Chapter 152
***
Misunderstanding stories have a formula that appears all too often.
When the protagonist makes a name for themselves, the people around them become obsessed.
Ever since I came to believe this was a misunderstanding-story world, I had no doubt that I, too, would end up living such a life.
But reality was the exact opposite.
The imperial family and the Church, who ought to have become obsessed with me, set me free as if they had no interest in me.
Of course, it wasn't that they truly had no interest in me.
They simply chose not to put a leash on me as a sign of respect.
Up to that point, it was a pleasant miscalculation.
If I couldn't avoid the leash, I'd enjoy it, but if I could avoid it, I preferred being free.
The problem was that unrelated people who didn't respect me became obsessed with me.
‘What on earth makes black mages think I'll join them?’
From my perspective, it was absurd.
They weren't offering me much money or promising me power. And they certainly weren't offering me knowledge I didn't already have.
Above all, what I disliked most was……
‘Give up holy magic? Are you insane?’
They were telling me to give up the miracles of holy magic.
Of course, even before hearing the proposal, I hadn't had the slightest intention of accepting it.
But the instant I heard it, I made up my mind.
‘You've lived in a world with magic all your life, so you don't know the misery of a world without it, do you?’
Do you know the terror of DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation), when blood vessels thinner than your pinky finger refuse to stop bleeding?
Or the helplessness of being unable to urinate because you barely nicked a ureter thinner than a fingernail while sorting through organs gone haywire?
There are even cases where a chylothorax (fat leaking from the site of a chest operation) develops despite completing the surgery perfectly.
Even though the surgery was definitely perfect!
‘Fuck. You sure are spoiled, having never lived in a world where you get screwed over even after performing surgery perfectly.’
Compared to that, this world was extremely kind.
Even if I accidentally severed a ureter or blood vessel during surgery, as long as the patient didn't die, it was possible to repair it somehow if they paid enough money.
If I didn't make a mistake, the usual unfair twists rarely happened.
Even unavoidable postoperative complications occurred far less often.
What a kind world this was!
Even if its setting was dark fantasy, medically speaking, this place was a fluffy romance-fantasy novel. (At least for me.)
‘You can say things like replacing holy magic only because you don't know how frightening postoperative adhesions are.’
That was why I could say this with confidence.
Black magic could never replace holy magic.
They might complement each other, but replacing one with the other would forever be impossible.
‘I didn't kiss up to the Church for nothing when I was running the Mercure merchant guild.’
Who was it that said it?
Those who have tasted meat can never return to the time before they knew its flavor.
I was the same.
Therefore, Barheit's proposal was outrageous nonsense not worth considering.
That was why I rejected it without hesitation.
“I am still an inexperienced human, so I desperately need the gods' miracles.”
“You are not a human so weak that you need to depend on the gods.”
“No. I am a weak human.”
Having enjoyed magic's benefits as naturally as breathing since birth, Barheit would never be able to understand me.
Perhaps sensing my firm resolve, Barheit suddenly changed his approach to persuasion.
The twisted soldier's body came to a halt, standing rigidly upright.
A line of black discharge ran from the hollow of his gouged-out eye and soaked the collar of his military uniform.
Before long, an empty voice spilled from the soldier's mouth.
“Holy power, is it.”
The soldier's head slowly tilted.
The broken vertebrae in his neck creaked as they followed the angle.
“……There was a time when I, too, pursued the same ideals as you.”
He muttered as though recalling the distant past.
“There was a time when I lived begging for the gods' mercy, too. I believed there was a line humanity had to observe, and that ethics were a mage's final conscience.”
“Are you talking about when you were the Tower Master?”
“Indeed. In those days, the Tower of Life was a tower that communicated closely with the Church, with the goal of understanding life.”
The Tower of Life had once been a field of study devoted to life itself.
However, there had been a clear difference between its goal and that of the Church:
While the Church aimed to understand life in order to treat patients,
the tower aimed to understand life in order to strengthen humanity.
In truth, the Tower of Life's research achievements had been remarkable.
The body-enhancement magic that vanguards used as naturally as breathing was a representative example.
The problem was that, intoxicated by those achievements, the Tower of Life had crossed the line by an immeasurable distance.
— “Master. I have a duty to make humanity greater!”
It was commonly believed that Tower Master Barheit had gone mad, blinded by magic while researching life magic.
But the truth I heard from my master, the Great Sage, was a little different.
Barheit had not gone mad because of magic.
He had gone mad from the anxiety brought on by precognition and his finite lifespan.
— “To raise one's magical level, one needs countless experiments to match it. Most other forms of magic have no restrictions on such experiments, but life magic has many, Yulian.”
A mage had to raise their level to live a long life.
And to advance, they had to deepen their magic through all sorts of experiments.
A fire mage burned countless materials to deepen their understanding of flame, while a prophet studied various forms of divination to deepen their understanding of precognition.
But life magic was inevitably subject to restrictions in research.
Since the subjects were people, ethics became an obstacle.
No matter how many experiments one conducted on magical beasts and livestock, one could never expect results equal to those from human experimentation,
And so Barheit, the Tower Master of Life, had no choice but to remain at the Second Circle despite holding the position of Tower Master.
Until he crossed the line.
— “Yulian. Before I teach you black magic, promise me this one thing. No matter what happens, do not cross the line. Once you cross it, you will no longer hesitate to go farther.”
Barheit grew anxious as the limit of his lifespan approached.
Then, after secretly crossing the line once by chance, the Tower Master of Life became unstoppable.
He merely cut open one person's abdomen, yet he advanced one Circle.
When he cut open the heads of several people, he advanced another Circle.
Having tasted the sweetness of that advancement, he began secretly using people as test subjects, and the same trend gradually spread among the elders and mages beneath the Tower Master.
In the end, the Tower of Life ravaged the western part of the Empire, created demonfolk, and caused countless other problems before being punished by the Great Sage……
……That was the full story.
As if retracing that past, Barheit, wearing a soldier's face, felt around his chest.
He looked as though he were checking the beat of a heart that did not belong to him.
“But one day, I heard a prophecy. It was a prophecy told to me by my senior, the first Tower Master of Prophecy…… She said that, in the distant future, a mage who dealt with life would ultimately make humanity the masters of the world.”
Crack.
I heard the sound of one joint shifting out of place.
It was the sound of using another joint to compensate for the one he had sacrificed while teleporting Pericia somewhere moments ago.
“The moment I heard those words, I had no doubt that I was the person in that prophecy. My hateful master, too, called me a child who would become a savior.”
“By ‘Master,’ do you mean the Great Sage?”
“Yes. You would know him better as the Great Sage Edelhardt.”
The corners of the soldier's mouth pulled upward against the grain of his muscles.
“Sir Yulian, I saw that prophecy again in you.”
The approaching fingertips touched the iron bars.
The finger touching the pattern in the style of the Old Testament sizzled and burned, giving off a thin wisp of smoke.
Because he had stolen another person's body through an impure method, the sacred letters rejected him.
But Barheit did not care.
“A man who makes truth bloom alone in a white corridor packed with hypocrites. Those eyes, unashamed even when thrusting taboos at the dying. You resemble my younger self too closely.”
“…….”
“I do not want to see my junior become frustrated as I did.”
Even as his fingertips burned away, his expression remained calm.
Yet his voice contained something like genuine pain.
Only he would know whether that pain came from his burning flesh or from his own past.
“Do you know the misery of being shackled by ethics, growing old and dying before these hands capable of saving the world can even live out their natural lifespan? I experienced it. I hope you alone do not suffer the same.”
I quietly watched his finger burn away.
Then I opened my mouth.
“How strange. Am I the only one who sees a contradiction in you, senior?”
“If there is a contradiction in what I say, it is probably because I lack the time to explain it fully. Even so, if you need an explanation to understand, ask.”
“I have never once heard of the courtesy of lacing wine with lead for the sake of a junior.”
The soldier's hand faltered.
“If you merely intended to visit my dream, there were plenty of other good catalysts besides lead. Using the Sandman's sand would have been one option. And yet, the fact that you deliberately used lead means……”
After letting the words hang for a while, I spoke again.
“You simply wanted to imprison me in a dream and steal my body, didn't you?”
Silence hung in the air for a moment.
And then.
“……Heh.”
What escaped from the twisted mouth was laughter.
“It seems there has been a misunderstanding. Let me correct that.”
The soldier's hand fell away from the iron bars. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the tips of his half-burned fingers.
“I have no interest in your body. I am simply confident that I could put that talent to better use than you can.”
Behind me, I heard Freyja grit her teeth.
I was grateful that she was angry on my behalf, but now was the time to remain meek.
I quietly took Freyja's hand.
Her trembling hand soon steadied and fell still.
Barheit continued.
“Some children may hold something precious yet not know how to handle it, while some adults can put it to use a hundred times over. Would it not be a waste to leave the treasure in your head…… buried in the shadows?”
In other words, he had no intention of using me as a vessel.
He intended to use me as a knowledge vending machine instead.
The kind of vending machine where he'd stand me beside him like a doll and press a button to make me spit out knowledge.
Naturally, I declined that sort of existence as well.
“I must decline after all.”
“……What a shame. Truly.”
Barheit sighed.
The soldier's lungs expanded and collapsed of their own accord, making a sound like a whistle.
“All right. Then let me tell you one last thing before I go.”
His twisted neck tilted back toward me.
“Do you really think that master of yours will trust you forever?”
The soldier's hand slowly clenched empty air.
“I realized it only much later. That man had already foreseen that I would surpass him. He was afraid of it. So he was taming me. He intended to use me until I was no longer useful, then cast me aside when the time came.”
Resentment oozed from his voice.
“At first, he supported me more than anyone; then, at some point, he began frustrating my experiments one by one. Someday, the Great Sage will probably obstruct your progress, too.”
“I disagree. As far as I know, he does not prevent thought experiments or ideas themselves.”
This was something I had learned while submitting countless black-magic attack scenarios as papers.
No matter how dangerous an idea I submitted, the Bureau of Mage Administration never used it as grounds to disadvantage me.
Even though they were people who would have a fit at the mere mention of black magic.
The only time they had a fit was when I suggested putting such a thought experiment into practice.
The fact that I was inspected when I gathered the fungus mages to make penicillin was proof of that.
But it seemed Barheit felt wronged by the fact that his experiments had been restrained in that way.
“What's the point of having ideas? A mage cannot advance in rank if they cannot conduct experiments.”
“Is it necessary to obsess over your lifespan?”
“You think that way now. But when your lifespan is nearing its end and you realize your body can no longer support your genius, will you really be able to remain so detached?”
“…….”
“The door is always open, Sir Yulian. That will be all for today. My master's gaze is beginning to reach even here. Well, then.”
Leaving those words behind, the soldier's body slowly collapsed.
His knees buckled like a puppet with its strings cut, and his upper body sprawled across the cold corridor floor.
The fallen soldier's face twisted of its own accord one last time.
Then it spread like an afterimage over the amber shadow cast along the wall before vanishing.
And so I stared for a while at the trace Barheit had left behind after saying only what he wanted to say and disappearing.
Belatedly answering the last words he had left me.
— “When you realize your body can no longer support your genius, will you still be able to remain so detached?”
“……Yes.”
There was something he had mistaken.
He was a genius, so ideas might continue to spring to mind endlessly, but I was not a genius; my knowledge had limits.
I was just getting a free ride by bringing in twenty-first-century knowledge; in reality, there was almost no technology or knowledge I had discovered anew.
In other words, I was someone whose resources would inevitably run out someday.
That was why I had no reason to obsess over my lifespan as he did.
‘If anything, I need the excuse of a limited lifespan so I can run away.’
What if my lifespan ran out before my knowledge did?
Then I could leave it behind in books.
Even genius mathematicians and scientists like da Vinci seemed to enjoy doing that.
Writing all those unrealized ideas down in notebooks and passing them on to future generations.
Then, on the last page, I would leave behind something like, ‘I proved this formula, but there was not enough room to include the proof here.’
In truth, I hadn't proved it either; I would simply leave my juniors a problem to torment them with before closing my eyes.
That way, I might even become a tragic genius whose lifespan couldn't wait for him.
In any case, I had no particular reason to obsess over my lifespan.
I merely gazed quietly at the place where Barheit had vanished and vowed once again not to end up like that when I grew old.
***
Meanwhile, at that very moment.
At the deepest point in the imperial palace, before a door at the end of a lightless corridor.
That door did not lead to the audience chamber.
Smaller even than the enormous door leading to the splendid room where the throne stood, it led to the emperor's bedroom.
The corridor where that door was located was a place where not even the emperor's relatives—not even the princes in line to inherit the throne—could casually set foot.
To begin with, hardly anyone in this empire had even seen the emperor's face.
Needless to say, that included the common people; even among the nobles who lived off the Empire, those who had seen the emperor's face with their own eyes could be counted on one hand.
No portrait of him hung anywhere, and his decrees reached his subjects only as printed words and spoken announcements.
One who existed, yet could not be seen.
That was the emperor.
An old man came to a halt before the most secluded bedroom of that secretive emperor.
The sole person in the world permitted to visit this room without prior notice.
It was the Great Sage Edelhardt.
“Ahem. Ahem.”
Before opening the door, the Great Sage cleared his throat.
Then he deactivated the layers upon layers of barriers and opened the door.
The emperor's bedroom was dark.
Bed curtains hung down from the ceiling, draped around the bed.
A silhouette showed through the thin veil resembling a canopy.
Someone appeared to be sitting on the edge of the bed.
Harsh breaths leaked from the shadow.
Wheeze—rattle. Wheeze—.
Mechanical inhalations and exhalations, as though he were fitted with a respirator.
With even drawing in each breath seeming laborious, the silhouette of his shoulders rose precariously with each inhalation, then sank.
The sound of wet phlegm bubbling deep in his lungs faintly seeped through the curtains.
Edelhardt gazed at him with pity.
“Eschenwald.”
Yet he called out to the emperor in as even a tone as possible, pretending he felt no pity.
“Did you sleep well?”
The silhouette beyond the curtains slowly raised its head.
“……Edelhardt?”
Wheeze. Only after pausing for a breath did the next words follow.
“I…… slept well. Yes.”
“What sort of dream did my old friend have today?”
The emperor could not answer immediately.
Only after his chest rattled once did the emperor answer.
“……For the first time in a long while, it was a good dream. It was neither a vision nor anything like that.”
“Was it the past?”
“Yes.”
Something like a faint laugh mingled with his rough breathing.
“A thousand years ago, you and…… the others. We crossed the sea together. The Saint was terribly prone to seasickness and had collapsed on the deck.”
“You left her there and went fishing, using a shark as bait to catch a sea dragon.”
“And you had prepared magic in case the ship sank.”
Edelhardt's eyes softened.
It was as though the sunlight of those days had briefly seeped into this dark room.
“When the ice on that sea melts someday, let us go again.”
“……Yes. Someday.”
The two fell silent for a while.
Wheeze—rattle.
For some time, only the sound of the respirator filled the room.
At last, Edelhardt adjusted his posture.
Then he spoke with the formal courtesy due a subject.
“I have something to report, Your Majesty.”
“Speak.”
“The Heaven-Defier Barheit Jaeger briefly appeared.”
Rattle.
The phlegmy sound beyond the curtains briefly stopped.
“He appears to have attempted to contact a boy named Yulian Nihirit. I pursued him immediately, but—”
Edelhardt paused to choose his words.
“Regrettably, I managed only to erase one of his fragments. I could not reach the main body. It was entirely due to my inadequacy.”
Silence fell.
And yet, unexpectedly, what emerged from beyond the curtains was not a reprimand.
“No. He is one who has invested everything in surviving. You must have been busy as well, and finding even one fragment of such a man in the midst of it was no small feat.”
Wheeze—the emperor dragged in a breath.
“It is more than enough. That man has already lost his body to you. A soul that wanders from body to body…… losing even one fragment is a wound on an entirely different scale from losing a piece of flesh. He…… won't be able to rise again easily for a while.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Yes. You have…… accomplished something great once again.”
A faint pride seeped into the emperor's voice between his harsh breaths.
Edelhardt bowed his head.
It seemed the report was over.
Wheeze—rattle.
But the emperor did not dismiss Edelhardt right away.
The respirator's sound came and went several times, as though the emperor were about to say something but could not quite begin.
At last, the emperor slowly opened his mouth.
“Edelhardt.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“That boy. Yulian, was it?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The silhouette beyond the curtains raised a hand to the canopy.
The outline of a bony finger showed through the thin fabric.
“Now…… I don't think that child needs a shadow anymore.”
“A shadow…… Your Majesty?”
“Yes. He needed one until now. Until he could stand on his own feet…… someone had to become his shadow and protect him so the light would not burn him away too soon.”
Wheeze.
“But…… he no longer needs one. He has already become a great tree, not a sapling that can be hidden in the shadow.”
“There will be many who target him.”
“It is necessary. A bird…… must leave the nest in order to fly, must it not?”
Edelhardt's expression slowly hardened.
“……Your Majesty. Do you mean……?”
“Contact the Church.”
Wheeze—.
“Tell them…… that the time has come to discuss in earnest…… the matter of conferring a title…… on the Black Saint.”
“…….”
“For the Empire. And—”
Rattle, his lungs bubbled once more.
“Even if this one body can never save all of…… humanity, I will do it for every last one of them.”