Chapter 372

Chapter 372

For Sale. Fallen Lady. Never Used.

Episode 372: Boiling Silence

As planned, as soon as we left the Great Forest, we used teleportation to head to the southeast of the continent. To find the sealed place of the Boiling Silence.

And Iona’s uneasy feeling was right.

…In a slightly strange way.

“The cliff you see past here is the entrance. It looks like a stone block with nothing, but it’s actually a cave with the entrance hidden by the power of concealment…”

“Ah! Are you talking about that, Master?”

“…What? Why isn’t it hidden?”

The sealed place of the Boiling Silence was buried deep underground in a cliff, as it was really randomly thrown away.

And they made the believers dig a cave.

Although this place was remote, it was not a place where there were no people at all, so they must have covered it up in case someone would doubt a suddenly created cave.

Anyway, since we saved some trouble, I put aside my doubts for a moment and went inside.

A long staircase stretched downward. The steep incline forced us to focus on our footing.

“Everyone stop. There’s a trap right in front of us where poisonous gas pours from the ceiling. The power of concealment is applied here, so it’s colorless and odorless, but the effect is the same, so let’s drink the antidote first. After that–”

“You mean this foul-smelling green smoke right here?”

“Y-yeah… probably?”

Why is this visible? Isn’t this a trap where you suddenly get poisoned while you’re off guard, and then believers rush in from the front and back and attack you frantically?

I was dumbfounded, but the poison was not hidden, and there was no attack from the cultists. Had they really been wiped out that thoroughly?

No. Still, it’s the Boiling Silence. This could be a device to make us careless.

…But even after that, similar situations continued.

“Everyone stop. This entrance itself is a trap. It’s a trap where you get nervous after the long stairs and enter the base, and then when you see an empty room and feel empty, the door suddenly closes and monsters rush in from all sides!”

“The door is already closed, Master.”

“Huh?”

The trap that almost made me rage quit when I was playing H&A was completely blocked.

“After passing through the side door, there will be a room full of complete darkness. Torches or light magic are useless, and the five senses are also limited, so you have to put your hands on each other’s shoulders and enter.”

“Light!”

Fwoosh.

“Wh-what? Light magic works, Student Yandel?”

“Huh?”

The power meant to isolate party members—annoying but effective—had long since lost its strength.

“Next is a room that seems normal, but it’s actually an illusion. You have to step exactly where I step to find the correct path.”

“Uhh… Junior? It’s definitely a maze, but it’s just… plainly a maze. And I don’t know what was originally in here, but now it’s so hollow we could probably break right through.”

“……”

At this point, nothing surprised me anymore.

I just coolly smashed the trap that once forced me to take a memorization test and went further down.

“This is the final area. It’s less of a trap and more like a treasure hunt. Anyone who’s made it this far would be considered a serious threat, so the focus was on hiding the seal as best as possible…”

“Brother! Over here! I struck a suspicious-looking floor and found a passage leading underground!”

“…Of course. Looks like the power isn’t working here either.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or not.

This was an enemy who had tricked me countless times—and whom I’d deceived just as many in return. A formidable Evil God I could never afford to underestimate, even with the overwhelming advantage of knowing the future.

That was what the Boiling Silence meant to me. More than brute strength, they wielded cunning, which was why I’d rushed to crush their influence first.

But judging by the state of their sealed site… maybe I had overdone it. I must’ve wrung them out so thoroughly that their final dagger was that twisted descent of the Grotesque Proliferation.

The fall of a powerful enemy was joyful and bittersweet… a subtle feeling.

“Well, either way… it’s time to put an end to this old grudge.”

The Boiling Silence was right below.

The first thing I felt was a strong stench.

“What is this…?”

The void, which originally had nothing, was covered with a foul smell that I couldn’t even imagine what it was.

Splash.

Even as soon as I took a step, I felt a lukewarm and sticky liquid. The moment I tried to look into what it was carefully…

Iona, who noticed faster than me, frowned and said,

“This is the smell of blood.”

“…Huh?”

“It’s not just the smell of blood, it’s the smell of rotting corpses soaked in blood. It’s a smell you can usually only smell in abandoned battlefields or the castles of fallen vampires.”

I didn’t ask why it smells like that here. I had a guess. So I cast a spell instead of answering.

“Light.”

Perhaps in an attempt to live up to its name, the place of the Boiling Silence offered no natural light—so when the spell lit up the cave like midday, it also confirmed something else: This place was no longer the Boiling Silence’s territory.

The now fully revealed void looked just as I expected.

The wide space was filled with the corpses of cultists and monsters. Blood from various races had pooled together, rising up to our ankles, slowly decaying.

Just like their master—slowly falling apart.

“…It’s human sacrifice, Brother.”

“And a massive one at that, Husband.”

“It seems so. Everyone, be vigilant just in case.”

Helena and Solari, practically experts in this field, confirmed it with certainty. Everyone quietly raised their mana and divine power and stepped forward cautiously.

…But once again, nothing happened. Only the nauseating stench and the sickening texture of rotting blood clinging to our ankles made us uneasy.

As the silence became uncomfortable, a white crystal lump floating alone in the void, where everything was stained crimson, was visible.

“Master? Maybe that’s…”

“Yeah. It’s the seal of the Boiling Silence.”

It radiated a sacred aura—strange for an Evil God, but seals were often like that.

They were usually formed using opposing powers, so it made sense for it to appear sacred.

By the way, seeing that nothing has happened even though we’ve come this far, are they really dying? Really?

I tilted my head inwardly and was about to take one step forward to the crystal…

-So you’ve made it here in the end.

“I guess you weren’t mute?”

I roughly replied and immediately took out Mistletoe and brought it to the crystal.

Then, Mistletoe, which had been like an ordinary branch until now, was surrounded by a faint green aura, and then it started to wriggle and wrap around the crystal.

A strange sight that seemed to restrain or take root.

-So this is it… I see. So this is how the seal is completed. Absorbing divine power to continually weaken the target… A classic method, but always effective.

“For you, who have lost most of your believers, it’s no different from a death sentence.”

-Heheheh. You’re right about that. More divine power is leaking out than I can recover, so eventually, I’ll even lose my divinity. I see now… You’re not just trying to banish me beyond this world… You’re trying to erase me entirely.

“If you did something worthy of death, you should die. Like the Grotesque Proliferation.”

-As I expected, the Grotesque Proliferation has been erased too. A pity. I had no eyes to witness their final moments. Could you tell me how they met their end?

“You’ll experience it yourself.”

-Why don’t you tell me? I’ll give you my sacred object.

“Fuck off.”

-Then how about the plans of other Evil Gods? I’ve been involved in most of the operations, so I have a rough idea.

“……”

I know that too. But I didn’t answer this time. Their constant attempts to talk were strangely suspicious.

Even now, Mistletoe pulsed as it drained the Boiling Silence’s divine power—but I refused to let my guard down. I’d been caught off guard far too many times before.

As if they had read my thoughts, the Boiling Silence let out a derisive chuckle.

-Ha. I suppose now that your business is done, you’ll pretend not to hear me. A wise choice, if nothing else.

The crystal, now more than half covered in Mistletoe, vibrated, and an eerie laughter echoed throughout the void.

After laughing for a while, they suddenly stopped laughing and continued in a nonchalant voice.

-Well, fine. It’s boring without a response, but I can talk to myself if I must. Too bad for you all, but until you destroy this seal, you won’t be able to silence me.

And so, they really did continue, talking to no one, while we said nothing in return.

-Let’s see… You’ve probably figured it out by now, but we weren’t always Evil Gods. We once had different names—different divinity, different natures entirely.

-You. The young god with that fancy title, Righteous Radiance. How long do you think your glory will last?

-A god’s fall from grace doesn’t always come at another’s hand. Take me, for instance. I’ve forgotten my original name, but I clearly remember that I was once worshiped as a god of wisdom—not trickery.

-The Grotesque Proliferation was the same. Tainted Unity was the god of abundance, Intolerant Plunder was a god of justice like you, and Reckless Roar was the god of war.

-Ah, Serpentine Leisure, you probably know best. He was originally the god of the sea, Surging Waves.

-Just to clarify, I don’t know what Lofty Dominion was. That one fell from grace long before even I did.

-Anyway, back to the point. Righteous Radiance, you naive little god. How long do you think you’ll remain divine?

-Just as children eventually grow independent from their parents, humanity will one day outgrow the gods. And do you know what happens to a god who’s no longer needed?

-Two outcomes. Either the god accepts they’ve outlived their use, relinquishes their divinity, and returns to the natural flow…

-Or they refuse to disappear and desperately cling to existence, eventually embracing corrupted faith and falling.

-You’ll learn this soon enough. The day will come when priests who sang of love are treated like common whores, and those who revered wisdom are branded as frauds.

-No matter how bright the sunlight, it’s still just a phenomenon. Justice and order will, in time, become mundane things no longer seen as sacred.

-Those who learned from us will be the ones to cast us out. And they’ll say this is how it should be. That this is the natural order.

-And honestly? They’re not wrong. In a way, it is the growth of the human species as a whole.

-After all, even now, in some corner of the universe, gods are fading away, accepting it with grace, blessing their children’s future as they vanish.

-But… But I couldn’t accept it! We couldn’t accept it!

-What are we, then, if not disposable tools? What becomes of all the love and devotion I poured into this world?

-Even if I could let it go, why should my followers suffer through such cruel times?

-I couldn’t accept it. I became an Evil God because I refused to accept the cosmic law that drives transcendents into oblivion… that irresistible, absolute flow of fate.

-The other Evil Gods… likely have similar reasons. Some rebelled to strike down the very ones who forced their fate upon them. Some fought simply to survive. Some sought to prove they were right all along.

-But in the end… I suppose these tales are wasted on children. This world is still young. Humanity is young. Even the gods are young.

-It’s natural for the young and brave to ignore the words of the old. So be it. Let’s change the subject for a moment.

-You, my adversary. The anomaly who ruined the old gods’ final wishes. The child this world calls Yandel Lindelheit…

For the first time, the Boiling Silence, who had been rambling without pause, fell quiet.

Then, with a beat of silence, they continued.

-You… have seen the future, haven’t you?