episode_0021

It wasn’t difficult to guess the men’s identity: ‘Secret Police’ from the Secret State Police Bureau of the SS State Security Department.

They were the kind of people who wouldn’t hesitate to commit all sorts of illegal and dirty deeds to maintain the Germania Duchy’s regime.

However, there was no need to panic.

Amidst that, what filled my mind was only what posture I should assume to greet them.

Should I perch on the windowsill? Or just stand? Wouldn’t it look uncool if they burst in and I was already standing there waiting? It’s not like I’m waiting for roll call or anything.

Striking a pose and waiting like a villain was not as easy as I thought.

So I stopped thinking and just sat on the bed, lighting a cigarette.

Bang!

As if on cue, they burst in, kicking the door open with both feet. Feigning nonchalance, I asked back:

“…What’s going on?”

“We are the Secret State Police of Germania.”

One man said in an intimidating voice, with a sneer full of malice.

“We received a report that some suspicious-looking individuals are staying here.”

“You’ll have to come with us for a moment.”

Behind them stood an old woman, bewildered and at a loss. I remained seated, silently looking at her. It was then.

“Ugh, what’s going on…?”

Alice, who should have been tucked away in the closet, crawled out awkwardly, rubbing her eyes like a child, unable to resist her sleepiness.

“Ugh, a walking cherry pie…? …Can I eat it?”

“Wait.”

To her, that looked like a cherry pie. Dumbfounded, I stopped her and spoke, intending to test the old woman there.

“Did you sell us out to the Secret Police?”

“Oh, no! This is…”

“This is your last chance, Madam Hella. You know better than anyone what fate these young people will meet under the Duchy’s Secret Police Law.”

“Really… are you going to be satisfied by dragging innocent young people into this and sacrificing them? They haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You brought this upon yourself, Madam.”

“Again, this old woman… because of this old woman.”

The old woman could not continue speaking and fell silent.

Soon enough, one Secret Police officer strode toward us. I restrained Aria, who was about to act from beside me, and continued to keep silent.

It was then.

Just as the suit-clad Secret Police officer was about to grab me by the collar, a spine-chilling cold ran down my spine.

Along with it, the stench of rotting corpses assailed my nose.

A nauseating smell of death. It wasn’t my doing. I hadn’t done anything.

“—Huh?”

The suit-clad Secret Police officer couldn’t understand what had happened. Nor could he possibly understand.

The man’s large, burly hand suddenly became wrinkled and covered in age spots.

A hand rapidly aging, as if his biological clock was being rapidly rewound.

The sudden aging didn’t stop there.

In an instant, his entire body became a mass of wrinkles, covered in age spots and freckles. Even after his hair fell out and his back hunched, turning him into a bent old man, the clock’s merciless hands did not stop.

Only after his flesh rotted and decayed, and his bare bones crumbled, did it end, with dust of bones scattering.

“H-Hella, Madam! You, what are you doing—.”

The remaining man raised his voice, but it didn’t last long.

The mercilessly accelerating clock of life also mercilessly harvested the youth of the man standing there. Following his youth, his remaining lifespan, and after his remaining lifespan, even the share of death and decay, all without exception, ravenously.

“Yes, maybe you’re right.”

High-tier Necromancy: .

The harvested crop of youth and life was there.

“…That I was never going to die a peaceful death anyway.”

There was no longer an old woman facing the twilight of her life. Instead, there was a young, youthful-looking girl, who seemed even younger than Alice.

About half of her face and body were terribly mangled and scarred, along with burning burns.

The Necromancer girl named Hella, the goddess of the underworld ruling over the dead in Norse mythology.

“You guys… aren’t you surprised?”

“It’s not the first time we’ve seen a Necromancer.”

I replied as if it were someone else’s business, with a cigarette dangling from my lips. Aria and Alice, guarding my side, were no different.

“Oh, Grandma! You got younger than Alice! From now on, Alice is the older sister! Right?!”

“—What you see on the surface isn’t everything, little tomboy.”

“Hmph, tsk-tsk. A young-looking one being so impolite! You should call me Alice Unnie!”

“…”

In front of Alice, who was bouncing around excitedly as if she had found a new friend, the former ‘Madam Hella’ continued speaking in a dumbfounded voice.

“I thought you were strangely out of the ordinary from the moment you first came to my house.”

—having become a new person with completely changed speech and voice.

“Who are you really? Surely you’re not—.”

Before long, the girl’s cold hostility and wariness were directed at us.

“I’m looking for someone.”

I answered, shaking my head, stating my purpose for coming to this city.

“Looking for someone?”

“When I last heard, he was running a bakery on this street—.”

By the time I arrived, it seemed to have already closed down, having disappeared long ago. So I was staying longer, looking for other information or clues to investigate.

“You guys…”

And that clue could be found closer than I thought.

“What else do you know about him?”

“That he’s the nameless hero of this country.”

A hero. To the people of this world, that word held special meaning. Indeed, is there any world where heroes aren’t special?

That nameless hero was one of the ‘protagonists of the previous work’ I was looking for in this city.

When I played the previous work, he was a bakery NPC I encountered in a small town in the Germania Duchy.

That seemingly ordinary bakery NPC, during conversation, had an Easter egg with seemingly significant dialogue, implying he was ‘the hero of the previous work.’ In order, he would be the protagonist of the work before the previous one.

—after completing his heroic mission, becoming an ordinary person found anywhere and living his daily life.

I came here using that information as a clue. However, when I arrived, the bakery had long since disappeared.

Just as I was wondering if I’d have to leave empty-handed, the clue didn’t break, but miraculously continued.

“That’s surprising, that there’s still someone who remembers him. What’s your relationship?”

“An old comrade. We had adventures together.”

I gave a vague answer. In a way, it wasn’t a lie.

At least until I got the information I needed, it didn’t seem beneficial to reveal our identities.

“How about you? How do you know him? Do you know him?”

“Well, he’s my—.”

Hella answered. It was as she was about to answer.

Thud!

The entire ground we were standing on began to tremble violently.

As if an earthquake had occurred—. No, it really is an earthquake.

With the shaking of the trembling ground, the floor beneath our feet on the second story completely collapsed.

“Gasp?!”

Panicking, Alice’s Gothic dress fluttered wildly as she stood there.

Unlike Aria and me, who hastily assumed a fall-breaking posture, Hella caught her as she tumbled to the first floor with a thump.

“Be careful, little one!”

“Hmph, tsk! I told you Alice is the older sister! You rude one!”

The earthquake’s repercussions didn’t end with the second floor collapsing and falling, just as Alice’s chatter didn’t.

Rip, crack!

Needless to say, the house was collapsing. The entire ground in the area was cracking, bursting, and breaking apart like a turtle’s shell.

At first, I thought someone had used an area-of-effect spell to cause an earthquake, like . It wasn’t.

‘—.’

Even the destruction that caused an earthquake and razed the area to the ground was merely an incidental effect of this magic.

Destruction descended upon a peaceful border town deep in the night. Disregarding the screams and horrors echoing everywhere, something writhed beyond the broken and cracked crevices of the earth.

They were the dead. I instinctively knew from the number of the dead and the armaments they wore.

—Highest-tier Necromancy: .

Innumerable dead were crawling up from the cracked crevices of the underworld.

—as if returning from the depths of hell.

“H-how—.”

Hella spoke in a trembling voice, a voice of bewilderment that clearly couldn’t hide her agitation.

Being unleashed right here and now, the highest-tier area-of-effect Necromancy: .

Because there was only one way to ‘acquire’ that technique.

“My hidden .”

And that’s not all that’s written in that book.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find it? Hella, former Senior Leader.”

“Colonel Hydra Waltz…”

At the same time, a voice was heard, blatantly, along with a presence that didn’t even try to hide itself.

“Actually, quite some time has passed since I found this. A very, very long time ago, indeed.”

“Then why on earth—.”

“Why did I do it, you ask?”

A man in an SS military uniform appeared in the pandemonium, smiling jovially.

Disregarding the screams of people echoing everywhere, he walked with an overly relaxed gait.

“Precisely for this day.”

“What did you say?”

“This day, that is. The day you killed two Secret Police officers and betrayed your homeland with your own hands.”

The man spoke as if he had been waiting.

“By the way, that the trigger happened to be—a few unknown young people renting the room upstairs. You’ve become very soft.”

The situation unfolded smoothly, as if on cue, just as he said. Unable to comprehend the situation, Hella asked again, repeating the same words like a parrot.

“Why on earth…?”

“Because I wanted to see it. Ah! And I was curious how much longer you could endure and hold out. A scholar’s curiosity, you could say.”

The man in the SS military uniform continued speaking, unconcerned.

“How much more you could endure, stubbornly holding out, sacrificing your everything, again and again.”

It was a distorted smile, more twisted with sadism than ever before.

Seeing that smile, Hella realized.

Everything she had endured until now, the pain she had tolerated, and all the constant torment inflicted upon herself, was not for an answer.

The act was merely sadism, carried out to torment her.

“Enduring and enduring like that, until finally tolerating even becoming a traitor to your homeland and abandoning your everything.”

—.

“When you abandon even your own family and realize that your resolve and determination to throw away your everything was all a useless waste—.”

The man laughed, spreading his arms, surrounded by a considerable number of Waffen-SS soldiers. As their name implied, they were not just ordinary soldiers.

—the immortal army boasted by the nation of necromancy and military dictatorship—.

Also known as the .

“Because I wanted to see your face when that last hope completely crumbled.”

The leader of the Duchy’s top elite necromancer organization, Vulture, who commanded them, smiled faintly.

—along with the female knight silently guarding his side, clad in black, dark armor.