-2-
AFTER MANAGING to defeat Reniement, we were successful in our original mission of destroying the Staff of the Saint. Lunaère had taken care of all her assigned pawns.
It sounded like the higher beings had sent Reniement directly. Were we at a point where Naiarotop was coming at me without caring how it affected Locklore?
First things first: we needed to return to Veranta and report in on what happened, including what happened with Reniement.
“It’ll be tough to find him, though,” I said. “He’s out taking care of pawns too, isn’t he? Maybe we should wait in the Arm of the Gods?”
“We don’t have to worry about that,” said Lunaère, and she pulled a glittering gold crystal from her breast pocket.
“What’s that…?”
“This is Tiamat’s Eye. If you accumulate just a small amount of magic in it, you can view any time and place you wish. Sopia gave it to me.”
“The high elf merchant…? You couldn’t even find something like this in Cocytus. I don’t think she’d just hand that over easily. Was it, like…a symbol of her surrender?”
“I don’t know. She gave it to me before I even knew she was a member of the Unseen Hand. It was sheer coincidence that I met her. And it was even when I was very open about the fact that I stood against them. It was thanks to this item that I managed to find where the Unseen Hand was. Sopia was likely acting of her own will, not for the Unseen Hand.”
…Sopia, a member of the Unseen Hand of the Gods, gave Lunaère this item even though she was their enemy?
Something smelled fishy about this story.
Everyone in the Unseen Hand was an ageless monster. I hadn’t heard anything about Zero, so I didn’t know about them, but Veranta rebuilt his body using alchemy, Ramiel became detached from age due to the Dragon Vortex’s influence, and Nobunaga had the ageless blood of ogres flowing through his veins.
Sopia was basically one of the first of the high elves, who were already long lived. Apparently their life spans were something like half of eternity. She was by far the oldest member of the Unseen Hand, around ten thousand years old from what I heard.
For that reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sopia knew more of the secrets of Locklore than even Veranta did.
“Did she want us to defeat the Unseen Hand…?” I asked.
“I came to that possibility as well,” said Lunaère. “I imagine Sopia is looking many moves ahead of us.”
That was a good thing since she was on our side, but we should probably be cautious of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was hiding her true thoughts while manipulating the situation with some end goal in mind.
“…You sure she just wasn’t terrified of you and handed it over so she could run away?” said Noble.
“Sopia is the recordkeeper of the world—she’s lived ten thousand years. I don’t think you should take her lightly,” said Lunaère. Noble’s reasoning was clearly too simplistic for her tastes.
“I think it’s a possibility…” muttered Noble with dissatisfaction.
“Anyway, we can talk about Sopia later,” I said. “We have to rely on her for now. Lunaère-san, I was thinking how you came at just the right moment, which means you were watching over me using Tiamat’s Eye, right?”
“Huh?! N-no, it’s not like that. I’m not constantly watching you! I-I swear! I had a difficult fight for the first time in a long time, so I did not even have enough magic for that! And it uses a lot of magic, so I can’t maintain it for very long! I don’t even mind if Noble checks for me!” said Lunaère, rushing to plead her case.
“Uh, I didn’t imply any of that… But, anyway, could you use that item to check on Veranta and the others?”
“O-of course, leave it to me,” said Lunaère, and she poured magic into Tiamat’s Eye. The scenes whirled blindingly fast. “There’s no one in the Arm of the Gods. If that’s the case, then maybe Cocytus, which Veranta was in charge of guarding… Wait, what’s this?” Her expression clouded over.
I peered into the crystal as well and saw a huge wall. There were loads of golems there as well as people that looked like adventurers and even the kingdom’s military.
They were fighting monsters made of large stones. The monsters were nearly fifteen feet tall and had countless, disturbing eyes all over the surface of their bodies.
“Wh-where is this? And what are those monsters…?” I asked.
“…The coordinates are right. This is Cocytus, and I’ve seen these monsters there before. Look, there’s a large hole inside the wall…that probably leads to Cocytus,” said Lunaère, but it still wasn’t ringing any bells. This place was completely different from the entrance to Cocytus that I knew.
There was of course this towering defensive wall that I’d never seen, but all the trees around the entrance had been uprooted and were totally gone. There was also supposed to be the old temple hiding the entrance to Cocytus. There wasn’t any hint that it ever existed.
“So, the monsters of Cocytus are spilling out, and the adventurers from nearby cities are trying to stop them…?” I asked.
Though, if they were the only ones fighting, they would never be able to survive. There were tons of monsters in Cocytus above level 1,000, but most of the adventurers in that area were under level 100.
Veranta probably created that wall and the golems with his ability. I imagined Veranta’s golems were making up the majority of the fighting force, stopping the flood of monsters, while the adventurers were supporting.
But even though they seemed to be managing at the moment, they were going to reach their limit eventually. We needed to head there, immediately.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“That does seem like a good idea.” Lunaère nodded in agreement.
Satan was supposed to be keeping control over the monsters of Cocytus. How did this happen?
“Let’s ride Wol,” I suggested.
Lunaère probably flew faster than him, but it wasn’t like me, Pomera, and Philia could hang on to her as we traveled. It would be better if we all went together on Wolzottl.
“Summoning Magic Level 18: Wolzottl,” I said, and a magic circle appeared, then the nearly ten-foot-tall beast with beautiful blue fur.
“Awooooooo!” Wolzottl’s gold eyes locked on to Lunaère, and his two tails swished back and forth.
“Ah, sorry, Lunaère-san! Wol tends to get overexcited when he meets new people and he jumps up and—!”
Wolzottl rushed toward Lunaère, then…stopped. Halting right in front of her, he plunked down on the ground. His tails drooped, and his body trembled slightly.