Chapter 66, The Order (11)
Eriel woke up.
I looked at the clock.
Night had arrived at exactly that moment.
That also meant that if Delta died from this point onward, he would no longer be able to revive.
Delta's face turned pale.
His attitude became even more polite and servile, and he lowered his head a little further.
He really wanted to live.
Eriel, who had just woken up, widened her eyes when she saw Delta lying on the floor.
“...Cardinal Delta? Why are you here... Ah.”
“Nice to see you, Eriel.”
I greeted Eriel, who showed no trace of grogginess despite having just woken up.
The first thing she looked at was the sword in my hand.
Then she saw the thick blood coating the blade.
So much blood from cutting down the followers had soaked into it that the blade looked almost black rather than red.
Sadness spread across her face.
“So in the end... you did it.”
“Yes.”
I didn't bother telling her that it still wasn't over.
There were still around three hundred followers remaining inside the Inner World.
Our journey would only truly end once we killed Delta standing before us and eliminated those remaining followers as well.
If even one of them survived and escaped, information about us would spread to every branch of the Order.
The moment that happened, we would have to face the entire strength of the Order.
To prevent that risk and possibility, now that we had already started this, we had to kill them all.
I didn't explain any of that to Eriel.
I simply gave her a bitter smile.
Seeing my expression, a similarly bitter smile mixed with sadness appeared on her face.
“...What are you planning to do after this?”
“We'll probably go home. After that... we've finished something exhausting, so I think I'll rest properly first and decide what to do later.”
“I see.”
“What about you, Eriel?”
“I plan to at least hold funerals for the followers who died. Even for an angel, bringing the dead back to life is difficult.”
In other words, if it weren't difficult, she would have revived them.
I should have felt irritated by how frustrating she was.
But instead of irritation or anger, only pity surged through my chest.
Without realizing it, I asked.
“Do you know what they did to you? What Delta did to you, and what else he was planning to do?”
“Yes. I know everything.”
“Then...”
“Even so... I think of them like my sons and daughters. Parents shouldn't abandon their children.”
“...”
“If even their parents abandon them, then who will embrace them and take responsibility for them?”
At that moment, I realized once again.
Agape was definitely a 900-series Mystery.
Of all the Mysteries I had encountered, it was the most threatening and infuriating one.
Negative emotions toward Delta naturally swelled inside me.
Isn't there some way to remove only Agape from Eriel?
As I thought about it, my eyes suddenly moved toward the dagger lying on the floor.
It had originally been a sleek black dagger, but because of our beliefs, it had now transformed into a pathetic-looking tree branch.
[Fragment of Faith].
Could this be the answer?
Of course, there was an enormous difference in rank between Fragment of Faith, a 200-series Mystery, and Agape, a 900-series Mystery.
There was a much higher chance that it wouldn't work.
Still, there was no harm in trying once.
I walked past my companions and picked up the dagger from the floor.
Then I slowly closed my eyes and believed.
I believed this dagger was a Mystery of far higher rank than Agape, the Dragon, or even the Flame of Human Sacrifice.
I believed and wished that it was an overwhelmingly high-ranking Mystery comparable to the Regression, Possession, Reincarnation Gallery itself.
“...Hup.”
It wasn't easy.
Fragment of Faith was a Mystery whose power increased in proportion to the intensity of the observer's belief.
If the user could freely change their own beliefs like swapping out a filter, Delta wouldn't have needed to invent fake penalties and convince us that they were real.
Genuinely believing a false truth you created yourself was difficult.
But I had already done something similar once.
Confirmation Bias.
Just like when I had created her as a young girl, I brainwashed myself.
I poured my entire mind into it until even breathing became difficult.
This was a ridiculously powerful Mystery capable of devouring even 900-series Mysteries.
This was a mysterious sword capable of cutting anything I wished.
This was a loyal sword that moved according to my will.
I believed.
And believed again.
Then, at some point, belief became reality and manifested before my eyes.
When I opened my eyes, the tree branch had become a magnificent and beautiful sword in my hand.
A sword bound to me, capable of cutting anything I desired.
A sword capable of cutting even things without physical form.
Delta, the only person here who understood what I had just done, widened his eyes.
“What the hell...”
Ignoring Delta as he cursed in disbelief, I approached Eriel.
I gripped the sword and thrust it into her chest as she watched me with a sorrowful expression.
The handle faced me.
The blade faced her.
The sword stood vertically as it sank directly into her heart.
Once the entire blade had disappeared into her flesh, I gripped the handle and dragged the sword downward.
“...?”
Eriel, whose eyes had widened at my sudden action, blinked blankly.
Only then did she seem to realize she had been stabbed, and resignation appeared on her face.
She waited for the pain that should have come.
Then, without thinking, she reached toward her chest and touched it.
The body that should have been pouring blood and screaming in pain was completely unharmed.
Even the clothes covering her skin remained perfectly intact, without so much as a tear.
It was bizarre.
Everyone fell silent.
The strange silence was broken by the sound of droplets falling.
Drip. Drip.
“...Ah.”
A painfully fragile sound escaped her.
Her voice carried a depth of emotion that could never be expressed through language.
It sounded like the lingering emotion of someone who had finally escaped their restraints and was feeling their own genuine emotions again after an incredibly long time.
I left so Eriel could have some time alone.
Delta came with me.
I grabbed him by the collar, lifted him by force, and dragged him outside.
There was definitely some intention to humiliate him mixed into my actions.
But Delta stared blankly at me as though he didn't care about being dragged by the collar, or perhaps couldn't even think about it.
“...Impossible. That's impossible... How did you...? That should violate the natural order... Insane. This is insane...”
“Is it really that surprising?”
“You... You don't understand what you just did...!”
So when he panicked, he dropped the polite speech and started talking casually.
That felt familiar.
Kim Hyunwoo from the Company had done the same.
So had Epsilon.
The three of them really had a lot in common.
Especially the part where all of them became my enemies and ended up dying by my hand.
I dragged Delta to an isolated area and threw him onto the ground.
A short scream of pain escaped his mouth.
His body was bound so tightly that he couldn't resist at all.
All he could do was wait for the end that would soon arrive.
The will visible in his eyes was fading in real time.
I wanted to kill him right now, but I couldn't.
This was Delta's Inner World.
If Delta died, the Inner World would collapse as well.
I could only kill him after everything else had been completely settled.
“Hwa-ryeon. Watch him for a while.”
I left with Arlin to clean up the remaining enemies.
Delta's voice, filled with emptiness and despair, drifted toward us from behind.
“...Even so, you can't do anything about your sins. Now that you've accumulated that much sin, opposing the Order will be difficult...”
We eliminated all the remaining enemies.
The three hundred followers who, for some reason, had remained inside the Inner World instead of escaping were completely wiped out.
I touched the bag containing hundreds of fragments and felt both positive and negative emotions.
The positive feelings came from the enormous gains we had obtained and the increase in our combat strength.
The negative feeling came from Fragment of Faith, which I had only examined properly afterward.
“It's cracked.”
“Is it completely broken?”
“...Not quite. We can still use it. But if I do something like that one more time, it'll definitely break.”
“What do you mean by something like that?”
I carefully stored Fragment of Faith, which now had a long crack running across its blade, and answered.
“Cutting a Mystery.”
Hwa-ryeon asked curiously.
“Will it break even if you cut a Mystery that isn't in the 900-series?”
“Yes. The Agape I cut was ultimately only one person's portion. There are probably countless people infected by Agape, and what I cut was only the Agape infecting Eriel alone.”
If Agape had been a single 900-series Mystery existing as one individual entity, Fragment of Faith probably would have shattered instead.
“...Then what if Yuhyeon believes Fragment of Faith will never break? Wouldn't that belief make it unbreakable?”
“That doesn't seem possible either. It's hard to explain, but it felt like something fundamental, something that absolutely couldn't be changed, had been damaged.”
Feeling slightly disappointed, I fiddled with the sword before returning to the cathedral.
Eriel had finished calming herself and was waiting for me.
It seemed to have taken her around three hours to sort through her emotions.
Three hours wasn't exactly a short amount of time.
But considering what Eriel must have been feeling, it was incredibly brief.
For two hundred years, Eriel had worn away her own life force, sacrificing everything she could, all to protect the people who had caused her suffering.
What emotions must she have felt after finally being freed from Agape?
I couldn't imagine it.
One thing was certain.
The way Eriel looked at me had changed.
Deep emotions were overflowing from somewhere inside her.
