Chapter 71 : Chapter 71
Chapter 71. Seeker of the Blue Star
Everything went smoothly.
Although he was of Baron status, Blanc was able to receive permission for an audience with the Pope by borrowing the power of the shining recommendation letters and certificates he possessed.
A pilgrim chasing the holy path.
That title was a difficult one for a secular figure to receive, but Blanc had already prepared everything.
The certification of the Iron Bank, where all the wealth of the world gathers, and the qualification of a Demon-breaking Knight granted by the Torch Knights of the legend among legends, Aselheit, made him shine.
The recommendation letter written by Cardinal Julio was sufficient to heighten trust in Blanc.
Upon seeing those, the Pope readily answered that he would grant the title regarding the pilgrim, but even the Pope was troubled regarding the justification concerning the three families of Gartaria.
However, the fact that the Pope of the Goddess Order, who does not involve himself in secular affairs, was contemplating Blanc's request was in itself a good signal for Blanc.
‘Almost there.’
Blanc, who had come to the Goddess Order carrying a full load of money, power, and shining honor.
He was now just one step away from buying the justification for revenge from the Pope.
Just one step.
Before making a decision, the Pope first praised his faithfulness and said he was qualified to receive a blessing given directly by the Saintess.
“Thank you for allowing me to see the Saintess who represents the voices of the Goddesses, Your Holiness.”
The 16th Saintess, Monica Sanctus.
Although she was over sixty years of age, she was still the one who represented the voices of the Goddesses, and her reputation was widely known not only in Moirai and the three kingdoms of humans but even reaching other races.
The holy miracles she had performed were holy enough to be written in history books.
Putting aside his purpose for coming here, Blanc’s heart was beating at the thought of meeting the Saintess, the existence closest to the Goddesses.
Blanc, having entered the Room of Blessing, stepped up the stairs stretching straight toward the Saintess under the Pope’s guidance.
One step at a time, with his head bowed to show respect for the Saintess.
So Blanc did not notice that every time he took a step and passed, the candlesticks standing on both sides of the stairs were lighting up one by one.
The blue candlelights burning as if to illuminate the path behind him every time Blanc went up a step.
Blue stars were lighting up behind Blanc’s back.
“……!”
The Pope and the Holy Knights standing at the bottom of the stairs were astonished upon seeing that sight and looked at the Saintess.
The Saintess, whose eyes were full of wrinkles, was astonished just like the Pope at first, but she soon organized her expression and smiled toward Blanc who was climbing toward her.
She stood up and opened her two arms to welcome the fate with black hair coming up while lighting blue candlelights.
Blanc, who finally climbed all the stairs, tried to kneel toward her, but before that, the Saintess approached first and hugged him, speaking.
“The Goddesses have sent a beautiful beast to announce my end.”
“……?”
At the Saintess' incomprehensible words, Blanc expressed questioning with his eyes, but.
At that moment, what was visible in Blanc’s eyes was the Saintess' white hair undulating as if she were inside water.
And her two eyes shining bluely.
It was from there.
That the unexpected thing happened to Blanc.
“All Holy Knights, blockade the exits! No one must be allowed inside here!”
The Pope made a flustered expression and issued a strict order to the Holy Knights.
Following his order, the Holy Knights guarding the place where the Saintess was quickly locked the doors and lowered the windows that were letting light through.
The Room of Blessing darkened in an instant.
Blanc turned his head to examine the situation occurring suddenly, but.
At that moment, the Saintess wrapped her two hands around Blanc’s face and spoke.
The Saintess, wrapping Blanc’s face with power unbelievable for the strength of an old woman in her 60s.
“Blanc…… Cadmus…… My pitiful thing who has returned by twisting time…….”
“……!”
“Look into my eyes before our vessel breaks. Hurry and look at us.”
‘Oh my god…….’
Only now did Blanc realize that he was standing at the moment of an oracle.
Blanc looked into her eyes following the Saintess' words.
Inside her eyes, there was a twinkling night sky.
The universe was contained within.
***
It was a pitch-black night sky.
“This is…….”
Blanc was lying inside the night sky.
The place where he was lying was the sky of the night, and the place he was looking at and the place surrounding him were all.
The universe.
Blanc tried not to be anxious about the current situation that transcended his cognition.
Blanc looked around and grasped the situation.
There was something faintly shining in front of him.
3 women.
Women gathering their two hands and praying while emitting faint blue light.
Their long hair undulating as if they were inside water.
Blanc approached them slowly and carefully.
“This is…….”
There were things visible as he approached.
Above the two gathered hands of the praying women, spheres emitting blue light were floating.
And those were illuminating the universe just like a lighthouse lighting up the night sky.
Blanc raised his head high following the blue light.
And then he saw the dark thing that the spheres created by them were driving away.
“……!”
Far away from a corner of the universe, there was darkness approaching gradually as if blood were spreading.
A cosmic existence approaching while dyeing the dark night sky even darker and swallowing the shining stars one by one.
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
Blanc knelt without realizing it.
Then he wrapped his hands around his two eyes and started tearing at them.
“……!”
It was the Void.
Blanc had cut down numerous people infected by the Void until now and had even burned a Void Tree spreading the Void with his own hands.
He was definitely the one who could look at the Void more calmly than anyone else in this world.
However, that thing approaching while swallowing stars was the Void itself.
The essence and source of the Void.
It was an overwhelming presence that a Void Tree, which was merely a fragment of it, dared not even imitate.
A gigantic and transcendental existence that a mere creation would crumble just from the inability to handle even its presence.
“My thing who returned by twisting time and fate!”
He had merely glimpsed only one aspect of the Void coming from beyond, but just with that, Blanc’s soul was already collapsing.
That was the limit of a mortal.
No matter how strong Blanc’s soul was, that was something like an unavoidable law.
There was a woman who held Blanc's hand.
“Look at me!”
One of the 3 women who were praying forcibly pulled Blanc’s hands away and opened his eyes to make them meet her own eyes.
“Ugh…… Uaaah.”
Blanc was shedding tears of blood and couldn't come to his senses, but amidst his collapsing mind, he tried to look at her shining blue eyes.
“There is no time. You are the only one who has seen that. You are the only one who can understand us.”
The Goddess hurriedly placed a bead emitting blue light into Blanc’s right hand.
“We…… the world…… from that…… stop…… so we can move…….”
She woke Blanc up with a scattering, urgent voice.
Blanc held onto her voice amidst his roughly collapsing mind and pulled his imagery world up above the surface of his consciousness.
With only his strong mental power.
“Speak…… Speak, please.”
Blanc, having come to his senses, hurriedly knelt in the night sky and worshipped her who was holding his hand while shedding tears of blood.
“Our voice…… new vessel…….”
It was a voice that was gradually cutting off, but Blanc could read what was contained in her urgent hand gestures and gaze.
Lastly, the Goddess gathered Blanc’s two hands and made him hold the bead tightly.
“……!”
Blanc did not hear the Goddess' end, but he perfectly understood what she was trying to say.
“I…… shall do…… shall do so.”
Blanc answered while bowing his head to the mothers of the world.
A single ray of a smile was drawn on the fading face of the Goddess.
***
When Blanc opened his eyes, the first thing seen was the Holy Knights surrounding him while not knowing what to do.
Blanc raised his head and looked beyond where the knights were blocking.
There was the Pope tearing up while embracing the Saintess.
“Move.”
Blanc staggered up and waved his hand toward the Holy Knights.
At Blanc’s gesture, the Holy Knights stepped back without realizing it and made room.
The Pope was just watching the last breath of the cooling Saintess without saying a word.
“Knights who follow the will of the Goddess. Do not look at me. Turn around and pay respect to the noble Saintess' final appearance.”
Blanc, even though staggering, knelt on one knee and paid respect to the cold Saintess.
“She fulfilled her duty to the very end of the end.”
Blanc was a person who had received the Goddesses by riding the passage created by burning the Saintess' last life.
The remnants of the Goddesses still remaining in him were evoking a sanctity that made the Holy Knights unable to refuse.
The Holy Knights looked at each other with eyes that didn't know what to do while watching Blanc paying respect solemnly.
“Blanc Cadmus…….”
The Pope spoke to Blanc while weeping sorrowfully holding the Saintess.
“What did the Goddesses say?”
The Pope was truly grieving watching the end of his old colleague who had led the Order with him for a long time.
Even if the Holy Knights didn't know, the Pope could feel it.
The divinity of the Goddess conveyed like a thin thread.
At the Pope’s tearful question, Blanc straightened his back and approached toward him.
“Your Holiness, I am not a pilgrim chasing the holy path.”
Blanc opened his hand and showed the blue bead conveyed to him to the Pope.
“Please bestow a new title upon me.”
The Pope closed his eyes while looking at the divinity felt from the blue bead in Blanc’s hand.
“Oh Goddesses…….”
Seeing the blue bead, the Pope could know what he had to do now.
He carefully laid down his old colleague who had already left the world and shouted toward the sky.
“A new era has approached.”
At the solemn voice the Pope spat out, all Holy Knights bowed their heads.
“The era has created a new flow fitting the era, and there is one who has mounted that flow before me now!”
The Pope wept and looked at Blanc.
“By the authority of the Pope, the staff of the Goddesses, from now on I name Baron Blanc Cadmus the Seeker of the Blue Star!”
“……!”
The Holy Knights were astonished at the Pope’s remark and started kneeling quickly.
Seeker of the Blue Star.
The holy guide who finds the Saintess.
Instantly, the metallic sounds created by the Holy Knights’ armor started to fill the Room of Blessing.
The Pope lifted the old staff he had not put down for a moment since becoming Pope and pointed at Blanc.
“Blanc Cadmus shall find the seventeenth Saintess and connect the Goddesses and humans again!”
Blanc bowed his head and answered him.
“I will do so.”
In the Room of Blessing where everything had darkened.
Only the blue bead newly created by the Goddesses was revealing its color and driving away the darkness.
***
At that time when Blanc received the title of Seeker of the Blue Star.
Inside a forest in the Straus Territory of the Kingdom of Anton.
In the very center of it, there was a mansion collapsing unable to overcome the flow of time.
This mansion was very old at a glance, but its discovery was a recent event.
The person who first discovered this place was a hunter living near the forest, and he was a person who had continued his livelihood hunting animals in this forest his entire life.
It was impossible that a hunter who had roamed the forest his entire life hadn't discovered such an old mansion until now, but such a strange thing had actually occurred.
The hunter to the village chief, and the village chief to the Lord.
And the Lord, judging this matter to be very bizarre, sent a letter to the Torch Knights saying it seemed to be a mansion related to Evil (Ma).
Thus, the Gray Knights had arrived here now.
Tarania was carefully examining the inside of the mansion with her right eye lit up bluely.
Even without holding a torch, sunlight was coming in through holes made throughout the mansion, lighting up the inside.
Birds and animals wandering everywhere were proving that this place had nothing to do with Evil, but the Gray Knights were looking around the mansion without relaxing their tension.
“Team Leader.”
Tarania discovered something reflecting in her blue eye and called the Team Leader.
An empty space that looked like a lobby in the center of the mansion.
There was a person sitting there.
“It’s armor.”
Specifically, an armor rusted from age was sitting on a gigantic chair.
The old armor had its sword stuck in the ground amidst the sunlight leaking in from everywhere and was silently bowing its head.
“It seems likely there is a corpse inside that armor.”
The Gray Knights, who didn't particularly feel the energy of Evil from the mansion they were investigating and the old armor sitting on the chair, were relaxing their tension without realizing it.
However, at that moment.
“Team Leader!”
At Tarania’s warning, the Gray Knights quickly took their stances.
The old armor was rusted and covered in moss to the point it was hard to gauge its former color, but.
“It’s moving…….”
It was moving.
The old armor stood up from its seat with a bizarre creaking sound and soon pulled out the sword stuck in front of it.
“Prepare for combat!”
At the Team Leader’s instruction, the Gray Knights each took their positions and secured distance to attack at any time.
“Is it a Living Armor?”
“It could be a Death Knight.”
“But the energy of Evil is not felt.”
Tarania was a knight with exceptional skill in detecting the energy of Evil even among Demon-breaking Knights.
That such Tarania couldn't find the energy of Evil meant it was a high-level Evil capable of cleverly hiding its presence.
-Who are you who have woken me?
Or it meant it wasn't Evil.
“Reveal your identity first. Rusted armor.”
An existence whose identity couldn't be gauged at all.
The middle-aged knight serving as Team Leader revealed his teeth to it and didn't hide his sharp spirit.
The old armor, clearly not a living thing, tilted its head for a moment, then lifted and looked at the necklace hanging on its neck part.
In the center of that necklace, a cracked red jewel was embedded.
Having checked the necklace, the old armor turned its body and looked behind the chair it had been sitting on.
At the old armor’s movement, the Gray Knights flinched and reacted.
However, the old armor nonchalantly went behind the chair and looked down at that spot.
There was only a skinny tree branch standing there.
-The flower did not bloom…… red color…… Phoenix…… Window 1…….
The sound of the old armor muttering rang through the mansion.
At the bizarre resonance, some of the Gray Knights gulped without realizing it.
The old armor, which had stopped for a moment, soon raised its head high and spoke.
-Fate turns and turns to wake me like this.
The old armor turned its body, looked at the Gray Knights, and asked.
-Did you ask who I am?
Inside the half-broken helmet, two white Ghost Fires burned up.
-I am one who has lost honor.
“There is no reaction of a living thing inside the armor.”
At Tarania’s report, the Team Leader sent a signal with his eyes to the knights and prepared an attack.
-Since I have answered your question, you answer my question too.
“Ask.”
At the Team Leader’s answer, the old armor asked ringing a bizarre voice.
-Do you know the one who uses the White Thunderbolt?
At the old armor’s question, for an instant, Tarania ended up thinking of the black-haired man stuck deep inside her head.
And the old armor accurately captured the moment Tarania’s blue eye shook.
The two white Ghost Fires hidden inside the helmet narrowed.
-You know him.
“Now!”
Simultaneously as the armor’s words ended, the Gray Knights who finished preparation rushed in from all sides.
-Finally, the time to regain honor has come!
A gigantic roar rang out over the collapsing mansion.
Along with that sound, birds in the forest flew high into the sky.