The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"Ah, thanks."

Cradling the cup of warm coffee in both hands, Alice Blesbuck let out a weary sigh.

"That's nice… I feel like I can finally breathe. Honestly, it was a little chilly out there, and I was wiped."

I sat down across from her.

She took two or three sips in a row before setting the mug down.

"All right, first of all — let me apologize for showing up like this in the middle of the night without warning. It's no excuse, but I needed to move fast. You know what this is about, right, Ji-hyeok?"

"Natalia Milited, and Milited's seal — I'd guess that's it?"

"Got it in one."

Alice nodded.

The mug must have been hot, because she rubbed her palms together as she went on.

"My ability lets me link my consciousness to someone else's. To put it more precisely, I share my senses with them. So I can guarantee there won't be anything… untoward going on, in case that was worrying you."

"You're going to link our minds and share senses?"

"Yes."

The biggest question hit me right away.

The whole reason she'd come here was that I couldn't easily come to her.

But if she shared her senses with me while sitting in the same room as me, what was the point?

When I raised it, she answered with a smile.

"Oh, no need to worry about that. I left a homunculus prepped back at the lab. I'll link to the homunculus, and you'll share senses with me. Okay?"

She giggled.

"It almost sounds like one of those choo-choo train games when I put it that way."

"……."

I'd been about to say something, but I closed my mouth.

I figured the thought I'd just had was better off staying buried in my chest. I nodded.

"Then there's no point waiting — let's do it. Oh, before that though…."

I picked up the pouch I'd left on the table and held it out to her.

She took it with a slightly confused look and asked,

"What is this?"

"Open it."

Alice opened the pouch right away.

The moment she saw what was inside, she let out a small, sharp gasp and nearly leapt off her chair, then turned to stare at me wide-eyed.

She'd clearly recognized what was in the pouch.

"I came into them recently. They'll be a huge help to you and Senior Ryle."

"B-but…! This is absolutely not the kind of thing you just hand over as a present!"

"…We're comrades fighting for the same goal, aren't we?"

I'd known she'd try to refuse it like that.

When I tossed out the line of persuasion I'd half-prepared, her expression shifted as if something had just clicked — like she'd been struck by lightning.

She nodded solemnly.

"…I see. I understand what you mean, Ji-hyeok."

She carefully tucked the pouch into her pocket and cleared her throat with a small ahem.

She held out her left hand to me, and with her right she drew out a metal pen.

"Now take my hand. My mana will brush against yours — don't try to resist it… and, well, you might want to close your eyes."

"Close my eyes?"

"Yes. You end up with two viewpoints, so the first time, it can be pretty disorienting."

With a small smile, she jabbed the pen lightly into the back of her own hand to draw a bead of blood.

Using the blood like ink, she traced what looked like a magic circle across our joined hands.

"Starting now."

I did as she said and closed my eyes.

For a moment, a strange ringing seemed to fill my ears.

Then it felt as though someone had grabbed me and was shaking me hard, followed by the floating sensation of falling from a great height.

"…Can you feel it? Can you hear me?"

I slowly opened my eyes at that.

No — I only thought I'd opened them.

There was a mirror in front of me.

And in the mirror was… me. Or rather, someone of indeterminate gender who looked like Alice Blesbuck, perched on the edge of an operating table.

"Good, looks like it worked. Ji-hyeok, can you hear me? It's me, Alice. Remember what I said earlier? About sharing senses?"

I tried to answer that I remembered, but no sound came out.

I panicked for a second, but she seemed to have picked it up just fine.

"Yes, just talking to me like that is enough — I'll catch all of it, so don't worry."

She got to her feet and gave a sly little smile.

"Honestly, a female body's easier to control, but I figured that'd be too much for you to handle… so I made this one neutral on purpose."

With that, she limbered up for a moment and immediately set off somewhere.

The sensation was almost like watching a movie as I took in our surroundings.

The place was huge, and clearly built with serious effort and care.

"Let's start here."

When she arrived at her destination, she gave a dismissive wave to the golems standing guard like sentries.

The golems shifted aside with heavy thuds, and a woman bound to a cross came into view.

One of her ankles had been severed.

"This is Natalia Milited's outer shell."

Alice murmured quietly.

"…All the adjustments are done. Fixing and stabilizing too… tomorrow I'll bring her to World Tree territory and hand her over to the clan head. I've also made sure no stray spirits or other entities can slip into the empty body, and I've ripped and broken everything inside so thoroughly that even if she got her original body back, it wouldn't matter."

She turned her gaze elsewhere.

There, floating in a glass tube filled with some unidentifiable preservative fluid, was what appeared to be Natalia's severed ankle.

"You played a big part in this, Ji-hyeok. Getting a piece of Natalia's body is what let us use it as a medium and catalyst to find a way to neutralize her."

After saying that, Alice stared in silence at Natalia Milited's body for a while.

Then she nodded, left the room, and headed somewhere else.

I asked her where Kath Ryle was.

"Oh, Ryle? Ryle's not here right now. Myung-jun asked him to give him a hand on something for a bit."

She smiled to reassure me.

"Oh, and just in case — don't worry about security here. We have our own watch set up… and on top of that, members of the Ten Powerhouses rotate through. Around this time of day, Osei Evans is probably the one staying here. He loves being on his own so much that he barely shows his face. Laura was better — we even talked about baseball for fun."

She named the lone mage-swordsman who didn't belong to any guild, then went on to explain a few more things.

"Me, Ryle, Evangelline Loengreen, Jin Ye-jeong — we're all being careful. Ryle and I have our security buttoned up, and so do Evangelline and Jin Ye-jeong. There's almost certainly one of the Ten Powerhouses on their side at all times too."

The last room we reached gave off a different kind of unease from the others.

Alice opened the door without hesitation and stepped inside.

"……."

"Hello there."

Inside, a young girl who looked like a blend of Alice and Kath Ryle was sitting on a chair.

She wore a one-piece dress, with an ankle shackle chained to the wall, and she was glaring at us with murder in her eyes.

The moment I saw the girl, I knew she was the being once known as Natalia Milited.

"Sleep well?"

The girl didn't answer.

It was so much quieter than I'd expected that I was a little surprised — and Alice, picking up on it, explained.

"She was loud at first. But after a few lessons and a particular collar around her neck, she quieted right down."

"……."

At Alice's murmur, the girl's eyes rolled to scan her surroundings.

She didn't seem to realize I was there.

The body she now inhabited really was, as Alice had said, a completely ability-less husk — even weaker than an ordinary person's.

"Well… we'll be disposing of her soon enough. Once everything to do with Milited is finished, I'll properly clean up. With my own hands."

At those words, the girl's eyes wavered for an instant.

It wasn't my place to step in, so I stayed silent. Alice tossed her next words at the girl almost carelessly:

"Tomorrow's going to be rough, so why don't you get some more sleep? I'm telling you in advance — it'll really hurt."

Though probably not as much as what you put me through.

With that, Alice turned and walked out.

The girl kept glaring after us with deadly intent.

"……."

A good distance from the room, she stopped and quietly spoke up.

"…To break Milited's seal, you need four alchemists. And the other side has probably gathered at least two."

Isaac McDowell.

Landschi Milited.

And the dragon hearts Landschi had been collecting for centuries.

"On top of that, based on what I dug out of Natalia's head, Landschi has an extremely rare space-type ability. And in alchemy, there are methods for synchronizing remotely to trigger a magic circle from a distance."

Alice paused, then nodded.

"That's the reason I called you here today. We need to do more than just defend — we have to find him and kill him, or at the very least stop him. And to do that, this is what's needed.

You hold the World Tree's power, and you have deep ties to the Seven Calamities too. If I'm not mistaken, you should be able to handle a bit of spirit power as well. And just now, by directly meeting my own mother, you've completed contact with Isaac McDowell and all of Milited's other children. With that, the conditions are met."

When I asked her to explain in more detail, she nodded.

"What I mean is, you, Ji-hyeok, are now able to function as a catalyst. By using you as the medium and catalyst and tracing things backward, we might be able to pinpoint the location of the magic circle they're preparing to trigger remotely. We absolutely need you for this kind of tracking."

"……."

All I could do was stay silent.

It wasn't that I was afraid to become a catalyst, or that I didn't want to.

It was that her purpose and mine had been mismatched from the very start.

Alice Blesbuck wanted Milited's seal to hold.

That was why she was using my help to hunt down Landschi and kill him.

Kill Landschi, and there'd be no one left trying to break Milited's seal.

But for me — someone who needed to defeat every last Seven Calamity and collect their essences to meet Ahriman — Milited's seal had to break, one way or another.

That was the decisive difference between her goal and mine.

"Professor Alice."

After mulling it over, I spoke quietly.

Whatever happened, Alice Blesbuck and Kath Ryle were indispensable to breaking Milited's seal.

"You already know it, don't you, Professor?"

"Know what?"

"That Milited's seal is going to break either way."

Alice fell silent at that.

It went without saying — she already knew.

When three or more of the six Seven Calamity seals (excluding Ahriman's) collapse, the rest will collapse on their own.

And so far, three of them — Margo, Sbeungali, and Minerva — had already had their seals broken.

It was only a matter of time before the rest got out too.

"But we can buy time."

She added it quickly.

"And during that time, maybe we can reinforce the sealing ritual even further. On top of that—"

"That's still just a stopgap. Milited's going to wake in the end, and the others will get out too."

"Then—"

Alice's voice turned cold.

"What are you saying we should do? Just sit on our hands?"

"Do you remember what happened with Minerva? You weren't there, but you must have heard the story at least."

She flinched and gave a small shudder.

"…You can't be serious."

"Yes — that's exactly it."

The reason I was helping Alice in her struggle to keep Milited from being released was precisely that.

If Milited was woken using an incomplete catalyst or method, she'd come out with her power weakened.

The same principle as forcing Minerva out of her seal before she'd fully recovered her power.

To help her, and to wake Milited while keeping her sealed power suppressed as much as possible.

That was my real goal.

And the moment Alice finally caught on, she cried out in fury.

"You — have you completely lost your mind — !?"

In that instant, I felt a violent pressure, like someone had cracked me across the back of the head.

When I came to, I was rolling along the ground.

Or rather, just before I'd slammed into the floor, something had caught hold of me.

Minerva's tail.

Her tail had curled around me like a seatbelt.

"Ngh…!"

A pained groan rang out.

Alice Blesbuck's.

"…Listening to her go on like this, I find I can no longer stand it."

Minerva muttered, her voice gone ice-cold.

Caught by the throat and dangling in midair, Alice Blesbuck thrashed.

I could see her now.

The shock from outside must have severed the connection and snapped me back into my own body.

"Ngh, gh…."

She tried to pry Minerva's fingers off her throat with both hands, but there was no chance.

In a flash, Minerva slammed her into the ground.

Pinned against the floor, Alice Blesbuck gasped raggedly.

"Kuh — !"

"And to whom does a lowly mongrel think she's whining and talking back, just now?"

A crackle came from Minerva's hand as she tightened her grip on Alice's throat.

"It seems even a mongrel inherits the blood of vampires reliably enough — you've taken your mother's serpent tongue without a single thing missing."

"Minerva, calm down."

I quietly called her name.

Minerva looked over at me.

"My dear one — they did not do anything to you, did they?"

"No, I'm fine. More importantly, I'm fine, so let her go — please. She's…."

"I know."

Minerva nodded.

Still gripping Alice Blesbuck's throat with one hand, she slowly raised the other.

"I knew you were in important conversation with this mongrel, and I meant to hold myself back — but I could no longer bear the sight of her wagging her slippery tongue at you, and so I overstepped."

She added,

"It is not because this woman, reeking of Milited, was joining her mana with you and sharing her senses with you in your chamber that I do this — be sure not to mistake it as such."

[That's plenty a reason on its own, you know….]

Sbeungali's voice — the first I'd heard from him in a while — was less welcome than annoying.

"My dear, this woman was trying to use you as bait."

"Bait?"

"Yes."

Minerva nodded.

"The technique this mongrel spoke of, even I am aware of. But if she could trace Milited's lingering scent through a method like that…."

A growl rumbled in her throat.

"It means you could also be used as an offering to break Milited's seal. Or as a living sacrifice to make the seal even stronger."

"W-wait a moment…."

Alice Blesbuck coughed and wrung out the words with difficulty.

"P-please… let me… speak, just a little… I know it sounds suspect, I do. But… please….”

"Must I rip your tongue out by the root before that mischief-making mouth will close?"

Minerva growled, baring her sharp teeth.

Her pupils split into slits, and Alice Blesbuck shook under the weight of her aura.

"To dare to mock my dear one and lead him into ruin."

"Th-that's not what I meant at all…."

Alice Blesbuck wrung the words out as if outraged at being misread, but Minerva only scoffed.

She raised her hand as if she'd seen enough.

"For that sin, you deserve to die many times over."

The glint in her eyes made it plain she was in earnest.

I spoke up quickly.

"I knew."

Minerva's arm, already arcing down toward Alice Blesbuck, froze in place.

"…My dear, what did you just say?"

"Minerva, I know what you're worried about — but I'd already figured out everything you just warned me about."

"My dear—"

"So, Minerva. Please. Let her go. She can't die just yet."

I spoke quietly.

"I still have things left to talk about with her."

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