Chapter 559

“What’s the point of being a team?”

Ulrike quickly stepped closer to me as he spoke, as if afraid I might change my mind. Apparently, I hadn’t managed to convince him that he could trust me. I understood. Sweat streamed down his face like rain, and only his eyes gleamed through his soot-blackened skin. All our clothes had been soaked through for some time now. Without the potion, the fire would drain Ulrike of his life force until he collapsed like the unfamiliar Association mages lying outside. That was why he kept putting the hose to his mouth whenever he got the chance.

But there was another problem on my mind, separate from the vague yet unmistakable hope Ulrike had given me. I knew what he was capable of. He was one of the seven outstanding students the school had carefully selected, and no matter what task far beyond his years they threw at him, he would undoubtedly carry it out brilliantly. He had been raised to do just that, and he had the ability to back it up. Perhaps succeeding at such a task would even give him a sense of accomplishment.

Even so, my way of thinking differed from that of the school and the Imperial Family.

The school and the Imperial Family were probably preoccupied with finding ways to make use of Ulrike, but I didn’t want to see him suffer. Even if it was Julia or Leonard who had come, these thoughts would still have plagued me, but perhaps they wouldn’t have weighed on me quite so heavily. Ulrike was different. And so was Heike. I clenched my fist. The hand that had been trembling weakly inside my glove finally stilled.

But so what?

If I truly intended to go through with it alone, I wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. My resolve hadn’t changed. As Narke approached the corridor and poured out his divine power, Ulrike stepped closer to me again. His voice took on a slightly harsher edge.

“You’re not going to tell me you’re going alone again, are you? Even after Julia and I went to rescue you last time?”

I narrowed my eyes slightly. His words made my stomach twist the moment I heard them. It was a reflex.

That day, I had seen Ulrike’s clear eyes—which had always looked so much like those of an ordinary student—settle into a calm stillness like the mist at dawn. I had realized that everything about him, the very aura and air he gave off, had changed completely.

From the day he was selected for the Student Military Corps, Ulrike had been destined to leave behind his carefree school days and step into the darkness. But he hadn’t expected it to happen that day. He hadn’t expected to face something like that barely a month or two after being selected.

I had admired his composure, yet at the same time, it had felt as though my heart had dropped into my stomach. That was why I still remembered what I’d witnessed that day so vividly. Not that I could have forgotten it even otherwise.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed a hand to my forehead, and struggled to speak.

“It’s not like I went in there knowing there was some other space inside.”

“Right. No one could’ve expected that. But that’s not the point.”

Ulrike narrowed his eyes as he spoke. He glanced at Narke for a split second, then turned his gaze back to me.

“I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t go alone. I know your abilities let you… take on all sorts of things. But—”

Whoosh!

— This is the confidence we have in approaching God!

The heat bearing down on the left side of my face suddenly veered away. Ulrike shouted in a hoarse, cracking voice and swept his right hand sharply through the air, forcing the flames pouring down from the fifth-floor stairs back upward. Beyond his trembling hand, the fire bent away on the other side of the pale green barrier.

“That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. I know. You throw yourself into these things because you think you have a good enough chance of surviving. You’re not crazy enough to charge in just because you want to die, are you? And yet you know that we’re all part of a Headquarters where our lives are worth no more than a fly’s, where it wouldn’t be surprising if we died today or tomorrow. So you go in anyway, knowing there’s a ten percent risk. Every single time.”

I nodded as I angled my left foot toward the stairs and raised my other hand beside my face to count down. 3, 2… 1. The moment I finished counting, Ulrike’s barrier scattered, replaced by crimson mana.

— And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—

KRA-KOOOM—CRACK!

— We know that we have what we asked of him.

The crimson light shot up the stairs like a rushing flame, drowning out the roar of the fire. My mana should keep the flames at bay all the way to the top of the fifth-floor stairs.

I’d bought us a little time. Before Ulrike could voice his concerns—such as asking why the fire couldn’t absorb my mana—I quickly grabbed him and pulled him toward the corridor where Narke was. Narke was constantly gulping down potions. Staying one step ahead of Ulrike, I swept away the flames spreading from the rooms into the corridor Narke had cleared.

Ulrike kept talking.

“You know what I’m trying to say. So go on, guess what I’m going to say next.”

I parted my lips awkwardly and furrowed my brows slightly. All the while, I recited my spell as if I were chanting the Lord’s Prayer during an exorcism.

— Though I walk in the midst of trouble—

“If we die, we die together.”

I closed my eyes, swallowed, and continued reciting the spell.

— …You preserve my life. You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes; with your right hand you save me.

“You probably think it’s a bit much for me to say this when we’ve only been friends for two or three months, don’t you? That I’m being overly sentimental without giving it much thought. Or maybe you think I can’t possibly care about you that much when I’m so friendly with everyone. Well? Am I wrong?”

You are. I don’t think that way. I don’t twist your words into something so distorted when I understand why you’re saying them. The words never left my mouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t mean them. I simply didn’t want to interrupt the flood of words pouring out of him. Ulrike’s sword whistled through the air on the other side.

“No, Lukas. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have been able to treat Heike the same way, either.”

The red light gathering at the tip of my wand suddenly turned white. Fragments of sunlight scattered through the black smoke. Even so, Ulrike’s eyes, fixed on me from across the corridor, never wavered. I looked back at him.

I knew. I knew how deeply Ulrike cared for all living things. His love might brush over the surface of everything like sunlight, but it never stopped there. It was always ready to seep beneath the skin, into the veins, into the heart. That was what it meant to have eyes that shone with love.

I didn’t think it was simply because he was still in high school, because he was young. Age might help preserve someone’s innocence, but I had never believed that people were like this only because they were young. Thinking that way would be disrespectful.

Compared to Elias’s deep blue eyes, marked by wounds, resentment, and determination, Leonard’s were filled with hope. Yet the immense responsibility placed on his shoulders from birth was enough to suffocate anyone, and his eyes were as calm as those of someone decades older. Except when he became particularly ‘unlike himself’ around me—as he himself had admitted, when he was allowed to act his own age—he always had the clear, upright eyes of an elderly person whom the world considered wise.

Compared to Leonard’s, Ulrike’s eyes seemed to shine without end. He gave everyone he met the same chance. First, he loved them, and only then did he decide what came next. How long he had known someone made no difference to him.

That was why I didn’t want to put Ulrike in danger.

And now, I understand how selfish it is to try to keep their bodies out of harm’s way just to preserve the light in their eyes. It’s more than selfish. It’s wrong. It means letting their souls fade.

Why?

— …The LORD will vindicate me.

KRA-KOOOM—!

With no one in the room, I unleashed my magic without holding back. I wanted to put out this fire as quickly as possible, find the survivors and send them downstairs, and focus on what Ulrike was saying. But Ulrike continued as though he couldn’t afford to wait for me to finish. Even with some distance between us, his voice rang out clearly.

“Being with you all until the day I retire was the future I had been given.”

— Your love, LORD, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands.

CRASH—…

I knocked aside fragments of a beam falling from the ceiling with my mana, then grabbed Ulrike and pulled him along. With a barrier around him, I ran down the long corridor.

“But look at me now. What do I have left?”

Running after me, Ulrike held out his empty hand. Even over the roar of the flames, his voice was clear. I glanced down at his glove. He shouted without a moment’s hesitation, as though he were finally voicing something he’d been thinking about for a long time.

“We don’t have Heike anymore, and you’ve nearly died time and time again. The only reason you’re still alive is that your abilities are so extraordinary that no one else can compare. Anyone else would’ve died hundreds of times over by now. And Elias can’t even come out because of the Imperial Family my house has been so loyal to.”

Ulrike coughed, his voice completely hoarse. Even with the barrier shielding him, it couldn’t keep out the tiny amounts of smoke that seeped through. I ran over to Narke, who was dealing with the stairs on the other side, and fell silent to give him time to drink his potion. I wanted to let Ulrike speak while he still had something to say. Even if he collapsed from exhaustion because he couldn’t inhale the potion while talking, I no longer wanted to stand in their way.

Ulrike panted as he spoke, the words coming so fast and urgently that it was almost as if he couldn’t catch his breath.

“The only ones who are relatively safe are Narke, who came from Italy, and Leo and Julia, the heirs to their respective kingdom and grand duchy. I know the Imperial Family can’t protect me. They won’t protect someone like me, with no one backing him. Just like Heike… No. Just like all those Association mages who died before us, they’ll make me risk my life when they need me to.”

The Imperial Family had failed to earn Ulrike’s trust so thoroughly that even he—a Junker from a military family, no less—had described himself as having no one to back him.

I moved away from Narke and led Ulrike toward the staircase on the opposite side, where we’d started, patting him on the shoulder as we went. Narke’s divine power was probably seeping into him, too, but Ulrike said nothing about it.

“But the reason I want to go with you now isn’t that I know I’ll die someday because of the Imperial Family. It’s not that I think I’m bound to die sooner or later while being sent all over the place to deal with magical crimes anyway, so it doesn’t matter when I die.”

— It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”

I murmured the words, steadying my concentration to keep the spell’s calculations from going wrong. Ash drifted through the pitch-black space before my eyes, only to be swept aside.

‘And now, I understand how selfish it is to try to keep their bodies out of harm’s way just to preserve the light in their eyes. It’s more than selfish. It’s wrong.’

I’d wondered earlier why it was wrong. I knew the answer.

— Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak.

“I want to protect what I’ve been given before any more of it is taken away from me.”

Ulrike’s eyes spoke with a fierceness that outshone even the flames around us.

Why? Because they loved me just as much as I loved them. Ulrike cared about me as much as I cared about him, and he cared about Elias, Leonard, Narke, and Julia, too. And Heike, who had dealt him such a devastating blow, went without saying. The length of time he’d known someone had never mattered much to him.

Just as I wanted the friends I’d come to love with all my heart to stay strong through everything, the friends who loved me wanted the same for me. I couldn’t just leave them behind and recklessly insist that I’d manage somehow with my own abilities. That was a form of selfishness so desperate it was almost absurd.

If there was one more thing I’d learned by surviving once again with Leonard’s help, it was that I’d been unintentionally selfish toward the people who loved me. And now, looking into Ulrike’s eyes, I saw the same thing all over again.

Ulrike was angry. He was afraid.

The thought came to me in an instant. The flames on the fifth floor weren’t as strong because of the water. Ulrike had realized the same thing. Without a word, he stamped his foot and plunged into the fire.

“Wait, Luise!”

I chased after him, feeling my way through the darkness toward the sound of his voice.

— For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

I began reciting the next part of the spell before he could cast his magic.

“Luise, wait! So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner—”

Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. Before I could finish reciting the spell, I fell silent and thrust out my wand instead. The green mana faded, and red mana spread out like a blade toward the spot where he had been about to strike. My view cleared.

Ulrike spotted the people collapsed on the fifth floor and smashed a window. Far below, people wearing artifact gas masks spotted us and drew their wands. Narke, who had come up the opposite staircase, was doing the same in another room. The sounds of doors and windows being smashed, followed by people being carried downstairs, continued one after another. Even as he worked, Ulrike kept talking. He knew the time was approaching to put my plan into action—to recreate what had happened at Stadelheim Prison.

“Surviving alone isn’t living to me. I’m scared now.”

Grabbing my arm, Ulrike left the room and spoke as he frantically searched our surroundings.

“What am I afraid of? Watching the world I believed in fall apart? Watching my new friends, whom I thought I’d be with forever, die? They’re the same thing. I don’t understand. Why are the very things I trusted and loved… the things that raised me into who I am today, driving everything innocent to this point? I don’t think I’m devout enough to call this fate. Though I am praying to God right now. So this is a problem with the world itself. Everyone, myself included, has been doing something wrong, whether we knew it or not.”

“…….”

“I realized it that day. And now that I know, I don’t want to watch things go wrong anymore. If I stood by and watched everything innocent fall into the Lethe¹ before I could do anything to stop it, then I…”

Our vision had grown a little clearer, even without us using mana. Smoke poured out through the broken windows, and Narke’s divine power helped as well. Narke, who had been putting out the remaining flames, slowly approached us.

Ulrike spoke as though he were telling no one in particular. Even so, his eyes still burned with determination, bright and clear.

“I don’t know. What I mean is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe in and live for anymore. How am I supposed to forgive myself for having lived all this time without knowing anything? How am I supposed to accept my family, whom I’ve always been proud of? And how am I supposed to come to terms with the mana flowing through my body—or, before I blame it all on mana, with the blood of a selfish creature called a human being flowing through my veins?”

The cheerful eighteen-year-old I’d known was gone. He had realized that something was wrong with the way society worked and begun tracing the problem back to its roots. Just as everyone does at least once in their life. Just as I had done in the 21st century, he was doing the same in the 19th.

Amid the crackling of the fire, Ulrike spoke calmly.

“What am I supposed to hold on to in a world where everything I’ve ever loved is killing everything I love? Do you understand what I mean?”

Right. Exactly. It wasn’t enough that my own stubbornness had finally forced Leonard to call something an injustice. It wasn’t enough that I’d shaken a friend’s sense of self and made him suffer as everything he thought he was came crashing down. I didn’t want to do the same to another friend.

If I’d faced this moment earlier, I probably wouldn’t have thought the way I did today. It had to be today. If this had happened before the day Leonard dropped me onto the church roof, I would have done what I always did—desperately tried to protect Ulrike so he could keep his light. Ulrike was already going through the process of breaking free from his past on his own, without me having to do anything. But if I could help him, that help would surely guide him toward the right path—the one he wanted to take.

“I’m afraid of being left out of it. I can’t not go with you. If you’re going to do something on your own, then you’ll have to beat me first.”

Ulrike grabbed my wrist. His grip was strong enough to press against my bones. I swallowed, lowered my eyes, then turned my head away. Then I recited a spell.

— If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

The magic that blotted out all light spread around us. Perhaps it had become a little easier to breathe, because Ulrike’s breathing gradually steadied.

There was so much I wanted to say to him that I couldn’t settle on a single word. I gazed at Ulrike for a long time before finally speaking.

“That’s why I brought it up with you.”

I understood what you meant, which was why I brought up Stadelheim Prison. If you wanted me to, I was prepared to go with you. The person I’d been before Easter wouldn’t have been able to do that, but things were different now…

For a moment, something changed in Ulrike’s eyes. His gaze wavered briefly before settling into a firm, unwavering stare.

“I won’t be satisfied with that. Tell me you won’t keep us safe.”

I blinked, taken aback by his unexpected words. It didn’t take long to understand what he meant. How could I not? With his eyes shining but his expression stern, Ulrike spoke in a rapid burst, like someone seizing an opportunity.

“Whether it’s your plan or mine, I’m telling you not to rely on your abilities to keep us safe. That would be worse than not letting us take part at all.”

“Of course. I respect you, Luise. There’s never been a time when I didn’t.””

There was no reply. I took a breath and looked into Ulrike’s eyes, shining in the darkness, before speaking.

“I’ve realized how immature I was, so I just believe that the way we do things has to change now.”

Ulrike didn’t fully understand what I meant. His eyes told me as much. That was only natural, since he didn’t know all the details of how I’d gotten back on my feet with Leonard’s help. Even so, though he might not understand the whole process, he trusted what I was telling him. If we hadn’t both known that I respected him, and that he respected me in his own way, we would have had to go all the way back to the beginning before we could discuss our next plan here.

“…All right, then. Explain it to me. Why do you want to repeat what happened at Stadelheim?”

Perhaps because he’d gotten all the assurances he needed, Ulrike’s voice settled into a steady, calm tone.

“And what do I have to do this time?”

Thankfully, he didn’t bluntly ask something like, Are you planning to bring the building down or what? I cast a soundproofing spell. There was no one around to overhear us, but I wanted to make absolutely sure our voices were concealed, too. Drawing Narke closer, I said, “Let’s start here. I need you to know this before I can explain things in more detail. Narke.”

“Yeah.”

Without waiting for me to say anything else, Narke glanced at me and then spoke to Ulrike using his divine power.

— “Lukas asked me earlier to tell them that we need to protect the Student Military Corps training ground. He wants me to tell you what I reported to the Headquarters.”

I could hear exactly what I’d been thinking, conveyed through him. I’d never realized before that it was possible to get chills in a place this hot. It was astonishing. I turned my head and forced the corners of my mouth down. It was a good thing, sure, but honestly… Narke looked Ulrike in the eye, his expression serious, and spoke without moving his lips.

— “Als ich nach Deutschland kam, sprach Seine Heiligkeit: ‘Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis’. Ora è giunto il momento.” (When I came to Germany, His Holiness said, ‘Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis.’ Now the time has come.)

Words formed from divine power were being driven straight into our heads. His voice sounded calm, but he spoke in a mix of German and Italian, as though he’d been so pressed for time that he’d mixed up his words. At least his distinctive, elderly-person-like way of speaking remained unchanged.

— “Die Lage ist jetzt äußerst dringlich. A mio avviso, il prossimo obiettivo dei nemici sarà probabilmente il campo di addestramento del corpo studentesco dell’Istituto Imperiale di Formazione II… der Kaiserliche Bildungsanstalt II sein. Sensus fidei, Wir müssen die Kinder Gottes unter dem Beichtstuhl schützen.” (The situation is extremely urgent. In my opinion, the enemy’s next target will likely be the Imperial Second Academy Student Military Corps training grounds… Sensus fidei, we must protect the children of God beneath the confessional.)

Ulrike furrowed his brows.

Wasn’t that strange?

If Narke had blurted out Italian because he was nervous, he could have switched to German when speaking to us. The fact that he was mixing the languages even now, while speaking to us, meant that he was doing it on purpose. That was also why I’d asked Narke to relay the message.

In the middle of this urgent situation, he said, “Urbi et Orbi, ite, missi estis,” claiming that His Holiness had sent him on a mission. It was a perfectly plausible thing to say, but anyone even slightly perceptive would immediately realize why Latin had suddenly entered the conversation.

Urbi et Orbi was a phrase used when the Pope bestowed his blessing upon the world. It meant ‘to the city and to the world’—literally, ‘to the city and the world.’ Ite, missi estis wasn’t a commonly used phrase, but if he’d meant Ite, missa est, it was what a priest said at the end of Mass. It brought to mind the image of people leaving the church and dispersing to their homes. As for Ite, missi estis, it meant, ‘Go, you have been sent.’

Now, we had to put the two phrases together.

Anyone listening could easily take that as a mere opening remark. But let’s look at it from a more twisted perspective. Was there really any need for Narke to tell the people in the Headquarters that he had been sent to the city and the world?

Sensus fidei. It refers to the faith shared by the community of believers—the faith widely held at the level of ordinary, everyday believers.

There was one more thing that stood out. What did he mean by ‘protect the children of God under the confessional’? A confessional brought secrecy to mind, and secrecy brought roses. If they were familiar with the expression ‘Sub rosa,’ as one might expect of Europeans, they would have immediately recognized it as a call to keep everything confidential. Even if they didn’t make that connection, simply considering the implications of mentioning a confessional would have been enough to grasp the intent. To protect those beneath the confessional meant not to reveal openly everything they had learned, but to handle the entire matter in secret.

Put it all together, and what did we get?

Ulrike stared at Narke and me with wide eyes, wearing an expression that seemed to ask, And what exactly is that supposed to mean? Then the corners of his mouth curled upward. We recognized that expression, too. We’d been about to explain, but with just these few clues, Ulrike had already figured out what we had in mind.

A disinformation operation.

His eyes gleaming at the thought, Ulrike nodded and crooked a finger toward himself.

“Good. What’s next?”

Translator Note

1. Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. ↩︎