Chapter 36: Trend

The same phenomenon is occurring on all stars.

The word that immediately came to Arie’s mind upon hearing that was ‘impossible’.

Just as there are countless stars in the sky, there are countless gods looking down upon this world.

Just as what is visible isn’t everything, if you add the stars hidden in the night sky, their number increases even further.

And the same phenomenon is occurring simultaneously on all those countless stars…?

That’s impossible, unless the gods are united and acting together.

“That’s absurd. Are the gods preparing for war?”

Arie asked the Pope for a more detailed explanation.

Even though she was a Holy Maiden closer to the gods than the Pope, she was ultimately just a mortal who hadn’t reached transcendence…

Unable to reach the realm of transcendence, she couldn’t yet read the flow, so no matter how much she looked at the stars, she couldn’t understand what the Pope meant.

The Pope silently swept his hand lightly through the air.

Then, thin, tail-like lines were drawn on each of the stars filling the room.

Arie instinctively recognized what those lines were.

“…The flow, then.”

“You’ve seen it accurately. It doesn’t appear this way to everyone, but this much should be enough to help you understand.”

What is the flow…?

It refers to the history and changes of movement present in all things.

This flow isn’t limited to physical things alone.

Emotions, time, thoughts, will, etc…

Whether they exist or not, everything in the world has its own flow.

“A Transcendent cannot read all flows, but what they can see increases depending on their authority or training method… Among these, this is merely a visualization of the ‘flow of will’ that I can perceive.”

“Then, in Your Holiness’s eyes, is everything in the world covered in those threads?”

“Hmm, that’s…”

The Pope pondered Arie’s question for a moment, then shook his head and spoke.

“You will naturally come to know it once you reach transcendence someday.”

Normally, Arie would have chuckled and said something like, ‘How can a mortal live with such sorrow?’, but she swallowed it back, trying hard not to utter it.

She looked closely at the stars the Pope showed her, and the countless threads connected to them.

“Indeed… The flow of will is moving.”

“Yes. The will of the gods is flowing in every direction. But the stars themselves aren’t moving at all. And… look more closely.”

Following the Pope’s words, Arie examined the slender, wriggling threads, like snakes, more closely.

Then, a strange point caught her eye.

“This is… Is it being pushed back?”

The threads, which she had thought were wriggling freely without any pattern, now seemed to be pushed back by something upon closer inspection.

Arie, unable to comprehend the phenomenon, asked the Pope with a disbelieving expression.

“Didn’t you say these threads were the flow of will?”

“Yes, I certainly did.”

“Then, truly… Is the will of the gods being pushed back like these threads…?”

“……”

The Pope answered with silence instead.

Arie knew that silence was an affirmation.

Because he wouldn’t have brought up such a topic without any certainty.

However, that very certainty confused Arie even more.

“If that’s true… then why aren’t the gods moving? They must surely be feeling that flow.”

“I don’t know that either. The gods don’t reveal their true thoughts to me…”

It’s impossible that the gods themselves wouldn’t know what the Pope had noticed.

Yet, the fact that they took no action whatsoever was certainly strange.

The Pope, upon discovering this phenomenon, must have immediately tried to communicate with the gods.

However, when no response came despite his wait, ‘the Holy Maiden’ was whom he chose.

“I thought you might be able to get an answer from the gods… but it seems my assumption was wrong.”

“……Indeed. There’s no response at all. They’re usually ones who visibly display their emotions…”

But the result was the same.

Instead, they seemed even more closed off than before; even their emotions couldn’t be felt.

To Arie, who continued to pray, unable to hide her disappointment, the Pope spoke softly.

“That’s enough. It seems the gods have no intention of responding.”

“But if communication with the gods is completely severed like this…?”

“Don’t worry about that. Seeing as there’s no effect on divine power whatsoever, it doesn’t seem like the gods intend to sever communication permanently.”

As the Pope said, nothing had changed for the church and the Holy Kingdom.

It was simply that the Holy Maiden could no longer communicate with the gods…

Other clerics, who couldn’t directly feel the presence of the gods, were still serving them, completely unaware.

If only the Pope, who had read the flow of the stars, and the Holy Maiden, who had heard the news directly from him, kept silent, this matter would not spread outside.

It was a moment when Arie’s shoulders grew heavier, as another secret to prevent chaos had fallen upon her.

Then, the Pope called out to Arie, who seemed deep in thought.

“There’s still more to discuss.”

“Have you perhaps found something out already?”

“Yes, before you arrived, I deeply pondered the flow. And I was able to reach a conclusion.”

“……?”

When he first discovered this phenomenon, he mistakenly thought there would be no pattern, as the flow wriggled about erratically.

However, after detailed analysis, he realized that all flows were being pushed back regardless of direction, leading him to form a hypothesis.

“No matter how I thought about it, it was strange that the gods were all experiencing the same phenomenon simultaneously. To think that the will of all gods had converged into one is unlikely, as not all of them are friendly with each other… It was only after I discovered that the flow was being pushed back that I was finally able to conceive of a possibility.”

“…A possibility?”

“That some unknown entity might be forcibly pushing back the flow of will.”

“What…?”

The fact that they were all experiencing the same phenomenon simultaneously makes sense if that unknown entity is pushing back the will of all the gods.

However, each of the gods is a being that transcends the realm of transcendence.

It’s impossible for their will to be pushed back when facing all of them.

The Pope thought so too, and tried to erase his absurd hypothesis from his mind.

That is, if he hadn’t discovered something very dark and suspicious slowly approaching from far beyond the stars.

An unknown entity so far away that it was impossible to tell if it was a single individual or a group…

The Pope, having revealed everything, spoke to Arie.

“Listen carefully, Arie. It seems truly unusual things are about to happen.”

“……”

“If something unexpected occurs, be sure to stay with those you can trust… If you do, even if the Holy Kingdom falls, you will be able to find your own path.”

“……Yes, Your Holiness.”

Arie nodded with a determined expression.

****

All around, everything was shrouded in invisible darkness.

It was a situation where we couldn’t even tell if the black mist that swallowed us remained or had vanished…

“……”

“……”

“……”

Hestia and I clung tightly to each other, relying on one another without a word.

Our forms were barely visible to each other, but the sensation of touch remained clear.

For a moment…

No, perhaps for quite a long time, we remained in a stillness where everything seemed to have stopped, listening only to each other’s breaths.

“……”

“Ahem, ahem…”

The long silence that seemed like it would never end was broken by Hestia’s awkward cough.

Confirming that her face had reddened slightly, I subtly distanced myself.

‘I’m not sure why, but for some reason, her gaze was gradually turning in a dangerous direction…’

‘It was definitely a look I’d seen many times before…’

“Um…”

“Yes, yes?”

A fleeting ominous thought crossed my mind, but Hestia’s voice snapped me back to reality, and I erased the unnecessary thoughts from my head.

She was pointing somewhere and speaking to me.

“It looks like there’s something over there.”

“Oh, you’re right.”

In the direction Hestia pointed, there was indeed a door.

Unlike the colossal door that led to the room with the treasure mountain, this was an ordinary-sized door, like a dormitory’s main entrance…

In this space of complete darkness, only that spot held a faint light.

“…It’s too suspicious…?”

“I agree.”

“So what should we do? I don’t see any other path.”

“Hmm…”

Hestia seemed to ponder for a moment, then spoke in a resigned tone.

“We can’t just stay here. In this kind of darkness, you never know what might jump out from where.”

“Is that so? I’ll follow your lead, Hestia.”

Hestia and I slowly walked towards the only visible door in the darkness.