The Serpent Church (10)
The Serpent Church (10)
-Hey, you crazy son of a bitchhhhhh!!!
The roar came flying at me. I picked my nose inside the white space that was slowly beginning to clear.
"Huh? Why?"
-Do you have any idea what you've just done?!
"I-I... Big Sis Ra..."
-Shut your mouth! You stupid bitch!
"Hauu..."
I stood tall.
"You said to take everything I could take, didn't you?"
-There are limits! Do you have no boundaries at all?! You’re supposed to be a priest serving a god, and now you’ve accepted another god’s mark?!
"I, I can explain...!"
-I told you to shut up, bitch!
"Waaah."
I shielded Naga, who was on the verge of tears.
"Why are you yelling at our Naga?"
-O-our Naga? Ah... ah... my blood pressure... my blood pressure...
"Z, Zahard..."
She squirmed and clung to my body. Yes. That's right.
You're mine now, so you can cling even more.
"Ra, forget this for now. Let’s go somewhere far away and talk."
-This is your mental world! There is nowhere farther to go!
"Come on. You can do anything if you put your mind to it. Naga, wait here for a moment. I’ll go calm Ra down."
"T, take care..."
I moved away from her. The moment I took a step, Naga's figure vanished without a trace.
But Ra's roar remained exactly the same.
-You lunatic!
"I can hear you fine, so lower the decibels!"
-Fine! Let’s put aside how lightly you’ve treated me! You have no idea what what you’ve done means!
"What does it mean?"
Flames flared and sparked in front of me. A massive blackboard clunked down, and a burning piece of chalk moved on its own before it.
She's even drawing diagrams to explain. How kind.
-Your body is something I made myself, formed solely from the power of the Sun God!
"The performance is pretty good, I'll admit."
-That's not all! Do you know how many Sacred Marks are contained in a body I made myself?!
"There was one on the back of my hand. That seemed to be all."
-What you can see is not everything! Your entire body might as well be covered in my Sacred Marks! I created this thing called the System for you as best I could... and fit the world onto it... do you know how much shit I went through...
The chalk trembled.
-And this bastard cheats on me?!
"No one can keep a capable man tied down."
-You son of a bitch! Just die right here! How dare you humiliate me! What?! An apostle of one god serving two gods?! If this gets into another god's ears, I'll be known as dirt cheap!
"You said to get everything I could get."
-I never said to get the Serpent Goddddddd!!!!
The chalk, which had been huffing, went limp.
-Why did I... why did it have to be someone like you...
"There, there. Stop crying."
-Bastard... piece of shit... And do you know how badly this could affect your body? It literally goes against causality. There is a reason nothing like this has ever happened before. Whether it causes enormous side effects... or leads to consequences no one can imagine... unprecedented things like this are always full of ruin.
The chalk flew at me.
-Is there anything wrong with your body?
"There was a strange description written in the System."
-...What did it say?
"Can’t you see it, Ra?"
-If I went that far, the world would warp. I was satisfied just showing you the quantified world. If I touch the System too, everything breaks.
"I see. It wasn’t anything dramatic—just things like my race becoming ??? or parts of my body getting distorted..."
-.......
The flames flared up. She hurriedly felt all over my body.
-It's a bomb about to go off.
"My body?"
-Yes. Your body! You damned thing! Different Sacred Powers are bound to repel each other! Didn't that bitch Naga tell you?!
"She didn't tell me?"
-That stupid bitch! I should have realized her head was empty when I saw her going into heat over her own follower!
Ra fell silent for a moment.
-...Now that it's come to this, there's no way around it. You're going to die.
"Excuse me?"
-Two things have mixed, so no one knows what will happen. You might explode tomorrow, or the day after. Your human shell could shatter entirely, and you could become the worst kind of monster on earth—a mass of Sacred Power.
"Come on. Surely not to that extent."
-Did you think a mere human vessel could contain two Sacred Powers that repel each other? I expected something like a Serpent God Sacred Relic... but this damned bastard came back with the title of Apostle on top of everything else...
"...If that's the case, that's a bit of a problem."
I racked my brain. Sacred Power about to explode. So two different types of Sacred Power were constantly fighting and exploding inside my body?
But there was a phrase that caught my attention and kept me from thinking only in that direction. If the System quantified and displayed all information, it wouldn't have lied.
"So it's like a nuclear bomb going off inside my body every day?"
-Yes! It’s irradiation! You idiot! War defiles the land too! Land that has been through war is often damaged beyond recovery!
"But it said they were mixed."
-That's the same thi... no. Wait. What? Mixed?
The flames touched my body once more.
-...Hold on. What is this.
"What's wrong?"
-A transformation of Sacred Power... a mass of Sacred Power I’ve never seen before... this is... small, but perhaps it could become a vessel for a Demigod... Now that I think about it... his body was never an ordinary human body to begin with. It is essentially the Sacred Mark I fashioned myself...
The flame went pale.
-You... what exactly is happening to you?
"I don't know either."
-F-first, put that issue aside! I need to think about this some more! Fortunately, it doesn’t look like you’ll explode right away! This will need more research...
The flames grabbed my arm. A blood-drawing needle that appeared from somewhere sucked out my blood.
"Ow."
-I'll be busy for a while, so I probably won't be able to contact you. If you need help, ask Naga. That bitch has relatively little to do.
"I'll get a bit lonely."
-Isn't that your fault!
The flames began to slowly disappear. I casually grabbed the tip of the flame.
"Hey, Ra."
-What now!
"You know Ra is the god I love most, right?"
-......
"You made this body for me, we’re close enough to whisper secrets only the two of us know, and you’re the god who has been with me from beginning to end in this world."
I stroked the flame.
"Ra is the god most precious to me."
-...This little shit.
The flames blazed up.
-Now I'm even angrier. You damn playboy! Take a beating!
"Ack! Ack!"
-I really... why did it have to be a human like that...
The flames vanished. I shouted into the space.
"Ra! I cherish you so much!"
-Shut up! You damned bastard!
. . .
"Zahard?"
Someone was shaking my shoulder. My eyes snapped open. I immediately got up from where I lay.
The surroundings were filled with ice. So I'd returned to reality. My body felt sluggish. I also felt a sense of foreignness I didn't recognize.
My body... is still the same.
But something had changed. I looked at the back of my hand. The Sun God's Sacred Mark still remained, but somehow I felt like I could show something different now.
"Are you okay?"
"Big Sis, want to see this?"
"Huh?"
I casually held out the back of my hand. The Sacred Mark on it swirled, and then its shape began to change.
The sun-like pattern had changed into one depicting a serpent.
"...Huh?"
At Isabella’s dazed voice, I quietly roused my Sacred Power. A sinister energy resembling a black shadow rather than the sun began swirling around my feet.
"It actually works."
"Wh, what is this."
"I went to see Naga, and she liked me more than I expected."
I smiled brightly at Isabella, who was staring at me blankly.
"She said she’d appoint me as her Apostle. Of course, I still serve the Sun God too. Only you know, Big Sis."
Isabella fainted on the spot.
. . .
"I've never seen... a phenomenon like this."
Isabella, the only one who shared the secret, said gloomily.
"Naga personally chose an Apostle... and of all people, it’s a Sun God Church priest. What does the Sun God say?"
"She said she likes me because I'm capable?"
Of course, she was foaming at the mouth.
"The gods stand far above us. But humans are ultimately nothing more than replicas made in the image of the gods. No matter how capable, we can never catch up to them. But for you to have your capability acknowledged by such beings..."
Isabella made a holy sign.
"This must be part of Naga’s teaching too. Zahard, I’ll teach you. The choice is yours, but now that a Sacred Mark has appeared on you, you have the right to hear the Serpent Church’s teachings."
"I'd be glad."
There's a saying: a blessing in disguise.
Inside the empty cavity, not knowing when Vagueness would swallow us, I was able to train with Isabella. Just the two of us, in a tunnel where no one could see.
Of course, I also drew suspicion from the inquisitors and Radatok.
"You've been spending too much time with the Serpent Church lately."
"Brother. Surely you're not harboring wicked thoughts..."
"Merely exchanging words can lead to corruption, Brother."
The voices that piped up went quiet with a single crab shell.
"Brother must have his reasons."
"The fact that you can make such pious food is proof that you were born for the Sun God Church."
"Sorry for doubting you."
"Could I have one more bowl, Brother?"
Unlike the dull time I'd spent alone, once I had something clear to learn, time flew by.
Isabella was a strict teacher. But whenever I got hurt during training, she immediately rushed over and poured healing Holy Arts onto me.
"Z, Zahard, are you okay? Maybe we should slow down a bit..."
Her somewhat stiff demeanor softened to some degree. Now she was almost like a real older sister.
But I demanded even harsher training. It had gone far off from the time I'd expected, but this was an opportunity to learn poison and darkness Holy Arts.
"I want you to push me a little harder, Big Sis."
Even when I collapsed, I got right back up.
"If I think of it as Naga’s teaching, it doesn’t feel hard at all."
"...You really are something, kid."
-Zahard... so cute...
Ra's voice was barely audible anymore. But now Naga's voice filled that empty space.
We weren't even face to face, but her personality seemed to have changed a little. How should I put it. You know that thing?
The feeling of a shut-in otaku huffing over their favorite genre.
-Cute... my follower is so cute... those sweat drops... I want to lick his shoulder...
Why is a god who shrivels up when we actually meet acting like that.
Like that, more than twenty days passed, then more than thirty. Vagueness, which had still been swallowing slowly, suddenly stopped moving at some point.
The Serpent Church members and inquisitors, who had naturally sat facing each other playing cards mixed in with the luggage, flinched.
"What's that?"
"Finally something..."
The floor began to collapse. A terrible smell seeped up through the cracks.
The inside of Vagueness's mouth.
Stage 3 was beginning.