Chapter 11 - Revelation

Five days passed.

Repairs to the cabin were progressing smoothly. The old roof had been torn off and replaced with a new one made from freshly felled and worked timber. The chair missing a leg and the bed with its warped frame had been repaired as well.

All that remained was repairing the fence and bringing in the furnishings and supplies.

A satisfied smile spread across Bera’s lips as he surveyed the cabin, which finally looked something like a home.

‘This will do for a place to live.’

He could rebuild the fence later with the twins’ help. He had already asked Norn to order the furnishings and supplies.

For a moment, a sense of security filled him at the thought that the most pressing matters were settled. Then Bera walked to the center of the clearing he had made in front of the cabin.

‘Today...’

Today he would test the sacred spellcraft whose framework he had spent the past five days developing.

... Yes.

Sacred spellcraft was the path Bera had chosen.

He had worked through the manuals Trebo lent him, acquired a basic grounding in the sacred arts, and used that knowledge to approach his divine powers in several different ways. In the end, however, he had concluded that the divine powers of the oath could not be incorporated into combat arts.

Unlike something as intuitive as the twins’ Indomitability, his divine powers were difficult to apply to the body.

Once he set their parameters, it was difficult to adapt to changing circumstances while they remained in effect. That left their existing drawback unresolved: he could not make immediate adjustments during combat.

To solve those problems, Bera had turned to sacred spellcraft—specifically, spellcraft arrays.

If applying his divine powers to his body was difficult, he could apply them to something outside it instead. If the inability to make immediate adjustments made it hard to respond to a situation, he could create an environment where those adjustments were unnecessary.

He would use an array to inscribe rules into the space itself through his divine powers. By turning the surrounding area into a battlefield that favored him, he could address every drawback he had identified.

The divine powers of the oath were powers of rules. They allowed him to inscribe an oath as a rule and be promised strength commensurate with it.

There was no reason he could not make use of that very aspect in this way.

Once he had settled on the concept, his next accomplishment was creating an array to realize it.

Fortunately, studying the array analyses Trebo had lent him had supplied the theory he needed for his design.

He had spent five days racking his brains to devise this barrier formula. Now he would test it for the first time.

Of course, with so little learning behind him, the formula was far from polished.

Its rough edges could be refined over time. For this test, Bera was focused on just one thing: activating the array.

Bera drew a deep breath and released the divine energy within him.

‘Blend the divine powers into the divine energy.’

At that thought, the divine energy turned ashen gray.

As Trebo had said, the process itself was remarkably easy. All he had to do was open a channel that passed through his sacred mark as he released the energy.

After confirming its ashen color, Bera gathered the divine energy dispersing around him.

‘Condense.’

The most basic use of divine energy.

As he did so, the energy scattered through the air like pale smoke intertwined, forming several strands of thread.

Now he had all the materials he needed to form the array’s framework.

Without a moment’s delay, Bera drew the threads in front of his chest.

The first task was...

‘Fix the coordinates.’

He would anchor the coordinates defining the array’s area of effect to himself.

He wove the longest strand of divine energy into a circle.

HUMMM.

The divine energy resonated, swirling around Bera.

Next, he had to set its range.

‘Five paces.’

A distance of roughly three meters. Bera did not yet have the ability to extend it across a larger area.

Selecting the longer threads circling him, he wove them into the formula that would define the range.

Within the empty center of the coordinate-anchoring circle made from the longest thread, a formula woven into a sphere took shape.

The completed formula looked, at a glance, like a planet surrounded by a ring of orbiting satellites.

Having finished that step, Bera examined his surroundings.

‘It worked.’

The divine energy that had been dispersing now remained within the specified range.

All that remained was the most important step: applying his divine powers.

Bera considered the rules he would inscribe into this space with a radius of roughly three meters.

He had to keep stability in mind. Accordingly, he inscribed rules into the array that would produce the smallest visibly discernible change.

“Within this area, all movement capabilities shall increase by ten percent. However, nothing may move faster than a falling leaf. Anyone who violates this rule shall lose thirty percent of all movement capabilities for ten minutes.”

HUM.

The array vibrated. The ashen divine energy arranged itself, inscribing his divine powers into the space.

He had set the penalty higher than the strength gained because that was the nature of the divine powers of the oath.

An oath rested on the premise that it must be kept. Naturally, the penalty endured for breaking it had to exceed the reward gained.

As the space vibrated once more and his divine powers were inscribed within it, Bera felt that the array was on the verge of activating.

Only the finishing touch remained.

He moved the remaining short threads of divine energy, invoking the name of the powers’ master as he inscribed it into the array.

“I proclaim all these rules in the name of Rushan.”

This was the process of guaranteeing the rules’ binding force in the name of a god.

As soon as he finished...

WHOOO.

The wind blowing into the space began moving distinctly more slowly than the wind outside it.

Bera knew what that meant. The incoming wind had violated the rules within the space, producing this effect.

‘It worked!’

A thrilling rush of joy shot up his spine.

Making no effort to suppress the smile rising to his lips, Bera looked around, grinning.

It was not just the wind. Leaves drifting in, insects...

Everything that violated the space’s rules moved a beat more slowly than things outside it.

Strictly speaking, he should have classified the test as a failure.

Hadn’t its effects extended even to nonliving things? Of course, that was partly because he had not established sufficiently precise rules. At its root, though, the phenomenon arose from divine powers he had not fully controlled running wild.

Still, this was clearly an error he could correct through refinement.

Rather than be disappointed by such secondary concerns, Bera decided to enjoy his immediate success.

Suddenly, he recalled the Holy Emperor mocking him with a dry chuckle.

The thought widened Bera’s smile.

Now he had something to throw in that old geezer’s face.

* * *

“The apostle of guidance has returned.”

It was Norn who spoke.

Bera had been busy adjusting his array in the clearing in front of the cabin. Norn’s words reminded him of something he had shoved into a corner of his mind while absorbed in his work.

“Ah, that’s the person who presides over the revelation, correct?”

“Yes. The apostle sent word that you will receive your revelation tomorrow, and that you should prepare.”

Revelation. This ceremony, in which one received a trial from the gods, had been presided over by successive apostles of guidance.

Vola, commonly called the god of travelers, possessed the divine powers necessary to connect the divine realm to the mortal realm.

The reason Bera’s revelation was being held after a week’s wait was that the apostle of guidance had been away on assignment, and they had needed to await his return.

Bera nodded slightly in acknowledgment, then asked a question prompted by his curiosity.

“What sort of person is the apostle of guidance?”

It was a perfectly natural question for Bera to ask.

How had the apostles he met here behaved? Idiots, a madman, a cranky old geezer.

Hadn’t every last one of them fallen outside the bounds of normality?

By now, Bera had developed a certain prejudice against apostles. When he asked the question with a trace of suspicion in his voice...

“... Well.”

Norn flinched. Dismay spread across his face. Rather than continuing, his words trailed on without getting anywhere.

That reaction told Bera everything he needed to know.

‘... Another fucking idiot.’

This apostle of guidance was probably not in his right mind either.

One more source of stress.

Irritation began to show on Bera’s face at the thought. After hesitating for a long while, Norn avoided his eyes and continued awkwardly.

“... He is a cheerful person.”

Bera forced himself to swallow the remark that cheerfulness and insanity were decidedly different concepts.

He was not stupid enough to think it was Norn’s fault that the man was a freak.

* * *

At noon the next day, the day scheduled for his revelation, Bera went to the Grand Temple’s chapel and found Trebo praying there.

“Trebo.”

Trebo lifted his head from his lengthy prayer. When he spotted Bera, his face brightened, and he greeted him.

“Ah, Bera. You’re here for your revelation, yes?”

“Yes. Where should I go?”

“Follow me. I must attend as well, so we might as well go together.”

“... You’re attending too?”

“Ah, did I not explain? Every apostle currently within the Holy Empire is required to attend the revelation ceremony.”

Bera gave a start at the explanation.

“... Every apostle?”

All those people would be gathered in one place. The thought made the back of his head ache.

Apparently failing to notice anything odd about Bera’s reaction, Trebo nodded with the same lively manner as before.

“Yes. The apostles of love and abundance are away on assignment and cannot come, while the positions of apostle of the Supreme God and apostle of repose are currently vacant. That leaves five of us gathering this time. Hmm, looking at it this way, there seem to be an unusually large number of apostles in this generation. Ordinarily, it is rare for more than five to appear in a single era.”

As Trebo continued talking, Bera merely nodded without offering another answer and pursued his own thoughts.

‘The vacant positions...’

Fifteen years from now, when the war against the Demon King broke out, every position would be filled.

In just four years, Renée would receive the Supreme God’s sacred mark. Some six years after that, the apostle of repose would take their place.

The position of apostle of judgment would remain vacant after Bargo’s death, until the next bearer of the sacred mark appeared as the war against the Demon King grew fierce.

Of course, not all of them had participated in the war.

Bera himself had spent that time avoiding it, hadn’t he?

People such as Trebo, the apostle of wisdom, the apostle of guidance he was about to meet, and the apostle of love he had yet to meet had remained unknown while the war raged, occupied with defending the Holy Empire’s interior. That was why he had lacked information about them.

Still following that train of thought, Bera glanced at Trebo, who was chattering away by himself.

‘Did he say he guarded the Demon-Sealing Barrier?’

The duty entrusted to successive apostles of wisdom.

Only after coming here had Bera understood why Trebo had remained unknown in his previous life.

The apostles of guidance and love had probably remained unknown because they held similar responsibilities.

Suddenly, Bera felt frustration rising within him.

Despite having already lived one life and knowing nearly every major event on the continent, his information about the Holy Empire was so limited that he could not make use of that advantage.

With so little information, he could not make firm plans for what Renée would face when he met her later, or how he should resolve it.

His brow furrowed slightly at those thoughts. Seeing it, Trebo finally realized that something was wrong.

“Bera? Are you feeling unwell?”

“No. I’m just a little nervous.”

“Ah! Then I can certainly sympathize. Hearing that reminds me of the day I first received my revelation. The sacred mark that suddenly descended upon me while I was an apprentice mage at the Magic Tower, the wonder of that day, the blessing. On the day of my revelation, it all came flooding back and stirred my heart. Before I knew it, I was weeping...”

On and on he rambled.

Bera’s face twisted into a deep scowl, but Trebo was so engrossed in his own story that he failed to notice.

For the first time in a very long while, Bera found himself wanting to sew someone’s mouth shut.