Ch.4040. Southern Swamplands (1)

A few days after the celebration party.

“Here, some nut cookies. And for Minerva… these pickled olives.”

“The Prophet expresses gratitude to her kind comrade.”

[…..Thank you, companion of my friend.]

Our Druid Party (tentative name), having rented one of the guild’s meeting rooms using the privileges of silver-rank adventurers, planned to discuss our next destination while enjoying the cookies and snacks I had specially prepared.

And as the discussion began, I confidently expressed my opinion.

“I want our next destination to be the Southern Swamplands.”

“Southern… The Prophet knows. Isn’t that a dangerous area said to rival the Great Forest where the Conclave is located?”

“That’s right, that’s the place. There should be many magical beasts there that would make good animal companions.”

As Sophia said, the Southern Swamplands are indeed a dangerous area comparable to the Great Forest… but the Great Forest and the Swamplands differ in the nature of their dangers.

The Great Forest is a natural primeval forest composed of trees of incredible density.

Therefore, rather than the terrain being dangerous, it’s all the creatures living there that are dangerous—to exaggerate slightly, one could say the entire ecosystem has developed predatory tendencies.

The Swamplands are also a dangerous environment, but they feel more purely environmentally hazardous than the Great Forest.

Bottomless bogs that swallow you up without a trace once you’re pulled in.

Poison swamps that not only consist of toxic substances but also emit toxic gases.

Additionally, one can commonly find swamps that emit mind-affecting gases or acidic marshes.

Despite these extreme environments, various reptilian magical beasts and horrifying monstrous insects persist stubbornly.

Slimes that inhabit the swamps and aquatic magical beasts that have migrated from the nearby great lake are also threatening enemies.

The magical beasts living in these inherently dangerous swamps have particularly strong territorial instincts in many ways.

Knowing that safe areas for themselves are rare in the swamps, they are exclusive and extremely aggressive toward intruders.

Of course, no matter how dangerous it is, it’s still just a natural environment.

Even in a swamp rich with mystery and magical energy, if the two of us hide ourselves properly, it would be nothing more than a playground for us.

Therefore, since we could easily move around the swamplands undetected if we wanted to, the problems we needed to consider were not physical but spiritual and magical in nature.

“The Prophet… wonders if you would like her to foresee your path.”

“Yes, I’d like to ask that. Even if astrology doesn’t always hit the mark perfectly, it can’t hurt to have it as a reference.”

Astrology, a subcategory of celestial magic. This magic, which draws upon and utilizes celestial power by observing stars and astronomy, is closely related to the fields of prophecy and foresight.

Prophecy is the power to glimpse the future by reading fate, which in more elegant terms is also called the will of the heavens.

According to what my mother taught me, it usually amounts to nothing more than peeking at one of countless possible futures, but…

Sophia’s prophecies are rare in that they can ‘observe’ and thereby determine the possibilities of the future, placing them in a more reliable category than the vague, low-probability prophecies of other druids.

It’s not for nothing that she separates her ego through that strange way of speaking.

There’s a return commensurate with the risk of using her separated ego as a filter to screen out mental strain.

“In that case, the Prophet agrees. The Prophet has decided to follow your wishes.”

And so, Sophia agreed to my potentially unreasonable request and declared that she would use her power.

She then took out several implements from the small bundle she always carried and arranged them on the conference table.

“What’s this…?”

“The Prophet explains that these are tools to assist with astrology.”

As she said, the arrangement of these implements might seem disorderly at first glance…

But to my eyes, with my knowledge of celestial magic, this was a kind of simplified celestial map created by extremely abbreviating and omitting the celestial forms.

Originally, astrology draws foresight through the starry night sky. So just as I was concluding that her intention was magical assistance…

[…Stars, shine forth.]

A scene depicting the celestial realm, the night sky, unfolded within this small meeting room.

‘Is this… a simplified barrier?’

A simple barrier that does nothing but separate the external and internal spaces.

What unfolded inside this simplified barrier, deployed with a short incantation, was the sight of these implements transforming the interior into a small night sky.

[…Therefore, …hmm… see…]

As I gazed at the dazzling stars shining in the night sky, momentarily lost in thought, I began to hear Sophia’s incantations in Elvish language reaching my ears.

[The firmament never descends. Stars, shine brilliantly. Moonlight, smile softly.]

This incantation, growing louder as time passed, didn’t seem to be her intention.

Sophia was now under intense mental strain from ‘observing’ fate, and the incantations flowing from her mouth were likely proceeding unconsciously to suppress that strain.

And then…

“…Phew.”

At some point, as the simplified barrier dissipated… Sophia, who had exhaled deeply, looked at me with slightly hazy eyes and began to speak.

“The Pro…phet saw. Saw directly. Saw, s-saw. Saw…”

“Astra, please.”

[…Alright.]

Interrupting Sophia as she struggled to continue speaking as if she had exhausted herself from running a long distance, I asked Astra to bestow his healing power upon her.

The healing ability possessed by Astra, a silver deer—originally a lower-class magical beast—is top-tier within the lower class realm, but… a silver deer’s healing ability is fundamentally a power that restores physical damage and loss.

However, after Astra grew to middle-class due to the influence of forming an animal companion contract with me,

Astra’s healing ability grew not only in output but also in applicable range.

As a result, the silvery healing energy emanating from Astra’s horn permeated Sophia’s brain, mind, and separated ego, healing the damage and dispelling the strain.

“Are you feeling a bit better now?”

“…Yes. The Prophet conveys her gratitude.”

Thanks to this, Sophia, having recovered from all the damage received during the process of glimpsing fate, bowed her head slightly in gratitude and began to explain the fate she had been able to read.

“The Prophet says that there is a deep connection between you and the Southern Swamplands.”

“A connection… Do you mean an animal companion?”

“The Prophet doesn’t know that precisely, but that’s generally correct. The Prophet saw an unusual connection.”

After speaking thus and pausing briefly, Sophia only continued after finishing one of the cookies I had made, filled with sunflower seeds, and a glass of milk.

“In the future the Prophet saw, there doesn’t seem to be any great danger in the swamplands.”

“By no great danger, do you mean we won’t die?”

“The Prophet thinks… something like that. At least in the sense that there’s no mortal danger.”

“That’s a relief, then.”

Sophia’s ‘observational prophecy’ is absolute.

Once she has observed something, the fate of this world is fixed in the form she observed, and there is no way for fixed fate to change unless there is intervention by a transcendental being.

No, rather, it is precisely because they are transcendental beings that they cannot escape the influence of fixed fate.

In that sense, it’s truly fortunate that at least we won’t die if we visit the swamplands right away.

…After all, having someone you’ve formed a relationship with as a companion die wouldn’t be a particularly pleasant experience.

※ ※ ※

Sophia, the Prophet of the Celestial Conclave, moved her body through her divided ego and gazed thoughtfully at her companion… Gregory Aleinos.

He was a man who, despite clearly being younger than the Prophet, didn’t particularly feel younger—a man who could be described as the most beloved by the mysteries of the wild among all the druids the Prophet had seen so far.

Not only did he have a delicate yet somehow wild appearance, but his build, at least two heads taller than herself—whom she had never considered small—played a decisive role.

On top of this, his overwhelming talent for wild magic was sufficient to form contracts with no less than four animal companions and still have plenty of capacity left, and the fact that he had reached middle-class at the young age of what seemed like barely 20 also proved his talent and combat prowess.

[…My friend.]

Although Minerva, the Prophet’s animal companion, called out to her in a somewhat peculiar voice, Sophia deliberately blocked her familiar’s thoughts while reflecting.

Though they had become companions unavoidably due to the fate bound by the strings of connection she had observed, she had somehow grown fond of him… a friend.

She sincerely hoped that her relationship with him would last as long as possible.