Ch.558Meetings come with partings, as is the way of things.

Going down to Ophelia’s laboratory felt not much different from exploring an underground dungeon.

The strangely murky and damp air. The peculiar smell lingering in the air. The dim and gloomy atmosphere. It felt like a monster harboring infinite hatred toward the living could come crawling out with a shriek at any moment.

If I had brought priests with me, they would have tried to demolish this place the moment they saw the basement entrance, claiming it was undoubtedly a den of evil.

Perhaps Ophelia’s personality had deteriorated far worse than in the original work because she spent all day in such a gloomy place.

Even a normal person would emerge as a cave troll only knowing slaughter and destruction after a month in this environment.

Anyway, after passing through the sticky corridor to reach Ophelia’s laboratory, I noticed a wooden nameplate hanging on the doorknob.

No unauthorized entry. If you have business, announce yourself at the door.

– Ophelia van Sigmillus.

It wasn’t a nameplate but a warning. Moreover, some strange mana seemed to be flowing as if she had embedded magic stones into the door.

Well, it’s clear she had to take magical precautions to prevent servants and maids from entering freely, as they would certainly be horrified if they saw the inside of her laboratory.

“Ophelia—are you awake? Your employer is here—.”

After lightly knocking on the laboratory door while calling for Ophelia, I soon felt the magical energy flowing over the door disappear, and I began to sense movement from the other side.

“Come in. I’ve disabled the defensive magic.”

“What kind of magic was it?”

“Hmm? Lightning strike.”

Hearing Ophelia’s nonchalant response, I couldn’t help but hesitate for a moment as I reached for the doorknob.

I had thought it would be something that simply prevented the door from opening, or perhaps a spell that restrained anyone trying to enter, but in reality, she had cast a spell that could instantly kill an ordinary person.

“…There haven’t been any victims, right?”

I questioned Ophelia as I pulled the doorknob and entered the laboratory. If she had killed servants with unnecessarily powerful security magic, I would need to send her to Lacy to verify whether she had been corrupted by dark mana.

“There haven’t been any, so don’t worry. The only people who might die from lightning strikes would be employees, and anyone tactless enough to open a mage’s laboratory without permission wouldn’t be employed in a mansion like this in the first place. Don’t you agree?”

“Still, change it to non-lethal magic if you don’t want to have a meeting with the saint.”

Though in fact, she’s already having a meeting with the saint right now.

A saint conversing with a necromancer. Astraea, are you really okay with your saint doing this? Are you starting to regret bestowing your stigmata?

Of course, there was no answer from Astraea. She told me to do as I pleased, so I guess she really doesn’t care what I do.

“What a terrifying threat… Fine, fine.”

Sighing, Ophelia adjusted her slightly open robe and pulled out a long mana herb from between her breasts and put it in her mouth. She must also find the prospect of facing the saint quite uncomfortable.

“I’ll fix it appropriately. A mild fainting spell should be enough, right?”

“Yes. That would be fine.”

You should have done that from the beginning.

—-

While Ophelia was adjusting the magic on the entrance door, I leaned against the wall next to the door, smoking a cigarette and briefly surveying the laboratory.

Overall, not much had changed. Isabella was nowhere to be seen, and there was some unidentifiable monstrous creature in the tank placed in the center—that was the only difference.

“Hey, what the hell is that?”

It had the body of a thoroughly boiled fetus with a mantis-like face, resembled a lobster below the ribs, and had a colorful snake protruding like a tail in place of a spine.

Additionally, a pair of large centipedes substituted for where arms should be, and dozens of pairs of dragonfly-like compound eyes sprouted on its back. It was so grotesque it made me feel nauseated.

…This could easily pass for a monster.

What the hell has this woman created? Though it didn’t emit dark mana, anyone would mistake it for some kind of hybrid monster.

“Ah, that? Well, you see…”

Ophelia seemed to find it difficult to explain in detail, so she took a long drag from her mana herb and exhaled toward the air.

“What is it? Why can’t you speak?”

“Well… did I mention before? That I tried to probe Isabella’s soul to extract information from her. It seems I went a bit too far.”

Ophelia scratched her head and smiled awkwardly.

“…So, that’s… Isabella?”

I looked again at the monster floating in the tank. Now that I thought about it, it did indeed have an insect-like appearance overall.

“More precisely, it’s Isabella’s homunculus… I disturbed her mind too much, and the foundation of her soul completely collapsed. No matter what body I prepared, the moment I connected her soul, insects would emerge and distort it. So I just put it in preservative fluid to stabilize it. I would need your permission before disposing of it anyway.”

“Dispose of it?”

“It’s useless now anyway. I’ve extracted all the useful information, and even if I tried to continue the interrogation, her self and memories have completely collapsed, so she can only make insect noises.”

Ophelia shook her head, saying she was sorry but there was no other way.

…Right. It seemed the time had come to say goodbye to Isabella.

I hadn’t even gotten to know her well enough, and already we had to part ways. It was truly regrettable for me, as I had planned to torment her for at least ten years.

“Sigh… Alright. Let’s say we dispose of Isabella, what happens to her soul?”

“It depends on how we dispose of it. If we convert the broken soul entirely into mana and consume it, Isabella’s soul will completely cease to exist. If we just separate it from the soul stone, it will either fall to hell or into the hands of an evil god.”

So I had to choose between annihilation and the afterlife. If she fell to hell, that would be ideal, but I wasn’t keen on handing Isabella’s soul over to Lilith.

The beings called evil gods probably weren’t trustworthy enough to diligently care for their devoted followers… but just to be safe.

“What do you want to do?”

“Annihilation would be better. If I were Isabella, I think I’d find that more horrifying.”

My conclusion was to completely erase Isabella’s existence from this world. To prevent her from being resurrected from the afterlife or being reused by the evil god Lilith.

It’s better to erase something disturbing rather than just putting it away.

“Good. Then, I can dispose of this now.”

Ophelia grinned and infused mana into the surface of the tank while muttering an incomprehensible spell.

Then, the water in the tank began to boil, and Isabella’s body instantly started to rot and crumble. It was like watching the process of a living being returning to soil, accelerated a thousandfold.

“KEEEEEEEK!”

As if regaining consciousness, Isabella in the tank let out a truly insect-like scream and writhed, but with her body crumbling, melting, and disappearing, her struggles only looked ridiculous.

I hummed a tune to match Isabella’s screams while savoring the cigarette smoke.

“I’ll proceed with converting the soul into mana tomorrow. There are some items I need to prepare.”

“Alright. Report the results when you’re done.”

I silently bid farewell to the flesh turning to fragments before my eyes.

Goodbye, Isabella. Congratulations on your pathetic end like an insect.

I hope I never hear your name again.

—-

After completely dissolving Isabella’s homunculus, Ophelia laid out the information she had extracted from Isabella.

She said that while knowledge about magic would be meaningless to me, the other information would be extremely useful.

Perhaps feeling guilty about turning Isabella into unusable waste, she displayed an enthusiastic attitude like a thirty-year-old job seeker at an interview.

Indeed, the information she presented was quite valuable. Or rather, it would have been valuable.

“Collaborated with Feyrus, a necromancer who has lived for hundreds of years, to incite werebeasts and Ka’har… the revival of the dragon Nidhogg buried under the archipelago… tried to achieve transcendence using the dragon’s heart and the souls of the archipelago’s people…”

“What do you think? Aren’t these incredible pieces of information? Any single one could turn the Empire upside down. And since they were extracted by kneading her soul, there’s no possibility of lies, right?”

That’s probably true. But…

“These are almost all things I already knew…”

The information merely confirmed facts I had previously only suspected, but I already knew the general content.

Suspicions had turned into certainties, but… I hadn’t learned anything that could serve as a breakthrough in the current situation.

At best, the confirmation that Nidhogg was buried beneath the underground waterway as I had suspected, and the fact that Feyrus had deep enough connections with other races to mobilize their forces, might be helpful.

“No, you already knew? How is that possible?”

Did she think it was my excuse? Ophelia seemed quite surprised by my lukewarm reaction.

“Well… should I say I heard it from a dead spirit, just like you?”

I told Ophelia about my encounter with Rotholandus’s spirit, warning her not to spread this confidential information.

“…Is that even possible? An ancestral spirit warning about future crises—this isn’t some heroic fairy tale.”

Why not?

If we’re questioning what’s possible, how is it possible that the original work’s heroine has become an insane, psychopathic, incestuous rapist necromancer?

Compared to the gap between the original Ophelia and the woman before me, an ancestral ghost appearing to offer protection and warnings wasn’t particularly surprising.