She was certainly inside the chapel.
It was midday, so it was bright, the surroundings were filled with sanctity, and a great many devout priests had gathered to offer up sacred prayers.
Beneath the resounding voice of Cardinal Harold Guggenberger, over a hundred priests prayed with their hands clasped together.
Irina stood at the very front of those priests.
Farther forward than Cardinal Harold, and higher up as well.
A girl loved by God.
As the holiest woman in the world, she occupied the place closest to God.
“…We thank You for taking us into Your embrace. Grant joy to pure souls, and…….”
Listening to Harold’s steadfast recitation of faith, Irina lowered her head slightly and looked down at her clasped hands.
Below them was the pure white garment of a saintess. She had grown quite accustomed to clothing like this, steeped as it was in reverence.
Quite a lot of time had passed, had it not?
She had grown used to the countless priests praying behind her, to the way she naturally existed before them, and to living as the holiest woman.
Even so, the events of the day she met the mage still remained vividly in her memory.
The day she saw with her own eyes that another world existed.
Irina’s life had changed completely because of that day.
‘The mage must be doing well.’
She had heard the news.
The guardian knight of the empire, Hio Pavlenko.
His deeds had been so extraordinary that there were few in the Holy Kingdom who did not know his name.
Most recently, word had even arrived that he had killed Ataolf, the symbol of terror said to be the strongest on the continent, and brought down Black Fang.
Worrying about him would be meaningless.
‘Focus. Focus…….’
Rebuking herself for letting her thoughts wander, Irina squeezed her eyes shut again.
She had become almost an entirely different person from who she had been before coming to the headquarters of the Order, but if she let her guard down even a little like this, the old Irina would pop back out.
But now was not the time for that.
Today was the day when Riphue priests of bishop rank and above gathered. It was an important event held once every quarter.
And so Irina closed her eyes and tried to focus on prayer once more, but……
For some reason, she could not concentrate today.
Stray thoughts kept coming to her strangely, and her heart pounded with an inexplicable anxiety that continued to rise within her.
In the end, not even five minutes had passed before she slowly opened her eyes.
And at that moment.
“……!”
The scenery that entered her sight was not that of the sacred chapel.
It was not the midday Riphue Order, where devout priests sang of God and clear bells rang softly.
What she saw was the wreckage of a building that had collapsed miserably. The statue of the goddess, which should once have stood lofty and dignified, was shattered, and the area around it was stained with blood.
A space where all sanctity had vanished. In place of the pure white ceiling was an ominous night.
The place where she stood was the center of a calamity.
Even though she had clearly only closed and opened her eyes inside the chapel.
“…What…….”
A crimson sky, as if stained with blood.
The collapsed Order, the flames rising up.
As she tried to step forward in confusion, something suddenly caught at the tip of her foot.
“…….”
It was Cardinal Harold Guggenberger’s severed head.
And only then did a new scene come into view.
Countless corpses, their pure white priestly robes soaked entirely in blood.
The surroundings had already become a land of death, packed with more corpses than she could count.
Startled, Irina staggered backward, but there was nowhere to set her foot because of the bodies densely strewn in every direction.
And at the same time, a rumble shook heaven and earth.
---!
It was a roar.
A roar that any creature existing beneath the sky could not help but fear.
A tremendous resonance that made the fine hairs on her body stand on end and froze her in place.
When she barely managed to lift her gaze and look up at the sky, she soon met its eyes.
A pair of savage eyes staring straight down at her.
The strongest life-form on earth, said to have existed in a distant ancient age.
It was a dragon.
“…Hah!”
Her closed eyes snapped open, and only then did the breath she had been holding burst out.
This place was once again the heart of the Riphue Order.
The ceiling was pure white, and the surroundings were filled with sanctity.
But the sound of her violently pounding heart remained the same.
The roar that had shaken heaven and earth was still vivid in her ears.
It had not been a mere dream.
What she had seen and felt was surely a vision of a future that might one day come to pass.
Cold sweat ran down her spine.
More strength entered the hands she had been clasping tightly without realizing it.
“Lady Irina……?”
The prayer had stopped at some point.
Over a hundred pairs of eyes were looking at Irina in confusion.
And.
“What is the matter?”
Harold had approached to just below her and asked quietly.
At that, Irina slowly closed her eyes and steadied her breathing.
The gentle bell continued to ring, and if she listened carefully, she could even hear birds chirping.
Her heart seemed to be calming little by little, but how could she forget?
---!
The dragon’s roar that had shaken heaven and earth.
Those savage eyes that had looked down upon the earth like a god.
Before it, kingdom, humanity, and everything else had been powerless.
Irina opened her eyes once more.
The gaze of the saintess, who had resolved herself to something, was utterly firm, but.
“…A dragon will appear.”
Apart from that, her unease only continued to grow without end.
* * *
Spirit Invocation.
The act of calling a soul down into a person’s body.
This was something quite familiar to a necromancer.
Was it not the work of a necromancer to handle dead flesh and make use of souls that had left their bodies?
Since it was magic that used the energy of death, handling souls was only natural for a necromancer.
But Kreutzwald-style Spirit Invocation was different.
It imbued a soul into a body, regardless of whether that body was alive or already dead.
At the same time, it allowed the abilities engraved in the body and the abilities possessed by the soul to be used together.
That was Kreutzwald’s Spirit Invocation.
- An invocation that lets one use both the abilities of the body and the abilities of the soul… For a necromancer, that would be a grimoire worth risking their life to obtain.
As Purnell said, it was a grimoire with that much value.
After all, the basics were that one had to either retain the soul’s memories and abilities while giving up the strength of the body,
or gain the body’s strength while giving up the intelligence, memories, special abilities, and the like from its lifetime.
- And if what is written here is correct, then under the assumption that they are mutually compatible, it means there would be no problem even if a different soul were overlaid onto a different body.
If what was written in the “Introduction to Kreutzwald-Style Spirit Invocation” was true, then that was indeed the case.
The power possessed by the body.
The power possessed by the soul.
It said two different powers could be combined into one and used together.
Of course, because the effect was so excellent, there were also many things required.
First, a strong body from which the soul had departed was needed, and there had to be an intact soul to overlay upon that body.
If those two materials were prepared, excellent results could be obtained when the Spirit Invocation was performed, but naturally, the higher the grade, the harder they were to obtain, so it was not easy.
It was also important that the different soul and body be highly compatible.
And lastly, attribute mana was needed.
And not just any attribute, but dark-attribute mana.
- This is the first time I have ever heard of the concept of dark-attribute mana.
It was a concept so unfamiliar that even Purnell did not know of it.
That was, until they brought down Black Fang and obtained this artifact in the Gray Castle.
「Soul Reaper’s Lantern (Epic)」
「An inhuman object.」
「Soul Absorption: You can absorb souls to permanently increase your stats. The degree of increase varies depending on the soul’s grade.」
「Soul Storage: You can store souls without damaging them. Souls that have been stored in the lantern for a long time can be controlled by the user.」
「Soul Recovery: You can consume stored souls to recover spiritual power or vitality.」
「Soul Extraction: You can extract the purest darkness from a soul and convert it into dark-attribute mana. This is the energy that is the origin of all black magic.」
Extracting the purest darkness from a soul and converting it into dark-attribute mana.
It was an idea no one had likely ever tried before, and a method whose feasibility he could not even begin to guess at.
“What matters is that it’s a possible method, anyway.”
- It is astonishing that if one can only use that dark mana, it is not all that difficult.
“Exactly.”
The point was whether one could use dark-attribute mana.
And whether one possessed the soul and body needed for Spirit Invocation.
Finally, whether the compatibility between the soul and body was good.
As long as those three things were in place, Kreutzwald-style Spirit Invocation could be performed more easily than it appeared.
- Extracting the purest darkness from a soul… In any case, you cannot do that right now, can you?
“Right?”
- Then what should you be doing?
“Mm… studying?”
- If you know, then hurry up and do it!
There was still quite a long way to go before reaching the 4th Circle.
“Yeah…….”
And after spending about a week going back and forth between the Magic Tower and Arileiya, he was finally able to reach the complete realm of the 4th Circle.
* * *
「You have successfully cast non-attribute magic - ‘Purification.’」
「Would you like to register non-attribute magic - ‘Purification’ as a skill?」
「Non-attribute magic - ‘Purification’ has been registered as a skill.」
Reaching the 4th Circle did not mean one could use every 4th Circle spell.
Separate from forming the circle, one had to learn and practice the magic itself.
However, because he had continued practicing while engraving the pattern, he was able to learn Purification only a day after reaching the 4th Circle.
The 4th Circle purification magic, Purification.
“Still, I went to the trouble of making another circle. I can’t learn only this.”
- Choose carefully. You can learn magic from many fields, but you cannot learn a great number of spells.
“I know.”
Even so, there were not that many spells to learn at the 4th Circle.
The 4th Circle was a stage mainly focused on destruction and expansion.
There was no need to deliberately learn many different kinds of destructive magic.
And so, after going around the various floors of the Magic Tower and choosing carefully.
“Let’s wrap it up with this much.”
He had selected a total of three grimoires.
The earth-attribute magic “Earth Break,” which overturned the ground with a powerful explosion.
The nature-attribute magic “Entangle,” which wove grass and trees together to bind a target.
The non-attribute magic “Wizard Eye,” which allowed one to look out over distant regions.
For offensive magic, Earth Break alone should be enough, with its strong destructive power and even the ability to create variables by overturning the ground.
If he also learned Entangle and Wizard Eye, which seemed likely to be highly versatile, the 4th Circle would be more or less complete.
Of course, necromancy was excluded from that.
He would learn other magic evenly, but since necromancy was Purnell’s specialty, had he not decided to learn all of it?
- For a necromancer, the 4th Circle is where one begins to create an army of one’s own.
And so, carrying the grimoires for Earth Break, Entangle, and Wizard Eye, he headed with Purnell to the room for practical necromancy training.
In truth, the magic most important to Hio could be said to be necromancy.
Somehow, his master had been a former necromancer; somehow, he had gathered all three of Kreutzwald’s divine artifacts; and one of his top-tier skills was the Summoning of the Death God.
The higher his realm in necromancy rose, the more tremendous the synergy effect would certainly become.
- Let us learn only two efficient spells or so. There is much to do, after all.
Even so, there was no need to learn miscellaneous necromancy for no reason.
Hio possessed as many as four types of highest-tier skills.
Ordinary magic would not be of much help.
“Summon Lava,” which summoned a giant worm of molten rock.
“Bone Spear,” which created a spear of bone.
Those two were the 4th Circle necromancy spells Purnell chose, and together with the three spells Hio had selected earlier, a total of five spells were chosen.
“It’ll take quite a while to learn all of this…….”
He had Purnell, and he had the genius trait of mana sensitivity, but these were still 4th Circle spells, were they not?
Even if he estimated quickly, it would take at least more than a week.
- And this is not all you must do, either.
Moreover, he was not in a situation where he could shut himself inside the Magic Tower and focus only on magic.
- You must also prepare the magic circle to summon the dragon.
Purification was not the only thing he had received from Isidore.
He had to summon the sealed dragon first in order to purify it, did he not?
And according to Purnell’s explanation, that required at least a 5th Circle pattern.
He had to study and prepare that as well.
- Still, it will be a good experience. Using the Darkness magic circle last time also helped greatly in improving your magical skill, did it not?
“Well… that’s true.”
Certainly, preparing a magic circle one stage above his current realm helped greatly with the application and understanding of patterns.
“How long will it take to prepare the summoning magic circle and learn all the 4th Circle spells, I wonder.”
- At the very least, you should expect more than two weeks. And even that speed is only possible because it is you.
“Two weeks……”
It looked like it would take even more time than he had expected.
Still, from Hio’s perspective, this was something he absolutely had to do.
So.
“As quickly as possible… let’s try to shorten it.”
Because two weeks was more than enough time for something to happen.