Chapter 454

“Let me ask you something. Suppose you’re inside a room, and an enemy is secretly watching you from outside the window.”

Eight hours before coming to Giesing.

I stood in front of the table and asked my friends, “Would you draw the curtains or leave them open?”

No one answered. Each of them probably had their own answer in mind. I waited for quite a while, and they graciously left the choice to me. After meeting each of their eyes, I opened my mouth.

“If it were me, I wouldn’t draw them.”

“…….”

“Why throw away such a great opportunity when we know the enemy is watching us? We have a chance to turn the enemy’s plan into one that works in our favor.”

Zähringen raised the corner of his mouth and arched an eyebrow. I looked at my friends sitting there with serious expressions and continued.

“To blatantly show our strategy right in front of the audience. That’s been my strategy all along, and I think we should keep the same strategy when we get to Giesing.”

A few of my friends nodded.

I turned my gaze to Ulrike and asked, “Now, there’s something you said you’d tell us earlier. Luise, you asked what Heike had to do with the holy relics theft, right?”

“Yeah.”

“First, the holy relics theft and the attack on Heike and Ismailov’s cores look like two completely unrelated incidents. Let’s start there. Why did Heike and Ismailov collapse at the exact same time?”

“…….”

“What do the two have in common? How did they both suffer the exact same kind of core damage, at the same time, in different places? What possible methods could have been used to attack them?”

At that, Zähringen raised a hand slightly and answered.

“First, a Special Ability.”

“…….”

“Second, an artifact, spell, magic potion, or some other device.”

He had listed exactly what Elias and I had been thinking.

We had to be especially careful of confirmation bias in this case. We were trying to connect two incidents that appeared to have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and we had dealt with the problem by applying the law of excluded middle. I had stuck to the opinion that Heike had been attacked either with a Special Ability or an artifact, following the principle that the simplest explanation was the best one. But there was always a chance that one of the other possibilities was actually the answer, so I had to approach the matter cautiously until the very end. That was why I had felt considerable pressure about involving my friends in the investigation.

I nodded with a smile.

“Exactly. You were kind enough to lump the second category together… In reality, every one of those possibilities could have been treated separately. For all we know, there could have been some other explanation beyond the two options Julia mentioned. They might have simply happened to collapse from heart attacks at the exact same time. There are other possibilities too, but I thought considering another hypothesis under the circumstances would be a violation of sound reasoning.”

“At least you know you overthink things.”

Leo backed me up in his usual matter-of-fact way. I gave him a grateful look and continued.

“First, if they used a Special Ability, there’s nothing we can find out.”

My friends nodded. I rested my hands on the table and lowered my gaze as I continued.

“But it’s the same even if they used an artifact, a spell, a magic potion, or some other device. Without knowing anything about the other side, all we can do is throw out every guess and sit around twiddling our thumbs.”

“You know that well.”

Leo again. I continued.

“So I had to pull out everything I had in my head and start with whichever possibility between a Special Ability and an artifact would be easier to investigate based on the information I had. That’s when I came across one incident that bothered me.”

I pointed toward Narke’s empty seat.

“A month ago, Narke told me about the theft of the holy relics. One of the relics had been stolen in Trier, Germany. But the Papal See had also lost one of the Arma Christi, and strangely enough, not a single relic that wasn’t an Arma Christi had been stolen. What the culprit wanted wasn’t just a holy relic. They specifically wanted an Arma Christi. Why? Because they’re worth more? If that were the case, they should have ended up at an auction somewhere in Europe.”

I had thought about it before.

Saint Helena’s skull, the countless relics in the Papal See’s vaults, things made from the belongings and remains of the previous popes, relics consecrated by the current Pope… Couldn’t all of them produce divine power? Just as the Archbishop of Trier had demonstrated. They would all make excellent tools for amplifying magic more cleanly. So why wasn’t the culprit using any of those relics?

Why did it have to be the Lignum Crucis brought all the way from Spain? Why did it have to be the holy relic from Trier Cathedral? Why go through all the trouble and risks of distance, location, security, and everything else just to steal two separate items from Spain and Germany?

From that fundamental question, we could naturally arrive at one conclusion.

The reason the culprit chose the holy relic from Trier and the Lignum Crucis from the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana wasn’t simply because they were holy and could produce several times the effect when an ability was infused into them.

It was because they possessed abilities unique to them alone.

Add one more thing to that. By coincidence, the parure was stolen from Austria-Hungary around the same time—and if we know that this parure was an object imbued with the spell formula of a certain mage…

“There are several reasons, but I reached one conclusion. The reason they had to steal the Arma Christi rather than any other holy relic is because there was some kind of magical benefit they could gain from those objects.”

“Like them functioning as artifacts, as you said.”

I answered Ulrike right away.

“Exactly. I concluded that they knew the Arma Christi could function as a natural magical tool. As I said earlier, the holy relic has the ability to retrieve something in common.”

Now it was time to explain what I had deduced after being given blood in the Extra Chapter.

“The holy relic has the ability to retrieve shared souls. I don’t really understand the concept of a soul myself… but I can’t think of a better word for it. The moment the thief used the holy relic, both Heike and Mikhail Ismailov simultaneously lost a portion of their souls. And it seems Heike lost far more than Ismailov did, to the point where he no longer had enough strength to keep his core running.”

“…No wonder. It was an object driven into Jesus’s hands, after all.”

Zähringen, who had been lost in thought with his fingers pressed against his temple, spoke quietly. When everyone’s eyes turned toward him, he gave a faint smile.

“It’s only fitting for an object that was used in carrying out Christ’s will. That’s what I mean.”

“Lukas.”

Before I could respond, Ulrike called my name with a tense expression.

“Wait. A shared soul…? What does it mean for Heike and Mikhail Ismailov to have a shared soul?”

“That—”

“No, that’s impossible. It doesn’t make any sense! If they were parent and child, or at least blood relatives, maybe their souls—or whatever you want to call it—could have a similar nature. But they’re not related by blood, and even their mana signatures aren’t similar!”

Ulrike’s voice rose. I understood. It must have been hard for him to believe any of this. Once again, I realized just how on edge he was over this incident. He was even more attached to Heike than I’d realized. We all were, so I could understand. But facts were facts.

“No.”

I opened my mouth.

“Heike and Mikhail Ismailov share a soul.”

How much could I explain from here on? How was I supposed to explain what a shared soul was?

Helga Brandt and the dark room I had encountered in Mecklenburg’s Extra Chapter. The blood of a stranger flowing into my arm. The memories flickered before my eyes. An unexpected wave of dizziness washed over me. I looked at my friends without changing my expression.

Ulrike asked me with a terrifying expression I’d never seen on him before.

“Why.”

Because.

Mikhail Ismailov is someone who can use the blood he absorbs to modify his core. To put it kindly, he can absorb souls and use them to change himself. But if you look at the facts, he was completely devoured by the souls he absorbed. There is no Yuri Alekseyev left in him anymore—he had become a patchwork of different people, to the point that it would hardly be an exaggeration to put it that way.

“Someone who dedicated their whole life to singing. A priest who spent his entire life conducting funerals on battlefields also came to me.”

He sang requiems when dealing with Rampagers. He sang when calling forth pheasants made of mana. That was how he drew in vitriol and ambient mana.

“A sorrowful person once visited me. And someone burdened with all the greed in the world visited me as well. The sorrowful one had lost everything. Nothing remained but blood. The greedy one wanted to make a name for himself through me. Someone completely empty also visited me. I resonated with that person. There was also someone who devoted themselves entirely to a single thing.”

Yes. One of them was—

Splash—

“…!”

The cold water hitting my face snapped my eyes open. Someone struck me hard in the chest. I lowered my head to shake off the water and sucked in a quick breath.

“Ghk… H-hah… hah…”

“Finally awake, are you?”

The person gripping my arm said with a laugh. I blinked away the droplets caught in my wet eyelashes and looked up at the person above me. His white hair, grown down to his waist, had been loosely tied back, falling past his shoulders and down toward my neck.

He slowly lifted his hand from my chest and released the hand I had thrown toward him. Then he stood and poured the whiskey from the bedside table into a crystal glass. Amber liquor swayed in front of me.

“You seem even more broken than the last time I saw you.”

“…….”

“Interesting.”

Not worth listening to. I glared at him before looking around.

My arms and legs were free. I felt a little dazed, but that seemed to be from exhaustion, and I didn’t feel like I’d been drugged. Which meant that whatever resistance I put up, he was confident he could crush it himself. Whether by his own power or through his subordinates.

The place where I’d been standing just moments ago was nowhere to be seen. Now I was lying on a bed in a mansion I’d never seen before.

‘…No. It’s too soon to be certain. I might still be inside that space.’

I might have been inside the mansion in what Maria called a ‘space of high purity mana.’ My head hurt. I pressed a hand to my forehead, and at that moment, I remembered the friend whose whereabouts were still unknown.

‘…Wait. Elias—’

Einsiedel noticed the sudden change in my expression. He jerked his head toward the space behind him and looked down at me. I turned in the direction he indicated and saw Elias lying on another bed. He was fast asleep, completely oblivious to everything around him.

“Finished taking in the sights?”

“…….”

“You must be wondering why I’m welcoming you like this.”

Even though I remained silent, he continued.

“Doesn’t this remind you of the day we first met?”

“…….”

“We first met at the cathedral. If you hadn’t taken my subordinates hostage, I would have treated you just as graciously even then.”

I knew. The first meeting he remembered was at the cathedral, but the first meeting I remembered was not at the cathedral. It was on the bed in his room. One of his subordinates had said it back then. ‘My master has ordered that I serve Your Excellency with the utmost care.’

Even while believing that Nikolaus was the murderer of Werner Strauch, he had still ordered that. He was an utterly unpredictable madman. There was no mistaking it—the person standing before me was Einsiedel.

“To think we’ve met like this again. How truly—”

BANG! CRASH!

“…….”

Einsiedel grabbed me by the collar and slammed my head into the nightstand. My head rang. I clenched my teeth as I stared at the wood of the nightstand inches from my face. The spilled whiskey splashed against my cheek before dripping onto the floor.

Einsiedel murmured in a nostalgic voice.

“It brings back memories. The last thing I said to you was remarkably kind.”

“…….”

I had erased his memories, but in the end, he managed to recover them. Considering his Special Ability, it wasn’t entirely impossible. I had expected it, and I didn’t mind him regaining his memories. In fact, I needed him to remember now.

“Why are your hands stained with vitriol? Your leg, too.”

Einsiedel placed a hand on the vitriol covering my right leg.

“Is the vitriol replacing your leg muscles? Your ability to assimilate is impressive.”

“…….”

“Not content with using divine power, you can even wield vitriol as your own power? Without even being baptized? You really are just like Pleroma…”

He kept muttering, apparently unable to get over how many things he wanted to know. I understood why he was observing me. Since I knew that, I simply remained silent and waited.

“So, have you been well all this time?”

The hand that had been gripping my collar moved to my neck. He gradually tightened his grip around the spot where my pulse beat as he continued.

“After killing someone, knowing full well they were going to die, and still pushing them to their limit until they eventually did…”

“…Ghk…”

“You must have slept soundly, didn’t you?”

As I struggled to breathe, my vision repeatedly turned blue and then cleared again. Einsiedel laughed out loud. The version of him I had met in the Extra Chapter and the one I had met in the Catacombs seemed to overlap before my eyes. Through the divine power flowing into my throat, I instinctively realized it.

He had merged.

The soul of Heike, whose ‘texture’ was similar enough to have the same Special Ability despite being far weaker in power, and his own soul that had once been passed down through Pleroma’s leadership and dissolved into Ismailov after his blood was injected into him.

‘…Hahaha…’

He really had everything going for him. Through the holy relics, he had ultimately regained the great power he possessed in the past. He had already been strong, and now he was even stronger.

“Thinking, ‘It’s fine because I wasn’t the one who personally cut off his last breath. I only pushed him to the brink of death, so I’m not a murderer…’? Or did you not even think Bern was worth that much consideration?”

I said nothing and only glared at him. Einsiedel released my neck. Air rushed back into my lungs. As I held my mouth and caught my breath, he looked down at me with a faint smile on his composed features.

“I understand.”

“…….”

“Bern is the kind of person who throws himself completely into the organization. And you’re the savior of this age, determined to destroy Pleroma, so naturally, you couldn’t have liked Bern.”

Einsiedel let out a long breath and looked up at the ceiling, looking strangely refreshed.

“To some extent, we share the same goal. But…”

His hand covered my neck again. He didn’t apply any pressure, just left it there.

“You should understand that the moment you repaid evil with evil, you took the weight of the lives you killed onto your own shoulders. That’s something you have to accept. Someone who kills a murderer is still a murderer. A sharp-minded intellectual like you can’t possibly be unaware of that.”

“…….”

“I suppose, in your eyes, I’m absolute evil. Simply because I don’t serve your interests.”

“…….”

“It’s the same for me, Your Excellency. You’re the person who ended my world.”

He continued speaking with a smile, showing little emotion. I slowly took a deep breath. As if trying to calm me down, he moved his thumb, gently brushing it over my skin. Then, in a soft voice tinged with amusement, he said, “But I don’t think you’re a villain. I understand why you killed Bern. What I’m saying is…”

His grip tightened again, little by little. I twisted my body, but Einsiedel’s fingers clamped down hard. The lack of air and the smell of alcohol were making my head swim.

“You need to take responsibility for your actions. Just as Bern died by your hand because of what he did.”

“…And you?”

“Of course, the same goes for me. Didn’t you come here to reclaim the life I had taken hostage?”

“…….”

“‘Bring Heike Einsiedel back to life.’ That’s what you came all this way to get me to do, isn’t it? Though, to begin with, my family is alive and safe.”

Alive and safe? What a ridiculous thing to say.

He looked down at me and whispered, “Now, tell me how it happened. How did you draw me into all of this? If you don’t tell me, there will be no negotiation.”

“…Hahaha. That’s rich. Are you really in any position to say that?”

I wasn’t the only one who wanted to negotiate. Einsiedel had knocked us unconscious and brought us here because there was something he wanted from us. Did he really think I wouldn’t realize that?

Einsiedel raised an eyebrow, tilted his head, and burst out laughing. Then he leaned closer to me and said, “I’m sorry, but you’re not the only one who cares about that child.”

I narrowed my eyes at his words. Einsiedel smiled, his eyes crinkling.

“You think I should lose the only relative I have who resembles me, all because of your inexperience? You may think I took your friend away from you…”

“…….”

“How arrogant. I won’t lose him twice. Don’t you understand?”

I let out a long breath. Then I slowly opened my mouth.

“You joined hands with the French cult.”

“The basis for that?”

“‘The sleeping pill powder found at the site of Emanuel Wittelsbach’s rampage matched that of the Diocese of Osnabrück.’”

“…….”

“This is going to take us quite a way back. Is that all right?”

Einsiedel smiled and gave a small nod. I gave him a faint scoff, my eyes flashing.

“You know as well as I do that the Archbishop of Freiburg infiltrated the Diocese of Osnabrück and stole information. You were careless. You should’ve paid more attention to your security.”