Ch.196War (4)

Thus, immediately after beheading the Death Knight who was the former Baron Lur, the undead soldiers formed by ‘event recreation’ dissolved into black dust and disappeared, just as the bishop and I had predicted.

The sight of countless undead that had filled my entire field of vision evaporating and collapsing in an instant was truly something to behold.

The spectacle of black powder or dust scattering in all directions was truly apocalyptic in nature.

“….Wow.”

“What a magnificent sight….indeed! Sir Alzar!”

Even Hannah, whose tastes were peculiar to the point of being bizarre, stood in awe holding a skull that was crumbling and dispersing into black dust.

Of course, this apocalyptic atmosphere completely vanished once all the remaining undead disappeared as if they had never existed in the first place.

“….Let’s head back.”

“”””Yes!””””

As I, who had no desire to linger in this environment of swirling black dust, gradually began to leave, the “Baron Lur’s Counterattack” incident seemed to be concluding splendidly with the success of our beheading operation.

….That is, if we exclude the aftermath cleanup work that followed.

“Acting Baron, I’ll leave this matter to you.”

“Yes! Sir Alzar!”

Of course, I—being utterly useless in this kind of work, nothing more than a sack of barley taking up space—pretended to be “a superior who trusts and relies on his subordinates” and thus legitimately passed off the work.

Well, despite being the lord’s son, I actually had no legal authority to handle this matter anyway.

In any case, after conveniently delegating the miscellaneous tasks, I decided to stay at least until the minimal cleanup was complete. It was then that I received an unexpected harvest from the cavalry reconnaissance team.

“Sir Alzar? I have something to present to you.”

“….To me?”

“Yes. It’s the ‘journal’ of the cultist necromancer you defeated. The analysis and purification work has already been completed, so it should be given to you as ‘spoils of war.'”

“I understand, Acting Lord.”

What the Acting Lord handed over as spoils was the necromancer’s journal. Legally, it would normally become my property, but since it had belonged to a cultist, it was delivered to me only after undergoing purification.

Particularly, the fact that a cultist’s possession was being passed to an individual suggested there was little chance of any problems, so I relaxed a bit and began to carefully read through this so-called necromancer’s journal….

‘….This person is completely insane, isn’t he?’

The contents of this journal, meticulously filled with diary entries and various stories by someone diligent in all the wrong ways, were each so absurd that I couldn’t help but grimace.

First of all, this necromancer whom I had eliminated first to remove variables was actually a 33-year-old female necromancer, despite her decayed appearance resembling a bald skull with just a layer of skin draped over it.

She was originally the daughter of a knight who had been Baron Lur’s close associate and notorious for exploiting the common people. After the baron was subjugated, she fled with her father and his associates.

During this time, her father, the knight, subjected her to various forms of “education,” one of which involved idolizing the deceased Baron Lur and gaslighting his magically talented daughter.

In fact, the knight’s attempts were successful; reading the book reveals that this necromancer suffered from cognitive dissonance to the point of regarding Baron Lur as some kind of messiah descended to the mortal world.

But this gaslighting backfired when the woman eventually questioned what her father had been doing while Baron Lur was being killed. After obtaining the secrets of necromancy, she began to truly lose her mind.

At the age of 17, she sacrificed all her family members except her father, awakening as an unusually powerful intermediate necromancer.

Later, she subdued her aging father and committed a “taboo” to raise her rank at the cost of soul damage, then formulated a plan to resurrect the former Baron Lur through research…. Could anyone consider this normal?

What’s even more absurd is that from the moment that creature appeared, one could say her plan had succeeded.

Necromancy in this world means not only the art of controlling the dead but also “spirit summoning”—the technique of calling forth ghosts. In fact, this meaning is closer to the original etymology.

As a result, what this necromancer planned was to use her father’s intermediate body as a foundation to summon and possess it with Baron Lur’s soul.

She originally wanted to resurrect the corpse directly but filled several pages with curses because the body had been lost. Reading this made my skin crawl and my whole body shiver.

Anyway, after devising this evil plan, she attempted to summon a spirit from the land beyond to possess the body….

‘….Failed? Then what was that thing?’

While suppressing the goosebumps rising on my skin at the sight of an entire page covered with nothing but the word “failed,” I suddenly had this thought.

Did this person… as an actual summoning school mage, not even consider the possibility of failure?

Indeed. The difficulty of summoning—precisely extracting and calling forth a soul from the afterlife into reality—is neither easy nor simple.

Forcibly bringing a soul of unknown location into the material world is practically as foolish as searching for a needle in a desert.

That’s why summoners typically choose the deceased’s original body to increase specificity—essentially bringing along a giant magnet to help locate the soul they wish to summon….

Frankly speaking, what are the chances of success without any such aids?

No matter how many attempts, the experimental cases were consistently marked as failures, with at best only minor spirits entering. Yet if a fanatical follower gave up at this point, they could hardly be called truly insane.

Indeed, a genuine fanatic born from cognitive dissonance and contradictory thinking doesn’t surrender so easily.

The oppressive self-identity completed through self-brainwashing rather than genuine faith reached a bizarre conclusion: if summoning was impossible, then simply create Baron Lur by modifying a summoned soul….

‘….Then what was that creature originally?’

Since there were no further details, I couldn’t tell whether she actually succeeded in soul modification or later managed to complete a summoning, but either way, this was definitely someone I wanted nothing to do with.

In any case, having somehow created this undead that believed itself to be Baron Lur, she meticulously set things in motion for this self-proclaimed “revenge.”

The preparation of living sacrifices for the necromancer’s secret art of “event recreation.” Various high-grade catalysts prepared solely to reinforce the fake Baron Lur’s mind.

By this point, it’s clear that even she must have known what she was doing was wrong, but her reactions suggest she was desperately trying to ignore this awareness.

Despite knowing she was heading down a wrong and twisted path, she seemed to have no knowledge of any alternative, gradually approaching her own destruction….

Honestly, this process felt uncomfortably familiar to me in many ways, leaving me with complex emotions.

As a bonus, something sticky and unpleasant clung to my mind, similar to the feeling of watching social commentary that hits too close to home.

I seem to have been exposed to cases of cult victimization on YouTube in my previous life, but encountering it for real was more than enough to make me feel disgusted.

※ ※ ※

Ah, and this is just a side note….

‘….What is this?’

While reading through the journal, I discovered something anomalous scattered throughout the book.

“Sponsor…?”

Throughout the journal, there were occasional mentions of this necromancer receiving help from someone called a “sponsor,” but without any proper details, I couldn’t confirm anything beyond the existence of some shadowy figure.

So, after pondering what might be happening, what finally caught my eye was a description of this “sponsor.”

The sponsor described in the journal was a woman with long hair, wearing an old-fashioned black dress and clothing in a classical style.

The journal particularly noted her black hair with a faint purple tint that had apparently made an impression….

But I couldn’t hide my exasperation at this all-too-familiar description.

‘….You again?’

My life’s worst nuisance, now beyond the point of familiarity and into the realm of exasperation.

It was almost certainly “Gluttony” who had supported this necromancer, despite being a demon who should have the worst possible relationship with necromancers and undead.