Chapter 21
Chapter 21
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Secret Society: Celestia (3)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Holy City—Parthia.
In the Palace of a Hundred Colors in Parthia, where Saintess Arianne, the proxy of the gods, resided as the main headquarters of the Church, a meeting was in full swing.
Men dressed in various sacred vestments.
Each one wore a solemn expression as they directed their words toward the head of the table.
The Church's budget issues.
Problems concerning the secret society of black mages.
Issues with the spread of heretics in the south.
A variety of matters were being discussed at the Church's meeting.
One of the Church's cardinals, Matthias, watched the proceedings with a reluctant expression.
‘The old fools are letting their greed cross the line more and more as time passes.’
On the surface, the topics seemed plausible enough.
But digging deeper revealed a different story altogether.
Schemes to funnel budgets to specific dioceses.
Or demands to increase the number of priests or holy knights in certain dioceses.
Sometimes, even absurd requests slipped out.
And everyone in the Church vaguely knew the reason behind such outrageous claims.
The girl seated at the head of the table, listening to the archbishops' ridiculous tales—
Saintess Arianne was the cause.
“Saintess, shouldn't we lend a hand in the Empire's next northern expedition?”
“…….”
“We must drive out the northern heretics and show those Erbar Alliance bastards a lesson.”
Arianne, with her platinum hair cascading to her waist, listened to the cleric before her with a vacant expression.
She looked as if she had no interest in most of the matters raised at the meeting.
Arianne consistently displayed this attitude toward the agenda items.
In fact, aside from a few urgent cases, she rarely intervened personally.
Even then, it was only when absolutely necessary that the Church's sword behind her, Sword Saint Leon Byrant, stepped in to handle things.
Thanks to the current saintess's attitude, the meetings were growing into fiercer power struggles between the dioceses with each passing day.
With a puppet saintess who had abandoned even mediation, the dioceses were sending proxies to continue vying for interests.
Cardinal Matthias disliked the changing landscape of the Holy City more and more.
‘Things weren't like this under the previous saintess, Catillea. I can't fathom what that woman is thinking.’
Cardinal Matthias did not like the saintess before his eyes.
He was certainly not the only one harboring such feelings.
The current saintess lacked the ability to lead the organization as its head.
Yet the reason they had to sit idly by and watch her at the head seat was simple.
She possessed the greatest power of any saintess in history, demonstrated by the index finger she now raised before them.
“Silence, everyone.”
Thud, thud—
At that moment, the Sword Saint standing behind the saintess slammed his sheathed sword into the floor, halting the meeting.
It was a response to the signal from the saintess.
It also meant Matthias no longer had to endure this irritating meeting.
In response to the Sword Saint's action, Arianne's soft voice echoed through the chamber.
“Shh, everyone. Please be quiet.”
“…….”
Fwaaah—!
Behind Arianne, who had raised her finger to call for silence, a pure white halo rose, pouring forth radiant light.
The beams of light scattered from the heavens enveloped Arianne, bringing stillness to the noisy meeting hall.
—Divine oracle.
The moment when the celestial god conveyed its sacred command to mortals on earth.
As all the seated clerics watched the saintess.
The saintess, wrapped in pure white radiance, touched her ear with a slightly surprised expression.
“Hm, a divine oracle has come down.”
“……Saintess, what is the content of the oracle?”
“Sir Leon. Please bring your ear closer for a moment.”
Having received the oracle from the heavens, the saintess brought her mouth to the Sword Saint's ear beside her.
She whispered a few words.
Flinch—
The Sword Saint, Leon Byrant, who had been listening, froze with a rigid expression for a moment.
“Alright, everyone. I'll tell you the content of this oracle.”
Soon after releasing Leon's ear, the saintess gazed at them all with a faint smile.
A divine oracle after a long time.
Everyone focused on what would come from the saintess's lips.
“There are those trying to summon a dangerous being into the Empire. One so perilous that the moment it descends to earth, it will plunge the world into ruin—”
“Hah…….”
“A, no… that matter is…….”
A dangerous being.
Cardinal Matthias's eyes fixed on the saintess as she spoke those ominous words.
“Black mages? Or perhaps the Magic Research Society? I don't know who's behind it either.”
A divine oracle with enormous implications for the entire Church.
It had been an incredibly long time since such an important oracle had come down.
Even Matthias couldn't maintain his composure upon hearing it.
And the smiling saintess met Matthias's gaze as she continued.
“But from now on, it will be your job to find them, won't it? Isn't that right, Cardinal Matthias?”
“……Yes, Saintess.”
Cardinal Matthias Bartiers.
That was the moment he first received a direct order from Arianne.
* * * * * *
The steep mountains in the north of the Empire.
In a secluded valley devoid of human presence, Senior Mage Creighton of the Magic Corps quietly smoked his pipe.
At his feet, a man bent over, sweating profusely as he carved letters into the ground.
The name of the man etching the ritual circle right before Creighton was Lass Hayldum.
He was a black mage who had made his lair in this valley, now reduced to an unpaid laborer under Creighton.
“Huff, hah… huuuh…….”
“Looks like it's quite taxing, Mr. Black Mage.”
Scratch, scraaatch—
Lass struggled to dig into the earth with the tree branch in his hand, engraving characters.
These were the phrases needed to activate the ritual prepared by Creighton.
Creighton watched Lass and kept gesturing with his hand, issuing directions.
“You missed a stroke on that character over there too. As a mage yourself, you know this kind of sloppiness is a big problem, right?”
“Huff, hah… Y-yeah, got it…….”
Hearing Creighton's command, Lass hurriedly added the stroke with a contorted face.
Rough breaths escaped his lips with every movement of his hand.
However, neither Lass nor Creighton paid any mind to the situation.
They both understood how little time remained until the 'experiment' Creighton had spoken of began.
It meant the emaciated black mage's work of inscribing the ritual on the leveled ground would end today.
“Huff, huuuh……!”
Scraaatch, scraaaatch!
Lass poured his body weight into the end of the branch, painfully carving the final character.
Clack, roll—
Having completed all the inscriptions, Lass dropped the branch and gasped for air.
The branch rolled down the slope after leaving his hand.
With the crudely engraved final characters from Lass's hand, the inscription work came to a complete end.
“Good work, Mr. Black Mage.”
“Haa, ha… I-I can't do anymore……!”
Sweat-drenched and collapsing, Lass declared his surrender.
However, Creighton no longer pressed him.
Tap, tap—
He lightly patted Lass's shoulder in his stead, then began walking toward the center of the inscribed ritual site.
Wherever Creighton's footsteps passed, intricate ritual patterns filled the space densely.
Archmage Johan.
The magic ritual to summon the master of the great library was finally complete on the earthly plane.
“It's been about four days since I arrived here? At last, the ritual is fully complete.”
“…….”
“Now it's time to witness the results of all our hard efforts.”
Step, step.
Creighton's footsteps, which had been crossing the circular ritual, soon reached its center.
In the midst of the high-density magic formation.
There, Creighton drew out a single grimoire.
An auxiliary ritual penned by Archmage Johan himself, for controlling the summoning magic.
Creighton opened the book containing its contents and gazed at the densely packed inscriptions.
‘A seal passed down for centuries… As it restrained a mighty archmage, it's no light seal by any means.’
Johan had called this summoning an 'experiment.'
Even Johan, who had designed the ritual, could not guarantee its success.
Yet, despite that, Creighton desperately yearned for Johan's descent.
He hoped Johan would come to the earth.
And grant the long-cherished wish pent up in his heart for ages—
Infusing the grimoire with mana born of that earnest desire.
“[Grimoire], activate.”
Wuuuuung—
Radiant mana light burst from the grimoire in Creighton's hand.
A flash of blinding light flooded the vision once.
Then, light began filling the letters spread across the ground.
Fwaaah!
The massive magic circle surrounding the two began to operate.
Wavering radiance filled the characters one by one from the center outward.
“———.”
One character.
Then another.
Light filled the dug-out spaces, imbuing meaning into the empty forms.
A circulating circle.
Mana waves racing atop it.
Characters linked tail to tail transformed into sentences of their own meaning.
Those sentences gathered, forming a ritual that began altering the laws of the world.
Ruuuuumble—
The atmosphere vibrated violently around the activation point.
The clear sky darkened in an instant, clouds gathered, and rain poured down.
“———.”
The sky began to change.
The surrounding landscape shifted rapidly as well.
Karaaang! Rumble—!
Thunderclouds blanketed the sky amid the downpour.
As if all things in the world feared this situation, screams laced with terror erupted.
Blinding lightning.
Roaring thunder exploding fiercely.
Amid the earth where countless anomalies unfolded, Creighton suddenly looked up at the sky.
“This is…….”
Something was wrong.
Creighton realized it the moment the mana flow of the formation around him began to twist.
A problem had arisen in the activating magic.
Part of the mana, which had been flowing smoothly, started forming an aberrant current.
However, even Creighton's magic could not control it.
Creighton glared at the runaway summoning magic.
Kiiiiiiing—
And then, at some point.
Creighton's ears caught an alien sound.
“Ah——.”
Crack, craaack—
The part of the sky he was gazing at began to crack and shatter.
An unbelievable sight unfolded there.
Craaack—!
Sky shattered to pieces.
The fabric of space crumbling like glass.
Beyond the gaping rift in that torn space, an unfathomable darkness peered through.
Thump, thump, thump, thump—
Creighton's heart pounded wildly upon facing that sight, pumping blood through his body.
His hand clutched his chest.
His breaths grew ragged, and his mind blanked for a moment as he stared skyward.
“Huff, huuuh……!”
“……!”
The two mages on the ground beheld it with their eyes.
The incomprehensible.
Something that could not—and should not—be comprehended existed there.
A pulsating cosmos.
Darkness rippling with stars within.
A principle beyond the ken of mere human will.
The mages' eyes, peering beyond the world's edge, stared at it in speechless awe.
“…….”
Creighton Lukbart thought.
The summoning had failed.
The library's archmage was not a being that could be summoned by ordinary means.
“W-what… what kind of monster were you trying to summon……!”
“A monster…….”
Lass's voice, drenched in shock, faded into the rain.
Yet Creighton's lips still mulled over Lass's vanished words.
Crack! Craaack—
The sky torn by the summoning magic began restoring itself.
* * * * * *
Phantasmal Archive Celestia.
The illusory magic library where I had resided for centuries.
Amid its center, as I read a grimoire, a bitter smile played on my lips.
“Ha… so that's how it went.”
At the desk in the library's heart.
My gaze, fixed on the book, met the countless eyes staring back at me.
The myriad volumes lining the magic library.
They had transformed into crimson eyes, all gazing at me uniformly.
Crackle, fizzle—
Atop the noise overlaying the space.
Eyes drawn on flat surfaces shifted their gazes across the grimoire covers.
- …….
- …….
Chilling stares that seemed to pierce the soul.
However, I felt no displeasure from those countless eyes.
If anything, they felt strangely familiar.
After all, they were all merely parts of myself.
“So that's why the summoning failed.”
My voice, laced with bitterness, echoed through the library where I alone remained.
Phantasmal Archive Celestia is alive—
That was the conclusion I had reached.