Jet-Black and Divinity
"……"
Nephthys's deliberation stretched on and on.
She sat on the bed perfectly still, eyes shut tight, both hands folded neatly in her lap, like a statue carved in place.
Shalak—
Her silver hair, soft as velvet, swayed in the breeze. A few strands slipped into her mouth, but she was far too focused to notice—
"Puhut! Ahpup! What is this!"
—or not quite that focused, apparently.
Having brushed the hair out of her way with her fingertips, Nephthys looked at Simon. "Mm~ Alright. May I answer you honestly?"
"Yes."
Simon straightened his posture with all due seriousness.
"First, one thing you need to understand—this isn't a problem that ends the moment I declare, 'I shall absolve the sins of the 7th Legion!'"
She pressed both palms against the bed and leaned back.
"This is the incident where necromancers—comrades—were killed for the sake of a priest, remember? It's unprecedented, which means public opinion is viciously hostile. The elders and high-ranking necromancers, of course, but even the survivors of that incident and their families are watching with both eyes wide open."
"Th-that's true."
Simon's head sank low.
So maybe this really was something I had to hide for the rest of my life.
"However!"
Nephthys thrust up her index finger.
"That was not a no. It will simply take time. If we slowly simmer down the boiling outrage and change how people see it from the ground up, it can be done."
Simon's head snapped up at her words. "Is it really possible to change how people think?"
"Mm-hmm. Of course, Richard's sins themselves won't vanish easily. But the push will be—'This Simon Legion and that Richard Legion are two entirely different things!' In truth, the Ancient Undead merely followed orders. And we'll hammer away at the argument that burying a powerful force capable of standing against the Holy Federation over the past would be a mistake."
Nephthys met Simon's eyes and smiled brightly.
"Of course~ if you'd failed to adapt at Kizen and stayed just some ordinary necromancer, the elders wouldn't have hesitated to erase you and install a different Legion Commander."
"……Ah."
"But the influence carried by the name Simon Polentia keeps growing larger and larger."
She flopped backward onto the bed, her translucent silver hair fanning out across the bedspread like a waterfall of moonlight.
"Special Admission No. 1, top of the class on the advancement exam. You fought a Saintess, and you repelled the Blood Sky Cult's covert operation. You're doing wonderfully. And recognition inside Kizen is as good as recognition across the entire Dark Alliance."
Nephthys's lake-deep eyes turned toward Simon.
"So keep working hard~ The bigger your influence grows, the easier my groundwork becomes for shifting public perception of the 7th Legion."
It was, in essence, a yes. Simon bowed his head, cheering silently on the inside. "Thank you! I'll work hard, Lady Nephthys."
Nephthys hopped up with a little hoit and ruffled Simon's hair. "Yes, yes, good boy~"
Simon gave an embarrassed laugh. Being patted on the head by someone who looked like a girl half his age was a strange sensation.
I never expected everything to be resolved in one go anyway. But if it's Lady Nephthys…
He had seen her political acumen and her grip on the media during this whole affair. Because he'd witnessed her skill firsthand, he could trust her promise to personally lay the groundwork for the 7th Legion's reinstatement.
"Of course."
Nephthys pulled her hand from his hair, clasped her hands behind her back, and hopped down from the bed.
"That doesn't mean I've granted your request in full. I'll have a personal gift for you later as well. That's fine, isn't it?"
"A-a gift?"
"Yep! That's still a secret~ It's going to be your new-semester present!"
Nephthys winked, adorably.
"Anyway! Congratulations on advancing to your second year at Kizen, Simon!"
After Nephthys left, the medical staff came in and ran a detailed examination of Simon's condition.
Simon wanted nothing more than to walk out right then, but discharge was impossible in his current state. The staff stressed "absolute rest" one more time before filing out of the room.
……No one's here now, right?
Once the medical staff had all gone, Simon swept his gaze around the room again and again. Only after confirming several times that no one was present did he shut the window and even draw the curtains.
Good.
Truthfully, he'd been on edge ever since waking up.
He'd been asleep for a full five days! Far too much time had passed.
If only the feeling is still left in my body.
The power called Void that he had used against Silaje.
—Sorry, but this information will fade away once you return. If you tried to hold onto it, your brain would burn out entirely.
The 'existence' that had taught him Void had said he wouldn't remember.
It was true that the 'existence' had gifted him Void. But to wield it, he would need to employ transcendent theories that didn't exist anywhere on the continent, and an unimaginable volume of knowledge besides.
With every other scrap of information evaporated, there was no way he could use it now, five days after waking. To put it in metaphor, he was a train engineer left holding nothing but the lever after losing the entire train.
Well, still—one thing is certain. It's a power I've used with my own hands once.
He didn't expect to reproduce it exactly. But if he could imitate it, even roughly, that alone would make him monstrously strong.
And there was another reason he had to recreate this technique.
I can't use Herseba in front of people anymore.
Simon had used Herseba in the Duel Evaluation, with countless spectators watching, and had even published and presented a thesis on her before researchers.
So if Herseba, who used her own independent jet-black, suddenly spewed out Simon's jet-black to invoke her abilities—and the mummies she produced used the same jet-black besides?
It would be stranger if no one suspected he was the Legion Commander.
Alright. No time to waste lying around!
Goal set, Simon sat up in bed and spread both palms open.
Jet-black.
Jet-black surged up from Simon's right hand.
Holy power.
His left hand stayed silent.
Difficulty right from the start. Back then, it had simply appeared the instant he spread his palms. Simon closed his eyes, thinking as much.
I can do anything!
Flaash!
Holy power finally flowed out of his left hand. Simon smiled in satisfaction and looked at his right hand.
"……This is driving me insane."
The moment he turned on the holy power, the jet-black switched itself off. Simon slumped backward onto the bed.
As expected—it was hard.
He could wield either jet-black or holy power, but 'wielding both at the same time' was a matter of an entirely different dimension.
Eyes closed, Simon strained to recall the sensation from that moment.
Right. The feeling is still faintly left in my body—that's exactly why I have to get a handle on it now.
He decided to start by methodically sorting out the fundamentals.
Jet-black was made by drawing in the mana of the surrounding air through breathing, then passing that mana through the core. It could be stockpiled in the core and drawn out whenever needed.
Holy power worked on a slightly different principle: you held a blind, unwavering faith in your mind, and the instant you drew the mana in your body outside of it, the mana manifested as holy power. Of course, it consumed enormous mental strength.
Yes, that's it!
Simon smacked his knee.
The moment I open my core, jet-black spreads out across my whole body. Living at Kizen this long has fossilized the necromancer's habit into me.
This time, Simon deliberately controlled the jet-black.
Let it spread on the right side only.
Leave the left reserved for holy power.
"Jet-black."
He drew out only a small amount and kindled it in his right hand. And while consciously holding that state—
"I can do anything!"
Flap!
Holy power blossomed in his left hand.
He hurriedly checked his right. The jet-black had gone sluggish and wobbly, but it was being fed from his heart and holding steady.
"Yes! Now, these two powers—"
Simon clapped his hands together.
"—combined—!"
KWAAAAAAAANG!
"Wh-what on earth—!"
The ward attendant, hearing the explosion, flung open the door to Simon's room in a panic.
Rumble-rumble—
It looked like a mana detonation. The bed was blown to pieces and debris was raining down from the ceiling.
In the middle of it all, Simon lay sprawled, laughing and waving a hand. "N-nothing! Nothing at all happened here!"
He was then scolded within an inch of his life for casting dark magic inside the ward.
Simon was moved to a different, brand-new room.
Fortunately, Nephthys's orders—Simon's convenience was to be treated as the absolute top priority—had come down beforehand, so the ward didn't make much of an issue of it. Their handling of everything was impressively quick, too.
"One more favor, please!"
The ward doctor, who had spent the better part of thirty minutes lecturing him, was on his way out when Simon hurriedly caught him. The man looked back.
"……Speak. Simon."
"Could you possibly call Professor Farahan of first-year Divine Defense?"
At that single sentence, fury burst from the ward doctor like a spray of sparks.
"……You intend to summon a priest into this sacred ward?!"
And so, a little while later—
"Heheheh! My boy, thank goodness you're safe!"
Farahan, dressed in white robes with his white beard flowing long, really did come to visit Simon's room.
Peeking out above his head were two kitten heads going meow!
"Baekya! Kkamya!"
The moment the cats spotted Simon, they scrambled down and threw a full-blown commotion. Pet me, hold me, rub-rub, meow-meow—absolute chaos, not a shred of composure between them.
"……Bringing a priest into this sacred ward, and pets on top of it! Kghk!"
The ward doctor trembled with rage while the attendants forced smiles and tried to soothe him.
But no matter what, Nephthys's orders were absolute.
Click.
Soon the door closed, and Farahan and Simon faced each other.
"Summoning me to such a sensitive place—heheh!"
Farahan stroked his beard.
"As you can see, I'm a priest. I must mind my conduct."
"I-I'm sorry. To be honest, there's something I urgently needed to consult you about."
Simon laid out the situation for Farahan in brief.
The story of the Void.
He told him that during his fight with Silaje, he had cast the curse called 'Compellonia'—learned from Bahil—upon himself, and that while he couldn't remember exactly how, he had certainly fought Silaje by fusing jet-black and holy power.
"……With this old man's head, that is a tale I find exceedingly difficult to believe."
Farahan shook his head back and forth.
"In all my long years, I have never once heard of such a thing. Are you certain you did not see some mirage or phantasm while you were unconscious?"
Farahan plainly didn't believe a word of it.
Silaje had been the same way before. He had seen it with his own eyes and still refused to believe.
Whether necromancer or priest, it seemed the longer one had served a single discipline, the more impossible such a thing became to accept.
But whether Farahan believed him or not wasn't the point.
"I have a favor to ask."
Simon requested that Farahan set up the same magic circles he'd once installed in his own home and laboratory—the ones that erased traces of holy power.
Farahan obliged without hesitation. He drew them where no one would notice—behind the bed, in the corners of the walls—and even added sound-dampening circles on top.
"Thank you so much, Professor!"
Simon bowed his head deeply.
"I cannot say whether what you saw was real. But the desire to explore the unknown is nothing bad in itself. I sincerely hope your efforts bear fruit."
Baekya, who had at some point climbed up onto Farahan's head, let out a soft meow~
The fusion of jet-black and holy power.
As he kept up this insane experiment, know-how began to accumulate.
By setting the output of both elements low overall and lowering the ratio of holy power even further than before before letting them collide, he could buy himself a little more time.
Since holy power held the elemental advantage by default, cutting its ratio down was the key.
However—
Fwoooong!
Another failure. When jet-black and holy power collided, they coexisted for less than a tenth of a second before either exploding outright or the holy power devouring the jet-black.
For all practical purposes, coexistence of the two powers was impossible.
……I'm exhausted.
At some point it had become evening. Completely worn out, Simon flopped spread-eagled onto the bed.
Did I really just hallucinate the whole thing?
Simon moved his hands, relying on feel alone.
Like this. Like this. I just mixed the two powers like this, and it worked.
Knock knock.
The sound of a knock. Startled, Simon hastily erased the residual traces of holy power—it was sucked away into the drainage-like magic circle Farahan had installed for him.
"Yes, come in."
Click.
The door opened and one of the ward attendants walked in. "Simon? It's time for your injection."
The attendant held up a syringe, tongue darting out playfully. "Come now! Pants and underwear down, and lie face-down on the bed!"
"……"
Simon said flatly, "Don't even joke about that. Erze."
[Eehee.]
The attendant let out a disappointed little sound. Then her entire body seemed to melt and run downward, reforming into a pink-haired girl in a Kizen uniform. It was the face of 'Elizabeth Webber,' seen for the first time in a long while.
"Nobody saw you, right?"
[Of course not! What do you take me for~ I'm the capable spy who slipped right through Kizen's surveillance wards!]
"Good. Then let's go."
Pulling a robe out of his subspace and draping it over himself, Simon rose from the bed.
"We have to be back by tomorrow morning."