Ch.67Past Stories: Christine Hildegard – 3

“You wretch, what nonsense are you spouting!”

“Nonsense? Do I look like I’m talking nonsense right now?”

Those narrowly opened eyes stared directly at the Pope. The Pope hesitated momentarily under that gaze, but soon issued orders in desperation.

“Kill him! Kill him, I say! What are you all waiting for? Attack him now!”

The Pope’s word was absolute. Even amid this chaos, the high priests approached the boy, summoning holy power from their bodies to obey the command.

The boy watched the priests drawing closer but didn’t move. He showed no particular reaction.

He simply, quietly, said just one thing.

“Touch me and you die.”

The boy’s finger was suddenly pointing at the Pope.

“Not me. You.”

“…!”

The priests’ reaction was almost instinctual.

As soon as those words fell, they blocked the Pope with their bodies, quickly surrounding themselves with holy power to form a human shield.

From behind the meat shield of humans, the Pope screamed.

“How dare someone like you think you can kill me! Even if the king of this country came, he couldn’t do it! I am the Pope of the Holy Church!”

Well, Charlotte would tear you to shreds with a single gesture.

The boy thought this but didn’t bother saying it aloud. There was no need to provide clues about his relationship with Charlotte.

Besides, it was true that the boy couldn’t kill the Pope anyway.

What he’d just said was all bluff. Yet that bluff had worked perfectly on the Pope, who was now hiding behind his human shield of high priests while running his mouth.

“If you don’t believe me, try it.”

The boy drove in the final nail with those words and walked toward Christine.

As he was about to place his hand on her heart, he hesitated momentarily at the sight of those ample symbols of motherhood.

It wasn’t that he felt any sexual desire. He just wondered what those people hiding and panicking behind him might think.

After hesitating, the boy finally placed his hand on her chest. The soft mass of fat enveloped his palm. Ignoring the sensation as best he could, he pressed his hand deeper.

The thump, thump of a heartbeat transmitted through his palm.

He synchronized with her heartbeat.

He closed his eyes. The boy’s heart and Christine’s heart gradually began to beat at the same pace. Contracting at the same time, expanding at the same time.

He aligned the sensation felt in his own heart with the sensation felt in his palm.

The boy drew mana from his body.

More precisely, he tried to draw it. The mana that was about to flow through the mana circuit returned to his heart due to the circuit that began repairing itself as soon as it was damaged.

With the mana needed to construct magic dissipating, any normal spell would have failed at this point.

But for the boy, that was enough. This wasn’t magic that required mana anyway. He just needed the process of drawing mana.

The boy’s hand rested on Christine’s heart. Literally, on her heart.

At a glance, it looked as if his hand had penetrated her chest, yet no blood flowed. The boy’s hand and Christine’s heart—two objects that should never overlap—were overlapping.

The two hearts synchronized their beats. Listening to that sound, the boy quietly activated his magic.

Soul Binding.

A technique that binds two souls together, achieving unity.

Once merged, souls can never return to their original state, making this ancient magic forbidden even among magicians, to the point where the casting method itself was eventually forgotten.

And as is often the case with ancient magic, the boy retained the casting method in his mind.

Though it was impossible to use, few magicians could match the boy in terms of pure knowledge.

The reason Soul Binding was considered taboo among ancient magicians was simple. Once souls achieved unity, they would forever cease to exist as separate entities.

The human body is like a vessel containing the pure water of the soul, and Soul Binding magic is like pouring water from two vessels onto a single plate to merge them.

Then, could water that has been combined be perfectly restored to its original state?

Even if one were to divide the water appropriately and return it to the vessels, it could never be exactly the same as before.

Once two liquids are mixed, it becomes impossible to distinguish between them.

That’s why reversing soul binding was impossible.

The essence of souls is perfectly identical in all humans. The moment that essence is mixed, the distinction between the two souls disappears, ultimately resulting in the death of both.

Except for the boy.

The boy’s ultra-regeneration ability was powerful enough to restore even the essence of the soul to its original state.

Powerful enough to draw out only the water that had been in a specific vessel from a plate where waters had mixed.

The souls began to squirm and merge. The boy’s body glowed with a transparent light. Though contradictory, there was no other way to describe it.

Something completely transparent soon began to emit light from Christine’s body as well.

“What are they doing? Go stop them!”

At the Pope’s command, the high priests rushed forward. Though they didn’t know what was happening, they thought they could separate the two who appeared so defenseless.

The high priests approached right behind the boy with holy power surrounding them and placed their hands on his shoulders.

And died instantly.

The Pope was shocked to see the priests lose their lives in an instant. He couldn’t even guess what method had been used.

The priests’ souls had evaporated in the light emitted during the soul binding, but the Pope had no way of knowing this.

A twitch. Part of the unified soul pulsated slightly. The small pulsation became a massive tremor, vibrating and shaking the merged souls unsteadily.

Soon, the transparent light leaking from the boy’s body disappeared, and the boy, his soul completely “restored,” opened his eyes.

“Shit.”

And cursed.

“You bastard, what the hell did you do to her?”

The boy got up and strode toward the Pope. Dry dust scattered with each step.

The Pope instinctively backed away as this figure approached—someone who hadn’t died despite weeks of attempts to kill him, who had survived a holy explosion unscathed, who might be hiding unknown powers, and who had just killed high priests the moment they touched his shoulders.

“I restored her soul, but something else is completely messed up? Did you cast some mind control magic on her? Because I can’t explain it otherwise.”

“You dare use such blasphemous language! Do you not fear divine punishment?”

“Divine punishment? Ha, what bullshit. If divine punishment really existed, I’d have been dead long ago, you fat pig.”

The boy grabbed the collar of the Pope, who had fallen backward while retreating.

“I know your ears are clogged with fat, but listen carefully. I’ll only say this once.”

Cold eyes met the Pope’s.

“I have great expectations for her. I was hoping that perhaps this saint could kill me. But whatever you did to her, even Soul Binding couldn’t completely fix it.”

“Fix? What do you—”

“Who told you to talk back?”

Slap. The boy struck the Pope’s cheek.

“If she stays broken like this and I can’t die, know that you won’t die peacefully either. I’ll start by extracting enough fat from your body to make two people, then we’ll see.”

Having finished speaking, the boy released the Pope’s collar. The massive body fell backward with a thud.

Trembling, the Pope summoned his holy power and disappeared somewhere in a mass of white light.

The boy looked contemptuously at the spot where the Pope had vanished, then immediately turned his attention to Christine.

He approached Christine, who lay limp on the ground, knelt on one knee, and carefully cradled her body.

Perhaps he had been too hasty, fearing he might miss his opportunity. The boy took a deep breath to calm his emotions.

He had become overly excited because the Soul Binding hadn’t worked properly.

Generally, Soul Binding was essentially an instant death spell that killed two people outright. The combined souls couldn’t properly return to either person.

It ultimately killed both the caster and the recipient.

However, for someone like the boy who could perfectly restore souls, the situation was somewhat different.

The mixed souls would separate again, becoming identical in the process.

During this process, the soul’s essence would align with the boy’s, and when returning to their respective bodies, their talents would be maximized.

Although the boy couldn’t properly utilize this due to his ultra-regeneration ability, the other person could.

This was what “Awakening” meant.

Of course, this method didn’t work for just anyone.

Ordinary people couldn’t withstand the process and would die, and even fairly strong individuals would be crushed by their suddenly enhanced abilities and permanently go berserk.

Only an extremely rare few, like Charlotte, who could be called geniuses of the century by their mere existence, could endure it.

But Christine’s mind rejected the Awakening.

While the mind is generally subordinate to the soul, in Christine’s case, the soul was subordinate to the mind. And the cause was her nearly broken mental state.

Even for the boy, this situation was a first-time experience.

Therefore, he was anxious at the thought that Christine might die like this, and he would lose a precious genius without even getting to attempt suicide.

After some time passed, Christine slowly opened her eyes. Black eyes and yellow eyes met each other.

Whew. The boy sighed in relief and was about to ask if she was alright.

“I had a dream.”

“…A dream?”

Christine spoke first. Her voice was drenched in ecstasy. Her yellow pupils grew moist.

“A very long dream.”

Delicate fingers gently grasped the boy’s hand.

And slowly, her eyes began to change. The light disappeared from her yellow eyes, replaced by viscous emotion.

“But I… no, this lamb has found it.”

The boy didn’t realize yet.

“…My God.”

That the Soul Binding magic had not failed.