After finishing dinner.
I was sitting on the bed in the inn room, playing with Rutina.
I shaped a light spell into something like a red laser pointer and shook it this way and that, and Rutina ran all over the place trying to catch it.
“Kyiiii!! Kyit!!”
A few months had passed since he was born, and the little guy had developed from chirping like a bird to crying like a lizard.
He still lacked strength in his wings, so he couldn't fly, but even so, he flapped them vigorously and leaped with all his might.
He failed to catch the light he had been aiming for and simply fell to the floor.
But it was adorable how he glared at the light again as if frustrated, then kicked off the floor and walls in succession to leap back up.
Still, while doing this, it really felt less like raising a dragon and more like raising a fairly large cat.
In the midst of that, I noticed Illyana, who had been looking at a picture book beside me, staring with eyes that said she wanted to try too.
“You want to try too?”
“……Yes!”
“Here, first take hold of the mana like this, then control it like this.”
I transferred control of the magic I was using directly to Illyana.
Illyana still couldn’t use magic on her own aside from magesight and basic defensive magic, but she had grown proficient enough in mana manipulation to control it without issue.
Having received my magic, Illyana moved the red light around a bit as if amazed, then soon began shaking it excitedly and playing with Rutina.
If Kasian had been here, he would definitely have looked on with eyes that said he wanted to do it too.
But for the time being, that was an impossible dream.
It wasn’t that there had been no progress at all. If there was food involved, he would at least pretend to cooperate.
Elaborating on that, it meant that if he had nothing to gain, he ran away like a ghost.
It was a mystery why he hated Kasian so much when he played so well with Illyana like that.
‘……Is it because she’s female?’
I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.
Having played with Rutina until he tired himself out and fell asleep, before I knew it, it was time for bed as well.
I extinguished the light spell I had been using as a lamp and lay down on the bed.
“……Teacher.”
While lying with my eyes closed, waiting for sleep to come, Illyana spoke in a quiet voice.
“What is a ghost?”
“Hmm? You were scared earlier. You didn’t know what it was?”
“I was told it’s something very scary…….”
So she had gotten frightened just by the atmosphere. That could happen.
“A ghost is a soul that wanders around without a body.”
“……Huh? How? Is it alive?”
“It’s not alive. It died but remains because of something like lingering attachment.”
Though grudges were far more often the cause than lingering attachments, I deliberately glossed over that.
“It has too many things it wants to do to go to the underworld, so it refuses and holds out.”
They were quite different, but if you looked only at the principle, they were similar to Transcendents.
A powerful obsession to somehow resolve their grudge, and the superhuman mental strength born from it, forcibly held the soul in the present world.
If you viewed it as using mana as a medium to keep the soul stuck to the present world like glue, it was easy to understand.
That also meant that once their grudge was resolved, they would lose that will and ascend.
In that sense, compared to Transcendents who continuously maintained that state and wouldn’t die even if their bodies perished, they might seem a bit pathetic, but.
In the framework of moving around with only a soul and no body, they were almost the same.
Well, since they had one fatal weakness besides that, comparing them to Transcendents was rather rude in the first place.
“So…….”
———Sssaaek…… Sssaaek…….
About to continue speaking, I looked toward Illyana at the sound of breathing, only to find that she had already closed her eyes and fallen asleep.
Since she would be seeing one tomorrow anyway, the details could wait until then.
I gently stroked the sleeping Illyana’s head and then fell asleep myself.
◆
The next morning.
Without any particular hurry, I prepared at a leisurely pace and stepped outside the inn.
Perhaps because I had woken up so early, it was only now that the morning sun had risen just slightly above the horizon.
The weather was fairly cool for the moment, but thinking of how the sunlight would beat down fiercely by midday, it already felt hot.
Unlike the cold, I had confidence that I could endure heat a bit better, but hot was still hot.
“A-are we really going that way?”
“Yeah. We’re really going that way.”
“Really?”
“Hurry up and follow.”
“Ah……!!”
Kasian had acted so nonchalant and full of bluster yesterday, but now that the countdown to actually encountering a ghost had begun, he seemed anxious.
“The ghost might not even come out when we get there. Let’s go quickly.”
“R-right?”
The reason Kasian was so afraid of ghosts was none other than an incident akin to dark history from the past.
It was around the autumn of the year before last.
A swarm of undead had emerged en masse from a communal cemetery near a certain city, spawned by the grudges of those who had died in war.
They offered a hefty reward, so I had participated in the subjugation, and that was where it happened.
At the time, Kasian had already been able to handle mana itself to some degree, so the miscellaneous lesser undead were hardly a problem.
With a body reinforced by mana and a mana-infused staff, most undead were sent back to where they came from in a single blow.
Then the problem ghost popped out, and Kasian charged boldly, having forgotten all the training I had given him.
The problem was that while Kasian’s mana was considerable for his age, it wasn’t strong enough to obliterate a ghost in one blow.
When the scattered ghost’s form reformed and startled him, Kasian fell flat on the spot and ended up…….
……I decided to stop thinking there for Kasian’s dignity.
His mana had increased several times over since then, so there was no longer any need to be so afraid, but it seemed the trauma had remained nonetheless.
“Well, I’m asking just in case one shows up, but you remember properly this time, right?”
“……Wrap pure mana around and attack.”
“Yeah, you remember correctly.”
While listening, Illyana tilted her head as if she didn’t quite understand and tugged on my sleeve a few times.
“……Um, what does that mean?”
“Yesterday I said they’re souls with lingering attachments, right? To remain here, they have to consume mental strength.”
Mana is fundamentally manipulated by a person’s mental strength.
Therefore, if you sufficiently collide mana controlled by stronger mental strength than the opponent’s, the mana holding the ghost in the present world will scatter in one go.
The ghost is forcibly ejected to the world beyond and ascends.
“So if you collide mana strong enough to scatter that mental strength.”
“……Ah, it will disappear!”
“That’s the gist of it.”
Rather than deliberately resolving their lingering attachments or grudges, this was a far simpler and more effective method.
If I heard their story and it was worth granting, there was no reason not to grant it, but…….
Most were evil spirits with gruesome tales of wanting to burn down someone’s house or forcibly take someone.
In most cases, I sent them to the Lord’s side in a single blow without granting their wishes.
Chatting about this and that, resting and walking to match Illyana’s pace, we slowly made our way forward until the sun had risen to midday.
As if perfectly timed, this was also when we began passing through a forest with trees growing at a moderate density.
Perhaps because we had just crossed the hill the restaurant owner had mentioned yesterday, Kasian was visibly on guard around him to an excessive degree.
“Relax and walk comfortably. You’re much stronger now.”
Ghosts used a considerable portion of their mental strength just to maintain themselves, so cases where they could actually wield great power were rare.
One had to be an Archmage who had reached the wall just to barely maintain their strength from when they were alive.
“B-but you never know…….”
Seeing Kasian so visibly anxious, Illyana asked with a questioning look.
“……Why is he so scared?”
At those words, Kasian whipped his head around to look at me as if telling me not to say anything, but I hadn’t planned on speaking anyway.
Just as I had completely skipped over those parts when reading the diary out loud a few days ago, I had no intention of digging up a person’s dark history.
“Something like that happened.”
Illyana looked back and forth between me and Kasian once, made an expression that indicated she wasn’t entirely convinced, but nodded slightly.
Instead, I patted Illyana’s head to comfort her.
It was while slowly advancing down the narrow path through the forest in that manner.
“……!!”
A powerful mana fluctuation was felt suddenly.
If it was mana powerful enough for me to feel to this degree, it was no ordinary strength.
And what that rapidly surging mana was targeting was…….
“Kasian!!”
I rushed at Kasian and pulled out his staff, which had been hanging from the backpack.
And before Kasian could even react, I stood the staff vertically and blocked the attack.
———Kraaang!!!
Thanks to reinforcing my body with considerable effort, I was able to block the attack without issue, but I couldn’t prevent my light frame from being pushed back a few steps.
“Wh-what?!”
“Step back.”
The dust raised by the attack settled, revealing the identity of the assailant.
A body transparent enough to see through to the other side, while simultaneously flickering like an unstable flame.
Covered in full plate armor from head to toe, his face was unknown, but from his build he was clearly a robust man.
The sword he held was transparent as well, yet, surprisingly, seemed to lack physical substance.
No matter how I looked at it, it was a ghost.
‘……Strong.’
Though considerably weaker than me.
It was strong enough to easily kill someone like Morwen.
———[Do not enter this place.]
The ghost swordsman spoke thus and took up his stance once more.