empty.
It seemed the fact that the 'child of the Schnabel couple' had been adopted had effectively been erased.
“Then what brought you to Necropolis?”
“I wandered a lot. I went back and forth between the swamp and the Holy City, and only recently did I learn that my masters’ remains had been interred in the Imperial Necropolis. But I didn’t know where, so whenever I had time I’d roam the fifth floor of the Necropolis, asking people about it.”
According to Simeon.
He had thought my parents would be buried on the fifth floor, the one reserved for national heroes.
As a result, he’d also crossed paths with people who knew traces of me, or of the other Schnabel couple.
“Yesterday, while heading up to the surface, I happened to run into the young master.”
“The gods must have been moved by Brother Simeon’s sincerity and guided you.”
Well, it could just be a coincidence.
Still, wouldn’t it sound better if I dressed it up like that?
But Simeon seemed to have a slightly different opinion from mine.
“Si… the gods, you say? Someone as insignificant as me? How could that be?”
“Didn’t we say that the gods always take pity on us? Wouldn’t that be it?”
“I am not worthy of pity.”
“Didn’t I say it? The gods take pity on everything. Whether one is worthy is not something we humans can judge.”
“Then… do you know what the gods want from me, young master?”
“No. How could I possibly presume to speak for their will?”
If I were one of those true saints and saintesses who communicated directly with the gods and even received oracles, maybe.
But for me, who had mistaken medicine for a miracle, I had no such ability.
Therefore, I could never speak for the gods.
Nor should I.
“But as one human being, I do have something I’d like to say to you, brother.”
I thought about it.
Why had someone who admired my parents this much continued his pilgrimage all this time?
And I came to this conclusion.
“You don’t have to wander anymore.”
He had been wandering.
Outside the wall, in the slums.
He must have been constantly denying reality while retracing his parents’ wishes.
I wanted to put an end to that wandering.
That was why I revealed my most important secret.
Of course, I knew it was a dangerous thing to do.
The more people know a secret, the less it remains one.
But if it can save one person’s life, isn’t it a risk worth taking?
“Just so happens, I needed someone who could tell me about the things my parents left behind.”
I’d heard the Schnabel couple were quite famous in the healing field.
They were said to be authorities on parasites and infections.
Unfortunately, I’d heard that with their passing, healing magic related to parasites had regressed quite a bit.
‘If it’s Simeon, he’ll remember his parents’ techniques to some extent.’
Which is why getting Simeon to stop wandering was necessary for me too.
More than anything, I know parasites about as poorly as I know psychiatry.
A trauma surgeon doesn’t get much chance to tangle with parasites.
“Will you help me so I can follow in my parents’ footsteps?”
“….”
The man with the slit eyes silently looked down at his legs.
Soon, he opened his mouth.
“The time has come to finish my long pilgrimage. I’d like to bid farewell to the people who’ve helped me along the way. Will you wait for me?”
“I’ll gladly wait. Once you’re done, please come to the Mercure Trading Company headquarters.”
Simeon rose from the bed.
As I helped him pack up his scripture, his only luggage, I said.
“On the day you come, I’d like to hold a small welcome party. Do you have any dish you particularly like?”
“Personally, I like potato soup.”
“Then we’ll prepare dishes that go well with potato soup.”
Simeon got to his feet and left the clinic without a shred of hesitation.
With a promise to finish his pilgrimage as quickly as possible and come find me again.
And by the time Simeon’s shadow, stretched long in the fading sunset, disappeared beyond the horizon.
Gregor, who had remained silent, finally spoke up.
“By the way, Saint.”
“What is it?”
“Yesterday, I checked with the Church about that Brother Simeon.”
I asked first, as if to beat back my unease.
“Was he not a priest?”
“No, that’s not it. He is officially registered as a pilgrim. However….”
Gregor stroked his beard and said.
“According to the Church registry, that man should be a Tier 1 cleric….”
“…?”
“Hmm…. Why does his rank feel higher than mine?”
“Pardon?”
I had no idea.
The presence I sensed, as a Tier 0, was only Tier 1.
But Gregor, who was Tier 4, seemed to have felt something different.
“I thought so too. But when the two of you were talking in the room just now, for a moment he felt like Tier 5. He may even have been higher.”
At the very least, that meant count-level.
But I shook my head.
“There’s no way. Why would someone that capable be a low-ranking priest?”
“That’s true enough.”
Even at Tier 4, he could become a senior holy knight like Gregor.
At Tier 5, he’d be at the rank of a margrave or the commander of the royal guard.
Someone like that turning down those posts and becoming a low-ranking priest?
That made no sense.
No matter how many fanatics there were who lived and breathed faith.
There was no way someone like that existed.
“It must have been my imagination.”
“Probably.”
Gregor scratched the back of his head, looking awkward.
Yeah. It was probably a mistake.
What would a marquis do, wandering the southern front as a mid-ranking priest’s disciple?
Unless he was insane, there was no way.
***
Simeon.
Simon Aleinos.
He had once been a towering figure among mages.
Through his magical accomplishments, he had reached Tier 5.
The next Tower Master seat was all but guaranteed, and perhaps he might even have had the chance to study under the Grand Sage.
But one day, he suddenly abandoned his position, his fame, and even his rank, and devoted himself to the Church.
Divine power and mana cannot coexist.
Because they interfere with one another.
For that reason, mages who awaken divine power usually receive help from a temple to drain it out, and then avoid praying so that the divine power won’t recover.
But Simon’s choice was different.
He drained out all his mana and filled the space with divine power.
He gave up the realm of a Tier 5 mage and became a Tier 1 priest.
“The gods chose me.”
The Magic Tower was turned upside down by his choice.
How could he do that?
Wasn’t it a waste to give up that level?
But Simon, no, Simeon Ronald, answered like this.
“I originally started studying magic so I could save more people. But in my view, a Tier 1 healer can save even more people than a Tier 5 mage.”
Once he said that, even the other mages who tried to hold him back had nothing more to say.
And so decades passed.
As time went on, many things changed.
While Simeon’s story faded from people’s memories, countless encounters brushed past Simeon, a half-blood of a long-lived race and a human.
During that period, Simeon’s rank remained at Tier 1, and his divine power did not grow.
But Simeon didn’t mind.
This, too, was the gods’ will.
Or so he told himself, blaming his own lack of faith.
He spent his days healing people without ever doubting his identity.
Then one day.
“There’s a healer who cured demon disease with only lower-tier healing?”
An interesting story reached Simeon’s ears.
Some of the illnesses that had until then been called demon disease.
There was a couple who discovered treatments for some of those demon diseases.
The Schnabel couple.
“My God… parasites were mixed in with demon disease?”
The history of parasites itself was ancient.
After all, when they were blatantly visible in stool or on skin, how could you not notice them?
But no one had ever thought those worms were the cause of the disease,
and even less that divine magic would actually help those worms grow.
It was the Schnabel couple who uncovered that truth.
“I see. So if you give them insecticide and a laxative first, then cast divine magic, by then all the parasites in the intestines will be out, and it’ll be fine. Why did I think of cutting off and reattaching limbs, but not of this?”
Their treatment was somewhat brutal, but the results were undeniable.
Not every demon disease patient was cured.
But at the very least, they had managed to save countless patients with parasitic infections.
The healing field was thrown into chaos as well.
“<Divine magic is a science that was already perfected 300 years ago.>”
That was the long-standing consensus in the healing field.
It made sense.
With the hand of a top-tier healer, a severed arm can be reattached.
If divine power is sufficient, there are even cases where a patient whose heart has been torn out can be saved.
What more could they possibly develop?
To them, miracles had already been completed.
— The problem is not the technique, it’s the supply.
— It’s time to research how to train one more senior healer.
After that, the healing field devoted itself not to improving treatments, but to raising the average level of priests.
But the one who shattered that paradigm was the Schnabel couple.
“Demon disease… can be cured?”
That was when it began.
The healing field, which had focused only on cultivation, shifted its focus to researching demon disease.
And Simeon, who stood at that turning point in history,
“Please take me in as your disciple!”
went straight to the couple.
The reason was simple.
Their method meant high-tier healing magic wasn’t necessary.
Even a low-ranking priest like him could play an active role.
So Simeon went to the couple and begged them to take him in as a disciple.
“But we only go to dangerous places. Others have asked to be our disciples too, but most of them left.”
“That’s fine! Even if it’s somewhere harsher, I want to follow you and learn from you both!”
“Good, then…”
“Let’s go to the southern front.”
And so Simeon became the couple’s disciple.
*
Three years.
For three years, Simeon roamed the southern front with the couple.
Naturally, it was because of parasites.
Unlike the cold north and the dry west.
Parasites ran rampant in the south and east.
For the couple, who were authorities on parasites, it was the perfect environment for research.
Simeon also learned a great deal there.
“Normally people leave us after six months, but Simeon, you’ve stayed with us for a long time.”
“I think it’s because learning from you, Masters, doesn’t feel difficult.”
“My, are you trying to seduce my husband right now?”
“A-ah, no, Master! How could I dare!”
The time I spent with those two was so enjoyable.
The number of times my life was in danger while wandering the demonic wasteland outside the southern fortress was beyond counting,
stern but warm Elia Schnabel.
witty and mischievous Arian Schnabel.
Watching the perfectly matched couple at my side, and the devotion and miracles carried out at their fingertips,
Simeon even began to think that this truly must be the will of the gods.
“Come to think of it, Master Arian, where were you for that year? Were you researching in the East?”
“Hehe. That’s a secret. But while I was gone, you taught Elia a lot, right? You didn’t just have her running errands because I wasn’t around, did you?”
“You answer well, Simeon.”
“Of course Master Elia learned a great deal, Master.”
“Good. Then I’ll see how much Simeon learned during this swamp expedition.”
No, it was certain.
Throughout Simeon’s long life, he had never seen people as noble and devoted as these.
These were people Simeon could call saints and saintesses.
As their disciple and companion, he must be the happiest cleric in the world.
But that happiness came to an abrupt end one day.
“A new kind of demon beast!”
A mutant demon beast that hadn’t appeared in ten years.
With that beast’s appearance, the fire magic normally used against insect beasts suddenly stopped working properly.
To make matters worse, southern fever suddenly began spreading through the army.
The countless anti-beast methods humanity had accumulated turned to trash, and countless talents nurtured over decades died in vain.
“Master! The fortress is surrounded. It will be captured within a few days. Fortunately, a teleportation array for evacuation to the rear has been prepared.”
Fortunately, the Church and the Empire had prepared a teleportation array capable of evacuating healers and heroes.
However, because the number of people who could be sent through the array was limited, who could escape was decided according to social standing.
And the Schnabel couple were included in the priority list as well.
“If everyone leaves here, who will keep these people alive and get them out?”
“Anyway, no one….”
“You shouldn’t say ‘anyway’ if you’re a healer, Simeon.”
The couple chose to remain in the fortress.
“You take that teleportation array, Simeon.”
“What?”
“We’ll give our seats to Simeon. You followed us here, didn’t you?”
“No, Masters! I’d rather regain my former mage level!”
A few days would be enough.
If I could just strip away the divine power and rehab for a few days….
“Simeon. You know that’s not possible. It’ll take months for your rank to return.”
“This isn’t a request; it’s an order. Someone has to inherit our knowledge, doesn’t he?”
The couple’s words came with a handkerchief pressed into his hand, and they shoved him into the teleportation array.
And for a brief moment, with sad expressions, they said.
“We don’t think we were very good parents.”
Those were the last words Simeon heard from the two of them.
*
After escaping, Simeon spent a while going in and out of the confession booth.
If only he hadn’t given up his rank as a mage.
No, if only he hadn’t stubbornly insisted on becoming their disciple.
At the very least, there would have been one more spot in the teleportation array.
Those were days spent drowning in guilt, going to the confession booth every single day without fail.
Then he heard a rumor.
— “Have all the bodies from the fortress been recovered?”
— “Yes.”
— “They were the ones who defended the fortress to the very end. Hold the funeral with due respect.”
The priests of the Holy City were busy for a while too.
Once the fortress invasion was over.
When winter had dampened the activity of insect-type beasts.
During that brief period, the Church and the Empire succeeded in bringing back only the bodies from the fortress.
Simeon naturally thought his masters would be among those bodies as well.
But,
“The Schnabel couple? I don’t see them.”
They weren’t there.
Had they been eaten by the insect beasts?
Just as that thought surfaced,
whispers from lower-ranking priests reached his ears.
— “They recovered all the bodies of the people who stayed in the fortress. So the story that the couple stayed there wasn’t a lie after all?”
— “Maybe they were wandering around outside the fortress again because of one of those pointless expeditions and met their end?”
— “Sigh. How lucky. If the fortress just happened to be captured then, they can be spun as having died honorably.”
A priest who had applied to become a disciple of the couple but failed.
A priest who followed the couple but gave up because it was too hard.
Such priests began entertaining all kinds of irreverent speculation about the Schnabel couple’s disappearance.
Even despite Simeon’s request,
the Church refused to canonize the dead couple.
— “Church tradition says no.”
That wasn’t the end of it.
— “The side effects of the insecticide are far too great. That treatment must be forbidden.”
Priests who were jealous of the couple belittled them by pointing out flaws in their treatment methods,
— “A parasitology authority died? What does that have to do with me? What’s so important about parasitology anyway?”
the public didn’t even mourn, not even knowing what the Schnabel couple had achieved,
— “Come to our clinic. Now that the couple’s dead, aren’t you the authority on parasites? As for the treatment fee… how about this much?”
the clinics showed not the slightest hint of mourning, only scheming to make money off the couple’s achievements through Simeon.
Having gone through all that,
anger and disgust took root in Simeon’s heart.
“Should I really be letting people like this receive treatment?”
He knew those people were a tiny minority that could not represent humanity.
But if trash like that isn’t punished, doesn’t this world and the gods share responsibility too?
That was when it began.
It was when Simeon dared to defy his masters’ wishes, return to being a mage, not pass on his knowledge of parasites to the healing field, and begin his pilgrimage.
He first shut himself away in a workshop and spent years studying black magic.
After achieving the accomplishments of a black mage, he used a black magic ritual—the one that most insulted the gods—to kill black mages, endlessly questioning the gods.
Was it really right to pass on my masters’ knowledge for the sake of gods who let evil go unpunished?
If this is a world where such good people vanish in vain, shouldn’t it be destroyed and erased instead?
For more than ten years.
Before long, black mages in the underworld began calling him this.
“<The Seeker of Blasphemy>”
A slur for one who used black magic to sacrifice only black mages, while remaining a benevolent pilgrim in the sunlit world.
For several years.
He accepted an offer from a black mage who said he could find his masters’ bodies through necromancy, and followed him into a group.
The Ophiuchus Round Table.
A place where black mages gathered, hoping to revive the Magic Tower of the Thirteenth Month.
*
“Have you returned?”
Inside a fortune-teller’s shop in G-Sector, where the sewage treatment facility stood.
A gaunt old man in a hooded robe welcomed Simeon.
“How was it? What was it like finding the corpse you’d been searching for all this time?”
“Yeah. I was skeptical that necromancy could find it, but fortunately it could.”
Simeon slowly sank into the chair.
With a posture completely unlike when he dealt with Julian, one that was somehow haughty.
“…But suddenly, I’ve got something I want to ask.”
“Hmm?”
“That secret art you taught me is certainly precious magic, but to think I’d have to work for you for ten years just to pinpoint a single soul. That doesn’t seem like a profitable deal.”
The old man clicked his tongue in disbelief.
“Did you have a corpse to begin with? Any clues? You only said the place of death was somewhere in the south. And what about the date of death and the constellation that day?”
“….”
“Under those conditions, asking me to tell you where the soul is buried doesn’t make sense. The fact that the Fifth Elder even agreed to such a request is a miracle.”
The old man tapped the floor once with the tip of his cane.
“At that level of conditions, thirty years of being worked to the bone would still be cheap. If not for your black magic knowledge, I would’ve kept you working even longer.”
“….”
“And one more thing.”
The old man narrowed his eyes.
“If you’d just kept offering sacrifices like the other black mages, your contribution would have built up and I would’ve told you that art ages ago. Why hasn’t this fellow brought me even one living person in ten years? I truly don’t understand it.”
“I hate humanity. But if I observe them without disturbing them as much as possible, I can judge whether they’re truly worthy of my devotion.”
The old man stared at Simeon in silence for a long while, then finally let out a dry laugh.
“Then what was it when you selected only the Round Table’s black mages and sacrificed them periodically? Weren’t they human?”
“That was a sacrifice necessary for my inquiry. They were never the sort of humanity I would devote myself to.”
“Hah.”
The old man eventually shook his head.
“If only you’d left those guys alone too, your contribution would have dropped less. Then I would’ve told you that art long ago.”
Simeon gave a brief smile.
Simeon rose from his seat and straightened the hem of his robe.
“I’ve been in your debt for a long time.”
“Hmm?”
“I have no more business with the Round Table. Let’s part ways here.”
“…I see.”
The old man gave a brief reply and didn’t bother trying to stop him.
There wasn’t even time for that.
Simeon’s rank was coveted even by the Round Table.
If it meant capturing a mage of that rank, they would gladly hand over one of the elder seats.
But no one would want to make an elder out of a mass murderer who routinely performed rituals sacrificing black mages.
So Simeon had remained nothing more than a guest.
Simeon turned his back and started toward the door.
The old wooden floorboards squeaked, dragging out each footstep.
That was when it happened.
A small black crystal orb on the old man’s desk flickered.
A communication artifact engraved with the Elder Council’s seal.
When the old man stroked the crystal orb with a familiar gesture, an image floated into the air.
A short letter.
And a portrait of a young man.
“Hm? This is….”
The old man adjusted his glasses.
“Ah, it’s the target that’s been rising lately.”
He curled the corners of his mouth.
“Julian Nichirit… I’ve heard the name, but this is the first time I’ve seen the face.”
The light from the crystal orb carved the old man’s wrinkles even deeper.
“Ah, so that’s what he looks like. Rather handsome-looking. Tsk tsk.”
The old man clicked his tongue in his familiar manner.
“What did he have to go and make trouble for at such a young age….”
Tap. Tap-tap.
The old man began tapping out a telegram.
His role was to inform the underworld of the Round Table’s decisions, or to connect people from the underworld to the Round Table.
The old man had always been that way.
As usual, he made a wanted notice with the young man’s face and name.
[Julian Nichirit]
[This mage is insulting the authority of the Round Table and black mages, so I hereby order that he pay the price befitting him.]
[Curse: 300 million mar]
[Death: 500 million mar + a black magic grimoire of Tier 3 or lower]
[Capture: 1 billion mar + a black magic grimoire of Tier 5 or lower]
Tap. Tap.
With that, the old man finished typing and hung the wanted notice on the wall.
Several black mages sitting in the corner of the fortune-teller’s shop picked up the notice.
“Whew. He’s got a pretty face, all right. The name….”
“Julian Nichirit?”
“Still, compared to Shun Isae, his face is out there, and his connections are too. Even if killing him is a bit much, a curse should be doable, no?”
“Hmm…. Would Academy students even do?”
“I don’t think they’d protect him that much, though?”
Thud.
The step of Simeon, who had been walking toward the door, stopped.
“Hmm? Why aren’t you leaving? Did the wanted notice catch your interest?”
“….”
“Well, you probably already know, but he’s a young man named Julian Nichirit. People have been talking about him nonstop for months, and it looks like the Round Table finally made a decision. Judging by the photo, he’s quite a looker. It’s the first time I’ve seen it too.”
At the old man’s words, Simeon’s head began to turn.
Little by little.
Little by little.
Even after reaching an angle no human head should ever be able to reach, it kept turning.
A black mage who had surpassed the ranks could perform feats impossible for humans.
Before long,
the Tier 6 black mage, whose head had turned 180 degrees, widened the eyes hidden behind those narrow slits,
and said to the people inside the fortune-teller’s shop,
“You people….”
“?”
“You people are the ones who need to repent right now?”