Chapter 491: The One Beloved by the Gods (4)
Countless curtains of aurora shimmered as if dancing, gently weaving their way between them.
With the mere manifestation of will, laws distorted, and fragments of altered space-time enveloped Lennok’s senses.
The sensation of air on his skin, the sound of his breathing, the temperature and humidity, even the way heat and energy converted.
Everything distorted differently from reality, then returned to normal with the passing will.
Countless wills, swirling around Lennok and dancing, ceaselessly whispered in an unknown tone.
Rather, they spun and danced around his body without pause, as if vying for Lennok’s selection.
As if they wished to imprint their will upon him right now. As if begging to be remembered for just this one moment.
All the whispers in his ear were faint, yet clearly understandable.
[Found you.]
[So you were here.]
[We’ve been waiting.]
[For a very long time…]
“…”
Izel and the Agents stared, their faces vacant.
The Correction Knights and high priests gaped at Lennok, their expressions unsightly.
Even knowing hundreds, thousands of gazes were fixed on him, Lennok focused on the voices in his ear.
A unilateral yet powerful manifestation of intent.
A simple yet transcendent miracle, converting their very will into an understandable language.
The words conveyed through this translated language of intent held more meaning than love-hate and longing.
[Round and round, back to the beginning…]
[We miss you.]
[Return.]
[Let us make a pact.]
[Choose.]
The moment he understood and accepted their meaning in his mind.
Lennok quietly closed his eyes.
The doubts that remained unresolved in Palgung Fortress. He could finally understand the answer.
The reason why his branching self, who had accepted the power of the Outer Sea at that time, didn’t exist beyond the kaleidoscope.
It wasn’t because Lennok himself had died or disappeared in that branching future.
Rather, it simply wasn’t reflected in the kaleidoscope because it no longer existed as a possibility.
Because they ceaselessly desired and longed for someone who was not Lennok.
Conversely, because they loved yet hated someone who could not be said to be not him.
[The first is coincidence, the second is inevitability, the third is destiny.]
Because someone who had taken the place of coincidence and inevitability still existed in this world.
“No. It’s not me.”
Understanding this, Lennok could finally answer their earnest will.
“The one you’re looking at isn’t me.”
[…]
“You’re simply seeing someone who could have been me, or who could become me.”
A faint fragment of truth revealed amidst the crossroads where past and future possibilities were intermingled.
The Well of the Codex, the rift in Palgung Fortress, Madame’s mansion, and Murphy’s hospital.
The faint thread of truth, tenuously connected throughout all those journeys, was finally grasped here.
“So next time, I’ll find you myself to confirm.”
Because he was certain that this alone was a greater harvest than anything, Lennok could smile there.
“That’s all I can promise you today.”
As Lennok decisively rejected their offer, the grand ritual concluded.
The moment the ritual focused on a single individual, it was natural for all doors to close according to the target’s decision.
However, that didn’t mean he was directly rejecting all possibilities related to the Outer Sea.
The branching point as an Apostle, undeniably obtained here. This would become a kaleidoscope for Lennok, reflecting another Outer Sea that didn’t previously exist for him.
Lennok didn’t choose no one here today.
Rather, knowing he could choose anyone, he merely postponed his decision until he could precisely grasp its meaning.
But there was no reason to tell them that this itself was a qualification and privilege granted to Lennok.
Shhhhhhh…!!
The endless darkness shrouding the altar slowly receded.
At the same time, the countless wills that had pathetically lingered around Lennok began to fade one by one.
[No…]
[Just a little, a little more…]
A pathetic gesture, as if trying to somehow remain by Lennok’s side.
However, now that the ritual, which had ascended close to the Outer Sea’s environment, had subsided and ended, the wills of the Outer Sea could not endure long in the world’s cycle.
All that remained was Izel, her head bowed deep on the altar’s summit, and the blood-soaked Amrita.
Hundreds of people surrounded the now silent altar tower, yet not even a breath could be properly heard.
“…Again.”
Izel murmured quietly.
Her face, as she lifted her head, was expressionless like a doll.
With an expression that seemed to have lost all emotion, she spoke.
“I will… restart the ritual.”
“…”
“If I kill you and offer your spirit and flesh, the Outer Gods will surely follow, eager to consume that delicacy.”
Splat!!
She reached out to Amrita’s blood-soaked body and violently ripped at her wounds.
[Kuuuoooooh…!!]
Ignoring her agonizing struggles, she tore at the flesh with bare hands and chewed on the Apostle’s organs.
Crunch, crunch!!
She chewed and swallowed Amrita’s flesh, muscles, organs, and blood vessels like a madwoman, the very parts she had been conversing with so amiably just moments ago.
Izel’s face, stiff and white like porcelain, became smeared with blood, transforming into a gruesome sight.
“Even like this, even like this…!! Can you still ignore me?! Do you think you can ignore a vessel that has consumed an Apostle and become one with it!!!”
“Izel Nidri.”
“It’s not over yet!!! I’ve prepared for decades for this moment, to return to His side!!!!”
Despite Lennok’s calm call, Izel shrieked like a madwoman.
“Because of a mere heretical wizard, like this, like this, so vainly…!!! No, it cannot be, it cannot be!!!!”
Stepping down from the altar, she rushed madly towards the cage where Lennok was imprisoned.
Without hesitation, she flung open the cage, grabbed Lennok by the collar, and threw him next to Amrita.
Thud!!
Izel, pulling a long dagger from her sleeve, held it in a reverse grip and panted.
“W-we just need to offer him… This is such an easy thing… To think I was still hesitating…”
“…”
“If I kill him, if I kill him, it can be resolved, right…? We can call them again, can’t we…? Amrita, right…?”
[Kiiik…]
Amrita cried sorrowfully, a sound devoid of intelligence.
Did Izel understand if that cry was an affirmation or a denial? Probably not.
Lennok, too, could no longer harbor any optimism or doubt about this situation.
“A priestess who has heard the prophecy of the end should know,”
Lennok said, watching Izel reposition the dagger in her trembling hand with a reverse grip.
“They are not ones who permit a second coincidence. Even if you repeat the ritual here, do you think they will grant your wish?”
“Shut up, shut up…!!”
Lennok exhaled softly, watching Izel shriek like a madwoman.
“You pretend not to understand, even though you clearly know…”
Izel’s eyes, rigid like porcelain, met Lennok’s cold gaze.
“Or perhaps, you just wish for it to be so?”
“Offer your heart!!”
Izel, dragging her body like crumbling porcelain, brought the dagger down with both hands.
As Lennok watched the blade fall inches from his face, exhaled softly, and was about to rise…
Thwack!!
A long blade emerged from the very center of Izel’s chest.
“…!!!”
An absurd strike, unforeseen not only by Izel, who had been holding a dagger with both hands, but even by Lennok, who had been facing her.
At the sudden appearance of an unknown entity from behind Izel, who had stabbed her, the other knights and Agents froze as if struck by lightning.
“Y-you…!!”
Izel, trembling, tried desperately to turn and look behind her.
Finally, upon seeing the face of the one who had stabbed her, a passionate fury spread across her face.
“Zaif…!!!”
Izel gritted her teeth, her voice boiling.
“What, what in the world is this…!!!”
“I doubted and feared until the very end.”
Apostle Zaif murmured.
“Lest all of this be merely delusion and falsehood… That’s why I stood by.”
Sliiiice!!
As the blade was slowly withdrawn, Izel’s body weakly crumpled forward.
The face that appeared from behind her was that of the middle-aged man Lennok knew.
Apostle Zaif, bearing an intent that was somehow empty and muddied yet incomparably clear, quietly looked down at Lennok.
“But you have never once lied.”
“Apostle Zaiffff!!!!”
“What in the world is this?!”
Priests and knights shrieked in mingled cries, and Agents rushed out in succession, surrounding Zaif.
Their faces were all filled with disbelief and horror at the current situation.
“Betraying the Archbishop, do you intend to commit treason…!!”
“This is impossible!!”
“How can an Apostle, who acts as His will’s proxy, harm the High Priestess…!!”
“This is not betrayal.”
Zaif, on the contrary, gazed at the Agents with an expressionless face and murmured.
“Didn’t you all see it? Whom the Pantheon’s will chose. What it revealed as the righteous path.”
“…!!”
“Apostle Martinez showed me the truth. He sacrificed everything to prove his words were not false.”
“Apostle? Apostle Martinez…?”
“Wasn’t he a heretic…?”
“What in the world is going on?”
Zaif’s calm words struck hundreds and thousands of worshipers gathered there simultaneously.
Muttering sounds and crowds drawing closer to hear more of his words.
Including the offerings sacrificed on the altar, and Izel and Amrita, lying bleeding and fallen.
Amidst this catastrophe plunging into uncontrollable chaos, only Zaif unhesitatingly turned his back.
As if he knew what needed to be done.
“The ritual that occurred here just now was nothing more than an illusory mirage. Therefore, I too will no longer hesitate…!!”
Crunch, crunch, crack…!!
At that moment, Zaif’s body seemed to violently swell, then instantly began to transform into the shape of a colossal beast.
A form like a gigantic rhinoceros with four horns on its head. Zaif’s true body, standing on four legs and swinging its long nose, trampled directly onto the altar and charged.
[Archbishop Izel Nidri and 10th Apostle Amrita have defied His will and violated unauthorized divinity!!]
Zaif, unleashing a booming true voice, emitted a powerful telepathic wave with the power of his true form, loud enough to be heard across the entire island.
[Let those who survived head to the main branch and confirm all truth!! From this moment on, I will… prove it to everyone…!!!]
Not towards Archbishop Izel Nidri, who lay clutching her chest, but towards Amrita, who was gasping for breath, covered in blood, behind her.
Zaif unhesitatingly rammed into Amrita’s true body, which had been excessively damaged as a conduit for the Outer Gods’ will.
CRACKLE!!
[Kiiiiiiiiik!!!]
Amrita’s body, pierced by thick four-pronged horns, flesh crushed, writhing and screaming in agony.
But Zaif continued to stab Amrita with his horns, crushing the fellow Apostle like a madman.
Amrita, unable to bear it, also began to bite at Zaif’s body, driven by survival instinct.
Crunch!!
[Kwooohh…!!]
[Kiiik, Kigigik…!!]
Tearing and clawing at each other’s flesh, ravenously devouring their spirits and bodies.
A sacrilege that should never happen: two Apostles of the cult attacking and devouring each other.
Even Lennok stared with a slightly dazed expression at the utterly grand battle between the monsters.
A desperately internal conflict that he could never have expected, even when he first deceived Zaif into thinking he was a fellow Apostle.
The outcome of the ritual, which Lennok himself hadn’t anticipated, was appearing as an entirely different kind of aftermath.
Was it a mere coincidence, or the fruit of compounded misfortune and contradiction swelling in size?
A series of situations, begun with misunderstanding, misapprehension, and lies, hurtling towards an uncontrollable catastrophe.
Izel, fallen and clutching her chest, turned her blurry gaze to the scene, then reached out a trembling hand.
“Amrita…”
Lennok watched silently, then slowly rose to his feet.
The handcuffs fell away as naturally as if he had never been bound.
Clink!!
The moment Lennok, now completely unbound, took a step towards Izel, someone appeared like lightning and embraced her body.
A knight with a grim expression, clad in silver armor.
Geobin Melwood, captain of the Correction Knights, gently supported the fallen Izel.
“I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but none of that matters.”
Geobin murmured in an eerie voice.
“You cannot lay a single hand on the High Priestess.”
“…Don’t worry.”
Instead of walking towards Izel, Lennok calmly bent down and picked up the amber diadem that had fallen to the floor.
“Because I have no more business with the Archbishop.”
The amber diadem that had fallen from her head. Lennok slipped Jindun’s recovered legacy into his coat pocket, and the moment he turned his gaze towards Amrita.
“That cannot be.”
Whoosh-!
The Agents who had been observing the situation stepped onto the altar and unanimously blocked Lennok.
Their faces were stiff, unable to show any clear expression.
Even for skilled individuals chosen as vessels to become Apostles, it was natural for them to find the current situation difficult to grasp.
Among them, only three Agents, exuding overwhelming presence, remained composed and stared directly at Lennok.
Silence fell.
“I’ve dedicated my entire life to the cult, but this is a sight I’ve never seen before.”
An Agent in a thick, fleshy priest’s robe quietly pointed below the altar and spoke.
“Look below. The worshipers who were united in serving the great will just moments ago… are now divided.”
“…”
His words were true.
Even among the Correction Knights and priests below the altar, the recent declaration by Zaif and the clash between Apostles had plunged them into uncontrollable confusion.
With Archbishop Izel unconscious, they couldn’t decide which side to take.
They might be accustomed to confronting and slaughtering heretics according to doctrine, but could it be possible for the Apostles they served to fight among themselves?
No, ordinarily, Zaif’s actions might have been dismissed as mere Apostle madness or treason and ended there.
But the fact that it was a heretical wizard, not the Archbishop, who was chosen by the Outer Gods, and that Zaif himself was risking his life on those words in this very situation…
…was implanting tiny seeds of doubt in the minds of worshipers who would ordinarily never question the cult.
“Protect Lady Amrita…!!”
“No, everyone stay where you are!!”
“Wait until we contact the main branch!!”
“What nonsense, that man is merely a heretic…!!”
The entire temple was in a state of immense, uncontrollable chaos.
That the Agents could calmly block Lennok amidst this was likely because they were beings who participated in this ritual as vessels for Apostles.
Knowing that the qualification they were meant to receive had been snatched away before their very eyes, they could coolly judge Lennok as an enemy.
“Apostle Zaif’s words are wrong. You are not one of the cult.”
The stout Agent stared at Lennok with a sharp gaze.
“I don’t know how you managed to sway him, a man of such deep loyalty within the cult, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not the only inexplicable thing happening right now.”
Despite his dull appearance, his judgment was remarkably shrewd.
Rather than trying to comprehend this moment where everything spiraled out of control, he accurately grasped what needed to be prioritized.
Indeed, other Agents, except for the four strongest who blocked Lennok, were putting all their effort into attacking Zaif to protect Amrita.
Even without third-party intervention, and even with Amrita’s mind not entirely sound, the power difference between the two Apostles was evident.
Regardless of Zaif risking his life to attack Amrita, it was Zaif who was bleeding and dying.
“However, it is an undeniable fact that even though you do not follow His will, you received the Pantheon’s choice…!!”
“…”
“Precisely because of that, there is a way to resolve all these complex, tangled problems.”
The stout Agent said so, raising his thick hand and extending it towards Lennok.
“Come to the cult.”