Chapter 200 - A conversation for something very important

Chapter 200 - A conversation for something very important: Resurrection

Death Mage 200 – A conversation for something very important

Murakami’s group, who had agreed to Rodcorte’s request to kill Vandalieu, had a daily routine of scouting his location with their Target Radars, which detected masses of over 100,000,000 death-attribute Mana.

Rodcorte had created the Target Radar ability based on the assumption that nobody other than Vandalieu possessed death-attribute Mana. It was an excellent ability that allowed the user to concentrate and sense which direction the source of death-attribute Mana was and how far away it was.

However, with Legion’s appearance, Vandalieu’s creation of large death-attribute devices (such as the devices that automatically created Undead in the former Scylla territory) and the development of Demon King Familiars, there were now more sources of death-attribute Mana.

On top of that, Vandalieu used Legion’s Teleportation to travel between various places. Thus, Murakami’s group had bee unable to tell which of the responses from their Target Radars was created by Vandalieu.

Thus Murakami had requested that Rodcorte make them able to see the quantity of death-attribute Mana. Though Rodcorte hadn’t been able to allow them to see exact numbers, he had improved the ability to allow them to tell which source of Mana was the greatest. With this, they had bee able to tell where Vandalieu was.

“… So, he’s staying in the Alcrem Duchy now,” Murakami murmured, checking his handmade map and paring it to the death-attribute Mana source that he could sense.

The map contained the twelve duchies of the Orbaume Kingdom as well as the central region that contained the royal capital. However, the only things marked on it were the boundaries between the duchies, the cities and the main highways; it was a very rough map pared to the maps available on Earth or in Origin.

However, it was a map created by the ‘Sylphid’ Misa Anderson, who had used her ability to turn her body into gas to infiltrate noblemen’s mansions and large panies to copy their maps.

“That’s unexpected. I was sure that he would choose either the Birgitt Duchy because it’s the southernmost among the Duchies along the mountain range, or the Jahan Duchy because it’s the farthest,” said Misa.

Duke Birgitt was a Beast-person, and Duke Jahan was a Titan.

The Alcrem Duchy was one of the northernmost duchies in the Orbaume Kingdom; it was located just east of the Sauron Duchy. It didn’t have a particularly large population of Vida’s races, nor was it particularly influential within the nation.

Regardless of what Vandalieu was doing, Misa couldn’t understand why he had chosen the Alcrem Duchy.

“The Birgitt Duchy is just east of the Farzon Duchy, right? Where the guy who killed his mom, Heinz, apparently is. It looks like he’s avoiding him, doesn’t it? Jeez, first ‘Metamorph’ and now Vandalieu, are parents really that important? To us, the parents in worlds that we’re reincarnated in are just victims of our brood parasitism,” the ‘Odin’ Akira Hazamada said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t understand this way of thinking.

Misa frowned at his parison of their reincarnation to cuckoos laying their eggs in other birds’ nests. “We don’t really need to sympathize with them, you know,” she said. “Getting back on-topic, even if that’s the reason he didn’t choose the Birgitt Duchy, why did he choose the Alcrem Duchy?”

“Who knows. Maybe there’s some reason that we don’t know about? Maybe there’s a Devil’s Nest or Dungeon in the Alcrem Duchy that spawns Undead-type monsters frequently, or maybe the Alcrem Duchy is part of the territory of one of his Vampire subordinates,” said Akira, shrugging.

“Stop messing around –” Misa began.

“He’s messing around, but it’s true that there’s no point in trying to figure it out here,” said Murakami, interrupting her. “Rodcorte’s information is perfect when it es to human society, but it’s useless for everything else. On top of that, it’s not like we’ve even been given that information… There’s a limit to how much we can hear each time we use Familiar Spirit Descent. And we can’t use it over and over without drawing a lot of attention to ourselves,” he pointed out. “We’re heading to the Alcrem Duchy tomorrow. He’s been in the Alcrem Duchy for ten days. He’s returned to the inside of the Boundary Mountain Range once, but went back after just a few hours. He’s probably still intending to do something there. Rodcorte’s apparently still talking to this world’s gods or something, so there’s no information for us, but… it’s a waste of time for us to sit still and wait until it’s all over.”

“You’re right,” Misa agreed. “It’ll take us a month to reach the Alcrem Duchy from here, even if we take the side road… Wait,” she said suddenly. “The signal’s suddenly moved south.”

“Yeah, I can sense it too. It’s … Umm, considering our current location, the Farzon Duchy,” said Akira, pointing to the signal’s location on the map. “But why is it that we can’t tell his height, whether he’s above or below us?”

“It’s obvious, right?” Murakami said, grimacing. “He’s in a special space where there is no up or down, the inside of a Dungeon. But… why did he Teleport to the inside of a Dungeon all of a sudden? In the Farzon Duchy at that, even though he hasn’t ever been there as far as we know. I don’t think it’s very likely that he’s gone to avenge his mother.”

Murakami did not know the exact location of the Dungeon that the Five-colored Blades were facing; he was oblivious to the fact that his last words were actually a little close to the truth.

Curatos, the god of records, was bewildered.

Heinz was now on the 65th floor, on the second battle against Vandalieu. Curatos had inputted the most recent information regarding Vandalieu in order to create the fake Vandalieu for this trial.

And Heinz’s party had begun trying to clear the 65th floor, but… there was something strange about the fake Vandalieu’s movements.

“… What is the meaning of this? The copies I have created so far may have had some flaws, but they never failed to fulfil their function,” he muttered to himself.

Utterly perplexed, he checked the program that he had executed, but no matter how many times he looked through it, he could not find any problems.

But the reality was that the copy of Vandalieu was continuing to move in a way that had not been planned.

“This… cannot be helped. I must take the copy down and restart it,” Curatos decided, executing a mand that would terminate the copy.

But the copy of Vandalieu did not disappear.

Curatos executed the mand twice, three times, but it had no effect.

“Impossible! No matter how elaborate the copies are, they are reproductions based on my records; there is no way that they can disobey my will… Could it be that it is not my program that is causing the copy’s movements?!” he shouted in astonishment.

He wasn’t the only one; the Five-colored Blades were as bewildered as he was.

Vandalieu was making no effort to fight them at all.

What is he thinking? Edgar wondered as he continued fighting off against the ‘King Slayer’ Sleygar, who was moving about the battlefield freely, trying to take the Five-colored Blades’ heads.

On the 50th floor, Vandalieu had stood behind Gubamon and Ternecia, unleashing spells and attacks with the Demon King’s fragments.