Chapter 421: Aimier

"Life Goddess Aimier... is She an Evil God?"

Muen stared solemnly at the Pope, asking each word with deliberate care.

At this moment, within the already sealed Supreme Hall, the daylight had dimmed.

The atmosphere felt heavy.

Though his body had not yet dried, fresh cold sweat broke out once again. Even without wind, the chill pierced him to the bone.

In this world, the boundary between what was called righteous and evil was difficult to define.

But when it came to gods, that ambiguity did not apply.

Unlike the so-called righteous gods—those who rarely interfered with the mortal world, whose «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» names were barely known, who merely accepted their believers’ faith and occasionally granted blessings—the so-called Evil Gods were, by their very nature, synonymous with destruction, death, and chaos.

They could not pierce the world’s barrier to truly descend here, yet they still watched greedily from the shadows of existence, longing for their gluttonous feast of blood.

They frequently made what seemed to be fair trades with humans, but with every bargain, every whisper of temptation, their will seeped in and easily polluted countless minds, driving them toward distortion and madness.

Throughout the long river of history, whether it was the Withering King, the Silent Moon, or even the Love God—shame among Evil Gods—each had once caused catastrophes of horrifying scale.

Some scholars had even unearthed a prophecy from a thousand years ago—

that the world would end by the hand of an Evil God.

It could be said that, to many, Evil Gods were the very source of all calamity.

And precisely because of that, the Life Goddess Aimier—who now possessed innumerable believers across the continent, who had performed countless miracles, who could be said to have guided all humankind forward through the chaos of the ancient era—

how could She possibly be an Evil God?

If Muen’s statement were spread, the Church would not even need to act. The enraged believers alone would burn him on the stake a thousand, eight hundred times over for blaspheming the Goddess.

To ask such a question required tremendous courage.

He could have chosen to bury the thought quietly within his heart and search for the answer himself—but now he could not.

Because Liya had already become the Church’s Saintess.

"Heh. To ask such a heretical question before me, the Pope... I must admit, your lust and your courage are both rather admirable things."

Though the question was indeed blasphemous, the Pope’s expression remained perfectly calm.

"May I ask, why do you harbor such a question?" he asked with a half-smile.

"I mentioned earlier—it was because of what Freya said: ‘similar, yet opposite,’" Muen replied.

"Just because of that?"

"No. That was merely the trigger. What truly made me begin to doubt... was the series of events that occurred in Kanteville."

Muen lowered his gaze.

Beneath where he and the Pope sat conversing lay that nation which had drifted unchanged for a thousand years, now quietly hovering as though in deep slumber.

Its native inhabitants were gone.

The rivers of milk, the mutton and beef growing on trees—those creations the natives had depended on for generations—had been completely erased as well.

Yet those scenes still lingered vividly in his mind.

Not only those, but also the prisoners later refined into dead matter, the hounds born of corpses, and afterward, the flesh plains themselves. All these seemingly different forms of power could be summed up in one word—

Life.

Twisted life.

That was the power of the Mother of Abundance.

"If I’m not mistaken," Muen said, "the Mother of Abundance’s Authority is unrestricted, ruleless, unbounded—distorted, mutating, and grotesque proliferation.

Then the Life Goddess Aimier’s Authority should be the beginning, and the end, of life."

The Life Seeds blessed by the Goddess represented the beginning of life.

The rot She spread through Kanteville represented the end of life.

The powers of the Life Goddess and the Mother of Abundance were so alike because both were parts of the vast concept called Life—but the Mother of Abundance’s portion had been utterly warped and deformed.

And they were utterly opposite because they represented two extreme ends of life itself.

"This similarity and opposition... naturally reminds one of another set of words," Muen said.

He lifted his head again, meeting the Pope’s gaze, and spoke the term he had once learned from the Black Book:

"Same Throne, same origin—mutually generating and restraining, natural enemies to each other, eternally craving to devour one another.

Just like the Withering King... and the Silent Moon!"

"......"

Another brief silence.

Muen’s heart hung higher and higher.

If his speculation were true, then it would be the Church’s greatest secret.

What reaction would the Pope show when his most guarded secret was pierced? Muen could hardly imagine...

He might simply raise his hand and suppress him on the spot; considering old grudges and new, he might even do it brutally.

All he could do was hope that Professor Meladomir would be reliable enough to drag him back afterward...

...Yet, to his surprise, the Pope’s expression did not change in the slightest.

Muen felt no trace of anger from him. Rather, it was as though the man had just heard some drunken bard spinning nonsense—an amused smile flickered across his face.

"If I said... you were correct, what would you do?"

"I..."

What kind of cursed question was that again?

Muen eyed the Pope suspiciously.

"I’d take Liya and get out immediately."

"Oh? Why?"

"Because it’s dangerous."

Muen answered,

"I can’t oppose the Church right now, and spreading such news would only make me look insane. But at the very least, I have to take Liya away—keep the person I care about from being dragged into this vortex!"

"Dangerous?"

The Pope raised an eyebrow curiously.

"But aren’t you yourself using an Evil God’s power? Are others not allowed to, now?"

"That’s different."

Muen drew a deep breath.

Professor Meladomir had said that power itself was innocent—the danger lay in the one who wielded it.

But the reason he could use the Withering King’s power was because, with the Black Book’s aid, he had gained that Evil God’s “Favor.”

Still, no matter how he thought about it, there was no way an Evil God would be generous enough to grant its favor to so many followers. It wasn’t some benevolent bodhisattva fond of spreading its flesh around as charity—there had to be a scheme behind it.

An Evil God worshiped by countless people could, at any moment, spread its corruption through the faith of its devoted believers and engulf the world. The very thought made Muen shiver.

"Of course," he said seriously, "if you tell me the Church has already developed a way to block an Evil God’s mental pollution while It still lives—so you can keep shearing Its wool safely—I’d be glad to hear it."

Since Professor Meladomir was in league with this old fox before him, the Church couldn’t be all that wicked.

And even in the original novel, the Church had been a fairly righteous force... though it possessed every standard religious darkness imaginable, it truly had been humanity’s main bulwark against the Evil Gods.

So, thinking it over, that seemed the most reasonable possibility.

"Heh. A way to block an Evil God’s mental pollution while It still lives—what a beautiful idea. Beautiful enough that it’d make me wake up laughing in my sleep."

The Pope chuckled softly.

"...Unfortunately, such a method doesn’t exist. Otherwise, this world wouldn’t have fallen to such a perilous state."

"Then..."

"Those things you just said... are splendid guesses. That old thing really did tell you quite a bit," the Pope remarked.

Muen’s pupils shrank; his body tensed up instinctively.

"But."

The Pope continued,

"They’re wrong."

"Huh?"

"Wrong."

The Pope spoke devoutly:

"The Life Goddess Aimier is a kind, great, and merciful deity. She is no Evil God, and She could never bring any calamity upon this world."

"......"

Muen stood there dumbfounded for a long while before his mind caught up with the Pope’s sudden twist.

"Truly wrong?"

"Otherwise what? Should I turn into a heretic on the spot and grind your bones to ash?"

The Pope shot him a cold glance and sneered.

"Don’t tell me you actually thought I’d kill you—and that old thing could save you?"

"Uh..."

"If you don’t believe me, go ask that old thing of yours—she knows far more than I do," the Pope said blankly.

"Ha... haha... Your Holiness, you flatter me. How could I possibly not believe? Of course the great Goddess isn’t some evil deity. I was just asking, just asking—no bad intentions, really."

"Get out."

Having utterly lost patience with this thick-skinned golden-haired bastard who clearly inherited that woman’s shamelessness, the Pope finally waved his sleeve. A golden doorway flared open and swallowed Muen whole.

Muen once again felt as though he’d been tossed through a spin-cycle—no, a centrifuge.

The world whirled.

Inside the cathedral, Muen clutched the wall, dry-heaving for a long while before finally calming his stomach. When he looked up, he found himself staring straight into the merciful gaze of the Goddess’s statue.

"So I was really wrong?"

A chill ran through him. He quickly pressed his palms together and muttered toward the statue:

"Goddess Aimier above, I swear I didn’t mean to slander You. My fault, my fault. You wouldn’t mind such a small thing, right...?"

"No, that doesn’t sound sincere enough."

After mumbling for quite a while, Muen raised his head, thinking hard.

"I’m not a believer, after all—I’m terrible at praying and repenting to a Goddess."

"Ah, no helping it. In this situation, I’ll have to ask someone who’s good at it to teach me properly."

With a long, weary sigh, Muen put on a solemn, dignified expression and hurried off to seek instruction from the Saintess herself.

...

After Muen left, the Pope also stepped through another doorway.

Space shifted, and he arrived at the very bottom of the Supreme Hall—the most forbidden place within the entire Church.

The First Forbidden Zone.

Despite being the most tightly sealed area, its atmosphere was not cold or severe. Instead, flowers bloomed, birds sang; it was vibrant with life.

"How is everything?"

The Pope asked.

"Not very well."

A sigh answered him—from a tombstone buried among the blossoms.

"At this rate, it won’t last much longer."

"‘Not very well’ is still a little better than ‘very bad,’ at least," the Pope said, tongue twisting on the words as he stepped past the grave.

Ahead lay a vast, bottomless pit—lake-sized, its walls covered in vivid vegetation.

Judging by the density, it was clear all the plant life here had spread outward from that pit.

The Pope lowered his gaze into the darkness. After a moment, he drew from his robes a crystalline gem.

Inside the gem was not Holy Light—but pure divinity.

Divinity refined from the projection remains of the Mother of Abundance.

Without hesitation, he tossed the precious divinity into the pitch-black pit.

Creak, creak...

From within came the sound of grinding metal and chewing.

It was a hideous noise, yet the Pope showed no disgust.

"An Evil God...?"

Recalling Muen’s earlier words, he suddenly smiled.

"Impossible. How could such a thing happen... right, our—Goddess Aimier?"

The Pope bent down, praying devoutly to the Goddess he served and worshiped:

"Goddess Aimier... please, as always, mercifully guide humanity... forward..."

Creak, creak...

The chewing continued, then stopped.

Within the Pope’s solemn prayer, it faded into a faint, ethereal whimper:

"Uu... it hurts..."