Chapter 747: Low Altitude Flight (15)
“Oh, already?”
At Lennok’s assertion that he would examine the contents of the Casket right then and there, Agneta looked around, bewildered.
“Wouldn’t it be better to return to Vulcan first and open it with Sabrinah?”
“Why should I?”
Lennok scoffed.
“The agreement with the spellcaster was merely to hand over the Casket. There’s no need to examine its contents together.”
“No, but earlier you said Jillian might track us. That was…”
“That was a lie to separate from the Clown at an opportune moment. There’s no need to show him the contents of the Casket.”
“…”
Since the Clown had already left, there was no reason to hesitate to examine the Casket now.
“…If things go wrong, it’s not my problem.”
Just as Agneta grumbled, pressing her hands together and preparing to open a sub-space.
A dazzling ripple quickly spread across the darkened sky.
Fwoooosh!!
A beautiful radiance, as if gathering starlight and showering it upon the earth. Agneta immediately vanished, and Lennok likewise suppressed his presence and deflected a spell.
Swoooosh!!!
The mere aftershock made the bushes across the grassland sway like reeds, rippling in all directions.
Lennok, who had been watching the undulating grassland, subtly raised his gaze.
[Victor, this is…]
“Yes.”
Lennok’s eyes narrowed as he gauged the source of the ripple.
A wide-area detection spell easily covering a radius of tens of kilometers. What did it mean that it originated from beyond the mountain range they had just left?
As far as Lennok knew, there weren’t many organizations or superhumans capable of using detection spells of such a range.
Unless it was a secret society that called themselves Watchers and served the Lighthouse Keeper.
“It seems Jillian has decided to make her fortress the Sixth Lighthouse. There’s no other explanation for such power.”
Lennok, who instantly grasped the situation, put the key he was holding into his pocket.
“It’ll be difficult to open it here. Let’s return to Vulcan for now.”
[Is it okay to change your mind so suddenly?]
“Since the Guide’s Remains are from Military City, they must be linked to a powerful or unique soul.”
Lennok said that, glancing back.
“Since souls aren’t my specialty, there’s a high chance I’d be instantly detected by the detection spells used by the Eyes of Blue. The compatibility isn’t good.”
Having held the authority of the Fifth Lighthouse and used it himself, he knew it even better.
How extensive the Lighthouse’s abilities and perception were in finding or detecting such distinctive powers.
The female Watcher he had seen in the fortress’s audience chamber. Was her name Marissa?
She was likely the holder of the Sixth Lighthouse’s authority and the one who facilitated this negotiation.
Lennok made a mental note of her name and immediately turned around.
“Let’s talk once we get back. If you plan to cross into imaginary space, feel free to go first.”
Lennok traversed the Kabahim border region and returned to Vulcan in less than two days.
The outermost undeveloped district of the mega-city Vulcan. A ruined, abandoned hangar.
Sabrinah, who had been waiting after receiving his call, waved cheerily.
“Victor, I heard the news. You had a hard time meeting some crazy bastard, didn’t you?”
“Did you hear it from Agneta?”
“She was rambling about what happened at the fortress.”
Sabrinah asked with a curious expression.
“They say you’re from the oldest family, is that true?”
“…”
Instead of responding, Lennok slowly raised his gaze above him.
Agneta, hanging upside down from the ceiling, subtly avoided his gaze.
“W-well, it seemed like you didn’t really care… so it just came up somehow.”
“Are you spouting that as an excuse now?”
“…My apologies.”
So she had blabbed everything about the Clown and Victor’s identities.
Sabrinah looked at Victor and saluted with one hand.
“So you were from a great lineage. Should I salute you like this from now on?”
“…”
If the stories he’d exchanged with the Clown were already circulating as rumors among the Pandemonium members…
It would be troublesome to deny it unnecessarily.
Thinking that it didn’t matter how they treated it if it wasn’t true, Lennok chuckled.
“That’s a terrible salute. You don’t do it like that.”
“…Huh, are you really related to them?”
Ignoring Sabrinah’s wide eyes, Lennok brushed past her and took out the key.
Sabrinah looked curiously at the key Lennok had presented.
“So, this is the Casket’s key, huh? It doesn’t look very special on the outside…”
“That’s not what a key looks like.”
Hylaea, who, unlike last time, had pushed back the nun’s consciousness and appeared directly, stared at the key and spoke.
“Can something like this really fit into that small Casket?”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Sabrinah looked back at Hylaea, bewildered.
“Anyone can see it looks like a key.”
“Really? To me, it doesn’t look like a key at all…”
“…”
“It seems Hylaea sees it a bit differently.”
Agneta, still hanging from the ceiling and focused on her mana thread weaving, said.
“Isn’t it because of her Talent for Duality or something?”
“…Call your host. Let’s see what she’s talking about.”
“Don’t call me a host.”
Hylaea, appearing somewhat displeased, switched personalities, and the nun, her eyes covered by a blindfold, appeared.
The nun, trembling slightly, wearing a blindfold, and retreating as if fearful.
As soon as Sabrinah saw that, she let out an “Ah,” as if realizing something.
“Now that I think about it, this Hylaea can’t see.”
“…”
“Are you stupid?”
At Agneta’s innocent question, Sabrinah snapped and whipped her head around.
“W-well, just let her touch it then!!”
“You’re noisy, finish it quickly. How long do you plan to critique it?”
Lennok, leaning against a hangar box, rubbed his neck with a tired expression.
Perhaps because he had contacted them immediately after returning from the fortress, he was quite fatigued. At Lennok’s languid words, the nun quickly took the key.
The nun, silently concentrating and fiddling with the key, spoke with a puzzled expression.
“It seems like a key, though…?”
“Hylaea!”
Hylaea, having switched personalities again, touched the key with her hand again and narrowed her eyes.
“…No, it’s not. It feels more like a puzzle piece. It’s the same whether I see it or touch it.”
“…”
Only then did everyone present realize that the two weren’t lying and fell silent.
“So this was why no one had been able to analyze the structure of the Casket or the key until now.”
Agneta said, sounding intrigued.
“That Talent for Duality, did someone named Zairo actually have it too?”
“For now, there’s no other explanation.”
Sabrinah asked.
“What exactly is the Talent for Duality anyway? It’s not about split personalities, is it?”
“Well… it’s hard for me to explain in words too.”
Hylaea pondered before answering.
“Before, it was closer to feeling all sensations twice, layered over each other. After dividing my personality, I only perceive it as a concept.”
“It must be a talent to observe two concepts simultaneously within a single space-time.”
Lennok said.
“If Zairo possessed the Talent for Duality, he could have made two forms coexist in the key.”
Lennok, who had been intently examining the Casket, lifted the key and spoke.
“If the Casket was designed to only open when both forms align, then I understand why it’s such an excellent small safe.”
Perhaps because only someone with the Talent for Duality could see the hidden side of the Casket and key, no one had been able to duplicate the Casket’s key until now.
“Wow, so now that I think about it, from now on, if we find a Casket, we can just bring it to Hylaea.”
Sabrinah clapped her hands and said.
“Then, couldn’t we make a new key to open Caskets without needing the original key?”
“…I wouldn’t know just by touching the Casket. I’d need to touch the key more to find out.”
“If you’re just going to spout nonsense, I’ll start first.”
Ignoring Hylaea’s reluctant reply, Lennok abruptly inserted the key into the Casket.
Hylaea’s talent was only necessary when duplicating the Casket or the key. Opening it itself was possible for anyone, as long as they had the matching key.
He wasn’t uninterested in the talk of the Talent for Duality, but there was something he needed to do first.
Click!!
Just as Hylaea said, it felt less like inserting a key and more like fitting a puzzle piece.
“Hey, wait a minute! If you open it like that here…!!”
The moment Sabrinah, flustered, shot up from her seat and yelled.
Like a folded paper unfurling, the Casket opened wide to both sides before Lennok’s eyes.
Shhhhhk!!
Though not large enough to fill the hangar where the group stood, it was spacious enough to easily store a small aircraft.
Lennok’s steps paused slightly as he saw the inside of the Casket spread open at his feet. Those peeking from behind him also turned their gazes in surprise.
What appeared inside the Casket was not bone dust in the form of remains.
“A gravestone…?”
A dark, ink-colored gravestone, as if marking someone’s burial, stood diagonally inside the Casket.
Its only distinctive feature was writing scrawled in an unintelligible script.
Sabrinah stared blankly at the sight before immediately turning her gaze to Hylaea.
“Hylaea, what does that look like to you?”
“…It’s the same to me. It looks like an ordinary gravestone.”
Hylaea replied reluctantly.
“The Guide’s Remains couldn’t possibly have duality. This gravestone is literally all there is.”
Lennok murmured that, slowly touching the gravestone with his gloved hand.
“It’s a gravestone meticulously carved from a single raw stone. Yet, its strength is surprisingly weak for such a thing. Considering the effort put into its processing, it’s strange.”
“Isn’t it because it’s been stored in the Casket for a long time?”
Sabrinah added.
It seemed curiosity had gotten the better of her, even though they could have just taken the Casket and finished the transaction.
Lennok, also thinking the spellcaster might be helpful, turned his gaze.
“The characters written on the gravestone. Can you make them out?”
While a spellcaster mediates by imbuing words with power, language is also intimately connected with writing.
Therefore, it wasn’t uncommon for spellcasters to also be cultural scholars who studied languages and scripts themselves.
“Roughly. I’ve seen similar interpretations in ancient texts a few times.”
Sabrinah said that, hopping off an aircraft seat and standing beside Lennok.
She nodded, intently gazing at the characters carved into the gravestone.
“That’s right. It’s a common phrase used to console the souls of the deceased. And it’s a specific incantation that was only permitted to nobles. It’s definitely related to the Guide’s Remains.”
“Nobles?”
Lennok countered.
“Are there nobles in Military City too?”
“No. The nobles I’m talking about are the nobles of Ars Nova.”
Sabrinah replied, lightly tapping the gravestone.
“This phrase itself was used in the central city.”
“…”
So the incantation carved into the gravestone was a requiem permitted only to the nobles of the central city. Lennok, realizing its implications, crossed his arms and bowed his head.
“The Guide of the Hundred Demons’ Night Parade was from a noble family of the central city…”
“Military City is one of the oldest city-states on this continent, but conversely, it was also the city most strongly linked to Ars Nova.”
Hylaea said.
“If there are phrases or traces related to the Guide’s Remains, I suppose that’s probably the influence.”
“…”
Lennok listened to those words and remained silent for a long time.
Agneta, who had been blankly staring at Lennok while hanging upside down from the ceiling, belatedly began to move frantically as if remembering something.
“Ah, I should get going now. The Clown assigned me a task, and The Doctor keeps calling.”
“The Clown? Why that crazy bastard again? He’s not coming this way, is he?”
As Sabrinah frowned, Agneta tilted her head.
“He asked me to deliver something to the Fisherman. So I might have to go a bit far.”
“Ugh, what’s wrong with that old man now…”
Sabrinah, disgusted, shook her head as if to cut off the conversation.
“That’s enough. I won’t bother. He’ll probably just talk endlessly about some weird topic.”
“I’ll go first. Victor, see you next time.”
Agneta grinned at Lennok.
“Next time we meet, we’ll talk about manipulation spells again, okay?”
But Lennok sharply cut off Agneta’s greeting.
“Before that, you’ll have to pay the price for running your mouth carelessly, won’t you?”
“Ugh…”
Since she had babbled useless things about being a descendant of Ban-gung to Sabrinah and Hylaea, there was no reason to let it slide.
Lennok held out his hand, as if retrieving something he had entrusted to her.
“Thread cocoons. You have more, don’t you? Hand them all over.”
Only then did Agneta, with a displeased look, pull out two small thread cocoons from her pocket and place them in Lennok’s hand.
“There’s really not much left… it takes a long time to make more, you know.”
“That’s not my concern.”
Lennok said that, naturally tucking Agneta’s thread cocoons into his pocket.
“But next time, I’ll pay a proper price for them.”
A consumable item, compressing tens of thousands of mana threads into a clump.
Even Jillian couldn’t overcome its organic nature and sheer quantity, getting tangled up momentarily, didn’t she?
It was an especially useful item for Victor, given his identity as someone who directly manipulates mana threads.
Despite Lennok’s reply, Agneta mumbled something, then climbed onto the mana threads and instantly vanished.
The messenger’s method of extending mana threads into imaginary space and moving by tightrope walking.
After the spider vanished so quickly that even Lennok couldn’t track her, Sabrinah looked back at Lennok.
“It seems this is all we can figure out for now. Should we wrap things up here?”
Stretching as if stiff, and rolling her neck, she pulled out her phone and mumbled.
“My visit to Vulcan is until tomorrow, so I need to finish preparing roughly tonight.”
“…”
Lennok ignored Sabrinah’s words and fell into thought, gazing at the gravestone.
The contradiction of a gravestone made to remember the deceased being very weak in strength. Conversely, the processing itself was incredibly intricate.
The few structural characteristics present in the gravestone. If these themselves were intentional clues.
“Victor?”
Turning his back to Sabrinah, he grasped the edge of the gravestone with one hand.
The moment he drew mana and pushed it into the gravestone, cracks instantly spread throughout the entire stone.
Crrrackle…!!
“Hey, if you break that now…!!”
The moment a flustered Sabrinah stepped forward to stop Lennok.
CRACK!!
The gravestone Lennok was holding shattered into countless crystals, scattering onto the ground.
Thud-thud!!
Sabrinah stared at Lennok, who had neatly brushed off even the crystals remaining on his gloves, with a bewildered expression.
“No matter how impatient you are, how can you just smash it if you don’t need it? We could have taken it for separate investigation-”
But her words were cut short as Lennok picked something up from among the shattered crystals.
A crystalline form, uniquely transparent and glowing amidst the dark gravestone fragments.
He realized it wasn’t merely a fragment of the gravestone, but a ring hidden within it.
Hylaea also looked at the ring in Lennok’s hand, slightly surprised.
“If it was storing the Guide’s Remains, then either a corpse or remains should have been visible. But there’s only this gravestone here.”
“…”
“Conversely, if the gravestone itself were the remains, they wouldn’t have carved a requiem on it.”
Ignoring the two silent figures, Lennok fiddled with the ring and said.
“If a raw stone’s strength is weak despite being processed, it’s highly likely its internal structure was tampered with. The gravestone itself was a case for storing the remains.”
The statement that the jeweled ring was the Guide’s Remains was not a lie.
A memorial diamond created by processing the remains of the deceased.
Lennok remembered that there were cases where remains were preserved in such a way, and had kept it in mind.
“You smashed the gravestone you just got your hands on, just to test that? Good thing it worked out…”
Sabrinah shook her head in disbelief, then sighed deeply.
“Alright, you found the answer, what more can I say? Just put it on for now.”
“Here?”
As Lennok replied with displeasure, Sabrinah crossed her arms.
“That way, I can see what the ring’s ability or purpose is and help you, right?”
“…”
“Since you brought the key and handed over the Casket, I’ll help you for free up to this point.”
Although he was reluctant to use the ring’s abilities here, Sabrinah’s knowledge might help them discover something more.
With Hylaea, who possessed the Talent for Duality, they might be able to figure out conditions that would be difficult to confirm alone.
The power emanating from the remains ring itself wasn’t that strong. If push came to shove, suppressing it wouldn’t be difficult.
As Lennok thought that and put the ring on his right hand, the gem shone dazzlingly, floating a hazy form into the air.
Whoooosh!!
Something that had been swirling in the air like a blurry mist slowly took shape and stood upright.
Its appearance had arms, legs, and a head, like a living human.
It stood facing Lennok, swaying gently and tilting its head.
Its pure white appearance lacked distinct features, only possessing the general form of arms and legs, but no concrete shape.
Being a ghostly form, it emitted no mana whatsoever, and its presence was so faint that it was hard to be sure it was even there.
Was this what it felt like to have a blank white canvas, shaped like a human, before one’s eyes?
“Hmm?”
At that moment, Hylaea let out a low sound, as if she had discovered something.
Sabrinah swiftly turned her head as if she had been waiting.
“Hylaea, did you find something?”
“No, not exactly… but that doesn’t seem to be a ghost.”
“…Not a ghost? Then what is it?”
Hylaea hesitated slightly before speaking.
“To my eyes, it looks exactly like a physical mirror shaped into a human form.”
At that moment, the ghost standing before him suddenly grabbed Lennok’s shoulders with both hands.
It was as if forcing Lennok to meet its gaze and look at it directly.
Fwaaat!!
At that moment, the ghost’s form began to subtly change.
Various parts of the hazy form flickered, as if something were trying to burst out from all directions.
Sabrinah quickly came closer and chattered, looking interested.
“Wow, could ‘mirror’ mean this, like-”
Fzzzzzt…!!
At that moment, cracks, like broken glass, suddenly began to appear on the ghost’s form gripping Lennok’s shoulders.
It glowed with dazzling light and vibrated violently on the spot, then, unable to bear it any longer, released its hands.
BOOM!!
The ghost’s form exploded and vanished on the spot.
“…”
Hylaea froze with her mouth agape, and Sabrinah, belatedly understanding the situation, scratched her head.
The Military City’s artifact. The Guide’s Ghost tried to peer into Lennok, but instead couldn’t endure it and self-destructed, an absurd outcome.
Lennok, having confirmed the result with crossed arms, looked at the ring and said.
“The artifact isn’t broken, so I can summon it at least once more. Let’s try a different method.”
Sabrinah, who had been watching Lennok nonchalantly changing the subject, asked.
“…Are you really from an Ascendant bloodline or something?”
“…”
Misunderstandings were piling up, making it difficult to even offer an excuse.