Chapter 221: Great Devil of Fire (1)
I don't know where or how the ship departs from Lohit, but I do know the location of the sea route overseen by the Tower of the Deep.
That's why I brought Jis.
Shadows have various uses. Among them is the role of a ship.
'Though I didn't expect to be putting people inside.'
Compared to creating a foothold with Divine power, it's a fitting vagueness.
As long as there's sothing to cast them, shadows exist even on the sea.
"Are you okay?"
Jis asked from within the Shadow.
Harad, who had been standing on the Shadow, staggered.
It was the aftereffect of dealing with the Waterspout.
But the reason Harad furrowed his brow wasn't because of the aftereffect.
"This doesn't make sense."
Harad crouched down on the Shadow as he staggered. He scooped up the rippling seawater with his hand and wiped his face, which had shed bloody tears.
Ellen, who had been keeping her distance just in case, swam over. She looked pleased.
"Is it okay to Manifest now?"
It had stopped at shedding bloody tears rather than tearing out his heart.
Ellen seed satisfied with that.
"Manifest?"
"Wasn't that a Manifestation?"
Since the Waterspout had Manifested, Harad should have countered with a Manifestation of the sun.
Only by achieving that minimum standard could the vagueness called Origin demonstrate its true value.
"It wasn't."
"Are you bragging? That you killed it without Manifesting?"
"No. I an it wasn't who did it."
Currently, Harad was halfway through rebuilding his intuition.
This was because his Origin had grown stronger due to absorbing the Embers.
The sun of now had beco quite different from the sun of his previous life.
All Magical calculations had to be based on the present.
And that went for Manifestation as well.
"I failed to Manifest. It was because the efficacy of the Embers was beyond expectations."
The creator knows their own work best.
That had not been a Manifestation. The aftereffect he was experiencing now was a backlash from Magic inferior to Manifestation, not from Manifestation itself.
"To Manifest now, I'd probably have to tear out my heart. Yeah, about that much."
Though he had beco 5th Rank and the window called Harad had grown larger, the sun that had to pass through the window had grown even larger due to the Embers.
To truly Manifest, he would have to tear out his heart as he had before Kandenkel.
A Manifestation completed that way would surpass even that one.
"But the Waterspout died."
Ellen pointed to Harad's mouth.
The traces of saliva were distinct. The Mage of the Waterspout was dead.
The lingering taste in his mouth proved it.
Harad instinctively smacked his lips. Just now, the sun had devoured an Origin through Predation. Indeed, that Origin had been the Waterspout.
"I didn't kill it."
If the Waterspout were compared to fruit, he hadn't picked it alone.
Soone had given him a leg up.
"The Great Devil of Fire. That one added fire to my failed Manifestation."
Purely, fire beca one.
Harad recalled Herbis's words.
As those words had said, so Drear's fire had aided Harad's fire. They beca one and burned the Waterspout.
"If we compare it to a painting, it's as if they forcibly completed a failed work I'd drawn. With Magic other than Manifestation."
It wasn't an incomprehensible phenonon.
Magic has compatibility. Kubel's smoke feeds fire, and ice calms Harad's emotions.
Fire being beneficial to fire isn't all that vague.
What Harad couldn't understand was the intent.
"They helped ."
What on earth was that Drear thinking?
"If so, setting fire to the sailing ship was also to help ."
They hadn't summoned the Waterspout for the asylum seekers. They'd summoned it for Harad.
To divert the attention of Inquisitor Badelots and Seria.
"Did they know I was a Mage?"
The Great Devil of Fire.
That Drear knew Harad was a Mage.
"Did they also know I was the sun? Even if they didn't know, they know now."
The Manifestation had failed.
However, it had been a construct sufficient to guess the Origin.
"And yet they're not trying to kill . They must have known from before, not just now."
If they'd just found out, they would have shown so reaction.
But the sea was calm. The likelihood was high that they'd discovered Harad's Origin in advance.
"What are they thinking?"
Why help, and having helped, why not even show themselves?
Harad thought for a mont, then shook his head.
'So that's why they're called a Drear?'
Fire that denies the prophecy of the Moon.
A breed called peculiar even within the Red Tower.
aning it would be a loss to try to understand them.
"Let's go back."
"Don't we need to look for them?"
"I don't think we could find them even if we wanted to."
If we could, they would have revealed themselves on their own.
If we tried to look for them now, they would grit their teeth and hide.
They were secretive enough that even Inquisitor Badelots couldn't catch them.
"It seems their objective is ."
Though the intent was unclear, the objective was clearly Harad.
That's why they helped rather than trying to kill.
"Judging by their actions, their patience doesn't seem all that great."
They arbitrarily painted over soone else's Magic.
They showed off their own fire under the pretext of helping.
"So even if we don't look for them, they'll co looking for us soon."
They witnessed the sun with their own two eyes.
The moth is bound to be drawn in.
Harad scanned the sea.
Sowhere beyond that horizon, the Drear was hiding.
"Ah. There they are."
"Already?"
Ellen gripped her sword from within the water.
"No. Seria."
"......Ah."
In the distance, Seria was bobbing in the water.
* * *
Seria, who had been torn to shreds dozens of tis if not more, was sleeping peacefully.
That gentle breathing sounded vague to Harad.
Was it truly realistic for a person torn into dozens of pieces dozens of tis to return alive?
Perhaps that was proof of a god's reality.
'Or not?'
Even if Ellen didn't know, it was sowhat less vague for a Mage. Regeneration, body...... well, if they were a Mage of such an Origin, they might be able to do sothing similar.
'Like cheating.'
In that respect, Divine power was no different from cheating.
Because Magic is limited to the Origin one possesses.
By contrast, Divine power is endlessly diverse.
In terms of a Mage, it's as if they'd combined all sorts of Origins into one.
Of course, that hexagon can't be wholly massive.
Divine power had a sowhat lower peak compared to Aura or Magic.
'No matter how vague, limits exist in the end.'
That's a Mage's maxim.
But it applies to Divine power as well.
"She'll wake soon."
When she collapsed in the Great Plains east of Serzila, Seria regained consciousness earlier than expected.
It was thanks to those small clusters of light gathering at Seria's brow. The depleted Divine power was being replenished, stirring her consciousness.
'Wimar was weak to sentint.'
More precisely, he had weakened with age.
Harad and Ellen had dealt with such an aged Wimar.
'Seria is.'
What kind of person is she?
'Was she weak to sentint? It seems like it.'
Seria had wanted to beco friends with Ellen.
'Weak to children? More than children, weak to neighbors.'
Harad recalled Laan's doctrine.
Prioritize your neighbors.
Laan had said so.
'Or soone made it up.'
In any case.
Seria had tried to prioritize her neighbors.
That must be why she apologized each ti her head burst back in Serzila.
However, Demons took priority over that.
Both Wimar and Seria.
Death and fervor were the proof, respectively.
Wimar died because he couldn't let go of that priority.
He had weakened with age, and because he was old, he couldn't accept it.
Seria.
"Great Devil!"
She shouted the mont she opened her eyes.
It was the coast of Lohit, and only Harad and Ellen were nearby.
"What happened to the Great Devil?"
Yet Seria looked for the Great Devil first.
Not Badelots, who wasn't present.
As expected.
"If you're referring to the Great Devil of Water, it's dead."
Harad borrowed the Church's expression to speak.
"Who...... who purified it?"
Harad's eyes widened slightly.
This wasn't a question he'd anticipated.
"Purified? Not killed?"
The two are strictly different.
Purification belongs solely to the Church.
"......Was it not purification?"
"I don't know what happened, but the Great Devil of Water was killed by the Great Devil of Fire."
Ellen nodded beside him.
Seria's pupils trembled.
"Was it truly not a priest?"
"Definitely not. A Demon killed a Demon."
Demon killed Demon.
Seria looked like she could hardly believe it.
Co to think of it, Wimar had been the sa.
It was a notion the Church didn't believe in.
"You wouldn't know, but in the Otherworld, fire and water are bitter enemies. That's probably why they killed it."
The continent is ignorant of the Otherworld's politics.
The Church was the sa.
When you think about it, Serzila had been too.
The relationships between towers—Ellen wouldn't have known either, had it not been for Harad.
"We missed the Great Devil of Fire. No, that's misleading. We didn't even see them. Couldn't find a trace either."
"........."
"We couldn't find Badelots. But he's alive sowhere."
"Ah."
Only then did Seria look around.
It was the northern coast with its biting wind.
"Yes, that's right. If it's Lord Badelots, he's surely safe. Because I am."
She was right.
If even Seria survived, there was no way the Inquisitor had died.
Regrettably, Badelots would be bobbing sowhere in the sea.
If he regained consciousness, he'd return to Lohit.
"The Demons."
Seria looked directly at Harad.
"What happened to the Demons?"
"Don't you rember?"
Harad blinked, then tilted his head.
"You purified them all."
"What?"
"After the Great Devil of Water died, you returned to the ship alone and purified every last one."
"........."
Seria pressed her lips tightly shut.
Light gripped her trembling pupils.
"Very efficiently too. Without a mont's hesitation. Whether child or elderly."
"......They weren't children or elderly."
"Right. Demons. You did well. Very skillful work."
Light spread through her pupils, creating ripples.
What emotion was that? Harad wanted to see beyond it.
"I have no mory of it."
"Just because you don't rember doesn't an it didn't happen."
Seria was a priestess who frequently fell into fervor.
Much of her mory would be fragnted.
"What kind of Demons were they? By chance, were they Demon pillars like before?"
In the Great Plains to the east, Seria had asked why the Rebellion Faction of the Liberation Tower was acting up.
"Does it matter?"
Harad answered as he had then.
"They're all the sa Demons in the end."
"........."
"What aning would identity or affiliation have? They're not even people."
"......I misspoke."
"It happens. Well, they did seem like worthless Demons. They didn't use Magic. Or couldn't use it? Wait, then were they even Demons?"
"........."
Seria bit her lip.
Ellen poked Harad's side from beside him.
"Actually, I was joking."
"What?"
"You didn't kill the Demons. The sailing ship sank in the Waterspout. Those Demons were shipwrecked. We don't know what happened after that either."
"........."
Seria glared at Harad.
What emotion was that?
Harad didn't know.
"If they were unlucky, they lived, and if lucky, they died."
"Isn't it the opposite?"
"Isn't this right? Since death is the good thing."
"......Is that so?"
But she didn't say she'd go back out to sea to catch them again.
* * *
It was Harad who brought up the fortune called Badelots.
The awakened Seria had only asked about the Great Devil and the Demons.
"How's your body?"
Ellen's expression was quite light, though.
The reason was obvious. Whether in mory or not, prey was sothing to be proud of. Not sothing to pry into.
'Who purified it?'
Harad found that question more striking.
Seria had mistaken Magic for Divine power. Because Magical fire was rare?
"As good as back then?"
"Back then?"
"Yes. The Great Plains we went to together ca to mind."
Seria seed much more at ease.
Was it because all the Demons were dead, or because Badelots wasn't beside her?
"I missed you, Ellen."
"You said that before."
"I felt I couldn't greet you properly then."
Seria smiled bitterly.
It seed to be because of Badelots.
"Did that anteater bother you by any chance?"
"What?"
Seria's eyes widened.
"That Inquisitor. I heard his nickna was anteater."
"No, Ellen. Lord Badelots is a wonderful person. Though he's violent at tis."
"That's what?"
At the pointed remark, Seria smiled bitterly.
"I'm sorry, Ellen. I broke my promise."
She was talking about trying to secretly go out to sea.
"The anteater forced you, didn't he?"
"No. This is a sin I must confess. Because Ellen is my neighbor and friend."
"I'm fine."
"Ellen, you are Serzila. This is the North."
She had defied Serzila's will in the North.
It wouldn't be strange if Serzila and the Church clashed over this.
The freewheeling Inquisitor Badelots might not care, but Seria had to take responsibility.
Responsibility begins with apology.
Seria prostrated herself on the ground imdiately.
Then Ellen forcibly grabbed the back of Seria's neck and pulled her up. Her strength was such that Seria floated in the air. She looked like she was prostrating in midair.
"Friends don't go that far."
"........."
"That's already enough."
Seria's eyes widened.
"Are we friends?"
"......I don't know."
Seria stared at the sowhat flushed Ellen for a mont, then briefly turned to Harad.
"Did sothing happen by any chance?"
Seria whispered in Ellen's ear.
"I don't know."
Ellen's face grew redder.
"Wow."
Seria opened her mouth in delight.
"......Actually, I know."
"Wow!"
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