Ch.402Bloodstained Wrist

Ophelia’s laboratory had the same atmosphere as always.

That is, drugs were being cultivated on one side, various creatures’ internal organs were displayed on the opposite side, and on the table was a small Isabella… no, what is that?

“Hieek… hieeeek…! I will… aaaaargh! I will definitely… heurgh! Kill you…!”

The small Isabella’s condition was completely different from usual.

From her head to upper body, she maintained the human form as always, but below the waist was attached to an insect body resembling an ant, not a human.

Moreover, she was continuously laying pale eggs from her rear end.

With each egg that popped out, her eyes rolled back, suggesting she was feeling extreme pain due to heightened sensitivity.

“…What is this?”

The conversation she wanted to have with me couldn’t possibly be about showing me this, right?

It’s satisfying but also quite disgusting.

“Ah, don’t worry about that. I was experimenting to see what kind of offspring would be born and whether power restoration was possible when I temporarily restored reproductive abilities.”

Ophelia calmly brushed back her hair and used tweezers to transfer the eggs Isabella had laid into a small glass tube.

“Power restoration sounds like a dangerous experiment.”

I was able to defeat Isabella because I had means to counter her powers.

In other words, without such means, who knows what disaster might occur if Isabella’s powers were restored.

“I understand your concern, but there’s no need to worry. The probability of power restoration was only about 1% to begin with, and if there had been even the slightest mana reaction, I would have immediately triggered self-destruction. The experiment itself is already over, and what you see now is just being left there until disposal.”

“I see. That’s a relief. Still, I’d appreciate it if you could be more careful in the future. There’s always the possibility of unexpected situations.”

I’ve seen plenty of people who would argue that a 1% chance is worth taking.

“Alright. As an employee, I should follow the instructions of the person who pays my salary. I’ll refrain from conducting overly dangerous research.”

Ophelia nodded rather readily.

The employee comment was probably made half-jokingly, but having said she would exercise restraint, she likely wouldn’t go back on her word.

—-

“So, if you didn’t call me here to show me that, why did you call me?”

I leaned against a desk in one corner of the laboratory, whistling mockingly in time with Isabella’s groans as she labored to give birth.

Isabella looked like she had many choice words she wanted to say, but every time she opened her mouth, her ovipositor opened as well, leaving her too busy screaming to curse.

Magic related to me…

I do have some idea what this might be about.

“That thing on your wrist. I want to talk about that seal. You said you got it from some dungeon before, right?”

Ophelia pointed at my wrist with the tip of her mana herb, her eyes sparkling.

So it was about this seal after all.

Among all my equipment and abilities, this is the only one deeply connected to magic.

Since I don’t know the proper way to use it, I’ve been forcibly activating it using the power of murder karma rather than mana.

Whether due to the murder karma or something else, the flame’s color is dark red, and once it ignites, it won’t extinguish naturally, which makes it quite useful in its own way.

“Yes. I got it from inside a dungeon in the Carmine Forest, in what was presumed to be an ancient temple. Lacy mentioned it was related to an old god called Alfodhr… though I don’t know the details.”

“Alfodhr… Alfodhr… That’s not a name I’ve heard before. What kind of god was it?”

Ophelia also seemed unfamiliar with the name Alfodhr.

I’m not sure if she’s unfamiliar with ancient god worship in general, or if she knows the deity by a different name.

“Apparently a war god worshipped by the ancient Dane people, with a possibility of being the same deity as the ancient god Wodanaz.”

Personally, I’m convinced they’re the same god.

“Ah, so it was an ancient god. Is that what they called it in Dane…?”

Ophelia nodded as if understanding.

It seems she was at least familiar with the concept of ancient gods.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the ancients called their gods isn’t important. Let’s get back to the main point. About that seal, you said there were three more besides the one you have, right?”

“That’s right.”

One seal was already empty when I found it, possibly used by the Deathknight, and the other two seals might have been crushed when the dungeon collapsed.

“Then, were those four really all there were?”

Ophelia approached me, grabbed my arm, and gently stroked the seal on my wrist while smiling.

“…Well, I wouldn’t know.”

I don’t think there would be similar ruins elsewhere.

If similar ruins had been discovered elsewhere, it would have caused a commotion long ago.

“Really? I think I know. The recent noble assassin incident, the Dane magician unit you told me about, and… the documents I personally researched to identify the nature of that seal—when I put it all together, there’s only one answer.”

Ophelia grinned, released my wrist, stepped back a couple of paces, and sat down in a chair.

“From what I can see, it’s already a complete magical artifact, just with a different system from our magic.”

She looked at my seal with her rainbow-like gem eyes and used her mana herb to draw a similar seal in the air.

Whether it was just a prank or not, no flames appeared from her drawing.

“It was probably a commonly used technique at the time. It’s too efficient and refined to be a technique researched exclusively in a single ruin. If that’s the case… such items couldn’t possibly exist only in that one ruin, right?”

By this point, I could understand what she was getting at.

The fire seal engraved on me.

Because of the unique circumstances in which I obtained it, I had thought it was a special reward only available from that place… but according to Ophelia’s reasoning, the opposite was more likely.

“So I’ve been researching pre-Carlos the Great era history whenever I could… and when you mentioned Dane training thousands of magicians, it clicked. That’s logically impossible. Magic is a discipline that one cannot even begin without innate talent, and even if you gathered all the mana-sensitive individuals in the world, you couldn’t reach numbers in the thousands.”

“So, the method Dane people used to train magicians…”

“Exactly. It would be similar to your method. I don’t know where or how they found it, but they discovered it. The method to artificially engrave that seal.”

Ophelia deeply inhaled the smoke from her mana herb before exhaling it again.

As the conversation became more serious than I expected, I stopped mocking Isabella with my whistling and lit a cigarette to calm my uneasiness.

“Of course, there must be limitations I’m unaware of. If they could produce unlimited numbers of people wielding magic at the level of your flames without restrictions, they would have invaded the Empire or Ka’har long ago. Considering how quickly the assassin rampaging in the capital was subdued, even if they use the same method as you, their power might be much weaker. If only we could have secured the corpse, we could have obtained more detailed information…”

So even with the same seal, the power itself could differ?

Well, a thousand magic warriors using karma flames would be more than enough to turn the Empire into a sea of fire.

The fact that they resorted to methods like the Triple Alliance suggests that this seal magic also has some kind of limitation.

It might be difficult to increase its power… or there might be a limit to the number of magicians they can train.

“Still, considering the information we just obtained, we can form a hypothesis. You mentioned an incredibly dense concentration of blood with a skull floating in it, right? And you found the seal in ruins related to an ancient god. Then… perhaps human sacrifice is required to increase its power?”

“…Human sacrifice?”

That’s a disturbing, even chilling term.

“Yes. The ancient god Wodanaz was known to favor human sacrifice. Your seal might have been created through the sacrifice of hundreds of people… that would make everything fit together.”

So she’s saying that what’s engraved on my wrist now is a seal created by sacrificing hundreds of people.

Honestly, it gives me the chills.

First the power of murder karma obtained by killing thousands, and now magical power created by sacrificing hundreds of people.

“Anyway, you said you don’t know how to properly use that seal, right? That you don’t know the activation words. But from what I know, the assassin who was eliminated recently was said to have recited some kind of strange incantation? If that was the activation word for the seal, it means the Dane people have knowledge about this. So, if we capture and interrogate a Dane magic warrior who uses fire magic, we might be able to learn how to use it.”

“That’s… certainly useful information. Though I can’t look into it right away.”

I need to leave for the Holy State now.

I don’t know when I’ll return to the Empire.

“I suppose not. And just in case, let me give you some advice: don’t use that power in the Holy State. Even though you said you’re activating it through a method other than mana, as you mentioned, it’s fundamentally likely to be a power related to ancient gods. If someone happens to recognize the true nature of that power, it could become a major problem.”

“Right, thanks for the advice.”

I hadn’t mentioned my seal to Lacy just in case, and it seems that was a good decision.

If this seal truly is a power obtained by sacrificing humans to ancient gods, merely possessing it would be enough to be branded a heretic.

As close as Lacy and I have become, she probably wouldn’t try to burn me at the stake, but she might at least want to cut the skin off my wrist.

—-

After finishing my conversation with Ophelia, I left a message for Demian and Millia, who were busy preparing, to meet me in front of the cathedral by noon tomorrow, and returned to the professor’s residence with Lena.

I needed to inform Nigel and Leonore about the trip to the Holy State as well.

As it happened, Leonore had just returned from monster subjugation.

“…So there were several undead creatures, but apart from one Deathknight, there weren’t any major threats. There were some injuries, but no casualties among the members.”

“It’s fortunate there were no casualties.”

Dealing with undead monsters is no easy task.

It must be thanks to Leonore’s hard fighting, but it seems the Rose Cross Knights were also more skilled than I had thought.

Afterward, I explained our upcoming schedule to Leonore and Nigel after they had bathed and changed into indoor clothes.

Leonore showed some reluctance at the mention of going to the Holy State, but indicated she would follow if that was what I wanted.

“Purification within the Holy State… First the southern region incident, and now this—you’ve been tasked with quite troublesome matters. I’ve been thinking, doesn’t it seem like all the world’s difficult tasks get pushed onto you, miss? Even ten bodies wouldn’t be enough, really.”

“I know… But what can we do? There isn’t a single human in the Empire stronger than me. So I have to handle it.”

I sighed as I responded to Leonore’s comment, and Nigel, who had been listening, offered words of comfort mixed with praise, saying I was truly an exemplary knight.

Unlike Leonore, Nigel had no major complaints about going to the Holy State.

While he was concerned about being so far from Landenburg, he said protecting Landenburg’s successor was just as important as protecting Landenburg itself.

Unlike before, when he would rush to the east whenever something happened there, now he seemed determined to act strictly as my bodyguard.

—-

The next morning.

Lena, Nigel, Leonore, and I took a carriage to the cathedral.

We spent time discussing future plans with Lacy, who was waiting for us, and all preparations were completed when Demian and Millia arrived around noon.

It was time to head to the Holy State.

And so, three carriages began moving west, passing through the capital’s gates.

Lacy, Bels, Lilliez.

Me, Leonore, Nigel, Demian, Millia, Lena.

Though we numbered only nine, with six master-level experts plus myself, we had enough strength to make mincemeat of any ordinary enemies.