Chapter 48: Occupational Hazard
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Chapter 48: Occupational Hazard.
“Hey, hey! Over there! In front!”
Watcher Outpost No. 671, straddling the Exploration Limit Line.
It was around the time I was maintaining my equipment to head out in search of Klein, who had gone missing even after the scheduled three days had passed.
At a fellow Watcher’s shout, I stepped outside as well and looked out over the Ice Plain shrouded in shadows.
“Ha, he really came back alive.”
“I’m not seeing things right now, am I?”
The unknown land spread out beyond the Exploration Limit Line.
For them to head there was practically the same as declaring suicide.
The moment one set foot there, even by mistake, it was a demonic cavern where one would be tormented by all kinds of hallucinations.
According to reports from decades ago, there were even grim rumors that someone had devoured a companion who went in together.
Yet contrary to their expectations, Young Master Klein cut straight across the Ice Plain without the slightest disorder.
And now he was even returning as if nothing had happened, so it was only natural that the Watchers were aghast.
“Did you really, really come back alive?
“You’re not a ghost or an Undead or something, are you?”
Moreover, unlike when he left, Klein was carrying something on his back.
Bringing something back from that unknown land.
As something unimaginable unfolded, fear likely took root in the Watchers’ eyes before curiosity ever could.
“Me, an Undead? Are you planning to get arrested for insulting a noble?”
Only after hearing that familiar brusque tone, they said, did the Watchers truly realize that Young Master Klein had returned.
If there was one peculiar point, it was that he told no one what it was that he had brought back from there.
According to the Watchers who had accompanied him, all that remained was the account that it had the texture and hardness of a massive boulder, yet no sense of weight could be felt.
“…Is that really everything you have to report?”
“Yeah. That’s all.”
I took a sip of the black tea Pai had poured and brushed off Korax’s interrogation.
A report to the Watchers after returning to the outpost.
A report to Vice-Captain Boran on the way back.
And after arriving, a report to Knight Commander Korax.
Why on earth did the Leinrant people love reports so much?
After returning to the Wall, I had spent at least half a day buried in these damned reports, so it was only natural to be sick of it.
“There’s no need to submit such a sloppy false report. You can simply tell us it’s confidential.”
He said that while shaking my utterly half-baked report, but I merely shrugged as if it were none of my concern.
“Confidential? I don’t have anything like that.”
“Then we’ll understand it that way.”
With a short sigh, Korax set my report on fire.
“What, you’re telling me to write it again?”
“No. There’s no need for that.”
A knight commander playing with fire in his office in the dead of night.
When I said that while watching my report burn away on the desk, Korax shook his head as if that weren’t the case.
“‘After the battle, the young master remained secluded at the Wall, and there were no notable matters.’ We’ll report it to the main house like this.”
“Is that fine? That’ll be a false report.”
When I asked back like that, Korax thought for a moment and then shrugged.
“Rather than reporting that we sent a Leinrant young master beyond the Exploration Limit Line, a false report would be better.”
…Now that I thought about it, that was true.
Unable to find anything to refute, I could only nod as if to say, I suppose so.
For the Big Raven Knights, unrivaled in the north for their secrecy, to cover up my movements—I was almost beside myself with gratitude.
Thinking that, I finished the remaining black tea in my cup.
The scenery outside the window was the same as ever: the expanse of the northern snowfields.
And if I lowered my gaze just a little there, I could see people with gloomy faces carrying something.
“What are they doing? Didn’t they say the Wall repairs were finished?”
“The Wall repairs are finished. Now the most important construction remains.”
“…The most important construction.”
Something more important than repairing the Wall, to the Big Raven Knights who guarded it.
Realizing what that meant, I rose from my seat at once.
“The bodies of the dead. Where are they right now?”
More important than repairing the Wall was healing those who had lost their families.
Korax, wearing a similarly gloomy expression, called Boran, who had been waiting outside the door.
“…This is the morgue.”
A communal chamber prepared beneath the Wall.
Contrary to the word morgue, the appearances of the bodies laid there all seemed far from peaceful.
“Two knights, five Watchers. Eight sentries….”
Frozen stiff in the extreme cold, they preserved exactly how they had looked at the moment their lives ended.
Urgent expressions, or expressions of pain.
Or even expressions filled with rage, as if they would fight to the very end.
There were some intact enough that you could recognize that much, but most had been crushed beyond recognition.
“Are you going to burn the bodies like this?”
When I asked with a frown, Boran clenched his teeth.
“We would like to observe proper rites, but it’s not feasible.”
“I figured.”
This was a place where outside access was forbidden.
It was a remote location with no priest to preside over a funeral, and no undertaker to handle the bodies.
“There’s nothing good in looking for long. We should return now….”
“When is the funeral. Exactly?”
“…Pardon?”
I asked before Boran could finish, and after hesitating for a moment, he asked again.
“When is the funeral?”
“Yes, in a week….”
“A week. You’re sure?”
As I looked over their bodies and asked, Boran nodded.
“A week…. A week, huh….”
I murmured while committing their figures to my eyes.
After a brief moment of repeated deliberation.
“Alright. I can make it in time.”
Having finished my thoughts, I spoke to Boran.
“These bodies. I’ll prepare them until the day of the funeral.”
“…….”
After my words ended, a long silence followed.
“Of course, I’ll get the families’ permission first. So about that, could you send letters to these people’s families….”
“W-W-What kind of nonsense is this…!”
When I added that extra remark, Boran, who had been blankly mulling over my words, finally reacted.
“Nonsense? Did you forget what kind of person I am?”
“I know, Necromancer! But aren’t you the Leinrant young master?!”
Looking at Boran making a fuss as if he had heard something he should not have heard, I asked back.
“If I’m the duke’s son, does that mean I’m not allowed to touch corpses?”
“No, that’s not what I mean, it’s just that this is something without precedent…!”
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he meant.
A scion of a ducal house embalming corpses—there would be no precedent for that even if one searched the entirety of continental noble history.
But ever since I had heard about them in Korax’s office, I had fully intended to do this.
‘If you really think about it, they died because of me as well.’
The Akimond Order that formed an Undead Legion and assaulted the Wall.
Just like their name suggested, the being they worshiped as a god was none other than me.
What they were after was even the knowledge of necromancy inside my head.
If one traced back the cause of the deaths that befell them, I was entangled in all of that causality.
‘It might be an excessive interpretation. Or maybe it’s just an occupational hazard.’
I thought that inwardly, but I had no intention of overturning the decision I had already made.
Thinking that, I opened my mouth toward Boran.
“It’s our comrades’ final journey. Do you really think precedents and that kind of thing matter?”
Perhaps left speechless by my single remark, Boran hurriedly lowered his head.
“I-I’ll report to the captain first…. Ah, I’ll let you know!”
Still stammering for quite a while, he ended with those words and hurried toward Korax’s office.
When a few more minutes had passed, what Korax conveyed through Boran was the words, ‘Do as you wish.’
One week since Young Master Klein had shut himself away beneath the Wall.
On the day of the funeral, the bereaved families gathered at the cremation grounds were waiting for Klein with anxious hearts.
“Over there, he’s coming.”
As if someone had spotted him first, they quietly announced his arrival.
The fifteen bodies whose funerals would be conducted today.
Along with the families and friends of the deceased who were tasked with carrying the bier, Young Master Klein, who presided over the funeral, revealed himself.
“…….”
“….”
Not in the splendid clothes of nobles, but clad in a black robe.
Having come out from beneath the Wall for the first time in a week, Young Master Klein showed none of his usual light smile, instead wearing a heavily sunken expression from beginning to end.
“Thank you for trusting me with the bodies of your precious family members.”
“Y-Yes….”
“To have Leinrant personally look after our son, it is nothing but an honor….”
Young Master Klein stepped forward first to pay his respects to the bereaved families waiting for the carried bodies, and showed them the bodies first.
“Ahh…!”
Clad in pure white burial shrouds, with peaceful expressions as if asleep.
Lying there with their hands clasped together, they looked less like the dead and more like people who had simply fallen into sleep.
“Y-Young Master…!”
As he turned his gaze back toward the families who had confirmed the bodies, a group of knights called out to Klein with trembling voices.
“What is it? Is there a problem with the bodies….”
“No, that’s not it.”
Answering Klein’s question, the knights once more looked at the body of their comrade lying there in full uniform.
It was certainly a comrade who had taken a blow to the head from an Undead’s iron fist.
They had seen it with their own eyes—the head crushed to the point that one could not even bear to touch it….
“All of this…. You restored it by hand?”
A comrade’s face so neatly arranged that there was no sense of difference from when he had been alive.
Only then did their eyes catch sight of Klein’s hands, swollen and roughened from long hours of work.
“Kh…!”
Unable to endure their reddening eyes, some of the knights hurriedly turned their heads away.
“Th-Thank you…!”
Some knights ultimately failed to contain the emotions surging up inside them and, shedding tears, grasped Klein’s hands.
That Leinrant, the object of their long-standing loyalty, personally prepared the bodies and saw them off at the end.
As knights, as those who had guarded the Wall.
What praise could possibly surpass this?
Fwoosh—!
After the final farewell, the bodies were laid atop the piles of firewood stacked by the families’ hands, and were sent up toward the sky.
The fifteen bodies carried by the Watchers’ hands were laid side by side upon the wood, and the Necromancer who governed the return of souls inscribed runes of repose upon their bodies.
[Guide, Klein Leinrant illuminates the path ahead of those who depart.]
Along with a short incantation, a blue light settled upon their bodies.
[The lives they lived with all their strength become the support of those left behind, and the send-off of those who remain becomes the wings of those who depart.]
At those words as the signal, knights holding torches set fire to the wood.
[I pray with all my soul and devotion that your journey toward the sky be peaceful.]
Beginning from a small spark, the flames gradually grew larger.
As if the reality of parting had finally sunk in, the cries of those left behind filled the Wall to the brim.
“Whew…!”
The flames bearing the departing bodies surged up toward the sky.
As everyone bowed their heads, immersed in grief.
Only Klein raised his head and looked at the sky, and after watching the fifteen souls heading heavenward with a clear expression, he finally let out a sigh of relief.
“I don’t know how I should thank you.”
Beside such a Klein, what was heard was the voice of Knight Commander Korax.
“There’s nothing to thank me for.”
Klein, unable to hide his fatigue as if he had not rested for a week, replied while looking at the sky.
“This is what we do anyway.”
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