The Second Labyrinth (6): The Purifying Light
The thunderous crash echoed like an explosion, followed by the clatter of shattering stone. Now I understood why I’d been told to pray from a distance. There wasn’t the slightest hesitation in the way she demolished the altar. After boldly reducing it to complete rubble, Melody pulled a mysterious powder from her pocket and began sprinkling it over the broken pieces. It pattered down softly. Then she transformed her weapon into a massive hammer and brought it crashing down again and again.
Boom!Booooom!!Crash!!!
Will my prayer even have any effect at this point? I wondered. With her hammering away like that? She might be so furious she wouldn’t even hear a word I said.
I have to try to calm things down somehow.
I closed my eyes and focused on the prayer. The sounds of destruction continued—crunch, boom, crash—but I’d been trained since childhood to concentrate through any distraction. No matter what chaos erupted around me, I could remain fixed on the task. Back then, I hadn’t believed the priests when they said this brutal training would one day prove useful. Yet here I was, living proof they’d been right. If I hadn’t endured that harsh discipline, I don’t know what I would have done.
Father, you were right. Thank you for teaching me so rigorously. Because of it, I can stay focused on prayer even in a moment like this.
At some point the crashing sounds faded from my awareness entirely. I poured everything I had into the prayer, guiding toward the Sun God those souls who had been freed from the Evil God Altar. Even if they had once believed in the Evil God and offered their own bodies to the altar, they could never have imagined being trapped there for three hundred years. And if they still clung to that faith after such torment…
That’s beyond my understanding.
Judging them wasn’t my role. My job was simply to lead them before Him so they could receive judgment for the sins they’d committed in life. I prayed that my devotion would guide them safely to that place.
“It’s finished, Father. You may stop now.”
“Ah…”
The voice pulled me sharply back to reality. When I opened my eyes, the leader was gently rousing me. Numerous gazes watched us both.
“It’s already over?”
Perhaps my effort to concentrate had paid off. Looking around, I saw the others searching the area. Melody would never have allowed these people inside before completely dealing with the altar, so it seemed the task was truly finished.
“Yes. You were so deeply focused that we tried not to disturb you, but we’ve nearly completed our search.”
“Ah…”
It was clear far more time had passed than I realized. How embarrassing. I could easily imagine how ridiculous I must have looked, kneeling there alone in prayer, and my face grew hot.
“You could have called me sooner…”
“We couldn’t possibly interrupt such a devout prayer. My apologies once again.”
I’d caused unnecessary trouble by concentrating far too intensely. I’d never immersed myself so completely in prayer before, and the realization left me flustered. I quickly rose, intending to pack away the portable prayer room first.
“I’ll tidy up right away.”
“Are your legs all right? You were kneeling for quite a long time…”
“This is nothing.”
The moment I’d opened my eyes, I had already used divine power to banish the numbness. Every priest learned this technique first. After all, imagine a priest stumbling before the believers after a long prayer, complaining that his legs had fallen asleep.
How undignified that would be.
To preserve their dignity, priests immediately cured any leg numbness with divine power the instant prayer ended. Ordinary people didn’t understand the trick, so they often stared in wonder at priests who rose perfectly steady after kneeling for ages. The priests, for their part, simply kept silent and humbly insisted they were fine.
When I stood and looked around, the altar had vanished completely, leaving only an empty space behind.
“Where is Melody?”
“You’ll see her as soon as you step outside. She’s burning the items that came from the altar.”
“Ah, I should go out too. If you find anything suspicious, don’t touch it—call for me immediately.”
“Understood. Melody gave us the same instructions.”
As the leader had said, the moment I stepped out I saw her burning the objects. She was vigorously digging into the frozen ground with a shovel, clearly intending to bury the remains of the burned altar.
“Have you finished praying?”
“Yes. It seems I focused too deeply. I didn’t even notice when you finished. Is the altar completely taken care of?”
“Yes. Thanks to you, it was resolved without major issues. Are you feeling all right?”
“Of course. I was only praying nearby.”
There was no reason I should feel tired.
“You must be exhausted, though.”
“Prayer is something I do every day. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Do you not realize it? The purification of the altar owed far more to your prayer than to my own power, Father Arthur.”
“Pardon?”
I couldn’t grasp what she meant about my prayer.
“I only prayed normally…”
“It was no ordinary prayer.”
“???”
Melody’s explanation was this: At first it had been a normal prayer, and she herself had been concentrating on purifying the altar. While she followed the proper procedure to destroy it—
“Suddenly, light began flowing from around your body, Father.”
Light from my body? I wasn’t a firefly. How could a person emit light? It sounded absurd, but I listened quietly.
“The light gradually expanded. Then, in an instant, it swallowed the altar whole. It drove out every trace of the Evil God’s power.”
“Light… from my body?”
“Yes.”
It seemed ridiculous to think I was some saint out of the history books, emitting light while praying. She claimed to have seen it with her own eyes, and I had been praying with my eyes closed and mind elsewhere—what could I possibly say? She had no reason to lie, so I could only believe her.
“When the light vanished, no trace of the Evil God remained on the altar. The objects had become perfectly ordinary.”
“……”
“Therefore, it wasn’t I who purified the altar. It was a miracle you created, Father Arthur. That’s why I asked whether you felt tired.”
Since the place had existed as an Evil God Altar for so long, the corruption must have been deeply entrenched. I had worried it was too soon to let ordinary people inside even after dealing with the altar, but now everything made sense.
“Hmm… It seems less like something I did through my own power and more like something He accomplished through me.”
In the end, all I had done was hide behind Him. If someone asked me to repeat it, I knew I couldn’t—so my claim wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
“That may well be. Perhaps He lent His strength to eradicate the Evil God. If we encounter more altars like this, could you offer prayers for us again?”
“I cannot guarantee the same phenomenon will occur. I didn’t do anything consciously. Still, if you wish it, I will pray whenever you ask.”
Praying wasn’t difficult, and if it could help even slightly in dealing with Evil God Altars, I had no reason to refuse.
The objects that had been on the Evil God Altar were now completely ordinary—rusted and buried in the earth. Even if someone dug them up later, they had lost all function; it would be nothing but wasted effort.
“We could have simply left them, but I thought leaving any trace would be unwise, so I burned the remains and buried them.”
“You’re very thorough. I would have done the same—leaving traces behind doesn’t seem wise.”
Discovering an Evil God Altar meant there was nothing to gain. Even if the party searched inside hoping to find something, they wouldn’t discover anything of value. And sure enough—
“Did you find anything?”
“No. We only wasted our strength. There was nothing at all.”
The group had excavated only what appeared to be the bones of victims sacrificed by the heretics. They returned empty-handed. Upon receiving the leader’s report, Princess Reciel approached us.
“Is it normal for Evil God Altars to appear this frequently?”
“It is quite rare.”
“Yet we’ve encountered this rare event twice.”
Princess Reciel did not seem pleased about discovering two Evil God Altars. Which was only natural. An altar steeped in curses was unpleasant to behold. On this point, I had my own theory.
“It seems this route was one the heretics frequently used.”
“This path belonged to the heretics?”
“Yes. That’s why we’ve found two altars by choosing this way.”
Otherwise, the heretics would have had to be insane to build Evil God Altars here. Such places weren’t easily discovered by chance.
How many lives does a single altar consume?
When an altar was destroyed, the power gained from its offerings vanished as well. Since their own strength depended on it, they would never have placed one where it could be easily found.
But this location was easy to discover.
If the heretics were sane, they would never have hidden altars just anywhere. They must have built them in places where they were confident the altars would remain undiscovered.
“Should we have changed routes, as the guide suggested?”
“Why worry when I am here? What would be a disaster for others is merely a minor nuisance for us—one that wastes a little time.”
Princess Reciel let out a small laugh. “Calling an Evil God Altar a mere nuisance… I wonder if that’s all right, but somehow it feels reassuring.”
“Even if we discover more altars ahead, do not worry. Everything will be resolved smoothly.”
And then I added, “At the end of this path, I suspect you will find a great deal of what you seek. In the past, the heretics accumulated wealth through unjust means. A considerable amount would have gone into creating the altars, but they must have hidden away treasures for their personal glory.”