Ch.1129Post-processing

While Demian was transporting the mechanical egg to the surface using Skywalk’s transfer ability, the priests who had been aboard the airship descended underground to begin the purification work.

There were twenty high priests alone. Having rested sufficiently throughout the flight, they were theoretically enough personnel to easily purify a lake of dark mana and have strength to spare.

“…This isn’t a lake, but a spring.”

However, the clergy who undertook the purification work soon realized that purifying this place wasn’t as simple as they had thought.

Unlike a lake, which is merely water collected in a large hole, a spring is where underground water flows up to the surface through subterranean waterways.

Unless the connected water source itself is dried up, even if the spring water is completely evaporated to expose the bottom, it would soon return to its original state.

The same applied to this spring of dark mana.

The priests gathered here could easily dry up the entire spring, but that would ultimately be just a temporary solution.

The dark mana of the black spring originally came from Invidius’s blood and the corpses of undead monsters, but now it was supplemented by void mana flowing in from deep underground.

The moment the effect of the purification miracle ended, dark mana would immediately begin to flow in again, and they couldn’t spend their entire lives performing purification here.

In other words, to complete the purification, they needed to trace the dark mana waterway upstream to its source and completely purify and eliminate it.

Of course, that would be impossible even if they mobilized all the priests of the Holy State, including the two saints.

“This dark mana isn’t flowing from just one place. This entire area—no, perhaps the entire Great Desert has already…”

After checking through detection miracles, they discovered that the source connected to the black spring and supplying dark mana was far beyond the level of a simple underground waterway—it was almost comparable to a sea.

In the words of the priests who couldn’t hide their shock, the situation was ‘no different than the gates of hell opening beneath their feet.’

“Good heavens. Where could so much dark mana come from?!”

“Ceres, what on earth is happening down there…”

How could they have known?

Due to the aftermath of the World Tree’s extinction and Invidius’s forced descent, a massive dimensional passage connected to the void had opened deep beneath the Great Desert.

The void was originally nothing but an empty space, but that was a story from thousands of years ago.

The evil god of envy, abandoned at birth, had filled the void with his own flesh and blood over countless eons, transforming the empty void into hell.

His blood, shed like a waterfall, formed a sea of dark mana without end, and the flesh that fell off or was torn away gained divine life and was reborn as monsters.

These were the monsters known as void creatures.

The monsters swimming through the void were minions of the evil god, born from the mixture of Invidius’s blood, flesh, and the small divinity contained within them.

Although they were called minions, Invidius had no interest in them whatsoever, neither ruling nor commanding them, simply leaving them be.

Anyway, to purify this black spring, they would need to completely dry up the sea of dark mana filling the entire underground of the Great Desert, and to do that, they first needed to find and close the passage connected to the void.

“Hmm… let’s return to our country for now. This is beyond what we can solve at our level.”

“…Do you think the Saint might have a solution?”

“Well… I hope so, but it’s hard to expect much. This is clearly beyond human capability.”

Of course, how could such a thing be possible?

It was a task that literally required a divine miracle. It was beyond human capability.

This wasn’t just the opinion of the priests at the scene; the Holy State’s leadership came to the same conclusion after receiving their report.

Several days later.

After a lengthy discussion with all its leaders gathered, the Holy State designated the entire Great Desert as an irrecoverable magical hazard zone, sealed the borders, and prohibited entry to the general public.

They also sent envoys to the two countries bordering the Great Desert—the Dragonic Kingdom and the Republic of Himmel—requesting cooperation with the containment measures.

Since there was no way to purify it, they concluded that they should contain it within the desert for now and only purify the dark mana and monsters that crossed the border.

Some might criticize this as an irresponsible act of postponing the problem, but it was the best the Holy State could do at present.

—-

How did the non-human nations, the Dragonic Kingdom and the Republic of Himmel, react to the Holy State’s request for desert containment?

“The pointy-eared bastards’ land is ruined? That’s wonderful news!”

“What’s new about that? It’s been ruined for quite some time. All that greenery turned to sand, didn’t it?”

“So it’s doubly ruined! I hear it’s become a magical hazard zone now?”

“…That’s wonderful news!”

The dwarves of Himmel simply rejoiced at the fact that the elven land had fallen.

Alvheim had long since perished, and its elves had already migrated elsewhere, so the elves suffered virtually no damage from this incident.

But then again, when have dwarves ever maintained their rationality when it comes to elves?

If Himmel hadn’t been preoccupied with its own monster and dragon problems, there would have been a flood of proposals to ignore the containment request and occupy the Great Desert to build dwarf cities there.

“Just imagine it, everyone! The flag of our Himmel standing tall and waving proudly on the spot where ‘that big tree’ died!”

“Make Himmel great again! Make Himmel great again!”

Of course, since dwarves were naturally inclined to be aggressive and stubborn, such radical proposals weren’t particularly rare.

Fortunately, however, their proposals never made it to the official agenda of the republic’s parliament.

While the parliament members were also somewhat aggressive in typical dwarf fashion, they were more rational than those extremists, befitting their position as national representatives.

“Make dwarves great again…? Ridiculous, do those fellows have no sense of thought?”

“Indeed. We already have enough headaches with the current monster problem, and they talk about occupying the Great Desert…”

The occupation of a magical hazard zone that even the Holy State had backed away from was nothing but nonsense not worth discussing to the parliament members who were facing the reality of Himmel’s situation.

Even without such circumstances, the parliament members had more pressing matters than desert occupation.

“By the way… have you heard the news? They say ‘it’ has been activated in the northeastern underground area that was taken by the monsters…”

They were facing a critical issue that could potentially determine Himmel’s future.

“Fafnir…. We thought it was lost, but to think it was buried in such a place.”

The mechanical dragon Fafnir.

Among the mechanical weapons created by their ancestors, it was incomparably stronger than any other—the ultimate weapon of old Himmel.

The parliament received reports from the territory reclamation team that Fafnir had reactivated and headed toward the Great Desert, and immediately designated this as top-secret information and a core discussion topic.

They needed to decide what attitude they should take regarding Fafnir’s revival.

“We must recover it, of course! It’s the legacy left by our ancestors! We can’t let it fall into others’ hands…!”

“If we secure Fafnir, even that dragon lord would no longer be a problem. Not just the dragon lord, but those monsters too…”

“This is an opportunity! A gift from our ancestors!”

Some members insisted on immediate recovery without further consideration.

“Do you even know where it is now? What condition it’s in? Do we have a way to recover it?”

“They say it headed toward the Great Desert. There’s a possibility it was destroyed in battle with the monster that descended there…”

“I heard that monster was slain by the demigod of Hestella… I hate to think it, but could Fafnir have fallen into human hands? …It might not be easy to get it back peacefully.”

Others questioned whether recovery was realistically possible, though they agreed it should be done.

“What if they refuse? Humans consider Fafnir one of the ‘Four Evil Gods.’ If they learn its identity, they’ll cause an uproar and try to destroy it.”

“Can we even use it if we recover it?”

“Well, according to documents I’ve read, that machine has an artificial consciousness installed… would it even side with us?”

“Hmm… if we could activate ‘Regin,’ there would be no problem. But as that’s impossible now… there’s no way to know.”

Some members were even negative about the recovery attempt itself, since there was no way to know if recovering Fafnir would actually benefit them.

Due to the varying opinions among the members, it took an extremely long time for them to reach a conclusion.

So much time passed that news of the evil god’s defeat spread throughout the continent, and word that the Holy State had secured an unidentified “mechanical egg” as a trophy reached Himmel.

—-

Upon hearing news about the mechanical egg, Himmel judged that Fafnir had entered a dormant state and was therefore safe, so they requested the Holy State to hand it over.

Of course, they didn’t brazenly ask for it for free; in exchange, they promised massive financial support and full cooperation with the Great Desert containment.

“…Something seems suspicious. Let’s stall for time for now.”

However, Agnes of the Holy State did not accept their request.

The reason was that it seemed highly suspicious that the dwarves showed unusual interest in the mechanical egg while saying nothing about its identity.

Therefore, Agnes avoided giving a definite answer and stalled for time, claiming that she was merely keeping the mechanical egg temporarily and that its ownership belonged to Haschal.

With the Holy State’s leader taking such a stance, Himmel’s parliament had no choice but to wait quietly.

They were told to speak to Haschal if they wanted the egg, but Haschal himself had not yet awakened due to battle fatigue.

So what could the parliament members do?

Even if they took a hard line, claiming they had no time to waste, it was obvious they would only incur the enmity of the human demigod who would eventually recover and awaken, rather than getting the mechanical egg back.

If they insisted they wouldn’t cooperate with containment measures unless the mechanical egg was returned promptly, only they would suffer if monsters crossed the border into Himmel.

They had no choice.

All they could do was wait desperately for Haschal to awaken and build defensive lines at the border with the Great Desert to guard against monster invasions, as the Holy State had urged.