Chapter 101: God's Dilemma (3) |
# God's Dilemma (3)
*
"Are you with us?"
Simeon came to his senses an hour later.
He'd open his eyes, then collapse again.
Come back around, then pass out once more.
After repeating that cycle about eight times, Simeon finally steadied himself.
"May I call you... Young Master?"
"When it's just the two of us, that's fine. Outside, please address me as before."
"Following in my parents' footsteps, I've taken on one thing after another, and as a result I've unwittingly accumulated quite a few complicated relationships. So please, keep this secret on my behalf."
Afterward, we took some time to correct the misunderstandings Simeon had been carrying.
"Just a moment ago, you said there was no one left to carry on my parents' legacy. What did you mean by that?"
"I knew my teachers had a child. But no matter how much I searched, I couldn't find any trace of you."
The Board of Inspection, as expected.
That they could stymie even someone actively searching spoke volumes.
It seemed the fact that the Schnabel couple's child had been adopted had simply ceased to exist as far as the record was concerned.
"Then what brought you to the Necropolis?"
"I wandered quite a bit. I drifted between swamps and the Holy City, and it was only recently that I learned my teachers' remains had been interred at the Imperial Capital Necropolis. But I didn't know exactly where, so whenever I had the time, I'd walk the fifth floor asking around."
According to Simeon, he had believed that people like my parents—people of their caliber—would be buried on the fifth floor, the Floor for Persons of National Merit.
And so he had kept missing me, or anyone else who might have known something about the Schnabel couple.
"Yesterday, I happened to run into you while making my way back to the surface."
"Surely it was the gods, moved by your devotion, who guided you there."
Well. It could just be coincidence.
Still, framing it that way sounds nicer, doesn't it?
But Simeon seemed to think a little differently than I did.
"Th-The gods? How could they concern themselves with someone as lowly as me?"
"Did they not say the gods look upon us all with compassion? Is that not reason enough?"
"I am not worthy of compassion."
"Did I not say it? The gods extend compassion to all. Whether one is worthy—that is not something we humans have the standing to decide."
"Then... do you know what the gods wish of me?"
"No. How could I presume to speak on their behalf?"
Unless you were a true saint or saintess—the kind who communed directly with the divine and received genuine oracles—something like that was beyond reach.
I had been mistaken for a miracle worker because of medicine. I had no such ability.
And so I could never speak for the gods.
Nor should I.
"But as one human being to another, there is something I would like to say to you."
I had been thinking it over.
Why had someone who revered my parents so deeply spent all this time wandering?
And the conclusion I reached was this:
"You don't have to wander anymore."
He had been wandering.
Outside the wall, through the slums.
Retracing my parents' ideals, endlessly denying the reality before him.
I wanted to put an end to that wandering.
That was why I had revealed my most closely guarded secret.
I knew it was a risk.
The more people who know a secret, the less of a secret it becomes.
But if it could save one person's life—wasn't that a risk worth taking?
"As it happens, I also needed someone who could teach me what my parents left behind."
From what I'd heard, the Schnabel couple were quite well-known in the field of healing arts.
They had been authorities on parasites and infectious disease.
Regrettably, when they died, healing magic related to parasitology had apparently regressed considerably.
'Simeon must remember at least some of my parents' techniques.'
So Simeon ending his wandering was something I needed as well.
Whatever else I might know, I was no better than a layman when it came to parasitology.
A trauma surgeon doesn't exactly spend much time with parasites.
"Will you help me, Simeon, so that I may carry on my parents' work?"
"..."
The man with squinted eyes looked down at his own hands in silence.
At last, he spoke.
"It seems the time has come to end this long pilgrimage. I would like to say my farewells to those who have shown me kindness along the way—would you be willing to wait?"
"I would be glad to. Once you've settled everything, please come find me at the Merkur Trading Company headquarters."
Simeon rose from the bed.
I handed him his only piece of luggage—his scriptures—and said:
"On the day you arrive, I intend to hold a small welcoming celebration. Is there anything you personally enjoy eating?"
"...Personally, I'm rather fond of potato soup."
"Then I'll prepare dishes that pair well with potato soup."
Simeon rose, and without a backward glance, left the clinic.
With those words—that he would finish his pilgrimage as quickly as possible and come find me again.
And as the long shadow Simeon cast in the slowly sinking sunset disappeared beyond the horizon—
Gregor, who had been silent this whole time, opened his mouth.
"By the way, Lord Saint."
"What is it?"
"Yesterday, I looked into Brother Simeon through the Order..."
He got ahead of my unease and asked first.
"Is he not actually a priest?"
"No, that's not it. He's registered as a pilgrim officially. However..."
Gregor stroked his beard.
"According to the Order's records, he ought to be a Rank 1 cleric, and yet..."
"...?"
"Hmm... why does the rank I sense from him feel higher than mine?"
"What?"
I hadn't noticed.
To me, at Rank 0, he'd felt like nothing more than Rank 1.
But Gregor, at Rank 4, seemed to have sensed something different.
"I assumed he was Rank 1 as well. But just now, while the two of you were speaking inside the room—for just a moment, he felt like Rank 5. He may even have been higher."
At minimum, that would put him at the level of a count.
But I shook my head.
"That can't be right. Why would someone of that caliber be working as a low-rank priest?"
"That's true enough."
Even at Rank 4, one could become a high-rank holy knight like Gregor.
At Rank 5, you'd be sitting in the seat of a Margrave or Captain of the Royal Guard.
Someone like that, turning down all of those positions to become a low-rank priest?
'That makes no sense.'
No matter how many people lived and breathed for their faith—
Surely no one would do something like that.
"It must have been just a feeling."
"I suppose you're right."
Gregor scratched the back of his head with an awkward laugh.
Right. It had to be a mistake.
Why would someone of marquis-level standing be traipsing around the Southern Front playing disciple to a mid-rank priest?
No one in their right mind would do that.
***
Simeon.
Simon Aleinos.
He had once been a giant tree among mages.
Through his magical achievements, he had reached the 5th Rank.
The position of the next Magic Tower Master was all but guaranteed, and there was even talk that he might one day receive instruction from the Great Sage.
But then one day, without warning, he relinquished his title, his fame, and his rank entirely—and converted to the Order.
Divine power and magical power cannot coexist.
They are by nature forces that interfere with one another.
For this reason, mages who happen to awaken divine power typically seek the help of a temple to squeeze out whatever divine power they have—and then abstain from prayer so it never recovers.
But Simon's choice was different.
He wrung out every last drop of his magical power, and filled the emptiness with divine power.
He cast aside the level of mastery of a Rank 5 mage, and became a Rank 1 priest.
"The gods have chosen me."
His choice turned the Magic Tower upside down.
How could he do this?
Did he not mourn the loss of what he'd built?
But Simon—no, Simeon Ronald—answered them like this:
"The reason I began studying magic in the first place was to save more people. But as I see it, a Rank 1 healer can save more lives than a Rank 5 mage."
After that, even those who had been trying to hold him back had nothing left to say.
And so the decades passed.
As time flowed, many things changed.
While Simeon's story faded from people's memories, countless connections came and went in the life of Simeon—half-blood of a long-lived species and a human.
Throughout that time, his rank remained unchanged at Rank 1, and his divine power did not grow.
But Simeon did not mind.
This too was the will of the gods, he told himself.
Or perhaps it was simply that his faith was lacking.
He harbored no questions about his own nature, and passed his days treating the sick.
Then one day:
"There's a healer who cured Demon Disease using only low-level healing?"
An intriguing story reached Simeon's ears.
Certain illnesses that had long been labeled Demon Diseases.
A couple had discovered treatments for some of them.
They were called the Schnabel couple.
"Good heavens... Parasites had been mixed in with the Demon Diseases all along?"
The history of parasites itself was old.
After all, worms visible to the naked eye in feces or on skin were hard to overlook.
But the idea that those worms were the cause of illness—that had never occurred to anyone.
And the notion that divine magic might actually help the worms grow—that was more unthinkable still.
The ones who had uncovered all of this were the Schnabel couple.
"I see. If you administer insecticide and a laxative first and then apply divine magic—by that point all the parasites in the gut would have been expelled, so there'd be no problem. To think people had the idea to amputate and reattach limbs, and yet no one ever thought of this."
The couple's methods were somewhat extreme, but the results were clear.
Not every patient diagnosed with Demon Disease was cured.
But at the very least, countless patients suffering from parasitic infections could now be saved.
The field of healing arts was thrown into an uproar.
And with good reason.
A skilled healer could reattach a severed arm.
In some cases, given sufficient divine power, even a patient with a torn-out heart had been brought back.
With magic like this already at their fingertips, what was left to improve?
In their view, the miracle was already complete.
― The problem isn't technique. It's supply.
― What we need now is to research how to train even one more high-rank healer.
From then on, the field of healing arts had poured its energy not into advancing treatments, but into raising the average caliber of its priests.
But the Schnabel couple had shattered that paradigm.
"Demon Disease... can be treated?"
That was when it began.
The prevailing current of the healing arts—focused entirely on training—shifted its course toward research into Demon Disease.
And Simeon, who had been standing at that inflection point in history—
"Please take me as your disciple!"
—went straight to the couple.
The reason was simple.
Their methods required no high-level healing magic.
Even a low-rank priest like himself could make a difference.
And so Simeon sought out the couple and pleaded to be taken under their wing.
"But we only ever go to dangerous places. Others have asked to become our students too, but most of them left."
"I don't mind! Even the most perilous places—I want to follow you both and learn!"
"Very well, then..."
Let's go to the Southern Front.
And so Simeon became their disciple.
*
Three years.
For three years, Simeon traveled the Southern Front with the couple.
The reason, naturally, was parasites.
Unlike the cold north or the dry west, parasites ran rampant in the south and the east.
For the couple—authorities on parasites—it was an ideal environment for research.
Simeon, too, was able to learn a great deal there.
"Most people leave us within half a year. You've stayed quite long, Simeon."
"I think it's because I've been too busy learning from my teachers to notice how hard it's been."
"Oh my—are you trying to flatter my husband right now?"
"A-Absolutely not, Teacher! How could I dare!"
The time he spent with those two was so joyful he could hardly stand it.
He'd lost count of how many times his life had been in danger while roaming the Demonic Realm outside the Southern Fortress.
But Elion Schnabel—blunt yet warm.
Arian Schnabel—witty and endlessly playful.
Watching that match made in heaven from up close, witnessing the devotion and the miracles wrought at their fingertips—
Simeon couldn't help but think: surely, this was the will of the gods.
"Speaking of which—where had you been for that one year, Teacher Arian? Were you doing research in the east?"
"Heheh. That's a secret. But you did teach Elia plenty while I was gone, didn't you? You didn't just send him on errands the whole time, did you?"
"Answer carefully, Simeon."
"Of course—Teacher Elia learned a great deal, Teacher."
"Good. Then let's see exactly how much Simeon has learned during this swamp expedition."
No—it was certain.
In all of Simeon's long life, he had never met people this noble, this devoted.
These two were his saintess and saint.
And he, their disciple and companion, was surely the happiest clergyman in the world.
But that happiness came to an abrupt end.
"A new type of demonic beast!"
A mutant demonic beast, the first in ten years.
With its appearance, the flame magic they had been using against the insect-type demonic beasts suddenly began to fail.
As if that weren't enough, Southern Fever began spreading rapidly through the army.
The countless countermeasures humanity had developed against demonic beasts became useless, and the many talented individuals humanity had cultivated over decades died pointlessly.
"Teachers! The fortress is surrounded. It will be overrun in a matter of days. Fortunately, a teleportation circle has been prepared to evacuate people to the rear."
Fortunately, the Order and the Empire had arranged a teleportation circle to evacuate healers and heroes.
However, the number of people the circle could transport was limited, and so who could escape was determined by social standing.
The Schnabel couple were among those with priority evacuation rights.
"If everyone leaves, who will stay to keep these people alive?"
"At this point, no one..."
"A healer should never use the word 'no one,' Simeon."
The couple chose to stay behind.
"Simeon should take our place on that teleportation circle."
"What?"
"We're giving you our spots. You followed us here."
"I won't allow it, Teachers! Then let me restore myself to my standing as a mage!"
Just a few days.
If he could just clear out the divine power and spend a few days rehabilitating...
"Simeon. You know that's not possible. It would take months for your level to return."
"This isn't a request—it's an order. Someone must carry on our knowledge."
With those words, the couple pressed a handkerchief into his hands and pushed him toward the teleportation circle.
And for just a brief moment, they wore sad expressions, and said:
"It seems we weren't very good parents."
Those were the last words Simeon ever heard from them.
*
After escaping, Simeon spent a long time frequenting the confessional.
If only he hadn't abandoned his rank as a mage.
Or at the very least, if he hadn't been so stubborn about insisting he be taken as their disciple.
There would have been at least one more place on that teleportation circle.
Drowning in guilt, visiting the confessional every single day without fail—
Then a particular piece of news reached his ears.
― "Have all the bodies of those who were in the fortress been recovered?"
― "Yes."
― "They held the fortress to the very end. See that they receive a proper funeral."
The priests of the Holy City were kept busy for a while.
After the fortress invasion ended—
During that brief window when the insect-type demonic beasts grew less active in the cold of winter—
The Order and the Empire managed to bring back only the bodies from the fortress.
Simeon had naturally assumed his teachers would be among those remains.
But—
"The Schnabel couple? I don't see them."
They weren't there.
Had the insect demonic beasts devoured them?
Just as that thought crossed his mind, the whispers of low-rank priests drifted into his ears.
― "They recovered all the bodies of people who stayed in the fortress. Are you saying that business about the couple staying behind was a lie?"
― "Sounds to me like they wandered outside the walls on one of those pointless expeditions of theirs and met their end."
― "Tch. Lucky for them. Since the fortress happened to fall right around then, it all gets wrapped up nicely—died honorably in the line of duty."
Priests who had applied to be the couple's disciples but been turned away.
Priests who had followed them but quit because it was too hard.
People like that began floating all manner of disrespectful theories about the Schnabel couple's disappearance.
And despite Simeon's appeals—
The Order refused to canonize the deceased couple.
― "It goes against the Order's tradition."
That wasn't the end of it.
― "The side effects of insecticide are too severe. That treatment method should be prohibited."
Priests who had resented the couple picked apart the flaws in their methods and spoke of them with contempt.
― "The authority on parasites is dead? What does that have to do with me? Parasitology was never an important field of study to begin with."
The public didn't even know what the Schnabel couple had accomplished, and offered no mourning at all.
― "Come work for our infirmary. With that couple gone, you're the leading authority on parasites now, aren't you? As for compensation..."
And the infirmaries showed not even a trace of grief, only scheming about how to profit off the couple's achievements through Simeon.
Through all of that,
fury and revulsion took root in Simeon's heart.
'Is it truly right to heal creatures like these?'
He knew, rationally, that those people couldn't represent all of humanity—that they were a minority.
But if that sort of filth could go unpunished, didn't some of the blame fall on this world, and on the gods themselves?
That was when it began.
Simeon—defying his teachers' wishes—returned to the path of magic and began his pilgrimage, without passing on to the healing arts community any of the knowledge he had of parasites.
He first shut himself in a workshop and, over the course of several years, studied black magic.
Having attained the level of mastery of a black sorcerer, he proceeded to use the most blasphemous black magic rituals he could devise to slay other black sorcerers—endlessly posing his question to the gods.
Was it truly right to pass on his teachers' knowledge for the sake of a world that allowed such evil to go unchecked?
If this was a world where people so good could disappear so senselessly, would it not be more fitting for it simply to be destroyed?
He continued like that for over ten years.
Before long, among the underworld, black sorcerers had begun to call him by a name.
It was a derogatory term for the man who offered only black sorcerers as sacrifice through black magic, while remaining a virtuous pilgrim in the legitimate world.
After a few more years of that, he accepted an offer from a black sorcerer who claimed he could use necromancy to locate his teachers' remains—and joined the group that sorcerer belonged to.
The Ophiuchus Roundtable.
A gathering of black sorcerers seeking to revive the Magic Tower of the 13th Month.
*
"You've returned?"
Inside a fortune-telling house in G-Sector, where the sewage treatment facility stood—
A scrawny old man in a robe greeted Simeon.
"Well? How does it feel, now that you've found the bodies you searched so long for?"
"I had my doubts that necromancy could pinpoint them. Fortunately, it worked."
Simeon lowered himself slowly into a chair.
His posture, entirely unlike how he had been with Yulian—somewhere between haughty and indifferent.
"...But I find I have something I'd like to ask you, now that it's done."
"Hmm?"
"The secret technique you taught me is surely something precious. And yet—ten years of service to your organization, all to locate a single soul? It strikes me as a poor trade."
The old man clicked his tongue as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"You had no body, no clues to go on. All you gave us for the location of death was 'somewhere in the south.' The date of death and the constellation for that day—what about those? And on top of all that, you wouldn't even give their names, said it felt disrespectful."
"..."
"Under those conditions, asking us to find where a soul was buried—does that sound reasonable to you? The fact that the 5th Elder agreed to help you at all was a miracle."
The old man tapped the tip of his cane once against the floor.
"By those terms alone, ten years was a bargain. We should have worked you for thirty. The only reason we didn't push harder was that black magic knowledge of yours."
"..."
"And another thing."
The old man narrowed his eyes.
"If you'd simply brought offerings like the other black sorcerers, your contribution would have accumulated and we'd have shared the technique with you long ago. Yet for ten years, this one hasn't brought a single living person. I truly cannot fathom it."
"I despise humanity. But I must observe them without interfering as much as possible—only then can I arrive at a definitive answer as to whether they are worthy of my devotion."
The old man stared at Simeon in silence for a long moment, then let out a dry laugh.
"Then what do you call it—regularly selecting black sorcerers of the Roundtable and offering them up as sacrifices? Were they not human?"
"Those were necessary sacrifices for my question. They were never the humanity I intended to devote myself to."
"Ha."
The old man shook his head slowly.
"If you'd only kept your hands off them too, your contribution wouldn't have taken such a hit. We'd have shared the technique with you a good deal sooner."
Simeon smiled briefly.
He rose from his seat and smoothed the hem of his robe.
"You've been good to me, over all this time."
"Hmm?"
"I have no further business with the Roundtable. Let us part ways here."
"...Is that so."
The old man replied briefly, making no particular effort to stop him.
There was no relationship between them that warranted it.
Simeon's level of mastery was something the Roundtable coveted.
They would have been glad to offer him an Elder's seat to keep him in place.
But no one wanted to make a man who conducted rituals using other black sorcerers as sacrifices into an Elder.
And so Simeon had remained nothing more than a guest.
Simeon turned his back and walked toward the door.
The worn floorboards groaned and creaked beneath each step, as if dragged along with him.
It was then.
Atop the old man's desk, a small black crystal orb flickered.
A communication magic tool bearing the seal of the Council of Elders.
The old man touched the orb with a practiced motion, and a single image rose into the air.
A brief message.
And the portrait of a young man.
"Hmm? What's this..."
The old man adjusted his eyeglasses.
"Ah, this must be the new target everyone's been talking about."
He twisted the corner of his mouth into a smirk.
"Yulian Nihilrit... I've heard the name, but this is my first time seeing his face."
The light from the crystal orb carved deep shadows into the old man's wrinkles.
"Oh, so this is what he looks like. A pretty-faced one. Tsk tsk."
The old man clicked his tongue in his usual manner.
"All that fuss at such a young age..."
Tap. Clatter.
The old man began composing a telegram.
His role was to relay the Roundtable's decisions to the underworld, or to connect people from the underworld to the Roundtable.
As he always had—
Just as he always did, the old man compiled the young man's face and name into a wanted poster.
`[Yulian Nihilrit]`
`[This mage has insulted the authority of the Roundtable and its black sorcerers. He is hereby ordered to pay the commensurate price.]`
`[Curse: 300 million Mar]`
`[Death: 500 million Mar + black magic grimoire of Rank 3 or lower]`
`[Live Capture: 1 billion Mar + black magic grimoire of Rank 5 or lower]`
Clatter. Tap.
The old man finished his typing and pinned the wanted poster to the wall.
Several black sorcerers lounging in the corners of the fortune-telling house picked up copies.
"Whew. What a pretty face. The name is..."
"Yulian Nihilrit?"
"Still, compared to Director Schun, at least his face and his connections are out in the open. Assassination might be a stretch, but a curse seems doable, doesn't it?"
"Hmm... I wonder if we could use the Academy students..."
"I doubt he'd be that attached to them."
Thud.
Simeon's footsteps, which had been carrying him toward the door, stopped.
"Hm? You're still here? Don't tell me the wanted bounty has caught your interest?"
"..."
"Well, you probably already know, but—it's a young man named Yulian Nihilrit. His name's been coming up for a few months now, and it seems the Roundtable has finally made its decision. The face is quite a handsome one. This is my first time seeing a photograph as well."
Hearing the old man's words, Simeon's head began to turn.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Even past the angle that a human neck could not possibly reach, his head kept turning.
A black sorcerer who had transcended their limits could perform feats impossible for ordinary humans.
And then—
The 6th Rank black sorcerer, whose head had rotated a full 180 degrees, flung open the eyes that had always been hidden behind his narrow squint—
And said to the people inside the fortune-telling house:
"You there..."
"?"
"It seems you are all in immediate need of repentance."
