Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
Mary continued feeling depressed as they continued talking about Ami.
Her stamina had not yet fully recovered after the fighting ended, so Calaria changed the subject out of consideration for Mary.
Still, there were no topics that did not relate to Ami in some way.
“Anyway, all this stuff was exhausting for my mind too. What was that monster you and Ami fought, Mary?”
“Hmm, I don’t understand that either. He called himself Angel, that’s all I know.”
Ami grabbed Mary’s arm after saying that.
Mary thought back to the event and answered Calaria’s question.
“The arcana user of Tower, Aoi, injected a worker in the medical office with something. He transformed into that thing after that.”
Then, the female doctor who noticed Cutie’s appearance turned around while sitting on a chair, and joined the conversation from some distance away.
“It seems the contents of that were blood.”
“So you investigated it.”
She had finished treating four people and analyzing Ami’s body, and Angel’s blood in such a short time.
The female doctor looked tired too, after all.
“So he was transformed into a monster just because of that blood?”
“It wasn’t just blood, it was the blood of a sorcerer…… probably an arcana user. It was adjusted to increase the thickness of mana as well, but……”
“Is there something on your mind?”
“If that really is the blood of a human being, their Sorcery Rating would be over 10,000.”
“10,000?”
Calaria couldn’t help but ask again after hearing that ridiculous number.
“That’s 4 times what I have!”
Ami on the other hand spoke in a laid-back manner.
Calaria slumped and the mood became softer.
“Of course, I don’t know what kind of work they did on the blood. The number probably isn’t correct.”
“But…… The truth is that using that blood was enough to give birth to a monster with more than 3,000 in Sorcery Rating.”
“That’s no insignificant thing, is it?”
“The one saving grace is that a big volume of blood is necessary to make something like that. Mass production would be impossible.”
Indeed, that gave them some peace of mind.
Despite the fact that just one vial was enough to grant powers beyond an arcana user’s.
“Just possessing something like that would guarantee authority over the country…… It puts the positions of arcana users in danger.”
“But that’s also the power of an arcana user. Perhaps there is a condition to activate it, like Tower.”
“We can defeat anything if we combine our strength.”
“That’s optimistic. But, in truth, perhaps that’s the only way.”
It was brute force in the end.
Mary and her group could also set up a trap, but……
“By the way, that naked Mr. Angel was not talking to me, but to the God of Wheels inside me. I think they know each other.”
“Acquaintances with an arcana? Mr. Noted talked about that too. About how gods may still be alive.”
“In that case, is an arcana itself the thing that made Angel take action? Granting powers to such dangerous people and letting them do as they will…… Do they really want to protect the world’s order?”
“Only humans imagine that they want to protect order. I always thought there were too many of them in the Kingdom.”
Noted answered Calaria’s doubts.
He let go of Cutie’s hand and approached Mary and the others.
“They’re spread all over the continent, and there are anecdotes about them on the other side of the sea as well. Fundamentally, arcana’s history is centered on the Kingdom. If we think that they actually have a different objective, and that the time to fulfill that objective is approaching, I can understand why Wheel of Fortune conducted its inheritance in such an unprecedented and forceful manner.”
“Are you saying the arcana are getting impatient?”
“The existence of that monster named Angel was clearly an irregularity.”
“It looks like Angel already knew that Death God had the power to absorb other arcana. Also, he called this power the ‘arcana cage’.”
“You are the first user of Death God in history, Mary. So if he knew about that……”
“He might have been involved in the group that controlled Death God.”
At the same time, this group were also the people who created a fabricated history.
Noted would usually jump up in happiness after learning about something like this, but he did not break his serious expression this time.
“Also, he talked about 16 years ago. He said that I was supposed to die back then.”
“16 years ago, that’s connected to Dugan. Putting that together with the story Kalinga told, it makes sense that they’re interested in the Slava Territory.”
“What did that man tell you?”
“The history of homunculi. According to him, the research began over 20 years ago.”
Noted told Kalinga’s story to Mary and the others.
It was a long story, but it helped Mary and Calaria fill up the gaps in their knowledge.
“So, my mother was Yueri, after all……”
Whether one could define a blood donor as a parent or not, that was the word Angel had used when talking to Mary.
But, even for someone grown in a test tube, Mary and Calaria accepted that the owner of one’s blood was their parent.
Mary knew that King Henry and Queen Blair were her parents.
Calaria however had just learned that Yueri was her parent.
The blood of the person she had yearned after was in her body.
For Calaria, who had lost connection with her ‘name’, this was quite the joy.
“Furthermore, she’s also the person who started the homunculus research, huh? She must have a strong connection with Pupa.”
“Lady Mary, are you a homunculus too?”
“Yes, and with my birth, the research ended, and the homunculi were scattered around……”
“That’s an indirect cause. You were necessary for the ‘thing’ King Henry is trying to accomplish. But, that ‘thing’ ended up failing due to Dugan’s intervention.”
“That’s why the homunculi ended up being treated carelessly. In that case, shouldn’t they hate Dugan instead? Mary is the wrong person to point their spears at.”
“Maybe that’s why things ended up like this.”
Dugan was being manipulated – Mary and the others were thinking about this possibility.
This theory’s credibility had now greatly increased.
“So the homunculi took their revenge by causing chaos in the Slava Territory?”
“Does that mean that they will have successfully taken their revenge whether you win or lose? That’s unpleasant.”
“Hmm, I don’t really know. It’s only natural for Dugan to be hated, but why are they going after you and Mary, Calaria?”
“Probably because they’re jealous of us since we don’t have any physical defects.”
“All of them?”
“Well……”
“The homunculi were happy to see each other again when ‘someone’ saved them and reunited them, right? That’s why they’re fighting with their lives on the line like today. But why aren’t they happy that Calaria is alive? And if their sister is a princess, shouldn’t they be happy about that?”
“I can only say that it depends on the person. No, maybe that’s precisely why it’s strange?”
“You’re all getting things too twisted. I think you should be more frank.”
Ami buried her head in Mary’s chest after saying that.
Then, Ami looked like she was melting when Mary patted her on the head: ‘Uhehehe……’
“We’ll understand their circumstances by fighting them. It looks like they want to talk, so.”
“Indeed, they probably want us to die feeling guilty. I find it hard to care about the tragedy of people I don’t know, though.”
It was a cold thought, but for Calaria, even if they were Alpha Types, they were still strangers.
In fact, she begrudged them for getting Yueri killed.
But Mary did not feel the same way.
(I thought it would go away after I slept, but…… The sense of guilt and the memories are all still here.)
When Mary absorbed an arcana user, she also absorbed a part of their memories.
She knew what they felt while they lived through hell, and what they felt when they came to kill Mary and her friends.
They put their lives on the line, not caring about whether they would survive or not.
But when they approached death, they suddenly felt afraid – it was very human.
Indeed, acquiring an arcana power did not mean one’s heart became stronger as well.
They were still the same humans, and even if Mary did not want to know, she knew that they even cherished her as family in the past.
She wanted to be emotionless and throw it all away.
But Mary could not be so skillful, unlike Calaria.
“……Oh, by the way.”
She laughed at herself for changing the subject so clumsily.
But, there was still a lot to talk about.
It wasn’t as clumsy as Mary thought.
“When I came to the top floor, I sensed a huge amount of mana coming from Kalinga. What was that?”
“That’s right, I wanted to ask that too. There’s so much to talk about. Noted, you said it was a Reverse Phenomenon, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s just the name I gave it. When looking through the historical texts, I saw a few records of something mysterious happening right before an arcana user died.”
As a prerequisite, arcana itself was something that caused mysterious things to occur.
In other words, the thing that occurred there was on a scale even larger than that.
“In the first place, I can say that each arcana governs a certain ‘attribute’. What shape each power is expressed in slightly changes depending on the inheritor, but, generally, Death God controls corpses, Empress controls inorganic objects. These parts seem to be constant.”
There was a reason that Noted used the words ‘seem to be’.
He had read through the ancient texts and researched arcana, but there was no specific explanation on which arcana possesses what power.
Now and before, while the existence of arcana kept other countries in check, exposing every detail of it would be the same thing as exposing its weak points.
That was precisely why the detailed accounts of Death God were unnatural.
When Noted himself saw Cutie acquire the power of Empress, he said to himself for the first time, ‘Oh, that’s what the texts meant.’
Well, although he was able to understand Tower early on, in case Hanged Man had attacked while hiding his powers and the name of his arcana, he would not be able to understand such things.
“What attribute did Kalinga control?”
“Combining the way he fought earlier and the accounts about Hanged Man’s practitioners from the past, I think he controlled the power of facing adversity.”
“Adversity?”
“The more he endured, the stronger he became.”
“Oh, I see.”
Ami seemed to understand, but she spoke in a tone of voice that said otherwise.
“If this was a tale, that would be a fitting power for a protagonist.”
Mary sounded sarcastic.
“But there was still pain and suffering, so perhaps him calling himself the ‘protagonist’ was a manner of self-suggestion.”
“I think he’s just a weirdo.”
“Haha, we can’t disregard that possibility either.”
“But he was very strange in the end when he tried to self-destruct in desperation.”
“Indeed, in some way, that could be taken as the exact opposite of the power to endure adversity.”
“That’s why you said reverse.”
“A Reverse Phenomenon is when an arcana user pays with their life to invoice a powerful spell that completely opposes their original arcana – that’s what I think. Other arcana users haven’t used it, so there must be a condition needed to activate it.”
The most disturbing thing was that this condition was unclear.
If Tower had used that, it would probably destroy the entire building.
“Even killing them is a difficult task too. I’m glad Dugan is not an arcana user.”
“Indeed. I really want him to suffer properly before dying.”
There was no delicacy in her remark, but that was on purpose.
Their expressions were cheerful, but one could sense hatred coming from Mary and Ami.
Noted worriedly scratched his head before the two revengers.