“Is she really asleep? She used magic just now while sleeping!” I said.
“Well, of course. I mean, it’s Hitaki, right?”
I didn’t understand the implication of that immediate reply. I’d never seen anyone use magic while asleep before. Seeing my confused expression, Sith raised a questioning eyebrow but quickly realized the cause and resumed her explanation.
“Ah. So my friend here has never seen Hitaki fight, then, right? For Hitaki, who possesses four unique mental skills, being asleep isn’t a handicap at all. Using magic deftly while doing something else is her specialty. She’s probably the most skilled magic-user in the world.”
My sister’s abilities in another world. I couldn’t even begin to imagine them. To me, Hitaki was the very symbol of our original world, the embodiment of peace itself. I couldn’t picture her using magic, so being told she was so skilled at it just didn’t register. Was it even appropriate to describe magic performed while asleep with a single word as skillful? Yet Sith believed it wholeheartedly. Far from lying, she boasted about Hitaki’s awesomeness as if it were her own achievement.
Various doubts swirled in my mind, and I found myself frowning involuntarily. Seeing my expression, Sith smiled gently. “Calm down. Shall we talk while we slake our thirst? The tea and cake here are delicious, a luxury we couldn’t have afforded a thousand years ago. Oh, there’s no waitstaff, so I’ll pour for you.”
Conversation was welcome, but her obvious behavior made it feel like a trap. I remained wary as Sith served tea to everyone and sliced the cakes lined up on the tray.
Feeling my suspicious gaze, her expression darkened slightly. She might have genuinely prepared this tea and cake as a token of affection. “My friend, I truly desire a peaceful resolution. I learned from our conversation a year ago and prepared an even better proposal this time. You dislike how they treat Dia with contempt, don’t you?”
“Yes...”
Leaving the tea and cake untouched, Sith moved on to her main point. “Listen carefully. I’ve brought a proposal that can save Dia and also fulfill my demands. It’ll take a little while; is that all right?”
Once more, I nodded, urging her to continue. Sith cleared her throat once before speaking of her desires as an Apostle.
“First, I want you to understand the fundamental premise: I’m acting to save the world. That’s absolute. The Apostles are messengers of peace born from this world. There’s only one condition for an Apostle to be born: when the world is on the brink of destruction.” Sith gestured emphatically, desperately trying to convey her feelings. I could tell she was explaining it to me, given my lack of memories, with the utmost care. “Without a doubt, the world is heading toward destruction right now. I want to stop that.”
She spoke of worrying about the world’s fate and wanting peace. That story, too beautiful to be true, seemed suspiciously fishy. But Sith, right in front of me, was serious. My observational skills, honed through long battles, and my Dimension magic, both told me so.
“By the way, a thousand years ago, the world nearly ended too. That’s why the three of us—me, Apostle Deiplachra, and Apostle Regacy—were born.”
“By ‘nearly ended,’ you mean the World Restoration Array?”
“No, we wouldn’t call that the world’s end. What we Apostles fear is the dark cloud filling the skies above the Second Dungeon town of Dahrill now at the mainland’s center. When that cloud engulfs the world, every living thing will be infected by magicbane and turn into monsters. Ultimately, the human species will vanish. The monsters will kill each other instinctively, and in the end, no one will remain in the world. Stopping that is our mission.”
Only now did I finally understand her purpose, which had long been unclear. The Apostles were not bound by individual values. They sought to save the world, transcending even nations and continents. It was a purpose one might call noble.
“But Deiplachra and Regacy ignored that mission...so now, I alone carry on the master’s will. Yes, I am the only remaining Apostle of Justice! That’s why I can’t back down. I can’t lose. I won’t yield to anyone!”
“Wait, you have a master? What kind of being is he?”
“My Master existed long, long before that queen over there lived a thousand years ago. Far, far in the past, she was the first of the winged race to reach the deepest level of the world. At that time, my Master took the world’s poison upon herself and sealed herself away with her own hands. She is the true Guardian of this world.”
A winged race from long, long ago? In this other world, even a thousand years ago was treated like a myth, so anything before that was hard to imagine. From what I recalled researching in the Allied Nations’ library, there wasn’t a single document about what kind of culture had existed back then. It was likely a realm where it was doubtful humans could have even lived properly.
“Thanks to my master’s sacrifice, the world, which had been on the brink of destruction by the magicbane, gradually began to prosper again. However, even my master was originally just an ordinary girl you could find anywhere. After over ten thousand years passed, her spirit reached its limit. She realized the poison sealed within her was leaking out, spilling onto the earth. Seeing her own body, now cracked and full of gaps, she decided a replacement was needed.”
This story about the so-called Master of the Apostles was also hard to imagine. The scale was grand, but could I think of it as just another common story about a human being with a divine attendant, like those in my world? From what I’d heard, that winged-race girl also seemed like a victim.
“To find a replacement, my Master mustered her remaining strength and sent three apostles—copies of herself, you might say—down to this land. That was the beginning, a thousand years ago. That’s how the story connects. My friend has forgotten this fundamental truth, which is why things got so twisted. So, what do you think after hearing this? Don’t you want to hear more? Don’t you want to cooperate with me?” Sith finished her explanation and smiled smugly.
“Yeah, I want to hear more. I’ll listen quietly, so go on.”
“Good. If even this failed, we really would have started killing each other right here. My friend truly understands me, huh? Heh!”
I still kept my sour expression, not lowering my guard. But Sith narrowed her eyes happily, looking relieved, and began digging into the cake all by herself. That sight only made me feel uneasy. Sith’s personality was showing through her actions far too much. And that exposed personality was far too...
“A thousand years ago, the magicbane spread, and the birth rate of semifer... Ah, back then they were called sorcerers. The birth rate of sorcerers skyrocketed. An increase in sorcerers is proof the world’s end is near. Ten thousand years ago, not a single sorcerer existed in this world. Naturally, there were no monsters either,” Sith continued.
She seemed convinced I wouldn’t interrupt her anymore and proceeded to recount the world’s history.
“We Apostles, born here a thousand years ago, sought to swiftly create beings capable of digesting and circulating the magicbane. You were the first experimental subject,” Sith said, pointing at the green-haired Titee.
The Essence Thief had been an experimental creature. Beside me, Titee showed no change in expression. Perhaps she had already suspected as much.
“By absorbing an excessive amount of magicbane beyond its natural capacity, a being under our control—an Essence Thief—was born,” Sith said. “To put it in terms you’d understand, we succeeded in removing the level cap. Confirming this success, we proceeded to select and cultivate a second and third Essence Thief. However, by the third one, the flaws in this method began to show.”
Sith took a bite of cake, washed it down with tea, and continued her story. It seemed like she was just making small talk.
“Lorde Titee, Tida Rands, Alty. The hearts of these three were just...so weak. We realized that no matter how much time passed, the hearts of these three Essence Thieves never grew. We wanted them to mature into beings capable of becoming replacements for our master, but we came to understand that they could never achieve that.”
Unintentionally, the order in which they’d become Essence Thieves had been slightly revealed. After all, given her age, Titee seemed to have been the first one.
“That’s why we tried from the start to prepare someone from elsewhere who was both strong-willed and talented. The condition for summoning them was ‘someone stronger-willed than anyone else in this world.’ The one called then was this Outworlder, Aikawa Hitaki. We believed that if it were Hitaki, she could gather all the magicbane in the world into herself and reach the same realm as our master...but the result is as you know. Even now, I still don’t understand the reason for that day’s failure.”
Sith sighed regretfully, patting my shoulder. But it looked like nothing more than slight disappointment, like a favorite toy had broken, and my expression, which I was trying to keep calm, began to twist.
“D-Don’t glare at me like that, friend. Please understand! It was all for the sake of world peace... I beg you...” Sith cut a new slice of cake, offering it my way while apologizing. Her desperate expression made it clear this was meant as an apology gift.
To an Apostle, cake and human life might be equal, with no difference at all. I felt a slight sense of despair at that difference in values, and my angry energy drained away.
“For world peace, we truly tried all sorts of things. Next, Apostle Deiplachra summoned the Outworlder Aikawa Kanami and completed the Level Up ritual to convert the magicbane into power. Apostle Regacy, collaborating with Saint Tiara, completed the magic petrification ritual to extract the stone containing the magicbane. But both were just stopgaps. Honestly, the only thing that truly worked was my World Restoration Array!”