Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 143: Vermin and Moss
Myss had the most comfortable sleep of his entire existence.
The bed in the bedroom was large, the sheets were soft, the temperature was perfect, and he had his favorite Hero Cushion. Better yet, he happened to have the finest sleeping aid of all: exhaustion.
Of course, by the time he woke up, the Hero Cushion was already gone. Faint clattering sounds came from the living room, and the steaming aroma of food drifted into his nose. Through the crack in the door, Myss could just make out Salaar’s back as he cooked.
Sunlight bathed the human Hero from head to toe, giving Salaar’s silhouette a hazy golden outline.
Myss watched for a while, then rolled over on the bed and buried his face in Salaar’s pillow. He stretched lazily, his entire body suffused with an almost drunken contentment.
“Awake?” Salaar asked without turning around, as though he had eyes in the back of his head.
Myss: “No.”
Salaar chuckled. “Then keep sleeping. I’ll just drink your soup myself…”
Myss sprang upright and tumbled off the bed. With his long hair a complete mess, he charged straight for the dining table in the living room. Salaar glanced at his enemy, who looked like a ball of fluff, and couldn’t help sighing again.
Myss rubbed his eyes and looked out at the daylight that had remained unchanged for so long. Then his gaze returned to Salaar, sweeping repeatedly over that excessively familiar face.
This face really was much easier on the eyes.
Counting the Prisoner of Dreams and the Blind God, he had already remodeled the bodies of two “gods.” If Salaar were willing to strip naked and let Myss remodel him however he pleased, perhaps he could twist Kendric’s body back into Salaar’s original appearance.
Unfortunately, no matter how unserious Salaar could be, he would never let an enemy casually tamper with his magic circuits.
…Forget it. They had only swapped bodies temporarily. There was no need to be so attached to a mere vessel.
It would be better to start studying the Blind God’s magic sooner, Myss thought as he bit the tip of his fork.
Clang.
A plate piled high with sandwiches was pushed in front of Myss.
The sandwiches were filled with fresh tomatoes and greens, along with perfectly cooked fried eggs and ham. The bread had been fried until crisp without burning, giving off a rich aroma of butter and wheat.
The rim of the plate was heaped with freshly washed raspberries, silver-like droplets of water still clinging to their surfaces. Salaar turned away and began ladling vegetable stew into a wooden bowl.
The rich aroma completely derailed Myss’s train of thought. After all, for the past day, or perhaps two days, they had been too busy devouring each other to eat anything beyond a little bread with jam.
“We should’ve stayed a couple more days… Mmph.” Myss greedily tore into his breakfast.
“I doubt the truth will be that easy to uncover. We probably won’t face the final showdown anytime soon.”
Salaar shoved another bowl of steaming soup toward him.
Myss gave a muffled response.
This investigation of the Blind God had only revealed a few of Salaar’s little secrets. The entire matter seemed unrelated to V.O.R. Strictly speaking, they were still on vacation.
Still, Sogné had said he had something important to tell them. Perhaps there would be some interesting news in it… Thinking of it that way, leaving today didn’t sound so bad.
After the meal, Salaar leisurely washed the dishes and wiped the water from the cutting board. Myss sprawled limply across the sofa, his eyes following Salaar as he moved about.
All of this was an illusion. Salaar’s tidying was completely meaningless. Yet Myss had a vague feeling that he shouldn’t point that out.
Perhaps it was because Salaar looked so peaceful, as though this truly were their home. As though they were simply going away for a while and would return in a few days.
In truth, they both knew they could never come back here. Once they left, it would be a final farewell.
At that thought, Myss couldn’t help looking around the room as well. He suddenly realized that this crude little wooden house was actually rather pleasing to the eye.
No wonder Salaar had enclosed himself in a little box even within the darkness of the seal. To Myss, a so-called “house” was tiny and ridiculous, but… wait. Something was wrong.
V.O.R targeted human geniuses. No matter how obscure the corner where a powerful person hid, they could dig them out and plant an Abnormal Fruit in them.
The Secret Garden was one of the famous three major faiths, after all. With a figure as significant as the Blind God hiding right in the capital, how could V.O.R have completely ignored him for three hundred years?
The Blind God was hardly weak. He had, after all, been made from the same mold as Salaar. Even Myss had to be somewhat wary of the brat. There was no reason V.O.R wouldn’t interfere.
So was V.O.R genuinely uninterested in the Blind God, or were they unable to interfere with him for some special reason…?
Myss narrowed his crimson eyes and fell into thought.
“Lift your feet.” Salaar was cleaning the floor with a broom instead of cleansing magic. “What is it? What are you thinking about?”
“If I were V.O.R, I’d definitely get rid of the Blind God.”
Myss muttered as he lifted both legs and hugged his knees. “That guy is powerful enough to stand out. He counts as more than half a ‘god,’ no matter how you look at it. But he’s also weak enough that he can’t properly protect himself, and he spends every day obsessing over being born.”
“If you killed a guy like that, whether you replaced him afterward or simply left things alone, there wouldn’t be any future trouble. The Church of Cadence is roughly from the same era, and the Rhythm God doesn’t even exist.”
Salaar paused. “Actually, I’m curious about that too.”
“Right?”
“But there’s something else I’m even more curious about,” Salaar said. “Most members of the Celestial Canopy were atheists. At most, they were loosely religious. There’s no way they had experience managing a religion.”
“Yet the Crimson Marsh seems to have begun rebuilding more than three hundred years ago, and the Secret Garden’s faith has remained clean and orderly without anything going wrong over the centuries. Most importantly…”
“What?” Myss blinked and stared attentively at Salaar.
“Sogné’s mission was to be successfully born and become my successor. Three hundred years ago, never mind whether he even possessed a sense of self, he would never have conceived the idea of ‘proclaiming himself a god.’ That would have been a complete rejection of the Celestial Canopy’s will and an insult to every person who sacrificed themselves.”
“So I’m curious who told him to do it in the first place.”
“Then let’s hurry up and leave so we can ask Sogné.” Full and satisfied, Myss immediately regained his energy.
Salaar sighed again and pushed Myss back onto the sofa. “Fine. I’ll tie up your hair now.”
“None of this is real,” Myss protested.
“Pretend it is.” Salaar spoke quietly and pressed the top of Myss’s head.
Myss grumbled indistinctly and glanced at Salaar’s face from the corner of his eye. When Salaar approached with the comb, Myss abruptly turned around and nipped Salaar’s lips.
“Fair enough,” he mumbled indistinctly. “Let’s pretend it’s real.”
The brilliant sunlight cast long shadows, and the two silhouettes briefly intertwined near the sofa. More than ten minutes later, they drifted toward the doorway.
The taller shadow reached out and wrapped an arm around the shorter one’s shoulders. Judging only from their silhouettes, they looked exactly like a pair of lovers preparing to leave the house.
“Salaar.”
“Mm?”
“You still have time to change your mind. I mean, your face looks awful, like you’re about to die. Staying another day wouldn’t matter. I’m not that curious.”
“…”
Salaar remained silent for a long while, then a trace of laughter entered his voice.
“It’s all right, Myss. I’ve memorized it properly.”
“Someday, when you kill me, or when I kill you, I’m sure it’ll appear among the memories flashing before my eyes.”
“…You should really just shut up.”
Drip.
Amid the gentle sound of water, within the cool darkness, Salaar opened his eyes once more.
A little regrettable, he thought.
He hadn’t even heard the sound of that door closing all the way.
……
“;…Have You ever heard of the ‘Order of Shadows’?”
Father Kalen urgently questioned Sogné. “I’m a priest of the Order of Shadows. This thighbone carries my God’s power of concealment…”
To make himself more convincing, he even removed the ring from his right hand and placed it beside the thighbone. The ring was only slightly smaller around than the bone, and the two were identical in color and texture.
Sogné looked at Kalen for quite some time before gently shaking his head.
“I have never heard of a religious group called the ‘Order of Shadows,’ Father.” He raised his head and tried to meet the priest’s gaze. “At least, the person who gave me this thighbone never mentioned the ‘Order of Shadows.’”
Kalen’s eyes immediately dimmed.
Tass, however, keenly caught the important point. “Would you mind telling us about the person who gave it to you, Sogné, uh… sir?”
Sogné glanced again at the thighbone and ring in Kalen’s hands, then nodded. “That person found me in the deepest part of the darkness.”
“He wore a black mask with no openings in it, as though darkness itself were covering his face. From beginning to end, he never said who he was.”
At the words “black mask,” Kalen’s breath hitched. He immediately thought of the mysterious leader of the Stargazers Society.
“Just a black mask?” For once, he interrupted Sogné. “Was there any pattern on it? A silver moon emblem, for example?”
“No. Just a black mask.”
Sogné sounded exceptionally certain. “That person was extraordinarily powerful, but when he found me, he was covered in blood and barely alive. His mental state was also extremely poor, and he spoke incoherently. In my personal judgment, his will to survive seemed… weak.”
It didn’t sound like a pleasant subject. Tass closed his mouth and quietly listened alongside Kalen.
“He didn’t even ask about my condition. He simply spoke to himself and warned me that the ‘daylight’ to come would be equally dangerous. Before I truly ‘came into being,’ I absolutely couldn’t go to the surface.”
“He gave me some knowledge and taught me how to establish a religion that could endure for a long time, not so that I could be worshiped, but so that I could continue acquiring knowledge and search for a way to be born.”
Tass finally realized something was wrong. “Wait, a religion? You founded a religion?… You don’t mean the Secret Garden, do you?”
Sogné honestly nodded. “People call me the Blind God.”
“Kalen, look! Kalen, this is what adventuring is all about!”
Tass shot in front of Sogné’s face, clicking his tongue in astonishment. “The Secret Garden really does have a god, and he’s alive! Wait, are you really the Blind God? You look way too much like two friends of mine. You…”
Before he could finish getting excited, Father Kalen grabbed him with one hand and pulled him back.
The priest seemed entirely unmoved by the appearance of the “Blind God of the Secret Garden.” He stared fixedly into Sogné’s lapis-lazuli eyes.
“What about the person who gave it to you? What else did he do?” Kalen asked urgently.
“He left.” Sogné said, “Before he departed, he removed one of his own leg bones in front of me and said it could help conceal me.”
“‘Farewell, good child. I wish you and your world the best of luck.’… Those were his final words.”
That sounds rather like a dying farewell, Tass thought. But out of consideration for the priest’s mental state, he ultimately didn’t say it aloud.
If even a bone possessed power this strong, the person wearing that black mask had undoubtedly been one of the foremost figures in the Order of Shadows. In the worst-case scenario, it might even have been the “Lord of Shadows” Himself.
Kalen remained silent. He merely stood there blankly, apparently having thought of much the same thing.
Tass coughed dryly twice and forced himself to continue. “Why did you, no, I mean why did You listen to him?”
“By your account, that person was nearly half-mad, and You didn’t know him…”
“Because the magic within him was extraordinarily powerful, far beyond human levels. I couldn’t see through his identity.”
In the end, Sogné still confirmed the worst possibility. “If what he said was true, then rashly revealing myself could very well have killed me. By contrast, following his guidance cost me nothing.”
Damn. By that logic, could the mysterious “Lord of Shadows” have fallen three hundred years ago?
Tass cautiously looked toward Father Kalen. The priest’s eyes were red, and he looked utterly lost.
“I said I was ‘returning it to its original owner’ because you also carry his aura.” Sogné sighed. “Now it appears that was because of the rings.”
Kalen lowered his eyes, the hand holding the thighbone trembling slightly.
No. Nothing could possibly have happened to the Lord of Shadows. If He had fallen more than three hundred years ago, then why did the Order of Shadows still exist?
An obscure little religion couldn’t possibly have endured for more than three centuries amid such despair. His god must have… must have hidden Himself within the darkness.
Yes. Hermit had once told him…
“Stop crying over every little thing, Kalen.”
His older brother spoke sternly. “Listen. The Lord of Shadow is indeed tolerant, but He is also a resilient and cunning god. He won’t like a whiny crybaby.”
“B-but ‘cunning’ is a bad word…” Kalen said through his tears.
“Uh.” Hermit, unusually, stumbled over his words. He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, in order to protect His devout followers, the Lord of Shadows will use whatever means necessary and do everything in His power to preserve Himself.”
“So when you face despair, don’t just cry… or at the very least, once you’re done crying, think about how you’re going to solve the problem.”
“But!” Little Kalen wiped the tears from his face. “All the potatoes we worked so hard to save have sprouted… Waaaah…”
“Look, isn’t there still one good one?”
Hermit patted his head. “We’ll eat that one first. We can sell the sprouted ones to the old woman next door. She knows how to plant them.”
“The Lord of Shadows protects us. There is always a solution.”
…Yes. The Lord of Shadows protects us. There is always a solution. Father Kalen adjusted his breathing, and his wildly pounding heart gradually calmed.
As though sensing his composure, the thighbone suddenly dissolved into countless pale-golden points of light. They drifted gently through the air, divided into two equally sized clusters, and flew into Kalen’s pair of rings.
A strange warmth rippled through the rings. Kalen raised both hands before his eyes. The rings seemed to have fused into his body. They had become lighter, easier to control, and more… powerful.
Without question, this was a gift from the Lord of Shadows!
Was it really only a coincidence that he had stumbled upon this thighbone? And Egan’s ambiguous words from not long ago… the lost glory…
Kalen’s spirits surged.
“Tass, before the Eye-Opening Ceremony begins, I need to go out for a while,” he said hurriedly. “I have to talk to Egan. That child might…”
Might be a member of the Order of Shadows.
Thinking of Egan’s prayers, so strikingly similar to those of the Order of Shadows, Kalen became increasingly convinced of the possibility. He looked up toward the opening of the enormous pit, and before he could even finish speaking, his body shot upward.
Only when his figure was nearly gone did Kalen remember to throw down a hurried, “Farewell, Lord Sogné.”
Tass had no intention of letting his companion act alone. He hastily said goodbye to Sogné and immediately flew after him.
Sogné: “…”
Young people these days really are in a hurry.
Still, he knew that those two were Salaar’s teammates. Lord Blind God decided to pretend he had seen nothing and turned around to welcome his true companions.
After all, he hadn’t told those two the truly important information.
Yes. Three hundred and twelve years ago, that strange man, covered in wounds and speaking incoherently, hadn’t given some vague explanation like “the daylight to come will be equally dangerous.”
Looking back, Sogné could still remember the sharp smell of blood. The strange man had struggled to breathe behind his mask, his voice no different from a wood saw, as though he might suffocate at any moment.
His warning had actually been quite explicit and very convincing.
“You sealed away something enormous and dangerous, a calamity that was about to be born.”
He spoke in a voice so hoarse that its original tone was impossible to distinguish. “And now… all those who fear It want to come try their luck. They want to strangle It in the cradle…”
So?
At the time, Sogné had been utterly unable to understand. What did that have to do with him?
The man laughed though there was no humor in the sound, only despair bordering on madness.
“All right, all right. Let me give you another analogy.”
“Suppose there is an immovable magical explosive here. Once it detonates, the entire continent will shatter and sink. But if you dismantle it, you can seize extraordinary benefits from it… What would you do?”
“Do everything possible to dismantle it,” Sogné answered obediently.
“Very good.”
The masked man spoke almost sorrowfully. “But that explosive is covered in vermin no larger than pinpricks, and a patch of insignificant moss.”
“They wail, ‘Please, think of another way. Don’t destroy my home.’ Do you think humans would listen?”
“…”
“For humans, there is only one choice: ‘immediate destruction.’”
“For those insignificant, pitiful creatures, there are two choices: have their home immediately destroyed and plundered until not even scraps remain or exhaust every possible means delaying it for several thousand years, until the explosive eventually detonates on its own and everyone is reduced to ash together.”
“I don’t understand what You mean…”
“Yes. You don’t understand.”
The masked man released a long sigh.
“I’m only a patch of moss that wants to survive. That’s all.”
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