Chapter 46
Chapter 46
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: The Erased Star
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Rachel had revealed that she was a regressor, but Abyss refused to believe it easily.
In the end, Rachel exchanged a few more words with him, and only then did Abyss mutter a single phrase.
“It's true.”
He had finally acknowledged Rachel's words.
Rachel shook her head in exasperation as she looked at him now believing her.
“Even if it's true. Why doubt me when I have that ability?”
“My ability has its flaws too. I can't detect it if the other person truly believes a lie to be the truth. So I thought your mind was the issue.”
“You're really annoying. It was so hard to earn your trust that I even brought a priest along.”
Rachel retorted while pointing at Enoch, and Abyss looked over at him.
“So I figured he was volunteering to look after a girl whose head was messed up.”
‘In the previous round, he showed up with a priest without delay, but he'd pegged me as mentally unstable from the very start? This guy really is tough to deal with.’
“How did I figure out you and Harpy's identities?”
“If it's Paris Emporus, then a scheme to drive his own nephew mad to stir up pity...”
In the end, he'd suspected Paris Emporus of pulling the strings.
‘Well, with that level of wariness, he must have held out against the baron for a long time.’
Rachel accepted his suspicion and cut him off.
“Anyway, since I made a promise with you from the previous round, I'll share the information first.”
“Then let's move to another spot. But is it okay for him to listen in?”
Abyss, preparing to relocate, indicated Enoch with a glance as he asked. Rachel nodded in affirmation.
“Yeah. Enoch's fine!”
“You seem to trust him immensely.”
“Yeah.”
“Then let's all go. Harpy, hold down the fort here.”
“Have a good talk, boss. Hurry back and spill everything—I'm dying to know!”
Abyss bid Harpy farewell and headed for the door behind the counter. He pulled out a ring of keys, selected one, and inserted it into the lock.
Her stomach churning, Rachel realized magic was manifesting nearby.
Enoch immediately noticed her discomfort and asked.
“Are you okay?”
“I'm sensitive to mana. It's probably Abyss using an artifact.”
“Right. Let's head in for now.”
Abyss opened the door. A vast blue field stretched out beyond it. Enoch shot Abyss a glare at the geographically impossible vista.
“There wasn't any place like this around the building.”
Rachel muttered.
The area surrounding the building they'd entered was lined with other structures. There was no way such a landscape could appear here.
Abyss explained to them.
“It's an artifact. The space beyond the door changes depending on the key. I don't usually show it off, but you seem like you're about to share something very important, miss.”
In other words, Abyss was giving Rachel and Enoch special treatment.
They stepped through the door into the field. Rachel turned back to look at the door they'd just exited. It was formed from a massive stone.
‘Looks like a dolmen.’
“Let's go up to that spot.”
Abyss pointed out across the field. A pavilion stood there.
Enoch took the lead, slashing through the tall grass with his sword, while Abyss and Rachel followed behind. Before long, they reached the pavilion.
Rachel handed Enoch her canteen while shooting Abyss a glare.
“You really suck at hosting guests.”
“I was about to clear the path, but you jumped ahead.”
Rachel shot a withering look at Abyss, who acted utterly shameless.
He shrugged as if wondering what the problem was and perched on the pavilion's railing.
“Better late than never—let me introduce myself. As you mentioned earlier, miss, I deal in buying and selling information. Call me Abyss.”
“A servant of the Lux God, Enoch.”
“Rachel Emporus. First off, as promised with your previous self, I'll share the information I have.”
Rachel pulled the notes she'd prepared back at the mansion from her bag. She handed them over to Abyss.
He'd seemed nonchalant up to that point, but his expression quickly grew serious as he read through the documents.
“Is this real?”
It didn't take long. After his eyes flicked back and forth a few times, he posed the question.
“It's real. You couldn't piece it together yourself, so I promised to let you know if I ever regressed.”
“May I read it?”
“Yes.”
At Rachel's permission, Abyss passed the documents he'd finished to Enoch. Enoch's face hardened as he read.
“Running illegal gambling dens and a slave market too! This is utterly unacceptable.”
“And he's a Pseudo-Contractor as well.”
Rachel fanned the flames of Enoch's agitation. Yet Enoch didn't flare up further; he squeezed his eyes shut, clenching and unclenching his fists to rein in his emotions.
“No wonder.”
Abyss nodded to himself as he examined the documents.
“With this, there's enough justification to mobilize the Second Prince's faction. That's why you sought me out, right?”
“See? This is why dealing with smart people is so convenient.”
True to form as an information merchant, Abyss had immediately grasped Rachel's intentions.
“But you didn't need to come to me specifically for that.”
“Why not?”
“Because that priest over there—ugh!”
As Abyss spoke, Enoch's holy relic dropped onto his foot. Abyss yelped in pain, his toe crushed by the object.
“Sorry. It must have loosened when I was blocking your subordinate earlier.”
Enoch apologized at once and channeled divine power into Abyss's foot. With the pain vanishing, Abyss held his tongue and tried to press on with his explanation.
“This guy's exactly—kuhk.”
Enoch, who had knelt to heal Abyss's foot, rose abruptly, and his head smacked into Abyss's chin.
Suddenly struck from below right on the jaw, Abyss clutched it and glared at Enoch.
“I'm truly sorry.”
‘That's gotta be on purpose.’
Enoch, who was always so cautious in his movements, had now hurt someone twice. There was no way it was a mistake.
Rachel didn't know what Enoch was hiding, but if things continued like this, relations between the two would sour fast. She spoke up before that could happen.
“I know Enoch has ties to the Second Prince's inner circle. I could leak the info through him, but then you wouldn't uncover what you're after, right? I came straight to you because I want to take down my uncle together with you.”
Abyss rubbed his chin as he muttered in response to Rachel's words.
“So the previous me even said stuff like that to you, miss?”
“Yeah. You were searching for the Black Sorcerer who wiped out your hometown.”
“That version of me sure ran his mouth.”
“Ah! And you told me to draw this shape and ask about it. You said you'd know if I mentioned the 'erased star'…”
Rachel sketched a pentagram in the air as she asked. Abyss pressed his thumbs to both temples and rubbed them.
“If I told you to go that far, then yeah, I really believed you.”
“So what is it?”
At Rachel's question, Abyss lifted his canteen and gulped down water as if his throat had gone dry. Only after wetting it did he finally speak.
“It's lines drawn from the erased villages, predicting the ones that will vanish next.”
***
Black magic is a power manifested by borrowing the strength of demons, and it typically requires sacrifices. The sacrifices effective for demons are known to be human blood, flesh, and souls.
“Personal aptitude isn't all that crucial for black magic. As long as you have a channel and a sacrifice, even an ordinary person can cast it.”
Rachel nodded at Abyss's explanation.
The current Henri was just a regular doctor. For someone with no connection to black magic to succeed in only two years proved it had nothing to do with talent—she knew that well.
“You mentioned channels, but that includes altars, objects, summoning circles—all of it. Even the black magician themselves, if contracted with a demon. Once connected, they select a sacrifice and offer it, and the demon lends its power in exchange.”
“I know that much.”
“Then this'll be easy to explain.”
Abyss unrolled a map and spread it on the ground. A pentagram was drawn across it.
“The places marked with red dots are the lands soaked in mass bloodshed over the past five years.”
“That's more than I expected. The kingdom hasn't figured this out?”
“Some were chalked up to fires or bandit raids.”
Enoch replied as he studied the map. It included villages he himself had visited during volunteer work.
Abyss picked up a long stick and used it to point at the map.
“The spots you're thinking of are the large villages. Most are in the kingdom's outskirts or…”
The tip of the stick indicated the edges of the kingdom's territory.
It pointed to three areas: the north bordering barren desert regions plagued by frequent barbarian incursions; the east teeming with monster habitats; and the southeast abutting the Hass Kingdom, where small-scale skirmishes were constant.
But Abyss's explanation didn't end there.
“Territorial borders between feuding lords or remote mountain villages. The borders see endless petty wars, and the small villages vanished without a trace.”
He caught his breath before continuing.
“In other villages, bandits suddenly appeared and slaughtered the inhabitants, or unexplained fires broke out and burned everyone alive.”
The stick's tip swept over numerous dots. Rachel counted them, her eyes widening in shock.
Connecting the dots formed a single shape. A pentagram.
In other words, the "erased star" referred to the pattern linking sites of mass deaths.
“And this is just what I've pieced together.”
He gripped the stick so hard that it snapped clean in two.
“These incidents aren't coincidences—they were deliberately orchestrated by someone.”
“Exactly. I believe it's the work of the Black Sorcerer.”
Abyss spoke with utter conviction. Rachel stared at the pentagram on the map before parting her lips.
“Then all the dead so far... they've been sacrifices?”
Rachel shuddered even as she voiced the question.
Black magic demanded human lives even before it was cast, and once unleashed, it birthed calamitous disasters.
In the game, when Henri cast it within the mansion, the entire estate twisted into a horrific hellscape.
So what horrors would a black magic ritual built on slaughtering people across the entire kingdom unleash?
And what on earth was it all for, on this scale?
“Ah!”
“What is it?”
“What's wrong, Rachel?”
Both men asked at Rachel's sharp gasp.
Rachel looked up at them and revealed what she'd realized.
“After this autumn, the death toll starts skyrocketing.”
Crop failures from floods led to food shortages and mass starvation among the populace.
The high-ranking nobles of the Second Prince's faction fell to curses, perishing in accidents or from mysterious illnesses.
Civil war erupted from the princes' war for the throne.
Once the Third Prince ascended, he purged the old nobility en masse, casting a reign of terror that led right up to the brink of war with the Hass Kingdom.
‘If more time had passed, war would have definitely broken out.’
Rachel shared these facts with the two men. The atmosphere grew gravely serious.
“We have to stop it no matter what. At this scale, it's not just borrowing demonic power—it's preparation for summoning the Demon King!”
As a priest, Enoch immediately inferred the black magician's goal from the ritual's magnitude.
Summoning the Demon King. Something countless black magicians had attempted, but never once succeeded.
“Stopping it is a given, but…”
Abyss trailed off. Rachel had a rough idea of his thoughts.
“We still don't know who's behind it. And judging by what they've done so far and what's coming, plugging the immediate leaks won't solve it.”
“You're right, miss. High nobles are tangled up in this too. Hell, the Third Prince might even be backing it wholeheartedly.”
Rachel nodded in agreement with Abyss.
‘The Third Prince? Yeah, that tracks.’
Abyss turned to stare at Enoch and asked.
“So, with that said... can we count on some help from the temple's side too?