Chapter 56
Chapter 56
I could see divine power scattering profusely every time she cried.
‘Isn’t there a way to capture that? Like a method to store it somewhere?’
[You can’t capture what flows out naturally like that. At the very least, the person needs to be holding or touching a medium.]
‘What’s this medium?’
[Eh, you didn’t know?]
[It’s the Philosopher’s Stone, silly.]
Ah!
So that’s why they gave me the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ as a reward.
And here I was thinking, ‘How pretentious, even a ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ has grades?’
Then, could I extract and use the power stored in the stone?
How could I use it?
As my mind was filled with thoughts about the stone, Isiel spoke firmly to his sister who was crying bitterly.
“It can’t be helped. You need to decide now. What are you going to do?”
My heart ached as Seiren glared resentfully at Isiel.
The more she cried, the more divine power dripped to the floor.
I abruptly offered her another dessert.
This time, it was a scone.
She looked at me as if I were some strange person but started eating it anyway.
“I guess I can’t stay at the temple anymore…”
“You can stay if you become a priestess. But you won’t be able to live as comfortably as you did when you were a saint candidate or a Lemiere princess.”
“…”
“So come back. You’re my sister, and you’re a Lemiere. Your place to return is our home.”
She took another bite of the scone with a stiff, expressionless face. I
siel quietly had a maid serve tea in front of her.
After a long silence, Seiren spoke.
“When the social season starts, everyone will laugh at me, won’t they?”
“Who would dare to…!”
“Mother will say I failed, that I’m Lemiere’s failure.”
“…No. You didn’t fail, Seiren.”
Ooh…
I watched the siblings’ conversation in real-time from the side, handing her a new dessert each time one fell from the former saint candidate’s hands.
[Seems like they have complicated family issues.]
‘Well, any proper villainess should have at least one tragic family backstory.’
The conversation that followed was similar.
I have nowhere to go.
No, you have our home.
I don’t like the capital where people will surely look down on me.
Then go to our family estate in the Lemiere duchy.
I don’t want to, Mother is there.
Why do you keep trying to send me somewhere?
If you keep this up, I’ll run away, and so on.
As the inconclusive conversation dragged on for dozens of minutes, I occasionally gazed longingly at the faint divine power emanating from Seiren Lemiere.
If I had that… I could probably make not just 5,000, but 10,000 ice creams a day.
“I’m just going to run away!”
“I told you I’d send you to study abroad instead!”
The two glared at each other, panting.
After hesitating several times, I quietly raised my hand.
“Excuse me, Lady Seiren Lemiere?”
“What?”
“If you don’t like the capital or the Lemiere duchy… how about the North?”
Come make ice cream with me in the North.
* * *
My proposal was rejected with Seiren Lemiere’s “Who is this crazy person?” question and Cassis’s “Absolutely not” opposition.
Still, they seemed to agree on something, as it didn’t cause an uproar like before.
I stood up first, saying I’d look around the temple for a bit.
Before leaving, I gave Seiren one more serving of ice cream.
“This dessert is called ‘ice cream’ because it’s like cold cream. If you ever want it again, please contact me through Isiel.”
As soon as I left the room, I grabbed a passing priest and asked where first-time visitors to the temple should go.
Following the priest’s kind explanation, I arrived at a hall open to all imperial citizens, including tourists.
As I expected, the hall had a summary of important events starting from the creation of the world.
“This is amazing.”
[Yeah, haha. There are some lies and exaggerations too.]
I skimmed through it once, but the information I wanted about the world’s destruction a thousand years ago didn’t exist at all.
The newly born saint seemed to be of great interest to everyone, as an entire wall was devoted to her story.
I skimmed through the story of Rose Bistin, the newly born commoner saint that filled an entire wall.
“I can see why Seiren Lemiere would be upset.”
[Why?]
“There’s not even a trace of Seiren here. It’s as if she doesn’t exist.”
It seems the temple no longer needs those who aren’t saints.
Even if she’s a princess of the Lemiere duchy.
If I remember correctly, in the original game, the villainess Seiren was opposed not to the saint, but to Princess Leily, who was the saint’s friend.
Passing by the section about the saint, I stopped at a part that caught my interest.
It was about the birth of the gods.
[It is said that the first thing Idelbach created on the canvas of night was the sun.
When he created the sun, the sky was born with it, and beneath it, he created the earth.
The sea came next.
Idelbach was a god who loved the shimmering reflections of sunlight on water, and regretting the waves spreading out into the vast ocean, he trapped them between mountain ranges, thus creating lakes.
Not long after the sun was created, the whole world was winter, so the lakes froze faster than anything else.
Feeling regretful, Idelbach peered into a lake, and that’s when he first saw his own reflection on the frozen lake surface.]
‘Really?’
[Really, Idelbach?]
[Haha.]
It was strange that in this creation myth of the twin gods, the other god, Arschen, didn’t appear at all.
[There was another being that spoke to Idelbach as he gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and that was another him reflected in the mirror.
That’s how Arschen was born, they say.]
“How fascinating!”
To think that even the system I talk to every day has such a creation myth.
“So that’s why they’re the twin gods and the gods of mirrors?”
[Originally, they were the gods of mirrors.]
[But since we were so indistinguishable, later generations came to call us the ‘twin gods’.]
I suppose.
Actually, if I had known Idelbach and Arschen for this long, I should be able to tell them apart, but I still can’t.
I just thought of them as one entity.
[That’s why your approach isn’t wrong, Irina.]
“Where is this lake? I’d like to visit someday.”
Out of curiosity, I asked the god, but the answer came from a nearby priest.
Wearing white priestly robes mixed with deep blue fabric, he looked like he hadn’t been a priest for long.
“Are you talking about the lake called the God’s Mirror?”
“Yes.”
“Lake Yusta Winter is in the Grand Duchy of Luwin in the northern part of the empire.”
I blinked.
Lake Yusta Winter was a place I had heard of before.
Had I just heard of it?
I even went ice fishing on its frozen surface in winter.
Didn’t I even fish out Sian Terezia, the hero from a thousand years ago, while fishing?
I froze with my mouth open.
The junior priest kindly added more explanation to my frozen state.
“There are exactly two places called the God’s Mirror, or the World’s Mirror. One is Lake Yusta Winter that I just mentioned, and the other is the Kima Desert located in the southwest.”
“Can a desert be a mirror?”
“Well, it’s been called that since ancient times, so I’m not sure. Actually, in the case of the Kima Desert, there are no separate records of why it became ‘God’s Mirror’.”
Until I heard the creation myth of the gods just now, my reaction was a light “How interesting!
But now, having fished out ‘Sian Terezia’ from ‘Lake Yusta Winter’, which is actually called God’s Mirror, I felt like I had grasped a key without finding its lock.
“Then, what exactly does the mirror mean to the followers of Idelbach-Arschen?”
“The mirror holds the meaning of birth. Just as another god was newly born reflected in the mirror.”
I found Sian Terezia in Lake Yusta Winter.
Then what could be in the ‘Kima Desert’, the other so-called God’s Mirror?
[It’s so old that I can’t really remember.]
[What was in Kima again!]
[I don’t know!]
The gods chatted among themselves, and the system chimed again.
[SYSTEM | ‘Visit the Temple’ (3/4)]
[SYSTEM | As a reward for the quest ‘Sian Terezia, Who on Earth is That Man’, your final Luck stat increases by 1.]
[SYSTEM | 5/18 -> 5/19]
No matter how hard I tried to accumulate Luck stats, they were often used up to avoid major accidents, so now I barely had 19.
Even without me actively trying to learn about ‘Sian Terezia’, I would occasionally get notifications like this during conversations.
Then I would realize in reverse that the content I just discussed was related to Sian.
This case is the same.
The quest was clearly intended to learn about Sian.
However, from the fact that the quest was partially completed just by investigating the gods like this, I could gain information in reverse.
The existence of Sian Terezia itself is very closely related to the gods.
‘Or is Sian himself just a god?’
[…..]
[…..]
The system fell silent again.
“Okay, never mind then.”
What followed through the system was a ‘Random Skill Box’.
[SYSTEM | You have received a ‘Random Skill Box’ as a reward.]
[SYSTEM | There are a total of ‘2’ ‘Random Skill Boxes’ confirmed in your inventory.]
“…..”
I wonder how trivial a skill I’ll get this time.
[Hey, that’s not true!]
At first, I found it ridiculous, but these days I accept them thinking, “Well, it’s better than nothing.”
I received the skill boxes and held two small ring box-like containers in my hand.
That’s when someone called out to me loudly from behind.
“Irina!”
