Rushing back upstairs, I continued to observe the steady fall of my creatures around us. The enemy seemed to have hidden in several underground structures so far, hiding their numbers in the process. But I couldn’t tell for sure yet.
Obviously, I couldn’t warn the others yet and thus aimed directly for my own room. Before I could get there though, a pale Ellie dashed out of her room, and stopped right away as she saw me.
“I … Louis is in danger.” Oh? Putting him before herself? What a noble girl she was.
“My sister is going to search for him.” I said in an attempt to stop er right away.
“I’m going with her.” She said, even though it would endanger her beloved friend more if she joined her.
“As much as I hate to say it, you won’t be of any help.” I said, looking straight at her chest which was still reddened from the healing.
“But …” She said, realising slowly that she would be more of a hindrance.
“Hey, she will find him and if not, I will.” I said and gave her the thumbs up which did take her off guard.
“You want to search for him?” She asked surprised.
“I lived in a demon infested forest for half my life … so yes, I will give my best.” I said and gave her a rather confident smile right away.
“I … I want to help.” She still said.
“You could wait outside. Maybe he will come back on his own.” And maybe, she could join the defence of the town if she noticed what was happening which shouldn’t be that hard.
“I … okay.” She said and looked to the ground dolefully. Touching her shoulder compassionately, I walked past her into my own room. Luna was apparently questioned right at this moment as she wasn’t around at all. But that would save me the trouble of explaining her everything which was why I just grabbed my very special uniform and changed into it right away.
It felt exactly like the one I wore before and didn’t look any different as well, which I why I felt comfortable walking out of my room once more. It didn’t take long for me to get back into the foyer where Hannah already waited for me.
“No amour?” She asked and inspected my attire from head to toe. But I knew for a fact that I looked brilliantly.
“I’m a schoolgirl? And we go into battle with style.” I said and smirked at her while strolling through the door unhindered by another teacher standing around there.
“Are you high?” Hannah asked as we were a bit away from the hotel.
“I’m exited … which is basically the same thing.” I proclaimed and giggled a little bit. Together, we walked through the town towards the gate which was already at high alert.
“Ladies, we cannot let you leave. We have spotted lots of demons and wild animals outside, so please stay inside.”
“I’m a gold rank adventurer and this is my sister. We are both trying to find the root of this unusual behaviour and exterminate it.” Hannah said and showed her badge right away. I was a little surprised she was even registered as an adventurer, but it was probably beneficial for her because the mercenaries could fulfil guild requests as well.
“… very well.” The guard said and signed the others to open the gates for us a little bit. Slipping through the gap they made, we found ourselves right in front of the town without any protection at all.
“Let’s get going.” She said and took the first step towards the nearby forest in the north.
“Hmm … hey, I know I’m usually the type of person who plans everything until the last detail, but I don’t have any plans right now. So …” I said, following closely behind and took one of the swords out of her hand.
“Stab him until he dies?” She proposed, which was honestly a great plan.
“That’s a great plan! Can I go first though? I really want to test out something before we kill him.” I asked and smiled a little. We both wanted to wreck this place, but I thought about something that may be much more beneficial to us.
“Which is?” She asked a bit curious, but also wary of my whacky plans.
“It might be a little surprising, but I want to talk to him first.” I said and giggled a little as she looked at me if I was crazy.
“You are going to ridicule him because of his creations, aren’t you?” Because they were worse! They didn’t even have a soul and thus had no way of deciding for themselves! They were just driven by instincts …
“What?” I asked as if I didn’t understand her at all.
“Do as you want…” She said and ducked behind a bush as one of these undead appeared nearby.
“Ehh … don’t worry about these.” I said and walked past her, stopped in front of the goblin and waved my hand. “The dead are still my domain, no matter how much magic is applied onto them.” I said and shrugged my shoulders.
“Weren’t you complaining you would need chants for everything?”
“That’s just a cheap trick … okay, I need a chant for the harder things. Satisfied?”
“What’s hard for you? Reanimating a dragon?” And why would that be hard? It was just a single soul I would need to get back from purgatory. That wasn’t hard at all.
“Hmm … stopping every soul from getting into purgatory? Stuff I’m not very familiar with? Open a portal for my soul to pass through?“ I said and scratched my cheek. When I thought about it, everything I could do did indeed seem a little over the top. “The easier stuff is like breathing these days.” I could still remember the long gone days where I needed a lengthy chant to get the soul of a dead being back into it and I was glad to have passed that.
“I’m giving up …” She said, right as one of these strange apes with red eyes shimmed past us. “All these years ago, I lost my men for nothing?” Oh, she meant the time where she saved Sofie?
“Not really. The truth is that I couldn’t help you anymore. I was already too far away from my body to use much more magic. Unlike Aska, I am bound to this form and use it to support my magic.” I explained and teasingly put my leg in the front of a goblin for him to trip over it. I laughed hard as he stood up and continued to walk onwards as if nothing happened.
“So, let’s wait here, shall we?” Hannah asked, around ten kilometres east of the location we assumed the necromancer to be.
“Hmm … do you have something to eat with you?” I asked and sat down on top of a very round boulder.
“You just had lunch.” And? My stomach had a black hole in it. Eating food doesn’t do anything to me.
“Every time except once, you always eat after you have eaten. Therefore, your ‘you just had lunch’ is invalid and void.” I nagged and pointed at her angrily.
“You would just complain anyway.” She said, completely unfazed by me.
“Maybe I would like the food for once?” I asked, even though everyone already knew the answer.
“There is no cook with four hundred years of experience rivalling you.” Maybe that was it … or maybe it was the lack of hatred these cooks put into their meal. Whatever it was, their meals were horrible.
“So it seems.” Time went on relatively quickly while Hannah and I chatted about this and that. We hadn’t planned to do anything until nightfall anyways, and so we kept chatting until the time was right.
“Let’s go!” I said eagerly and stood up from the boulder I had grown attached to and grabbed the still seethed katana. Hannah followed suit right away and walked westwards, still completely unseen by any dead eyes.
“Hmm … have you lost you way?” I said after a little while of running through the forest unhindered. We should already be there, but so far, I couldn’t see any hut around us.
“No? It’s just hard to find a spot based on a feeling you described.” Hannah said indignantly and stopped angrily. “It’s hard t-“
A massive light appeared a few kilometres north of us for several seconds, blinding me somewhat until it vanished as quickly as it came.
“Found them.” I said and ran at full speed to the signal through a normal forest at first, and then through an area infested by these undead. At that point, I could already hear everything going on and stopped in my tracks.
Louis was alone and the impostor Ellie nowhere in sight. Louis seemed to have fallen onto his knees already, and was close to blacking out as I picked up a bit of my earlier pace again and sneaked onto the clearing with the hut. Louis was already passed out as I stepped into his field of vision and with the necromancer facing him, it was quite easy to sneak up on that guy unnoticed.
“That’s a nice house you have there.” I commented dryly, a few metres behind him which startled him somewhat. He must fought before, he cause he immediately stopped choking Louis and turned around to blast me with a ray of dark light.
The barrier woven into my uniform activated right away and shielded me from around a tenth of this attack, with the rest harmlessly passing by as I twisted my body to the side.
“Oh my … can we not talk about this?” I asked, holding my seethed weapon in front of me to calm him down somewhat.
“The house?” Why would we want to talk about the house? Just because I praised the hut a little?
“You are taking me way too serious.” I answered and shook my head in disappointment.
“Oh, so you are one of those who lost their will to live already.” Will to live? Just because I got there without any precautions and didn’t commit to a surprise attack? He was way too full of himself … but I kind of liked that.
“Life is overrated. But no, I’m here to talk about your problems.” I said and casually leaned against a nearby tree.
“My … what?” He said, completely confused and called a few of his underlings towards him.
“Okay … let’s start again, shall we? My name is Lucy just like the saint, but no, I am not the saint. It’s a cruel twist of fate that I got her voice and her name … what about you?” I asked, looking at the two big dogs that stood by his side at this point.
“Nezar.” He said.
“Ahh …” Somehow, I recalled this name from somewhere, but couldn’t say from where right away.
“Doesn’t there ring a bell?” He asked proudly.
“Oh, you are famous? Maybe you are a book author? Or perhaps … a journalist? No … that’s not it either.” Grabbing my chin, I thought deeply about him until I remembered that name from two hundred years ago. He was one of the kings aides and focused on magic if I wasn’t mistaken … but for him to live two hundred years, even though he looked like a complete wreck was quite the achievement. “You are that famous mage that vanished a long time ago. How fascinating.”
“So you do realise how outclassed you are. Then tell me that, how did you get here?” He asked and looked behind me to see if there was someone else.
“By foot.” I explained right away as I saw no reason to hide that I didn’t get there by horse.
“How did you evade the surveillance of my creatures?” He asked a bit annoyed because of my answer.
“Oh … you mean that. You see, I’m fairly good at optical illusions. But enough about me, what are your plans?” I asked and snipped my finger to point at him.
“Why would I tell you that?” That was the question … but I did hope we could build a solid foundation for our future cooperation, if that was even possible.
“Because you are a villain and they always spill the beans when they think they won?” I proposed and rubbed my cheek.
“A villain?” Stupefied, I looked past him towards Louis who laid on the ground completely defeated. “Oh … okay, I can see where you are coming from.”
“So, why are you trying to crush the town?” I asked unhappily. If he would have waited a few weeks with that, it all wouldn’t matter to me.
“It’s my end of the bargain.” He said right away.
“Oh? So you are working with the demons.” I snipped once again, finally piercing all these pieces together.
“It was necessary to achieve my goal.” That goal was better something grand. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to stay calm. Allying with someone who was driven to exterminate your very race was just … illogical.
“And this goal is?” I asked and tilted my head to the side.
“The power of the gods. I want the philosopher’s stone.” He said, stunning me somewhat. It was the same thing with Sirius all these years ago … and I fucking hated it.
“And the demon king promised you one?” That was a very cheap way of gaining the support of one of the strongest mages alive … but it also had its drawbacks. If the demon king couldn’t deliver for example, then …
“You are already dead … so I suppose there is no harm telling you. No, the demon king is merely offering me the opportunity to create one myself by gathering all these gifted people and allowing me to run my tests on them. This way, I can get crucial information about the gods themselves and can replicate their powers.” Oh, that was a smart way. Sadly, it wouldn’t work out at all as he had no way of identifying what was god-given and what not. Even I couldn’t do that after all.
“Sound tedious with very little chance of success. Why don’t you just take the power of the gods yourself?” I proposed and smiled happily. If he would join my side because his chances of getting a philosopher’s stone by following me were higher, it would benefit everyone.
“What do you mean by that?” He asked confused.
“There is a philosopher’s stone in purgatory for example …” I didn’t even lie. There was still the magical circle capable of creating and modifying everything, it was just that he probably wouldn’t be able to use it.
“And how do you know that?” He asked, which made me smile a little.
“Because I got mine from there.” He sadly didn’t believe me one bit and probably thought that my death was long overdue.
Pointing his finger towards me, a black lightning shot out of it towards me. I only sighed a bit exhausted before it hit me square on my chest and corroded my flesh away. The magic spread across my whole body, drying my flesh up until it crumbled, and then turned into dust.
I merely witnessed the beginning of it as my body stopped functioning soon afterwards, but it was enough time to prepare for everything. Merely by thinking about it, I detached my soul from my body and stepped out of it a bit bored.
Witnessing my own death was kind of thrilling though, so I watched every second of it until there were only my attire and a bit of dust left from me.
“And I really thought she would be able to fight me.” He said and turned around to Louis once more and started choking him with his magic. Whistling loudly, but still inaudible for anyone else, I witnessed how the ashes of my body turned into a bloody mist, which then turned into bones, muscles and flesh within around thirty seconds. Going by that, I was as fast as Aska, but my way still had a crucial drawback. It was easy to interrupt my resurrection. Well, at least I fixed that I had a high blood loss this way as my dead body was reconstructed exactly like it was before.
And then, as the last bit of skin was being remade quietly, I slipped back into my body and liked everything up.
“Whoa, that hurt.” This time, Nezar was indeed surprised and turned around wildly. Picking up the katana from the ground, I grinned at him and giggled a bit. “You know that this was quite mean?”
“That wasn’t any magic … how did you do that?”
“I told you I have a philosopher’s stone? It’s incorporated into me, giving me immortality and all the other amazing stuff.”
“You …” He was apparently not yet ready to face reality and ordered his two hounds to get closer to me.
“Sit. Sit.” I said once they were close to me and patted their head.In reality, I merely put their old souls into their bodies and ordered them to sit down. But saying it so casually also did have its perks. “I’m telling you. We could be a great team.”
“It may indeed be time to find a new partner to cooperate with.” Lucky me. I really thought he would continue blasting me with this scary lightning which I had very little way of countering. Even if he used the system as support, I doubted he wouldn’t figure that out soon enough and if he did, merely claiming I wasn’t the saint wouldn’t work anymore.
“Great! You might need to blow off the attack on the town.” I proposed right off the bat.
“You care about them?” Did I? Definitely about Luna, but the others were merely useful … like Nezar was.
“Too much collateral damage is bad for the economy. And that boy … I’m sorry if he attacked you, but he’s kind of mine already.” I said and pointed towards Louis.
“Alright … so, how do I get into purgatory.” That was the question. And I didn’t even know if I wanted to answer it. If he opened a way by accident and Aska slipped in, that would be the end for me. On the other hand, I didn’t know anything about the ways to get to this world, which meant gathering information had a higher priority than anything else. And besides, if purgatory was easily accessible, shouldn’t Aska find a way to order anyone to open it up for him? It wouldn’t be that easy, that was for sure.
“That is a great question. I fell into a well and got there and I know for a fact that everyone who had ever ventured there fell and then got transported there. But there also has to be a gateway connecting purgatory and this world which I am sadly unable to find.” Theoretically, there had to be a way from purgatory to Solaris which could be taken by everyone. Sadly, I didn’t know how that looked nor how to use it yet. And thus, it was the perfect decision to ask someone with a high motivation to do that for me. “If you find that gateway, don’t open it though. You will probably die.”
“Hmm … I can take care of myself.” He said and ordered his two hounds back which I naturally didn’t block. Instead, I took the two souls out of their body again and let them escape to purgatory once more.
“You can reach me at burrow street ten in the capital city.” I said as he turned his back to me, probably already somewhere else with his head.
“Don’t order me around.” Even though I was just doing that? He was an interesting, but also dangerous man. I knew for sure he would betray me at the first possible point as he had just betrayed the demon king without a second thought. And he also wasn’t really one of my underlings, so there was that.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I said and looked at him as he muttered something. A circle appeared right underneath his feet on the ground and glowed up brightly. It took him ten seconds to complete everything while I shielded my eyes with my hands. As the light vanished and I looked at the place he saw earlier, I noticed a pair of footprints, ending right there. He had teleported away and left all his creatures like he found them once more. Dead.
Rushing back upstairs, I continued to observe the steady fall of my creatures around us. The enemy seemed to have hidden in several underground structures so far, hiding their numbers in the process. But I couldn’t tell for sure yet.
Obviously, I couldn’t warn the others yet and thus aimed directly for my own room. Before I could get there though, a pale Ellie dashed out of her room, and stopped right away as she saw me.
“I … Louis is in danger.” Oh? Putting him before herself? What a noble girl she was.
“My sister is going to search for him.” I said in an attempt to stop er right away.
“I’m going with her.” She said, even though it would endanger her beloved friend more if she joined her.
“As much as I hate to say it, you won’t be of any help.” I said, looking straight at her chest which was still reddened from the healing.
“But …” She said, realising slowly that she would be more of a hindrance.
“Hey, she will find him and if not, I will.” I said and gave her the thumbs up which did take her off guard.
“You want to search for him?” She asked surprised.
“I lived in a demon infested forest for half my life … so yes, I will give my best.” I said and gave her a rather confident smile right away.
“I … I want to help.” She still said.
“You could wait outside. Maybe he will come back on his own.” And maybe, she could join the defence of the town if she noticed what was happening which shouldn’t be that hard.
“I … okay.” She said and looked to the ground dolefully. Touching her shoulder compassionately, I walked past her into my own room. Luna was apparently questioned right at this moment as she wasn’t around at all. But that would save me the trouble of explaining her everything which was why I just grabbed my very special uniform and changed into it right away.
It felt exactly like the one I wore before and didn’t look any different as well, which I why I felt comfortable walking out of my room once more. It didn’t take long for me to get back into the foyer where Hannah already waited for me.
“No amour?” She asked and inspected my attire from head to toe. But I knew for a fact that I looked brilliantly.
“I’m a schoolgirl? And we go into battle with style.” I said and smirked at her while strolling through the door unhindered by another teacher standing around there.
“Are you high?” Hannah asked as we were a bit away from the hotel.
“I’m exited … which is basically the same thing.” I proclaimed and giggled a little bit. Together, we walked through the town towards the gate which was already at high alert.
“Ladies, we cannot let you leave. We have spotted lots of demons and wild animals outside, so please stay inside.”
“I’m a gold rank adventurer and this is my sister. We are both trying to find the root of this unusual behaviour and exterminate it.” Hannah said and showed her badge right away. I was a little surprised she was even registered as an adventurer, but it was probably beneficial for her because the mercenaries could fulfil guild requests as well.
“… very well.” The guard said and signed the others to open the gates for us a little bit. Slipping through the gap they made, we found ourselves right in front of the town without any protection at all.
“Let’s get going.” She said and took the first step towards the nearby forest in the north.
“Hmm … hey, I know I’m usually the type of person who plans everything until the last detail, but I don’t have any plans right now. So …” I said, following closely behind and took one of the swords out of her hand.
“Stab him until he dies?” She proposed, which was honestly a great plan.
“That’s a great plan! Can I go first though? I really want to test out something before we kill him.” I asked and smiled a little. We both wanted to wreck this place, but I thought about something that may be much more beneficial to us.
“Which is?” She asked a bit curious, but also wary of my whacky plans.
“It might be a little surprising, but I want to talk to him first.” I said and giggled a little as she looked at me if I was crazy.
“You are going to ridicule him because of his creations, aren’t you?” Because they were worse! They didn’t even have a soul and thus had no way of deciding for themselves! They were just driven by instincts …
“What?” I asked as if I didn’t understand her at all.
“Do as you want…” She said and ducked behind a bush as one of these undead appeared nearby.
“Ehh … don’t worry about these.” I said and walked past her, stopped in front of the goblin and waved my hand. “The dead are still my domain, no matter how much magic is applied onto them.” I said and shrugged my shoulders.
“Weren’t you complaining you would need chants for everything?”
“That’s just a cheap trick … okay, I need a chant for the harder things. Satisfied?”
“What’s hard for you? Reanimating a dragon?” And why would that be hard? It was just a single soul I would need to get back from purgatory. That wasn’t hard at all.
“Hmm … stopping every soul from getting into purgatory? Stuff I’m not very familiar with? Open a portal for my soul to pass through?“ I said and scratched my cheek. When I thought about it, everything I could do did indeed seem a little over the top. “The easier stuff is like breathing these days.” I could still remember the long gone days where I needed a lengthy chant to get the soul of a dead being back into it and I was glad to have passed that.
“I’m giving up …” She said, right as one of these strange apes with red eyes shimmed past us. “All these years ago, I lost my men for nothing?” Oh, she meant the time where she saved Sofie?
“Not really. The truth is that I couldn’t help you anymore. I was already too far away from my body to use much more magic. Unlike Aska, I am bound to this form and use it to support my magic.” I explained and teasingly put my leg in the front of a goblin for him to trip over it. I laughed hard as he stood up and continued to walk onwards as if nothing happened.
“So, let’s wait here, shall we?” Hannah asked, around ten kilometres east of the location we assumed the necromancer to be.
“Hmm … do you have something to eat with you?” I asked and sat down on top of a very round boulder.
“You just had lunch.” And? My stomach had a black hole in it. Eating food doesn’t do anything to me.
“Every time except once, you always eat after you have eaten. Therefore, your ‘you just had lunch’ is invalid and void.” I nagged and pointed at her angrily.
“You would just complain anyway.” She said, completely unfazed by me.
“Maybe I would like the food for once?” I asked, even though everyone already knew the answer.
“There is no cook with four hundred years of experience rivalling you.” Maybe that was it … or maybe it was the lack of hatred these cooks put into their meal. Whatever it was, their meals were horrible.
“So it seems.” Time went on relatively quickly while Hannah and I chatted about this and that. We hadn’t planned to do anything until nightfall anyways, and so we kept chatting until the time was right.
“Let’s go!” I said eagerly and stood up from the boulder I had grown attached to and grabbed the still seethed katana. Hannah followed suit right away and walked westwards, still completely unseen by any dead eyes.
“Hmm … have you lost you way?” I said after a little while of running through the forest unhindered. We should already be there, but so far, I couldn’t see any hut around us.
“No? It’s just hard to find a spot based on a feeling you described.” Hannah said indignantly and stopped angrily. “It’s hard t-“
A massive light appeared a few kilometres north of us for several seconds, blinding me somewhat until it vanished as quickly as it came.
“Found them.” I said and ran at full speed to the signal through a normal forest at first, and then through an area infested by these undead. At that point, I could already hear everything going on and stopped in my tracks.
Louis was alone and the impostor Ellie nowhere in sight. Louis seemed to have fallen onto his knees already, and was close to blacking out as I picked up a bit of my earlier pace again and sneaked onto the clearing with the hut. Louis was already passed out as I stepped into his field of vision and with the necromancer facing him, it was quite easy to sneak up on that guy unnoticed.
“That’s a nice house you have there.” I commented dryly, a few metres behind him which startled him somewhat. He must fought before, he cause he immediately stopped choking Louis and turned around to blast me with a ray of dark light.
The barrier woven into my uniform activated right away and shielded me from around a tenth of this attack, with the rest harmlessly passing by as I twisted my body to the side.
“Oh my … can we not talk about this?” I asked, holding my seethed weapon in front of me to calm him down somewhat.
“The house?” Why would we want to talk about the house? Just because I praised the hut a little?
“You are taking me way too serious.” I answered and shook my head in disappointment.
“Oh, so you are one of those who lost their will to live already.” Will to live? Just because I got there without any precautions and didn’t commit to a surprise attack? He was way too full of himself … but I kind of liked that.
“Life is overrated. But no, I’m here to talk about your problems.” I said and casually leaned against a nearby tree.
“My … what?” He said, completely confused and called a few of his underlings towards him.
“Okay … let’s start again, shall we? My name is Lucy just like the saint, but no, I am not the saint. It’s a cruel twist of fate that I got her voice and her name … what about you?” I asked, looking at the two big dogs that stood by his side at this point.
“Nezar.” He said.
“Ahh …” Somehow, I recalled this name from somewhere, but couldn’t say from where right away.
“Doesn’t there ring a bell?” He asked proudly.
“Oh, you are famous? Maybe you are a book author? Or perhaps … a journalist? No … that’s not it either.” Grabbing my chin, I thought deeply about him until I remembered that name from two hundred years ago. He was one of the kings aides and focused on magic if I wasn’t mistaken … but for him to live two hundred years, even though he looked like a complete wreck was quite the achievement. “You are that famous mage that vanished a long time ago. How fascinating.”
“So you do realise how outclassed you are. Then tell me that, how did you get here?” He asked and looked behind me to see if there was someone else.
“By foot.” I explained right away as I saw no reason to hide that I didn’t get there by horse.
“How did you evade the surveillance of my creatures?” He asked a bit annoyed because of my answer.
“Oh … you mean that. You see, I’m fairly good at optical illusions. But enough about me, what are your plans?” I asked and snipped my finger to point at him.
“Why would I tell you that?” That was the question … but I did hope we could build a solid foundation for our future cooperation, if that was even possible.
“Because you are a villain and they always spill the beans when they think they won?” I proposed and rubbed my cheek.
“A villain?” Stupefied, I looked past him towards Louis who laid on the ground completely defeated. “Oh … okay, I can see where you are coming from.”
“So, why are you trying to crush the town?” I asked unhappily. If he would have waited a few weeks with that, it all wouldn’t matter to me.
“It’s my end of the bargain.” He said right away.
“Oh? So you are working with the demons.” I snipped once again, finally piercing all these pieces together.
“It was necessary to achieve my goal.” That goal was better something grand. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to stay calm. Allying with someone who was driven to exterminate your very race was just … illogical.
“And this goal is?” I asked and tilted my head to the side.
“The power of the gods. I want the philosopher’s stone.” He said, stunning me somewhat. It was the same thing with Sirius all these years ago … and I fucking hated it.
“And the demon king promised you one?” That was a very cheap way of gaining the support of one of the strongest mages alive … but it also had its drawbacks. If the demon king couldn’t deliver for example, then …
“You are already dead … so I suppose there is no harm telling you. No, the demon king is merely offering me the opportunity to create one myself by gathering all these gifted people and allowing me to run my tests on them. This way, I can get crucial information about the gods themselves and can replicate their powers.” Oh, that was a smart way. Sadly, it wouldn’t work out at all as he had no way of identifying what was god-given and what not. Even I couldn’t do that after all.
“Sound tedious with very little chance of success. Why don’t you just take the power of the gods yourself?” I proposed and smiled happily. If he would join my side because his chances of getting a philosopher’s stone by following me were higher, it would benefit everyone.
“What do you mean by that?” He asked confused.
“There is a philosopher’s stone in purgatory for example …” I didn’t even lie. There was still the magical circle capable of creating and modifying everything, it was just that he probably wouldn’t be able to use it.
“And how do you know that?” He asked, which made me smile a little.
“Because I got mine from there.” He sadly didn’t believe me one bit and probably thought that my death was long overdue.
Pointing his finger towards me, a black lightning shot out of it towards me. I only sighed a bit exhausted before it hit me square on my chest and corroded my flesh away. The magic spread across my whole body, drying my flesh up until it crumbled, and then turned into dust.
I merely witnessed the beginning of it as my body stopped functioning soon afterwards, but it was enough time to prepare for everything. Merely by thinking about it, I detached my soul from my body and stepped out of it a bit bored.
Witnessing my own death was kind of thrilling though, so I watched every second of it until there were only my attire and a bit of dust left from me.
“And I really thought she would be able to fight me.” He said and turned around to Louis once more and started choking him with his magic. Whistling loudly, but still inaudible for anyone else, I witnessed how the ashes of my body turned into a bloody mist, which then turned into bones, muscles and flesh within around thirty seconds. Going by that, I was as fast as Aska, but my way still had a crucial drawback. It was easy to interrupt my resurrection. Well, at least I fixed that I had a high blood loss this way as my dead body was reconstructed exactly like it was before.
And then, as the last bit of skin was being remade quietly, I slipped back into my body and liked everything up.
“Whoa, that hurt.” This time, Nezar was indeed surprised and turned around wildly. Picking up the katana from the ground, I grinned at him and giggled a bit. “You know that this was quite mean?”
“That wasn’t any magic … how did you do that?”
“I told you I have a philosopher’s stone? It’s incorporated into me, giving me immortality and all the other amazing stuff.”
“You …” He was apparently not yet ready to face reality and ordered his two hounds to get closer to me.
“Sit. Sit.” I said once they were close to me and patted their head.In reality, I merely put their old souls into their bodies and ordered them to sit down. But saying it so casually also did have its perks. “I’m telling you. We could be a great team.”
“It may indeed be time to find a new partner to cooperate with.” Lucky me. I really thought he would continue blasting me with this scary lightning which I had very little way of countering. Even if he used the system as support, I doubted he wouldn’t figure that out soon enough and if he did, merely claiming I wasn’t the saint wouldn’t work anymore.
“Great! You might need to blow off the attack on the town.” I proposed right off the bat.
“You care about them?” Did I? Definitely about Luna, but the others were merely useful … like Nezar was.
“Too much collateral damage is bad for the economy. And that boy … I’m sorry if he attacked you, but he’s kind of mine already.” I said and pointed towards Louis.
“Alright … so, how do I get into purgatory.” That was the question. And I didn’t even know if I wanted to answer it. If he opened a way by accident and Aska slipped in, that would be the end for me. On the other hand, I didn’t know anything about the ways to get to this world, which meant gathering information had a higher priority than anything else. And besides, if purgatory was easily accessible, shouldn’t Aska find a way to order anyone to open it up for him? It wouldn’t be that easy, that was for sure.
“That is a great question. I fell into a well and got there and I know for a fact that everyone who had ever ventured there fell and then got transported there. But there also has to be a gateway connecting purgatory and this world which I am sadly unable to find.” Theoretically, there had to be a way from purgatory to Solaris which could be taken by everyone. Sadly, I didn’t know how that looked nor how to use it yet. And thus, it was the perfect decision to ask someone with a high motivation to do that for me. “If you find that gateway, don’t open it though. You will probably die.”
“Hmm … I can take care of myself.” He said and ordered his two hounds back which I naturally didn’t block. Instead, I took the two souls out of their body again and let them escape to purgatory once more.
“You can reach me at burrow street ten in the capital city.” I said as he turned his back to me, probably already somewhere else with his head.
“Don’t order me around.” Even though I was just doing that? He was an interesting, but also dangerous man. I knew for sure he would betray me at the first possible point as he had just betrayed the demon king without a second thought. And he also wasn’t really one of my underlings, so there was that.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I said and looked at him as he muttered something. A circle appeared right underneath his feet on the ground and glowed up brightly. It took him ten seconds to complete everything while I shielded my eyes with my hands. As the light vanished and I looked at the place he saw earlier, I noticed a pair of footprints, ending right there. He had teleported away and left all his creatures like he found them once more. Dead.
