It was not a battle.
What Kore witnessed was not a fight. It wasn’t even a hunt or an escape.
It was mockery.
Utis utilized Adosiam’s attack against him until the end, toppling him with his own moves. As the sonic bomb hit Adosiam’s left arm, silver metal dust burst forth like a shower of flowers.
With every bang of the sonic bomb, a limb was crushed. Each time Utis broke Adosiam’s body, he taunted him with words.
Only when all of Adosiam’s limbs disappeared did he finally take a step forward.
Kore then realized that Utis hadn’t moved from his spot, deflecting the sonic bombs. From start to finish, Utis had been toying with Adosiam.
As he advanced slowly, his whispered voice was clear.
“Is it a defective product?”
A chill ran down Kore’s spine, as if ice were being injected directly into her spine. She had no idea what he deemed to be “defective.”
Inference began.
Utis expected some sort of reaction from Adosiam, and upon receiving none, deemed him “defective” and began to punish or dispose of him.
“The desired reaction… obedience? Is he a golem?”
Utis rushed down without gathering any artifacts from the depths of the Great Temple. He was searching for something else, and could that something be the golem of the Mage King, Adosiam?
Why did Utis think that the Mage King’s legacy would obey him? Kore involuntarily hesitated and stepped back.
She must not let the author discover that she was here. It was too risky to bring Utis into play against the Pope.
Just as Kore turned to flee…
“What are you doing there?”
Utis’s words pierced her back like a blade in the darkness.
*
I blinked several times. I had been awake for quite a while, suppressing Adosiam. I had dismantled his limbs sufficiently, so I shouldn’t be ambushed suddenly.
Now, it was time to converse with the priest in the corridor that I had caught sight of since the moment I fought Adosiam.
Not an ordinary priest, each time I tried to focus on the figure, my head throbbed. It was tough forcing my focus to stay on Adosiam.
If such a high amount of condensed information was present, it likely meant considerable training in either Divine Power or Fighting Spirit, yet I wondered why he was just watching.
“……”
The sight of the priest was no longer filled with information and letters but was instead a normal appearance as seen with the naked eye. He was one of the priests from the Divine Cult meeting.
“If you were watching, couldn’t you have helped me?”
“…You. You can indeed see me, can’t you?”
“Yes. Why would I be stating something so obvious?”
As soon as those words left my lips, I had a thought: “Does that mean I shouldn’t be visible?”
I recalled my conversation with Demus. He was supposed to be the twelfth priest present, yet Demus neither remembered nor recognized him.
A priest of Pluton? My head began to spin with confusion.
*
Creak. Utis stepped forward.
Kore tried to analyze the situation calmly. She couldn’t shake off Utis with her current speed. Even if she ran, she would get caught soon.
Her priority was to escape this place unharmed.
“Hmm.”
Utis stroked his jawline.
“Let’s step out and talk. There’s nowhere to sit in this corridor, is there?”
Brushing off the debris from nearby stones, Utis sat down right there. He appeared unguarded and devoid of formalities.
Kore cautiously stepped forward. The initiative clearly belonged to Utis. There was no doubt about it.
“When did you realize I was hiding?”
“After the meeting? Though it’s somewhat vague.”
That was a clear lie. If he hadn’t noticed her presence during the meeting, he wouldn’t have used the phrase “of course.”
“I have many questions. Especially for someone who serves Pluton.”
Kore suppressed her agitation. His eloquence made it seem like he could see through everyone. If she hadn’t met the Pope, her agitation might have surfaced.
“But I might not be a priest of Pluton, right? Estia could be of the rank that sits on the left of the Divine Cult.”
“Oh? Let’s keep things casual. Estia’s Holy Power isn’t too far from stealth. Even if she were stealthy, it would show an illusion of a peaceful home life, far from true invisibility, right?”
His question felt so relaxed. Kore had no choice but to nod in agreement.
“There are a couple of other reasons. This is, after all, the deepest part of the Great Temple’s underground. Very few people could navigate this place skillfully on their very first visit to a temple. Perhaps a priest who believes in the deity enshrined in the temple could resonate with it.”
‘Then what about you?’ the question rose to the tip of Kore’s tongue.
“Now, I have a curious question.”
How does my soul look?
It was an utterly incomprehensible question. Seeing that Kore couldn’t respond, Utis tilted his head and asked again.
“Pluton is the god of death, isn’t he? Don’t you have a Holy Power able to read the flow of souls or their history?”
That was true. But she couldn’t read his soul properly.
‘Does he already know I attempted to see his soul at the Pope’s directive…?’
What a cunning choice of words. Kore hesitated, feeling as though she were truly conversing with the Pope.
“Why are you curious? Are you afraid of death?”
“Who wouldn’t fear death? But my interest in my own soul is more about curiosity than fear. I’m curious about where my soul came from.”
“…Curious about where it came from?”
Such strange words. It felt as if he was hinting that he shouldn’t exist in this world at all.
Memories from the past whirled in Kore’s mind like a storm.
The prophecy of the Mage King’s return.
Disappointment in Adosiam for not obeying her.
The announcement that her soul came from outside the world.
Utis said, “It’s hard for someone visiting the Great Temple for the first time to navigate it so skillfully.” Yet how was Utis so familiar with the geography of Pluton’s Great Temple?
─What if Utis had not been on his first visit to Pluton’s Great Temple?
Utis’s extraordinary ability, which even the goddess herself could not identify the origin of, might not even be confirmed as divine power.
─What if that extraordinary ability was a fragment of some new divine essence that had never existed in this world until now?
No way.
No way could Utis himself be…?
Before Kore could pull herself together from the shock her deductions had brought, Utis’s words poured out.
“I have always wanted to meet a priestess of Pluton. If you’re representing the Divine Cult during the meeting, you must be one of the top-tier talents in the Pluton Church.”
It was a crossroads. Kore was at a loss for words.
As she struggled to think, she slowly opened her mouth.
“I can’t see it. Your soul. There’s just a blue glow, shining without any history or significance.”
That was the truth.
“It could be that there are no clues. Would you tell me more about yourself? Just like magic, the more you know about someone, the more intricate your Holy Power becomes towards that target.”
This was a gamble.
Certainly, knowing more about the opponent would enhance the effectiveness, but it was uncertain whether one could gauge someone like Utis, who completely transcended the limits of a divine being.
Kore waited anxiously for a reply.
If Utis truly was ‘someone who came from outside this dimension, originally destined to serve Adosiam’, there should be some response.
“Is that so? This is troublesome. Hmm….”
Utis might not spare her after hearing that answer.
But it was precisely when facing death that Pluton’s powers were manifested to the greatest degree. If she used up all her divine powers as a priestess, she might leave a final message for the others in the cult.
If Utis truly was what he thought he was, something too horrifying to voice, then hope lay only with the Pope.
“It’s going to sound strange to say this, but I haven’t really done anything differently. I just had a bit of trouble in an adjacent area of the extra-dimensional space.”
“You know ‘Utis’ isn’t your real name. Tell me your true name.”
“The real name, you ask?”
Utis’s faint smile seemed to dissipate like vapor in the air for a moment. But that didn’t last long. His signature smile was back in place.
“Right now, I am merely an enemy of the Ten Towers.”
“You said you’re an enemy of the Ten Towers.”
Kore recalled what Utis had said in front of Philoxenon.
“I believe what I testified.”
“A vanished magician who brought calamity upon the world has returned.”
“The prophecy of return is not something heard from someone, but something witnessed directly.”
…This testimony made it seem like Utis viewed the vanished magician as an enemy. The overarching strategy of having the Ten Towers and the vanished magician combat each other was already evident.
But that strategy was suggested to persuade Adyrion to be eliminated. Utis had stated that if the Ten Towers and Adyrion fought each other and weakened their power, they would be unable to counter the vanished magician.
However, conversely, couldn’t the strengthened Adyrion and the Ten Towers join forces against the vanished magician?
If Utis had lured Adyrion’s elimination to shut down such unforeseen variables?
“The enemy of the Ten Towers is you, and the enemy of the vanished magician…”
Utis’s eyes gleamed.
At that moment, the Pluton Temple trembled. Kore, resonating with the temple, felt a phantom pain as if her body was pierced through.
“Ugh?!”
Kore hastily activated the divine power of tracking externals. Familiar extraordinary ability, the aura of divine power felt from the priests. But they were not the only ones.
A group with an ominous mana of extra-dimensional origin stealthily infiltrated. Without a doubt, they were Adyrion’s group.
Yet that wasn’t all. The immense fluctuation of magic power that an ordinary magician could not possess. A vast extraordinary ability surged forth.
The magic user from the Ten Towers had arrived.
Kore gazed at Utis in bewilderment, struggling to grasp the situation. Had he been stalling for time to prepare for this moment?
To prevent the intruders from being detected within the Pluton Temple?
Utis, hands clasped, looked at Kore.
“What’s happening?”
Still with a smiling face.
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