Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 227

Chapter 227: Flower (1)

TL/ED – Miso

After listening to a few things from Agnes, there was one fact I came to realize.

Our Creator was neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but-

Simply, He was merely good.

“…So.”

Clutching my throbbing head, I went back over what Agnes had explained so far.

“What is this?”

“These are the reasons why life must be protected. It’s what you wanted.”

“…”

What Agnes had scrawled on the paper with that small beak of his was as follows.

1. Whether lowly creatures or higher beings, we are precious existences who get to live in the same era. Cherish and bless one another.

2. Do not say to others what you yourself would not wish to hear. You must offer the treatment you would want to receive.

3. Greed is a natural emotion for any living being, but in the direction of properly controlling it…

These were the sort of gentle bits of advice that would probably rake in a few dozen likes in some corner of the internet.

It wasn’t that I particularly disliked these sentences. They basically just amounted to telling someone to live kindly. What could be wrong with that?

But the claim that this was the secret to protecting the world was something I simply couldn’t understand.

“There was a time when I too lived in baseless confidence, just like you.”

Agnes clicked his beak as if in pity and piled one more onto the already plentiful advice.

“Do you think I simply accepted the fact that the world was going to end? The reason I know all this information is precisely because I once struggled desperately to save the world.”

“Isn’t this just a disguise, and actually some kind of magic spell? Like, if I recite this in front of the Crimson Circle, they’ll spurt blood from their seven orifices and die?”

“The Creator was the first strong being to believe that fragile life had the right to exist, and at the same time, a peculiar entity with childlike thinking. The more I gathered information about Him, the firmer my conclusion became that it was precisely because He was such a being that He created the world. Meaning, no, that’s not it.”

“…Still, this can’t be all of it. You said there was more.”

“There is. Similar things have been spread in the form of fairy tales as well.”

Wasn’t that the same thing?

Perhaps The First Wizard had dreamed of a beautiful world where the Crimson Circle and we reconciled and lived hand in hand. Not that one could ask anything of the dead.

Either way, nothing could be solved this way. Irritably, I stuck the collection of advice somewhere nearby and asked again.

“Setting aside the jokes like these, is there anything that would actually help?”

“A few things. There were places said to hold ancient monuments or hidden weapons. I searched through all of them and found rocks, stone tablets, and ancient documents inscribed with similar passages.”

“Is that really all?”

“There is one thing I couldn’t do physically.”

“…Physically?”

“Proving that the Prophecy is wrong.”

Agnes shrugged as if it were no big deal.

“The Crimson Circle follows something called the Prophecy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s certain that it’s the sole directive moving the head of the Crimson Circle.”

“Isn’t that just wanting to return the world to its beginning?”

“That’s the movement to fulfill the Prophecy. The reason why that guy, who grasped victory long ago, endures this entire process and takes his steps a little faster is surely also connected to this thing called the Prophecy. If you can prove it wrong, the Crimson Circle might stop. It’s only a possibility, though.”

“Hmm…”

It was a more reasonable method than I’d expected. The moment I nodded and softened my expression a little, he immediately crushed that hope.

“However, the only ones who know the exact contents of this Prophecy are the Creator, the head of the Crimson Circle, and the Priestess. We can only guess that it involves unifying the world as one. Then again, perhaps they intend to do something after that…”

“Priestess?”

“Yes. The imperial princess, you know.”

“…Ah, Sharmia?”

Come to think of it, the Crimson Circle had called Sharmia the Priestess.

But Sharmia had told the Crimson Circle nothing. Far from helping them, she was still desperately struggling at this very moment to prevent the Crimson Circle’s goals.

“Different. The Crimson Circle created a fake priestess long ago in order to hear the Prophecy. More precisely, the Crimson Circle came into being after the priestess was made. Void, changed upon hearing that Prophecy, made up his mind to establish the Crimson Circle.”

A fake priestess.

That too was a word I had heard before.

A being uncannily resembling Sharmia, who had always been in the basement of the Spire where the Crimson Circle dwelled.

Cheon-hwa.

“I thought Cheon-hwa had taken Sharmia’s face…”

“If Cheon-hwa refers to the fake priestess, then that would be correct.”

“What’s that supposed to mean now?”

“From an unfathomable span of ages ago, the Crimson Circle’s fake priestess has had that face. Perhaps even that face is part of the Prophecy, I suspect.”

Agnes sighed and laid out his speculation.

“The fake priestess set her own face as the time to act. Meaning, if a priestess with the exact same face appeared- they would no longer need to wait. The commencement of the beginning.”

***

In conclusion, there was no freeing Agnes.

No matter what he said, he was a Knight killer. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t do the same thing again, so he had to be kept under strict lock and key. Even if he demanded the honor of keeping a promise, I wasn’t a Knight, just an Orphan.

After sealing the birdcage in the deepest part of the storeroom and returning, I shook the shoulder of Dersia, who was staring down at the desk motionlessly with the same expression.

“Master, please wake up.”

“…Uh, mm. Jern.”

She was usually like this, but Dersia right now genuinely seemed like a person with a screw loose.

After waving my fingers a few times in front of her blank eyes, I realized the situation was serious when her pupils didn’t follow my fingers at all, and I moved to a firmer approach.

“Pull yourself together. What guarantee is there that what he said is true?”

“Pardon?”

“If that guy is a Crimson Circle spy, he might have prepared those words just to keep you tied down quietly, Master. We still don’t even know for certain whether Void has reached the Celestial Realm or not, do we? I understand the despair, but giving up just from hearing his words, before we’ve seen anything, feels a bit much.”

“…You’re… you’re right.”

She let out a sigh and slowly got up, readjusting her posture, looking just a touch better than before.

“It seems his words struck at something I was terribly afraid of, so I shrank back for a moment. I’ve shown you an embarrassing side of myself. My apologies.”

“Afraid? Were you normally afraid of someone else reaching the Celestial Realm first?”

“More precisely- it was the fact that I cannot reach the Celestial Realm.”

Dersia clasped her hands tightly together and poured out her Confession.

“From the common sense I’ve gained walking the Path of Magic, having attempted it this many times, there have been several occasions where the heavens really ought to have opened a way at least once. I don’t mean simply leaving it to luck; I mean literally, a realm where the Celestial Realm itself must grant the space.”

“So what about it?”

“To a degree that couldn’t possibly be dismissed as coincidence, the path has never once opened. As if someone were refusing to permit it. Until now, since there were no mages at a level similar to mine, I had simply thought it was a lack of training and experience, but…”

With bloodshot eyes, she glanced toward the door, then bit down on her lip again.

“At times, the thought has crossed my mind that perhaps everything has already ended.”

“…But is it really true that someone who reaches the Celestial Realm first can pull the ladder up behind them?”

“It’s true. That is why I placed such importance on walking the Path of Magic. If I cannot reach the Celestial Realm, the extinction of all Elves becomes a certainty. Not that their extinction weighs heavily on me, but- in the end, I too would plummet.”

“…”

“For those of us who live through spans of time close to eternity, having the path forward blocked is rather, yes. Rather a frightening thing.”

It was the first time I had heard Dersia show weakness.

As I couldn’t think of what to say, she shook her head and rose from her seat.

“In the end, it’s just weak talk. I’m sorry for making you listen to this. What did that man say?”

“Ah, yes. He told me to hear the Priestess’s Prophecy.”

He hadn’t actually said it that way, but my course was set.

First, I needed to find out what this thing called the Prophecy actually was.

Only then could I do something, whether fix it or prove it wrong.

“The Prophecy? The one the imperial princess does?”

“More precisely, the Prophecy given by the fake priestess, the gloomy princess who lives in the Crimson Circle’s basement.”

I went over again what I knew about the fake priestess and the information I had on her.

Having heard of it before, Dersia quickly recalled it and nodded in agreement.

“That priestess could be said to be the starting point of all this. But can we reach her?”

Indeed.

The Crimson Circle were people who were hidden deep somewhere.

And now they had even abandoned their main base. In other words, we would first have to find the Crimson Circle’s headquarters again, then find Cheon-hwa and hear the Prophecy: a task of absurd difficulty at a glance.

I hadn’t seen much of this Cheon-hwa person, but even if we caught her, it didn’t seem like she would just smoothly spill the Crimson Circle’s Prophecy for us.

“That’s what’s troubling me too. What should we do?”

“Hmm…”

As we put our heads together and squeezed out ideas, Dersia came up with an ingenious thought.

“…What do you suppose the Crimson Circle is doing right now?”

“They’ve been quiet lately, but I’d imagine they’re still moving to fulfill this Prophecy.”

“What I mean is, what are they doing to fulfill it?”

“Well? They’re moving the Crimson Circle’s members…”

Having said that much casually, I finally caught on to what Dersia was driving at, and my eyes widened.

A messenger app that was distributed to all of the Crimson Circle’s members. Such a thing existed.

“Mission Book!”

“That probably isn’t the Prophecy itself. But it must be moving the members with content close to the Prophecy. If we follow that trail upwards, we may be able to reach the essence.”

Having said that much, Dersia soon rubbed her chin with a troubled expression.

“However, for this we need to find a Crimson Circle member who possesses a Gospel Book, and until now there’s been no word of any Crimson Circle combatant carrying one.”

“Ah, that’s not a problem.”

I smiled warmly and put her at ease.

Because right here in this empire, there was a certain freeloader who had a Mission Book.

A nasty fellow on standby, ready to betray us the moment the situation turned sour.