Chapter 206 : Chapter 206
Chapter 206
"This is really weird."
"Is it?"
"Normally it's you lying there, and Big Sister pacing around beside you like a dog that needs to pee. That's the routine."
"And by now, Senior would have said 'Teacher' about a hundred times."
"......A hundred?"
Surely she had not muttered Teacher that many times.
I looked at Pan with a somewhat baffled expression, but he stared back as if to say it was absolutely true.
Everyone else seemed to agree, which meant Rozalin really had made quite the fuss every time I had been unconscious.
"Why on earth would she......"
"Isn't what you're doing right now pretty much the same?"
"Huh?"
"You've asked if Big Sister woke up about twelve times just today. It's noon now, so by evening you'll probably hit fifty."
Is that so?
I scratched the back of my head, embarrassed.
"Of course I am worried. A kid who is normally up and causing trouble is lying there unconscious."
"Don't worry. Sihan said so, didn't he?"
"That is true, but."
"Senior will shake it off and get right back up."
Pan, and Hati and Sordian and the rest of the students and security team, did not seem terribly concerned.
Was I the only one overreacting?
"More than that, it's your first time waiting, isn't it? We've always been waiting."
"Ah?"
"We're used to it by now. There's a certain someone who habitually makes people wait."
"Ah......"
It seemed like the right moment to apologize.
"If you're really that worried, why not go see Berlith?"
"Berlith? She is a Necromancer."
"Whenever you collapsed, Big Sister always went to find Berlith."
Really......?
Was there something to her?
***
"Oh—my—!"
It seemed there really was, because Berlith's eyes went perfectly round.
The look in her eyes was like a graduate student who had just been presented with a rare, limited-edition tome.
"What kind of comparison is that~? I don't know what that look is~!"
Then perhaps like a gourmand faced with a feast.
Her face was full of mischief — it was clearly not a normal expression.
"Yes! Moments like this are needed too! A master's love, answering a disciple's devoted affection! Aah! How forbidden~!"
"Um, excuse me?"
Berlith laughed a ho-ho-hong and grabbed my arm.
"Let us go at once!"
Behind her, her teaching assistant Bonnie hastily grabbed a bag and followed.
And so, upon arriving at the infirmary.
"Now now~ Everyone out, please~!"
Berlith expertly shooed everyone from the infirmary.
There had been many Holy Kingdom clerics inside, but they vacated without complaint.
As if this was not the first time.
"Ready up, and Sihan, you brought everything I asked for?"
"I brought roughly everything you said you'd need."
"Good, good~ Ohohohoho."
Why was she so pleased?
Berlith used reagents received from Sihan to draw a ritual circle near the bed where Rozalin lay.
A faint fluorescent glow began to seep from the green circle.
She layered in a blood-red liquid, adding another circle.
As the various liquids and mana were arranged, the circle emitted a bewitching light.
Ominous yet wondrous.
"All done~!"
Berlith dusted her hands and stood.
Now what?
As I waited, everyone's eyes turned to me.
"What are you doing? Hurry up and go in."
"I go in?"
"Just go to her side. Oh, and please turn off the Anti-Magic Fantasy~! You know the drill? Then, begin~!"
Before I could answer, Hati came up behind me and gave me a light push.
There was no hostility in it.
So I walked a few steps toward Rozalin's bed.
I tried to accept the magic as it was, as Berlith had asked.
And soon, a thick fog blanketed my entire field of vision.
'Huh.'
Fog, of all things, right in the middle of Akarind Academy's nursery.
And so dense I could not see in front of me.
This must be the magic Berlith had mentioned.
'But what does this have to do with Rozalin waking up?'
Thinking that, I wandered aimlessly through the fog.
Nothing visible, nothing audible, for what felt like an eternity.
After about thirty minutes of walking.
"————!"
A clamor rose from somewhere in the distance.
"———!"
———!
"——————!"
Shouts and the clash of swords and spears drew steadily nearer.
I could not make out the details, but the atmosphere was utterly familiar.
It was.
The sound of war.
"AAAAAARGH!"
With an ear-splitting scream, a soldier went flying past me.
Literally flying — because he had been hurled at a speed no human could possibly achieve.
"Stop it! Hurry!"
"Shore up defenses! Hold!"
People roared, hoisting blades and spears, and charged.
There stood a humanoid monster.
—————!
Its mouth was clearly moving, speaking something, but the sounds ranged from a piercing tinnitus-like shriek to a deep, rumbling bass, cycling endlessly.
I could not decipher a single word, yet strange images seemed to seep into my mind.
Fear pushed to the limit of human sensation, revulsion, contempt, hatred, rage — every negative emotion flooded in.
'Cut.'
I raised my Sword Intent and set the blade of my mind.
The tormenting emotions evaporated in an instant, and the hazy fog vanished.
All that remained was a single demon.
And the people desperately fighting it.
'Weak.'
The demon's power was not that impressive.
Its only trick seemed to be disorienting the mind.
I picked up a sword lying on the ground nearby.
Aura bloomed from the blade immediately.
"A-Aura!"
"Aura from someone other than the Champion! Oh, oh!"
"God! You have not abandoned humanity yet!"
A commotion erupted around me.
It was hard to immediately understand the meaning, so I focused solely on the demon.
I stepped forward.
The emotions it transmitted intensified.
"Begone."
I swung the sword wide, and the demon's body split in half.
A small gemstone clattered to the floor.
A Fantasy.
"Whew."
Really quite weak.
To better identify the demon, I should examine the Fantasy......
"A-a Fantasy!"
"It is mine! Do not touch it!"
"Grab it!"
"Stop!"
What on earth?
Several knights and soldiers who had been crawling on the ground suddenly sprang up and threw themselves at the dead demon's Fantasy.
Another knight piled onto the first; two or three soldiers stabbed spears at the knight's body.
A soldier who had practically torn someone's hand off grabbed the Fantasy and started running blindly.
People swarmed after him; arrows flew from somewhere.
The world felt suddenly foreign.
A madness I had never seen filled everything.
Corpses were strewn everywhere, and no one collected them.
The ground was pocked and uneven as if bombed, and an acrid stench was overpowering.
Wind blew, and the smell of death, saturating the air, rose once and then settled back down, unremarkable.
"You killed a demon that easily and you let the Fantasy get stolen that easily?"
A voice both familiar and strange. I turned.
A person stood there.
"I heard you use Aura."
A woman in an Imperial military uniform.
Slightly shorter than me but roughly the same age.
Scars from countless battlefields dotted her face, the largest crossing her left eye — just a fraction more inward and the eye would have been lost.
She was chewing on an unlit cigarette.
Her red cloak was so worn it was barely more than a tattered rag.
And her left sleeve fluttered emptily in the wind, just like the cloak.
"First time seeing someone with no arm?"
"Rozalin."
"You know me. Ah. You must have recognized me by the missing arm. That is right. I am Rozalin Vürhelm. Holding the rank of Grand General in this godforsaken army."
A Rozalin from a world I did not know — and would never have known.
I studied her face again.
Emotions I had never once seen were layered onto her features, accumulated over years.
Resignation, irritation, anger, a dull despair.
Every one of them unlike Rozalin.
"Came running the moment I heard. You used Aura?"
"......"
"Quiet type. Well, I do not care. As long as you can use Aura, even if your personality is garbage upon garbage, all of humanity should be sacrificed to recruit you."
"All of humanity?"
"What. Interested in that kind of talk? A Necromancer type? Well, if that is what it takes, I will hand over kids or old folks, whatever."
There was no emotion whatsoever in the way she spoke.
Just the mechanical repetition of words that needed to be said.
"What. Am I what you want?"
Apparently, staring at her in silence had given the wrong impression.
Rozalin chewed on her cigarette once more.
"Peculiar taste. Well, if you prove your usefulness, I can provide myself readily enough."
"No, that is not it."
"No?"
"No. I was just...... thinking, so this is what the world was like."
Even when offering her own body, Rozalin maintained a businesslike tone.
None of this seemed particularly special to her.
That just.
Made me sad.
"Looking for romance in a time like this. Fine. As I said, if you have the skill, romance or whatever — do as you please."
"Rozalin."
Then another familiar face came to this place.
No — I was not sure "familiar" was the right word.
"Pan."
The man called Pan was enormous.
Nearly two meters tall, his frame was packed with excessive muscle.
Each shoulder alone was as wide as a human face.
His thighs were as thick as a person's torso, and a massive sword hung across his back.
What stood out most was his overall face.
His eyes were sharp, parallel rhomboids like a hawk's. His chin was heavy and double, covered in a full beard — more masculine than anyone.
Ruggedly handsome, perhaps — but the old beauty that had once earned him the title of most handsome man in the Belmein Kingdom was nowhere to be found.
Who are you?
"Is this the new recruit who used Aura?"
Above all, the way Pan and Rozalin spoke to each other was jarring.
Pan had always called Rozalin Senior or Guard Captain.
He had respected and wanted to emulate her.
Rozalin, too, had treated Pan like a beloved junior — handled him so gingerly, as though he might blow away or shatter.
But the relationship between these two was — how to put it.
The camaraderie of battle-hardened veterans and more.
Trust forged through years of combat was palpable in their eyes alone.
"Yeah. Seems a bit unhinged, though."
"Why?"
"Apparently the price for joining the army is me. He has been staring at me slack-jawed this whole time."
"Insane."
"But that look is aimed at you too, it seems. Peculiar tastes on both sides."
"......"
What kind of world was this?
What on earth had Berlith sent me here to do?
I could not begin to fathom it.