Reincarnated as the Villainess's attendant

"Well then. He certainly won't be of much help for a bit."

Burushi looked between the younger boy and his dead father and sighed before turning away.

"Say – if you don't mind, those here need to be buried and I am a wind magician, how about Zoemi will give us the sentinels and I will get Devios back to his room and stay there just in case he would freak out when he wakes up?"

Miriette, who didn't seem to handle corpses particularly well spoke up and approached Zoemi, taking the blue-haired boy off of his hands as her body glowed green with the wind enchantments.

"That's a very good idea. Little ones who are free, my friends need a little bit more protection here. Three of you, if you may."

The black-haired boy didn't protest at all as he didn't want Miriette to stay around something that made her so uncomfortable, and after nodding at her words, he called out in an unspecified direction.

"(Of course!)"

"(I was trying to dig under that barrier but it goes down too... Okay.)"

"(Sure~)"

It took no time at all for three murky-black spheres to appear in front of him and cheer out carefree and cheerful despite the situation.

The three of them then split up and dived into the shadows of Miriette, Burushi, and Devios without the need for another order.

"Don't do anything else without me, okay?"

Miriette took a step towards the castle but then she turned around and asked in a worried voice.

"I wouldn't even think about something like that."

Zoemi assured her and with that, she left.

"..."

"..."

The black-haired boy and the blond girl looked at the helmet-wearing girl until she disappeared and then both faced each other in silence.

"If you wanted to, you could ask your sentinels to properly bury them."

Burushi pointed out in a calm voice.

"True. I might do it now though."

Zoemi nodded, equally calm.

"As a healer, I need to ask you... since you can copy the magic of other magicians, does your repertoire includes necromancy? You talked about a necromancer once... say. This is just my past life of playing games in between studying and sleeping speaking but... You wouldn't want to make the barbarians think that they messed up their plans by resurrecting those people here, would you?"

Burushi asked, looking straight into Zoemi's eyes.

"What kind of games were you playing? Does otome games get that dark?"

Zoemi smirked and asked back.

"Much, much darker sometimes. So?"

The blond girl nodded and certainly didn't give up on her inquiry.

"Well, since it wouldn't be a real resurrection but rather creating a corpse puppet, Devios would certainly hate me for that... my new mother probably would too... For now, I will try to just create as many sentinels as possible. I haven't created a single new one since I woke up from the coma. Those little ones might be enough to overwhelm the barbarians."

"Ah. True. Now I feel stupid for jumping straight into the conclusion about necromancy."

Zoemi said pointing out another route and Burushi raised her brows and laughed in relief.

|Just in case. Little ones, can you create more sentinels like yourselves?|

"(Sorry master – impossible.)"

"(Nope.)"

Before actually doing it himself, the black-haired boy thought a question to his resident sentinels and both of them gave him a negative answer.

"I see. Well then. Burushi, I will be counting on you to watch over me just in case. Little ones, please have an ice pack ready for me."

"Sure."

"(Okay.)"

"(Don't worry master~!)"

Zoemi nodded and straightened his back, just to then immediately sat down in preparation, making sure that both the Burushi and his sentinels had his back.

"I'm crossing my fingers so that you will make enough to just cover the entire territory – you have enough mana, right?"

"Hmhm~"

The blond girl asked with a soft smile, and Zoemi smiled back and nodded.

"Well then... Sentinel."

The black-haired boy focused on the spell and spoke up the incantation as the mana within him began to move... but then his concetration broke for just a split of second as he though it would be better to have time magic used on the corpses and actually bring them back...

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

All of a sudden, influenced by the mere thought about time magic, a massive clock appeared behind Zoemi and...!

...and his world simply exploded into a blinding platinum pain just before he lost conscience withouth witnessing the birth of a new type of sentinels.

--------

Zoemi found himself in the world of dancing shadows, but... all of them were standing completely still.

The motionless shadows were surrounding him and one other shadow, which was darker and had a much more threatening aura surrounding it than all the others combined.

|What is happening...?|

The black-haired boy thought and his thoughts resounded through the murky-black world.

|You should stop using magic.|

|HUH?!|

Zoemi tensed up as the threatening shadow actually moved and a voice sounding exactly the same as his own spoke to him.

The threatening shadow looked like a bear, not an animal, but rather a stuffed toy, only much, much bigger than normal.

|Hold on...! You are the original personality living within me, aren't you?! What is going on!? What happened here?! Why did everything stop? Why can't I reach out for any of those?!|

Zoemi tensed up and tried to move closer towards the massive shadow of a toy bear, or at least reach towards another shadow, but found himself unable to do anything.

|Yes, I am the original personality. The original Zoemi. And this is the world how I see it. A world that should have never been open to you.|

The massive shadow tilted his large head and answered in a monotone voice – well, instead of answering, he was just saying whatever he wanted.

|What are you talking about?!|

Zoemi shook his head and frowned.

What kind of bullshit was that?

He should never see the world of dancing shadows? He should stop using magic?

But he was a magician!

And he was in a dire situation that required him to use magic to protect himself and the people he cared about!