Chapter 525:
A Diary?
WE STOOD IN FRONT of the painting, the most eye-catching item in the room. Framed decoratively in wood, it was very big and very impressive.
“It’s impossibly huge,” my father remarked.
The painting’s size distracted us from its contents. I found myself walking over to its right side and stretching my arms wide. I made a note of where my left hand hit and moved over, spreading my arms again so my right hand touched the spot. The painting was about three Ivys wide—or maybe a little bigger.
“What are you doing?” My father was staring dubiously at me.
“Ahh!”
Well, this is awkward.
“I was just thinking, gee, what a big painting.”
“And you were measuring it with your arms?”
Looks like he caught me. I’ll just laugh it off.
My father crinkled into a soft chuckle and patted my head. Why did he think it was so funny? Looking at the smile on his face made my cheeks burn, so I slowly looked away.
“Pu! Pu, puuu.”
Hey, don’t sneak a look at my face from the ground, Sora.
“Adorable.”
I looked up to see Zinal had the same soft smile as my father. I quickly averted my eyes. That smile seemed to make me uncomfortable for some reason, and my cheeks were on fire.
Okay, let’s change the subject!
“What do you suppose it’s a painting of?”
Fische patted my head. “Yeah, I’ve never seen this image before.” He approached the painting and gently ran his finger along the canvas. “And there isn’t any dust on this, either.”
So he was checking how clean it was. Yeah, it really is in perfect condition.
I took the entire painting in. In the center were people wearing black armor fighting others with red armor. They held swords and shields, and some were using bows and arrows. Behind the black and red fighters were people holding spears defensively. Maybe they were next up to fight when the people in the front died? Standing behind the spears were people dressed in robes, and there were more spear-holders behind them for some reason. Dark shadows also loomed in the right and left edges of the painting. These shadows seemed to be human silhouettes, but those black silhouettes perplexed me a little. As a whole, the painting was made with incredible detail. At a closer look, you could even make out the expressions of the fighters, and yet the right and left edges of the painting were the only areas covered in dark shadows. Only that part of the painting held an incomprehensible ghastliness. I widened my focus and looked at the entire painting as a whole again.
“So, this is a war painting, right?” I asked.
Zinal gave a perplexed look. “I think so. But I’ve never seen black and red armor before. The royal knights dress in silver armor, and all the knights outside the royal capital dress in green.”
I remembered that the knight Lord Foronda summoned was wearing silver armor. He must have been a royal knight, then. Wait, didn’t he come awful quick for somebody who got summoned from the royal capital?
“There’s no telling when this painting was even made…” my father said.
Zinal nodded in agreement, and Fische looked equally perplexed. Even in the eyes of those well-versed in history, this was a painting of unknown knights fighting in an unknown war. Why was it hanging in a church? What a mystery.
“Wait a minute…”
As I got a closer look at the painting, something felt odd about it. The people holding spears, both the group behind the front line of fighters and the line behind the robed people, were wearing masks. And the positions of their spears seemed off. It looked like they were about to stab the people in front of them.
“Is this…a threat?” The words spilled out of my mouth as I stared at the painting, but for some reason, they felt truer when I said them.
“A threat? What do you mean?” My father came closer and looked at the spear-holders.
“Look at the people in masks. It looks like they’re threatening the ones in front of them.”
“You’re right…it does look like that,” my father said.
Fische and Zinal nodded at the painting.
“So, like, they’re forcing the knights to fight?” I could hear the disgust in Zinal’s voice. Stealing a careful glance at him, I found him glaring at the painting.
“The real question is, what even is this church?” Fische asked, looking around the room.
I followed his gaze. The room showed no ravages of time, yet there were no flowers in sight. Instead, there was a giant painting depicting a battle Zinal and Fische had never heard of. I looked up at the huge painting again. There were no flowers, but the wooden cross you’ll find in every church was hanging on the wall. Without that, nobody would even know this place was a church.
That reminds me, I’ve seen this cross in my past life, too. I saw it…in a church. So it’s the same in my past life. How strange.
“Looks like there’s another room over here.”
I looked where Fische was…and a section of wall was opened like a door next to him.
“A secret room?” Zinal headed to Fische’s side.
“Looks like it,” he replied. “I felt a breeze, so I tapped the wall and it opened.”
I peered inside the room from between Zinal and Fische. It did indeed look like a proper room, and it had a desk with something on top of it.
“There’s something inside,” I remarked. “A stack of papers?”
Zinal and Fische entered the room. They approached the desk and took the papers off it.
“…It’s a diary.”
Maybe whoever worked at this church wrote it.
“Let’s see, it says… Today marks the start of my fourth year in hiding. At last, my voice reached the ones in the church beyond.” Zinal made a face. “Beyond what?”
Yeah, what do they mean by “beyond”? There are churches in every village and town, but they’re all the same church, so they’d never call any of the churches “beyond.” And what did they mean by “my voice reached”?
“If we gather enough summoning circle operators, we will surely succeed. We’re so lucky they survived.”
“Summoning circle operators”? I thought to myself. And what do they mean by “survived”? Survived what?
“What…does it mean?” Fische asked flatly.
Zinal shook his head. “I don’t know. But again with the summoning circles? Do you think that’s why time stopped in this village and we couldn’t see it very well? A summoning circle?”
“That’s definitely possible,” Fische said.
My father nodded. “There’s still so much about summoning circles we don’t know. Maybe they can hide villages or stop time.”
My father put his hand on my shoulder. He was probably worried about me since I’d been targeted by a summoning circle before. I lightly patted his hand to show him I was okay.
I’m okay now. My father, Zinal, and Fische are with me.
A summoning circle operator in a church “beyond”… From the way the diary was written, there were probably summoning circle operators in this church, too. And these operators had come together and were trying to accomplish something. If they figured out how to operate the summoning circles properly, could they be used without sacrificing any lives?
“I am an operator myself, but this summoning circle greatly shaved off my life span. I can only use the circle a few more times before it kills me. I truly am relieved that we made it on time.”
So even people who knew how to use summoning circles still lost their lives to them. What were they so desperate to accomplish that they were willing to shorten their life spans for it?
“The operators captured in the church beyond probably number ten. If we combine our numbers with their ten, we probably still won’t have enough. I know it can’t be helped, but I can’t stop hating myself for my own feebleness. I hate that I have to sacrifice the lives of those who gave their all to help us escape. But I cannot let this world fall into those bastards’ hands… Agh!”
I looked over when Zinal suddenly cried out…and the papers were crumbling to dust.
“Damn it!” Zinal quickly put the stack of papers back on the desk. “It’s no use. I can’t read them anymore.”
I walked over to Zinal’s side and looked at the top of the desk. On it was a dusty substance one could no longer call paper.
“It doesn’t even look like paper.”
“Yeah, it suddenly fell apart. It might’ve had a time-stopping spell on it.” Zinal slowly swept the fragments of paper to the side.
“But there could still be some readable papers beneath it,” Fische reminded him.
Are there? I kind of think it’s hopeless.
“Oh! I think I can barely make this out?”
From beneath the fragments of paper, a piece of paper with barely legible letters emerged. But it looked like the slightest movement would destroy it as well.
“Let’s see, it says… If only there were no summoning circles…if only there were no… I can’t read the rest of that part. Okay, after that is… We must prepare ourselves. And the next part I can read is… This world will be destroyed. This doesn’t make sense.”
I felt like whoever wrote this diary hated summoning circles, even though they could operate them.
And what’s this about the world ending? What a creepy diary.