Chapter 731: The Wizard and the Magic Tower (8)
[Lucifos Phillion. Vulcan Elder Council Second Secretary. Former Blood-Thought Scribe administrator.]
Blood-stained characters rapidly appeared on the Blood-Thought Scribe’s page.
The message, written without any emotion or agitation, laid bare the unvarnished record of Lucifos before the two.
[Completed the 95th Machina Archivist Curriculum as second-place. Responsible for official document recording and management during Vulcan’s early establishment. Retired after 35 years of service.]
“Th-this… how could it be…!!”
Lennok stared at the page with an unreadable expression, as Lucifos, unable to hide his agitation, trembled his lips.
The reason Lennok had ignored the Blood-Thought Scribe’s explanation that information on past administrators was inaccessible and entered a command anyway.
It was because Lennok had already received personal details about an administrator when he previously inquired about Kaiser’s body.
The fact that even officially inaccessible information could be viewed with Lennok’s blood, which was treated with the reverence of an Ascendant.
That alone was enough to shatter Lucifos’s confidence in having mastered the Blood-Thought Scribe and to thoroughly expose the depths of his knowledge.
[Period of service as Blood-Thought Scribe administrator: 5 years. Authority later transferred to Madeleine.]
[Most frequently searched record during tenure: how to become a vampiric species.]
“N-no!!”
Lucifos, his expression crumbling, lunged towards the artifact, but was stopped by an invisible barrier.
Lennok had instantly erected a shield beside him, blocking his movement.
As Lucifos desperately pounded on the shield’s surface, Lennok checked the information on the next page.
[Attempted vampirism on his own kind multiple times and periodically recorded related findings.]
“I see.”
Only then did Lennok, realizing why Lucifos was so obsessed with the Blood-Thought Scribe, let out a faint chuckle.
“You wanted to become a vampire, searched for a method, and left those records in the Blood-Thought Scribe? That’s why you were so sensitive about this artifact’s existence.”
“……”
The reason he spoke of knowing about the project yet vaguely avoided answering. His oddly obsessive attitude towards the Blood-Thought Scribe.
From the start, Lucifos had been more interested in the Blood-Thought Scribe that Lennok possessed than in the project itself.
Perhaps during his tenure as the Scribe’s administrator, he felt limited by his own birth and sought a way around it.
It would make sense, then, that he was convinced Lennok, also a human, wouldn’t be able to properly handle the Blood-Thought Scribe, and thus tried to exert influence.
“But I didn’t expect you to have drained the blood of other humans and left records. Was a powerful figure with your career driven so far as to cling to such a hope?”
While Ryan Aiter, the blood wizard working for Lennok’s company, had become a vampire, it was only possible due to a confluence of fortunate coincidences.
Generally, it’s difficult for an ordinary human to become a vampire and enjoy the same longevity and eternal youth as true vampires.
Lucifos, knowing this, must have sought to become a vampire through methods different from those publicly known.
Despite Lennok’s cynicism, Lucifos’s shoulders trembled before he quietly shook his head.
“It’s my turn to ask. Remove the barrier.”
“Very well.”
At Lucifos’s words, abandoning any attempts at excuse or response, Lennok slowly dispelled the shield.
Not all those involved in the project acted out of noble duty or mission.
Many among them likely participated for deeply personal reasons, greed, or private motives.
What Kaiser had done was not to gather those who shared his beliefs, but rather to unite superhumans who could never truly coalesce, all under the pretext of ‘the conclusion’.
Even if, after his death, those involved scattered in such a manner, each striving for their own survival, it was not unusual.
Lucifos, his lips pressed tightly, abruptly inscribed characters in blood onto the Blood-Thought Scribe.
It was an action not to question Lennok, but to question the Blood-Thought Scribe itself.
Did that mean he couldn’t understand the Blood-Thought Scribe’s current answer?
[Why did the Duke of Feared Blood allow an outsider to view this information? According to the contract, he should have foreseen this situation and set the permissions in advance?]
[…….]
But the Blood-Thought Scribe did not answer Lucifos’s question.
A subtle reaction, as if deliberately delaying its response.
Lucifos, not waiting for Lennok, inscribed characters again.
[As a former administrator, I have the right to an answer. Respond to the above question.]
[I recognize that the current blood holder is administrator Lucifos Phillion.]
[Then why aren’t you answering?]
No answer came. It was as if it simply wasn’t reacting to Lucifos’s questions.
Lucifos’s expression, quickly sifting through his memories, suddenly turned blank.
“C-could it be….”
The very first command Lennok had entered just before using the Blood-Thought Scribe.
[Zyble. Omit unnecessary modifiers and answer only my questions.]
The Blood-Thought Scribe, Zyble, was literally responding only to Lennok’s questions, as per that command.
The unbelievable reality that Lennok’s presence held a higher priority within the Blood-Thought Scribe than Lucifos, its former administrator.
As Lucifos stumbled backward, Lennok spoke.
“It seems I made a mistake in entering the command. A Q&A will be difficult with this now.”
Once a command is entered, it cannot be modified until the Blood-Thought Scribe ceases operation.
Even if Lucifos were to write questions into the Blood-Thought Scribe now, it would no longer respond.
But Lucifos, hearing Lennok’s words, instead looked at him with a crestfallen expression.
“A mistake? At this point, you wouldn’t have made such a slip. You ended the Q&A and left no room for further interaction, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“By showing me the Blood-Thought Scribe, you intended to assert your ownership. You likely also wanted to confirm whose authority held precedence.”
“……”
The possibility of that wizard merely making a command input error to end the transaction was extremely low.
From the very beginning, when he first inscribed the command, he must have intended to use Lucifos’s knowledge to determine how far his commands would reach.
As a result, Lucifos ended up revealing that the Scribe’s author was the Duke of Feared Blood, and that the project’s associates had contracted with him.
Having confirmed that much, Lennok used the set command to refuse Lucifos’s questions, forcibly ending the Q&A at an early stage.
“Did you determine that probing each other further here wouldn’t be particularly beneficial?”
The old secretary’s eyes gleamed.
“You already have confidence that you can achieve it on your own, don’t you?”
“Perhaps… but it’s certainly true that I have no intention of relying on others.”
Lennok neither affirmed nor denied Lucifos’s words.
Instead, he simply met the old man’s intense gaze head-on, his arms crossed.
“While the Blood-Thought Scribe’s abilities seem quite useful, its limitations are also clear.”
“W-what…?”
“As a recording device and search tool, it can only present selective, superficial information. Because of that, it can sometimes even mislead about the truth.”
Speaking thus, Lennok slowly approached Lucifos and continued.
Without using any magic, simply placing a hand on the secretary’s shoulder caused his body to stiffen rigidly.
Lennok grasped the old man’s shoulder and quietly whispered into his ear.
“The project associate you met here. They weren’t alive to begin with, were they?”
“……!!!”
“You said the purpose of the rendezvous was due to the project associate’s murder, but that alone doesn’t explain why no other contact appeared here with you.”
Lennok spoke, gazing into Lucifos’s trembling eyes.
“It appears the rendezvous in Sector 6 was itself an arrangement to receive the corpse of the murdered associate.”
The rendezvous between project associates in Sector 6, as relayed by the Blood-Thought Scribe, Zyble.
However, that information did not state that the associates involved were alive.
The reason Lucifos appeared alone, even after sensing Lennok’s presence.
The reason no other associate appeared, despite the rendezvous’s purpose being to discuss the associate’s murder.
Wouldn’t it only make sense if the other contact met here was, in fact, the murdered associate themself?
An easy error to overlook if one didn’t set precise search conditions.
But that would happen because Zyble isn’t truly alive, but rather something closer to a search engine.
Lennok, leaving the speechless Lucifos, asked.
“The corpse of the murdered project associate. It’s here, isn’t it?”
A data room located quite deep within Sector 6.
A hidden room behind a strictly managed underground cold storage facility for ancient documents.
“From what I’ve gathered so far, there’s no close bond whatsoever between the project associates.”
Lennok, walking behind the secretary, stated.
“Many were hostile to each other, or even harbored burning hatred. You, too, weren’t deeply involved with the murdered associate, were you?”
“……”
“Then why did you personally come to recover the associate’s corpse?”
“As you said, the project is completely over. We can no longer even claim to stand on common ground.”
Lucifos replied weakly.
“It’s true that associates frequently kill and antagonize each other. But despite that, the reason I recovered his body was…”
Creeaaak…!!
Lucifos, pushing open the door, murmured.
“Because he was a being who could never truly die.”
“……”
A pitch-black coffin resting in the center of the cramped secret room.
What lay enshrined beneath the coffin was no ordinary human corpse.
It barely retained a human form, its decaying flesh and exposed bone fragments here and there making it grotesque.
The corpse looked as if it had been brutally butchered by someone.
But instead of frowning at the corpse’s appearance, Lennok approached closely and quietly examined its state.
“Decaying flesh and crumbling bones… impressive characteristics, but not the direct cause of death.”
Instead of touching it directly, Lennok, subtly activating his Mystic Eye and silently gazing at the form, spoke.
“A splint on the shin, and cotton stuffed below the collarbone. Evidence of an attempt to maintain a normal appearance, aware of its own condition. It seems to have preserved its exterior for a long time.”
Lennok tilted his head slowly, looking down at the corpse.
A form closer to a corpse. Yet, a lifeform capable of moving with intellect.
The reason Lucifos had defined this individual’s death as a special circumstance and recovered the body.
Because even in Lennok’s own memory, a term existed for a similar state.
“A ghoul. Isn’t that right?”
Lennok asked, without waiting for the secretary’s reply.
“The ultimate fate of necromancers or military spirit users. They become monsters that cannot die or live, preying on the souls and bodies of the living.”
“……”
During Pandemonium’s mid-term accounting, Lennok had faced ghouls circling the satellite city of Bailuts.
Though he had dealt with them relatively easily using the Compassion of the Archangel, a top-tier holy relic,
their unsettling aura and the hunger teeming in their eyes were not easily forgotten.
But he hadn’t expected to encounter a ghoul’s corpse in a secret room within Sector 6, where ancient documents were stored.
Lennok murmured, observing the ghoul’s now completely motionless corpse.
“I’d heard they could form when a soul inhabits a corpse buried in a spirit-rich area, but that’s unlikely for a project associate…”
Lennok shifted his gaze.
“You decided to recover his body because a ghoul, who shouldn’t have died, actually did?”
“……Yes.”
Lucifos nodded with a grim expression.
“Grimalder, more than anyone among the associates, was someone who should not have died. Everyone understood his significance. That’s why an exception was made.”
“……Grimalder?”
The message the Blood-Thought Scribe, Zyble, had relayed when explaining the location where Kaiser’s body was hidden.
[The location was selected with the cooperation of the Duke of Feared Blood, and the storage method was decided after consulting Grimalder.]
So, Grimalder, the individual consulted to decide the body’s storage method, was this very ghoul?
At Lennok’s words, Lucifos, surprisingly, twitched his eyebrows.
“You know about Grimalder. Have you met him?”
“I’m aware he advised on how to store Kaiser’s body.”
“……”
“However, the fact that he was a ghoul bothers me. Surely Kaiser’s body wasn’t stored in this manner as well….”
Lennok, frowning, questioned Lucifos, but stopped mid-sentence upon seeing his reaction.
The moment he heard Lennok’s words, Lucifos’s face had turned corpse-pale and rigid, unable to even breathe.
Lennok instinctively knew this was the precursor to a life-threatening Geas about to activate.
This very conversation had brought the secretary to the verge of being ensnared by a Geas.
The questions regarding Kaiser’s death must have struck at the heart of the project’s hidden secrets.
“……Hm.”
Lennok, after a moment of contemplation, sighed and placed a hand on Lucifos’s shoulder.
As he rotated his mana and flowed it into the secretary’s body, the old man’s stiffened form slowly relaxed.
“H-huh…!! Cough!!”
The secretary stumbled, leaning against the wall, gasping for breath.
Lennok, his arms crossed, looked at Lucifos and spoke.
“I forcefully stimulated your nervous system to relax your muscles, so it’ll be difficult to stand properly.”
“……!!”
“If I were to directly interfere with the Geas, things wouldn’t end well. Let’s stop this discussion. Tell me more about Grimalder.”
Even as Lennok said this, he was pondering how he had obtained this information.
How Kaiser’s body was decided to be stored. How Grimalder’s advice factored into that process.
Lennok had obtained this information by searching the Blood-Thought Scribe, Zyble.
But if merely becoming aware of this fact was enough to trigger the Geas on Lucifos, then why was the Blood-Thought Scribe able to tell Lennok?
‘The Blood-Thought Scribe said it had been destroyed decades ago and then recreated,’
What if the process of being destroyed and then recreated was a method to bypass the Geas’s activation?
What if this information, transmitted to Lennok, was actually a shared resource meant not for Lennok, but for other Ascendants?
What if the author, the Duke of Feared Blood, recreated the Blood-Thought Scribe to convey this fact to Ascendants, bypassing the Geas?
“……”
An interesting hypothesis, but a question that couldn’t be answered immediately.
“Grimalder, more than anyone among us, should not have died, yet he also feared death more than anyone.”
Lucifos, weakly leaning against the wall and gripping his cane, said.
“That’s why he learned necromancy and embraced the fate of becoming a ghoul himself. The fact that he was murdered like this means…”
A ghoul is already a monster teetering on the boundary between life and death.
What does it mean to kill a being whose physical death has already passed, and only its soul remains alive?
“It means Grimalder’s body wasn’t destroyed, but his very soul was annihilated.”
“……My part is done here. If you wish, feel free to examine his corpse at your leisure.”
Lucifos, rising weakly, shook his head and turned his back.
After realizing he had been supplanted in his authority over the Blood-Thought Scribe, he seemed to have lost all his will.
“How Grimalder was murdered, or what happened to him, is no longer my concern.”
“Is that because you hold the position of secretary?”
“Yes… it was the same then.”
Lucifos smiled weakly.
“My duty was to observe, record, and preserve.”
“……”
With those words, the secretary stumbled and left the secret room first.
Perhaps he kept it here because his remaining task was to recover and preserve the project’s records.
The mindset of storing Grimalder’s body in Sector 6, where ancient documents were kept, seemed chilling at first glance,
but Lennok knew that was precisely the shared sense of uncanny detachment common among those involved in the project.
“The death of a ghoul….”
On this continent, where could one neatly sever and annihilate only the soul, leaving the body behind?
Lennok considered this, then took a monocle from his pocket and placed it over one eye.
An artifact Mila had half-jokingly gifted him as a bribe, capable of showing differing Mana Projection Rates.
Looking at Grimalder’s corpse again through it, he could see a pattern on its neck that hadn’t been visible before.
Though small, roughly the size of a coin, the intricacy of the pattern drawn within it was beyond imagination.
Beautiful curves, like waves of wailing ghosts, compressed dozens of times over and crashing down.
Beneath the pattern, the shape of ancient characters, their form unrecognizable.
Lennok immediately took the Blood-Thought Scribe and meticulously copied the characters into it.
[One translated record exists. Would you like to view it?]
By cutting off his transaction with Lucifos early, he still had one chance left.
In other words, this was, for now, his last opportunity to uncover a clue through the Blood-Thought Scribe.
But that single search was enough.
[The Night Parade is not yet over, and the path to the Ghost Tribulation is long and arduous.]
The moment the blood-stained characters appeared on the page, Lennok immediately knew who had killed Grimalder.
[Punishment has been meted out to the sinner who mocked the Great Cause; their end shall be displayed to all in the mortal realm.]
“Military Spirit City….”
Military Spirit City, Yorta, which is said to gather all the spirits and curses of this world.
Someone there had murdered an already failed project associate and taken their soul.