Chapter 402

“Hold on, time out~”

Throwing manners out the window, Elias clamped a hand over my mouth and turned my head toward him. I let out a dry laugh.

“What?”

Clack.

Elias flicked his finger, casting a soundproofing spell around the two of us.

“Now~ listen up! Just because someone gets a blood transfusion doesn’t mean they get someone else’s soul too!”

I never got to hear Narke’s explanation of how the soul, mana, and the body were connected. Elias’s long-winded theory had taken so much time that there hadn’t been any left for it. Even so, what Elias had just said—that a blood transfusion doesn’t transfer a soul—was common sense. I didn’t need Narke’s complicated explanation to know that. Drinking someone’s blood doesn’t mean drinking their soul, after all.

…Setting aside my own ability to open worlds by drinking blood.

“Right.”

“Then why did you use that metaphor, Luka?!”

“I’m just feeling literary today, Eli.”

“Ah~”

Elias clapped once before suddenly leaning in. Grabbing my head, he said urgently, “That’s weird. A guy who’s never this literary suddenly starts talking in metaphors? You know something, don’t you?”

“……”

He was right. Of course I knew.

Wasn’t that why I handed myself over to Helga Brandt in the first place?

While you were with Pleroma, you were regularly given massive blood transfusions. Is that correct?

It had taken a lot to arrive at that question. The transfusions were something I’d experienced during the Extra Chapter. They hadn’t been an experiment tailored specifically for me. They were meant to test Helga Brandt’s hypothesis—creating a more complete messiah—based on Ismailov’s ability.

One thing should be made clear. It wasn’t about drinking blood. It was about injecting it.

That horrifying experiment ended in the Extra Chapter—for me. Not for Ismailov. Those blood transfusion experiments had actually taken place in this world, and they had changed him exactly as Helga Brandt intended.

If Helga Brandt’s hypothesis was correct, then just as I could open an Extra Chapter by drinking blood, Ismailov could also take a portion of another person’s soul into himself through the blood he was injected with. “Soul” was an absurd word to use, but there wasn’t a better way to describe a theory born from Helga Brandt’s madness.

This ability seemed to differ somewhat from the way Ismailov copied Narke’s abilities. Temporary ability copying appeared to work even without blood. Why that was the case was something we’d have to investigate later.

To sum it up, abstract as it sounded, Ismailov was capable of both altering his own essence and temporarily layering new traits over that essence.

I pulled Elias’s hand away from my mouth and said, “Right. It wasn’t a metaphor—it was exactly what I said. Ismailov can absorb something like a soul through blood, and Pleroma’s leadership know it. The abilities we think of as his Special Ability… my guess is they’re abilities he permanently acquired by absorbing part of another being.”

Elias narrowed his eyes before asking cautiously, “Part of another being… But at the Papal See… no, at Trier Cathedral, didn’t you say the power inside that holy relic was the ability to attack someone’s core from a distance?”

‘Hmm.’

Bringing up the holy relic out of nowhere… That was so Elias. I shifted my gaze for a second, then leaned closer to him.

“Just remember one thing, Eli. What were you all doing while I was engaged to the Archbishop?”

Elias instinctively glanced at my gloves before looking back at me.

“…We were following your instructions. Marian Baum was helping us.”

“No. How were you able to get to where I was? Did anything get in your way?”

“Ah… I get what you’re asking now! That thing was outside the window. Seeing something like that wandering around in broad daylight made the whole place feel eerie.”

Leo nudged my shoulder impatiently.

“Are you two seriously going to keep talking forever?”

I gave him a brief glance, then turned back to Elias.

“So then, Eli. What came next?”

“We had to make sure we didn’t look out the window.”

“Exactly. That’s it. So why didn’t you just close the curtains?”

I tilted my head with a smile. Elias, whose eyes had gone wide, smacked me hard on the back.

“Ah—seriously! Luka!”

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Your head’s going to explode before mine does. Would it kill you to just say it outright?”

“Even if we never run into that thing again, we have to stay on guard. The same goes once we’re back in Trier. Got it?”

Crash!

Elias and I both winced at the same time. Leo layered his blue mana over our soundproofing spell and shattered it, then asked in a lifeless voice, “Are you two kidding around? Did we come here to chat?”

“Thanks for assuming we’re joking. Let’s get started.”

I gestured for Leo to move. Once he stepped aside, Ismailov came back into view. Looking at Ismailov, whose head was still lowered, I spoke.

“Mr. Yuri Alekseyev. Do you intend to answer?”

“…….”

“Tell us what happened there. The sooner you talk, the better.”

“Are you angry?”

His voice was flat, hollow, stripped of any inflection. Was he talking about biting my neck again? Mikhail Ismailov was just as he had been a few days ago.

The silence as I looked at him felt endless. I could almost feel the others’ wariness, disgust, and outright contempt against my skin. Ever since what happened to Heike, Ulrike seemed to have developed a grudge against Ismailov as well. He kept glaring at him before rubbing his forehead in frustration.

“…….”

“I remember what I did. I want to apologize.”

His voice still had no rise or fall, no pause. If a machine could speak, it would sound like this. But I took back my statement that he was the same as a few days ago.

The six friends around us would never know it, but somewhere in a past they had never seen, I had become this guy’s friend. I had seen, with my own eyes, the person he had been since birth. He had helped me. I had heard him shout in his native tongue, his voice full of life, and stood beside him beneath falling snow.

The snowballs packed as hard as stones, hurled alongside slurs as they shoved me from behind, never truly hurt me. I wasn’t young enough for children’s insults to leave a scar. Those memories never weighed more than a tightly packed snowball before settling lightly at the edge of my mind.

But for eight-year-old Yuri Alekseyev, who had been protecting a foreign orphan he had met only recently from the children he’d grown up with, that day could never have weighed the same.

His apologies continued. They were short, saying only what needed to be said, but somehow they didn’t feel rehearsed. That alone was enough to unsettle not just me, but everyone else. Maybe, after spending time with us, Mikhail Ismailov had managed to reclaim a tiny fragment of Yuri Alekseyev. I wanted to believe that. But at the same time, there were two things I couldn’t bear.

First, the fact that Elias’s prophecy kept weighing on me.

Second, the fact that in those few words Mikhail Ismailov had spoken, I could still hear traces of Yuri Alekseyev. It felt as though his voice had split in two, only to merge back together inside my head. I kept my eyes on his face, afraid I might find another trace of Yuri Alekseyev there, yet unable to look anywhere else.

Yet even with snow-white hair and eyes paler than a clear blue sky, he still had Yuri Alekseyev’s face. And when I desperately searched for something—anything—that made him different, all that remained to me was the fact that the round cheeks that had once flushed red with youthful innocence had hollowed out, drained of all warmth, leaving only a pale face behind.

The bold dream he’d once had—that he could become anything—hadn’t been a lie. He really had become everything. Made from pieces of countless people, the only thing left in his future was to become me. He had become the false Messenger of the Covenant, prepared for the sake of the true one. How could I stop him from becoming me…? Thoughts of the holy relics faded to the back of my mind. What mattered now was finding a way to defy their prophecy. It felt as though ink made of blood clung to my feet, holding my legs in place. Carrying the feeling that this illusion would never leave me, I finally spoke.

“I’m not angry with you. You should be relieved. I know how to pretend to be angry well enough to fool even myself. But I don’t know how to truly be angry.”

“…….”

That wasn’t true anymore. It was only true of the person I had been, for a time.

I hadn’t been angry when Robert Müller stabbed me in the stomach. But it was different when my irreplaceable friend cast a covenant spell to give me his life. It was different when Pleroma left Heike in a state where no one could even tell if he was alive or dead. Like clothes slowly soaked by a steady drizzle, many of the things that made me who I was had quietly changed.

Those words were meant for my friends as much as for him. The pressure at the top was heavier than people imagined, and people expected others to show the emotions that fit the situation. I knew the range of what these friends could understand about me was different from those I’d had before. No—in fact, because I trusted them, I wanted to stop an argument from breaking out in front of Ismailov. Ulrike looked like he wanted to say something, then turned away instead.

Lacing my fingers together, I spoke.

“…I never imagined someone who hadn’t even received Pleroma’s baptism would do something like that. I still find it surprising. But let’s leave that aside. You wanted to live, after all. What concerns me is this: Pleroma taught you that drinking blood would contaminate you. Yet you drank my blood… I’m worried you may have ended up thoroughly, irreversibly contaminated. What do you think?”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, Lukas.”

Leo—who knew better than anyone that I wasn’t joking—cut in without even looking at me. Keeping my eyes on Ismailov, I spoke again.

“Please answer honestly.”

I understood now what that ‘contamination’ really meant. His body had been prepared as a vessel for me, not for anything else. The only blood he was ever meant to drink was mine. They called it not contamination, but completion.

Fortunately, he never managed to keep drinking my blood until I died. But the fact that he’d only failed told me Pleroma’s plan didn’t end there. Hadn’t Elias already come up with a convincing theory about what was supposed to happen next?

Then, through the silence, a clear voice answered.

“It was good.”

“…….”

Every one of my friends frowned at once. It was good? That was his impression after drinking my blood? To them, that response was practically the essence of Pleroma itself. Leo seemed more bothered that Ismailov could drink his friend’s blood and call it good, while the others were focused on how Pleroma-like Ismailov sounded. The underside of my tongue felt dry. I slowly opened and closed my eyes, pressing my lips together.

‘…Seriously, is he a child?’

Just saying whether it was good or bad? Then again, children usually had more ways of expressing that they liked something. Yuri Alekseyev had been that kind of person. Smiling faintly, I asked, “What was?”

“…….”

“The taste? Or the feeling of your dying vitality returning? Or realizing who I am?”

The divine power we’d forced onto Ismailov still lingered in his irises, tinting them a pale blue. He quietly met my gaze before answering.

“All of it.”

“…….”

“It was the first time I’d ever felt alive.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Leo’s cold reply cut in.

Felt alive. So that confirmed it. I snapped my fingers and, despite the light gesture, answered in a voice that was anything but light.

“That’s probably because you and I are bound by fate.”

Because I was supposed to be you. Because you were the vessel prepared for me, and I was the one Pleroma had intended to fill it with.

I went back to one of Elias’s theories. Maybe Pleroma’s plan wasn’t just to turn Yuri Alekseyev into the current Mikhail Ismailov. Maybe it also included raising Ismailov into our perfect ally in defiance of Pleroma.

It was exactly the sort of plan Pleroma would make. We stood on the side of justice, and anyone who saw Ismailov’s upbringing would naturally want to save him. Unless that hypothesis was true, there was no explaining why they’d sent him to us in the first place. Unless there was some other reason entirely.

One thing was certain. If Elias was right, then even restoring Ismailov into Yuri Alekseyev had been part of Pleroma’s design all along.

Damned if we did, damned if we didn’t. Which meant I had to find a way to defy fate itself. There was no other way to put it.

You and I are bound by fate. Zähringen tilted his head at my words. Elias frowned as well. Tapping one interlocked finger against another, I asked, “What did it taste like?”

“I don’t think it’s something I can put into words.”

“A textbook answer would be salty and metallic… I suppose. Never mind the taste. Did you see anything?”

“You can become anything. You can become countless people, and then become countless others all over again.”

“…….”

It wasn’t funny, hearing those words from a kid who had once wanted to become anything, when I had never wanted to become anything at all.

Anyway. I answered briefly.

“That’s not true.”

The answer came on the second try. I needed to find out just how much he could perceive through blood.

In my case, it had been the Extra Chapter—and, in a broader sense, even the Labyrinth, despite not involving drinking blood. In his case, did it manifest through vision? It was an ability befitting Pleroma’s messiah and prophet. Though now that I knew that “messiah” was me, I couldn’t bring myself to think of it that way anymore.

Then Ismailov suddenly spoke, “For some reason… I feel as though I’ve sensed you before.”

Hm. Sensed me, huh…

He knew nothing. And precisely because he knew nothing, he was useful.

“I see. When?”

“Every moment. Every time I breathed. Every time I spoke.”

“You’re mistaken. Now then, I’d like you to tell me about those experiences one by one.”

I opened my notebook and uncapped my pen. Just then, an Imperial Mage cracked open the door, glanced inside with a tense expression, then quietly left again.

“A sorrowful person once visited me. And someone burdened with all the greed in the world visited me as well.”

Judging by the way everyone pinched the bridge of their noses, that wasn’t the answer they had expected. But what else could they have expected? No one labels a blood bag with the donor’s life story. We’d have to infer everything from what Ismailov had seen.

“Be more specific.”

“It felt as though they were testing me on purpose. 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.”

I listened quietly to his flat narration until one particular remark caught my attention.

“Was that last person me?”

“No. There was also someone who devoted themselves entirely to a single thing. Someone who dedicated their whole life to singing. A priest who spent his entire life conducting funerals on battlefields also came to me. I don’t know whether any of them remained inside me.”

“…….”

Anxious eyes turned toward me. At best, Ismailov’s account sounded like the narration of a fairy tale that couldn’t decide whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. At worst, it sounded like the ramblings of a madman. I was sure everyone else thought so too. But to me, it was more than useful.

I scribbled his words onto the rough paper before me and said calmly, “Good. Tell me about them one by one, in detail.”

“You’ve looked deep in thought for a while now.”

“…….”

Once again, it was Narke who took my hand at the warp point. He stood there with his white hair blowing in the wind, an early moon rising behind him. The faint smile on his face somehow looked tired.

I’d just warped twice—returning to Trier by way of a hospital in Bavaria—yet somehow he, who had arrived here with nothing more than a snap of his fingers, looked even more exhausted than I did. Of course, he’d been with Ismailov alongside me until just moments ago, so it wasn’t that hard to understand.

I returned his smile with one of my own.

“You didn’t read it?”

“Like I’ve said before, I won’t if you don’t want me to. Unless someone’s in danger. Then it’s a different story.”

Nice of him to mention even that. I silently let go of his hand and started walking. Narke called after me.

“You look tired. Want me to draw you a bath?”

“Later. And I’ll take care of that myself.”

“…….”

When no answer came, I turned around. He was simply watching me. I reached back, tugged the faintly smiling Narke toward me, and matched my pace to his. Walking beside me, Narke asked, “Lukas. Which are you going to deal with first? The Holy Nail, or Ismailov?”

“Can you even separate the two? In the end, they’re both connected to what happened to Heike.”

I took a slow breath before asking, “What do you think we should do?”

“…….”

There was no answer. I turned, puzzled, and saw Narke standing perfectly still, his expression stiff as he stared ahead. Someone was approaching, escorted by the priests here. The person looked like a noble from another country. The moment he spotted Narke, he smiled and removed his hat.

“It’s been a long time, Cardinal Farnese.”

“…….”

“No greeting after all this time? These past six months have been miserable without seeing Your Eminence.”

He joked as if they’d known each other forever. When Narke didn’t respond, he turned to me instead. Grinning, he held out his hand.

“A pleasure to meet you. I am Simone Savelli, aide to His Eminence, Cardinal Farnese.”