Chapter 38: Pounding

A strange sensation, as if passing through dozens of dimensional barriers…

Hestia watched every step of the process with wide eyes.

As she passed through darkness and reached another darkness, the headache that had been overwhelming her completely vanished, and her mind became clearer.

Her increasingly sharp senses told her what was happening to her.

She was being pulled away from her body, somewhere.

‘Ugh…!’

Hestia struggled to escape, but whatever was holding her seemed unwilling to let go.

Instead, the increasing pressure only held her body tighter.

‘Please…!!!’

Despite Hestia’s desperate will, nothing changed.

All she could do was cross the space filled with darkness, taking in everything she saw.

It was stars.

Countless stars, each with a will, were living and breathing in an immeasurably vast dark space.

Although it was a sight she had never seen before, Hestia had some knowledge of this space.

The cosmos.

A sanctuary for stars, a vast dimension embracing countless souls…

Furthermore, it was a space where the presence of gods could be clearly felt, even without crossing into a higher world.

Hestia’s golden eyes encompassed the entire cosmos.

Beyond the starlight, somewhere in the distant cosmos, the will of the gods could be faintly felt.

At the same time, Hestia’s transcendent talent instinctively grasped how to wield will.

Just as she, having gained an unexpected realization, moved her will and tried to struggle again.

‘……?’

The intangible force that had been pulling her suddenly vanished.

As she stopped dead in the middle of cosmic space, bewildered, she looked around.

However, only empty darkness and faint starlight illuminated from all directions…

She remained suspended in the still cosmic space.

‘Somehow, I must return to my body…!’

Hestia maintained her composure as much as possible, closed her eyes, and focused on her consciousness.

In the complete darkness, she relied solely on her heightened senses to search for a path.

The vast history accumulated in the cosmos obstructed her, but Hestia ultimately found the thread most firmly bound to herself.

The moment she, having found her way back, opened her eyes with a faint sense of relief…

‘What is this…?’

The light of the stars began to extinguish one by one.

Hestia’s eyes, feeling a premonition far more ominous than when she was pulled by the intangible force, chased after the remaining light.

But with only a slight time difference, the starlight extinguished one after another without exception.

Suddenly…

A chilling aura made her entire body shiver, and her nerves became taut.

A terrifying fear she had never felt before gripped her heart tightly.

[Where are you.]

A darkness deeper than darkness, true darkness, arrived.

It wasn’t just because the stars had lost their light.

Her instincts had voluntarily shut down all her senses.

As if, this darkness must never be seen…

However, despite the sensory blockade, the chilling aura and fear did not subside.

Her heart began to beat faster and faster, while her breathing gradually slowed.

She couldn’t remember how to breathe, and she forgot how to think.

She desperately tried to hold onto her fading sanity, but she felt it was all meaningless.

Like this.

Complete…

Rest…

– Thump!

Then, the sound of her heart, which she thought had stopped, caught her fading consciousness.

Along with a familiar sensation, her vision returned.

Her blocked senses began to release one by one.

Her consciousness instantly cleared, as if she had surged from deep water to the surface.

Just as the defenseless Hestia was about to stare directly into the darkness…

Something unknown gently covered her eyes.

It also softly covered her ears, which trembled with a start.

Along with it came a ‘true’ sense of relief and comfort…

‘Ahhh……’

Hestia surrendered to the overwhelming drowsiness and fell into a deep sleep.

****

A mysterious space where beautiful stars floated freely…

In this vast place, generally called the cosmos, I gently stroked Hestia’s head as she slept with a more relaxed expression than before.

I also didn’t forget to place her head on my lap, so it wouldn’t touch the hard ground beneath her, a ground that was unseen but existed.

The position commonly known as a lap pillow.

I worry if Hestia will be disgusted when she wakes up and sees this…

Well, I’ll think about that when the time comes.

By the way… I ended up doing something regrettable to Hestia.

This place, where she seemed to be enchanted and pulled me into, is the ‘Observatory’.

It is a term referring to a type of research facility built for mortals to observe the space beyond the sky, which they cannot see with their naked eyes.

This place is also an observatory built with a similar purpose, but what is observed here is not merely celestial bodies.

Stars are traces of the gods…

Observing stars in an observatory is no different from observing gods.

If they noticed, they would have probably raged, asking who I was to dare monitor them when I wasn’t even the Pope, but that would never happen.

One reason is that it was designed to evade even the gods’ eyes, but this observatory, strictly speaking, was not originally built to observe stars.

The sky doesn’t only contain traces of the gods.

Somewhere further away, there are threats that even the gods are wary of.

Powerful beings known as Outer Gods…

The main culprit who corrupted Arie before Elisha regressed, and the one who infused the cross necklace with evil energy…

This observatory was originally a facility built to monitor the Outer Gods.

The reason stars aren’t visible when the observatory is activated is that there’s no particular need to monitor gods, whose presence can be felt through starlight.

Although its original purpose has been served, it was still functioning normally, so I intended to give Hestia, who might one day have to face the Outer Gods with Elisha, a brief experience.

However, that lightheartedness unfortunately led to carelessness.

While the observatory I designed can evade the eyes of gods and Outer Gods, it doesn’t mean it’s immune to their influence.

Of course, it was meticulously designed so that most entities couldn’t exert even a minor influence, but if the opponent was truly dangerous…

It wouldn’t be strange for the mind of the mortal observer to waver.

Hestia seemed to have had the bad luck of encountering that dangerous something.

I didn’t see it, but it seemed to be dangerous enough to enchant her, the Hero.

If I had known beforehand, I wouldn’t have activated the observatory…

I felt sorry for causing her distress due to my carelessness.