Chapter 229: 122. Aihrance’s Underground Labyrinth -3 (Part One)
The very first Holy Emperor, Ordin Olfolse.
He was the first one to plant the seed of ‘faith’ in this continent, and then went onto establish a religion based around that very faith.
Furthermore, he founded the very first incarnation of the faith-based theocratic nation, and commanded twelve thousand Priests to craft a certain item, a task that took several decades to complete.
And that item was the treasured tool capable of summoning an ‘angel’. A sacred sword of the gods, also commonly referred to as the greatest relic in the land.
However, that was nothing more than an ancient mythical tale.
No detailed explanation on what it looked like or what its exact ability had been passed down.
I was currently in the library located inside the Aihrance royal palace. Alice and Hans were accompanying me.
Right now, she was diving deep into the pool of magical knowledge found in this place in order to satisfy her near-unquenchable curiosity. All those grimoires authored by magicians with value systems and thought processes quite different from Raphael’s could be found just about everywhere in this place, and she was fully exploiting this opportunity to gain access to them.
As for Hans, he was searching for any knowledge related to warp gates. From what we’ve heard, one of only a handful of magicians in the whole continent capable of casting warp magic lived in this queendom, so there should be more than enough data on the spell to be found in this library.
I too was currently searching for information in this place – the records detailing the ‘angel’ that Queen Rox had brought up.
-At the end of the library on a shelf marked ‘5785’, you will find records pertaining to the angel.
She revealed to me during the dinner that she had personally witnessed the angel’s prowess.
I roamed around this helical-shaped library where hundreds of thousands of books had been stored. After checking out the rows of numbers on the shelves, I raised my head up high to look up.
“…Well, that’s pretty high, alright.”
The top of these shelves could barely be seen from down here.
I procured a ladder, propped it against the shelf, and slowly climbed up.
“Found it.”
I took out the tome that Queen Rox had told me about and flipped it open. It contained records of the queen’s journey in the labyrinth, Titalos, and the events that happened forty years ago.
-That place is like a completely different world; it boasts a new and different ecosystem from ours.
The place featuring an environment and lifeforms of the ancient past, is it?
-My father and I led an army and launched an investigation on the labyrinth. We finally deciphered the ancient rune letters found there. Only after it took us several years to reach this stage did we finally realise the truth. Before the Aihrance royal palace was built on top of it, this place was actually one massive tomb created by someone.
I flipped through some more pages.
My eyes grew larger and larger with every page flipped through.
-We discovered the truth. We finally figured it out. This place, it…
It was the tomb of the first Holy Emperor, Ordin Olfolse.
-A truly horrifying and monstrous ‘item’ lays in slumber within this ancient ruin. This thing, which possesses a humongous figure, fired out thousands of arrows and spears of light, all the while lashing out with hundreds of hooks at the same time. And…
I swallowed back my dry saliva.
-Nearly five hundred knights and magicians, plus two and half thousand regular soldiers were killed in action. During this event, the ruler of this nation, his majesty and my father, had to pass from this world.
Not one person could inflict a single injury on that mysterious yet noble ‘angel’ and it went on to display its majesty to everyone present on that day.
This being, apparently far stronger than any dragon, truly befitted the title of an angel guarding the throne of a god.
I closed the book.
What I learned from this record was that things weren’t as simple as a nice little treasure sleeping quietly in a tomb somewhere, and this ‘creature’ called the angel was guarding said tomb.
“Well, that’s not good.”
“What is?”
I turned my head to Alice after she asked me that question.
She was in the middle of reading books large and thick enough to hide even her face. And such books were forming small hills on the table, too.
“I learned a bit more about this thing called angel.”
Alice’s eyes instantly became round dots resembling a shocked rabbit’s.
She was filled with curiosity towards theology as well as magical knowledge. As such, any mention of the term ‘angel’ would have proven to be quite stimulating for her curiosity.
She even volunteered to come with me the moment she heard the term ‘first Holy Emperor’, so yeah, I was getting really tempted to praise her unyielding drive to acquire more ‘knowledge’.
“The angel really exists?”
She was so shocked that she wobbled unsteadily and nearly dropped the book in her hands, but managed to regain her balance in the end. She sighed in relief and awkwardly smiled at her own clumsiness.
I asked her, “Hang on, you know something about the angel?”
“…Even if you ask me like that, there are a lot of different types and myths accompanying them, so I…”
“What about those myths related to Holy Emperor Ordin?”
Alice put the books away on a nearby shelf, then began combing through her memories while placing her fingertip on her chin.
“There aren’t all that many records, but…” She glanced at me and continued to speak. “They all say that he was a god and a devil, your highness.”
I furrowed my brows.
“The records note that, when he waved his hands around, the ‘surrounding terrain was altered, his believers were saved, and the villains all cried out in despair’.”
Why did that description sound so grand for some reason?
However, we were talking about the very first Holy Emperor here. There’s a good possibility that the records of his exploits had been heavily embellished.
Except that, when comparing those records with Queen Rox’s own accounts, it became harder to say that such descriptions had indeed been heavily dramatised.
Let’s say there’s a dragon going up against the elite forces of the magic queendom. Even if it was a feared dragon, it’d still find eliminating three thousand knights and magicians exceedingly difficult to pull off. Besides, the dragon would also be inflicted with injuries a lot more serious than mere simple scratches, too.
“If the description within those myths are real, then I wonder, will we be able to win against the angel?”
Alice’s eyes opened wider at my question that was directed to no one in particular.
She didn’t seem willing to verbally answer me, since all she did was shake her head while keeping her mouth firmly shut.
She was definitely signalling no.
I rubbed my chin in silence.
While I pondered my options, Alice quietly stared at me. Her lips parted a little as if she wanted to say something, but it seemed that she couldn’t find enough courage to do so.
This state of hers went on for a little while, so I glanced at her to ask, ‘what’s up?’
Only then did she finally open her mouth. “By any chance, your highness. Are you really a Sa…”
“I finally figured it out!”
Alice winced and clamped her mouth shut.
Hans was shouting at the top of his lungs while scattering the documents all around himself. “That’s right! Just who am I?! I’m the genius Alchemist Hans, whose family has been researching warp magic for generations already!”
He then exploded in a peel of crazed laughter.
“Those stinking Vampire bastards! You can live for thousands of years for all I care! We have the knowledge and wisdom passed down through the generations of my ancestors! Hahahahaha!”
His eyes were sunken with bags under them. Blood even began trickling down from his nostrils. The whites of his eyes rolled up and he slowly fell down on his back.
“Mister Hans!”
Alice cried out in alarm and hurriedly dashed over to him, then quickly cast healing magic on the guy.
Hans continued mumbling stuff like, ‘I did it. Sons of b*tches, this is a victory for humans, you damn Vampires…’
It kind of looked to me that he had been working himself to the bone for the past couple of days.
“This dude, how many days has he stayed up already?”
Alice sighed deeply before replying back to me, “I think it’s been about a week, your highness. From the look of things, he must’ve drank a lot of holy water to force himself to stay up.”
Well, I gotta hand it to him for his tenacity, at the very least.
Even though you could drink holy water to heal your physical fatigue, your mind wouldn’t be able to stay up for that long, you know?
I shifted my gaze away to his table. That’s where I discovered a piece of memo and a warp magic circle Hans had drawn.
He had finally figured out the end coordinates of the warp magic the Vampires used.
“Being a genius has nothing to do with one’s station, it seems.”
Hans alone figured out something that hundreds of magicians and Alchemists that called themselves the best in the Theocratic Empire had failed to do. Not to forget, he also deciphered the Aztal Rune, so yeah, this guy was one of those rare geniuses that might show up once in a century or so.
“I guess I’ll have to give him a special bonus later on. Let’s wait until he recovers. We’ll head to Titalos afterwards.”
“Are you really planning to head to the Holy Emperor’s tomb, your highness?”
“Well, I was thinking of visiting my ancestor’s resting place to pay my respect, you see…”
…And to rob the tomb at the same time as well.
Although I didn’t say the latter part of my plan out aloud, Alice must’ve seen through me because a troubled expression was now forming on her face.
I needed the help of both Hans and Alice in order to recover Ordin’s relic. My plan was to head straight to the labyrinth as soon as these two’s conditions fully recovered.
