Chapter 458
Chapter 458
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 458
>Chapter Title: The Intuition Speaks
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A chill silence settled over the space.
As if time itself had frozen.
Aster and Demeya stood facing each other, staring intently, until Aster was the first to break the silence.
“Fragments... three of them?”
“Answer first.”
“What...”
Demeya clamped her mouth shut, as if refusing to give any more information. Left with no choice, Aster had to sort through his thoughts alone. The first thing he needed to address was this.
*Does she... know about Yeokcheon?*
―There are fragments of Yeokcheon in the Sanctuary.
―What you need to answer is this: are you truly the master of Yeokcheon? ...Answer, and I’ll tell you the fragments’ locations.
Demeya’s tone was that of someone who knew about Yeokcheon.
Not something she’d learned from Pahren in the reception room, but as if she’d known about it all along...
*How?*
No, how didn’t matter.
What mattered was *what* she knew.
And...
*...If I am the master of Yeokcheon?*
What then?
What was Demeya’s goal?
Figuring out whether the information—“There are three fragments in the Sanctuary, not two”—was true or false could come later.
“How long do I have to wait?”
“If you are the master?”
“Well... I’ll think about what comes after. There are three options: kill you, leave you be, or help you. I haven’t decided yet.”
“...”
Demeya’s voice was calm. She didn’t seem to be lying. But that only made it more unsettling.
In other words, it all depended on how Aster acted from here on out.
More tricky than any outright threat.
So, what to do?
Aster closed his eyes for a moment. He pressed his furrowed brow with his middle finger, trying to smooth it out, then remembered he was wearing a mask and switched to pressing his temples.
After a while like that.
Aster let out a deep sigh.
He realized it.
Dragging this out any longer was as good as answering. He could keep playing dumb to the end if he wanted, but it’d just be closing his eyes to avoid the elephant in the room.
Thanks to the heavy mental toll from the battle with the Ninth Elder.
Aster had no choice but to admit it honestly, and Demeya’s reaction was exactly as expected.
“I am the master.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“So?”
“I’ll ponder what to do step by step.”
Demeya said that and fell silent. As if she really meant to think it over.
Aster decided not to worry about that part either.
It wasn’t something that would change no matter how much he fretted.
Anyway, what mattered now was this.
...The fragments of Yeokcheon.
“Now it’s your turn to answer. Is it true there are three fragments in the Sanctuary?”
“Yes. There are three fragments. Two of them are right below us, in the deep layer.”
“...The deep layer?”
Demeya nodded.
“If you follow Pahren and Kahazar to the forked path, there are stairs leading underground. At the center of that underground area, the fragments are placed.”
“Hmm.”
That meant he’d have to chase after Pahren and Kahazar after all...
“And the last one?”
“One is on this current layer.”
“On this layer?”
Aster tilted his head.
Demeya stared at him blankly before asking quietly.
“Don’t believe me?”
“Well...”
Honestly, it wasn’t easy to believe.
If the two fragments belonged to Sun and Moon, the third one’s origin was unknown.
Of course, there was a chance another Indurance had joined during the Sanctuary’s long history, but even so...
*...Three fragments in one place?*
Demeya watched Aster, her lips twitching. She seemed about to say something short, then closed her mouth.
“Believe it or not, your choice.”
“What...”
Aster was dumbfounded, at a loss for words.
It was obvious she’d gotten annoyed midway through explaining and shut her trap.
“Couldn’t you at least convince me?”
“...Necessary?”
“Probably?”
“...Hmph.”
Demeya narrowed her eyes with a grunt, her face screaming inconvenience. But her mouth opened soon enough.
“...Fine. I’ll explain.”
“As detailed as possible.”
“...”
“No info sharing?”
“...Understood.”
Aster flashed a cheeky grin at Demeya’s reluctant agreement.
There seemed to be a little time left before the Judge of Jamal awakened anyway.
*If I play this right, huh? I might learn what traps are hidden in the Sanctuary too.*
Absolutely not just to annoy Demeya.
Really.
* * *
And so the explanation began.
Demeya wasn’t much of an orator, but she had a knack for getting straight to the core concisely.
Thanks to that, by the time her not-so-long explanation ended, Aster fully understood everything she’d seen, heard, and experienced.
His impression?
“...They’re all insane.”
“Is that so.”
“Insane, obviously.”
Why insane?
To understand that, one had to know the atrocities committed by Sun and Moon.
In Aster’s view, this Sanctuary was one big “fish trap.”
*A trap baited to keep luring in fish.*
...It drew in reclusive mages under the fancy banner of the Sanctuary, mages’ holy land.
And those mages, after death...
*...Slaves.*
Their souls bound to the Sanctuary’s core.
Uses varied.
Some souls fueled it as power sources, others handled computations impossible without mental prowess.
The gateways to sea, land, sky... all created that way.
Even the magic circles recreating past Arch Mages were made by grinding those souls.
No need to separate them out—everything in the Sanctuary was squeezed from those souls.
The ugly truth hidden in the Sanctuary.
So yes, Sun and Moon were insane.
*Yeokcheon fragments might be a pain, but this kind of crap?*
Unfathomable.
Why?
The Sun and Moon Aster saw in his visions weren’t that vicious.
They harbored great resentment toward Yeokcheon, sure, but were they mad enough to sacrifice others without hesitation...?
*...Not that far.*
So why?
No, the *why* wasn’t the key point.
More importantly...
*What the hell is their goal?*
Why had Sun and Moon trapped the hermits’ souls?
For what purpose?
Was it tied to the traps?
It would’ve been nice to find the answer in Demeya’s experiences, but unfortunately, it didn’t go that far.
Instead, the “third fragment.”
He learned how it had ended up in the Sanctuary, and the story went like this.
*The hermits discovered the Sanctuary’s secret.*
Naturally, the hermits wanted to escape that bondage.
They hoped to free the souls of past hermits while shaking off their own soul chains.
But it wasn’t easy.
The binding defied natural order.
Yes.
...Yeokcheon.
It was Yeokcheon that shackled the hermits’ souls.
After decades of futile searching and countless failures, they closed their eyes in despair. Then, the survivors had a sudden thought.
―What if we had the same power...?
Then, perhaps they could break the cycle.
And so, for decades more.
The hermits sought someone with a “fragment of Yeokcheon.”
It wasn’t easy.
Yeokcheon’s existence was a secret known to few.
But the hermits roamed the continent without giving up. They searched not just for Yeokcheon fragments but for any way to break their soul bonds.
Meanwhile, mages drawn by the Sanctuary’s name became hermits and were oppressed.
After the first hermits who uncovered the secret passed, their successors carried the torch.
How much time passed like that?
―Yeokcheon? If it doesn’t mean treason, I’d like to hear more.
...A stroke of pure luck, nothing else.
The Indurance they met gladly accepted the hermits’ request.
―Heh, to think our ancestors committed such absurd atrocities...
...That was all Demeya had confirmed of “events that happened.”
What came after...
“I don’t know why it failed. The Ninth Elder’s intervention warped the illusion. But from what I remember...”
Demeya had dodged the rampaging fragment guardian while gathering Sanctuary intel.
The info mentioned earlier came from that process, but what stood out to Aster was this.
...The Sanctuary’s deep layer.
*Sun and Moon are there?*
Of course, not “alive.”
Souls without bodies.
But not ordinary souls.
So-called... spirits.
No, something transcending spirits. Long ago, continent folk called such spirits this.
...Gods.
* * *
What is a god?
Not delving into godly conditions or religious interpretations.
Simply, what were the beings continent folk called “gods” in history?
Transcendent, omniscient, omnipotent gods existed only in distant myths. Most “gods” in recorded history stemmed from ignorance.
A prime example being...
*Spirits.*
But not ordinary spirits.
Spirits with power beyond...
*...Mysteries.*
Beings performing miracles beyond common sense were deemed gods. In Demeya’s words, it boiled down to this.
*So, Sun and Moon became such spirits and are waiting for me.*
What to say.
Not a great feeling.
An unimaginable span of waiting. Even benevolent, it’d be eerie; Sun and Moon clearly harbored malice.
Anyway.
“So, the third fragment?”
“Near the illusion’s end, the rampaging fragment guardian spoke to me. It realized it was an illusion and asked a favor of me, living in reality.”
What favor?
―Deliver the fragment to Yeokcheon’s master. The location is...
As if it knew Yeokcheon’s master had come here.
Absurd, but not all that surprising anymore.
To sum up...
“The fragment’s on this layer?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm, so it is.”
Aster took a moment to organize his thoughts.
A Yeokcheon fragment on this layer.
He didn’t know how or where it was hidden, but Demeya knew the location.
Two things to consider here.
*What have Sun and Moon prepared?*
And another.
*Why is Demeya so cooperative?*
Detective Aster’s intuition was speaking.
...Demeya was hiding something.