Ch.875Letters

Due to Hersella’s excitement, Meiharin’s interrogation was postponed.

She mentioned something about needing careful management, unlike with Isabella who was completely broken. It made sense.

Even that terrible witch couldn’t last a year, so how would Meiharin be any different? If we handled her too roughly and broke her, we’d only be hurting ourselves.

“I’ll be going now. Please contact me when the separation work is complete. The sooner the better.”

“If everything goes as expected… it should take two days at the earliest, four at the latest. It might get complicated if there’s no difference in mana reactions.”

Ophelia answered while twirling her bright red curly hair with her fingertips.

Apparently, if there were differences in mana reactions, it would finish quickly, but if not, they’d have to try all sorts of methods.

Well, I wasn’t particularly worried. I was confident she’d handle it well. She wasn’t just any ordinary mage, but a genius necromancer. Surely she could manage this much.

—-

The results came three days later.

Early in the morning, a carriage arrived at the palace.

In the cargo hold of the carriage Ophelia sent were two coffins, containing the neatly arranged remains of Imelia de Median and Aishan-Gioro Amin.

Unfortunately, they weren’t in perfect condition.

The statement that Amin’s body had been reinforced with Imelia’s bones meant that the base of the ginger corpse was Amin’s body.

In other words, only the necessary parts were extracted from Imelia’s remains for attachment, and the rest were simply discarded.

[Mother…!]

Hersella trembled with anger and grief as she looked down at her mother’s remains, which consisted only of the spine, ribs, pelvis, and arm bones.

While the absence of leg bones was one thing, the missing skull seemed to particularly provoke her outrage.

In every culture around the world, the skull held incomparably greater significance than other bones.

In situations where recovering a complete body was difficult, people would at least try to retrieve the head for a proper funeral.

With the skull completely gone without a trace, how could our filial daughter Hersella not be beside herself with rage?

Considering Meiharin’s character, she would have had no qualms about tossing the unnecessary skull into a sewer or animal pen, and wherever it ended up, it would have been burned to ashes by now.

[Meiharin…! Indeed, that punishment was far from enough…!]

I could already hear it, as if it were playing out before me.

[I’ll bury you in the mud…! Your pride, your personality, even your mind and soul!]

The humiliating groans and screams of agony that Meiharin would let out for the rest of her life.

—-

Anyway, having received the remains, it was only right to properly lay them to rest. Hersella chose cremation over burial.

This was due to her anxiety that someone might try to use Imelia’s remains again someday, and because since the other parts had all been burned, these remains should be cremated as well.

It wasn’t a difficult request.

I manifested my Karma to burn Imelia’s remains to ashes, then placed the ashes in an urn and kept it in a corner of my bedroom.

Hersella would greet that urn morning and evening. Her devotion was truly remarkable.

What about Amin’s bones? Well, there was no value in keeping those. I ground them up and mixed them into dog food. The dogs seemed to enjoy the nutritional value.

After that, two weeks flew by like an arrow.

—-

Many things happened during that time.

More precisely, many letters were exchanged.

A couple of letters from Leopold, one from Knut. Even Faelrun sent a message. All with different contents.

First, Leopold, as expected, demanded an explanation for why I had accepted the Ka’har refugees as citizens.

He claimed it didn’t bother him personally, but the nobles were in an uproar.

I sent back a plan explaining that I intended to “westernize” them to stabilize the eastern border, along with high praise for the airship he had gifted me.

Firepower that could overwhelm even a hero under the right conditions. I praised its battlefield value as being greater than that of a hero.

When a woman known as the Empire’s Greatest Sword offered such praise, Leopold could certainly hold his head high for having actively promoted this project.

As if it were all thanks to his foresight.

And I wasn’t the only one singing its praises.

“Oh, the airship? I’m looking forward to it too. There’s still much to improve, but if those flaws can be fixed…”

Lacy seemed completely captivated by the airship’s potential.

She seemed to have forgotten the conflict between the Church and mages, as she had invested enormous funds in the Magic Tower under the pretext of research support.

And it wasn’t just financial support—she had meticulously written down requirements and improvement points.

The development of a magic engine that could withstand extreme cold environments.

The idea of having the gun barrel itself recoil to absorb the shock and minimize the hull’s shaking during bombardment.

The concept of carrying small, high-speed 1-3 person airships to counter enemies who could intercept airships, like winged Dragonborn or fairies riding spirits.

She was absolutely desperate to establish an aerial carrier fleet.

“Why not just pray for a miracle or divine power to make ships fly?”

I asked her that question.

If she could obtain such a miracle, she could operate an air strike force with the Church’s own power without relying on magic.

Both myself and the Empire were using mana lavishly out of necessity, but originally, mana was a power that shouldn’t be wasted carelessly.

There was a setting that the more mana was wasted, the more concentrated the dark mana permeating the world would become.

Meaning the frequency of monster appearances would increase.

“I pray every day. Elpinel hasn’t answered yet, though.”

She was already doing it.

Lacy smiled with a regretful expression. I shrugged, offering comfort that Elpinel surely understood her heart.

While swallowing my inner thought: how could she call herself the goddess of the sky but not grant a single miracle of flight?

—-

Knut’s letter clearly reflected his personality—getting straight to the point without any diplomatic rhetoric.

The first part expressed gratitude for returning the slaves who had been captured by the Ka’har, and the latter part was his answer to my previous proposal about abandoning the Volberg faith.

Give us time.

That was Knut’s answer in a nutshell.

Suddenly prohibiting the worship of Volberg, which was essentially the national faith of the Dane people, would only cause riots, so they needed a long time to gradually change the people’s consciousness.

The intelligence in the explanation suggested it wasn’t Knut’s own opinion, but probably advice from Frigg or Heirek that he was simply relaying.

/For now, we’re encouraging conversion to the Church of Astraea. The idea of wielding a sword for justice isn’t a foreign concept to Dane warriors./

That was written in the latter part. He planned to spread the fame of the goddess Astraea widely among the Dane people who were reluctant to accept any god other than Volberg, in order to convert them.

I was curious about what methods they were using, and it turned out to be quite interesting.

They were spreading a story about an evil monster that ate Dane people being enlightened by the goddess of justice, repenting for its sins, and then fighting other monsters to atone, eventually being hailed as a hero.

It was a plan devised by Heirek himself, using the power of the intelligence department to spread it not only through minstrels’ songs but also as novels and children’s fairy tales.

‘…This story sounds strangely familiar?’

[It’s our story. More precisely, yours and mine. Those guys are really doing unnecessary things.]

That’s right. It was an adaptation of my story into lyrics.

Perhaps to reduce the listeners’ resistance, the protagonist had been changed from a Ka’har female warrior to a man-eating monster.

They’re really doing all sorts of things, that intelligence department guy.

It was absurd, but I didn’t feel like complaining. The letter stated they were actually seeing some effect.

Apparently, it suited the taste of the Dane people?

Since the spread of the lyrics had increased the number of warriors showing interest in the Church of Astraea, I thought that as the Church’s saint, I should encourage its further dissemination.

…Though being treated as a man-eating monster was a bit unpleasant.

“Sigh…”

I exhaled cigarette smoke with a sigh and continued reading the letter.

/For women and children who aren’t warriors, the faiths of Saulite and Imela are popular. Their conversion is proceeding smoothly./

Imela…

Come to think of it, it made sense.

Volberg, a god who bestows glory upon warriors, wouldn’t be very appealing to women and children who aren’t warriors.

In contrast, Saulite is the goddess of life who generously bestows protection on the sick and injured, and Imela’s domain itself is “love” and “children.”

They were gods perfectly suited to women’s tastes.

—-

Faelrun’s letter was very short but contained quite serious content.

/Fairy guardian Eirnesia attacked during escort. Assailants presumed to be undead monsters. Eirnesia captured and abducted./

‘Huh…?’

I raised my head, rubbed my eyes, and looked down to scan the contents of the letter again.

…I hadn’t misread.

The content, summarized in neat western language, stated that undead creatures had intercepted and stolen my package.

What is this?

If fairies had taken her, I could understand, but undead monsters…?