Sonora
Login and logout.
When I logged in, I became Randolph. When I logged out, I returned to being Park Hyunmyung.
That proposition had not changed.
The one left behind still seemed to trigger the Guardian Wall if attacked while asleep. And recognizing and controlling both bodies at once remained, as expected, impossible.
"Why is the Balrog Cult's mark here…?"
Isabella asked again, her face unable to accept what she was seeing.
This was the outer edge of the Abyss where she and the children had been imprisoned—the slaughter ground where the Desert Queen had forced them to kill and devour one another. Her expression said she could not understand why the mark of the Balrog Cult, an organization with no connection to this place, was sitting out in the open.
…That aside.
The Balrog Cult.
I had run into them a few times in the game. The only time I had faced them in person was when I killed Master in the Rift Tower.
That paladin. He had used the Balrog Cult's Black Spot and the Goddess Church's Explosion of Light at the same time. I was fairly certain he had claimed he was offering his holy blood to the Heaven-Destroyer.
I sorted my thoughts and spoke.
"…The Black Spot that the Balrog Cult wields resembles Contamination."
Back when the Desert Queen had planned to contaminate an entire city and summon the Demon Blood King, Isabella had sacrificed herself to stop the ritual. Of course, the Demon Blood King had died inside me and manifested as a Hidden Trait. But I had always wondered how the Desert Queen had artificially created Contamination in the first place.
I had known Contamination as something that occurred by chance through contamination sources that appeared in cities—a side effect of Pangenia rising into the sky.
That question was finally answered.
The nature of the Black Spot.
The Black Spot the Balrog Cult used was nothing like existing attributes. It was not darkness, and it was not chaos either. The Black Spot had the property of continuously stacking, spreading, and destroying—exactly like a contamination source.
Perhaps the Black Spot simply possessed the attribute of Contamination. In short, the Balrog Cult was connected to the Contamination of the world itself.
"Are you saying the Desert Queen had dealings with the Balrog Cult?"
Isabella spoke as if she had never heard of such a thing. Even during her days as the Snake Princess, she had never once seen the Desert Queen interact with the Balrog Cult. Her confusion was only natural.
But the Balrog Cult was an organization that never revealed its true identity to begin with. Even while waging war against the Goddess Church, that remained true. No one knew how the Balrog Cult had managed to win its war against the Goddess Church. Normally, once a war broke out, the gossips made sure you learned the shape of the conflict whether you wanted to or not.
A place that leaves no traces… left a trace.
And yet here it was, sitting out in the open.
I continued turning the mark over in my mind and spoke.
"High probability they did."
"Then… the Balrog Cult left this mark and kidnapped Sonora?"
For the first time, anger touched Isabella's face. I shook my head.
"That is not a mark the Balrog Cult left behind."
"Then who?"
"Sonora left it."
"…What?"
"Look closely at the cloth."
A frayed, yellowed scrap of fabric heavy with the years. We had been so absorbed in the mark drawn on it that we had overlooked whose cloth it actually was.
"This is… ah!"
Isabella's pupils began to widen. She recognized it. This cloth had been torn from a piece of clothing.
"It's… a piece of the clothes I used to wear."
It was Isabella's. A scrap of the outfit she had been wearing. Somehow I had expected as much.
"Sonora did not die. She simply continued, in this pitch-black place, to remember you."
The final battle. When I had borrowed Isabella's body and played as a gamer, I had defeated Sonora as she was turning into a hybrid. But winning did not mean I had killed her. That hybrid had been nothing like ordinary hybrids. With the crude weapon I had been holding at the time, killing that mutated hybrid had been clearly beyond me.
And so Sonora, who had not died, had taken a torn piece of Isabella's clothing from their duel, and clinging to that memory, she had endured alone for a long time in this pitch-black darkness.
"Ah…"
Isabella clutched her chest, her hands trembling as if her heart itself were in pain. No tears fell. When something is too sad, too shocking, tears simply refuse to come.
Sonora. Her friend had been waiting for her alone in this place all this time. She must have been lonely. Unbearably lonely. Imagining Sonora left alone in the dark made Isabella's chest ache as if it would collapse.
Just before the Balrog Cult took her, Sonora had desperately drawn their mark onto this cloth—using the precious scrap of Isabella's clothing she had kept, carving the mark with her own blood. Leaving it in a place no one would ever find… perhaps she had hoped Isabella would come looking for her.
"I was… far too late."
"It is not too late."
"…?"
"Sonora is alive."
It was not too late. Sonora was alive—in the Holy City of Adrium, capital of the Goddess Church. It was clear the Goddess Church had captured Sonora themselves during the war with the Balrog Cult. Why she was carrying the Broken Spear of Longinus, I did not know. But there was no doubt she had been used as a weapon of the Balrog Cult. And if they had taken her alive, they would not kill her for some time yet.
Isabella lifted her head and looked up at me.
"Sonora is… truly alive?"
"Yes."
"Ah—do you know? Where she is?"
"Holy City Adrium."
"…!!!"
At my answer, Isabella's eyes shook violently. Then she composed herself and rose to her feet, looking ready to charge straight for Adrium if left alone. I shook my head and stopped her.
"Charging in recklessly will not solve this. There is something you must do before you reach Adrium."
"…Please tell me."
Her face and eyes said she would do anything, whatever it was.
"Bring Priest Andrew, who headed for the Forest of Beginning. We need him if we are to secure Sonora's Divine Illness safely."
Isabella looked puzzled at the order to fetch Priest Andrew.
"Lord Randolph. Priest Andrew may be an ordained priest, but… he does not hold much influence within the Goddess Church, does he?"
"Of course he cannot do it alone. Naturally, Saintess Seia must come as well."
"Ah…!"
"Lead Saintess Seia and Priest Andrew to Adrium."
Saintess Seia, believed dead in the Great Expedition. The picture of her returning alongside Priest Andrew would make everything far smoother.
Isabella asked, "And what do you intend to do, Lord Randolph?"
"I…"
I started to speak, then hesitated. Should I tell Isabella that I, as Park Hyunmyung, was already in Adrium?
She must not learn that I am here at all.
The Paradox of Fate. Simply recognizing or becoming aware of me would thin my existence. If Isabella realized that I, Park Hyunmyung, was in Pangenia rather than on Earth, I could vanish on the spot. The problem was that Isabella likely knew my face—Park Hyunmyung's face. I could not be certain how far our memories had been shared.
Entering the Holy City in Randolph's body would be difficult.
Still, there was no choice. The moment Randolph set foot in the Holy City, his identity would inevitably be exposed. That was why I had never made contact with the Goddess Church until now. Walking into the Holy City myself was a two-hundred-percent guarantee of being caught.
The Goddess's Barrier.
The unique barrier engraved upon the Holy City—the Goddess's Barrier—blocked anything related to Ruin. The problem was that a Fragment of Ruin existed inside Randolph. When I had consumed the Calamity Baal, had a Fragment of Ruin not lodged itself in my heart? The moment I stepped inside, I would be discovered, and any safe way of bringing Sonora out would vanish into the distance.
I have no choice but to take it in two steps.
So I needed hands and feet to move in Randolph's place. As Park Hyunmyung, I would have to move separately, tracking down Sonora's whereabouts and pinpointing the location of the Archangel.
I finished organizing my thoughts and spoke.
"I have other business."
"Will you be sleeping? Or…?"
"…I will be asleep."
"Understood. Then I should head for the Balan Kingdom first."
Resolve kindled in Isabella's eyes. She believed my words that Sonora was alive without a shred of doubt. Once more she stood firm. This suited Isabella far better than grief.
"…Why are you smiling?"
"She must be a truly precious friend."
At that, a smile rose to Isabella's lips as if the sorrow had never been there.
"Yes. She is a truly precious friend."
A friend who could make her smile just by being remembered. I could only feel envy.
The most important thing, as always, was identity laundering.
I needed a plausible identity if I was going to survive in the Holy City. Wandering around Adrium as an outsider and stirring up trouble would make it hard to keep my own head on my shoulders. If I wanted to search for both Sonora and the Archangel at the same time, I needed a special identity that no one would dare touch lightly.
For example…
"Recruiters?"
"What are they recruiting for?"
A murmur of voices. At the center of the plaza, a great crowd had gathered. Everyone was looking in one direction and speaking roughly.
"Why are Empire bastards in Adrium?"
"Didn't you hear? They're holding some kind of martial arts tournament."
"So… why are they looking for people in Adrium to enter a tournament held in the Empire?"
It was strange. The Empire, which worshipped only the Death God Religion, and the Goddess Church—the two were like oil and water, utterly unable to mix. And yet Imperial recruiters were standing brazenly in the Holy City. Something that could never happen without the Goddess Church's permission.
"I heard they're searching every city and nation. Place and you can join the Eight Houses Knights, and the champion gets taken on as a disciple by Knight Commander Raiga."
"The Eight Houses Knights… Raiga…?"
At those names, the crowd reeled. The name of the Empire's foremost knight order and the name of the strongest man who led it had come out together.
"And that's not all! There's an enormous prize on the line, including the holy sword Path of Light that Knight King Wilhelm once wielded!"
"Hah!"
"Insane."
It was not merely a rise in status—the prizes were perfect. The owner of a holy sword was someone even the Goddess Church could not treat lightly.
Then laughter burst out beside me.
"Pfft! It'd be hilarious if someone from the Holy City actually placed."
Something without precedent. If a placer emerged from the Holy City, it would paint a truly ridiculous picture. And yet they were recruiting people in the Holy City?
One thing was certain: if someone from the Holy City placed, they would gain enormous influence over both the Empire and the Goddess Church. And if they actually won?
"Ah, so that's why they allowed recruiting in the Holy City. And I hear quite a few children of the Holy City's prominent figures have already entered."
"Prominent figures? Who?"
"His Eminence Johanson's son, for one…"
"What…?!"
From the Goddess Church's perspective, there was nothing to lose. They should have been encouraging it. Was this not a golden opportunity to convert the Empire to the Goddess Church? More than anything, you could tell how the Goddess Church viewed this tournament just from the fact that Cardinal Johanson's son had entered. Beyond that, a great many famous names had poured into the competition. The tournament had already become a festival not only for the Goddess Church but for all of Pangenia.
"How do you know so much, anyway?"
"…I was thinking of entering myself."
There were more people hoping to enter than I had expected. Plenty of shills, too—people who knew a suspiciously large amount of information and would not stop talking. They had almost certainly been paid by the recruiters to drum up interest.
Well. It did not matter.
"Name?"
"Hyun."
"Applicants wait in the tent on the right. There will be a simple test."
An attitude that said there was nothing else worth asking beyond a name. Following the recruiter's words, I moved to the tent on the right.
Whew. I whistled softly under my breath.
Inside the tent, a great many hopefuls were already waiting. People who looked at me—the newcomer—with open hostility.
"What's with that guy?"
"Looks scrawny."
"Every kind of freak is walking in these days."
Everyone was a competitor. I shrugged.
The first step toward identity laundering.
For example…
Become Raiga's disciple.
…A disciple of Raiga born in the Holy City of Adrium.
There could be no more solid identity than that.