Chapter 38

Carl told her that Mrs. Fred’s grave was at the edge of the forest, past the library tower.

It was a very beautiful cemetery, surrounded by clusters of violets. In the middle of the flowers stood a green stone tablet, engraved with Mrs. Fred’s name.

The stone tablet was very clean, as if a servant came by every day to clean it.

A bouquet of violets lay in front of the tablet, looking fresh. It seemed that someone came every day to place fresh flowers, and the old flowers were always cleared away by the servants. Her grave looked vibrant and full of life.

“I didn’t expect that the first time I’d formally meet her would be in this way.”

Talli gently crouched down, placing her hand on the engraved words on the stone tablet, feeling its coolness and uneven texture.

She placed her hand on the flourishing violets next to the stone tablet, channeling magic into them. The flowers slowly began to bloom, and a few small fairies flew out from within. The little fairies, like tiny points of light, hovered around her, flying to and fro.

Talli extended her hand, and the little fairy settled on the tip of her finger.

It was like a cluster of light.

The light among the flowers flickered and gleamed through the gaps in the tree shadows. In that moment, Talli’s heart felt unexpectedly light.

A few small fairies turned into beams of light, twisting and flying up into the sky, heading toward the sunlight.

Golden specks of light scattered across the grave.

Talli stood silently before the tablet for a long time. Finally, she turned and said:

“Let’s go back.”

The clouds in the sky parted, revealing a vast, clear blue sky.

—

On the way back, Deritz, who rarely spoke, asked her a question about her world.

“What’s your world really like?”

Talli thought carefully for a moment, then explained to him:

“In my world, there’s no magic, just technology.”

After describing a series of modern inventions, the young man seemed neither interested nor excited. He merely took it as a starting topic.

He then asked her, “Do you really have to go back?”

“…Of course.”

Talli lowered her gaze to her hand, which seemed to still carry the cold touch of the stone tablet: “…I will never make the same mistake she did.”

“…”

Talli took a few steps forward, and the shadow that had enveloped her, wrapping around her, gradually disappeared.

She turned around and saw that the young man had stayed in the same spot and didn’t walk up with her.

He was crossing his arms, his lashes lowered, and his red eyes were obscured by a shadow cast over them. His gaze, from her height, appeared dim and unclear. His facial features were sharp and well-defined, his thin lips gently pressed, suppressing the natural upward curve of his smile.

Talli walked over to him, reaching for his fingers. “What’s wrong? Didn’t we agree to go back together? I won’t leave you behind.”

“…I’m just worried,” he replied.

The young man made a sound of agreement and gave her a light smile, seemingly trying to reassure her. “You may not know, but if you want to use the vortex at the center of the world to return to your world, you’ll have to wait a very long time. The last time the vortex turned was only a few hundred years ago.”

“That’s true,” Talli said, lowering her head.

From Deritz’s perspective, he could only see the small swirl of her hair at the top of her head.

“If I just wait for the vortex to turn,” she continued, “maybe by then I’ll have turned to dust. No… perhaps I’ll wait for several lifetimes, constantly reincarnating, until I forget everything, forget my name and identity. By then, I will have no possibility of returning. Even though I have elf blood in me, that will only slightly prolong my life.”

Talli suddenly asked, “Dusk, how long do your beasts live?”

Deritz thought for a moment. “About three to four hundred years.”

“The lifespan of the elves is only a little over two hundred years,” Talli said. “You see, in the face of eternity, lifespan is such a fleeting thing. We’re not arrogant rulers, we cannot live as long as the world. Before the opportunity arises, we must fade away in accordance with the world’s laws.”

She tightly grasped the young man’s cold hand, suddenly looking up and smiling at him as she faced the nearly blinding sunlight. “So, Dusk, I found another way that can allow us to go back.”

“…A method so dangerous that it could almost be considered… self-destructive.”

Talli didn’t directly say what the method was.

On their way back, they encountered Ryan, who had come from the temple. He was wearing a platinum-trimmed robe. When he saw Talli, he was momentarily startled, quickly walked over to her, took a careful look, and then sighed in relief.

“Lord Fred sent out word that you were seriously injured, but seeing that you’re alright now, I’m truly relieved.”

Talli exchanged pleasantries with him, then asked, “Did you come here to find Theresa?”

Ryan nodded. “Yes. Since last night, she’s been running a high fever, and it hasn’t subsided. Lord Fred asked me to come and use light magic to heal and treat Miss Theresa.”

Just a fever was enough to make a temple priest intervene?

Talli was taken aback. Normally, priests only treated dying royalty or used magic for exorcisms.

Ryan looked at her and suddenly seemed to remember something. “By the way, Miss Talli.”

His words stopped abruptly as he looked at the unfamiliar young man behind her.

Talli quickly realized. “Oh, this is my knight.”

She turned to him and said, “Dusk, I need to speak with the priest privately.”

Deritz smiled slightly. “Mm, go ahead.”

The young girl followed the gray-haired, green-eyed priest as they walked a few dozen meters away, separated by a long flowered corridor. The wind casually blew past them, lifting their conversation and carrying it to Deritz’s ears.

He stood there with his arms crossed, waiting quietly. The flower vines hanging from the corridor were bathed in spots of sunlight, gently swaying in the breeze. Occasionally, birds passing by would stop and chirp.

He stood at one end of the flowered corridor, in the shadow where sunlight couldn’t reach, while the girl and the priest stood at the other end, bathed in the clear, brilliant sunlight filtering through the branches. Thirty meters, or maybe even less, just a few dozen steps—though they were so close, for a moment it felt as though they were very far apart.

“…Okay, thank you. I’ll come by this afternoon to see you personally.”

After the girl spoke, she waved to the priest and turned to run back toward him. The path beneath her feet seemed so easy and short, as though she could walk it effortlessly.

She stepped out of the sunlight and into the shadow, coming to a stop in front of him.

“I’m done. Let’s go, Dusk.”

“Mm.”

Deritz responded as he watched the girl turn and walk ahead of him. They were walking one in front of the other.

He didn’t ask anything, but the girl spoke up voluntarily. “I gave my brooch to Ryan last time. He said he’d take it back to see how it got broken. I’m going to the temple this afternoon to get it back from him. He said he’d explain what happened this afternoon.”

That was true.

It was the same as what Deritz had heard. She hadn’t lied to him.

“So, I’m going out this afternoon. You stay in my room,” she said, adding, “Change into my form so they don’t recognize you.”

“Mm,” Deritz responded. “I understand.”

—To change into your form.

The girl with black hair and purple eyes walked with unbothered ease toward the magnificent temple at the center of the imperial city. Like a ghostly breeze, she silently moved through the twisting corridors of the grand temple, arriving at a modest wooden door, where she paused.

The girl gently reached out and knocked on the door.

“Knock knock knock.”

The door creaked open.

The priest’s face appeared behind it.

He looked surprised when he saw “Talli.” “Miss Talli, you… how did you arrive ahead of the scheduled time?”

The girl didn’t say anything. Deritz extended a finger, casually pushing the door open, and entered the room like a shadow. He crossed his arms, gently tilted his head back, squinted his eyes, and wore a light smile as he looked around.

Ryan’s room wasn’t as opulent and luxurious as the temple. Instead, it was simple and modest. In addition to bookshelves lining the walls, there were portraits and small sculptures of an arrogant monarch. He also wore a hexagram necklace around his neck, looking every bit like a devout believer.

Deritz didn’t rely on the faith of followers for survival. In a sense, this was one of the reasons why he wasn’t fully recognized as a “god.”

Gods require the faith of their followers, and so when magical power dissipates with the world’s vortex, and the creatures of the world dramatically decrease, the gods fall one after another.

Just as Talli had said, in the world she spoke of, there were no gods, no devils, there were only humans. Without the interference of gods, the people of that world invented technology. They became self-sufficient and lived better lives.

— It is not that the world needs gods, but that gods need the world.

But Deritz didn’t need that.

His gaze roamed freely around Ryan’s room. The priest seemed slightly at a loss, but he did not stop Deritz from his actions.

It wasn’t until the girl’s gaze finally landed on him.

She smiled slightly, pulled out a chair from the sandalwood desk, turned it to face him, sat down, crossed her legs, and brought her fingertips together. “What you wanted to tell me before, the one related to the brooch, what was it?”

Ryan felt that there was something a bit off about the person in front of him, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what was wrong. He hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“The brooch you gave me last time, I’ve checked it. A mere beast wouldn’t be able to cause such a level of power… No, it should be said that it’s absolutely impossible. So, my guess at the time was that it might have been damaged by a force from the Abyss… or perhaps from a higher level. Afterward, I went through books and conducted further investigation into the lingering energy on the brooch…”

He took a deep breath before stating his conclusion. “I didn’t find any trace of energy from the Abyss on it.”

“It can only have been destroyed by an unknown, mysterious power from the center of the world.”

After the words fell, there was a long silence.

The girl’s purple eyes, which had lowered, glimmered faintly. Deritz nodded, agreeing.

“Not bad.”

Ryan said, “…So, you…”

He gently raised his head and violet eyes to glare at the priest.

“—So, forget about it.”

As the words left his mouth, time and space around them instantly froze.

The room itself seemed bound by chains that spread everywhere. The monarchs on the portraits and sculptures opened eerie, ghost-like red eyes. Invisible, enormous hands reached out from behind Ryan’s head, and his feet slowly left the ground. Something was being ripped from his mind.

He couldn’t… move.

Ryan’s eyes widened as he looked at the figure before him. His mind felt rusty, as though it took great effort just to turn it slightly. It felt as though his entire body was ensnared by chains, this powerful, unshakable force making him realize what had felt off earlier—during his conversation with Deritz, his posture had not been one of equal inquiry. It had been an interrogation.

It was a divine interrogation of a human.

The overwhelming, absolute power that made humans feel insignificant, like ants, was something only Deritz could possess.

—A monarch.

Suddenly, he felt his whole body trembling, his blood flowing backward.

The girl before him gradually transformed, becoming a tall figure shrouded in shadows. He couldn’t see her face, only the red eyes that reflected the faint dust-light filtering through the window, towering over him, just like her red ear pendants.

She reached out her hand to him.

It hovered in front of him.

Ryan’s pupils abruptly contracted, and a twisted, distorted voice squeezed out of his throat: “…God, deity…”

A deity, one that only existed in legends, born from the torrential rains and massacres of the wilderness, had descended before him.

His voice stopped abruptly, just as the young man moved.

Deritz gently clenched his right hand and slowly parted his lips:

“Shatter.”

The red crystal above Ryan’s head, with a “bang,” shattered at the command.

Fragments scattered, falling to the ground before evaporating and dissipating into the air, leaving no trace.

Deritz retracted his hand, and the chains vanished. Ryan fell to the ground from mid-air, unconscious.

He raised his hand and activated a magic circle, ready to step forward, but then paused. He picked up the ruby brooch from Ryan’s desk and gently squeezed it.

The brooch turned to dust, scattering in the wind.

—

When Talli returned from the temple in the afternoon, she looked troubled, her expression a mix of confusion and displeasure.

Deritz was sitting in her wicker chair, lightly rocking, his long legs awkwardly restrained beneath the chair: “What happened?”

“That guy Ryan is pretending to be dumb.”

Talli complained angrily, “I went to the temple to find him as promised, and he acted like he knew nothing, asking me what I wanted with him. Not only that, but the ruby brooch I had left with him was lost, and he even asked me, ‘What ruby brooch?’… If he’s not possessed, then he’s messing with me.”

Deritz leaned back slightly and closed his eyes: “Maybe he lost it and didn’t want you to blame him, so he pretended like that?”

Talli said, “If he lost it, just be honest about it… it was already a damaged item anyway, so losing it doesn’t matter much. I mainly just wanted to know how it got ruined. Besides…”

She added, “I hate lies the most.”

“However,”

she continued, unable to resist recalling the situation in more detail, “Ryan’s behavior at the time didn’t seem like he was pretending to be ignorant. And, based on his character, it doesn’t seem like something he would do. I think… maybe he really fell under some kind of magic or curse?”

…That’s quite a terrifying intuition.

Deritz didn’t comment, only lazily stretched his arm out to rest on the long table, yawned, and opened one eye to look at Talli.

“But you don’t really understand him.”

Talli recalled the cold, detached description of the priest in the novel and nodded slightly: “…Indeed.”

Her understanding of Ryan was limited strictly to the portrayal in the novel and the few conversations they’d had before.

She had no reason to expect such a person, whom she didn’t know well, to be honest with her.

As she was saying this, something seemed to come to her mind: “Oh, right.”

She pulled a red satin box from her pocket, walked over to Deritz, jumped up onto the table, sat down, facing the sunlight, and extended her right hand towards him.

A red satin ribbon hooked around her index finger, holding a beautifully crafted golden badge.

The badge featured crossed halberds, with a galloping horse leaping in the center and fierce flames burning at the bottom. It was decorated with gold and red satin ribbons and inlaid with exquisite multi-faceted gemstones, reflecting the dazzling sunlight.

“Before, Lord Fred had been urging me to find a personal knight. I kept postponing it until now. This afternoon, when I returned, I got his permission and went to the Knight Order Association to apply for this badge. They said your uniform will be delivered tomorrow afternoon.”

Talli said, “I’m not sure if it will fit you, though. I just guessed based on my impression. I should’ve called you over to try it on at the time.”

Deritz paused for a moment, then reached out, gently touching the badge with his fingertip.

It was warm from the sunlight.

“I can’t give it to you just yet.”

Talli curled her finger, retracting it, and swayed her legs as she placed the badge back into the satin box. “Although Lord Fred didn’t grant me the authority to conduct the knighthood ceremony, we still need some formality — tomorrow afternoon.”

With a “click,” the satin box closed.

“I… I’m not sure if you’ll accept this human tradition of rituals, but I still want to ask for your opinion,” Talli said, bending down, her hands resting on the edge of the table, leaning close to his face.

She looked seriously into his ruby-colored eyes, a little awkward but earnest as she asked, “Tomorrow afternoon, would you come to the back garden and become my knight?