Where the Alchemist Resides (5)
You're asking if I need help?
Does it LOOK like I'm not desperate to you right now?! Have you been sitting up there so high and mighty that the pleas of us lowly mortals just don't reach you anymore?!
I couldn't breathe. My consciousness was slipping away faster and faster. I was holding on by a thread, but I was already brushing up against my limit.
I fear we cannot speak like this.
The moment that message appeared, my vision went dark, and the crushing pressure around my throat vanished. What just happened? When my sight returned, I found myself bewildered by scenery that had changed without warning.
A blank white space where nothing existed. And I was floating somewhere in the middle of it.
Where the hell is this? The afterlife? Did I actually die getting strangled by the Alchemist?
Don't worry. You're not dead yet.
Along with a soft notification chime, a message from the useless Chief God materialized before me.
"Then where exactly is this?"
After the words left my mouth, I startled myself. No way. Actual, normal words just came out of my mouth. Normally it would've been 'you useless piece of trash' or 'a parasite Chief God worse than the Evil God' coming out instead.
Since conversation seemed difficult in that place, I brought only your spirit here.
So you used your divine authority to create a venue for conversation. And since only my spirit was summoned, the Mesugaki trait doesn't apply here. If you could do this all along, how about summoning me for a chat BEFORE I nearly die? Then I wouldn't have had to go through a near-death experience at all, would I?
You sadomasochistic, incompetent god. Did you really want to hear a mesugaki's abuse that badly?!
Let me ask again. Do you need help?
"Yes. Of course I do. I'm not exactly in a hurry to die."
The reason I had trained myself half to death over the past several months was for one purpose alone: survival. I did not want to die. Getting transmigrated into a mesugaki's body was unfair enough — I wasn't about to go out like a dog on top of it.
If that is what you wish, I can save you.
But know this. In this world, no miracle comes free of price.
The moment I read the follow-up message, a hollow laugh escaped me. Ahaha. So it wasn't that you COULDN'T help — you just weren't going to.
The gods inside Soul Academy were neither omniscient nor omnipotent. On top of that, they weren't unconditionally benevolent, either. Wielding power overwhelmingly beyond any human, they were closer in nature to transcendent beings than to gods — because at their core, they were thoroughly, disgustingly human. And this situation was no exception.
If that sneaky, useless Chief God Armadi had been a simply benevolent deity, She would have helped me before things ever got this bad. But She hadn't. She had waited, biding Her time until the value of Her aid reached its absolute peak, and only THEN had She deigned to appear — shamelessly asking whether I needed help. The intent wrapped inside that question was so transparent I couldn't help but laugh.
"What is it you want from me?"
I want only one thing from you. Become my Apostle.
"Why me?"
The instant I heard the useless Chief God's terms, an objection slipped out of its own accord. I simply couldn't understand the reasoning. I knew that becoming a god's Apostle wasn't decided by piety alone — but even so, there were degrees. So what kind of human was I, Lucy? Someone who doubted the gods' very existence and went around insulting the faithful who believed in them. A complete unbeliever, utterly divorced from the word 'faith.' Why would a god want someone like THAT as an Apostle? The world was stuffed to bursting with people better than me. Armadi, what on earth are you looking at?
Does a god need a reason to choose an Apostle?
Translation: not going to explain, deal with it. Ha. THIS is why I hate the gods of Soul Academy. They're so drunk on chosen-people syndrome that all they ever say is 'Ahh, I see. You don't understand? Then you are not yet meant to know.' Drives me up the wall.
Every fiber of me wanted to tell that shameless Armadi exactly where She could shove it — but I couldn't, not now.
"Fine. I'll do it. Being your Apostle, I mean."
Because I had no other choice. If this useless Chief God didn't save me, the ending waiting for me was a dog's death. Even if the deal Armadi was proposing right now was a devil's bargain dragging me straight into hell, I had no option but to accept.
The contract has been concluded.
The moment I read those words, my eyes snapped open as if surfacing from sleep — and I was lying on a stone floor. The Alchemist who had tried to make me his experiment subject was gone. So were the Argos that had ringed us in. All that remained was the glowstones lighting the chamber and one enormous hole at its center.
This is... the boss room of 'Where the Alchemist Once Stayed,' isn't it?
Turning my gaze toward the breathing beside me, I found Joy and Jacob fast asleep, both wearing the peaceful expressions of people who had completely forgotten the catastrophe they'd just survived. Well, even a useless god manages this much consideration, huh. Ha. Now THAT'S a kind gesture. Fine, I'll drop the 'useless' from now on. Useless-but-kind Armadi.
"Girl. What miracle has just taken place?"
'What do you think happened?'
"The instant you fell into peril, a light wrapped around us, and we were transferred to this place. As though the Lord Himself had worked a miracle."
'That's exactly right, Grandfather.'
There was no reason to lie, so I told him everything that had just happened — minus, of course, all the deeply irreverent thoughts I'd had along the way. If I confessed what I'd been thinking to Grandfather, a holy knight devoted to Armadi, the poor man would have a stroke.
"So Armadi Herself has shown you mercy, lass."
'Sure. Even though the dungeon appearing, the Alchemist chasing us — that was ALL Armadi's doing too, you know.'
"Hmph. Blasphemy, child. Utter blasphemy."
'So what if it's a little blasphemous? That useless Chief God apparently knew all about it anyway and still made me Her Apostle, so.'
"Experiment subject! Where do you think you are going!"
While I was bickering with Grandfather, a voice steeped in revulsion slithered up my spine from somewhere far below. The floor beneath my feet began to shudder, and along with it came the sound of something moving through that massive hole at the chamber's center.
"Girl! We must move, NOW!"
'I know!'
That Alchemist bastard really is as repulsive on the inside as he looks. You're the dungeon's boss — stay cooped up in your own dungeon! How far are you going to chase us, you stalker freak?!
In a rush, I hoisted Joy and Jacob onto my shoulders. We had to run. As far away as possible, so we could shake that thing's pursuit. The dungeon map was burned into my memory — if we fled through the hidden passages, surely we could buy ourselves some time.
Just as I was thinking that, I saw it: a tentacle slithering up out of the hole in the boss room floor.
Ha. ...Damn it.
Already too late?
I dropped both of them onto the floor and raised my shield and mace. And before long, the Alchemist in his tattered rags surfaced into view. The instant I saw that blood-red glow in his eyes, my breath caught in my throat. A frigid terror climbing up my spine began to devour me whole.
How long can I hold out?
"If you were going to run, you should have run FARTHER."
Yeah, thanks, I KNOW, right?!
Damn you, Armadi. I take back everything nice I said a minute ago. You ARE a useless, pathetic excuse for a god. Worse — you're a complete moron. You absolute cabbage! If you're going to rescue someone, send them somewhere SAFE, you idiot!
Did you really think I wouldn't anticipate this?
I was in the middle of unleashing a torrent of silent profanity when — as though the god had heard every word — a message window popped up in front of me.
"My lady! DUCK!"
At the same instant, Carl's voice rang in my ears, and my body moved before my thoughts could. Something that could only be called sword aura swept just over my bowed head. It sheared through the tentacles lunging at me with absurd ease, its momentum utterly unspent.
"Hmph!"
A low growl rolled out of the Alchemist as he caught the sword aura on his staff. Sensing the danger, he immediately began channeling his sinister mana, frantically trying to weave a magic circle — but by then, Carl had already closed the distance. The moment Carl swung his blade, the tentacles anchoring the Alchemist's body were severed clean away, and robbed of anything to hold him aloft, the Alchemist plunged back down into the dungeon below.
"My lady, are you alr—"
'I'm fine, so...'
"I'm fine, so get down there and beat that disgusting freak to death already!"
What's with the savior act, showing up this ridiculously late?! If you've got time to chat, swing that sword ONE more time and finish him off!
At my shouting, Carl let out a laugh, answered that he would, and — without a single moment of hesitation — hurled himself down into the depths of the dungeon.
— As a fellow institution of learning, we find this incident deeply regrettable. That Soul Academy, with its long and storied history, failed to anticipate even a variable of this magnitude... While the accident was fortunately resolved without incident thanks to the outstanding leadership of Lady Partran, had matters gone even slightly awry, three noble students sitting their entrance examinations might well have lost their lives. Regarding this matter, we of Berle Academy—
Jude Alber, headmaster of Soul Academy, heaved his hundredth sigh of the day as he read the letter from the rival academy. Ever since the accident during yesterday's entrance exam, Jude had been buried in letters of exactly this kind. Their senders ran the whole gamut: parents of Soul Academy students, other academies, the royal court, the Church, the scholarly societies. Everyone with any connection to Soul Academy seemed to be waiting for an answer about the incident.
Every time he read one of these letters, Jude vented the same excuse in his heart. An Evil God intervening in an academy examination is unprecedented in all of recorded history — how exactly were we supposed to prepare for that? But he never let that thought escape past the walls of his mind. However well it had ultimately been resolved, the fact remained that someone had nearly died because of Soul Academy's inadequate preparations. And as its headmaster, he was the one who had to bear that responsibility.
— To the distinguished recipients of this correspondence: I am Jude Alber, headmaster of Soul Academy. Regarding the recent incident, we sincerely—
He was in the middle of scrawling out a reply with his quill when someone knocked at the door.
"Come in."
Through the door entered his secretary, the dark circles under her eyes stretched long and deep from working straight through yesterday.
"What is it?"
"Headmaster. Lady Aln is asking to see you."
Lady Aln — one of those caught up in yesterday's accident in the dungeon, was she?
"Tell her to come in. No — wait. No, she doesn't. I'll go out to receive her myself."
Lady Aln was a victim of this affair. Which meant Jude Alber, the man ultimately responsible for all of it, owed her every courtesy. Setting down his quill, he rose from his desk and passed his secretary, stepping out of the room.
"Good afternoon, you decrepit old Headmaster, sir~♡"
The moment she laid eyes on him, Lucy Aln — who had been waiting outside — delivered a perfectly courteous bow and, in the very same breath, an utterly insulting greeting.
"I've come to lodge a formal complaint about the little accident this pathetic academy of yours caused, you see♡"