Academy (18)
Our pace had slowed considerably. No matter how many times Sister Mary insisted she was fine, the woman had been unconscious for four full days. I wasn't about to push her.
"Aren't we going a bit too slow? We could pick up the pace."
"Mary, for someone who just said that, you look exhausted."
Four days wasn't enough to atrophy anyone's muscles. Her body simply wasn't back to normal yet. She kept saying she was all right, but she tired easily and complained of fatigue.
"Ah, never mind. Let's rest a moment."
"Agreed."
Sister Mary looked a little put out. But I was the one who'd called for a break—what was she going to do about it? The Young Master and my sister were on my side.
"Fine."
We settled against a tree and took a breather. I used the downtime to satisfy my curiosity.
"About Holy Territory."
"Yes. Yesterday's explanation was rather vague."
I understood that the effect was powerful and the range vast, so of course it required a lot of people. But did it really need that many? I still wasn't sure.
Fortunately, she was an excellent nun and answered my questions without hesitation.
"The minimum of three people is partly about Holy Power consumption, but the bigger reason is the division of roles."
It wasn't impossible to cast alone, she explained, but sorting allies from enemies across a wide area, defining the barrier's range, and maintaining it all required continuous calculation. Unlike ordinary magic or Holy Magic, where you finished the computation and simply released the spell, this one demanded constant, meticulous discrimination.
"So the three people each take a role and split the work."
One person identified allies within the area and designated the Holy Territory's beneficial effects. Another identified enemies and marked the targets for weakening. The last person managed the barrier's range and sustained it.
"Couldn't you just build it as a magic circle?"
I'd always heard that large-scale magic and Holy Magic worked better when cast through a formation.
"It's possible, but the friend-or-foe problem remains either way."
Ah… so a formation couldn't distinguish allies from enemies.
"I see."
She went on to say that if you narrowed the area and limited the number of targets, a single caster could handle it alone.
"That's how I was able to use it back then."
Only…
"I didn't have enough Holy Power."
Before the battle, Sister Mary had layered multiple blessings on us. And that wasn't all. During the fight she'd used offensive Holy Magic like arrows of light to support us, and even earlier she'd fought to protect Investigator Liza. Every step of the way had drained her Holy Power.
"Originally I planned to deploy it for ten seconds—just ten—and then drop it…"
Her reserves had simply been nowhere near enough.
"I miscalculated the Holy Power needed to open the Holy Territory versus what it took to maintain it."
The technique was designed from the ground up for multiple casters, so even Sister Mary hadn't known the true cost. She'd estimated roughly—and the activation cost had been far higher than expected.
"I… see."
Then why had she said Holy Territory was normally used with groups of ten or more?
"So when you said this morning that it needs ten or more people…"
"Yes. That's the Church's standard condition for deploying Holy Territory."
They set the barrier's range at a minimum of one kilometer—radius, not diameter. And the duration was a minimum of ten minutes, averaging thirty. Of course the Holy Power drain was enormous.
"Then I could use it alone, couldn't I?"
I'd still need to simplify the friend-or-foe identification, but…
"Hard to say. I know you possess a great deal of Holy Power, Julian. I just don't know how much."
Apparently every nun or priest who awakened their Holy Power and took holy orders learned the technique as a matter of course—yet she'd never actually used it herself until that day.
"Priests and nuns all learn it?"
"Yes. It's their trump card for supporting the holy knights fighting on the front lines."
It was a spell for the nuns and priests who stayed behind the battle line.
"Interesting…"
That also made the three-bishop requirement easy to understand.
"Becoming a bishop in the Church means you've been recognized in every respect."
In a denomination that venerated knowledge and wisdom, rising to bishop required not only faith but an unimpeachable record of achievement in learning and technique.
"In other words, bishops are the most outstanding and capable among all priests."
Ah—so anyone skilled enough to become a bishop could realize the spell with only three people.
"It's quite the remarkable piece of Holy Magic."
Holy Territory. The name had always sounded grandiose. Now I knew why.
"We should get moving."
The Young Master stood and spoke.
Hmm…
"Yes, we should."
I still had plenty of questions, but we couldn't spend the night here. We set out again.
Even after the sun went down we couldn't find a decent campsite, so we pressed on a little farther. Birdsong and wind through the forest should have been peaceful. Instead they made my skin crawl.
"Maybe we should have just picked a spot earlier."
"Indeed."
Regretting it, we walked another ten minutes, still found nothing suitable, and finally decided to make do. It was only one night. We could endure.
"But I draw the line at a hard floor!"
I cast earth-turning magic on the ground. I flipped the hard-packed soil, picked out every stone fragment inside, then turned the earth back over. The ground became soft and yielding.
"There. Floor problem solved!"
My sister gathered the stones I'd pulled out and used them to build a fire ring.
We pitched the tent and laid out our bedrolls on the now-cushioned earth. Sister Mary prepared dinner while I set alarm magic…
The division of labor had become second nature by now.
After we ate, I picked up the earlier thread of curiosity.
"This is hard…"
I'd decided to learn Holy Territory myself.
Sister Mary had been ordained young and was exceptionally skilled—but teaching was not her strong suit.
"I-I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
Knowing the theory of magic or Holy Magic didn't mean you could cast it. That made everything harder.
"Julian, you already know a wide variety of magic without needing Holy Territory, don't you?"
Holy Magic and ordinary magic were similar yet different. There was no need to argue which was superior… though if forced to choose, magic had the edge in sheer variety.
"That's not the same thing. And I'm just curious."
It absolutely was not because I was the Saintess of the Metis Church. I was simply curious, all right?
"Then I'll explain it again."
I studied hard until we fell asleep, but I still failed to cast it. The scale of the spell was simply too great to master in a short time.
After three days of steady travel we reached a large village.
Windmills stood in rows across a vast plain of wheat fields.
"The atmosphere here is lovely…"
Golden wheat, buildings with a certain rustic charm, windmills turning in the breeze—the whole place looked like a painting of an ideal village.
"This is a direct royal holding."
One of the kingdom's foremost granary regions, or so the Young Master explained, sharing what he knew.
"But the town feels so… static."
"It has to be."
Because the village's role was fixed as a granary, nothing outside that purpose was allowed to take root. More accurately, it was sealed off at the source.
"Meaning…"
"Yes. Unless they leave the village entirely, the people here farm until the day they die."
Some might resent that life, he said, but most would not.
"Because they never go hungry…"
I understood the reason perfectly well.
Only someone who has starved knows how terrible hunger truly is.
As a royal holding and a granary region, the town received meticulous oversight. That oversight covered land, grain, and water—and people as well.
"I see…"
So that was why inns and shops were so scarce…
The most unsettling detail of all might have been the complete absence of an Adventurers' Guild.
"There are a lot of soldiers."
Guards stood at intervals throughout the village.
"It's that kind of place."
Were those soldiers watching the people? The thought was a little chilling…
The atmosphere was pleasant, but that was as far as it went. Listening to the Young Master's explanations, I realized this village and I were a terrible match. My sister, on the other hand…
"You'd adapt just fine to a place like this, sis."
My sister's hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed.
The strength of a Knight Class superhuman was overwhelming. Pain shot through me.
"S-sis?! That hurts!"
"Yuli. Don't say things like that."
"Ow! I was just saying!"
I couldn't even joke anymore!
"This time Julian really is in the wrong, so she deserves the punishment."
When Sister Mary sided with her, my sister cheerfully worked both of my shoulders.
"Ow! Ow!"
If I'd been older and carrying years of tension in my shoulders, it might have felt good…! Unfortunately, my body registered nothing but pure agony.
"You're awful, Yuli."
"I said I was sorry…"
She forgave me… but she was still sulking.
I'd only been teasing, saying she could live happily even in a place like this… and she'd taken it as me trying to abandon her.
This was exactly why you shouldn't joke carelessly…
The Young Master watched us with thoroughly pleased eyes, as if the whole scene delighted him.
"Is this funny to you?"
"It's nice to see you two getting along so well."
"Ha. Young Master, you should remember our first meeting."
He'd cornered me with suspicion the moment he found me near his little sister. Thank goodness the misunderstanding had cleared—at the time he'd been genuinely terrifying.
"You were awfully protective of your sister, weren't you?"
He didn't so much as change expression, answering with perfect composure.
"Yes. That's precisely why this makes me happy."
He said it reminded him of bickering with his own sibling back in the territory, and I had nothing left to say.
Come to think of it, we'd been on the road nearly two months now.
"Even nobles bicker like that?"
"Of course. We're on the friendly side—it's only teasing. When the fight is over succession, it turns vicious."
Stories of siblings killing each other for power were common in both my previous life and this one.
"Is that so…"
Thinking about it, I was grateful my sister and I had never had that kind of conflict. Ours might have been a remote backwater village, but the village chief's authority was nothing to dismiss.
Well, the best outcome would have been our older brother still being alive…
The image of him throwing himself in front of me rose unbidden, and my mood soured.
"Yuli. You're thinking about big brother."
How she always knew was a mystery.
"Just…"
"You have an older brother? Two of you with a brother—he must have been a fine, dashing man."
The Young Master asked with genuine curiosity. I…
Honestly, I didn't want to talk about it.
When I avoided answering, my sister simply said it.
"He's dead."
"Pardon?"
Sister Mary, who had been watching our exchange with interest, went rigid. The Young Master's face filled with awkwardness.
"Just an ordinary story. He fought a monster that appeared in the village and died."
In this world, an ordinary story…
"I-I'm sorry."
The warm atmosphere we'd built died completely.
But what else was there to do…?
We decided to spend the night in the village. I'd worried there might be no inn, but fortunately we found one with decent facilities and settled in for the night.