Feeling Ellie's gaze on her, Marilou was rather surprised.
Surely she didn't think Marilou would know a way to break it.
Marilou thought about it briefly. Her own understanding of magic cores stopped at the stage of destroy the core and the monster dies; she had nothing new to add.
"Destroy the core... a monster that can't be killed..."
Nightingale murmured it to herself.
"Just so. It's the first time I've met one as well. If any of you have ideas, please say so."
Ellie kept the conversation going easily, and those around her considered it.
Miss Judgement, who had spoken earlier, chose her words. "I have in fact seen a similar description in the old books. It should be death-aligned Ancient Magic, from the previous age."
"Ancient Magic, of all things?"
Ellie clearly knew something of the traces of Ancient Magic and showed no surprise at it; if anything she sounded curious.
"If it is Ancient Magic, there's one thing I find strange. Could it manage something on the scale of a large beast tide? The magic beasts I saw with that ability numbered several hundred at the least."
"In theory it is possible. Although from your description, I suspect there may be one magic beast in command of Ancient Magic contaminating the servants around it. I have seen that situation before, in the ruins."
Miss Judgement pinched her chin, and the mask swayed faintly.
"I don't think it's necessarily Ancient Magic. It could be caused by some token, or else you destroyed some ruin, and an afterimage escaping from it is also possible."
Raven weighed her words, a card hooked over her fingers.
"I have no particular impression of this. Though I have indeed heard of a similar phenomenon on the sea floor.
"Deep down there is a kind of fish that cannot be killed. However you kill them, they seem to come back."
Nightingale said it with a touch of pleasure coloring her brow.
Beside her the Sun, Marilou, bit her lip. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Very well. Let us leave the subject, then. Thank you all for your suggestions."
Ellie closed the topic at the right moment, and those around her stayed in their seats.
Marilou's gaze came to rest on Nightingale, and the mist wrapped around Nightingale showed not the slightest sign of thinning.
There was simply no seeing through it to what any of them looked like, and the pendant at her chest gave no reaction either.
The Assembly went on in that eerie atmosphere, and listening to what was said, Marilou gradually formed a basic guess about this session's members.
Miss Judgement was a judge who tried criminals somewhere.
Miss Justice she wasn't sure about, whether she was of the Kingdom, but she could plainly feel the woman was familiar with the battlefield and with certain Kingdom affairs.
Judging by the detail she gave about fighting, she couldn't be a mercenary; a battlefield mercenary could never know material that precise. Marilou guessed she must hold some post in an army to know it so clearly.
Then there was Miss Star, who was very familiar with the ocean. She should be someone from the coast, or possibly of a sea-dwelling race.
As for the Hanged Man who had drawn her here, Miss Crow simply chaired the Assembly throughout in the ordinary way and gave away very few clues about her identity.
Everyone... appeared to hold a post of some kind, and that wasn't much like the Witches' Assembly Marilou had imagined.
At first she had assumed they'd be professional wreckers at the least, or dangerous terrorists.
Plotting the destruction of the world. And what they actually discussed came down to how to grow stronger and how to acquire new knowledge.
"I have a question."
Marilou raised her hand, and the others' eyes came over.
"If I want to buy an item, how does one go about it at the Assembly?"
Marilou asked the question that mattered to her, and the others reacted in various ways.
Miss Judgement was quickest to respond.
"You may state the item you want and then give a price. If it suits, someone will take your commission, though when you might actually receive the thing is uncertain.
"If it is an item already in hand, you may pay a deposit first, and the chair on rotation will supervise the transaction."
"I see. Thank you."
Marilou nodded. Understanding how to purchase items would be a great help to her in trading for things later.
As matters stood the world was very unsettled, and it would be better to lay hold of more ways to stay alive.
With Marilou's question, the Assembly gradually came toward its close.
In the final stage they discussed how to look for their little sister, and even Marilou offered the suggestion of hunting for clues in the old books.
Then a flash of white light passed, and Marilou was back on the bed where she had been lying. She sat slowly up, her head aching badly from all that upheaval.
Attending the Assembly consumed a great deal of energy in its way, and a headache was getting off lightly.
Rubbing her swollen temples, Marilou raised her head and looked out of the window, where clear moonlight was laying its white glow quietly across the ground.
She got up, found a cup of milk, sat down on the bed, and thought back over what Miss Judgement had said, finding it quite astonishing.
Ancient Magic... it sounded like something formidable.
To be able to bring dead monsters back to life, or to make a monster impossible to kill by any simple means.
It was nothing at all like the descriptions Marilou had read in the magic books.
And at that same moment, in a certain courtyard, Ellie was turning over the same question.
"This business of Ancient Magic really is spreading further and further. It can't only be the ripple from a witch waking."
Ellie ran a hand along a fire-red greatsword, her expression anything but easy. With her on the battlefield, even monsters that revived wouldn't much affect the front.
But it probably wouldn't be long before similar monster incursions started playing out inside the Kingdom, and if they couldn't be killed, it would be thornier still...
KNOCK—
The door was rapped lightly, and a servant holding a garment appeared at the doorway.
Ellie pulled the door open soon enough.
"My lady, this is the formal dress you had me press. Will you be wearing it tomorrow?"
Ellie blanked for a moment, then remembered the business of going home for the family banquet, and simply took the dress and nodded.
"Thank you for the trouble, Miss Sieg."
"You're too kind, my lady. Good night."
Sieg pulled the door shut, and inside the room Ellie stood holding the dress.
Her mind went back to what her younger sister Viya looked like. She had forgotten the circumstances of the last time she saw her.
She'd heard that while she was away, Viya had taken a girl to wife.
And she still hadn't seen what she looked like~
***
Morning. A thread of sunlight fell across her face, Marilou slept in, and someone pushed the door open.
Seeing Marilou fast asleep, Viya shook her by the arm.
"Time to go. The road home is rather long, and we're setting out by carriage today."
Marilou opened her eyes blearily and found herself looking at a Viya fully dressed and ready.
Viya was wearing an immaculate formal dress today, her hair combed without a strand out of place.
Then Marilou looked down at herself. Eh, where were her clothes?