Dawn's Sacred Relic

Pernok brought Marco to Armin.

“Where have you been to just show up now? And what’s with that child?”

“There’s something you need to know.”

“Hm?”

“It’s the story of the Dawn Temple and darkness.”

They entered a quiet place with no signs of people, and Pernok spoke of the Dawn Temple’s atrocities.

Origin and experiments, kidnapping.

“Did you drink alcohol in broad daylight? What nonsense are you spouting?”

Armin waved his hands while bursting into hollow laughter.

The God of Dawn is like a lamp illuminating the future path of life.

Dawn, which symbolizes future and prosperity—who would believe that unspeakable experiments are being carried out in the main temple itself?

“Even as a joke, don’t put such words in your mouth. You’ll get beaten to death here.”

“Do you think I brought this child just to spout nonsense?”

“Look here. To slander another temple……”

“This child has the Origin I told you about.”

When Pernok pushed his back, Marco furrowed his brow.

His expression seemed to ask whether he could really trust him.

When Pernok nodded, Marco clicked his tongue and spread his palm.

“Hey, priest. I’ll show you just once.”

“Such terrible manners……”

Marco gathered the nearby darkness and made it into a small bean.

“……?”

Armin tilted his head.

He didn’t feel any trace of mana at all.

It felt extremely natural, as if a shadow had merely changed its form.

But when Marco clenched his palm tightly.

Thud!

The bean pierced through the ground, leaving a round shape.

When the lethality became apparent, Armin’s face hardened.

“It’s not mana. The Origin you wrote in your journal refers precisely to this.”

Armin’s hand twitched.

He had reflexively judged that he should suppress the darkness that had raided the Grand Temple.

“He’s a victim of the experiments.”

At the words that followed, Armin stiffened.

“He was unwillingly found to be compatible and was worked like a slave of the Silver priest. And as I said before, he’s barely extending his meager life after meeting a person called Boss. Though that Boss is currently imprisoned in the capital Armosa.”

“Is this…… true?”

“Haven’t we shown you enough?”

“Perhaps there’s another……”

“I don’t know what imagination you’re unfolding, but don’t turn away from the truth before your eyes. Besides this child, there are five more children. I’m risking danger right now to denounce this to a priest of Benevolence. That the corruption of the God of Dawn must be corrected.”

“……”

Armin must have been dizzy, as he placed his finger on his brow and staggered.

Unable to watch any longer, Marco clicked his tongue and tried to turn around.

“I knew this would happen. Before this priest bastard spouts nonsense, I’ll handle things as promised.”

“Don’t act hastily.”

“Hey! We even showed you Origin, yet you can’t trust our story—what can we trust to keep a priest like that alive? If we don’t kill him, our identities will be revealed and we’ll be the ones to suffer!”

“Absolute obedience to my words. Have you already forgotten?”

“Haaa. Seriously!”

Marco crossed his arms and turned his head sharply away.

Armin watched with wavering eyes as he made the gesture saying to do as he pleased.

“How could noble Dawn……”

“Don’t listen to the truth with your ears—confirm it with your eyes.”

Pernok jerked his chin toward the Dawn Temple on the hill.

“We’ll sneak in through the laboratory to the place where the sacred relic is enshrined and begin our operation. You attach the priests’ attention at the main gate.”

“……!”

“Then I’ll prove it. That these children’s words are the truth without a single bit of falsehood.”

How could a priest of the gods accept the request to help steal the Dawn Temple’s sacred relic?

Armin unconsciously clasped his two hands together and silently repeated the name of the God of Benevolence.

‘Why? Why the Dawn Temple?’

The question he’d long harbored while organizing the incident from long ago mixed with the god’s name.

‘Origin and experiments. If those cruel acts are truly real.’

He had followed Pernok to solve this question.

The witness was right before his eyes.

Was it falsehood or truth?

The statement that made him doubt his faith solidified Armin’s resolve.

‘I have the duty as a priest of Benevolence to rescue these pitiful people!’

Moreover, he must fulfill his responsibility as a record cleric to document atrocities.

His noble mission and consciousness organized Armin’s complicated mind.

“If what you’re doing is merely coveting the sacred relic, then I will inform the Holy Kingdom of all the truth and take the lead in punishing you.”

“I can only imagine the God of Benevolence driving out the God of Dawn.”

Pernok nodded to Marco.

“Cooperating with a priest, huh. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it…… damn it.”

If Armin’s cooperation were added, the operation’s success rate would increase.

Even though the Silver priest had vacated his position, the Dawn Temple still boasted strict vigilance.

It would be the same even when infiltrating from inside.

The moment a handful of mana flowed out, the Dawn Temple would harshly hunt down the intruders.

“When will you start?”

Pernok looked at the setting sun and answered.

“Tonight at midnight. When clouds cover the moon.”

* * *

At the dark hour when the surroundings of the Dawn Temple were lit with torches, Armin strode forward.

‘It can’t be. It won’t be. But what if it is? What if Per’s words are the truth!?’

With a face full of agony, he knocked on the Dawn Temple’s main gate.

One cleric who had been standing guard approached and asked.^[1]

“Aren’t you a cleric of the God of Benevolence? What brings you here?”

“May the grace of the God of Dawn guide the Holy Kingdom to the future. I apologize for visiting so abruptly at this late hour. I have nowhere to go right now—may I dare request to stay for one night?”

“What, a cleric such as yourself has nowhere to go?”

“On my way here, I met some pitiful children……”

“My.”

The Dawn cleric clicked his tongue and shook his head.

Clerics of Benevolence cannot tolerate injustice and poverty, and they always help.

Though it’s an unnecessary meddling in other clerics’ eyes, clerics of Benevolence believe this is the path of following the god’s faithfulness.

‘He probably gave charity to beggars.’

The Dawn cleric, who glanced at Armin’s shabby appearance, nodded.

Dawn stands in opposition to Light.

However, Benevolence advocates neutrality between the two.

There was no need to turn him away.

“There’s one empty lodging, so please stay there.”

“Thank you. Then I shall first pay my respects to the priest.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“No, I must. After all, when you’re providing me a place to stay……”

“The priest is currently in the capital. So please stay quietly and then leave.”

“Ah! I see. Understood. I’m grateful again for your grace.”

“How can we ignore a fellow cleric? Please don’t feel burdened and come inside.”

The Dawn cleric smiled and brought Armin inside the temple.

He was newly surprised at the magnificent and large scale that allowed him to see the village below the hill at a glance, and he thought.

‘Really, if there are experiments, there’s no way such kind people wouldn’t have seen them……’

His worries were brief.

The moment Armin saw the high clerics walking around inside the temple, he sat down on the spot.^[2]

“Oh my, my stomach!”

“……?”

“My, my stomach hurts so much!”

“What?”

The Dawn cleric panicked, and the high clerics who were passing by approached.

“What’s the matter?”

“Ah! Well, this cleric of the God of Benevolence requested a place to stay for one night, so I briefly brought him in……”

“I’m dying! I’m dying!”

Armin grabbed the high priest’s pant leg.

“Please save me! My stomach feels like it’s tearing apart and I’ll die!”

“Wh-what on earth is this……”

The more the flustered high cleric tried to shake him off, the more desperately Armin clung.

‘If you’re lying, I absolutely won’t let you go!’

While gritting his teeth at Pernok, Armin began struggling to his utmost ability.

“Oh my! Clerics! I’m dying!”

“Q-quickly, let’s bring him inside!”

“Clericssss!”

“Let go of this! No, please get up!”

When he somehow tried not to move while stuck to the ground, clerics began gathering after hearing the commotion.

* * *

Outside the temple, a barrier that detects mana is deployed.

Even if they’re lucky enough not to be detected and enter inside the temple, the high clerics are the problem.

They are level-7 battle clerics.

Even without the Silver priest, they alone are more than enough to guard the main temple.

‘They’ve moved.’

He could feel the high clerics’ mana leaning to one side.

‘A gap has formed in the dense surveillance network.’

The high clerics move sequentially at regular intervals.

Their mana is stickily connected to each other and acts like a barrier.

At the Dawn Temple, this is called the Eight Directions Formation.

Thanks to Armin causing a commotion at the main gate, the high cleric in charge of one axis had left his position.

Below that.

The children moved swiftly through the secret passage they’d dug over 10 years.

‘The barrier doesn’t reach this far. Is the surveillance only aboveground?’

He had thought they might be caught, but it was an unnecessary worry.

They had created a laboratory underground.

To avoid being discovered by those who didn’t know that fact, they would have had to limit the barrier’s expansion range to aboveground.

‘He’s a clever one.’

Marco had precisely grasped the Silver priest’s habits.

That’s why he had the audacity to create the passage even when the priest was staying at the temple.

He’d felt it from the first meeting, but this was quite a bold fellow.

‘He acts as if it doesn’t matter if he dies.’

His attitude that seemed somehow enlightened about life didn’t look very pleasant.

“It’s above here.”

Marco entered the end of the passage and pointed upward.

He hadn’t brought the other children.

The more people, the more problems would arise in the work.

Whooong.

Origin flowed from the obsidian like a faint thread and seeped upward.

As soon as the thought arose that other Origins existed, Pernok quietly extended his hand.

A small hole was pierced in the ceiling, and the two people launched their bodies upward.

“Still the same.”

Marco twisted his lips.

There wasn’t a single person, but things resembling signs of people were scattered all around.

They were massive flasks.

Colorful orbs were contained inside them, and flesh-colored mucus was clinging and trying to envelop them.

“Damn it.”

Marco looked at the flasks pitifully.

“They’ve already been devoured.”

Even without explaining what that meant, he could understand.

It appeared clearly in Observation Eye.

The forms of various souls contained in the orbs.

“Those orbs must be the cultivated Origin, and what is that mucus?”

“People who couldn’t accept the Origin.”

Marco spoke as if spitting.

“They originally had the same form as me. But the moment the Origin rejected them, those who lost compatibility all turned into that. Into lumps of flesh that have lost everything……”

“They’re Origin’s nourishment.”

It was a prison that trapped them so that even their souls couldn’t come and go.

If you gathered only the negative aspects of Origin, wouldn’t it become a form like that?

Pernok looked at the souls trapped in Origin and crying out.

‘The serpent.’

Somewhere it resembled the serpent that had preyed on the Scale Tribe.

“Can’t you somehow save them with your Origin?”

“Origin is not omnipotent. There’s no way to revive those who are already dead. However, I can deliver them from suffering.”

Someone’s presence was heard.

“Was there a caretaker?”

When Marco’s Origin was about to head through the ground toward the cleric revealing himself.

“Who……?”

Before the voice could ring out, Pernok grabbed that neck and twisted it.

When he threw the limp corpse into the flask, the Origin exerted its power, turning it into a lump of flesh and devouring it.

“They’re all trash that doesn’t need to be saved even one.”

Pernok drew up his mana.

The place where the sacred relic is enshrined is the deepest part of the Eight Directions Formation.

Even if Armin caught the high clerics’ attention, reaching that place would be extremely arduous.

Therefore, he added one more method.

He would detonate this laboratory and catch all of the Eight Directions Formation’s attention with the explosion.

‘The high clerics couldn’t be uninvolved.’

If a laboratory was created underground in the temple, there would be a group following the Silver priest.

Someone among the high clerics would definitely come out to calm the laboratory.

Pernok raised his hand while facing the souls trapped in Origin.

“The place above won’t be so cold.”

Pernok, who murmured lowly, burst blue flames in the middle of the laboratory.

When all the flasks shattered and the Origins that had been cultivated inside struggled as if resisting, a flash burst from his fist.

The moment Over Impact shattered the Origins to pieces, the souls that had been trapped were liberated and ascended to Netherworld.

And when all the condensed Origins exploded, they surpassed the laboratory.

Swooosh-!

Colorful brilliant radiance shook the tranquil Dawn Temple.