"I'll leave Hans be for now. We can't afford to divert our forces just to retrieve him. That would be suicide."
Laura spoke. She glanced down at the corpse sprawled on the floor, her leg twitching.
It was a blatant declaration of abandoning Hans, yet not a single person objected.
If the boss says so, that's that. In the mercenary world, where hierarchy is ironclad, the captain's word carried absolute authority in and of itself.
Moreover, her ability allowed her to even bring others back from the dead. In a system where you die if ordered to die and flee if ordered to flee, hesitation simply couldn't exist.
After all, wasn't that the case? Knowing you'd be revived anyway even if you died when told to, a moment's pain was easy enough to bear and endure. Torture was a bit tough, but unless your mind was destroyed and biological data corrupted, recovery was always possible.
Thus, the concept of death simply didn't exist for the Florence Mercenary Company. They knew that restoration couldn't be abused, but escaping an immediate crisis by dying was hardly a challenge for them.
Hans was no different.
A founding member alongside Anna, Maia, and Victor, who had been with the company from its inception. His abilities were nothing special, yet he was a comrade—no different from family—after all those years.
Anna recalled his terror-stricken face and roughly ruffled her hair.
"Phew... Please, come back in one piece."
The moment she muttered those words, the corpse, which had been utterly motionless, began to bubble and seethe. Everyone's gaze snapped to the corpse, and Anna leaped to her feet with a bright expression.
"Ah, shit, you finally died!"
"Watch your mouth..."
Hist let out a deep sigh. But he didn't stop Anna. Rubbing the area around his still-throbbing eyes with his palm, he silently fixed his gaze on the convulsing corpse.
Crunch!
With a sound like tearing bones and muscles, the corpse's appearance began to change. Its arms transformed—thinner, pure white, like a boy's. The decayed, rotted legs became whole. The lower body finished forming, and the torso restored itself up to the chest.
And then, the head regenerated.
"...Huh."
The head regenerated.
The head, the head...
...
...Is that a head?
Crrrack!!
The very moment the same thought flashed through everyone's mind, the corpse's cervical spine elongated. Instead of forming a skull, it soared toward the sky, then slid down like a serpent and pierced its own abdomen. The sharp neck bone, having stirred the viscera, drove through the heart and settled above the chest.
Riiip.
The bone split open. True to its nature as a neck bone connected to the spine, spinal fluid began to ooze from within the parted bone. It soon turned black, drenching the floor and the corpse.
"What the hell... What's going on, Maia?!"
Anna shouted. Maia, apparently seeing this for the first time as well, blinked and carefully knelt down.
"...I'm not sure either."
"'Not sure' isn't an explanation! Your ability stores biological data and updates it in real time! So what the hell did they do to that data for a person to be restored in this state?!"
"I said I don't know. In the first place, I can't directly manipulate the data. All I can do is store it."
"Then shit, are you saying Hans really died looking like this in the end?! For that to be updated, there'd have to be a physical mutation in his existence itself—what kind of utter bullshit are you spouting!"
Anna clenched her fist and screamed.
"That wizard bastard was a summoning-type magician. There's no way he could pull this crap!"
"Anna, barking noisily won't resolve this. Calm down. I'm flustered too."
"Is that the face of someone who's flustered?!"
Splish.
Anna stepped in the black water pooling on the floor.
"If you're going to say that with such an expressionless face, then get the hell—urk!"
Thud!
Mid-sentence, Anna lost her balance and collapsed. Her body went down sideways without any resistance, and she clutched her throbbing head. Then she looked down at her leg.
"Ah, what... sud... denly..."
Her words faded and fell apart.
It wasn't just her. The other mercenaries watching also stared at Anna's leg with expressions of horror.
"Wh... where'd it go."
She grabbed her bleeding leg with trembling hands.
"Shit, where's my leg..."
The right leg that had briefly touched the black water. As if it had never existed from the start, it had vanished entirely. From the cleanly severed socket of her pelvis, as if cut by a blade, blood and fat gushed out madly.
The instant she registered it, searing agony scorched her brain, and she screamed.
"KYAAAAAAHHH!!! It hurts, shit, it hurts so goddamn much!!! Kill me, please just kill me, AAAAHHH!"
Pain more excruciating than anything she had ever felt scraped through her nerve endings—she who had died well over ten times before now couldn't bear it.
A torment as if every nerve cell across her entire body was aflame and a white-hot iron rod was stirring her brain.
With the agony of each skin pore being stabbed by an awl and her organs slowly being sliced apart, Anna's eyes rolled back and she clawed violently at her scalp. Then she finally fainted. Having gone into shock, she foamed at the mouth and convulsed.
"..."
Laura watched her with a cold expression, then drew her revolver and blew Anna's head apart. BANG—with that sound, Anna's brains scattered.
Silence descended. Laura ran her finger over the revolver's automatically rotating cylinder and looked back at Maia.
"Maia, how many times has she been restored today?"
"That was the tenth. If we do it again now, it'll be eleven."
"Then she can do about four more. Past that, the brain functions that regulate biological activity start to shut down."
"Four times is plenty. So... what should I do to prepare?"
"Yes, get ready. More importantly, what do you think of Hans's condition?"
At Laura's question, Maia shook her head.
"He's alive. But that's in the most literal sense."
"..."
"He has no brain, so all biological responses, including cognition, are gone. Yet, for some reason, his heart is beating."
"...That's impossible by common sense. If we restore him again, will he go back to normal?"
"There's no such possibility. Regrettably, even if we kill him here and restore him from scratch, it will only manifest the same form. His very essence is contaminated. He's in a state where it's ambiguous to even call him human anymore."
"...Haah."
Laura sighed deeply and nodded.
"Understood. Then dispose of him as you see fit."
"Yes."
"It hasn't even been long since we arrived in Korea, and already we're hemorrhaging. First Louise, now Hans, permanently killed. This year is full of ill fortune."
The subjects Laura could restore were limited to those who had died from traumatic injuries.
Not even all trauma fit the criteria. The direct cause of death had to be from an external blow or physical means for the restoration condition to be satisfied.
In simple terms, someone instantly killed by a bullet through the head could be restored, but someone who bled out and died from a gunshot wound could not. Because that's not dying from external impact but from internal blood loss.
An ability like a game of semantics. But fundamentally, supernatural powers were phenomena that arose only in mutants. They were not kind, not honest, not consistent—anomalous abilities. What more could one expect?
"Haah..."
Laura holstered her revolver and rose to her feet.
"Maia, please focus on procuring a corpse for Anna. And the rest of you, as I said earlier, concentrate on hunting down Eric."
"Understood."
Victor bowed. At that moment, someone raised a hand cautiously.
"Aren't we going to take revenge for Hans?"
"No."
Laura answered at once. The mercenary who asked nodded and stepped back.
Laura briefly stared at Hans, still gushing black water, then turned away without any lingering attachment.
"Maia, give Hans his rest."
"Yes."
Crunch.
Without hesitation, Maia crushed Hans's body with a hammer. Crrrack—bones and flesh were pulverized with that sound. The moment his heart was destroyed, the black water it had been spewing ceased. Laura sidestepped the water crawling toward her and spoke.
"Let's move. Bring me Eric's head."
*
Eric lived in a small house in Seoul. With few neighbors and decent public safety, it was sufficient for a wizard. The neighborhood was also very quiet due to the many elderly residents.
Many young wizards these days would earn some money and immediately set up in high-rise buildings, but that was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
A wizard was, by tradition, a scholar who pursued knowledge in silence. Nesting in the heart of a bustling city only brought more constraints. With CCTVs plastered everywhere, even discreet movement was difficult.
It wasn't for nothing that the Owl of Korea had settled in a gloomy back alley. Everything had a reason.
Of course, owing to the nature of the East, alleys had more ghosts, but that was an obstacle that didn't pose much of a problem for a wizard.
Anyway.
"Mm."
A drizzly afternoon.
Eric sat in his rocking chair, quietly staring at the window against which raindrops were committing mass suicide.
"The energy isn't very good."
Eric wielded a total of two types of magic. One was pentacle magic, which he had separately learned in the Clock Tower's Solomonic academic theory class, and the other was his family's secret art passed down through generations: 'Nature Communion.'
Pentacle magic was common magic that anyone could use once taught.
A spell involving creating a pentacle in accordance with the planetary day and invoking it. It had various restrictions, and unless one possessed the Lemegeton or the Key of Solomon, its performance wasn't all that impressive; nonetheless, it was quite popular among non-combat wizards. That was only natural, as it was as good as gaining a means to fight.
Eric also learned pentacle magic for the same reason. The Nature Communion magic handed down in his family had little to do with combat.
Nature Communion magic, as the name implied, was magic that communed with nature, enabling foresight of the near future through their reactions, phenomena, states, and so on.
For example, by magically analyzing the direction, intensity, and moisture of the wind, one could foresee the degree of change in one's current location.
A power somewhat akin to science.
The difference from science was that foresight through magic almost always came true.
Thanks to that, the wizards of Eric's family could tell it would rain before the rain fell, and could predict disasters before earthquakes struck.
However, at best it could only glimpse the near future—roughly 5 to 30 minutes ahead—so they fell far short of being called true seers. Nevertheless, there was no better magic for assisting in combat.
The reason a family possessing magic with little combat applicability—magic that had to be honed to the extreme just to imitate a fragment of disaster—could survive to this day was precisely this supportive characteristic. Simply by standing beside a seasoned combat wizard and aiding them in battle, their utility was all but proven.
And Eric was currently a wizard who had attained a remarkably high level of mastery even within his family. Gazing at the falling rain and the magic circle on the back of his hand that resonated with it, foreseeing the situation fifteen minutes into the future was not a difficult task.
'A bloody wind will blow.'
Eric let out a long exhale and rose from his seat.
'It's too late to flee. I don't know who they are, but they've already pinpointed my location. The risk is too great to abandon this place and run, throwing away the advantage of a wizard's stronghold.'
He clenched his fist.
In the corner of his vision, the image of his granddaughter reading a book was reflected clearly.
'If I were alone, I might somehow manage, but taking Amelia is difficult. We'll be killed before we can even enter the Owl's headquarters. There's only fifteen minutes left, so even if we move right this instant, one of us will definitely die.'
So, toward the path with the highest chance of victory.
‘I'll catch him here. I've got enough talismans prepared. I don't like it, but I even have a gun. The defensive spells I've laid everywhere are still functioning, and I can activate the trap I bought for a fortune from a flame mage. The house will be wrecked, but that's better than dying.’
His judgment was swift. Erik took a long sip of the coffee Amelia had made for him and spoke to her.
“Amelia.”
“Huh? Grandpa, what is it?”
Amelia flinched and turned her head.
Erik promptly pulled a small pistol from a drawer and handed it to her.
“Take it. It's loaded.”
“Uh, uhh... this is...”
“You know how to use it, right? Just pull the trigger. Keep it, just in case. Go up to your room and don't come out, no matter what.”
“W-why all of a sudden...”
“I'll explain briefly. There's going to be a fight here soon. It'll be pretty rough, so make sure you wear the pentacle I made you around your neck at all times. If you want to live, stay in your room.”
It was a sudden declaration, but Amelia's face crumpled and her lips quivered. Erik patted her shoulders.
“Let's have your favorite chicken for dinner. Though the house is going to collapse, so we'll have to eat out.”
“...Grandpa.”
“Go now. I have a lot to prepare too.”
With those final words, Erik turned around without hesitation. Amelia stared blankly at his shabby back, then quickly wiped away the tears welling up and went up to the second floor.
Creeeak, clack.
She opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. The room, stark even for a child, greeted her.
She immediately placed the pistol on the table, then took out the talisman she had kept beside the bookshelf near her bed and put it around her neck. The sapphire set in the blue pentacle sparkled, and a thin membrane enveloped her body.
“Ugh.”
She felt a chilling sensation as if a ghost were embracing her, then sat on the bed and pulled the blanket over herself.
She glanced back at the window where raindrops pattered against the glass. The overcast sky showed no sign of stopping the downpour anytime soon.
Staring at the rain-laden clouds, she muttered the magical knowledge she had learned, trying to push away her fear.
“O-on rainy days, the power of water-attribute magic grows stronger. And W-Wednesday is said to be conducive to the acquisition of knowledge, so making a related pentacle on this day can help you study better...!”
Rumble!
A bolt of lightning flashed from the sky. Amelia let out a small shriek and burrowed deeper into the blanket.
“Li-lightning's power is not granted to humans. It's a divine punishment, so even m-mages can't wield it...!”
Amelia continued reciting the knowledge she knew for a long while. Then, overwhelmed by a surge of emotion, she slumped her lips and hugged her knees.
“I know so much, but I have no talent for magic... it's so unfair...”
Sniffle.
She sniffled.
“I... I want to become a mage too. But if I do and can't live up to expectations, if I don't become strong and only hold others back, if I only end up disappointed... I'd hate that kind of future...”
Amelia's golden eyes trembled.
“I want to become a great mage like Grandpa, like that big brother...”
She was mumbling and pulling the blanket closer when suddenly her vision was dyed in black.
“Huh?!”
As if swallowed by darkness, her sight went dark in an instant, and Amelia flinched.
It was only for a moment. In the blink of an eye, the darkness vanished as if it were a lie.
A sudden anomaly. But it was the kind of thing that happened occasionally whenever Erik experimented with magic, something she could normally just laugh off.
Yes, normally.
But not this time.
“...Oh.”
Amelia looked down.
And then she saw it.
On her lap, a slight weight had appeared.
Where the light had vanished, a notebook with a black cover lay silently. As if entranced, Amelia ran her fingers over the notebook's cover.
[Archive of Knowledge]
The moment the title, written in clear letters, was etched into her mind.
*
In the center of the workshop where Hans's body had melted away, Ian stared at the brain left behind and then checked his grimoire, which was vibrating violently.
[This grimoire is permitted only to its owner, ‘Shin Ian’. Deliberately showing it to others is strictly forbidden. Even if the owner wishes to do so, this grimoire shall not respond.]
The first page of the grimoire bore a comment dripping with displeasure. Ian chuckled bitterly and stroked the cover of the Deep Sea Record.
“Alright, I get it. I won't do it again. I'm sorry.”
[Vwoom!]
As if in forgiveness, the Deep Sea Record vibrated and rubbed its cover against his hand.
[Ah.]
The Schemer, having devoured the entire corpse, let out a small burp near Ian.