“The Maestro was quite the unreasonable man. Since he was always looking down on others to some degree, he barely interacted with people. We just barely managed to be deemed worth talking to for him even at our level,” the Professor explained.
What? Didn’t that mean he wouldn’t talk to most people?
What did he do when he needed to go shopping? No, wait, he could just use his Gollems...
“I hated him because of how rude he was,” Doctor Elluka said. “He was the kind of person to scoff at any work you showed him. He probably sold his soul to the wicked god just to get the gold crown.”
“I didn’t dislike him as much as you, but I did think he felt a bit unstable.”
“To be fair, you even managed to get along with the witch-king, Professor... You really need to find better friends, you know?” Doc Babylon remarked.
“Hoh hoh hoh! I never thought the day would come when I’d have both of you saying that to me.”
This Maestro might have been a genius, but from what I was hearing, he wasn’t the nicest guy to be around. Honestly, I thought magitech engineers all tended to be the same way in some form or another, especially looking at the three in front of me...
Perhaps some things are better left unsaid.
“Maybe they all escaped to Maestro’s laboratory.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“The Triharan Holy Empire, in a forest at the foot of Mount Paparika. It’s filled with monsters, and isn’t really a place that’s very habitable for humans,” the Professor said.
“Why would he make his lab there?”
“Because he hates people. He once said that he’s much calmer in places where people don’t gather.”
Damn, he was thorough. What happened to make him so averse to human contact? Was he betrayed by someone he greatly trusted? Whatever the case, we had to make that our next destination.
“I know he hates humans, but that didn’t mean he had to stop being one...” Doc Babylon muttered.
“Can one really not return to being human after becoming a wicked devout?”
“Definitely not. The wicked devout are, by all rights, already dead. Their existence is simply held together by the power of their wicked vessel. The moment that’s destroyed, both their body and soul are destroyed with it.”
They were basically all Undead... It was impossible to turn them back.
“Well, I pretty much quit being human myself, so I can’t really say anything. Changing topics, we’ve confirmed that any important devices or recorded information in the Ark were destroyed in the blast. All we managed to retrieve was the remains of the ship itself and some Kyklops frames. That, and...”
An image appeared on the monitor showing two Kyklops traveling through the sea holding what looked like a torpedo in one hand each. One was metallic orange, the other metallic green... Those were definitely the wicked devout with the iron and feather masks. So they got away after all.
“This was the last bit of footage sent by one of the probes that we had stationed around the Ark. Naturally, it was caught in the blast as well.”
“What way were they headed?”
“Toward Isengard, but I couldn’t tell you if that was their destination or not.”
Isengard was as chaotic a place as ever, which made it the perfect location for people with a bad history to hide. Did they maybe have bases outside of the Maestro’s lab? I doubted they just lived a nomadic life until they got their hands on the Ark.
Just in case, I tried using [Search], but I couldn’t find the wicked devout, Gould, or even the Kyklops with it. Why were they always so good at hiding? If I had the power to spread my divinity over the whole world, I could find them easily, but unfortunately, I wasn’t quite there yet.
Speaking of divinity...
I left the repairs of the Frame Gears to the scientists and opened a [Gate] to Mismede so I could ask Kraft, the god of crafting, about the sacred treasure.
As per usual, he was leisurely carving wood. Though I wouldn’t call the speed at which he finished them leisurely.
I handed Kraft the sacred treasure, and he closely examined it.
“I see now. It’s had its divinity stolen from it, has it? Now that I look at it, the core has certainly been greatly depleted of your power,” he said with a wry smile. “The weapon itself seems fine. If the only problem is that it’s lost its divinity, then just recharge it with more.”
Hearing those words filled me with relief. If it turned out I had to make it from scratch again...I don’t know what I would’ve done with myself.
“Still, can’t say it’s very good that something with the god of erosion’s power managed to steal your divinity. He can use the power of erosion however much he likes now, and if he can do that, we might have another wicked god on our hands.”
“Yup...”
The previous wicked god was created from a servile god, though he ended up being consumed and fused with his own creation. Unlike the servile god, however, the god of erosion was a full-fledged god, even if there was a little “ex-” in front of that. Use a power like that and it would definitely be possible to make another wicked god.
“A wicked god can’t be made that easily, though. Even if you did manage it, you’d need massive amounts of negative energy to let it grow. You know, like deep grudges, hatred, grief, agony... Stuff like that. That’s why people who worship wicked gods go around spreading calamity. That was the case before too, no?”
Was Gould actually trying to revive the wicked god? No, perhaps he wanted to make a whole new wicked god altogether... If that was the reason he was spreading chaos over the lands again, then we absolutely could not ignore him.
We’ll definitely beat him to a pulp.
“The reason we weren’t allowed to touch the wicked devout was because they were wards of the wicked god, but what about a Gollem that happened to acquire the power of a fallen god? There’s no problem with us destroying that, right?”
“Wicked gods are born on the surface, that’s why it is the surface humans that must do something about it. Of course, it’s a little much to ask them to take it all on themselves, so we gods are allowed to support them. However, a fallen god is an escapee from the Divine Realm. As such, the responsibility lies on us. Even when the servile god escaped to the surface, the goddess of love came down to take him back, didn’t she? It’s the same idea.”
Right, it had slipped my mind, but that was the whole reason Karen came down here to begin with. Nowadays, though, she only really came to have fun...
Anyway, basically, that meant that we gods could take erosion-god-related enemies down.
“In our minds, wicked gods we leave, fallen gods we annihilate. We’d have settled the matter with the servile god ourselves as well if it hadn’t fused with the wicked god.”
Huh? Did that mean if a new wicked god was born and fused with Gould, we’d be in massive trouble? We wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him if that happened... But if it was okay for the divine to attack the fallen god, then maybe we could have Moroha or Uncle Takeru take it down before that happened?
“It is possible, but...are you sure you want to take that option? You’re basically saying that you can’t handle the problems in the world that you oversee. Is that not a bit pitiful for a ward of someone like God Almighty? I can already see those handful of gods who disapprove of you growing more disgruntled.”
“Ah...”
People bad-mouthing someone who only got in because of their connections with the CEO and doing nothing of value was pretty natural...
That was close. Sure, it would make things easier, but I can’t rely on another god to solve my problems.
I had no choice but to rely on the kids to deal with the wicked devout, but I had to be the one to figure out how to deal with the fallen god.
“Do remember that this fallen god is but a fragment. As a ward of someone of such high status, I find it very unlikely that you would lose. You just have to be careful to not get everyone in the surroundings too wrapped up in the battle.”
He was right. Sure, it’d be great if we took down Gould, but managing it by destroying half the world first could only be called a pyrrhic victory. Even if I could win, what was important was how I won. I had to make sure to avoid as many casualties as possible. There were already tens of thousands of victims of the conflict, so I had to keep it from getting any worse.
At the very least, now that the Ark was destroyed, it shouldn’t be so easy for them to launch surprise attacks. I’d like to think they’d lost their ability to mass-produce the Kyklops as well, but it was a little naive to think the Ark was the only factory they had...
Were they making more of them at the Maestro’s lab?
We’d better find it as soon as possible.