Chapter 159
Chapter 159
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 159
Chapter Title: Artificial Soul Circulation Device (2)
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"Life and Verdancy believed that human souls dwelled in the blood. They thought you could stitch a healthy person's soul onto a sick person's wounded soul."
"That's ridiculous. You think souls are like dough you can just stick on and peel off?"
"At least—that was that group's belief."
In St. Martin's Garden, there was a picture book they would pull out to soothe sick children.
The cute illustrations and the story of a brave child battling the god of death were perfect for capturing children's attention.
When I was first admitted, I often asked for that picture book to be read to me, and one passage in particular stuck in my memory.
〔Our hearts are vessels that hold the soul. The reason our hearts beat is because the Creator God Aegis warmly cradles our hearts in His hand, moving them so the soul can spread throughout our bodies.〕
The picture book explained the beating of the heart as the touch of Aegis, and it culminated like this.
〔The brave girl Marian reached her hand into the reaper's cold heart. The frozen heart of the reaper melted from the power of her blazing soul. The reaper wept bitterly and repented his wrongs. Marian's soul had awakened him…〕
As a child, I took that fairy tale simply as the story of how the brave girl Marian's warm heart moved the cruel reaper.
But in truth, it was all groundwork to make us accept the [Artificial Soul Circulation Device].
Because the healthy, brave child who could melt a cold heart was the one lying on the operating table.
"If something like that happened, wouldn't it have become public knowledge? I've never heard a thing about it…"
"It did. It made the local papers, at least."
"The local papers? And that was it?"
"Shirley, I'm a merchant's son."
The Holy Aegis was a nation where the royal family, called the bloodline of the gods, held firm power. In a country like that, it was hard for anything happening to a mere merchant's son to become a big topic.
And even aside from that, the actual victim was just a poor kid from a destitute family.
I, who had undergone that bizarre procedure without any issues—in fact, even got healthier afterward—became a kind of device that trivialized Logan's unjust death just by existing.
"If something had happened to me, it might have been different—but since nothing happened to me, it just ended like that."
"Sunbae…"
Shirley fell silent, unable to find a response.
The mood had grown even heavier.
"But what's important now isn't what already happened—it's what will happen next."
Contrary to Life and Verdancy's beliefs, souls do not transfer to other souls.
There are no people in the world with deficient souls or abundant souls, let alone ones circulating through some machine like this.
If souls have inestimable value, it's because they are unique, non-circulating, and possess an inviolable nobility built up over long years.
The only thing I proved in St. Martin's Garden was that one fact.
"If the string of events so far were caused by this idiotic device, then I—"
Might have come to this place that incinerates souls of my own accord.
To sing a requiem for Logan, of all people.
"Sunbae! Snap out of it!"
-Bam!
At that moment, Shirley shot up from her seat and slammed the table.
Startled, I looked at her, and she gazed down at me with a face that seemed somehow anxious.
"Say one more word. I'm seriously about to lose it."
"…I didn't say anything?"
"Sometimes you provoke me with that look on your face like I should just know."
"Uh… Did I?"
Shirley, who had been with me since my very inexperienced days as 'Arma Cruise,' sometimes wielded sharp insight honed from those accumulated experiences.
'I've known her too long.'
I swallowed a bitter smile—thinking maybe she'd even read that—and reorganized my thoughts.
"Nothing will prove the corruption at Aegis Academy as clearly as this circulation device."
Everyone's eyes turned to the suspicious machine sitting plainly on the table.
As I stared at it, I naturally recalled how it worked and how it circulated the fresh blood extracted from people.
"I can roughly guess about the epidemic that started at Aegis Academy too. It's a bit different from what we think of as an epidemic, but… Let's do this. Dylan, I need your help."
At some point, Dylan had been silently watching our actions, and he twitched an eyebrow before lifting his face.
His sky-blue eyes, reflecting the moonlight, held an eerie chill.
"Just say the word. I'll do anything."
It was a strange thing to say, but I sensed extreme cold rationality from this normally gentle man.
What did it mean that Dylan had that gap unique to those hiding their true feelings?
In any case, Dylan going off the rails like this was a bad sign.
I deliberately put on a fabricated smile to lighten the mood.
"—It's not that serious. I just need you to persuade one civilian."
Most of the people who had participated in this ridiculous freak experiment had probably already fled.
But at least, the ones responsible remained at the academy.
So I wrestled intensely with what the best choice would be.
-A short while later.
While disbanding the search party that had kindly gathered in the middle of the night, one suspicion clung to me unshakably.
'…Did this experiment really restart here by coincidence? Or rather…'
.
.
.
The next day, in the [Fruit of the Angels] room shrouded in darkness.
-Clank!
"Let me go!"
"Calm down and sit here."
Theodore and I restrained the struggling seminarian's limbs as he fought to avoid entering the clubroom, then closed the door to the clubroom.
The one we had dragged out after searching every corner of Wooden Cross House was the newspaper club’s William Jones.
William had, at some point, prioritized spreading campus incidents over his major classes, becoming a walking disaster.
William Jones, who usually picked fights with every seminarian, resisted so fiercely that Theodore even pulled chalk from his pocket.
Of course, it was also true that this guy had made my academy life considerably more exhausting.
Maybe that's why he resisted even more violently.
'Hah, should I have pretended it was an accident and socked him one…'
Seeing the guy who had added so much weight to my grueling academy life now huddled with trembling shoulders, that urge faded.
Besides, time was too tight for personal revenge.
"…Wh-what… so… what do you want now?"
William Jones, his bunched hat pulled down not just over his head but practically to his nose tip, asked with his shoulders shrunk in tight.
Because of that, the only thing visible about William Jones—his freckles on the bridge of his nose—were all that could be known of him.
"…Theodore, put the chalk away. No, confiscate it. Hand it over."
What I learned this time was that Theodore was more hot-blooded than expected.
Whether it was a suppressed emotion from before or the influence of our changed relationship, I didn't know.
Even without figuring out why Theodore was waving chalk around, William seemed to sense it was something ominous and quickly opened his mouth.
"I—I just wrote down what I heard…"
William muttered something small and rapid.
He clearly thought I'd dragged him here for personal revenge over past incidents.
I snatched Theodore's chalk, pocketed it, and waited until William met my eyes.
"…"
In the end, unable to withstand the pressure, William was the one who raised his head.
William was a seminarian with reddish-brown regent hair and eyes of the same color. Up close, his face had a monkey-like cuteness.
"I'm not here to grill you. I called you because I need your help."
"Help…? The only help I can give is publishing a correction that Seminarian Arma Cruise is actually very upright."
"…We'll talk about that later, slowly."
I returned the reporter's notebook and pen he had dropped while thrashing, then said,
"What I want to ask is for you to cover something else."
William's eyes went wide at my words.
It would be hard to grasp my true intent in this dark room.
At that moment, Theodore snapped his fingers, and all the curtains in the clubroom flew open at once.
Morning sunlight streamed in almost straight, illuminating the [Artificial Soul Circulation Device] I had placed on the desk.
"I figured you wouldn't pass up an opportunity like this."
Gulp. William swallowed dryly.
The machine with its plainly unusual pump attached, me with my fame as an [Executor of Aegis] unlike last year, and the string of gossipy incidents at the academy.
I briefly explained the connections between those seemingly unrelated 'materials' without making anything up.
***
"Extra, extra!"
The academy's troublemaker with the bunched hat, William Johnson, reached into the bag slung at his side.
Each time, the unofficial gossip rag made unilaterally by the newspaper club, 'Today's Aegis Academy,' flew through the air.
Just then, Aegis Academy was in the midst of bizarre class suspensions.
The number of seminarians wandering the grounds idly was higher than usual, so William's special edition spread through Aegis Academy in an instant.
[Today's Aegis Academy: Extra]
[Oh my god! Today's incident! Taboo experiment for eternal life?!]
<'St. Martin's Garden' incident and the revelation received by Executor of Aegis 'Arma Cruise':
Arma Cruise says, "Everything is Lord Aegis's arrangement… I felt fate with the 'Artificial Soul Circulation Device' discovered on campus…"
(Image caption) Detailed sketch of the discovered Artificial Soul Circulation Device
Starting from the objection raised by D seminarian over the suspicious death of Ivy Yang, errand runner of Silver Chalice House, the investigation uncovered horrific circumstances of a taboo experiment for the forbidden wish of immortality.
This bizarre experiment, which exchanges human fresh blood to repair broken soul links, is conducted via the magic tool 'Artificial Soul Circulation Device.' Each time this device is activated, the massive plasma released is actually fatal to humans with weak immunity…
[Does 'Executor of Aegis' Arma Cruise's claim have basis? He has sent a denunciation stating he will reveal all truths this Wednesday night.]