The interior of the vehicle was a cold metal cube. The dull roar of the engine and the rattling on the forest track were the only soundtrack. The dim light of a safety lamp flickered rhythmically, illuminating the faces of the only two occupants of the cabin.
Across from me, sitting on a bench with his back against the padded wall, Merem Solomon watched the passing landscape. He didn't seem tense; he seemed... contemplative.
"Seiji," he said without turning around, his voice clear despite the din. "Would you like me to tell you a story?"
"What story?" I asked, frowning.
He slowly turned his head toward me.
"The true story of the Forest of Einnashe."
"...Isn't it just a Dead Apostle who became prominent about 800 years ago?"
"Yes. But that's not the whole story," he began, his voice taking on a narrative, grave tone that filled the enclosed space. "Einnashe is like Zelretch. He is a magician who became a vampire. A powerful hypnotist. So much so that his abilities could be called memory remodeling. He was cautious. So cautious that he rewrote the memory of every human being who knew him."
"Even the White Princess was deceived into thinking, 'There is no Dead Apostle named Einnashe.'"
"Arcueid Brunestud..." I muttered, more to myself. "I wonder what kind of being she is."
Merem leaned forward, and the flickering light caught a flash of absolute warning in his eyes.
"I wouldn't recommend you go after her. Not even your eyes would be able to glimpse a line. And besides, I would kill you before you made a move." It was a flat statement, an unquestionable fact.
"Is that so? Too bad."
Well, anyone who knew Merem Solomon would know about his obsession with the white princess, ah, as they called her... simp.
He nodded, satisfied that I understood, and leaned back again, continuing as the vehicle carried us closer to our destination.
"That was only once. Her memory remodeling power makes the target simply 'understand' a new truth. There was a magician, an ally of the Princess, who could sink thoughts into the subconscious, making them impossible to remember. With his help, the Princess eliminated Einnashe. That was 800 years ago."
"800 years... So that would be when she was still hunting Dead Apostles on the orders of the True Ancestors, right?"
"Yes," he confirmed. "If she had eliminated him then, she would have destroyed them all. But that was not the case."
"So, Einnashe wasn't completely annihilated?"
"Yes, that's what happened. However, for some reason, the Princess made a big mistake." He lowered his voice, as if sharing a secret with the darkness. "She left Einnashe's corpse and returned to the castle, but she left it under a tree."
"...?"
"Well, a carnivorous plant. From your home country of Japan, have you heard of that? Like the Gajumaru or the Jubokko, stories of trees that suck blood. Ah, it is also said that cherry blossoms drink blood." He made a vague gesture. "Well, anyway, the corpse was under that tree, and the tree... accidentally sucked Einnashe's blood."
The vehicle braked sharply, coming to a halt. The engine shut off, leaving a sudden, heavy silence. Merem's story hung in the air, complete.
"You know the rest," Merem said, standing up with supernatural fluidity. "The tree that sucked the blood of a powerful monster like Einnashe became a transcendental life form that moves, attacking people, and grew steadily."
"I see, an interesting story..." I adjusted the zipper on my coat. "But there's something I don't understand."
"Huh? I thought I was being as clear as possible. What part didn't you understand?" Merem asked, tilting his head with genuine curiosity.
"No, no. What I don't understand is why you're here. I thought only I was coming."
"Oh, that!" His expression lit up with childlike enthusiasm. "Well, since this is going to be the last time Einnashe will be 'alive,' I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to feed my pets."
"But why did you ask that question?" He continued, pouting exaggeratedly. "It almost seems like... you don't want me here."
"It's because I don't love you."
"How cruel, Seiji! You weren't like this when we first met," she said, placing a dramatic hand over her heart.
"It's—"
"Ahem!"
A sharp, powerful cough cut through the air. It was the driver, a man with a face that had seen too much and an Agency uniform, who gently tapped on the partition separating us. The signal. We had arrived.
"Never mind," I sighed, resigned. "Since you're here, you might as well be useful. Help me find its core. Your... perception must be keener than mine for these things."
"Of course! Nothing excites me more than unraveling the mysteries of nature!" Merem said, rubbing his hands together.
I turned toward the rear door, mentally preparing myself for the landing in the containment zone. "Good. Then, I'll—"
I stopped. The sound behind me had ceased. There was no breathing, no aura of ancient, mocking presence.
"Merem?"
I turned to look at the seat where he had been sitting.
It was empty.
On the seat was a piece of paper.
I picked it up. It was written in impeccable handwriting:
"Dear Seiji,
A last-minute emergency.
I wish you the best of luck on this mission.
Good luck.
Sincerely,
Solomon."
I stared at the note, then at the empty seat...
That bastard.
Anyway, the original plan was for me to go alone.
The driver, an anonymous man with tired eyes, watched me from his cab, waiting.
There was nothing more to say. I nodded in his direction and jumped out.
The impact was soft, on a layer of pine needles and damp earth. The air around me was cold, still, and heavy. It carried that sweet, stale smell I hadn't noticed before, but here, at the edge of the clearing, it was permeated with something else: death.
About two kilometers away, rising like a dark green ink stain against the gray slopes of the Alps, was the Forest of Einnashe. From here, it simply looked dense, impenetrable. But my eyes, even without straining, caught the tremor in the air around it, a subtle distortion of light, as if reality itself were sick around its edges.
Well, I'll have to walk from here.
XXX
The silence lasted less than expected.
A hundred meters from the edge of the clearing, the forest itself enveloped me. The light became a dirty green filter, filtered by a canopy so thick that the sky disappeared. The air was denser here, the smell of rotten sweetness overwhelming. And then, I saw it.
20, 50, 85... I quickly lost count. Bodies. Mummies. Human and animal remains dried to the point of crispness, impaled on thick branches like spears at different heights. They weren't hanging; they had been violently skewered, their twisted forms frozen in eternal, silent agony.
There was no time for reflective horror. A low, twisted branch of an ancient pine tree, which a second before had seemed harmless, lunged at me with the speed of a snake. Its tip, sharp and hardened like a stake, pointed directly at my heart.
My arm was already moving, the dagger I carried in my thigh sheath came out in a side thrust.
Shh-tac.
A sharp sound, like a small bone breaking. The branch stopped in midair, its tip inches from my chest, and then fell to the ground, lifeless like ordinary firewood.
Good. I took a step forward, trying to gain ground, to put distance between myself and that grove of impaled branches.
Hm?
I tried to strengthen my legs with an od boost, a basic technique for increasing speed. The energy flowed from my center... and dissipated instantly, absorbed by the spongy, dark ground beneath my boots. It wasn't blocked. It was sucked up, as if the earth itself were thirsty.
No wonder they ended up like this. If the forest absorbs both the ambient mana and the output of any individual, any mage or enforcer would be rendered useless in this forest.
Too bad my eyes don't fit in that section.
A new branch, this time from my left, lunged not like a stake, but like a lasso, seeking to entangle my arm. My blade moved in a short, economical arc, intersecting not the branch itself, but a specific point half a meter from its base, where my eyes saw a small knot of twisted lines.
The result was the same. The branch lost all tension and fell. I moved forward, avoiding the exposed roots that seemed to want to entangle my ankles.
XXX
Squadrons 1, 2, 3, and 4 eliminated. The Forest of Einnashe is certainly unforgiving. Why did Barthomeloi send us on this suicide mission?
Bitterness was a constant taste in my mouth, mixed with the dry dust of decay. I hid in a hollow formed by the twisted roots of an ancient oak tree that, for some reason, the forest seemed to ignore. Or maybe it was just too full with the bodies of my comrades.
It's been three days since we entered, and I still haven't found the core or any "fruit." What a waste.
"Fruit." The code word for the main objective, the concentrated essence of Einnashe's power that could supposedly be extracted if you located its center point.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound made me freeze. Footsteps.
Did I think everyone was dead?
With a slow, imperceptible movement, I looked up over the edge of my hiding place, peering through a tangle of fibrous roots.
About twenty meters away, walking with surreal calm amid the green nightmare, was a figure.
Who is that?
Black hair with white strands. Asian face. Dressed in a black trench coat and red gloves.
I remember the faces of all the members of the raid, and there was definitely no one like that...
My mind, numb with fatigue, tried to classify him.
Then I saw it. A faint glint on his neck.
Ahh, a cross necklace. Silver, simple, hanging over the trench coat. A symbol of the Church.
Must be a member of the Church? But what would a simple Enforcer be doing here? Even the top-level ones wouldn't do much against this...
A more dangerous connection popped into my mind.
A member of the Burial Agency? No, there's no one like that in the records that I've heard of... although...
The rumor.
...There are rumors about Solomon's apprentice. The protégé of the Twentieth Ancestor. And the description... dark hair with premature graying, Eastern origin, and that air of unnatural stillness... He has all the characteristics.
A heavy silence fell after his eyes swept over my hiding place. There was no movement, no threatening gesture. But the certainty of having been detected was absolute.
"Come out of there."
The voice was not a shout. It was a flat, clear command that cut through the whisper of the forest like a knife.
Did he notice? ... Presumptuous brat.
The mental insult was a last act of rebellion before the instinct for survival and the authority in that voice forced me to move.
He was closer now. The red gloves, the impeccable black trench coat despite the surroundings, and those eyes... I didn't look directly at them. Something in my gut warned me not to.
"Are you from the Mages' Association?" he asked. His tone was one of mere verification.
A crooked smile appeared on my dry lips.
"Forte. A magus hired by the Association. And you?"
His cold, appraising eyes lingered on me a moment longer than necessary.
"You don't need to know."
Haa? Me, a magus classified as 'Exceptional' by my family and the Association, and this brat dares...?
I straightened up, ignoring the pain in my ribs, and tried to project the authority that my rank and lineage conferred on me... anywhere other than this green nightmare.
"Even if you are the protégé of the Twentieth Ancestor," I said, loading each word with contempt, "you should learn your place. You are speaking to a magus of the Association. A name and a title are basic courtesies, or did your tutor not teach you manners before teaching you to be a tool?"
"Why should I say all that to a dead man?"
That was the spark. The three days of terror, the humiliation of hiding like a rat, the death of my squad, and now this cold insolence from a lucky kid... it all exploded like a volcano. Reason evaporated, replaced by blind, burning fury.
"You cocky brat! I'll teach you to learn your place!"
I didn't think about the forest. I didn't think about the consequences. Wounded pride and pent-up stress took over. My staff was in my hand in an instant. I channeled a concentrated, rapid burst of prana directly into the core of my Mystic Code carved into the hilt. The forest absorbed energy, but if I was quick enough and used small amounts, it wouldn't react frantically. I had learned that by observing my dead companions.
With a flick of my wrist, I wielded the staff like a dueling sword. Three quick, precise cuts sliced through the humid air. These weren't simple power strikes; they were "Air Strikes," hyper-focused pressure spells that traveled like invisible razor blades, silent and lethal. Any average mage or enforcer would need a specialized shield or supernatural perception to notice them before they sliced open their flesh.
The brat didn't move to dodge. He didn't raise a shield. He just stood there, watching.
But his gaze... changed. It wasn't something I could define with words. There was a supernatural gleam. It was as if the very nature of his attention was transformed. From the cold assessment of a supervisor, it became something... intrusive. As if his eyes were no longer seeing my surface, or even my spell, but something deeper. A feeling of absolute vulnerability ran down my spine. Some kind of mystical eyes? But suddenly I felt that standing in front of them was more dangerous than any branch in the forest.
The three invisible slashes flew through the distance. Seiji didn't seem to flinch, but at the last moment, when they should have been hitting him, his hand moved in a blur. A dark dagger appeared and traced three absurdly short lines in the air in front of him.
Shh... shh... shh.
My spells, on the very threshold of tearing his flesh, disappeared. They weren't blocked or deflected. They were erased, as if they had never existed. The dagger returned to its sheath. It had all happened in a fraction of a second, in the narrowest and most terrifying margin possible.
I froze, the staff weighing like lead. I didn't understand how he had done it. I hadn't felt an explosion of power, nor a wave of force. I had only seen that change in his gaze, and then the end of my spell.
But there was no time to stand still.
I lunged forward.
My staff, now a simple bar of reinforced acerol, became an extension of my arm. I forgot about prana, focusing instead on angle, force, speed. A side blow to his temples, followed by a low thrust with the pommel toward his stomach.
He dodged the blow to the head with such a slight tilt of his neck that the air from my cane barely ruffled his hair. For the low thrust, his red-gloved hand moved to deflect it. He pressed his palm against the side of the pommel and, with an almost imperceptible circular motion, redirected all my force to one side, spinning me around and exposing my back.
It was so easy for him that it was humiliating.
I spun around, barely regaining my balance, and threw a quick low kick at his knee, seeking to destabilize him. He simply raised his leg and took my impact on his shin, unperturbed. The pain reverberated through my foot as if I had kicked a steel pole.
Before I could pull my leg back, his other hand closed around my ankle like an iron vice, completely immobilizing the joint. He just held it there, demonstrating that he could dislocate or break my bone whenever he wanted.
We remained like that for an eternal second, me in a precarious balance, him holding my leg with one hand, looking at me with those cold eyes that now showed neither effort nor emotion.
Then, without changing his expression, he moved.
His arm, which was holding my ankle, rose, and with it, my entire body was lifted off the ground. The force was so absurd, so disproportionate, that I didn't even have time to scream. The world became a whirlwind of green and gray.
At the climax of the arc, when I was almost horizontal in the air, his other hand closed into a fist.
"GAH!"
It hit my solar plexus.
The air exploded from my lungs. Everything was reduced to a thunderous white of agony.
And then I flew. I flew through the air like a sack, broke several low branches with sharp cracks, and landed on my back in a thicket of ferns and soft earth, about five meters away.
The impact was secondary compared to the punch. I gasped for air, writhing on the ground as my diaphragm spasmed. I couldn't get up. I could do nothing but convulse silently, desperately trying to catch a breath of the air that now denied me.
Through my blurred vision, I saw his black silhouette outlined against the sickly green. His cold eyes showed no conflict, no regret, not even disdain. Then he simply turned and kept walking, his footsteps quickly fading into the whispers of the forest.
Maybe today could be my lucky day... I thought, a last glimmer of delusional hope as I tried to roll onto my side.
Or definitely not.
"AHHH!"
The scream was drowned out by a gurgle of blood. Three branches sprang from the soft ground like spears of living wood. One pierced my belly, another my thigh, the third dug into my shoulder, pinning me to the ground like an insect on a collector's board.
The pain was so vast and absolute that it transcended pain.
I stared, eyes wide, at the branches writhing happily inside me. Then I felt the pull. It was as if my veins were connected directly to the roots of the forest. I felt my blood, my magical energy, my very being, being sucked through those wooden thorns. A sweet, voracious coldness spread from the wounds.
My vision darkened at the edges. The whispers, once a distant chorus, became a close, satisfied, almost purring murmur. It was the sound of Einnashe feeding.
Of course... I forgot about the forest... I thought, or perhaps it was just a last echo in my fading mind. How foolish...
The coldness reached my heart. The whispers became my only thought. My eyes, already blind, fixed on the treetops swaying against the gray sky.
Forte, magus of the Association, classified as Exceptional and Fez rank, died alone, impaled and drained on the floor of the Forest of Einnashe. His pride, his knowledge, everything was absorbed, turned into nourishment for the seventh Ancestor.