Chapter 177

Cold flames and unfamiliar demonic beasts with white fur that came rushing like a storm from the north.

The flames stole away the warmth of all living beings in the vicinity simply by existing,

And the demonic beasts destroyed everything in front of them, whether people, animals, or vegetation.

Terrible things crossing over the high and treacherous mountain ranges of Dikenter and moving south.

Many villages and cities disappeared, and no life that had set foot on this land could survive the onrushing disaster.

People's lamentations and requests to explain this phenomenon poured in.

In response, the Central Temple broke its long silence and appeared. They defined this phenomenon as follows:

[This is divine punishment.

Divine wrath, divine resentment, divine lamentation.

As the deity seeks to destroy the world due to the arrogance and pride of humans on earth, sending down such trials,

one must purify body and mind, humbly accept death, and bear the deity's anger.]

The people who heard the Central Temple's declaration were enraged.

What kind of being was this deity to punish innocent people?

But the demonic beasts were rushing in at too rapid a pace for them to continue being angry.

In the blink of an eye, forests and fields froze and became desolate, and in the space of a single breath, dozens of farmhouses and small villages were destroyed by demonic beasts.

How far would this tragedy reach tomorrow?

The day after tomorrow, and the day after that, how far would it come?

The people who had reached this point were divided into three groups.

Some fled. They packed their belongings, abandoned everything, and left their villages. Even if those demonic beasts came to the ends of this land, they wanted to live even a little longer.

Even if it was only for a single day.

Some faithfully believed the temple's proclamation.

They neither left their villages nor cities, reflecting on their lives and using their remaining time preciously.

People who lived each day even if their houses might collapse tomorrow and the fields they tended might burn.

With hearts close to resignation, they loved and pitied their families and neighbors as if each moment were their last.

They were people who lamented the grace period that might not last much longer.

The last remaining people abandoned their deity.

No, they thought their deity had abandoned them.

They had always prayed earnestly. Even though life was harsh, they never went empty-handed when going to the temple to pray.

They hadn't asked for much. They only wished for tomorrow to be smooth, for autumn's harvest to be abundant, for people they knew to be healthy.

Had that been such an presumptuous act?

Had it been so arrogant as to deserve being frozen wholesale and left to be torn apart by hordes of demonic beasts?

They had not abandoned their deity.

The deity had abandoned humans first.

People who didn't know where to direct their hearts filled with resentment and anger.

Sweet temptation came precisely at that moment.

-The deity does nothing for you. Far from rewarding you for living earnestly, it burns the world under the pretext of divine wrath. The deity you believed in is merely an existence created to exploit humans.

-Even if such an existence is revered as a great deity, humans will only tremble at a single temple, a single offering. Such a thing is not a deity but a tyrant. An absolute tyrant in the realm of ideas that can neither be damaged nor harmed. The deity's hands, ruling at the end of everyone's faith and prayers, must surely be stained with the blood of pitiful and innocent believers.

-We will tell you. We will make you believe. Our deity, whom the world calls a demon but who gives infinite blessings to believers! Promising the harvest of your wheat fields, healing your old and sick horse - these are simple matters for the one we serve. Not just such small wishes, but greater aspirations are possible too. If you have the price to exchange for your wish.

The strangers showed miracles of healing sick livestock and reviving withered fruit trees,

And people witnessed what were called miracles before their eyes and changed the object of their faith.

Thus, the cult's influence, having absorbed people who struggled with resentment toward their deity, grew frighteningly.

The heretics desired only one thing.

To summon their deity to this land and have it look down upon the desires of the believers.

The heretics, seeking to advance the timing of their deity's summoning, began preparing offerings they believed to be of the highest value.

Humans hunted humans, and villages became desolate for yet another reason.

In the end, believers, intoxicated with ecstatic faith toward their deity, stabbed their own chests while praying for the deity's descent.

The heretics who nested in the closed prayer house in the west were the first case to successfully manifest a deity.

The deity summoned by the western heretics was called by the ancient names of 'deity with the form of a great serpent,' 'coiled king,' and 'the scaled one.'

The heretics rejoiced with joy and elation, but the fervent emotions did not last long.

After some of the heretics played with and trampled to death a snake passing through the prayer house's front yard, the deity brutally killed all the heretics in the prayer house, covered the west with serpents, and reigned as a new disaster.

And not long after, a cruel deity with the epithet 'Bountiful Watcher' descended upon the eastern wasteland.

The 'Bountiful Watcher' covered the sky of the wasteland, looking down at the believers and bestowing strange blessings of abundance upon them.

Humans exposed to the blessing transformed into cursed forms and spread throughout the east.

In an era when, besides white flames and demonic beasts, wicked beings occupied the land one by one, erasing places where humans could stand.

At that time, a hopeful rumor carried by the wind reached the few remaining people.

That there was a hero who had defeated the heretics' deity that had descended upon the south.

* * *

The Great Hall, where blood was beginning to emit the stench of slow decay.

A man sitting on the chair that seven sages had once directly offered to the founding king in ancient times looked down haughtily at the bottom of the stairs.

On the floor, flesh of unknown origin and spinal fluid had hardened with congealed blood, sticking viscously.

In the middle of it, one person knelt, and another lay collapsed as if dead.

The man sitting on the chair commanded.

"Is that all?"

The person kneeling remained silent.

Then the man urged once more.

"Is that all, Verde?"

The person called Verde raised his head.

He couldn't even guess how much time had passed since entering here.

The Crown Prince had summoned him here and mercilessly trampled Duke Arenheit.

And he had commanded him, who had witnessed the entire scene.

-While you tell stories about Sir Leandros, I will not rise from this place.

-That means.

-The moment you close your mouth, I will do what I want to do.

This was clear blackmail.

But Verde, who couldn't understand the purpose of the blackmail, had only one choice.

To tell stories about Leandros as the Crown Prince wanted.

Verde sat there and told of the relationship that began in Gallo.

Meeting Leandros, hearing the request to save the Duke, scouting Gallo with him, fighting wicked beings.

As time passed, Verde's voice gradually began to grow hoarse.

But because the Crown Prince's foot would twitch as if he might rise at any moment whenever Verde stopped speaking, he could never stop.

Even when the smell of blood rose from inside his throat, even when his voice was completely ruined, even when his kneeling legs became numb and his knees felt like they might split from pain, he didn't stop the story.

He couldn't even sleep. Even when fatigue and drowsiness came, he had to stay awake by pinching and hitting his own forearms and thighs.

Every minute and second was agony.

But Verde didn't stop the story.

He was a physician, and he had to do his best so that the patient he was responsible for could survive.

He was an adult, and because of that, he couldn't bear to watch a young man who still showed signs of having just reached adulthood die.

He was called a crazy quack physician, but he at least retained enough conscience not to stand by and watch someone die.

Verde tried to gather his minimal conscience, moral ethics, and professional duty to open his mouth,

But from his already overworked vocal cords came only the sound of stones scraping.

Then Yurik's head tilted to one side.

Verde hurriedly opened and closed his mouth, then embraced the blood-covered human form collapsed before him.

Watching this, Yurik sent a gaze devoid of any emotion, then turned his head.

"Do you know about the secrets this world holds?"

"...I don't, don't know well."

It was a voice close to a rasping breath.

But Yurik continued speaking without concern.

"Greenhouse ignoramuses like you wouldn't know well, but the truth that penetrates this world is rough and barbaric. Beyond what you can imagine."

"What do you, mean..."

"So humans began to distance themselves from truth from the time they became capable of the activity called thinking. They distanced themselves from what they couldn't understand and invented words to define it."

"......"

"As humans began to multiply, that method started to show effect. All mystery and truth had their stage stolen by humans. The truth that yielded the largest place retreated to the corners of the world. Did you know that fact?"

Verde couldn't understand Yurik's story.

Yurik's story seemed both very ancient and like something that had happened just yesterday.

Yurik continued.

"My role is to summon truth to this place and send humans to where they should originally be. To return to the era when ancient beings roamed the earth. In that process, Sir Leandros and I simply cannot avoid fighting."

"Your Highness, you..."

"I can't wait for that unbearably."

Yurik's eyes turned toward a distant place.

It was a gaze that searched beyond the ruined hall's walls, toward places unreachable by human eyes.

Verde moved his parched lips.

Eventually, Yurik, who had closed his eyes, came down from the chair. Verde held the blood mass he was embracing even tighter, but Yurik passed by him.

"Since the ancient ones have finally descended to earth, your roles are finished. You've entertained me and also told me memories that Sir Leandros and I can share. Shall I tell you something good as a reward?"

What?

Verde opened and closed his mouth questioningly.

Yurik looked back from in front of the hall's door.

Red eyes that alternately looked at Verde sitting in the wretched hall and the dead one who still hadn't awakened smiled clearly.

"The divine being that Sir Leandros repelled in Gallo and Valentine will descend upon the east. Sir Leandros will be quite surprised. Isn't it a tiresome connection?"

Yurik left the hall with those words.

The outside that was briefly visible was clean, bright, and dazzling, but Verde knew he couldn't leave this hall.

Verde looked down weakly at the person he was holding.

The demonic beasts of Gallo, the suspicious people of Valentine, the terrible avatar that Leandros had dealt with.

Verde recalled what Yurik had rambled about.

Humans multiplied and truth retreated to the edges of the world.

Yurik was trying to bring back the expelled truth.

The deity in the east was the same one that had occupied Gallo and Valentine.

That being was undoubtedly part of the truth Yurik spoke of.

People who saw the deity that was part of truth would fall into unknown terror and chaotic madness and never return.

Even if they saved their lives while maintaining their sanity, they wouldn't be able to survive long with such beings nearby.

To face humanity's complete end in this way.

Then the blood mass in Verde's arms began to writhe.

Soon it would be time for the heart to beat and blood to race through newly formed blood vessels.

Verde looked down at the scene and asked himself.

If he could remove the source of fear from humans?

If he could eliminate the emotion of fear and enable them to face such beings.

If he could remove humanity's most primal instinct and devise ways to oppose them using only logic and reason...

-If I die, wouldn't that be better for you? You can dissect to your heart's content.

Truth, enlightenment, the abyss that humans couldn't bear.

This was a disease. An unjust disease that humans hadn't created but had to bear.

He wanted to remove the source of the disease.

For himself, for Arenheit, for the hero knight, and furthermore, for this world.

This work had to remain secret until his death.

Verde slowly lowered the blood mass to the floor.

The amygdala that controlled instinctive fear in the brain.

Verde knew where in the brain the small nucleus, smaller than a finger joint, was located.

With trembling hands, he stroked the round area presumed to be Arenheit's head.

Though he had opened countless animal corpses, this was the first time opening a real human head.

But the Crown Prince was gone, and only he and Arenheit were here.

Verde staggered to his feet.

The slightly open hall door closed again, and everything around became quiet.