Alliance, Guardian, Revelation (1)
In the past, Raul had gone through three rank-ups in a row and felt as if his body were being redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up.
Even thinking about it now, it had been absurd, but the rank-up in Agility had been something else entirely.
In Exeria, the Agility stat affected not only speed but also perception.
Everything reflected in Raul’s pupils was, quite literally, being seen anew.
Light.
Raul looked down at his hands and flexed and unflexed his fists.
His body responded faster than he had expected.
So this time, he tried jumping in place, then ran across the Land of the Sacred Tree, where beautiful horizons stretched on and on.
Only then did Raul understand through his own body why Agility even enhanced perception.
When Raul set his mind to running, the world slowed while he himself remained unchanged.
Then, when he kicked off the ground and broke into a full sprint, the world turned into slow motion, just as it had when he drew in the radiance of Halo's Sacred Light to the limit of his pupils.
...Wow.
This was truly more moving than the upheaval of Strength.
Raul tested the transformed sensations one by one, as if he were enjoying a game.
Then, when the dagger at his waist caught his eye, an amusing thought crossed his mind.
He drew the blade and took a stance like a pitcher.
The dagger pinched between his index and middle fingers took the full force of his sweeping arm and split the air.
Whoosh-!
With a heavy sound, the dagger turned into a point of light in an instant.
Raul pushed off the ground, and within the slowed world he chased after the dagger that had become a dot.
Thwip!
In the end, Raul caught the dagger he had thrown himself.
He had followed up a dagger throw powered by the full force of A-rank Strength with A-rank Agility.
“Ha... hah.”
A dry laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
If he infused Halo's Sacred Light into this ridiculous power and speed, what exactly would happen?
That he could not test it now was a regret that would linger for a long time.
Raul glared at the one message that refused to disappear from the corner of his vision.
[Warning!] Until the body ruined by overuse of Halo has fully recovered, Divinity is sealed.
Remaining time until full recovery: 122h 32m...
The penalty for opening Halo with a body that had not been ready for it was bodily collapse.
He had forced that back with Mimir’s authority, using the Invocation of Recovery, and now even the use of Divinity had been sealed off completely.
“No shortcuts, huh?”
Raul looked at the red warning message with a somewhat bitter expression.
And yet, even after obtaining a Stigma and having his strength supported to some degree, this was what it amounted to...
According to the Sacred Tree, Raul had been unconscious for a full ten days.
So, ten days plus today.
And if he added the remaining 122 hours of penalty time on top of that?
It came to roughly 400 hours.
And if he converted those 400 hours back into days?
“Hah... this penalty runs past two weeks.”
He had verified that if he pushed himself, he could barely open Halo for three minutes, but if the penalty was this severe, then no matter how he looked at it, all desire to repeat the stunt vanished on the spot.
That was only because this place was the isolated world of the Sacred Tree; in Exeria, one never knew when some vile thing might come crawling out from the dark.
“A little disappointing.”
Raul swept a hand through his hair and rubbed at his face, unable to quite name the frustration he felt.
Still, his growth had only just begun, to the point where the world itself now looked different to him.
Raul decided he would not indulge in rash greed.
“What’s disappointing?”
Once again, a voice came without the slightest hint of a presence.
It was the Sacred Tree, wearing Alicia’s face, who had vanished earlier after saying she was going to look around outside.
“Nothing important.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you suddenly speaking so politely, Saint?”
The Sacred Tree blinked her large eyes in clear confusion.
Raul answered her with an easy, almost teasing tone.
“Well, I thought I should say I’d suddenly developed respect and awe for the Sacred Tree.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Honestly, I figured if I played along with you a bit, maybe you’d give me another Sacred Tree fruit.”
“What? No. Do you know how precious those are?”
“How would I know?”
“True. You wouldn’t. Even most of my children don’t know. Anyway, no. It’s not that I won’t give you one. It’s that I don’t have extras.”
“That’s... a pretty big shame.”
Raul clicked his tongue in mock regret.
The Sacred Tree looked faintly horrified, then cleared her throat and went on.
“Well, enough nonsense. First, congratulations. Your body has almost completely recovered. You’ll wake up tomorrow. There are some among my children who are serious about medicine, you know. Erebrid. They put some effort into it.”
“That’s a relief.”
The Sacred Tree spoke in a tone that sounded almost proud, as if she were bragging about her children.
When Raul gave her a suitably dry response, she stared at him as if he were something strange.
“What’s that look for?”
“No, I was wondering why you weren’t asking.”
“Asking what?”
“I mean, you’re standing here perfectly fine. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I’m talking about your body recovering and waking up tomorrow?”
“Do I have to be shocked?”
“Huh?”
This time, the Sacred Tree looked genuinely bewildered, as if Raul’s reaction made no sense at all.
Raul had no choice but to say what he had realized the moment he opened his eyes in this world of endless horizons.
“Well. I’m talking this casually with someone who has divinity. There’s no way this is reality.”
“...You knew?”
“I knew the moment I opened my eyes. For one thing, there’s no barrier around you, no guardian either. No matter where I look, it’s just a fairytale landscape. There’s no way I could miss it.”
“Well... this is the world of my dream, so things should naturally feel ordinary, shouldn’t they?”
“Oh, really?”
The world of a dream.
Raul was interested in the unfamiliar term, but for the moment he decided to indulge the Sacred Tree, who seemed faintly disappointed.
He suddenly put on an extremely grave expression and said, “I-I’m going to wake up...? What do you mean by that!”
“Don’t start matching my tone now! You’re just making me more embarrassed!”
“Honestly. You’re so inconsistent. What an annoying god you are.”
“What’s wrong with you?!”
Watching the Sacred Tree blush, Raul found himself thinking that this was exactly the Alicia-like expression he had not seen in a while, and he smiled despite himself.
After a little more banter and idle chatter, the Sacred Tree let out a deep sigh and said, “Now that your mind and body both seem settled, will you tell me? What exactly is happening in Exeria?”
The childish expression from moments ago was gone, and even her voice had turned calm. Raul could tell she was serious, so he shed his own playfulness and answered.
From the moment he had awakened in this world, he spoke of almost everything he had seen and heard on the road to this place.
“...The Abyss Grand Duke has returned.”
Of everything he said, the most important thing Raul stressed was, of course, the Abyss Grand Duke.
First he had been the demon contractor in Zern.
Then traces of the black magician from Latina Village had been found here in the world of the Sacred Tree as well.
Had Eldrix not said it himself?
The Grand Duke wants your spinal fluid.
The Abyss Grand Duke already knew of Raul’s existence and was after him.
The bastard was meticulous.
He always laid the sort of spiderweb-thin groundwork that secured his own safety before he ever bared his fangs for real.
So if evidence of him was showing up this directly, it was fair to assume that the Abyss Grand Duke had already secured his own safety to some extent.
The only reason he remained in hiding was simple.
He had not yet found the dagger he intended to strike down the three great churches.
And Raul now suspected, because of this incident, that the dagger the bastard had been preparing was none other than the World Tree Defying Heaven he had seen in his future sight.
“...In other words, Saint, if I understand you correctly, that wicked being who tried to corrupt me and even use my corpse was actually...”
“Yes. The Abyss Grand Duke.”
At Raul’s calm reply, the Sacred Tree’s face darkened, and she kept rubbing both of her arms as if a chill had crawled over her skin.
“How horrifying... That demon was actually brought down by the so-called Demon Hunters thirty years ago?”
“Yes.”
“My children stopped being able to hear my voice right around then.”
“Then that means...”
“That vicious demon must have started planning to seize me the very instant he was destroyed.”
The Sacred Tree looked deeply shaken.
And no wonder.
She was the one who had carved off a portion of Exeria and made this world.
She had done it solely for the peace and well-being of the elves.
And yet that long peace, maintained for 1,600 years, had finally come to an end.
Right now.
For the last sixteen centuries, the elves had become a race that had forgotten war, save for a tiny few.
During those 1,600 years, the elves and the Sacred Tree had fallen into the same delusion.
They were safe.
Even if Exeria was destroyed, their world would remain unharmed in the end.
The result of that delusion, that arrogance, was the bad ending no. 144: World Tree Defying Heaven.
At that moment, the Sacred Tree, who had kept her mouth shut tightly, let out a short, self-mocking laugh.
“...I look ridiculous. When I created this world, there wasn’t even a demon capable of truly understanding dimensions...”
“And now they’ve gone beyond understanding and are opening portals to invade Exeria directly.”
“I thought I had achieved eternity...”
“Nothing in this world can truly be eternal.”
At Raul’s dry, even response, the Sacred Tree raised her head and stared at his face for a long moment.
Then, in a tone edged with irony, she said, “The Saint who first introduced divinity to Exeria is telling me that nothing is eternal.”
“The me of then and the me of now are different.”
“...Right. You said you had lost your memory.”
“Well, it’s a little different from that.”
Raul looked straight into the Sacred Tree’s eyes and said, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned while traveling this world, it’s that Exeria has neither impossibility nor perfection.”
“Neither impossibility nor perfection...”
The Sacred Tree repeated his words as if tasting them, turning them over in her mind.
She was certainly a being of divinity, but she was also someone who had lived the last 1,600 years in an isolated world, doing nothing at all.
In an age standing on the brink of destruction, she was not so different from an infant who knew nothing.
Raul gave a faint smile and spoke with deliberate force to the Sacred Tree, who still looked uncertain.
“I’m going to stop the Abyss Grand Duke.”
Only then did the Sacred Tree’s gaze return to Raul.
Meeting those deep, lake-like eyes, Raul nodded.
“And beyond that, I’ll stand against the other demons of abyss, void, and chaos who are eyeing Exeria as well.”
“...That’s impossible for you as you are now.”
“A year and three months ago, it was even more impossible.”
“You changed that much in such a short time, so you’re saying you can keep going?”
“If you help me even a little, I can grow far faster than I have so far.”
Raul met the Sacred Tree’s eyes, where unease and hope now mingled in equal measure.
He did not lose his smile as he lowered himself slightly and extended a hand toward the Sacred Tree wearing Alicia’s face.
“Join me.”
“...You want me to send my children back into the battlefield again?”
“I’ll always be the one standing in front.”
“My children are weaker than you can imagine. Some of them haven’t held a sword in centuries; some have never shot an arrow in their entire lives.”
“Even so, they are elves. The proud descendants of the Sacred Tree, born with exceptional sense for mana and an affinity for spirits. They’re hunters.”
When he spoke the last word with feeling, a soft curve appeared at the corners of the Sacred Tree’s mouth as she faced Raul with a still-stiff expression.
“Honestly... you say you’ve lost your memory, but your talent for bewitching people is just as bad as ever, Saint.”
She took Raul’s outstretched hand gently in her own.
In that way, the Saint made his first alliance with a world.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
When Raul woke in the infirmary, many elves he had never met before came to greet him.
Fortunately, they did not pry into the little details Raul had been worrying over.
Apparently, after the day when the opened Halo had revealed its true form, there had been a number of elves who once again heard the voice of the Sacred Tree, though only a few.
Perhaps the aftereffects of Halo had finally swept away the Abyss Grand Duke’s unknown scheme cleanly.
“Thank you. Truly, thank you, Saint.”
The elves thanked Raul again and again with tears of gratitude, but in truth, he was not the only one who had benefited.
He had been worrying about how best to explain everything that had happened.
In any case, after opening his eyes, Raul had to meet many people.
From the soldiers who commanded the ranger corps called the Golden Branch in the world of the Sacred Tree,
to the people from the institution known as the Academy, where spirit users and rune mages were trained.
And finally, even the council of elders that ruled and governed this world.
They sought Raul’s advice.
How they could help him.
What they should prepare to face the coming war.
That was where Raul’s background knowledge came into its own.
He recommended combining the Magic Academy and the Ranger Corps into a composite military force, and he also asked the council of elders to conscript most of the elves living in the Sacred Tree’s world into that new army.
Conscription... soldiers...
Even to Raul, those were highly uncomfortable words, but there was no other choice.
They really did have war on the doorstep.
And so, in elven society, the fearsome-sounding K Army was born.
As he met different people day after day, Raul’s remaining penalty time of around 100 hours of Divinity Seal quietly came to an end.
The moment Divinity returned was a dim dawn.
Even while he had been asleep, Raul suddenly woke at the loud burst of cricket chirps.
The world he saw as he blinked his eyes open was...
What is this.
Even though the sleep had not fully left him, everything was unbelievably clear.
As if the perceptive faculty sharpened by the upheaval of Agility had met the Divinity that made his senses even keener, opening yet another new horizon.
“Hah...”
How was he supposed to put this into words?
Raul stood there blankly in the early dawn and thought about it for a long time, but no better expression seemed available.
It feels like eyes that had been shut have opened, and ears that had been closed have finally heard.
Raul found the world looking different yet again.
But perhaps because he had been struck by too many enormous changes all at once, he simply could not fall back asleep.
Hmph...
Even with his eyes closed, he felt as if he could vaguely make out the things around him, and even with his ears covered, he could hear footsteps moving through Sererial’s mansion from all over.
Of course, Raul had a body that no longer needed sleep if he used the Invocation of Recovery.
But forcing fatigue out of the body and the crisp freshness of waking after a full night’s sleep were not things one could compare.
Hoo.
With no choice, Raul sat on the edge of the bed and let out a sigh.
Would it be better to give up on sleep entirely and adapt to these new senses as quickly as possible?
That was when it happened.
Stigma - Logos informs you that the new life acquired by the Guardian is waiting for your summons.
A guardian is waiting?
The Stigma of Logos, which created a guardian by blending the nature of a sacrifice with the user’s soul.
After sacrificing Eldrix, there had been no response at all until now, so Raul had been wondering what the hell this was supposed to be...
So it’s finally done.
Guardian.
A being made into a sacrifice by Raul, shaped to resemble Raul’s own soul, breathing only for Raul.
It was said that spirits and guardians usually received a body that suited their master’s temperament perfectly.
Then what form would Raul’s guardian take?
Elves were not the sort to possess overwhelming self-assertion like dragons.
Most likely, it would gain an entirely different body, one inheriting only Eldrix’s magical and physical talent.
Ha, interesting.
For the first time in a while, Raul felt as if he were playing a game, and the sleepiness disappeared at once as a thin smile touched his lips.
When he reached out his hand, the next message appeared.
You must give the new Guardian a name, then call that name to summon it.
“A name?”
Raul muttered the word as if repeating the unusual message back to it.
A bright smile had already settled on his face.
Come to think of it, unlike spirits, a guardian’s name was pretty important...
Unlike spirits, who met their contractors after already gaining some degree of selfhood, a guardian was a being born into this world with its master’s first summons.
For a guardian, a name was its identity, and also a major element in defining the way it lived.
Raul rubbed at his chin again and again, happily mulling it over.
Then a good idea suddenly came to him.
“Horus.”
At that moment, bright light poured from the back of Raul’s hand.