Unruly Summon Chapter 35: Education (Patreon)

"It's a pleasure to meet you," said a priest in white robes that were surprisingly similar to Alexander's, except that the trimming and decoration was green instead of yellow. Also, his hat was somewhat more sensible, barely even a foot in height. "My name is Tony, and I'm the leader of our little group of students."

Behind him stood another priest with blue trimming and no hat at all, along with a trio of priestesses, one wearing green and the other two with blue. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that the colour of their trimming denoted rank within the church, rather than magical affinity. As far as I knew, a strong affinity for white magic was more or less a requirement to join the clergy in the first place.

... By that logic, perhaps the primary colour of their vestments denoted their affinity?

"Daniel," said the blue priest.

"Glenda," followed up the blue priestess next to him, who was holding his hand and looking rather nervous.

"Jane," said the next blue priestess.

"And I'm Bishop Johanna," finished up the green priestess, the only one to introduce herself with a title.

I did my best to commit the names to memory, despite the distraction of the towering cathedral behind them. It was one of the few buildings in the city that was more than a couple of stories tall, a gleaming construction of white brick and beautiful stained glass. The gods and goddesses of this world appeared to be highly respected. Hopefully. The alternative was graft and corruption on a rather terrifying level. Given the free-healing-for-all initiative and the behaviour of their archbishop, not to mention that the deities provably existed, and to paraphrase Wendy, weren't above being obvious about their existence, I was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the first option.

"I'm Thomas Smith," I said, introducing myself.

"Christine," said Christine, skipping her family name after her demotion.

"Minoru, nya!" exclaimed Minoru.

"You're nya-ing again," I pointed out.

"I'm trying to be disarmingly friendly, nya."

I could understand where she was coming from. From the way Glenda kept glancing at her, it was obvious that the demon was the cause of her nervousness. And while the others weren't outwardly nervous, that didn't mean they were comfortable.

"Why is there a demon with you?" demanded Johanna, putting voice to their concerns.

"Because it was part of the peace agreement," answered Christine.

"We're letting them keep tabs on our hero? Would they like to put a leash on him too?" she spat.

"I'm not your hero," I pointed out. "And she's here to learn Miraculum, the same as you."

The priestess gave me a look of obvious disapproval, but I ignored her. I had no intention of playing favourites.

"Please calm down," said Tony, a phrase which had approximately zero chance of actually calming anyone down, but did at least send Johanna into a sullen silence. "Now, what are the plans?"

"We'll head about four miles north, where Thomas will explain and cast Miraculum. Then we'll move east a few miles and you can attempt it. If you don't succeed after a few hours, Thomas will cast it, and either way, we'll return home."

"Sounds simple enough," said Tony.

"We're walking?" asked Jane. "That's four hours of travel time. I'm not certain I'm capable of that."

"King George has not seen fit to provide us with such niceties as carriages. I was hoping something had been prepared without our knowledge, but apparently that is not so. We can rest during the journey, and in the worst case, me and Thomas can carry one passenger each."

Given that body strengthening used mana, and there was no reason not to want the ability to bench press a cow with each arm, it surprised me how many mages hadn't learnt it. Thankfully, Jane was the only one to express any concern, so the eight of us set off.

————————————————————

"I fail to see the problem," said King George. He was rather grumpy, having his schedule messed around with when he was so busy, but an audience request from an archbishop wasn't something he could ignore.

"A threat has been made against the hero by an unknown being. We must act to protect him," repeated Archbishop Alexander.

"Yes, I heard your description the first time around. You, on the other hand, don't appear to comprehend me. I asked why you think this is a problem. Why must we protect him?"

Alexander frowned, having no idea what was running through the king's mind. "Because he holds the key to saving this world from the endlessly encroaching curse that afflicts it."

"That is true. However, that 'key' is nothing but a simple spell. Is he not teaching it to some of your church's most talented healers as we speak? You said the threat is not imminent, so he should not have a problem teaching the spell to others before it arrives. Once he has, what further purpose will he serve?"

Alexander's eyes opened wide as he realised the king understood the situation perfectly, and simply didn't care.

"We don't yet know if our healers can learn the spell. If they do, we don't yet know if they'll be capable of casting it. Even if they are, recall that the first experiment attracted a monster horde. Any number of unexpected situations may yet arise."

"That horde was doubtless some ploy of the demons, so they could 'rescue' our mages," dismissively claimed King George. "And while I'm aware heroes may eventually grow outside the bounds of common sense, Thomas has not yet done so. He is by no means the strongest individual in our kingdom. I very much hope that the church, which has gathered the strongest white mages of the continent under its banner, is not unable to replicate his feats."

"If it was easy, someone would have done it in the preceding centuries," pointed out Alexander. "But putting aside the question of necessity, since you are obviously unconvinced, is it not simply the decent thing to do to aid someone who is giving so much to aid us?"

"Aid us?" spat King George, driven to rage by that argument. His knuckles whitened as he clenched his fists. "That so-called 'hero' is a betrayer of us all! He promised to defend us from the demons, but then turned his back on us! Had he simply declared himself unwilling from the start, we could have explored other options or summoned another hero, but he did not. He strung Father along, made us dependent on him, then abandoned us. All for the sake of a single slave! For the life of a meaningless slave, he slew a king, as assuredly as if he'd tied the noose himself."

"So, you reveal your true thoughts at last," said Alexander, remaining calm in the face of the outburst. "There is assuredly more to the story than your rage permits you to articulate, but I see you will not be persuaded today, while the wound is still raw, so I shall not try. Instead, I beg you to consider what will happen if you remain on this path. Will you not drive the hero away, out of our lands? I would not have thought you wished to gift him to the demons."

King George sneered. "He's welcome to go. Of course, he won't be allowed to take his little harem with him; they are citizens of Ricousian, and they may not leave without my say so. I wonder what would happen to them without him?"

"Hostages, then."

"Perhaps, although you're wrong about not being able to persuade me. To keep them as hostages to prevent the other nations claiming our hero was my original intent, but the fact that you, the Archbishop of Odimere, are here on his behalf... The threat you speak of must be great indeed. I'm starting to think that I don't want it invading Ricousian on its way to him. Perhaps I will let them leave. I wonder how much of Ti'zharr would be destroyed, should he be attacked there?"

Alexander sighed in exasperation. "I see further conversation is useless. I shall be on my way, but before I leave, it would be remiss of me to not leave you with a brief sermon. Our gods teach that no life is meaningless, and I assure you that they will not differentiate between a king and a slave, except perhaps to hold the king to an even higher standard. And you, your highness, are a king. Today, you are defending yourself to me. One day, it will be to them. You would do well to keep that thought in mind as you rule."

"I did not permit you this audience to lecture me. Leave, now, or else you will find me less welcoming in the future."

The disappointed archbishop turned and hobbled out of the throne room, supported on the arm of another priest as he slowly returned to his carriage.

————————————————————

"The important thing to remember is that Miraculum heals, but it is not a healing spell. It purifies, but it is not a purification spell. First and foremost, it's a spell to save lives."

"Huh? But there's no-one here in any danger," pointed out Daniel.

"Is there not? Should I fail to cast the spell here, what will happen?"

"Nothing? Like I said, there's no-one else here."

"No, you're thinking too short-term. What will happen in the future?"

"I see," said Tony. "We are already suffering from chronic food shortages, but with the war repatriations... Next season, we'd see widespread famine."

"That seems a rather nebulous justification," said Glenda. "We couldn't claim to have saved anyone specific."

"No, we couldn't point at anyone specific, but in general, we'll be saving many lives," I continued to explain. "But despite the lack of specificity, the 'who' is actually quite important. Should there be a famine, who would be the victims? Think hard about what would happen, exactly."

"What do you mean?" asked Tony. "The poor?"

"Do you think? Would they simply let themselves starve to death while those able to afford food continued to eat? I can't imagine anyone doing that."

"They'd resort to theft... But there'd be nothing for them to steal," pondered Daniel.

"There would be civil war," said Tony flatly.

"No, there wouldn't," said Johanna. "The king wouldn't let things go that far. He would... He would..."

"Yes?" I encouraged. "Continue that thought, because you're spot on."

"Execution would become the punishment for almost any crime," suggested Jane.

"He'd repeal the slave treatment and welfare act," stated Daniel, aghast.

"Order the army to invade and slaughter entire settlements..." said Tony.

"And how does that make you feel?" I asked.

"Awful, but why does that matter?"

"Because that's the second big part of the image. It's a spell to prevent injustice. Every time I think of that image—of innocent people being killed, not through any fault of their own, but simply to reduce the number of mouths that must be fed—it makes me angry. That is not how the world should be. And that is the image for this spell. The certain knowledge—and the anger that comes with it—that the world should not be this way."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Christine flinch, realising exactly why I'd been able to cast the spell that first time.

"Bloody hell," opined Minoru. "That is not a normal spell image."

"Even if it works, once we've purified enough land to avoid mass starvation, won't the spell cease to be effective?" asked Daniel.

"That remains to be seen, but I don't believe so. After all, without solving the root of the problem, events will simply repeat themselves. As long as corrupt lands remain, monsters will be born. As long as monsters are born, the corruption will spread. As long as the corruption spreads, there will be innocent victims. The problem will not truly be solved until the corruption is completely erased."

"By that logic, why could this spell not be used as a weapon in the war? Demons were killing us by the thousand."

"I can't really say without trying it. I don't think it would work in a reasonable battle between soldiers. It would if the demons started indiscriminately slaughtering civilians, but even then, it's a white spell. It would have simply healed the civilians, not harmed the demons. You already have effective healing magic."

"Not on a scale this wide," pointed out Tony. "But given the expected mana cost, I don't think using it as a wide-area healing spell would be feasible."

"Okay, I think we all have the idea. Everyone has cast Magus Visus. Would you please cast Miraculum so we can observe?" asked Johanna.

"Yes," I agreed, employing a small amount of body strengthening on my throat. "Miraculum!"

As in my previous outdoor cast, there were no echoes, but the spell was nonetheless deafening. The surrounding fields of crops—wheat, unless my botany was rather worse than I thought—swayed in a non-existent wind as the magic wrapped around the stalks. Flocks of birds took off, startled.

My body strengthening didn't stop the spell sending me into a fit of coughing, but at least I didn't end up fertilising the area with showers of blood, so there was some improvement.

"Whu?!" went Daniel, staggering backward as if punched.

Glenda fell over, clamping her hands over her ears in such a rush that she lost balance.

"Woah, that felt... weird..." gasped Minoru, clutching at her stomach.

"You can't possibly expect us to cast that!" exclaimed Jane after a few moments of silence. "The amount of mana involved... the control you'd need... There's no way!"

Tony and Johanna pulled complicated expressions. While they hadn't reacted as strongly as the three green-trimmed members of their group—who I was starting to suspect were lower ranked—they were still obviously troubled by the weight of the spell.

"No individual has the mana capacity of a hero, and we expected this to require a ritual casting from the beginning," said Tony. "There's nothing for it but to try."

"With the members we have here, it's useless," said Johanna, shaking her head. "Even the five of us combined don't have the capacity."

"No, we have to try!" exclaimed Daniel.

"Yes, it's too soon to give up," agreed Glenda. "Even if we don't have the mana, we can work on our image. We'll know when we've got it."

"Yes, because you'll fall into a coma," pointed out Johanna.

"It's what I intend to do," said Minoru.

Johanna glared at her.

"Unless everyone wants to give up, we'll stick to the plan," said Christine.

"Oh, great, more walking," muttered Jane.