* * *

Unable to adjust to the oddly serious atmosphere, Yu Na-gyeong scratched her head with a wing for a moment before cautiously asking a question.

["Um, Team Leader? There’s something I don’t understand."]

"What is it?"

["About the Saint’s ghost appearing in the Temple of Muse. Is that really such a disgrace that even the goddess herself, not just the church, would make such a fuss over it?"]

"A disgrace? It’s the worst scandal in the history of the Church of Muse."

["Over something that minor?"]

Yu Na-gyeong was bewildered. Perhaps she would have understood back when a single ghost could frighten her, but after seeing whole hordes of them in London, she could not understand why one ghost was such a serious matter.

As though reading her mind, Limon clicked his tongue and explained.

"What do you think is the biggest reason people believe in gods?"

["Uh... because they’re gods?"]

"... My mistake."

["Why are you apologizing?!"]

Yu Na-gyeong bristled as Limon reflected on his mistake of expecting too much from a chicken-pigeon. It was Ainsha who answered her.

"Salvation and repose."

"Right. Some religions are exceptions, like the Seven Dragons Society, but the most common purpose of faith is to secure spiritual peace after death."

["Oh... that’s true."]

Perhaps it was because she was, after all, a priestess of the Holy Alliance that Ainsha had supplied that answer. Hearing Limon elaborate on it, Yu Na-gyeong nodded. Heaven, the Pure Land, Valhalla, reincarnation—most ordinary religions did include teachings about the afterlife.

Limon casually put another question to her.

"So what happens if people learn that a devout priest who believed in a god—a Saint, no less—died and became a ghost?"

["... Would it make it harder to win converts?"]

"They’d be lucky if that was all it did."

"It is a serious problem. It could diminish the god’s divinity. For a god, that is like being beaten half to death."

Just as witches used magic by offering up mystery and fate, gods, whose very existence was practically magic, maintained their divinity through their followers’ faith. Thus, damage to their divinity meant being left half-dead at best. At worst, they could lose their believers’ faith and fall into demonhood.

Given those circumstances, it was only natural that the goddess Muse had panicked and erased every record of the Saint.

"Besides, I doubt that ghost is in its right mind."

Over his long life, Limon had seen many things resembling ghosts, but few had been sound of mind. Whether they were souls summoned through magic or ghosts unable to depart for the afterlife, most either harmed the living or wandered aimlessly, without even their memories of life intact. The souls summoned to Avalon, which created a semblance of an afterlife, had been exceptions.

"And the cause of death was suicide, of all things. A ghost who died that way would be a mindless spirit at best. At worst, a deranged vengeful spirit or an evil one."

"An evil spirit that used to be a Saint... That could easily be more dangerous than a demon."

Limon clicked his tongue. Taking the Violin of Deepest Black out of the case on his back, he gazed down at it and muttered,

"And that ghost is inside this?"

This must be what it felt like to learn that an instrument he had been using without trouble all this time contained a bomb. As Limon openly displayed his unease, Ainsha spoke bluntly.

"We cannot be certain. This happened hundreds of years ago. It may have disappeared already."

"No, it’s probably still there."

Limon answered decisively, then continued with a frown.

"Just recently, Cir—that old hag—confirmed that there’s a soul inhabiting this violin."

A few days earlier in London, when Cir had appraised the Violin of Deepest Black and told him that the Seven Arcs were something akin to seals, she had added one more remark: she did not know whether it was connected to the seal, but some soul also dwelled within it.

At the time, Limon had taken that in stride. He had thought one extra ghost would make little difference to an already cursed magical artifact on par with a divine relic. But who would have imagined that the ghost was the very Saint who had created the Violin of Deepest Black? At this point, he could hardly tell whether it was a violin or a bundle of disasters masquerading as an instrument.

After briefly clicking his tongue at that realization, Limon began looking through the scroll Ainsha had given him. Suddenly, his hands stopped, and he turned narrowed eyes on Yu Na-gyeong.

["Team Leader? Why are you looking at me like that?"]

"Come to think of it, didn’t you once say you’d seen a ghost at Leviathan?"

["... Oh, that? Why do you ask?"]

Yu Na-gyeong’s eyes darted about before she finally nodded. She had belatedly recalled seeing a ghost while wandering around Leviathan during Limon’s absence, back when its subsidiaries were under attack from the Liberation Brigade’s ghosts.

Limon held out the scroll and asked,

"Just in case—did that ghost look like this?"

["Huh?"]

Puzzled by the unexpected question, Yu Na-gyeong suddenly looked as though her eyes might pop out of her head. The portrait on the scroll Limon held out looked exactly like the ghost she had seen at Leviathan.

["That was the Saint’s ghost?!"]

"Judging by your reaction, it looks like it."

["No, wait. But that doesn’t make sense!"]

Yu Na-gyeong objected without thinking. Pointing a wing at the portrait of a girl who looked to be in her mid-teens at most, she demanded,

["There’s no way a little girl like this could have been a Saint, not just an ordinary priestess!"]

"Of course she could."

"It is entirely possible."

Yu Na-gyeong froze at their unexpectedly immediate answers. With an expressionless face, Ainsha told her,

"A soul’s appearance does not necessarily match its age at death. Besides, accomplished witches and priests often look young, or even like children."

["Well, sure, but..."]

Yu Na-gyeong reluctantly conceded the point. Cir, the Great Witch, and Rakht, Muse’s high priestess—their youth and beauty, so at odds with their ages, had certainly been enough to make her want to learn magic herself.

"Besides, hundreds of years ago, someone in their mid-teens was already considered an adult. And magical talent doesn’t particularly care about age anyway."

["... I really hope the Saint of Muse just looked incredibly young for her age."]

Yu Na-gyeong murmured gloomily. The thought of a girl like this falling into despair and taking her own life at such a young age was deeply unsettling.

"Hmm. If the Saint’s ghost could wander freely around Leviathan, that means it isn’t sealed inside after all."

Unlike Yu Na-gyeong, Limon considered the matter dispassionately. It was not that he was heartless; his long life had simply made him accustomed to all manner of such things. Ainsha, who was likewise skilled at controlling her emotions, offered her opinion with an expressionless face.

"It is more likely possessing the violin of its own accord than forcibly sealed inside. Ghosts commonly inhabit objects they were attached to in life."

"It’s been awfully quiet for that, though."

"That is strange. According to the records, at least, it appeared in the temple every day."

"Hmm, so it used to be more active... What’s making it stay tucked away as though it’s dead?"

While Limon and Ainsha were putting their heads together over the problem, Yu Na-gyeong finally shook off her gloom. Recalling their visit to the Temple of Muse, she opened her beak.

["Could it be staying hidden because it’s afraid of you, Team Leader?"]

"... I see."

"... That makes sense."

It was a remarkably astute observation. From creating a great canyon in a battle with an evil god to bringing down a corrupt church, temple and all, Limon had inflicted no small number of calamities on the Holy Alliance, even if they paled beside what he had done to the Seven Dragons Society. It was especially plausible that a Saint who had lived and died hundreds of years ago, when Limon was still regarded as an absolute being, would hide inside the violin out of fear of him.

"Hmm. Then how do we coax this ghost out?"

["Coax it out? Why?"]

"Why do you think?"

Limon clicked his tongue and pointed at the violin he had placed on top of its case.

"Think about it. If the Temple of Muse’s records are right, the Saint’s ghost has been inside this violin ever since it was made."

["That’s right."]

"Which means that ghost knows everything that’s happened to this violin over the past several hundred years."

Yu Na-gyeong briefly tilted her head, wondering what that had to do with his reason for calling out the ghost. Then her eyes widened.

["Oh, then...!"]

"Exactly."

Limon nodded. Gazing at the Violin of Deepest Black with solemn eyes, he continued quietly,

"This Saint’s ghost either knows what the Seven Arcs really are or at least has a clue about them."

["... Now I see why we absolutely need to call it out."]

"The problem is, we have no way to do that."

Even a legendary Great Witch like Cir had only been able to vaguely identify the presence of someone’s soul, let alone pull the Saint’s ghost out. That meant no one could summon it by force. They would have to make the ghost reveal itself willingly... but it had not reacted at all, even when they visited the Temple of Muse, a place deeply connected to its life, and then its own tomb. It was hardly likely to emerge of its own accord.

As Limon clicked his tongue at the dead end, Yu Na-gyeong suddenly spoke up.

["Um, then how about this?"]

* * *

["This is a heavy blow..."]

In a room shrouded in deep darkness, the strange figure sitting there assembling a cube snorted at those words.

"You’re making far too much of it. Comrade Kaiser was never much use anyway. All he did was act important."

The strange figure sneered, asking how it could be a blow when someone who was going to croak sooner or later had finally croaked. The reply came from one of the figures occupying four of the table’s twelve seats—the other eight consisting of four empty seats and four with nothing but face-down cards.

["I don’t care whether Kaiser lives or dies, but losing out on the Seven Arcs again is a major problem."]

"Ah, yes. That was a shame."

Even the strange figure agreed this time. For the Liberation Brigade’s ghosts, the Seven Arcs were an objective they could not afford to let slip away.

["The Monarch of Magic is a regrettable loss as well."]

"That old man? He certainly helped us a lot, but he was rather fussy. I doubt he’d have made a good Comrade."

["No. Had this operation ended successfully and we obtained London’s Seven Arcs, he too would have received the stars’ blessing and become an excellent Comrade."]

"... True. He could at least have filled the vacant third-ranked position."

The strange figure conceded the point. Even to them, who could wield power beyond level 100 through 『Constellation Descent』, the ten Monarchs were special in several respects. Karl had been active since the beginning of the Iron Age and was already prepared to receive the stars’ blessing. In that sense, his death was indeed a regrettable loss.

"Still, don’t be too disappointed. I’ll fill that gap for you."

["You, Labyrinth? How, exactly?"]

The question carried undisguised suspicion. Though the tone sounded more like an interrogation of an enemy than a question to a Comrade, the strange figure called Labyrinth paid it no mind. He merely grinned and said,

"The toy I’ve been working on for a while is almost complete."

["You intend to fill the shoes of that Berserker or that Monarch of Magic with a mere toy...?"]

Eugene’s prodigious combat instincts, her transcendent unique skill 『Avatar of Wrath』, and her stable erosion rate had given her combat strength surpassing even a Monarch’s. And Karl, had he received the stars’ blessing, might not only have filled the vacant third rank, but perhaps even vied for second place. To fill the void left by people like them? Even Labyrinth, the Liberation Brigade’s fourth-ranked ghost, could not make such a claim lightly.

"Ah, of course I admit my toy alone wouldn’t be enough."

Labyrinth readily acknowledged that fact, though he added one qualification.

"If I didn’t have this, that is."

TAP

The instant Labyrinth set an object on the table with those words, the dark room was bathed in blood-red light. The radiance spilling from a regular icosahedral stone—too cloudy to be a gem, yet too beautiful to be ore—illuminated everything around it in red.

["... Did you obtain that in London?"]

"That’s right. It’s the only legacy Comrade Kaiser left us before croaking like a f***ing moron without accomplishing a thing."