As the founder of Magic Guide technology, Merlin was both the most powerful Magic Guide Master in history and the greatest.
He had not only opened an era, he had made enormous contributions to turning the tide of the war.
Dark would never be arrogant enough to think he could replace a figure like that.
Least of all on the "greatest" part, since at heart he was the sort of man who liked to sit under the eaves and watch the rain come down in sheets.
But becoming Professor Harvey's disciple? That, he was genuinely a little interested in.
As a necromancer, Professor Harvey was relatively well versed in the study of souls. That Soul-Body Centrifuge alone could achieve the same effect as the Soul-Sucker Spell.
And the Soul-Sucker Spell could effectively weaken the sealing function of the brain, making it far easier for a Major Sin to overflow.
Dark's own Soul-Sucker Spell was only entry level, yet it already lowered the overflow barrier for a Major Sin from 100 points to 95.
If he could learn a more advanced Soul-Sucker Spell from Professor Harvey, he could surely push the threshold for harvesting Major Sins lower still.
With Major Sins in ever shorter supply lately, a deeper mastery of the Soul-Sucker Spell had become especially important.
Besides, it was already April. Two months from now came the long holiday, three full months of it.
Once it began, he would have no choice but to leave the academy.
The world outside was more complicated, its web of relationships far wider, and far more likely to send a Major Sin spiraling out of control.
If he could bring that threshold down, his safety margin would improve considerably.
The problem was that he already had a teacher.
"My apologies," Dark said anyway. "I'd like very much to be your disciple, Professor, but my teacher, Claire Kate, would never allow it."
Professor Harvey didn't seem surprised to hear it. "Claire Kate, the Beast Sage?"
Dark smiled faintly and nodded. "That's right."
Professor Harvey rubbed his chin. "No wonder you already have a teacher. Then let's do it this way. Whatever you want to learn, you can still come ask me, simply as professor and student. How does that sound?"
Dark blinked. "Is that allowed?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Professor Harvey waved a hand. "Does a professor need a reason to teach a student?"
Dark knit his brows in thought, then asked, "Then, Professor, do you know the Soul-Sucker Spell?"
Professor Harvey nodded. "A minor trick."
"I have some understanding of my own about the Soul-Sucker Spell," Dark said slowly, "but I want to study it more deeply."
Professor Harvey's interest sparked at once. "Let's hear them."
So Dark laid out the entry-level Soul-Sucker Spell he had mastered.
In truth the Soul-Sucker Spell was extremely difficult to learn, nothing like the "minor trick" Professor Harvey had called it.
A normal Soul-Sucker Spell robbed a person of consciousness for a short while. At the same time the bond between soul and flesh loosened, and the substance of thought began to drift, making it easier to strip out of the brain.
The version Dark had mastered through the Holy Grail, however, let him choose whether or not to include the fainting effect at all.
It also spared the target any dazed aftermath, and the whole effect lasted no more than three minutes.
You could call it a weakened version. You could just as easily call it an improved one.
After all, it shaved away the negative effects of the Soul-Sucker Spell, which made it far better suited to formal experiments.
The longer Professor Harvey listened, the more astonished he grew. It was a while before he spoke. "So that's all it takes to strip out the drawbacks. Wait. You've been learning the Soul-Sucker Spell, don't tell me you're using it on yourself?"
Dark didn't bother hiding it. "That's right. I need it to separate out the power of emotion."
Professor Harvey shook his head immediately. "Then I can't just teach you any old way. Give me some time. Once I've refined the basic Soul-Sucker Spell using your method, I'll pass it on to you."
Delight stirred in Dark. "Thank you, Professor."
"No need to thank me," Professor Harvey said with a smile. "If anything, I'm the one profiting here. With a method like yours, my experiments get a great deal more convenient. Call it a fair exchange of courtesies."
Dark laughed. "I'll thank you all the same, Professor."
Professor Harvey burst out laughing. "Then I'll accept it."
…
Teacher and student talked on in high spirits.
Dark came away with a first impression of the professor's temperament.
Professor Harvey was actually rather endearing, fond of dry jokes that derailed the mood entirely.
If Claire hadn't gotten there first, he really would have been willing to become the man's disciple.
Perhaps once they knew each other better, he could talk it over with Claire?
Hmm…
Thirty minutes slipped past in the blink of an eye.
Dark was so absorbed in the discussion with Professor Harvey that he hadn't even found time to check on the changes to the Vampire Young Lady before Ophelia Brad's "corpse" twitched.
"Awake?"
Professor Harvey rose at once and crossed to Ophelia Brad's side in a few quick strides.
Ophelia Brad came around by degrees, though her limbs still seemed unwilling to obey her, and she couldn't get her mouth to form words.
Professor Harvey gave her a brief examination and smiled. "The soul and the body have bonded quite nicely, it seems. Don't rush yourself. Give your body a little more time to adjust.
"For the next three months at minimum, you must not touch any power connected to souls. Also, go to the infirmary and have Sister Carian mix you some Grimm Potion. One dose before bed each night, for at least a month. It will firm up the bond between your soul and your flesh."
After a while, Ophelia Brad could finally speak.
The first thing she did was thank Professor Harvey. Then she tried moving her limbs, slowly, and after roughly fifteen minutes she was at last able to get out of bed and walk.
By then Professor Silf and Professor Medea had come in as well.
The two of them thanked Professor Harvey in turn, then supported Ophelia Brad between them and left his dormitory.
Dark waved to Professor Harvey and followed them out.
Once through the door, Professor Medea's face was bright with joy, while Professor Silf's went stiff and stern.
They didn't leave the faculty dormitories after that. They turned straight into Professor Silf's quarters instead.
"All right. Now that she's alive again, I assume you've prepared yourself to accept your punishment."
Faced with Professor Silf's severe reprimand, a wry smile surfaced on Ophelia Brad's face.
Good and evil are both repaid in the end. If the reckoning hasn't come, it's only because the hour hasn't arrived.
Do wrong, and there's always a price.
Ophelia had made her peace with that. She lifted her head. "Professor, I'm willing to accept my punishment."
Professor Silf kept her face hard. "Good. From today, and until I say otherwise, you are forbidden to leave the academy. You may not go out under your true identity, you may not openly acknowledge Virt as your son, and you must keep your distance from him. Do you understand my meaning?"
Ophelia stared for a moment, then said with gratitude welling up in her, "I understand!"
"I'm not finished." Silf held out her hand. "Give me the 'Grand Prophecy.'"
Ophelia had no choice but to hand the Grand Prophecy over obediently.
Having confiscated the "instrument of the crime," Professor Silf asked, "Where did this Grand Prophecy come from?"
"A fellow inmate gave it to me," Ophelia Brad said.
"A fellow inmate?" Professor Silf's brows drew together.
"The previous Archbishop," Ophelia Brad explained.
Professor Silf's astonishment was immediate. "Him? He's still alive?"
Ophelia nodded. "Hale and hearty."
"When you escaped," Professor Silf asked, "did you see him?"
Ophelia thought it over carefully and shook her head, helpless. "No."
Professor Silf was silent for a long moment. "That isn't good news. If the previous Archbishop has escaped as well, the Holy Church may be facing an ordeal unlike anything it has known.
"No wonder they were so lukewarm about hunting you down. They've likely poured the overwhelming majority of their effort into recapturing him."
When she finished, she pressed her fingers to the space between her brows, a thread of weariness settling over her.
Dark had been listening quietly to the professors. Only now did his curiosity get the better of him. "Professor Silf, what did the Holy Church's previous Archbishop do? Why was he locked up in Bastia Prison?"
Professor Silf lowered her hand and delivered the answer flatly. "Treason. Selling out his country to the enemy."
Human lifespans are finite, so gaps in the succession of power are inevitable.
The Holy Church was no exception in this.
The previous Archbishop and the current Pope had once competed for the papal seat, and the outcome was plain enough.
Having lost that contest, the previous Archbishop couldn't stomach it. He secretly colluded with the Demon race, intending to assassinate the Pope and seize the position afterward.
The outcome of that was plain too. He was thrown into Bastia Prison.
Only, the Holy Church had always announced publicly that the previous Archbishop had been executed internally. Nobody expected he hadn't died at all.
There was clearly something fishy buried in that, but it was an internal matter of the Holy Church, and outsiders could hardly meddle.
Yet if the previous Archbishop truly had broken out, the matter might no longer be internal to the Holy Church at all.
…
In any case, once he had feasted on the entire helping of gossip, Dark Demon said his farewells to the professors and walked out of the faculty dormitories.
It was already six in the morning, and curfew had long since lifted.
Given that the final outcome hadn't been bad at all, Dark was in a decent mood.
He headed straight back to the Noble House tower, and once inside his dormitory he took out the Vampire Young Lady Magic Guide Card.
Compared to the gossip he'd just gorged on, this Vampire Young Lady hadn't smelled nearly as sweet, which was why it had taken him until now to remember to look.
"I wonder what's changed now that Ophelia Brad's soul has been drawn out of it?"
Sitting down at his experiment table, Dark set the Vampire Young Lady on the surface and pushed magic into it with one hand.
The card's face was unchanged, its interior still hidden behind red cloth like a drawn curtain.
Only once his magic flowed in did that curtain part slowly to either side, revealing the Vampire Young Lady's true appearance.
Dark looked, and fell briefly silent.
Then he let out a small sigh.
Perched on the corner of the table, DemiDevimon was already clutching his belly, cackling.
"She got smaller!"
It was still a Vampire Young Lady, but the vampire girl who had looked fifteen or sixteen was now a sweet little thing of seven or eight.
A straight demotion from JK to JS, in other words: from high schooler to grade schooler.
Thinking about it properly, though, it made sense.
After all, the core material used to forge the Vampire Young Lady had been Vampire Brad while he was still an infant.
Without Ophelia Brad's soul added in, the Magic Guide Card that came out at the start might well have been something like "Vampire Infant."
As things stood, this was pure profit.
The only issue was that the little sweetheart in the card didn't move at all. Clearly there was no awakened intelligence left in her.
"I wonder whether using a Major Sin Card could reawaken her intelligence?"
"In theory it should work. Let's try it first."
With that in mind, Dark summoned the Magic Guide Scribe at once and had it spend the time needed to summon Sylveon.
He handled Meowth himself.
With a four-star and a three-star on hand, he could perform a Sacrificial Summoning for a seven-star Magic Guide Spirit.
Sylveon and Meowth were a thousand times unwilling, but they dissolved into light all the same.
As the Sacrificial Summoning completed, the brand-new Vampire Young Lady climbed out of the summoning array.
She stood where she was, expressionless, somehow even more wooden than an ordinary Magic Guide Spirit.
Dark focused and studied her closely.
This Vampire Young Lady's hair was still cherry-blossom pink, which ought to be the mark of Lust.
Her facial contours had rounded out a little with the drop in age, though her skin remained pale, her eyes as vividly red as rubies, her ears sharper and more upswept than before.
Look closely and you'd find that every trace of Ophelia Brad had vanished from her face, leaving only the shadow of Vampire Vlad.
She had unquestionably inherited the striking looks of vampire nobility.
She wore an adorable l0lita dress, and the wings on her back were like tiny chicken wings, crumpled and curled up tight.
In her hands she clutched that black parasol with its fanged bone frame.
As cute as Sylveon.
…
"In the name of Dark Demon, Magic Guide Summon — 'Lust III'!"
To keep anything from going wrong while awakening her intelligence, Dark went straight for the best-matched option, Lust III.
The light of Lust bloomed all at once.
Bathed in that pink radiance, the Vampire Young Lady's long lashes trembled once.
Something stirred in Dark's mind. "!"
An instant later, the Major Sin crest that signified Lust lit up across the Vampire Young Lady's smooth forehead.
The little chicken wings at her back took the stimulation and swelled open with a snap, finally carrying a trace of vampiric majesty.
As the pink radiance was absorbed entirely by the Lust crest, a spark of life entered the Vampire Young Lady's blank pupils.
She blinked, and then, to Dark's complete surprise, burst out crying with a loud wail!
Just like a newborn infant.
…
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