She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 11 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“ANYWAY, ENOUGH TALK. How about we eat?” Soul Howl casually brushed off the preceding conversation and started

preparing food. Collecting the utensils he’d left here and there, he turned away from Mira. It seemed he was embarrassed and trying to hide it.

There was no need to probe further, Mira knew. She refocused and stood up straight proudly. “On that note, I have something better!”

Soul Howl turned and glared with cold eyes. “I said I don’t want that red fruit.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Mira clicked her tongue and smirked. “It’s nothing to do with ingredients. I meant better than those utensils of yours.” Grinning wider, she instantly summoned the mansion spirit.

A small mansion appeared in the large chamber. Seeing it, Soul Howl exclaimed, “Ooh! Now, this is interesting. New summoning magic, I’m guessing?”

“Indeed. It’s an artificial mansion spirit. I only just met it the other day, but it’s quite useful.” Mira puffed out her chest, expecting praise. 

Soul Howl ignored her, however. Interest spurred him to reach for the mansion doorknob. “Huh? It won’t open.” He pulled and pushed, but the door wouldn’t move. Twisting the knob in irritation, he looked back with a frown.

“Hm? That can’t be right.” Mira ran over and turned the doorknob. It opened with ease.

“You can’t open the door unless you’re the master?”

“I hadn’t tested that, but you may be right.”

After that exchange, Mira and Soul Howl followed their scientists’ hearts and began experimenting. They learned you just couldn’t open the door without Mira’s permission; a guest couldn’t even use the furnishings inside unless she explicitly allowed that.

“What a loyal mansion,” Soul Howl mused. Instinctively yearning to refresh himself, he started stripping quickly in front of the shower room and asked Mira’s permission: “Okay, I’d like to use your shower.” 

“Oh, I suppose I have no choice. I deign to permit you entry into the shower,” Mira acquiesced, basking in a sense of superiority.

“Yeah, thanks,” Soul Howl replied, rushing into the shower room.

Now, as for dinner…I think I’ll have him make it! Mira laid her special sleeping bag on the floor and plopped down. She was hungry, but she wasn’t about to make dinner; that was Soul Howl’s greatest skill, after all. Cooking food for two people probably wasn’t much harder than for one, so Mira planned to have Soul Howl cook her meals in return for her providing such a luxurious kitchen.

I’ll shower while he cooks. A perfect plan! She would come out of the shower nice and clean, with dinner ready and waiting for her. Pleased by this flawless flow of events, she recalled Soul Howl’s cooking repertoire and wondered what to demand he prepare.

Just then, there was a voice in Mira’s head: “Umm, hi. Sym? Is this connected? Mira? Miiiraaa? Can you hear meee?”

“What?!” Mira was getting used to hearing the Spirit King out of nowhere, but the new voice in her mind startled her. Assessing its tone and the words she’d heard so far, Mira realized it was the progenitor spirit Martel. “That voice… Is that you, Martel?”

When Mira asked what was wrong, Martel replied happily, “Oh, hey, Mira! Wow, wow! It really connected!”

Between Martel’s excited squeals, Mira heard the Spirit King. “Apologies, Miss Mira. Martel said it wasn’t fair that only I could talk to you, and she butted in.”

According to the Spirit King, he’d been enjoying Mira’s adventures through her senses as usual until he got wrapped up in small talk with Martel. He’d been so distracted, he missed Mira’s latest adventure, which made him quite sad.

Furthermore, in the middle of their chat, he ended up teaching Martel to communicate with Mira in addition to other spirits. However, Martel could only do so while the Spirit King conversed with Mira. That also meant that she could butt in on their conversations at any point.

Martel had been able to talk to Mira from afar during the Fenrir rescue operation because Mira was inside her seal. It was like using a grocery store’s microphone. Now that Mira was outside the seal, only the Spirit King could talk to her freely, and Martel was awfully jealous of that privilege.

“Well, it’s…fine,” Mira eventually responded. “I’m sure you’ll be a reliable help along the way.” Reliable, if a little noisy, she chuckled to herself. Still, she now had two veterans of this world to consult if the going got tough.

Hearing the faint sound of water from the shower room, the Spirit King realized someone else was there. “Miss Mira, it seems somebody’s with you. We didn’t interrupt something, did we?”

“Oh, is there somebody? Sorry, Mira,” Martel added.

“No problem. He’s just enjoying the shower right now. I doubt he’ll come out for a while.” Mira knew Soul Howl liked long baths; he’d probably take just as long in the shower.

“Sounds like he’s a friend of yours, Miss Mira. That must mean you found the person you were looking for—all while I was distracted.” The Spirit King knew Mira had been searching for a close friend, and he’d been excited to see them reunite. Yet Martel’s small talk had unfortunately made him miss it.

Ignoring his complaints, Martel cut in, “My! You came all this way searching for someone?”

“Indeed,” Mira replied. “He’s in the process of making a Holy Grail. We tracked his footsteps, and I finally caught him here. That’s the long and short of it.”

After Mira’s succinct explanation, Martel exclaimed, “Goodness! Making a Holy Grail? That’s incredible.” As a progenitor spirit, she knew all about Holy Grails, and seemed aware of the difficulty of creating one. She was impressed that he was going through such an arduous process all on his own.

“Quite ingenious to think of making one,” the Spirit King said, equally impressed. Even he considered the process difficult. “That friend of yours is a wild card, Miss Mira.”

While Mira listened to them, she hit upon an idea. If these two knew so much about Holy Grails, could she ask whether they truly had the power to erase a Demon’s Blessing? It was really only hypothesized that a Holy Grail would do that; they had no clear proof it would work. Soul Howl was trying all this because he had no other options. Would his efforts be rewarded, or…?

“Sooo…I’d like to ask you two something,” Mira told them, steeling herself. That prompted her distant companions to say that they’d answer anything they could. Praying that Soul Howl’s efforts wouldn’t go to waste, Mira posed the question.

“A Demon’s Blessing…” repeated the Spirit King.

Mira could tell that he was deep in thought. What if a Demon’s Blessing was too much for even a Holy Grail’s power? She prepared to hear the worst, but their answers blindsided her.

“What exactly is a Demon’s Blessing, Sym?” Martel asked the Spirit King.

“I’ve certainly never heard of it,” he responded curiously.

“What…?” Mira gasped. Her shock was unfathomable. The two apparently knew nothing about the Demon’s Blessing, despite having lived as long as this world had existed. “Come now, you must be familiar with that. The…Curse of the Underworld, or whatever, is also known as the Demon’s Blessing. You’ve got to know it.”

Although Mira did her best to explain, they only replied again that they didn’t know what she was talking about.

Then she remembered something: “Curse of the Underworld” and “Demon’s Blessing” were names created by players. They were nicknames of convenience; the mark itself had no formal name.

In light of that, Mira explained in more detail to Martel and the Spirit King. The mark would suddenly emerge one day by tearing through someone’s skin. It was a six-pointed star surrounded by symbols and shapes, and the characters “XV” were at the center. Those whom the mark appeared on died untimely deaths. When that happened, a demon’s shadow appeared beside them.

Mira told them as much as she knew from the instances she’d seen so far. Ultimately, she also told them about the girl at the bottom of Nebrapolis, whom Soul Howl was making the Holy Grail for.

After a moment of silence, the Spirit King gave a surprising response. “Could it be…the stigmata?”

In real life, stigmata were unexplainable wounds that appeared on the bodies of the devout. Setting demons of the past aside, the word didn’t fit this world’s modern demons. However, Martel piped up in agreement at the Spirit King’s words.

Nevertheless, hearing the word “stigmata,” most would think of a holy figure. The word was more associated with angels than demons, including by Mira. 

“Stigmata…?” she asked. “That word has more of a divine connotation to me…” Having seen the Curse of the Underworld many times during the game’s events, Mira didn’t get a holy vibe from the so-called “stigmata” at all.

But the Spirit King and Martel insisted that what Mira was describing must be the same mark.

“To be fair, stigmata might as well be a curse to you humans,” the Spirit King muttered, before explaining what it was.

Stigmata were said to be accumulated divine power within the soul that somehow awakened. It was divine power—literally the power of a god. As for why such power would lie dormant within a human soul, it wasn’t due to a god’s whims, consideration, or grace—no, it was mere happenstance.

“Miss Mira, do you remember the night when you saw off my kin?”

“Of course. I remember it well,” Mira replied firmly to the Spirit King’s nostalgic question, casting her mind back to the great river of light streaming into the sky.

The Celestial Shrine of Nirvana—where the souls had flocked—was adjacent to the divine realm. As such, scant drops of divine power occasionally rained down from it. According to the Spirit King, that spilled divine power could collect in nearby souls, depending on compatibility. Being compatible with divine power might sound lucky to most, but he added acerbically that it was anything but fortunate in these cases.

Simply having divine power wasn’t a problem on its own. Humans had no understanding of how to manifest it, and it was too much power for them to wield. Instead, it usually lay dormant within their souls. It was only in rare cases that stigmata appeared. In some cases, the power acclimated to the person’s soul and blessed them, though it took time. At other times, it blended with the person’s mana, allowing them to use the power for themselves.

“Miss Mira, have you heard of people who can perform healing miracles that soothe all wounds and ailments?”

“Healing miracles, hmm…? I believe there were people like that in the Church of Alisfarius.” Mira recalled such a quest popping up there. “That was thirty years ago, though. I don’t know about the modern day.”

The Spirit King claimed that divine power was the true cause of miracle healing, and that accumulated divine power would most likely manifest as a healing ability. That didn’t make such an ability common, though. In almost all cases, people with divine power lived their lives and died before the power manifested. When their flesh released their soul, the power dispersed. It seemed death was a phenomenon so powerful, it could even overcome divine power.

But if one fulfilled certain conditions before death, while the divine power was dormant, the power could awaken and appear as stigmata.

“So you’re basically saying that the girl I saw met those conditions?” asked Mira.

“Correct. When the divine power awakens, it changes into a symbolic form. After all, form holds the most significance in a world ruled by material things. That form is the six-pointed star, which is also a symbol. However, the human form is too feeble for it. It tears through the flesh, injuring the victim and eventually killing them.”

Awakened divine power destroyed one from the inside, although not by a demon’s hand as humanity had thought. It was no surprise, the Spirit King added, that they’d suspect demons first in this day and age.

Now Mira understood that the Demon’s Blessing and stigmata were one and the same. But what were the conditions that caused it to manifest? 

When she asked, the Spirit King answered that there were two general scenarios. The first was a similar power interfering with the dormant divine power. If something nearby had a comparable power, the divine power would gradually resonate with it until it awakened. In the process, the divine power would swell and put pressure on the soul, causing the host’s health to somehow decline.

The other scenario was the opposite: interference by wicked power, the opposite of divine power. When evil power approached, the divine power would abruptly awaken to fight it.

“Hrmm… In that case, one of those two types of power must’ve been near the girl in Nebrapolis,” Mira mused.

“We can assume as much. Neither power is really common, though. I have to wonder how she came into contact with one.”

The first situation required divine power—that of a god or something similar, like an angel. Meanwhile, anything that brought impurity and curses held wicked power, including modern demons. Like the Spirit King had said, it wasn’t exactly omnipresent.

The chances that a person possessing dormant divine power would run into either and manifest stigmata were extremely low. Yet it had happened. How in the world had the woman met one of those conditions?

There did happen to be a demon back in that castle Soul Howl stayed in… 

Just then, an idea sprouted in Mira’s mind. She recalled something Soul Howl had said. According to him, the woman he was trying to save had come every day, ranting and raving at him, but her vigor had died down at some point. Shortly afterward, the Demon’s Blessing—the stigmata—appeared on her.

When her vitality waned, was that the divine power swelling within her, causing her health to deteriorate? If so, divine power’s interference could be the cause.

“I can’t be certain, but she might’ve come into contact with divine power somewhere. She apparently belonged to a budding religious sect. Could an object of worship possibly have influenced her?” Mira wondered.

The Spirit King thought it was unlikely. “That may be possible, but a power that reaches through the wall of the soul and interferes with the divine power within must be at least as strong as a divine item. I don’t know the scale of this ‘budding religious sect,’ but it would require a minimum of thirty thousand years for an object to obtain such power. Even then, it would need to be a one-of-a-kind object of worship from a sect as large as the Trinity.”

“You make it sound impossible, rather than unlikely.” Faith could instill divine power in objects of worship, but that required time and effort. A new sect could never accomplish it.

“That wouldn’t be the case if the object had such power already,” added the Spirit King.

It wasn’t especially rare for religions to take existing items with power or long histories behind them as objects of worship. However, none of those worshippers seemed to end up like that frozen woman.

Furthermore, it was difficult to obtain objects on the level of divine items. That was clear even from the turbulent times players fought over them. Divine items were essentially legendary treasures leagues above the many other categories of items. Rumors often spread of people obtaining or finding one somewhere, but those rumors were always dubious at best—most often lies.

Former top players, including the Nine Wise Men, read countless reports and ran around the continent searching for divine items, but never saw so much as a hint of success. In the end, there were no confirmed reports of anyone obtaining one. Players concluded that divine items were only for NPCs, and that players could only handle items up to legendary status.

Currently, the only known divine items were the three wielded by the generals of the Three Great Kingdoms, which proved how divorced the items were from everyday existence. If a sect had worshipped one, word would’ve spread across the continent in the blink of an eye.

But what if the sect had obtained something abominable—something cursed—and worshipped that? The wicked power within, which opposed divine power as a rule, would’ve caused the divine power within a soul to awaken at once. But that didn’t match the girl’s symptoms, which had come on gradually.

These reasons led them to the conclusion that the girl’s stigmata had nothing to do with her budding religion. The condition was a gradual awakening of divine power, and only a divine item or something equivalent could cause that awakening.

One of those divine items was missing. I wonder if it’s related…?

The Hadean Mace, which Mira and company had theorized was used to gouge open a sealed oni coffin, was a divine item. At the time, the dark demon Barbatos had wielded it. The demon’s wicked power could have brought on the sudden appearance of stigmata before a gradual awakening took place.

Having reasoned this out so far, another question occurred to Mira. “By the way, I understand that the Demon’s Blessing is stigmata, but why do those who bear it meet such horrible ends?”

The symbols that emerged, and the demon that appeared upon a victim’s death, had led to the curse’s menacing nicknames. Yet it came from divine power. Why did it seem so closely linked to demons? That was what Mira wondered.

“The answer to that is probably simple. As I mentioned before, in extremely rare cases, people gain the ability to control divine power.”

From there, the Spirit King explained what was behind the demons’ rough actions. The stigmata’s appearance corresponded to divine power awakening within. Humans couldn’t control that state, so that power was released constantly. Demons—with their opposing power—would notice before long.

Even left alone, most stigmata victims would die, unable to withstand the manifested power. But once in a blue moon, someone harnessed that power. Even if they only controlled a fragment, that was still divine power—an existential threat to the wicked power of demons. As such, the Spirit King explained, demons would seek to dispose quickly of anyone they found who had the stigmata.

“I suppose that makes sense.”

The Spirit King’s theory was that the stigma associated with the divine stigmata came from the fact that it attracted demons. That certainly made logical sense, and Mira found her past experiences bore it out.

But that led to another question: why hadn’t the woman in suspended animation been hunted down in the same way? Back at the bottom floor of the Nebrapolis, Mira had encountered a demon plotting some evil scheme and defeated it. Nearby, the stigmatic woman sat in suspended animation, yet her body showed no sign of injury.

Hrmm. There must be some secret trick to that suspended-animation magic.

The most likely cause was Otherworldly Stasis itself. It had likely deceived the demon’s senses by cutting the woman off from the laws of nature.

Now fairly certain of this, Mira returned her focus to her conversation with the Spirit King and Martel.