Chapter 508

Chapter 508: The Cathedral Ark’s Secret

All known history of this world started with the Great Annihilation of the Age of Antiquity.

If one treated the Great Annihilation as a wall, then that invisible wall was clearly not a simple event node. In truth, it cut the entire historical Time-Stream.

Everything before the Great Annihilation was unknown. Archaeological scholars exhausted all their wisdom and effort, yet could not restore even a shred of information from the node of time before that moment. In the whole world, people could not find a single relic that pointed to the era before the Great Annihilation—not even a stone carved with words.

In the eyes of scholars, this hopeless black wall had already stood for ten thousand years. Now, Captain Duncan, who had returned from Subspace, had given this barrier a fitting name.

As leader of the Truth Institute and Pope of the God of Wisdom, Rune felt the presence of that black wall more deeply than anyone, and he understood how precise the term “Horizon Limit” was.

“Our world feels as if it was ‘created out of thin air’ at some moment after the Great Annihilation. Our broken and self?contradictory history is ironclad proof that this Horizon Limit exists,” Rune said, his tone full of emotion as he faced his three old friends. “Since the rise of the city?states, even since the Dark Age, countless scholars have tried to trace the past and search for the ‘source’ before the Great Annihilation. They dug ever deeper into the dark earth, but in the end they were all blocked by that invisible barrier.”

“Not even a single second— not even the one second before the Great Annihilation began—can be confirmed. It is blank. Even the ‘Three Long Nights’ mentioned in the Blasphemous Tome that Captain Duncan took from the Annihilators only describes the span of history between the Great Annihilation and the founding of the ancient kingdom of Critt. As for any information from before the Horizon Limit, it is still a complete blank.”

“It is very dangerous to treat a cultist’s heretical ravings as reference material,” Banster, Pope of Death, could not help but remind him from the side.

Rune lightly shook his head. “The danger of heretical doctrines lies in their power to tempt and to incite evil. If we strip away those influences, the ‘Three Long Nights’ themselves are still a topic worth studying. Many of our results on the Dark Age after the collapse of the ancient kingdom of Critt are built on research into the Church of the Sun and the Cult of Annihilation.”

“…So in the end, what you are saying is that you cannot explain the ‘Leviathan’ beneath the city?states, and those Leviathan beasts that carry the Cathedral arks cannot give us an answer either,” Frem broke the silence. “Because this was something that happened before the Great Annihilation, all information that points to it is unknowable, unmeasurable, and unprovable.”

Rune did not speak, which was as good as agreeing with Frem.

Helena thought for a moment, then suddenly spoke. “But you can at least tell us where the Truth Institute found those four Leviathans. At the very least, the beasts that carry the four Cathedral arks really were discovered and ‘revived’ by your people, weren’t they?”

“…They came from the frontier, after a large?scale ‘Border Collapse,’” Rune finally gave a clear answer this time. “The exact location… was near the Eternal Veil in the eastern sea.”

“The eastern sea?” Banster frowned without thinking.

“Yes, right by the former site of the Viseran Thirteen Isles,” Rune nodded. “Ever since that terrible Subspace disaster a century ago, the eastern stretch of the Eternal Veil has always been a fragile node. The dense fog there often collapses inward, or temporary Vision zones appear over the sea. You should know this as well.”

Helena and Frem nodded in silence, while a thoughtful look appeared on Banster’s face. None of them interrupted Rune; they signaled for him to go on.

“When the Truth Institute was in charge of patrolling the frontier, one of our ships encountered an anomaly there,” Rune went on, sorting through his memories as he spoke. “The exact situation can no longer be verified, because during the event the crew suffered severe cognitive confusion and memory gaps. Afterwards, they could not accurately describe what they had experienced. But there was a hastily written log on the ship that recorded part of what happened—

“‘The sea suddenly sank inward, like a strange bowl. The edge of the “bowl” was smooth and calm, and the water seemed to have frozen in place. But the ship did not fall down with the sunken sea. Instead, it floated above that sunken region… The ship lost all power. It could not move forward or back, and hung in the air hundreds of meters above the water in a terrifying way… Colossal shapes surfaced from that sunken sea, as if some kind of living creatures…’

“That was what one crew member managed to write down in a hurry before his cognition broke down and his memories were damaged.

“Later, another of our fleets found that missing patrol ship. It was slowly drifting out of a patch of thin fog, completely without power, its steam core cold. Everyone aboard was asleep. And behind that ship, deep in the slowly thinning fog, four massive shapes appeared in the rescuers’ field of view.

“Those were the Leviathans we discovered at sea—the colossal beasts recorded in the Storm Canon, long vanished from the river of history, apostles of the Storm Goddess.

“What happened after that, you already know. The Truth Institute found a way to ‘revive’ those legendary beasts and built vast Cathedral arks upon their backs, then handed them over for the Church of the Four Gods to use.”

Rune finished his account. Frem and Banster were still lost in thought, while Helena slowly furrowed her brow. “So those Leviathans were actually one of the Frontier Relics… No wonder you always avoided talking about these details before. So it was related to a Border Collapse.”

“Awareness of Border Collapse increases the chance of a Border Collapse occurring inside the civilized world. The closer in time, the higher the probability. This was a rule that Captain Duncan Abnomar summarized a century ago, back when he was still a great explorer,” Rune nodded. “But now, decades have passed since the Border Collapse in which the Truth Institute discovered the Leviathans. Bringing it up again is not quite so dangerous.”

“…I have a question,” Frem suddenly said. “The Cathedral arks may be large, but compared to the city?states they clearly are not on the same scale. If the biological structure under the cities really is also a Leviathan, then its size is several times that of the Leviathans under the Cathedral arks… Are they really from the same species?”

“Who knows?” Rune spread his hands. “Perhaps the four Leviathans we found on the frontier were just some kind of ‘small individuals.’ Or ‘juveniles.’”

“…In theory it should not be like that,” Helena shook her head. “I often communicate with the Leviathan of the Cathedral ark. It does not know what happened before the Great Annihilation or the truth beneath the city?states, but it has clearly said that it is an adult Leviathan.”

“Then the problem lies in the biological structures beneath the cities. Perhaps they are unusually huge ‘mutant individuals,’ or perhaps… they are connected to the influence of those ‘Blueprints’ in the Deep Sea,” Rune said, guessing as he went. “After all, if the information sent by the Vanished is true, then all the city?states now on the Boundless Sea can actually be counted as the ‘creations’ of the Elder Gods. Even the biological structures beneath the cities are likely the result of a ‘second round of processing’ by the Abyssal Lord…”

At this point Rune suddenly stopped. He shook his head with a touch of self?mockery, then passed his hand over his eyes and made a gesture of prayer to God of Wisdom Rahm. “May the Lord forgive me. It feels truly strange to be talking about such heretical claims.”

“May the Lord forgive us.”

Helena and Frem also made gestures of benediction, confessing to the Storm Goddess and the Everburning Ember behind them.

As leaders of the Church, they could look at these borderline?taboo, even outright heretical topics from a higher vantage. They could analyze information from heretic fanatics with cooler heads and a more practical attitude. But as Heralds of the Four Gods, they also held to their sects’ teachings and were bound by their faith. When they spoke of certain dangerous subjects, that inner sense of unease and resistance was hard to avoid.

Only Banster, the Herald of the God of Death, tall, gaunt, and aged in appearance, had kept silent, as if he had been lost in thought from the very beginning.

“Banster,” Rune finally turned his attention to this silent spokesman of the Death God. “You have seemed distracted from the start.”

“I am thinking about a question, Rune,” Banster finally lifted his head. His sunken eye sockets were deep as night. “The Viseran Thirteen Isles—the place where the Leviathans were found was near the sea where the Viseran Thirteen Isles incident happened. Do you not find that worth paying attention to?”

Rune nodded calmly. Clearly, he had already expected Banster to focus on this detail.

“I know what you want to say—the Vanished,” the elven elder said slowly. “A hundred years ago, the Vanished opened a gate to Subspace at the Viseran Thirteen Isles and dragged all those islands and their residents into the terrifying depths of that world. That event also left the entire sea region with a fragile space?time Anomaly, with Visions occurring again and again… In that sense, the incident that patrol ship from the Truth Institute encountered decades ago is causally linked to the Viseran Thirteen Isles incident.”

At this point he paused, then looked up and gazed seriously at Banster. “But we cannot simply conclude that ‘it was the Vanished that sent the Leviathan beasts into the Mortal Realm.’ We lack evidence, and there is not enough theoretical support.”

“But those four Leviathans could indeed have entered our Mortal Realm because of some later effect of the Viseran Thirteen Isles incident, Rune. This matter was risky from the very beginning.”

“…So you don’t want your Cathedral ark anymore?”

“I want it.”