漫画大王

Chapter 189

However, because of the nature of the item that we’d found, we couldn\'t openly brag about our achievement. Hence, while this was a monumental event worthy of being recorded in history, it had to remain buried, unknown to anyone.

Though I hadn’t been able to return to the dormitory the night before, it didn\'t particularly pose a problem. On Fridays, the classes were Mana Attunement Training II, Comprehensive Martial Arts II, and Demonic Ecology, which I attended with Ellen, Riana, and Harriet.

The class on demonic races proceeded with a simple overview. In reality, most people never encountered the demonic races. Moreover, with the end of the Great War, it was information that wasn\'t necessarily needed unless someone intentionally sought out dangerous places.

Ellen listened diligently to the lecture, but honestly, I couldn\'t concentrate at all. Learning the biology of goblins or orcs was all well and good, but what mattered to me more was figuring out what to do before the Holy Sword Tiamata was sealed.

After all the Friday classes were over, Ellen, Harriet, Riana, and I returned to the dormitory together.

"It\'s surprisingly interesting. I never knew goblins built homes and lived in them. I thought they lived in caves or places like that," Riana said, finding enjoyment in acquiring what she considered unnecessary knowledge.

"Th-That aside... I was more shocked by the fact that an orc settlement could have over a thousand members...” Harriet\'s face turned pale, possibly thinking about the vicious orcs she had encountered on the deserted island and imagining a village teeming with a thousand of them.

Ellen, on the other hand, seemed lost in thought, as if she were silently reviewing the lecture, although it was also possible that she was just wondering about the dinner menu.

"How about we just eat out tonight?" Harriet suggested, taking advantage of the fact that we had the entire weekend free now that classes had ended.

Ellen and Riana nodded in agreement.

"I have somewhere to go," I replied.

I had something I needed to check out, so I couldn\'t join them for dinner. Harriet gave me a mischievous look.

"Oh? I wasn\'t even planning on inviting you in the first place."

"Yeah, okay, whatever. See you."

"Oh... huh? Yeah, okay."

Harriet seemed a bit taken aback by the fact that I was leaving without making my usual snarky comeback.

***

I went to the Royal Class dormitory library. Unlike the dorm rooms that were spread out on the ground floor, the library was located straight ahead in one of the annex buildings, which also included banquet halls and other facilities.

At a glance, the library\'s collection seemed extensive, though I couldn\'t determine exactly how many books it held.

Harriet or Adelia probably borrowed a lot of books from here for their magical studies, but this was my first time visiting.

Tall bookshelves lined the walls, each equipped with ladders to reach the higher shelves. The place almost looked like a building made out of books. It seemed excessive to have such a gigantic library for only about a hundred and twenty students.

The more I experienced the perks of the Royal Class, the more I felt they might be a bit too extravagant.

I saw a few students reading in the study area, but there were less than three of them, and none of the faces were familiar.

As I wandered around aimlessly, someone who appeared to be the librarian approached me. "What book are you looking for?"

"I\'m looking for books about the Holy Relics of the Five Great Gods."

"Ah, I see. Wait here a moment."

Given the vastness of the collection, it seemed that students did not go around locating books themselves, but had the librarian retrieve them instead. The librarian disappeared for a while and soon returned with about five books, setting them down in front of me.

"I\'ll take care of putting them back, so just leave them here when you\'re done. If you want to borrow them, fill out a loan card. The loan period is one week."

"Yes, thank you."

I didn\'t intend to borrow them, so I sat down at a table in the reading room and opened the books. The books weren\'t particularly thick.

I opened the book titled "The History of the Five Holy Relics".

[The god of war, Alse - Arsbirnger]

[The god of the sun, Shalam - Lapelt]

[The god of the moon, Mensis - Lament]

[The god of courage, Riter - Alixion]

[The god of purity, Ouen - Tiamata]

The table of contents listed the names of the five relics. Since I wasn\'t interested in the other relics, I immediately turned to the section about Tiamata.

[The Sword of Purity, Holy Sword Tiamata]

The god of purity, Ouen, is a deity who fervently rejects all unclean beings and desires their purification and eradication. Consequently, the Holy Sword Tiamata, imbued with the power of the goddess, is known to possess extraordinarily powerful abilities when it comes to eradicating unclean beings, a power unmatched by the other four relics.

Whenever Tiamata has appeared, it has been in times when the land has been plagued by scourges of undead, vampires, and other beings opposing the will of purity. In such times, Tiamata has always been wielded by a champion enacting Ouen’s will, purifying the world.

No unclean being can withstand the power of Tiamata, and it has the strongest exorcizing power among the Holy Relics.

The first appearance of the Holy Sword Tiamata was...

.

.

.

.

The subsequent pages enumerated the various champions who had wielded the Holy Sword Tiamata throughout history. It detailed what they accomplished with Tiamata and which evil beings they had vanquished. While not immediately pertinent to my needs, the descriptions provided insight into the capabilities of the Holy Sword Tiamata.

When confronting the undead, it was the ultimate weapon. I wasn\'t certain I needed such a weapon specifically, but it was undeniably impressive. Having such a powerful weapon couldn\'t hurt.

I read on further and reached the last section.

Ouen’s Final Champion was someone named Laigorn. Laigorn’s numerous exploits, after obtaining the Holy Sword Tiamata, were extensively documented. He was renowned not just for hunting powerful undead. His primary targets were the heretics of the demonic faith. He had crushed numerous demonic cults that were corrupting the empire.

After the book listed out numerous feats, the final record appeared. It was a document from about the 30th year on the Imperial Calendar. It was now the 332nd year on the Imperial Calendar, which meant that the events occurred 300 years ago.

Around the 30th year on the Imperial Calendar, an unidentified group managed to steal Tiamata, killing Ouen\'s champion, Laigorn, in the process. The group was suspected to have fled to the Dark Land with Tiamata. A large number of Ouen’s holy knights were dispatched to the Dark Land in pursuit, but none ever returned.

Subsequently, Ouen’s priests and holy knights continued to scour the Dark Land in an effort to recover Tiamata, but their efforts were in vain. The number of those sacrificed to the monsters of the Dark Land increased steadily. Ultimately, the Church of Ouen failed to retrieve Tiamata, and so we reach the present day.

The identity of the group that killed Laigorn and their exact reasons for stealing Tiamata remain unknown. However, it is widely believed that, since Laigorn was actively exterminating heretics who followed the demonic faith—and posed the greatest threat to their expansion—the heretics had plotted and carried out his murder and then hid Tiamata to prevent another champion of Ouen from emerging.

Three hundred years ago, the demonic faith had run rampant across the land. Laigorn, the champion of Ouen, had undertaken numerous missions to eradicate these heretics rather than fight the undead.

In the end, however, he was murdered by the heretics, who then fled to the Dark Land. Although there was no concrete evidence to prove it, the circumstances strongly validated this theory.

The Holy Sword Tiamata had disappeared into the Dark Land and, three centuries later, had re-emerged as an accursed, unidentified sword found in the same land.

The heretical followers of the demonic faith who had worshiped Kier, the god of corruption, would have naturally harbored the greatest hatred for Ouen and Ouen\'s devotees—their opposing deity and their followers. Their hatred for Ouen\'s champion, Laigorn, would have been intense beyond words.

This created a bizarre scenario in which the worshippers of what was basically the same divine being despised each other the most.

In any case, the followers of Kier had killed Laigorn and fled to the Dark Land with the Holy Sword Tiamata. True to their service to the god of corruption, they had likely attempted to corrupt Tiamata, resulting in that cursed sword.

Why this sword had eventually ended up in a tomb somewhere within the Dark Land remained unknown.

Several theories were possible. It could be that Ouen’s holy knights had eventually found the heretics who had stolen Tiamata and after a fierce battle, succeeded in exterminating the heretics. Unable to recognize the now-corrupted Tiamata, they might have deemed it an evil artifact and sealed it in a tomb alongside with the heretics\' belongings.

Alternatively, it was also possible that the heretics themselves couldn\'t handle the corrupted sword they had created and decided to seal it away themselves. Given that this sword could dominate its wielder\'s mind, either scenario was plausible: the holy knights of Ouen might have sealed it away, or the heretics might have done so themselves.

Of course, the truth of the past was irrelevant to me.

“...”

What mattered was that the Holy Sword Tiamata, an object of purity, was now manifesting the power of Kier, the god of corruption. This suggested that the concept of "divinity" might inherently lack any intrinsic character of good or evil.

If one followed the doctrine of Ouen, the god of purity, and believed in Ouen, they would wield divine power related to purity. Conversely, by following the doctrine of Kier and channeling divine power from the same entity, they\'d wield divine power related to corruption.

Faith in the same entity was crucial, yet the nature of that faith yielded completely different powers. It wasn\'t that demon gods didn\'t exist; rather, it seemed that the supreme deity itself might be neither good nor evil, granting power based on the believer’s faith.

Ouen or Kier, it didn’t matter. The deity simply acted as a conduit for divine power. If someone believed in the deity as a god of purity, they’d borrow the power of purity. If they believed in the deity as a god of corruption, they’d borrow the power of corruption. Thus, the deity could be both a demon god and a god of purity—it was the believers, not the deity, who determined how the divine power manifested itself.

The corruption of Tiamata demonstrated the existence of demonic power within the concept of divinity.

In conclusion, Tiamata had been corrupted. The heretics had tainted the item of their most hated deity, but both deities were essentially the same being. The object of one belief lent power to those who held the opposing belief, which reversed the direction of that power.

Thus, the Holy Sword Tiamata became a cursed blade. Did the heretics, after corrupting Tiamata, realize that Kier and Ouen were actually the same entity? Just as followers of the holy deity couldn\'t accept such a concept, the heretics likely couldn\'t admit it either.

If corruption was possible, then purification should be possible too, since the heretics had first corrupted Tiamata.

Therefore, if priests who believed in Ouen purified the cursed sword, it should revert to Tiamata. However, the Temple had taken various measures so far. Mages and priests must have tried to identify, understand, or remove the curse on the sword through various means.

So why hadn\'t the sword returned to its original state?

Perhaps the methods used by the priests were insufficient, since the heretics had intentionally sought to corrupt the Holy Sword Tiamata, while the priests of Ouen believed it was a curse and were merely trying to identify it and cleanse it.

That was the wrong approach. This sword wasn\'t cursed in the traditional sense—its power had been twisted. There wasn\'t any curse on it at all from the start.

Instead of trying to restore it, they were in essence pressing the delete button repeatedly. If they understood that the cursed sword was indeed the Holy Sword, the priests could perform the necessary rites to restore Tiamata.

Before that, though, could the priests of the Ouen church accept that the Holy Sword Tiamata had been corrupted?

Could they cope with the fact that what had emanated from this sword wasn\'t the power of the demonic god Kier, but rather the twisted power of Ouen? They would have to accept the possibility that a Holy Relic could be corrupted—that a relic of Ouen, god of purity, had been corrupted and taken on its opposite nature.

The priests would never acknowledge that this relic was Tiamata. Even suggesting that the cursed sword was Tiamata could lead to me being handed over to the inquisitors.

Knowing the truth that the cursed sword was Tiamata had allowed me to gather clues here and there. However, the priests wouldn’t believe me, and even if they did, accepting that a Holy Relic could be transformed into a demonic one would shake their beliefs to the core.

Even if I had a solution, the need to convince the priests first remained a tremendous challenge. Convincing them would require their thinking to undergo a transformative shift—on the scale of a religious reformation.

Moreover, did I even have any authority to challenge the current consensus that the item was a Demon God Relic? This situation was far beyond a simple student’s capability to handle. Even though I had retrieved the item, my words would now hold no weight.

The discovery of the first Demon God Relic would draw the attention of the imperial family and the followers of the Five Great Gods.

And then I\'d come around and say, "I know what this really is: it\'s not a Demon God Relic but the Holy Sword Tiamata. By the way, I’m seventeen years old.”

It would be surprising if I didn\'t lose my head for that statement. This was a monumental event that would go down in history. No adults would believe my claim, no matter if I was the original discoverer of the artifact or not.

‘Damn it. What’s the point of figuring out a solution if Tiamata is already beyond my reach? Should I try to leverage the power of Charlotte and Vertus? Then again, being overly obsessed over this supposed Demon God Relic also wouldn\'t look good.’

One thing was clear: without the aid of external forces, I did not hold enough power to personally exert any influence over the fate of Tiamata.

Ultimately, I left the library and trudged back to my private room.

"...?"

When I entered, I saw something unusual.

"What the...?" I mumbled to myself, unable to comprehend what lay in front of me.

‘Why is this here?’

“...”

A longsword without a crossguard, its blade slightly darkened.

"What the hell is this?"

The cursed sword was lying on my bed.

‘How did an object that absolutely shouldn\'t be near me end up in my room?’

I wasn’t sure what this implied, but one conclusion was clear.

"... I\'m screwed, aren’t I?"

I was screwed.

I was utterly and completely screwed.

For some unknown reason, it now seemed as if I had stolen the artifact that had been identified as a Demon God Relic. It was the perfect setup for a misunderstanding revolving entirely around me.