Chapter 37: Oh! My God (2)
37
“Honestly, you never know how to stay still.”
It had been two days since Korax had confined Ian and me in a private chamber.
Letting Ian’s grumbling as he smacked the back of my head slide past me, I was once again reviewing the ritual circle I had drawn across the floor of the private room.
“You should’ve just said you understood and stepped back. Why did you have to confront him there?”
“I didn’t think he’d really lock us up.”
“Something to be proud of, really!”
Ian shouted that, then a moment later cried out again as if deeply wronged.
“No, then you should’ve been the only one confined! Why did I, who was just standing there doing nothing, get dragged in too?!”
The one who answered Ian’s outburst wasn’t me, but someone beyond the wall.
“It was the captain’s order. He said that since you’re his guardian, you must be kept in the same space.”
“So they say.”
When I chimed in, pointing at the knights standing guard beyond the iron door, Ian seemed to have nothing more to say.
“I should’ve run away…. I really should’ve run away earlier…. What glory and riches was I hoping for….”
“Be quiet, Uncle.”
Even after my remark, Ian continued grumbling before finally turning his back and grabbing a bottle of liquor from the cabinet.
‘At least it’s a relief that saying they’d provide conveniences wasn’t just empty talk.’
I thought that as I looked around the neatly arranged room.
Aside from the crude iron door, it was no different from an ordinary guest room.
Pai, who came by every other day, had brought most of the items we said we needed,
‘Just quietly eat the food they give you and return to the main family. Isn’t that a bad outcome?’
It was as if Korax himself were saying that to me.
‘But I can’t just hole up in here like this.’
I recalled the appearance of the undead that had flowed in from outside the barrier.
A repulsive patchwork that could barely even be called necromancy.
Yet the flow of demonic energy that maintained its form followed a structure that was all too familiar.
‘It’s been corrupted by being forcibly grafted onto half-soul sorcery, but that construction formula is one I proposed myself.’
Two hundred years ago, the spiritual body construction formula I had personally researched in order to arm five million vengeful souls that followed me.
That something I had created for the northern people who died of the plague was now killing northerners.
I could never tolerate that.
“So, what are you doing, sitting there as soon as you’re confined?”
“Can’t you tell? I’m using necromancy.”
As I answered Ian, the detection ritual circle I had been drawing over the past two days was completed on the floor.
“Necromancy? It doesn’t look that different from magic to me.”
“There’s actually not much difference. It’s just whether you use mana or demonic energy.”
Even if I said that, mana and demonic energy had different origins.
Using a formless power without will, versus dealing with beings that possessed a clear will.
That was why necromancers tended to see themselves not as mages, but as spiritists or summoners.
‘Though now, I’m probably the only necromancer who approaches it that way.’
When I thought of the Empire’s necromancers, my sigh grew deeper.
But only for a moment.
After checking the ritual one last time, I poured the black aura that burst forth from my heart into the circle.
[At the request of your guide, become a lamp and illuminate.]
Wooooong-!
The runes and diagrams glowed blue and moved in accordance with my will.
What I summoned with a simple chant was a spirit that roamed the skies, a banshee.
After carving her rune into the center of the ritual, I used it as the basis to create a detection network.
“Oho, this is…!”
The ritual that had been emitting a blue light now twisted completely, blossoming into an entirely new form.
What appeared was a topographical map depicting the barrier and its surrounding regions.
Countless blue lights flickered across the three-dimensionally rendered map.
“Large-scale reconnaissance! Is something like this even possible with necromancy?”
“It’s footage seen through the banshee’s eyes, output through the ritual. It’s basic necromancy.”
“Then what are those clusters of light?”
“Souls.”
As I said that, I pointed at the clusters of light glowing in different colors.
“Blue ones are spiritual bodies, red ones are those bound to corpses. White ones are living souls.”
“…Are you saying you’re showing all of this in real time? Every living being and undead present in the area?”
“That’s right.”
At my answer, delivered without much emotion, Ian seemed to lose his words for a moment.
“…So that’s why those Imperial bastards throw themselves into necromancy like they’re ready to die for it.”
“You think so?”
When I asked back, puzzled by Ian’s shocked expression, he answered immediately.
“A large-scale detection ritual that shows the surrounding battlefield situation at a glance. It’s indispensable in war.”
“Ah, certainly….”
I nodded, recalling the time when I had overturned the continent.
Real-time reports of enemy troop deployments.
Just by adjusting the placement of the undead in response, the Alliance forces back then were swept away like lamps before the wind.
“To recreate this with magic, you’d need at least a professor from a mage tower.”
“Wouldn’t a spiritist or summoner find it easier?”
“They don’t count. You can’t train them systematically.”
‘As if necromancers are any different.’
The fledglings raised by the Empire, and the unidentified idiots now threatening us.
The very fact that such things were called necromancers like me was utterly unpleasant.
Two hundred years ago, it was a bit more….
“Tch.”
I clicked my tongue roughly, cutting off my wandering thoughts.
My companions, whose deeds weren’t even recorded, let alone passed down orally.
There was nothing to gain from lamenting now.
‘More importantly….’
The soul map connected to the banshee.
As I looked at the red dots marked there, my worries deepened further.
‘They’re still increasing.’
Red dots growing one by one.
And in proportion to that, the reactions of living souls scattered throughout the forest were disappearing.
In other words, they were hunting the monsters in the forest and turning them into undead.
‘Judging by the numbers, they’ll attack soon. In a week at the shortest….’
The speed at which the undead were multiplying, the other red dots coming in from outside.
Comparing their numbers with the barrier’s defending forces, I got a rough estimate.
‘That means I have to get outside somehow within that time….’
Thinking that, I looked at the tightly closed iron door.
“….”
“…….”
The two knights guarding the door to my room.
I had spent about two days without making any complaints, so their guard should have loosened by now.
‘Shall I start laying some bait?’
Like any other necromancer, I wickedly smiled and moved right up close to the iron door.
“Hey, you knights there!”
“?!”
“P-Prince Klein.”
Hearing my voice suddenly from behind, the knights flinched in surprise.
After two days of silence, I had abruptly spoken up, so it was only natural they were startled.
“You’re having a hard time because of me alone, aren’t you?”
When I spoke up like that, an answer came after a brief pause.
“There’s no need for you to concern yourself.”
“But you must be bored. There’s still some time until the shift change, right?”
“Th-That is so, but….”
“Then I’m starting to get restless too. Let’s just chat a bit. How about it?”
At those words, the knights stared at each other blankly for a moment.
The Leinrant prince wants to talk.
A duke’s son? With us? Why?
Is this allowed?
There wasn’t an order saying we couldn’t, was there?
‘They’re not rejecting it outright.’
They looked flustered, but not unwilling.
Sensing that, I immediately called out to them again and spoke in a coaxing voice.
“It’s your first time meeting a necromancer like me, right? Isn’t it?”
When I said that, the reply came back quickly.
“We’ve met them plenty of times.”
“And killed even more.”
The barrier knights’ aversion toward necromancers.
However, the cause wasn’t necromancy itself, but the necromancers’ method of combat.
Half-soul sorcery, which revived the corpses of the dead and used them as weapons.
Modern-era necromancers who made that their primary weapon were thus all the more despised and forced to crawl into the shadows.
But if it was an original like me, the story was different.
“I’m talking about real necromancers, not those who fight with low-grade things like zombies or ghouls.”
“…In other words, Prince, you don’t handle corpses?”
“I don’t. I swear on my honor.”
Honor.
The moment I brought out the ultimate persuasion tool for knights, their eyes changed.
‘I really don’t get it.’
Even as I found their mental structure—living and dying by the word ‘honor’—fascinating, my mouth continued to entice them.
“Unlike those types, I deal with souls.”
At that, one of the knights’ expressions twitched.
“Sou… souls, you say?”
“You handle the souls of the dead?”
When another knight asked in the same way, I smiled a confident smile.
“Yeah. For example….”
After saying that, I pointed at the knight standing on the left.
“Like the one attached to your shoulder.”
A casually delivered sentence.
But at that moment, silence settled between the two knights.
And then, shortly after.
“I-It seems like you’re trying to mess with us, but we’re not falling for it.”
“Th-That’s right! A necromancer’s words…!”
“Your shoulder’s been a bit stiff since three days ago, hasn’t it?”
When I cut off the other knight mid-sentence and said that, an even longer silence fell than before.
‘Hey, what is it! Hurry up and say that’s not true!’
‘No, but….’
‘What the hell, was it really stiff?!’
With my head poking out between the bars, the two knights exchanged glances nonstop.
“Knights are more sensitive to their own physical condition than anyone else, so you can’t exactly deny it, can you?”
When I presented that irrefutable point, the startled knight nodded heavily.
“I w-won’t deny it. But this is…!”
“You’re just tired?”
I cut him off and put on a broad smile.
After pressing my silently smiling face toward them.
“Really?”
At that, an even longer silence arrived than before.
‘Judging by how easily they’re swayed by superstition, they really are northern natives.’
Harsh cold, endless missions, continuous battles.
Those who lived under constant threat to their lives were bound to fear supernatural phenomena like superstitions and legends.
They were easily influenced by spiritual elements like ghosts or souls.
And coincidentally, those were exactly my area of expertise as a necromancer.
“You want it gone, don’t you?”
The knight who heard my words nodded after a long while.
Now his face was completely pale.
“Before you sleep, light a candle, press your thumb around your solar plexus, and take deep breaths. Then the tightness should ease up a bit.”
When I said that, the knight looked at my face.
“With something like that…. is it possible?”
I examined the knight’s expression as he cautiously asked back.
Judging by his face alone, he looked no different from those middle-aged women who went around visiting fortune-tellers.
‘Back when I was active, I used to tell people to cut this kind of thing out.’
“It’s a simple appeasement rite. You’ve got nothing to lose, so give it a try.”
As I said that, two other knights appeared for the shift change.
While the handover for the shift was in full swing, I subtly raised my thumb toward the window.
Heehee!
The child sitting on the knight’s shoulder responded to my greeting by raising his own thumb.
“So then, is it true that ghosts exist?”
At Ian’s question, thrown at me the moment I returned inside the room, I nodded.
“In frozen lands, the ones who die the most are children, aren’t they.”
"Then what, it wasn’t just bluffing? It was real? The knights were actually possessed by ghosts?"
“Rather than ghosts…. it’d be closer to guardian spirits.”
As I vaguely replied to Ian, who asked back in disbelief, I once more looked at the backs of the knights walking away.
“What is it? I feel like I’ve gotten a bit lighter somehow….”
“Don’t say things like that! That’s seriously creepy…!”
As he shook his stiff right shoulder this way and that, his empty left hand dangled freely.
Heehee!
The little ghost that had been sitting on the knight’s shoulder was now tightly holding that empty hand, trotting along behind the knight.
“The son he sent off first is protecting his father who guards the barrier.”
“…Those knights must be natives here too, so it’s not like they’d lack such stories.”
Listening to Ian’s voice, now convinced by my explanation, I watched the two figures walking away.
A father walking along, continuously tilting his head in confusion, and the children protecting that father’s back.
Really, the people here didn’t change, no matter how much time passed.
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