Demos moved to a remote area outside the city and opened a golden door through Proditor’s sigil. Darkness filled Orthes’s vision as he transcended dimensions through a shimmering golden veil.
‘No way. It’s not just dark, right?’
It was the Black Rock. So enormous it filled his sight.
Unlike the rough surface of basalt, it looked like dull obsidian. But it was much darker than even obsidian’s hue.
Orthes recalled a memory from Earth. It felt like the picture of the darkest substance called Vantablack.
The massive rock made entirely of darkness felt surreal, like a drop of ink falling into reality.
‘Is that Uluru in Australia? If that rock were coated in Vantablack paint, it would feel like this.’
“Is Pluto’s Great Temple on this black stone?”
“Can you see it…!?”
Demos flinched and spoke. Orthes didn’t immediately understand the reaction, but his trained subconscious reflexively responded before his rational mind caught up.
“It’s not just what you see with your physical eyes. Chosen by the relic of a distant seer, isn’t that power with me?”
“I see. Truly amazing. All I can see is a crater of sorts. An unfathomable abyss of utter darkness…”
Orthes looked back at the Black Rock. So surreal and massive, it felt solid enough to be a fortress.
“The black stone visible to you is the Great Temple itself. They say it was carved slowly from within the stone. The temple extends underground far more massively than what’s visible above.”
Orthes gently opened his eyes to analyze the structure of Pluto’s temple ahead of time. A diligent thief knows how to scout the valuables to plunder.
But the information that rushed in through his barely-open eyes was far from practical.
The ancient seal granted by the Mage King violently struck Orthes’s mind with overwhelming information.
The ancient magic enveloping that enormous rock. A chain of magic circles constructed from hundreds, thousands of overlapping spells. The extraordinary enchantments concentrated in the magic shone with an unfathomable brilliance that ordinary mages would only begin to comprehend after risking their lives.
The chain formed by interconnected spells represented an additional magic circle. The multitude of inscribed spells worked as components of a single enormous enchantment.
The final spell severed Pluto’s Great Temple from reality.
It stripped the temple of its form and concealed its essence. The temple’s shape and essence became dissociated in different dimensional realms.
Orthes closed his eyes. The intense surge of information that could fry his brain finally ceased.
Habitually rubbing his temples, Orthes reflected on the information he had just witnessed.
‘What kind of insane magic is this?’
It sealed the components of existence by dividing them into form and essence.
‘If I had to liken it to a game, it’s like a transparent wall and a bugged texture….’
A transparent wall, though unseen, can be touched or broken. Conversely, an object that is visible but lacks detailed data allows for no interaction whatsoever.
The formless temple cannot be perceived, and the essence-less temple cannot be touched. It was a level of magic so strange it bordered on the bizarre.
‘Do you mean to say the Divine Cult could break this insane level of seal?’
From Orthes’ perspective, to break the Mage King’s seal, an Apex Towers level of magical capability wasn’t nearly enough. One of the Ten Towers would need to show up to even comprehend the structure of the seal.
“O gods, sing of your wrath! μῆνιν ἄειδε θεούς!”
In a moment of suffocating silence, a strange voice could be heard in the distance. The sound slowly drew closer.
It was some kind of song. Likely a hymn that began with Aegio’s cult, continuing like a round.
With every line of the song, Divine Power became more intensely concentrated. The radiant Divine Power illuminated the abyss, and slowly, forms previously hidden beyond reality began to shimmer into view.
As Orthes’s eyes reopened to grasp the situation, he witnessed another spectacle. Divine Power was being released in response to the hymn from within Pluto’s temple, beyond the Mage King’s seal.
‘Oh my god.’
The Divine Cult did not dismantle the seal through some elaborate magical principle or complex counter-magic. Similar to divination magic, the workings of Divine Power do not necessarily require logic.
It only needed the output capable of penetrating the Mage King’s seal.
The Divine Powers from inside and outside stretched towards each other. Glimmers met, separated by just one dimensional wall. Crack, it sounded like something breaking.
A fracture appeared in the air. A crack reaching from the night sky down to the ground. Light streamed from within the fissure.
“─Thus they performed the funeral rites.”
As the final verse of the hymn resounded, the crack in reality finally collapsed. In the place that had just been a massive pit, a huge boulder colored as dark as darkness itself erupted.
Upon that black rock swirled auspicious script. It was a vast amount of Divine Power remaining after breaking the Mage King’s seal.
The disciples of the Divine Cult began to rush towards the light as their beacon.
Time was running out to reclaim the relics.
*
I displayed an adequate level of kindness, leading Demos and Enyalius’s priests to the place where their relics were laid to rest.
“How could this happen…”
I could hear one of the priests muttering in disbelief. I responded with a friendly smile.
“Since you can see and feel it, isn’t it natural? Since Lord Demos invited me, it’s time for me to get back to work.”
“…Be careful. As I mentioned before, there isn’t much time left before Blasphemia arrives. If you think of your safety, you need to get out within an hour.”
Nodding appropriately, I started running without hesitation.
From the moment I stepped away from the priests, my eyes were half-opened. Since it would be awkward to explain if I got caught gathering other relics, I needed to be aware of the priests approaching me.
‘Even if I’m not fully awake, as I expand my perception, I need to periodically close my eyes….’
It wasn’t such a difficult task. What’s so hard about closing your eyes once?
To reset the expanded range of perception, I had to stay slightly squinting for a few seconds, suppressing the eye’s ability to the max.
Those few seconds would be meaningless unless someone lurking outside my perception zone was creeping up from behind.
Unless this was a magic-filled den that sought my life. The folks in the temple were all priests frantic to retrieve their relics.
‘According to Demos, they agreed to recover all relics first before sorting out who gets what afterward; it seems human feelings aren’t that straightforward.’
Even now, I could feel priests hurriedly moving several floors above me. Struggling to find the cult’s relics. Divine Powers bursting forth. They would likely be tracking the relics through their holy powers.
I was in search of artifacts belonging to factions that did not belong to the Divine Cult. In other words, artifacts belonging to minor cults that did not belong to the Twelve Gods.
While the Divine Cult scoured for their gods’ relics, I aimed to snatch up the relics of countless nameless cults.
Since there was a physical limit to how many I could carry, I needed to be selective and take only the best of the nameless cults.
*
In the underground layers of Pluto’s temple, a silver light shimmered within the darkness.
It resembled a much smaller version of the rupture caused by the Divine Cult’s earlier choir.
Unlike the rupture that had created a fissure large enough to cover the entire field of view, this one was just big enough to fill a single stone chamber.
It wasn’t just the scale that was different. The color of the power warping the world was also distinct. Instead of brilliant gold, it was a chilling silver.
Sparks continued to erupt from the rupture. The restorative action of the world wall trying to close the fissure. Just then, a hand shot out from the crack and grasped the air.
Thud, thud, thud!
A rough force stretched the crack as it tore at it. An ethereal silvery figure stepped out from beyond the destroyed world wall.
It looked like a golem made from brass instruments. Though its color was silver.
It had limbs resembling spiral instruments like tubas and horns, and its framework was filled with organ pipes. Each step it took was accompanied by the smooth movement of valves and buttons, creating a sense of elegance.
If its limbs were instruments, then its head was that of a unicorn. A horse-like head crowned with a long horn.
The silvery figure sent a signal according to the command left by its former master. One to its fellow servants, and one to its master’s disciples.
The place where the master sealed is under attack.
Respond immediately to summon and eradicate the enemies.
I felt the familiar power of former enemies. It was the power of gods that should have vanished from this world.
It extended its mana to gauge the strength of the enemies. It trembled, sensing a divine presence unlike anything it had ever experienced.
Even this creature, which had devoured countless priests from many cults while alongside its master, detected an unknown foreign divinity.
The ever-foreign is the most dangerous variable.
It was a threat that I had to quickly assess and eliminate.
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