An Important Thing For When You Need Something Done

Receiving the scroll from Soto, I immediately learned [Resurrection].

An hour later Narikin learned it as well, and then another hour after that, Rokufa finished learning it too.

[Minor Replication] really is broken. With just a single ultra-expensive scroll worth billions of DP, it basically becomes unlimited-use.

I also had to properly give Leona a week of freedom from Soto. I keep my promises.

"So yeah, Soto. I want you to stay away from Leona for about a week."

"And why exactly do I have to go along with something Papa decided on his own in a deal?"

She turned me down with a beaming smile.

Yeah, well, she's not wrong.

"Because Leona's exhausted. Honestly, it's starting to get kind of pitiful."

"If Leona-san's exhausted, then that just means I should heal her with even more of my love, right!"

"Soto. There's this thing called 'rebound soreness' with massages, you know? If you keep going too much, it actually ends up being bad for the body."

"My love is organic and good for the body, so it's fine!!"

So I have to persuade this…

But Soto understands too. Once we've made a deal, we should give Leona a week of rest. And Leona's been asking for time off in one way or another, so Soto herself isn't against letting her rest for Leona's sake.

That's why this is just her fussing to squeeze some extra compensation out of me.

… Alright then. I'll pay up. Since I'm asking a favor, I was prepared to pay a price on my end too.

"… I've got a pair of socks here. How about we settle it with these?"

"Oh? But I'm not going to agree for just any old socks, you know? We're talking one whole week here, one week. I need appropriate compensation."

"These are Saintess Alka's socks."

"!!"

Hook, line, and sinker. I'd already asked the Saintess for them, saying, 'As payment for teaching me the magic, I'll need a piece of clothing the Saintess is wearing.'

It wasn't a lie. I did need them for this negotiation.

… I told her socks would be enough, but she almost tried to hand me a really expensive-looking robe instead. Turning that down and insisting I only needed socks was actually the harder part.

"S-Saintess' socks, huh. But, you know… my girlfriend Leona-san is the First Saintess too, right?"

"Taste test."

"Eh?"

"A taste test… how about it? You let Leona do whatever she wants for a week, then you compare the socks she wears that whole time with these current Saintess socks. Well? You are curious, aren't you?"

"You're good, Papa! Alright, deal!"

I handed Alka's socks over to Soto.

For her part, Soto's the type to keep her promises. Leona, I've kept my end of the bargain for you. You might wind up with some kind of new collar on you, though.

"Yep, top-tier! As expected of Papa!!"

"Hahaha. I still don't really get it."

"Soto really does like incomprehensible things, doesn't she?"

"Eh? Mama understands it, right? I mean, considering Papa's—"

"Soto. I'll give you my socks too. Look, angel socks."

"Yaaay!!"

… Is that what parent-child conversations are supposed to be like? … Eh, whatever.

Anyway, now that we'd learned [Resurrection], we needed to figure out the whole soul issue before actually casting it on the late Ronesky. His own soul has probably already been taken away.

"… Come to think of it, what happens when you die?"

"Eh? Who knows? I've never died. You're the one who's died, Kehma."

"No, not like that. I mean what actually happens to the soul when you really die. I'm wondering if there's something like heaven or whatever."

"Heaven…? Never heard of it."

… Guess it'd be better asking someone else how that kind of thing's handled.

"Haku-neesama, do you know what happens to souls? I want to know more about resurrection of the dead."

"Did someone die? Souls disappear really quickly, so if you don't immediately protect them with a barrier, resurrection magic won't succeed. You can see souls themselves if you have a God-Eye-type skill."

"Got it. You can't like, call back the soul of someone who's already died?"

"You mean Summon? If they died in a dungeon, the dungeon absorbs them, so there's a chance they could appear as a Ghost."

"Thanks, Haku-neesama."

Rokuko asked Haku-san. Short messages like that really did feel like chatting.

"So yeah, apparently if you have a God-Eye-type skill, you can see souls. And they disappear pretty fast."

"So they just scatter, huh. Doesn't sound like there's much of an afterlife."

"If you die in a dungeon, the dungeon absorbs you, she said. So basically, it all just ends up in our stomachs, right?"

In a sense, maybe the dungeon's belly is what counts as heaven.

… If that's the case, then there's a decent chance the resurrection done by the former Pope, Core No. 10, was actually pretty proper.

The procedure would be:

1. The deceased is an adventurer who died inside dungeon territory managed by Core No. 10. First, repair the corpse.
2. Summon their Ghost.
3. Tie the Ghost to the repaired body and resurrect them.

Core No. 10 was specifically an undead-type dungeon core. Being able to deliberately call out the person's own Ghost would've been well within his capabilities.

Here's the important part: if, like with us and Haku-san, the town itself was also part of the "dungeon territory managed by Core No. 10" part, then people who died inside town would be included too.

That would mean a pretty wide range of people were "resurrectable in an almost complete state".

"… Maybe he was doing a better job resurrecting people than I thought."

"Ah, but you know? If it's a Ghost, then it's still your own monster, right? In an emergency, you can always force it to obey your orders."

"True. You could use that as some kind of 'plant' for later."

On top of that, it doesn't always succeed perfectly — there are times when it fails.

There were apparently even cases where people lost their memories…

Yeah, that's pretty convenient in all kinds of ways. I'm starting to feel like even we could pull this off.

Huh? I thought this was an impossible demand, but it actually isn't, is it??

"… It really is easy once you ask a knowledgeable person, huh."

"If you can ask the right knowledgeable person. Normally, people can't just go and ask like this."

This really drove home how important connections are when humans want to accomplish something.

Oh, right. I should give Haku-san something in return too.

"… Should I send her Rokuko's socks?"

"Kehma? Haku-neesama isn't Soto, you know?"

… Ah. Whoops.