I Became the Servant of the Blind Wicked Woman

To read over 260 fully translated episodes, patreon.com/Denji02

Demus, who had moved to an isolated place outside the city, opened a golden door using Proditor's sigil. As Orthes crossed through the shimmering golden veil and transcended space, his vision was filled with darkness.

'Wait, no. It's not darkness, is it?'

It was a black rock. A massive one that filled his entire field of view.

The surface wasn't rough like basalt. If he had to describe it, it was like a non-reflective obsidian. But it was far darker than any obsidian he'd ever seen.

Orthes recalled a memory from his time on Earth. Vantablack—the blackest substance in the world. The photo he saw of it gave off a similar impression.

This giant, pitch-black rock felt surreal, like a drop of ink that had fallen into reality.

'It's like Uluru in Australia, but if it were entirely coated in Vantablack.'

"Is Pluto's Great Temple on top of this black stone?"

"You can see it…!?"

Demus flinched in surprise. Orthes didn't understand his reaction at first, but his well-trained instincts answered reflexively before he could even think it through.

"What you see with your physical eyes is not everything. Being chosen by the relic of one who sees far allows that power to be with me, doesn't it?"

"Indeed. That is truly remarkable. To me, this place looks like a sort of crater. I only see an abyss untouched by light…."

Orthes looked at the black stone again. The massive rock, which felt almost surreal, appeared as strong as a fortress.

"What you see as a black stone is the Great Temple itself. They carved out the inside of that rock slowly. The underground part of the temple is even larger than what you see above."

Orthes subtly opened his eyes. He wanted to analyze the structure of Pluto's temple in advance. After all, a diligent thief always surveys what to steal beforehand.

However, the information flooding into his barely open eyes wasn't the practical kind he was looking for.

The ancient seal left by the Mage King struck Orthes' mind with a violent torrent of information.

A magical barrier from ancient times enveloped the entire massive rock. The chains of a magical array composed of hundreds, thousands of overlapping spells. The extraordinary techniques embedded within the magic shone with an incomprehensibility that would take ordinary mages their entire lives to even begin to understand.

The spells interlinked, forming a chain that was itself a colossal magic circle. The intricate spells engraved into it functioned as parts of a greater magic.

This ultimate spell isolated Pluto's Great Temple from reality.

It stripped away the temple's form, concealing its true essence. The form and essence of the temple were separated, existing in different dimensions.

Orthes closed his eyes. The overwhelming influx of information, powerful enough to fry his brain, was finally cut off.

Habitually rubbing his temples, Orthes reviewed the information he had just witnessed.

'What kind of insane magic is this?'

The spell separated the elements of existence into form and essence and then sealed them.

'To put it in game terms, it's like an invisible wall and a glitched texture….'

An invisible wall can be touched or broken, while a texture without detailed data, even if visible, cannot interact with anything.

The temple without a form couldn't be perceived, and the temple without an essence couldn't be touched. It was a bizarre and mind-boggling level of magic.

'Can the Divine Cult really break through this insane seal?'

From Orthes' perspective, breaking the Mage King's seal was impossible with the magical prowess of even a proper magic tower. It would take one of the Ten Magic Towers to even begin to comprehend the structure of the seal.

"O gods, sing of your wrath! μῆνιν ἄειδε θεούς!"

In the suffocating silence, a strange voice was heard in the distance. Slowly, the sound grew closer.

It was a kind of hymn. Perhaps it started with the Aegio cult, and then it continued like a round in a choral song.

With each verse of the hymn, the divine power condensed even more. As the radiant divine power illuminated the abyss, the form that had vanished beyond reality began to become visible.

Orthes opened his eyes again to understand the situation. He saw a different sight. Beyond the Mage King's seal, in Pluto's temple, divine power was being emitted, responding to the choral hymn.

'Good grief.'

The Divine Cult didn't break the seal using some magical principle or complex counter-spell. Like a prophecy that diverges from predictive magic, the workings of divinity don't require logic.

All that was needed was enough output to pierce through the Mage King's seal.

The divine power from inside and outside stretched out toward each other. Light touched light, separated by a single dimensional wall. A cracking sound echoed, as if something had shattered.

A fissure appeared in the air, stretching from the night sky down to the ground. From within the crack, a brilliant light of divine power spilled out.

"─Thus, they performed the funeral rites."

As the final verse of the hymn echoed, the fissure in reality finally collapsed. In the place where there was once a massive crater, a gigantic black rock now jutted out, as black as the void.

The black stone was surrounded by a sacred aura, an enormous amount of divine power left over even after dismantling the Mage King's seal.

Using that light as their guide, the priests of the Divine Cult rushed forward.

The time to recover the relics was running out.

***

I exercised a reasonable degree of courtesy. I led Demus and the other priests of Enyalius to where their relics were housed.

"How can this be…"

One of the priests muttered. With a friendly smile, I answered.

"Isn't it natural since you can both see and feel it? I've repaid the debt I owe for Demus inviting me, so now I'll go about my business."

"…Be careful. As I mentioned before, there isn't much time left until Blasphemia arrives. For your safety, you should get out within an hour."

Nodding slightly, I began running without hesitation.

The moment I left the priests behind, I kept my eyes half-open. It was a precaution to detect any priests approaching me since it would be hard to make excuses if I got caught while swiping other relics.

'Even if they're not fully open, the extended perception range gradually increases, so I have to close my eyes periodically….'

But that's not a difficult task. It's just closing my eyes for a moment.

To reset the extended perception range, I needed to spend a few seconds with my eyes open as usual—in other words, in the state where the eyes' functionality was suppressed as much as possible.

Unless there was an enemy lying in wait outside my perception range, those few seconds were a trivial disadvantage.

If this were a den of wicked mages out to kill me, it'd be a different story. But in this temple, everyone was too busy rushing to find their relics.

'According to Demus, they agreed to recover all the relics first and sort out who owns what later, but human nature doesn't always work so neatly.'

I could sense the priests several floors above me, busily moving about. They were frantically searching for their cult's relics. The bursts of divine power were evidence of that. They were probably using holy rituals to track down the relics.

I was searching for relics from cults that didn't belong to the Divine Cult. In other words, relics from minor cults that didn't belong to the Twelve Great Gods.

While the Divine Cult was busy finding their gods' relics, I would be claiming those of the countless obscure cults.

Since there was a limit to how many I could physically carry, I'd have to pick only the best ones from the minor cults.

***

In the underground levels of Pluto's temple, a silver spark flickered in the darkness.

The crack in the world caused by the Divine Cult's recent hymn—it now seemed like it was being recreated on a much smaller scale.

Whereas the cult's hymn had created a fissure large enough to cover the entire field of view, the one occurring now was barely big enough to fill a single chamber.

It wasn't just the scale that was different. The color of the force distorting the world was different too. Instead of a brilliant golden light, it was a cool silver.

Sparks continued to fly from the crack. It was the restorative power of the world wall trying to close the rift. At that moment, a hand suddenly emerged from the crack and grabbed the void.

Crack!

With brutal strength, the hand tore open the crack. A silver figure stepped out from beyond the destroyed world wall.

It resembled a golem made of brass instruments. But despite its shape, it was silver in color.

Its limbs were composed of coiled instruments like tubas and horns, and its frame was filled with organ pipes. Every step it took was accompanied by the smooth movements of valves and buttons, displaying a sense of mechanical elegance.

If its limbs were instruments, its head was that of a unicorn. A horse-like face with a long, protruding horn.

The silver figure sent out a signal, following the command left by its former master. One to its fellow servants who served the same master, and another to the master's disciples.

The location where the master had sealed himself was under attack.

Respond immediately to the summons and annihilate the intruders.

It sensed a familiar force—an ancient power of gods that should no longer exist in this world.

As it spread mana to gauge the enemies' power, the figure flinched. It had detected a divine power unlike anything it had encountered before.

This entity had fought alongside its master, devouring countless cult priests, yet this was an unfamiliar and alien divine power.

The unknown was always the most dangerous variable.

It was an immediate threat that needed to be fully understood and eliminated.

To read over 260 fully translated episodes, patreon.com/Denji02