Chapter 236
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 236
Chapter Title: Fragments of Truth
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"The capital..."
"While you were asleep, news from the north reached the central government."
"Hm."
A fortnight was more than enough time for that.
"This is a letter Count Camilo left for you."
"Ah, thank you."
"You're probably still out of sorts. Take your time reading it."
With those final words, Laness left the room, and Aiden asked,
"How's your body feeling, Captain?"
"After getting some solid rest, it's not bad."
The God of Death, the First Emperor's legion commander Pommel—they had unleashed magic that transcended all boundaries.
Even before that, his internals had already been ravaged from using Ifrit's power.
It wasn't for nothing that he'd been out for a full fortnight.
Thanks to that, though, his body felt fine—no aches or pains anywhere.
'The circles are intact, too.'
As Jun opened his eyes after checking his inner self, Maya spoke up.
"Lady Eleanor was by your side every day."
"Yeah, no one but Eleanor could explain this level of healing."
Even among high priests, Eleanor's divine power was exceptional.
She had even repelled the approach of the God of Death itself.
Without Pommel, the God of Death wouldn't have been able to touch Jun or Eleanor at all.
"Where's Eleanor now?"
"Ah, she's with the priests from the Sun Temple at the moment."
"Sun Temple...?"
Why had they come all the way to the distant north?
The answer came to him quickly.
"They must be here about Merdaine."
"Yes..."
The Dimensional Reversal in Merdaine.
It had happened about fifty years ago, and the Sun Temple had been handling its purification ever since.
The monster that appeared there was a lich, reigning as the king of the undead, so they must have linked it to the God of Death.
"Even so, Eleanor doesn't know much about it."
"They seemed interested in how her divine power repelled that guy's aura."
"Ah, right."
Jun recalled how Eleanor had driven away the God of Death.
Repelling an outer god's aura with this world's divine power wasn't easy.
He didn't know why, but even in the game, it had played out the same way.
"Anyway... what happened in the north afterward?"
"Fortunately, most of the people who passed out woke up safely. Though some got injured in the process..."
Compared to an outer god descending, the casualties were ridiculously low.
"The real issues came after."
Those who had directly experienced the God of Death's aura suffered nightmares for days afterward.
"There were a lot of discussions about what to do with the refugees and the ruined territories."
"Makes sense..."
Overnight, countless people had lost their homes.
Naturally, Count Camilo must have been run ragged dealing with it.
"Even though we held the line pretty well, there was still damage."
The north would face harsh times ahead.
But as the saying went, the forest that fire passed through grew back healthier.
"Count Camilo promised to report every detail of the incident to the Imperial Family without holding back. And the capital promised support in return."
"Wise move."
"Yes."
No one knew yet why such a disaster had struck the north.
The Imperial Family was taking the matter very seriously.
"They've found several sites in the central regions similar to the cave discovered up north."
"Altars too?"
"Yes."
This suggested it wasn't a disaster limited to the north.
The Imperial Family must have had plenty of discussions.
"There were other disturbances too—like monsters coming down from the canyons due to the sudden chaos."
Aside from Eleanor, Aiden and Maya had separately contracted with Count Camilo to help out.
That was how the last fortnight had gone.
"We were planning to stay in the north until you woke up, Captain..."
The White Whale Mercenary Corps had been summoned directly from the capital.
It was in place of Count Camilo, who was busy cleaning up the north.
The others had planned to wait for Jun to wake, but Laness had persuaded them that if anything happened to him, the capital might be safer than the north.
"There must be more to why the Imperial Family called us... but no point dwelling on it now. You two did great."
"No, Captain being safe is what matters... We're just glad."
"Falling like this all the time... As captain, I have nothing to say."
"N-no, it's not..."
Aiden bowed his head deeply.
Despite his recent rapid growth, the shock of collapsing without even resisting when the God of Death descended seemed to hit hard.
Jun figured words wouldn't help in that state—time was what he needed—and held back.
But Maya pinched Aiden's side.
"Always like this, you sword. That face every chance you get."
"Ugh, Maya..."
"Can't be helped, sword. No one saw that monster coming."
"Heh... We'll figure out a way to handle it later."
"Y-yes, got it."
"So, the airship left today?"
"Yes. A ship flying through the sky... Amazing."
"They finished the airship already...?"
Not bad at all.
He looked forward to what mass-produced airships could do down the line.
"More importantly, Leader. Got a question."
"Hm? What?"
"The Red Calamity. What those guys really are."
The mood shifted once more.
Maya's clear eyes fixed on Jun, and Aiden lifted his head to stare too.
The First Emperor's legion commander, Pommel.
Jun had recognized him immediately.
To Maya, he was an archenemy. To Aiden, with his background, curiosity was inevitable.
"Yeah... Fair to wonder."
Jun quietly cast a soundproofing spell.
"Blackout. That place said to have existed beneath the empire for centuries—even after all this time, the empire hasn't fully conquered it."
Reasons abounded.
It reset everything yearly, making outposts impossible.
The monsters were utterly hostile to humans.
Ancient ruins claimed countless lives.
Above all, Blackout's secrets remained unsolved.
"Still, the empire never gave up on conquering it. They reached the 9th floor."
But that was it.
The empire still hadn't set foot on the 10th.
"Scholars debated endlessly. Some said you'd meet Blackout's creator there. Others claimed a wish-granting god waited."
All wrong.
The 10th floor held no such thing.
"The 10th floor has the First Emperor."
"Pardon...?"
"The First Emperor?"
The First Emperor, Adrian van Rude Benecio.
In the game, he reigned as the final boss.
"Leader... how do you know that?"
A heavy silence fell at Maya's question.
No mere mage could know that.
No excuse would cover it.
So Jun didn't bother.
"...Sorry, but I can't answer that."
"Even to us...?"
Jun nodded at Aiden's follow-up.
"It's not that I don't trust you. It's just... not something I can explain."
Someday, when time passed and everything ended, maybe he could tell them.
That he'd lived on a planet called Earth, encountered this world as a game, and been pulled here.
But he still didn't know who—or what—had brought him.
Pommel in the north had recognized his soul and mentioned two possibilities.
Either the death throes of this world's fallen gods, or machinations of outer gods.
Or neither.
"Anyway, I don't have much more on this. Why the First Emperor's on the 10th floor, what their real goal is—I don't know. What I can say for sure is..."
They want the empire destroyed.
That was it.
"Destroying the country they built? What idiots."
Maya's blunt words hung in the air, but both listeners agreed.
A little time passed, and Eleanor returned after her meeting with the Sun Temple.
"How you holding up?"
"Better, thanks to you."
"Good to hear. Sigh, do you know how busy I've been since you went down?"
"Heard the gist. Aiden and Maya jumped into the fights up north, and you were at every meeting."
"Vice-captain material, right?"
"Can't argue."
"Oh? You're admitting it?"
"Nah. In a four-man merc group?"
Lots of subgroups, but White Whale Mercenary Corps was just the four of them.
"Eh, I hate the hassle anyway. Let the captain handle the annoying stuff."
"Has been that way, will stay that way. So, what'd the Sun Temple want?"
"Ugh... They want me to visit their temple when I have time. Their saintess has business with me."
"Saintess..."
"Probably in Merdaine by now."
"The client?"
"Not yet. They're swamped too. Might take till year's end at least."
Eleanor summoned golden divine power over her hand.
"You felt it too, right? How it's different from my usual divine power."
"Kinda. Seemed like what drove off the God of Death."
"Spot on. This power's special. Even Grandpa acknowledged it."
"Elahim?"
"Yeah."
Had the temple told her something at the end of last season?
"Grandpa said... the gods of our world are in a deep slumber."
"Deep slumber? Pommel said something similar."
—The death throes of gods entered the realm of death? Or another outer god's scheme? Unknown.
Pommel's words when he first spotted Jun.
He'd called it the 'realm of death' for the gods.
Deep slumber fit that interpretation.
"Yeah. Grandpa already knew."
"But the temples are still going strong, and everyone's using divine power."
"That's why mine's special."
Eleanor said various temples had coveted this power of hers for ages.
"Grandpa explained it was why he and the previous pope tried to house a god in a human body."
Centuries after Blackout's discovery, encounters with outer god auras had piled up.
Temples tried countering them, but failed.
"They all knew. The gods fell into deep slumber, leading to those failures."
The Sun Temple knew best.
That was why Merdaine's purification dragged on.
"So the divine power priests use now?"
"Not rooted in gods anymore. It's power born from mana and the collective will to make it divine."
"I see..."
Eleanor's Lament of the End did exactly that.
Made perfect sense.
But Eleanor's was different.
Hers came straight from a god in deep slumber.
"That's why it worked when your soul shook so badly. Why it beat the God of Death too."
"That all the pope said?"
"No. He wants me to find the source of my power if possible. Tough, but it's the only way to purge the outer god aura still lingering in me."
So Eleanor planned to connect with more temples.
The Sun Temple was one.
"Think it's possible?"
Jun nodded lightly at her question.
"Merdaine's deeply tied to outer gods anyway. No harm in checking it out."
"Thanks."
A destination was set, whenever it might be.