Mystery, Jörmungandr
Indulgence.
As the name suggests, it’s a right of amnesty. A document that proves one’s pardon.
And a priest of the Goddess Church could issue three indulgences over the course of a lifetime.
Naturally, issuing an indulgence is something that must be done more carefully than anything else.
If you make a mistake, you could be stripped of your position because of the indulgence you gave out.
No matter what, an indulgence does not forgive the mortal sins the Goddess Church defines as the “Ten Evils.”
A priest who issues an indulgence to a sinner who has committed one of the Ten Evils is, of course, bound to be dismissed.
“······ Even if you are the successor of the Knight King, I cannot issue an indulgence to someone who has not been verified.”
So Andrew’s words were the orthodox truth.
Issuing an indulgence was something done at the risk of one’s own office.
Becoming an ordained priest in the Goddess Church carried value beyond the ordinary meaning of the term.
Only one out of a hundred deacons who had served the Goddess Church for more than ten years could become a priest, so the priests dispatched to cities were people even the city’s lord could not treat lightly.
A status that great.
When you could lose everything you had built, it wasn’t something you could just hand over because someone asked.
“If there is giving, shouldn’t there also be receiving?”
At my words, Priest Andrew shook his head.
“An indulgence can only be used by the person it was issued to. I’m grateful for your donation to the relief shelter, but it is impossible for someone who is not the Knight King to use the Knight King’s indulgence.”
“But you were ‘pardoned,’ weren’t you?”
“······.”
Andrew pressed his lips shut.
Right. That was what was strange.
An indulgence. Andrew granted the Knight King, Wilhelm, the qualification to be absolved of sin.
Because it is a promise made directly to the goddess, it can be used anytime even without a piece of paper.
That’s why someone who isn’t the certificate’s rightful owner can’t use it.
‘······ But it was used. The amnesty right from the indulgence issued to the Knight King was used on me.’
At the instant the man before him said, “I absolve your sins, Andrew.”
Andrew faced a situation he couldn’t understand.
In this world, when you commit sins, something called “evil karma” accumulates.
As a concept opposite to fame, priests can tell a person’s evil karma or fame just by looking at them.
【Fame 84】
【Evil Karma 0】
······ Like this.
It just appears before your eyes.
From that alone, Andrew could tell that the man claiming to be the successor of the Knight King, at the very least, hadn’t lived committing sins.
But on the other hand, the moment Andrew used the revere prayer not on the goddess but on a human, his evil karma ballooned as if it might explode.
Because it was an act that violated the doctrines of the Goddess Church.
Evil karma doesn’t build up only from doing evil deeds.
Even if a priest directly violates the doctrines of the faith he belongs to, it accumulates all the same.
‘A priest cannot issue an indulgence to himself. If a few days pass like this, the Goddess Church will find out that I used the Revere prayer on a person.’
In that moment, he would be demoted back to a deacon or dismissed outright.
But to protect the city, Priest Andrew broke doctrine.
Because of that, his evil karma increased, and all that remained was to be judged.
‘······ But the evil karma, disappeared.’
The moment the man before him said, “I absolve your sins,” Priest Andrew’s evil karma melted away like snow.
The amnesty right of the indulgence had activated.
Having seen the goddess directly with his own eyes, there was no room for doubt.
And he could also be sure that the activated “indulgence” was the one he himself had issued.
As natural as a mother recognizing her child.
“The Knight King told me. Priest Andrew, that you owe him a great debt.”
“Hmm.”
“A debt you could never repay even if you devoted your whole life. Yet you find it that precious to give a single indulgence to his successor?”
Priest Andrew swallowed a groan.
As you say, Priest Andrew owed the Knight King a debt.
But it was a secret known only between the two.
Had he told that secret to his successor?
“······ Did you hear it directly from Lord Wilhelm? The story about that ‘debt’?”
“If you want, I can say it in my own mouth.”
“Try.”
Try it. Such a confident attitude.
Was he certain that the Knight King would never have revealed the secret to anyone else?
But unfortunately, Priest Andrew did not know that the Knight King was me.
I shrugged and said exactly what he wanted.
“I personally purified ‘Eldritch Andasar.’”
“······ Did you also hear about Andasar’s identity?”
“Do you mean that she was your hidden daughter?”
“······!!!”
Priest Andrew’s eyes filled with panic.
He couldn’t help it.
Priest Andrew was an existence that endlessly handed out quests related to fame.
If you completed every quest and raised his favorability to the maximum, he would give a hidden quest called “Eldritch Purification,” and the only character who had ever reached that point was Wilhelm.
Eldritch Andasar.
Andasar was Priest Andrew’s hidden daughter. She became an Eldritch by the power of the unique items’ main ingredient, 《Eldritch’s Cursed Black Grimoire》.
After purifying her, I had obtained that grimoire.
Naturally, only Wilhelm knew that fact.
Priest Andrew looked unable to believe that Wilhelm, who knew honor, had told anyone else.
‘The reason he kept giving quests tied to honor must have been to find someone who would carry this secret to the grave.’
A hidden daughter who had become an Eldritch, a byword for wickedness.
For Priest Andrew, it was something that had to be resolved in utmost secrecy.
In the end, she was purified, but Andasar did not return to Andrew’s arms.
“I will bring Andasar back to you.”
“T, what are you saying?”
“I know where Andasar is.”
“W, where is she?!”
Priest Andrew grabbed my shoulders and shouted.
His composure shattered in an instant.
She had been purified, yet Andasar’s trail had vanished into mystery.
Back then, I didn’t know where she had gone.
But now I do.
“Kramdel.”
······ She is in Kramdel.
That place called a fortress city, or a monster city.
“If it’s Kramdel······ isn’t that a place humans can’t even enter?”
Meaning, how could Andasar, a human, be in such a city?
Unfortunately, that belief was wrong.
“Even if she lost the grimoire and was purified of the curse, from the moment she became an Eldritch, Andasar is already non-human.”
“Ah······.”
Priest Andrew’s legs trembled, and then he half-collapsed.
Eyes full of self-reproach.
I lowered my head slightly, then drove the stake in toward the self-blaming priest.
“To bring her back, I need an indulgence, Priest Andrew.”
So hand over the indulgence.
***
The next day, riding in a Hydragon carriage, I left the Garden of Knights.
“Is that an indulgence?”
Inside the carriage, Isabella Von Dersian asked as she looked at the paper in my hand.
A stiff square piece of paper, like a brown cotton veil.
Nothing was written on it, but this was the indulgence.
When the indulgence activates, the name and the insignia of the Goddess Church are made to appear on this paper, they said they made physical copies separately because there were people who wouldn’t believe it without seeing it.
“It’s my first time seeing the real thing.”
“Yes······ There is no Goddess Church in the desert.”
True. The Desert Queen hated the Goddess Church.
Come to think of it, by now the pursuit party would have been formed and chasing us hard.
Because there was no way the queen would let her princess go.
“How did you end up becoming the desert’s princess?”
Since I thought of it, I voiced the curiosity I’d been putting off.
When I raised her back then, she hadn’t obtained the princess position.
Isabella hesitated, then said,
“After the queen saw the ‘mystery’ I have, she appointed me as princess.”
······ Wait.
She saw her mystery and made her princess?
At that completely unexpected answer, I tilted my head inwardly.
What is mystery?
Mystery is an “effect.”
When you play a game, those glowing lights or colors that follow a character’s appearance.
Like how an item shines green or red once you enhance it to a certain level.
In Pangaenia, they called such traits “mystery.”
The mystery I was supposed to obtain in the next main quest was the same kind of thing.
‘She shouldn’t have had anything besides the basic mystery.’
I was sure she had nothing but the basic mystery I’d bought from a mystery practitioner for money, a white beam of light with no ability.
I didn’t remember any mystery that had special abilities or proved one’s qualifications.
“What kind of mystery did you have?”
“Well······ Would you like me to show you?”
“Mm.”
When I nodded, Isabella spread both hands.
And then—
Hwaaa.
Black patterns rose over Isabella’s appearance.
Countless black circular marks, like spots, wrapped around her.
They looked like eyes of something, like a leopard’s hide,
‘Snake scales.’
They also looked like peculiar snake scales.
And I knew what that “mystery” was.
‘Jörmungandr’s Scales.’
For a moment my brain froze.
Why does Isabella have that?
“Where did you get that mystery?”
Isabella explained slowly.
“······ One day I dreamed of a gigantic snake coiling around me. After that, I obtained this mystery, but··· it had no ability.”
“You were chosen.”
“Chosen?”
“It means the Desert Queen saw correctly.”
Mystery, Jörmungandr’s Scales.
It has no ability, but instead grants one qualification.
‘The qualification to possess a star. A mystery that seeks Jörmungandr’s star.’
One of the thirty-two stars.
Among them, the star of Jörmungandr, which no one has ever found yet.
It is one of the few transcendences that has a name.
That was a mystery that granted the right to find and claim it.
‘Once she hits level 10, she’ll be able to find it immediately.’
But it was strange.
Isabella’s level was still 8.
It was too early to transcend, and the idea that she obtained such a mystery purely by chance made even less sense.
That she dreamed one day and gained a mystery everyone had been hunting for.
‘Did she meet some specific condition?’
I stroked my chin. Just as she said, it couldn’t truly be a coincidence.
She must have satisfied some hidden condition.
What’s certain is that it hadn’t existed when I played.
And the Desert Queen had surely recognized that this was a mystery that would lead to the star needed for transcendence, and then seated Isabella in the princess’s place.
“······ Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s nothing.”
At Isabella’s puzzlement, I shook my head.
I said it was nothing, but in truth it was something.
‘The queen will never give up on Isabella.’
Neither would I.
Whether she wants to snatch her back, or truly make her a successor, either way Isabella is an enormous treasure.
‘Void.’
To only realize that now.
“Then··· where are we?”
Isabella looked outside the carriage and asked in a puzzled voice.
The scenery outside was a graveyard everywhere you looked.
“Necro Valley. A shortcut to head toward Kramdel.”
This is the city of the dead, Necro Valley.
As its name suggests, you can’t find any living things here.
It’s a dangerous region overflowing with undead and ghosts, but only by passing through here can you find the warp that leads to Kramdel.
“This should be enough.”
I stopped the carriage near a certain grave.
Beside countless graves, memorial stones for the dead of the past were densely erected.
I pulled out a ‘shovel’ I’d prepared in advance.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuuuk!
“W, what are you doing?!”
Seeing me dig up a grave with a shovel, Isabella gasped in horror.
<You are digging up someone else’s grave, ‘Evil Karma’ is accumulating.>
At the same time, my evil karma rose.
I didn’t really care.
Why do you think I brought an indulgence?
And the reason I was digging was simple.
‘The underground dungeon of Necro Valley.’
Among these countless graves, there is one tomb connected to an underground dungeon.
In that dungeon, there was a shortcut leading to Kramdel.
“Hmm. Looks like it’s not here.”
“······.”
Leaving the flustered Isabella behind, I started digging up another graveyard.
Then, not long after, text floated up.
<‘Heavenly Spirit Egg’ is being affected.>
<The hatching rate of ‘Heavenly Spirit Egg’ increases.>
······ I paused for a moment.
‘Was it influenced by fame and evil karma?’
The hatching rate had risen when I gained fame after achieving the True Glory achievement too.
It seemed the Heavenly Spirit Egg was affected by my fame, or my evil karma.
‘Still, there’s no helping it.’
I couldn’t give up.
Heading to Kramdel to obtain that ‘strongest mystery’ was also no less important.
More than anything, just because it is affected by evil karma doesn’t mean it’s certainly bad.
It could be even better.
Tuk!
In that instant, something caught on my shovel.
<You have discovered ‘Necro Valley: Underground Dungeon of the Crow Graveyard.’>
***
A dungeon.
By the game’s setting, a dungeon was located somewhere between a “city” and the “abyss.”
That’s why hidden warps were sometimes found inside dungeons.
Naturally, the secret warp to Kramdel had to be somewhere in here.
“Where the hell is this, where the hell is this place······!”
“Shh! Keep it down. I can’t hear the crows crying.”
···How long had it been since we entered the dungeon?
Turning a cramped alley, I had no choice but to stop with a frown.
Because a youthful voice was coming from not far away.
But this is Necro Valley’s underground dungeon.
A place where no living person can be, must not be.
Yet as if I hadn’t misheard, the voices of a young boy and girl continued.
“Is this a hidden camera or what?”
“Oppa. Didn’t you hear me say shut up?”
“I gotta poop, so let me out!”
“······ Ah, you pig bastard, did you boil and eat a train smokestack or what!”