There was a point that I also doubted in Tiryum’s suspicion.

‘Kiriye keeps using the phrase ‘before’.’

And he spoke about Siena as if he had already met her. He held a peculiar resentment towards her, as if he had suffered from her ‘before’ just like someone who had encountered her.

It was strange to attribute that anger solely to the fact that his brother, Kierran, was exposed for treason and driven out to Linstead.

‘Could it be a regression?’

Before I knew it, I, too, might have been possessed by Elizabeth Kitten’s body in this strange world.

「Hmm. Just saying, ‘before’ is a bit…」

Zero said so only for me to hear. I ignored it.

‘Yes, it’s not just saying. You mistakenly brought an innocent person like me here.’

「… I was wrong.」

Zero fell silent. Whether I said anything or not, I wanted to understand the zombie situation assuming that Kiriye had regressed.

‘If he regressed, the rapid deterioration of this entire zombie situation makes sense.’

The collapse of the original work was unbelievably sudden. Siena, who was murdered. Kiriye, who intended to brutally kill even the remaining survivors, using Siena as a pawn.

“Tiryum.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Was Tiryum’s son also someone who knew alchemy that turns the living into dead flesh dolls like zombies?”

In response to my question, Tiryum nodded.

“Quena does not teach disgusting ways to harm people. There were those who aspired to walk the path of such a disciple, but… they were strictly governed by national law.”

It was a story of killing everyone. Well, such alchemy is a shortcut to mess up society.

“Then Kiriye Waray did not learn such things from your son.”

“That’s right. I could have taught him general knowledge about magic. But, risking my name, honor, and soul, I can dare to swear… my son was not a reckless person teaching alchemy to kill people.”

Tiryum’s wrinkled and weathered skin shed tears along its contours. Regret for not stopping his son.

She missed her already dead son, and resentment continued as she did not stop talking.

“It happened a few years ago. The traveling merchant who used to come as usual didn’t come for a month. Checking for something strange, a great calamity occurred. Realizing that something had happened to my son, I immediately sought a guide to the empire and rushed there. After several days and nights of investigation, the grim result. The news I faced was horrifying.”

Tiryum could meet his son. Only for a very brief moment. At the end of the investigation, the son she met was under a disgusting and bizarre curse, rotting away.

“I still remember the last words my son left.”

She said. As soon as she saw her mother, her son screamed in agony like a young child.

〈”Mother! Mother!”〉
〈…What in the world. Son, what happened to you? Who made you so miserable? Weren’t you doing well? What is this, what in the world…〉

“The decaying body of my son emitted a stench that words could not describe. Yes, now that I think about it, it was similar to the smell of a corpse. Perhaps my son was the first experiment subject of that child Kiriye. At the time, I didn’t know.”

Incomplete patterns were wriggling above the son’s head. Tiryum immediately recognized that it was the work of a sorcerer.

〈Sorcerer’s pattern…? Who did this? Could there be a frightening sorcerer within the empire? Who committed such dreadful acts?〉

“A curse that tormented my son emanated from the red pattern and was gnawing at his life. It was an immature and crude creation, so my son was suffocating to death in a sea of agony.”

Tiryum couldn’t save her son.

No matter how terrible the sorcery was, usually, they study the countermeasures together for inheritance. The overflowing red pattern was a type that had never been seen before, and there was simply no way to figure out the countermeasure.

“I… found it strange. That sorcery was really oddly not made purely from magical knowledge. It was a hybrid created by mixing something else powerful. I couldn’t unravel that sorcery. I just had to wait for my son to die in pain.”

The wailing of the elderly sorceress spread. Digging into the painful memories of the departed was not enjoyable. Everyone maintained a silent silence.

In this passage, Zero perked up his ears.

「…I’ve been suspicious of this from the beginning. Do you think I might be missing something?」

‘Exactly.’

I also found that part strange.

‘…Siena told me.’

That Kiriye completed the alchemy because he stole something different from ‘before.’ In ancient times, he had to destroy what the gods had put in place for other humans, so he needed to steal it…

While saying that, she also said that I might have already seen it.

‘Red status window. Kiriye accessed with an unreadable virus.’

Is all of this just a coincidence?

Even the newly appointed Zero couldn’t read the zombie sorcery situation of Kiriye, and it seemed strange that even the people of this world were utilizing the status window through a strange route.

‘If Kiriye Waray’s status window authority is possible because of the power he stole…’