Chapter 460

Einsiedel’s gaze met Zähringen’s. Silence fell between them.

We would negotiate with Einsiedel as planned and establish friendly relations, while independently looking for a way to return Heike’s soul. Starting things this way was the right choice. The important thing was that Einsiedel knew we had our own agenda, just as we knew he had no intention of joining forces with us alone. Zähringen remained calm, and Einsiedel spoke to him with the same expression as before.

“You make it sound easy.”

“What other choice do we have? Fortunately, our goals and Lord Einsiedel’s align without requiring us to compromise our beliefs. There is no reason we cannot cooperate.”

Zähringen clasped his hands together and continued, lightly tapping the back of his left hand with his right index finger.

“First, I must ask this. You do know how to return the soul, don’t you?”

“Does it look particularly difficult?”

“You sound quite certain.”

Zähringen smiled at Einsiedel’s dry reply. My eyes met Ulrike’s. We immediately understood what the two of them were talking about.

To return the soul he had taken, all we had to do was use the holy relic on Heike instead. Doing so would effectively bring Einsiedel to his death. So when he said he could not return Heike’s soul yet, he meant that he had no intention of dying until he accomplished the lifelong goal of destroying Pleroma.

‘Pleroma just had to want Heike’s ability, of all things…’

Anyone with a rare and highly useful ability was bound to become a target for people blinded by the pursuit of power. If my own ability—the ability to amplify the mana in blood hundreds of times and make it my own—became known to society…

‘Terrifying.’

I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I would have to live like a goose that laid golden eggs, with people trying to find a way to make my amplified mana transferable to others even though there was currently no way to do so. It was fortunate that the Change Probability had not dropped yet, but I still had to remain careful.

‘Come to think of it, why isn’t he being as underhanded as I expected?’

Einsiedel must have noticed that I had absorbed vitriol and used it to move my broken leg. If you gained hold of an enemy’s weakness, you would normally use it to threaten them and gain the upper hand at the negotiating table. Yet Einsiedel had not tried to blackmail me that way once.

‘If he were the Archbishop of Freiburg, he would have turned every available means into a pawn at his disposal.’

Useful information. I needed to remember what kind of person my enemy was. As I looked at everyone seated around the table, Zähringen spoke again.

“We both know that we want Heike Einsiedel’s soul.”

“…….”

“On the other hand, we don’t know exactly why you want to destroy Pleroma, or what it is you truly want. Tell us your objective clearly and explain the situation as a whole.”

Einsiedel was still obsessed with Werner Strauch. If he intended to die after destroying Pleroma, did that mean he had finally given up on the prospect of a life with Werner Strauch? I wasn’t sure. Judging from what I had learned in the Extra Chapter, he had hated Pleroma from the very beginning, and the only reason he joined them was to be with Werner Strauch. With the goal of his life already dead, wanting to destroy Pleroma made sense. But what did he intend to do about his true goal—Werner Strauch? I needed to hear that from him.

But he didn’t give us the answer we wanted.

“You know that’s something you don’t need to know. It’s not much different from me asking why you want to bring Heike Einsiedel back.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Ulrike snapped back harshly. Einsiedel still had his eyes half-lidded as he snapped his fingers. An hourglass appeared in the middle of the table. He changed the subject.

“I’ll tell you something you’ll want to know. Believe it or not, that’s up to you, but I hate lying, so I’d advise you not to waste time pointlessly verifying whether my answers are true or false.”

Trickle…

As Einsiedel began to speak, the white sand in the hourglass started to fall. His gaze settled on me. Zähringen and Ulrike looked at me.

“There’s something similar to Pleroma in France as well. Terminus Eukairia. It isn’t as old as Pleroma.”

“…….”

“Pleroma only confirmed its existence this March, when France and Austria-Hungary were fighting over Peru. In reality, Terminus is merely a temporary organization formed to collect the Arma Christi, relics associated with Jesus. They haven’t established an extensive organization of their own. However, they have taken control of the House of Orléans.”

“Interesting.”

Zähringen raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. I asked, “What are they trying to do with the Arma Christi?”

“What do you think? Their stated cause is ‘stopping Pleroma, which threatens international security.’ But their real objective is different. When you think of the leading country in Europe, which one comes to mind first?”

“France is the cultural center.”

“If you’d asked an American, they would’ve answered France without hesitation. You’re letting your pride get in the way.”

Einsiedel shot back with a bored look on his face. I knew he didn’t like me, but I was only stating the facts. He really had a comment for everything.

Einsiedel tapped his fingers against the table.

“Germany, which had always been a step behind, has grown rapidly and has now become a very threatening nation, both economically and militarily. Right now, the military power of Europe is Germany, led by Prussia.”

Einsiedel lightly tapped the wineglass with his finger, filling it with water, then took a sip. It reminded me of Heike slamming his beer glass down to fill it with alcohol. Apparently Ulrike thought of the same thing, because his face twisted again.

The glass soon clinked against the glass tabletop, making a clear sound.

“France wants to reclaim its former glory.”

“…….”

“So they are trying to attempt alchemy in order to obtain more mana and stronger magic ‘for the sake of a great France.’”

Ulrike frowned.

“Alchemy? What kind of outdated nonsense—”

“They don’t believe the total amount of energy in the universe is fixed. They think more energy can be added at any time. They claim they’ve already encountered an inversion of entropy on the macroscopic scale. So why wouldn’t they be able to achieve alchemy?”

My neck stiffened. In this context, the inversion of entropy he was talking about had to mean time travel. And who had traveled through time?

‘…Maria.’

I’d suspected as much, but this confirmed that the French cult had absorbed the records of l’Éclat Littéraire. Einsiedel must have needed Terminus Eukairia’s technology for that reason. But what exactly for? Don’t tell me… to take control of this empty world?

I glanced at the hourglass and asked Einsiedel, “How was this world created? Does Terminus Eukairia know this world exists?”

Einsiedel shook his head. Then he slowly looked at Ulrike and Zähringen.

“I wonder how you managed to make it this far. You seem to have doggedly followed my trail. Did you just charge ahead without knowing anything? Then again, I suppose you had no other choice.”

Even at those blunt words, Zähringen remained unfazed. Ulrike continued glaring at Einsiedel, but he still hadn’t let his anger get the better of him.

“Pleroma doesn’t know about this space, and neither does Terminus Eukairia. But Terminus Eukairia is researching it. They may find out someday, but I’d prefer that day to come as late as possible.”

“Hmm… On our way here, we passed through another world in between. Does Terminus Eukairia know about that space?”

Einsiedel answered Zähringen’s question.

“You noticed that, did you? That one is their handiwork.”

There was another space in between? So Ulrike and Zähringen had crossed through the original world → an unknown world → the world of high mana purity.

‘So the world in between was created by France, while no one but Einsiedel and us knows about the world we’re currently in now…’

I rubbed my chin and asked, “Didn’t you say Terminus Eukairia has to remain unaware of this world for as long as possible? But we’ve already ended up here. If people can simply fall into this space naturally, then there’s nothing stopping others from ending up here too. Which means you’re the one who pulled us into this empty world.”

As expected, he said exactly what I had been thinking.

“You catch on fast. Terminus was the one that caused the prison explosion, and they had every reason to seize you in the confusion. If that happened, there would be another Mikhail Ismailov. Bringing you here was the best option I had.”

“Can Terminus Eukairia do that to people too?”

“They don’t cover people in that unpleasant white, but they know how to alter a person’s mind. Did you think they wouldn’t?”

So they knew about Mikhail Ismailov too. They knew that Ismailov hadn’t originally had white hair and white eyes. Einsiedel closed his eyes and pressed a finger to his temple as he spoke.

“The moment you were taken by France, you would have been as good as dead forever. I’m sorry I couldn’t come any sooner, but I think you should be satisfied that I’m sending you back in one piece.”

“…….”

My eyes met Ulrike’s. Then Zähringen’s as well. Despite his hatred for me as the one who killed Werner Strauch, Einsiedel didn’t seem to harbor much hostility toward us. Whether that was simply his nature or there was some other reason for it was something I needed to figure out. It was worth remembering.

I looked at Elias, lying facedown beside me, and asked, “Why did you treat Elias?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I have a habit of treating my guests exceptionally well.”

“…….”

Just because of that? I remembered the warning we’d received from the Papal See—the one telling us to protect Elias. I couldn’t simply ignore it.

“Does France want Elias Hohenzollern?”

“That would be a bit of a leap.”

I slowly nodded. It was ambiguous. France wasn’t specifically targeting Elias. If France merely saw Elias as someone who would be nice to capture and kill, but not worth going out of their way for, then the Papal See hadn’t warned us about France because of him.

There was no answer I could reach just by thinking about it now. I turned back to Einsiedel and asked, “Then why the True Cross and the Holy Nail, of all things? You had the Holy Tunic and the Iron Crown of Lombardy. And the Spear of Longinus goes without saying. Why leave all of those aside?”

“How would I know? But the purpose is the same as before. It’s for alchemy.”

“Then what kind of alchemy, exactly?”

Einsiedel went, “Hmm,” and closed his eyes before slowly looking at me. For the first time, he seemed to consider how he should answer.

“They worship Maria Österreich-Este as an apostle.”

“…….”

Ah. Now I understood.

Terminus Eukairia needed more mana to make France a rich and powerful nation, and their plan was to resurrect Maria Österreich-Este so they could produce more mana. Using the Arma Christi. A chill ran down my spine. Einsiedel stared straight into my eyes and murmured, “Looks like you know who that person is.”

“…….”

“Maria Österreich-Este. An Austro-Hungarian, is it?”

Zähringen rubbed his chin as he asked, and Einsiedel answered in an even voice.

“There was an occult group that preceded Terminus. They claim Maria Österreich-Este was its prophet.”

That “intermediate” world Ulrike and Zähringen had mentioned must have been another piece of spatial technology created while they were developing a way to find Maria. And the world they ultimately wanted was this very place Einsiedel had been hiding from everyone.

There were only about two minutes of sand left in the hourglass. I left out the subject that would only get me a negative response if I asked—Werner Strauch—and went with the question I needed answered most.

I looked down at the sand piling up below and asked, “Who is the Papal See’s accomplice?”

“Would you know who I meant even if I told you now? Just sit quietly and wait for the right time.”

I knew he would shut me down. Fine. Next question.

“What happens to the soul when the body dies?”

“…….”

Einsiedel closed his eyes.

“I don’t particularly enjoy hearing a question like that from you. It returns to the universe.”

“So it becomes part of natural mana. Is Pleroma’s resurrection the process of returning that mana to its previous form? If so, what is the principle behind it?”

“If they knew the principle, Pleroma wouldn’t be in its current state, would it?”

Einsiedel smiled at me. I knew that expression. He was exercising his patience.

I already knew from Abraham that Pleroma had no idea how resurrection actually worked. From what I had seen, Pleroma’s resurrection couldn’t be used twice or three times. An ordinary human could only be resurrected once, and once they died again, that was the end. If they knew the principle behind it, they would have tried to achieve infinite resurrection. But they didn’t, so there was nothing they could do.

That was why Einsiedel had lost his mind after Werner Strauch’s death.

I looked at Einsiedel, whose gaze had fallen, and asked.

“So souls can be revived even without a body. Does that mean it’s always possible?”

“In theory. They can restore even a body from nothing but the dust of decayed bones. The first Pleroma were revived that way.”

“In theory, huh. Sounds like there was an exception.”

“You should know.”

I did.

He was talking about Maria Österreich-Este.

Pleroma had failed to revive Maria. Because of the soul annihilation spell Maria had created, his soul could never gather itself back into the form of Maria Österreich-Este.

‘…And yet, I just did the impossible.’

I had succeeded in reviving a soul, something even Pleroma had been unable to do because of Maria’s spell. I hadn’t brought back the Maria of this world; all I had done was pull Maria from another world into this one. But to anyone else, the distinction wouldn’t matter. The fact remained that I had brought into existence someone who should not have been here.

I thought again of Maria’s out-of-body experience between the EC and reality, which I had tried to make sense of using existing theories. Those theories seemed to make sense, yet somehow they didn’t. And the reason something that shouldn’t have been possible had happened was my blood. My blood could do something else absurd besides amplifying mana.

“So Pleroma was unable to revive Maria Österreich-Este, but Terminus Eukairia is trying to succeed where they failed.”

At Zähringen’s words, Einsiedel blinked in response. I felt my mind go cold as the pieces finally came together.

“Terminus Eukairia is trying to make the impossible possible.”

That’s their ultimate goal. They’re after resurrection, too.

Silence fell.

Then what did Einsiedel want by joining hands with Terminus? He believed that if France could resurrect Maria Österreich-Este, then they could resurrect Werner Strauch as well. That much was certain. The ability of my blood was a secret I had to take to the grave. If he learned the truth, I would become the material they needed to resurrect Werner Strauch.

‘…Well, Einsiedel isn’t the only problem.’

Tap—

All the sand in the hourglass ran out. Everyone’s eyes turned toward it. Einsiedel calmly took another sip of water and stood up. As he did, he said dryly, “Then I’d like to believe that was a sufficient initiation.”

“Wait! We haven’t—”

Ulrike slammed his hand on the table and stood up, shouting, but Einsiedel merely snapped his fingers and tossed something at him. Ulrike’s eyes widened as he caught it.

It was a vial smaller than the length of a finger joint. At a glance, it appeared to contain ash-gray mana. Ulrike looked at Einsiedel with his face tightly scrunched up. Einsiedel regarded him with an utterly emotionless gaze before placing his right hand on the table.

“I’ll be in touch soon.”

Light burst forth from beneath his palm.

We opened our eyes in the empty mansion in Bavaria and immediately warped to Nuremberg and Ingolstadt, erasing our trail before making our way to Munich. Elias was still asleep, slung over my shoulder.

The fact that we could warp meant we had made it back to our own world. That made it clear that Einsiedel knew how to enter and leave the ‘world of high mana purity.’ He must have been using that empty world as an underground passage to move around while evading the surveillance of both Pleroma and Terminus Eukairia.

“…We’re back.”

The dawn sky was blue.

The moment we warped into a square where the Munich Residenz was visible, Ulrike whispered quietly beside me. None of us had the energy to celebrate, so we simply nodded calmly. Since we had suddenly appeared out of thin air, everyone walking along the street turned to look at us.

“…! Lord Askanien is here!”

A Bavarian mage who had been guarding the front of the royal palace spotted me and my friends in the distance and shouted, cupping a hand around his mouth. We immediately headed to the National Medical Center, where I explained the situation to the king’s aide who had come looking for me to resolve Nikolaus’s identity problem, then sent him away.

Right. Which meant it was time to see how my friends were taking things. I glanced sideways at them, checking their faces.

“…….”

Ulrike didn’t ask me a single question, as though he had no interest whatsoever in where Nikolaus had gone. Zähringen was the same. Ulrike had been clutching the vial tightly in his hand ever since he woke up in that empty, abandoned mansion.

He held the vial up to the long window in the medical center’s corridor, examining it against the light as he murmured, “What is this? It can’t be a soul… Heike’s mana?”

“…….”

My eyes met Zähringen’s. We didn’t know what it was either, so neither of us said anything.

“I don’t think it’s just mana.”

Ulrike murmured that as he gently turned the bottle over in his hands. He seemed to be controlling the mana flowing through his body, as though he was afraid even his own mana might seep through the glass and into the bottle. I nodded and checked the time.

‘We can figure out what this is later… but surely they should have given us permission by now.’

I turned around and looked at the door to the hospital room behind me.

BANG!

“Your Highness! Wait a moment!”

Before I could even turn around properly, the door flew open. A familiar friend stood there, looking at us with a familiar expression.

“…….”

Leo had bandages wrapped around his head and right arm. My brow furrowed for a moment, but I quickly relaxed it when I realized it. Seeing the face of a friend who had never crossed into another world finally made it sink in that we were back in Munich. Only then did I feel the tension finally leave me, and I smiled at him.

“Leo.”

“…You… definitely, in the building…”

Whether he had just woken up or was still groggy from the medication, he was rambling. His eyes were slightly unfocused, too. He stopped mid-sentence and put a hand to his head. A nurse ushered him back into the room and gestured for us to come in.

Once we sat beside his bed, Ulrike quietly brought up what he had clearly been waiting to say, without even asking Leo how he was doing.

“Once you’re discharged, let’s go find a magnolia branch, Leo.”

“…….”

Leo kept clutching his head, as though it throbbed whenever he spoke. His condition looked bad enough that even when he tried to smile, his face naturally stiffened. I wanted to ask if he was all right, but that would only force him to answer, so I had no choice but to stay silent for now.

Unlike me, Zähringen had initially looked quite shocked by Leo’s condition. But by now, he was looking at his friend with a calmer expression than I expected. Perhaps that calm was actually happiness.

Leo stared at us with a bewildered expression. Then, as though he had suddenly remembered something, his eyes widened. He whispered to Ulrike.

“…A magnolia branch?”

“I’m going to put it in Heike’s room.”

Leo slowly opened his mouth at that. Then he lowered his brows and shook his head.

“…You guys didn’t… Wait, Elias—”

Before Leo could say anything more, I held up a hand and cut him off.

“Yeah. We went to see him. Elias is awake now and doing fine in another room. I’ll explain everything else later, so get some more rest.”

“…….”

Leo realized it too: we had met Einsiedel and come back. Once he had pieced everything together, he squeezed his eyes shut. Then he covered his face with both hands and slowly let out a laugh. Ulrike slipped an arm around his back, closed his eyes, and smiled.

“Once Lukas is discharged, he said he’ll make us something good at his place. So hurry up and get better. Let’s get out of here.”

“I said I’d make something with melted sugar. I never said it would be good.”

I quickly crushed any expectations, just in case. Zähringen, who had been smiling at us with his chin propped on his hand, finally burst out laughing. Even then, Leo slightly raised his head and gave me a questioning look with his eyes. I ruffled his hair and sank back against the backrest.

The sunlight streaming through the window was warm. I had never been so glad to see a moment like this.