111. You will burn the light!
[Look, doesn’t that look like you?]
“Mole, la?”
The more you look, the clearer it becomes. They didn’t just have the same hair color, they actually looked alike. Maybe when Cream gets a lot older, it will become like that?
But at my question, Cream only smiled and tilted her head. Write, I’m sure there must be something.
[Do you really not know anything?]
“I don’t remember.”
But I can’t ask for more after I say it myself. Eventually, we turned our attention away from the portrait and started searching around.
Vargo, who had been unable to enter due to his huge size and was only rolling his eyes outside the door, looked curiously into the room.
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“This is my first time coming here too. Small but big people have always been banned from entering this place.”
[Then you don’t even know what you’re doing?]
“I don’t know!”
Anyway, that doesn’t help. Ignoring Vargo, the group started searching the office again. However, there was no proper harvest either.
Well, when I heard the story, they said that they didn’t just run away. Then, of course, I would have packed the important things with me.
Is it nonsense again? I’m a little bit angry
“What, what? It’s scary all of a sudden…”
Feeling something ominous, Virgo looked around at him. Looking at it, I decided to calm down a little.
Yeah, there really can’t be anything. If so, this place wouldn’t be the only place left untouched by the flow of time. The adventurer’s intuition was also feeling something reluctant.
Simply thinking, I turned my attention to the portrait that first caught my attention.
[Cream.]
“Huh?”
Somehow, I called Cream, which was sold elsewhere. She naturally looked back at me, and the light returned to her blurry eyes.
[That portrait, let’s put it away.]
“Why?”
[Try it once. According to my perception, there must be something in there?]
The bookshelves where there would have been something originally, and the place that seemed to be used to store documents were now empty. The only thing left is the furniture that was too big to carry and that portrait.
It’s polite to dip your hand at least once if it’s this blatant. Crim approached the portrait and looked back at me hesitantly.
“This is called Chiu, right?”
[Yes.]
Cream nodded at my words, then lightly approached the portrait and began to caress the woman in the painting. What are you doing?
While I was looking at the scene with puzzled eyes, Cream pressed the portrait’s eyes one last time. At that moment, the portrait’s eyes sank inward with a click.
Then, with a mechanical sound unsuitable for a fantasy world, the portrait was pushed aside and a huge hole was pierced. Was this a secret passage?! No, more than that, how did Cream know that?
[Unreasonably wicked and ominous aura······.]
Is this even camouflage? Although it was too obvious for such a thing. Cream and Choco naturally stepped into the aisle, and Whiren and the Bishop of the Moon tried to follow suit.
At that moment, Cream reversed and pulled out her holy sword and swung it.
“Follow me, don’t come.”
“Yes, yes?”
As Cream scratched the floor with the holy sword, sparks flew and left white marks. Fieren, who could have cut off her feet if she made a mistake, quickly backed away in fright.
“Wait there.”
“Yes? But······.”
A secret passageway that exudes an insidious atmosphere that even the holy sword hates. Of course, what’s inside couldn’t be normal either. Whether it’s an object or a secret.
The imperial family and the clergy of mainstream religions seemed to be very interested in him, but Cream’s attitude was stubborn. Flames gushed from the marks she had scratched her with her holy sword.
“Wait.”
The heat spread in an instant, and the two bodies hesitated and took a few more steps back. Cream cast a rare cold gaze at them and turned her body.
“hehehe… Master, can I go out too?”
“You are fine.”
I was scared, this guy. When Choco hesitated, Cream returned to his usual expressionless face and comforted him. Certainly, after seeing the portrait, Cream’s behavior is different from usual.
[Wow…]
However, the exclamation of the Holy Sword soon forced me to turn my gaze toward it. The Holy Sword, which entered through a completely secret passage, was admiring the scenery unfolding inside.
No, is it more accurate to say that you hate it rather than admire it? However, no matter how horrific and repulsive the scene is, if it exceeds a certain level, you will feel rather awe-inspiring.
[Mortal malice is truly amazing.]
[You speak as if you are not mortal.]
Even the muffins reacted in surprise. The underground passage was narrow. Even Cream had to bend down a bit. And, there were things filling the narrow space.
Profane and blasphemous phrases that fill the walls, ceilings, and floors without a trace. However, what was truly terrifying was the material used to write it down rather than its contents.
[It’s terrible.]
At first glance, the marks look like ink or old bloodstains. However, that black dried liquid was none of that. That’s ectoplasm.
When more than a certain amount of spiritual power is gathered in a certain range, the spiritual power is materialized and pooled in the form of ectoplasm. In contrast, the powers of the specter cannot create ectoplasm.
“Hey, do you even know how to feel that way?”
[You know me as a monster without any blood or tears.]
Spiritual power tainted with fraud and grudge. That was the identity of the ‘darkness’ handled by me and the specters. Such distorted spiritual powers cannot unite. That’s why the darkness I deal with also appears in the form of a hazy mist.
Therefore, black ectoplasm cannot exist in general. Unless you grind the specter itself and concentrate it.
What’s more, even if you grind a specter like that, there’s only a handful at most. How many souls must have been sacrificed in order to write the words of the passage that no one sees at all? My heart ached.
[This precious resource wasted so pointlessly!]
[What?]
Oh, I think I just heard Holy Sword speak plainly for the first time. But my heart was sincere. No, what is a soul? Isn’t it so precious that even the gods put a separate taboo on it?
Well, I’m in a position to ridicule the dignity of the soul, but even I don’t waste my soul like this. It really stinks.
[If I had eaten this much soul, I could have broken the seal of the cream right now! Oh, it’s a pity, I’m dying.]
“······What?”
Oops, that was a mistake.
But Cream calmed her rage with one slap on her wall. Come to think of it, Cream hasn’t poured divine power poultices on me lately. No, I’m not asking you to do that!
Whew, I almost died. Cream quietly put down his hand where the light stayed. Of course, he doesn’t mind being struck by Cream’s divine power now, but even if he knows it in his head, he’s still afraid in his heart.
[By the way, is this a myth of the Dark Church?]
“Yes.”
As befits a pseudonym who openly calls the god he serves an evil god, the content of it was absurd. It is completely different from the existing creation myth that the three gods split the night and opened the world.
According to the mythology of the Dark Church, originally this world was a world of giants. Then one day, an evil spirit invaded the world and destroyed the giants.
Later, the three underlings of the evil spirits created new life from pieces of the giant’s corpse, which are the current fairies, beastmen, and humans. It certainly fits the title of creation myth.
[Hey, according to what is written here, the three gods are said to be evil spirits?]
[It can’t be! Do you believe in such blasphemous aphorisms?]
Somehow, when I stabbed the holy sword, which had been depressed, an angry reaction came back. I smiled and turned my head.
[Well, I don’t believe it. Because it is sloppy in many ways.]
If the evil god was such a great and transcendent god among gods, where did he go now? The followers of the Dark Church do not even know the name of the god they serve, and the evil god does not give out stigmata.
Whether it’s a corrupted stigma that uses the existing god-given stigma dyed into darkness, or an imitation stigma made by embedding a specter into a monster’s body. It is the fruit of mortals, not the grace of God.
[That can’t be God.]
[What? Oh, are you talking about evil spirits?]
[Yes.]
As we passed through the aisle, the content of the writing kept changing. There were quite a few fun things too. The hell created by the evil god on earth to torment mortals, or the divine beast of the evil god.
It was a pity that some of them were unrecognizable because they were written in such an old language. But the holy sword, which had lived longer than mine, was definitely different, and I could feel her gaze meticulously scanning the wall.
[Why? Because the myth of that evil god denies the gods you serve?]
[No.]
Cream stepped up little by little. Now she has just become her saint and has opened her eyes to her spiritual realm, but Choco, who is still her black eyes, also follows her without paying attention to her surroundings.
Perhaps he sensed the horror of this space with his bestial intuition. However, there was no hesitation in Choco’s steps because there was a boss I trusted and served.
[The heretics of this place also wrote disrespectfully about their gods.]
However, the voice of the majestic holy sword, which was the hero’s first companion and said to have decapitated the most demon kings, trembled with delusion.
[For her own amusement, driving countless mortals into despair. Forces death on those who worship it, causes disaster just because it’s boring…]
A sword directly forged by the three gods, never destroyed and at the same time an infinite source of divine power.
But the holy sword’s divine power is the sun, moon, and stars. No attributes of any god are visible. Her attitude toward the gods is more courtesy and respect than fanaticism and worship.
[That can’t be God.]
On the contrary, the object closest to the Holy Sword’s faith is-
She obsessively repeated the words she had spoken earlier.