The Hidden Scenario Begins
······ Sonora's body crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Fortunately, she was still breathing.
I checked her condition, then brought together the fragment of Longinus's Spear I already carried with the one I had torn from the Outer God.
And in that same instant—
Thud!
······ My heart slammed so hard it hurt.
That was not all.
For a moment, the world itself stopped.
And then—
—Come find me.
—Find us.
······ The two goddesses revealed themselves before me.
"W-what in the world just happened?"
"What have I done······."
One by one, the people of Holy City Adrium began to come to their senses.
The Pope. The cardinals. Countless holy knights and the faithful of the city.
Yet none of them could properly remember what they had just done.
The goddesses' forced authority had stripped every last one of them of their reason.
And worse—
"Th-the Tower of Ruin?!"
"What is that······ how is it here, in Holy City Adrium······!"
The black tower rising before their eyes drove a despair deeper than anything they had ever known.
The situation was already beyond control.
Left alone, Adrium would fall.
In the end, the Pope had no choice but to lower himself.
He set aside every scrap of pride, every shred of dignity that belonged to the papal seat.
"I beg you. Sa······ save us······ please, save the Goddess Sect."
To a man he had never seen before.
To the unknown figure who called himself Master of the Round Table.
He could only drop to his knees, tears streaming, and plead.
There was no other answer left.
That was the moment.
The one who had received the Pope's plea—
I settled the silver mask back over my face once more.
"Knights of the Round Table, hear me."
Snap!
I spoke to them as they stood arrayed in a single line.
The Tower of Ruin I myself had raised—I would conquer it with my own hands.
And then—
Ding!
A Hidden Scenario has begun!
It had returned.
A Hidden Scenario.
A form of story that had never once appeared since the world first drew breath.
Something no hero, no human being, no one at all had ever experienced.
It was the pure domain of creation—of authorship itself.
A name that meant a new myth.
And so not even the gods could know how it would unfold, or how it would end.
The only one who could write a Hidden Scenario was the one who set the story down, line by line.
"Th-that light······!"
"Ah— Goddess!"
The land drowned beneath the Tower of Ruin.
A dark shadow swallowed Adrium whole.
Neither the prayers of the devout nor the concentrated might of sacred power could touch it.
And just as every soul flailed in despair—
Fwaaaah!
··· Brilliant light burst from one man's sword, punched through the darkness, and remade the world in radiance.
Those who watched that light dropped to their knees, one after another.
They clasped their hands and recited prayers with fierce devotion.
For the sight of him was as upright and gentle as a goddess's merciful smile.
It was as though the blessings of both goddesses were turned toward that man alone.
"That man······."
"The new Master of the Round Table······."
Even the cardinals stared, entranced, at the new Master of the Round Table.
Among them was the fanatic Aron.
"Look upon him! He is the one who will show us the path we must walk! Believe! Faith alone will be our salvation!"
Ask nothing. Question nothing. Simply believe.
Aron had already witnessed the man's miracles more than once inside the Tower of the War God.
To his enemies, he was a figure of endless dread.
He wore the shape of evil that dragged endless darkness in its wake—but that was only a signal and a divine punishment reserved for those who refused to believe in him.
How could a being who carried the blessings of both goddesses, who pressed forward without ever losing the path, possibly be evil?
"That sword······!!"
Then it happened.
Staring at the blade that poured out such brilliant light, the Pope began to tremble in fine, continuous shudders.
Like a man who had suddenly understood something—or like a man struck with pure horror.
He looked again, confirming the sword's form with both eyes, and cried out.
"The lost sacred relic······ the sword of Patience!"
Patience.
It was the concept that stood opposite to sin.
A sword of the gods—and for that very reason, called the natural enemy of evil.
But long ago, in an age when evil ran rampant and the demons of sin no longer feared the gods, it had vanished—a weapon of tragic fate.
The first thing the demons had erased was that very sword of Patience.
Yet there could be no mistake.
It was the sacred relic the Goddess Sect had searched for with desperate longing.
And now a knight of the Round Table had brought back the divine weapon that had been lost, that had disappeared.
"Y-Your Holiness! Are you saying that sword is truly the sword of Patience?"
"How can this be······!"
The cardinals could not close their mouths.
If that blade was truly Patience, then he was the great hero recorded in the Book of Revelation.
"He Who Illuminates the World from Darkness!"
"The Holy Blood of Patience!"
"······ Knight of the White Pantheon!"
"So those stories were real all along······!"
He was no mere knight of some single god.
In the golden age of civilization—before Ruin ever appeared—even the gods of the White Pantheon, who had flaunted the most overwhelming divine authority of that era, had been forced to acknowledge the Seven Knights.
But the truth of those legends had always been fiercely debated.
Records of such powerful knights existed only in the Book of Revelation.
Nothing detailed what they had actually done.
And so the heroes of the Six Corners of the Former Empire had always been far more famous.
But the sword of Patience could be wielded by only one person: the Holy Blood of Patience.
Which meant the stories in the Book of Revelation had been true.
And the Pope—who held the authority to read the Revelation with his own eyes—could not possibly be mistaken!
"The will of the goddesses has been inscribed upon him!"
"The authority that fell to the earth has at last been set right!"
"At last, I can see the light······!"
They cheered as well.
In their ignorance and disbelief they had invited something base and impure into their midst.
But now, as they began to believe in the knight of the Round Table who had come to save them, they truly began to see the light.
They had closed their eyes, stopped their ears, turned their faces away, and refused to look.
Because they could not accept the goddesses' deaths.
Because they could not bring themselves to believe.
But······.
No longer.
They believed in the man who held the sword of Patience and carried the will of the goddesses with him.
And that faith opened their eyes.
"Goddess!"
"I can see them! I can feel them!"
"Were You there all along?"
"The goddesses never abandoned us!"
Behind the Master of the Round Table, they could see the two goddesses smiling.
They felt the goddesses' mercy.
A hymn of hope began to rise.
And just before the Round Table entered the Tower of Ruin—
······ He spoke.
The sin of failing to believe.
The sin of inviting something base into their midst.
He forgave them for all of it.
That was the moment.
Fwah!
Fwaaah!
Fwaaaaaaah!
Across the whole of Holy City Adrium—
Sacred light began to rise above the shoulders and heads of the faithful.
"H-holy power······!"
"It's returned!"
"The flame of sacred force has been rekindled!"
People trembled and wept without exception.
The Pope. The cardinals. The saintess, the high priests, the holy knights—every last one of them.
It was not merely that holy power had returned.
It was because the flame of sacred force, dead for so long, had been brought back to life.
The fallen authority. The divinity they had believed extinguished.
"I······ I was blind."
The Pope repented of his sin.
Their salvation had stood before their eyes, and still he had failed to recognize it, failed to believe.
He no longer felt the intrusion of anything base or impure.
The one who carried on the will of the goddesses had removed it.
He had answered the Pope's plea.
And the Pope thought he understood now.
The Knights of the Round Table.
··· They had been fully revived.
But the worry remained.
Could they truly conquer the Tower of Ruin?
"Believe. You must believe."
Aron repeated the words without end.
The Pope quietly nodded.
He would believe.
He would not waver again.
"······."
The Elf Queen read the signs of Ruin and shuddered.
It had not been long since they left the Dungeon of the World Tree.
How could a great evil already have appeared?
"We must form······ a Holy Alliance."
Inside the Dungeon of the World Tree, the Elf Queen had felt it with painful clarity.
How utterly powerless they were.
That if things continued this way, they would be devoured by evil.
The Knights of the Golden Rule had been strong.
Even the White King, the Evil-Slaying Giant, and every other sacred being had ultimately fallen to the Knights of the Golden Rule.
The druid Albino and Raiga, the strongest of the Empire.
Even the members beneath them could not be taken lightly.
If they had met as true enemies······.
We would have been annihilated.
The elves had been far too arrogant.
They had believed that so long as they remained inside the Primeval Forest, they were invincible.
Reality had proven otherwise.
They had suffered the Dark Elves' assault and tasted bitter defeat at the hands of the Knights of the Golden Rule.
If they continued to rest on their laurels, a far greater catastrophe would be unavoidable.
"A wise thought, my Queen."
Beside her, the White King smiled.
It was the White King who had first proposed the alliance.
He, too, had been under constant assault from the Black King.
Then the White King looked around at those gathered and spoke.
"Evil-Slaying Giant. Kasim, the Radiant Transcendent. Ancient Phoenix. Guardian of Light. What will you do?"
The monsters who had entered the Dungeon of the World Tree.
He had gathered the most representative among them and proposed an alliance.
But these beings had spent long ages alone.
Joining forces with anyone, forming an alliance—it was an awkward, alien thing to them.
The White King gazed toward the aura of the tower rising in the far distance and opened his mouth.
"The Tower of Ruin has appeared. The beasts of the Abyss are hunting us as well. Countless others dream of becoming the continent's master. If we simply stand still, we will fall."
No single power could stand against what was coming.
The darkness, the evil, was simply too vast.
—Ruin······ must be erased.
—Agreed.
Two voices rang through their minds in that instant.
They belonged to Al Raum, the Ancient Phoenix, and the Guardian of Light in the form of a colossal stone statue.
Neither the monsters of the Abyss, nor the Black King and his forces of darkness, could compare to Ruin itself.
They recognized it as an enemy that had to be eliminated at all costs.
"Then will you join your strength with ours?"
"Where is the Druid of the Golden Rule?"
Kasim, the Radiant Transcendent, spoke.
If they were gathering those who had cleared the Dungeon of the World Tree to form an alliance, the Druid of the Golden Rule could not be left out.
The White King shook his head.
"It is best that he remain as hidden as possible. The moment he steps into the open, he will be the first target."
"He's right. The Black King, the Dark Elves—countless forces of evil will try to strike him first. Perhaps even the evil gods······."
The Elf Queen agreed.
There was nothing to gain from the Druid of the Golden Rule revealing himself.
It was obvious they would come for the power of the Golden Rule—or for the World Tree itself.
The White King nodded.