My brother sighed deeply and then said to me. “Apologies, Reines, but could you help me take a look?”

“Hmm?”

Though I thought it was a bother, I did as he said and activated my Mystic Eyes. Ah, I’d have to take eye drops later, won’t I? Not only would it hurt like hell, but I also couldn’t just walk around the village with bright red eyes.

The Mana of the area appeared immediately. The magical energy here was more active than in the city, and swirled around the graveyard like the mist that would appear in a cheap horror movie.

“There seems to be nothing weird about it. Aren’t graveyards usually like this?”

“Don’t just look at one place, but at the bigger picture. Concentrate on your head and let your focus blur. Don’t just use your Mystic Eyes to look at it, but imagine that you’re a different entity, controlling yourself as well as your Mystic Eyes.”

“Hey, hey, why did it suddenly become a lesson?”

I complained, but did as he said. I squinted and tried to imagine another self. I suppose this was very basic magecraft, so there was no reason why I couldn’t do it. But if I needed to do it at the same time as activating my Mystic eyes, it required a bit more concentration.

What I saw started to change.

…What was even going on?

I frowned.

The spirits that the girl in the hood— Gray had talked about were mostly formed from the will of the dead. You could say that they were like the habits of the dead that had been engraved into the world. Usually, they dissipated quite quickly, but cases where they stayed for a long time because of the land or some magic-imbued object also occurred sometimes. This is the reason why haunted houses came about. Though, my countrymen like ghosts a bit too much, so this would cause the price of those properties to go up.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, how do I say this… When you look at it like this, the spirits are condensed, but also very [diluted]. ”

I answered my brother, confused by what I saw. Though the magical energy was very concentrated, and there were indeed traces of their will, but they were all blurry. The spirits could hardly be differentiated from the magical energy in the area. They seemed to combine into wisps of smoke.

Even so, I could feel a weird force that was different from pure magical energy.

Necromancy was not my strong suit, so I couldn’t put what I saw in words, but this sort of thing stimulated my curiosity as a mage.

It was as if this entire graveyard was a giant undead spirit. Was this the nature of Blackmore Graveyard? In the midst of it, a couple of threads of light shot out.

Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files: The Atlas Contract; Chapter 2, Part 2