Chapter 652

Chapter 652: Stepping Into the Mist

The flame on the alchemy platform began to burn silently. The liquid in the flask started bubbling. Rahm’s gaze came from the mist deep inside Rune’s thoughts, and Rune felt his consciousness pulled into a dark, deep place. After he passed through a long, unreal black “tunnel”, he saw a few faint lights at its end.

They were his old friends – Helena, Banster, and Frem.

He walked up to the figures, but before he could greet them, Helena was the first to break the silence: “You look in pretty good shape, Rune – looks like we don’t need to worry about the Truth Academy having to find a new Pope.”

“Thank you for your ‘concern’. It seems I am not going to be called to the Lord’s side anytime soon,” Rune glared at Helena, though there was clearly no real annoyance in his tone. Then he turned to the others and gave a small nod. “Sorry to keep you waiting – I needed some time to restore order on the ark, and to recover my own condition.”

Tall and broad-shouldered, with skin like rock, Frem studied Rune’s spirit projection carefully. His voice was low: “The incident is resolved?”

“It is resolved,” Rune nodded and said. “Order in Lightwind Harbor is being restored. The elves in other parts of the world should also start ‘waking up’ one after another. In the end, the worst did not happen.”

“…We want more information,” Banster spoke from the side. The tall, thin old man who followed the God of Death looked grave. “The influence of this incident spread far beyond the previous crises in Pland and Frostholm. It directly affected an entire race and pointed straight at history from before the age of the Deep Sea… What exactly happened in Lightwind Harbor?”

Rune fell silent for a moment. His gaze swept over the shadows before him and finally landed on Frem, leader of the Flamebearers. After thinking for a bit, he finally spoke in a low voice: “With Captain Duncan’s help, I witnessed the Great Annihilation – the final truth of our world, far beyond anything anyone imagined.”

Then he told his three old friends everything that had happened in the deepest part of the Nameless One’s dream. He told them about the great impact that destroyed two worlds, and the information about Senkin’s home world. He held nothing back.

Even for followers of the Four Gods, this information was far too shocking. After Rune finished speaking, the dark space held up by the psychic echo fell into a long silence.

“Worlds… colliding and merging?” No one knew how much time had passed before Helena finally broke the silence. In the darkness, she fixed her gaze on Rune’s eyes. “You mean the World Drift Theory has been proven?”

“We can only say it was something even more extreme than ‘world drift’… You did not see it with your own eyes, so it is hard for you to imagine how terrifying that collision was. It was the destruction and remolding of all things. Everything in the mortal world turned, in a very short time, into a dark, chaotic ‘primordial soup’. It looked… just like Subspace. And the worlds involved in that ‘collision’ were definitely not just two. There might have been dozens, even hundreds of worlds crashing together at the same time. Atlantis’s memory is only a corner of that Great Annihilation…”

Rune did his best to describe how he had felt when he saw that scene, and the ideas that followed. While he spoke, the towering Frem stayed silent and thoughtful. After a long time, this Senkin Pope, who looked like a small giant, suddenly spoke: “Are you sure… that giant who traveled with Miss Vanna was the Everburning Ember?”

“That is what all the clues point to,” Rune said with a serious face and nodded. “That Chronicle Pillar is now on the Vanished. I have seen it with my own eyes.”

He paused for a second, then added in an even more serious tone: “But I should warn you – if you want to take that thing away, it may not be easy…”

“I know,” Frem shook his head before Rune could finish. “I will think very carefully about this… Right now, the most important thing is not that Chronicle Pillar, but information about my Lord. Or, to be strict, information about each ‘Lord’ we all serve.”

He raised his head. Invisible pressure seemed to fill his gaze as he looked at each figure present.

Of course the others understood what that last sentence meant.

After all, in this world, the mortals closest to the Four Gods were them. They had long been able to sense what lay behind that hazy, awe-inspiring veil.

“…Our link with the Gods keeps getting weaker. The role of the Pilgrimage Ark is also fading,” Banster said slowly. “When the ark was first built, I could almost hear my Lord’s voice directly in the meditation room. But after only these few years, that voice has already turned into a vague, muddled whisper.”

“The Pilgrimage Ark is only an auxiliary anchor. It can only strengthen our link to the ‘Lord’. It cannot truly slow decay,” Rune slowly shook his head. “When we built these arks, we already knew this day would come sooner or later.”

Banster fell silent. The tall, thin old man closed his eyes a little, as if he was quietly feeling and performing a Listening Rite. After a long while, he finally said softly: “Sometimes, I can almost smell them slowly rotting…”

The dark space grew quiet again. After a long time, Rune finally broke the silence in a low voice: “…Yes. We all can.”

Banster turned his head and fixed his gaze on Helena in the darkness: “…The Deep Sea Church’s fleet has been operating at the border for a long time. Have you made any progress?”

“The vanguard is still circling in that endless fog,” Helena answered with a hint of frustration. “There are no routes or landmarks in the depths of the mist. The sea and sky both have a strange texture. Even if we use the Stargazing Room for navigation, the course error reaches an unacceptable level… We tried to build a few temporary lighthouses where the fog is thinner, but they only let us go a limited distance deeper into the mist… If we go farther, the fog swallows the lighthouses.”

“Our fleets met the same problem,” Frem added. “We entered the eternal Veil at the border through another gap. At first the fog was thin and the sea was still normal. But if we went just a little deeper, the mist suddenly grew thick. The lights we set up vanished in the fog as if something swallowed them out of thin air.”

“This exploration has gone on for some time,” Rune said solemnly. “We have pulled patrol fleets from all over the world and massed them in the border seas. This has surely drawn the attention of many city-states. If we keep this up, it does not matter whether we ever find the ‘link point’ between the Gods and the mortal world. We will definitely stir up suspicion and fear among the people.”

None of the figures spoke for a moment. The Popes fell into their own thoughts. After several minutes, Helena suddenly said: “In all history, only one person truly went deep into the ‘border’ and came back alive from that fog.”

“…Yes. That is also the last thing I wanted to tell you this time,” Rune nodded slightly. “‘He’ is also willing to build closer ties with the Four Gods Church. It is not just about meeting one of us. He wants a truly deep ‘cooperative’ relationship.”

It was clearly a sensitive and hesitant topic. The other three figures did not speak at once, so Rune turned his eyes first to Helena: “You should support this. That Saint named Vanna has been living on that ship for a long time. You must have gotten a lot of information from her. I believe, like me, you know quite a bit about that ship’s current state and that captain’s condition.”

“Vanna… All right, just from the reports she sent back, that captain does seem trustworthy,” Helena rubbed her forehead, for some reason sounding a bit awkward. “Sometimes I even start to wonder whose Saint she really is. Lately she has been… a bit too trusting of that ‘captain’.”

“But at least you can be sure she is still faithful to her belief – otherwise you would not still hear her voice through the Storm Goddess’s divine blessing,” Rune laughed. “I met your Saint this time. We did not talk for long, but I could feel that she is… an honest and real person. Her judgment of that captain is worth trusting.”

“I also agree to build closer contact with that captain, including meeting him directly and inviting him to join our current operations,” Frem said from the side. “I do not have a Saint who was tricked onto that ship, but I trust Rune’s judgment. And in any case, I need to see that Chronicle Pillar with my own eyes…”

Helena and Rune spoke in unison: “Can you please stop bringing up ‘the Saint being kidnapped onto the ship’ every single time?!”

Frem spread his hands. “Fine, I will stop.”

Then, as if by agreement, all three of them turned their eyes to the only figure present who had not yet spoken.

Tall and thin, draped in a black robe, Banster felt a bit awkward under their stares and could not help frowning: “Why are you all looking at me?”

“Only your opinion is left,” Rune said seriously. “We all agree to build closer ties with that captain and to tell him about our operations in the border seas. What about you?”

Banster pressed his lips together. It was clear that his mind was still racing. After a long time, he sighed helplessly: “I need some time to make my bishops accept this.”

Helena looked surprised. “So you accept it personally?”

“What else? ” Banster spread his hands. “Personal feelings have to step aside at times like this – as long as ‘he’ does not take something from me again this time.”