kscans

Chapter 78 - Akitsuki Uta and What Sleeps With Her

Back at the church, the priest guided us to the hundred-year-old hero's tomb in the basement. The party consisted of the priest leading the way with a lantern, all the members of Levante, Kalpana, Hyakka, and Chihiro.

The basement wasn't completely dark. Small, glowing stones were embedded in the corridor walls at intervals, and their faint light cast an eerie atmosphere. The hero's tomb was apparently on the lowest level, with the church built on top of it.

I walked alongside Kalpana.

"How was Chihiro?"

I whispered to her.

"Well. I think he is a wonderful person. However, he feels a little too young for me."

A picky one, she is. Of course, I didn't say that out loud.

"I see. There are only six others summoned by the five goddesses. I wonder how many of them are men..."

Personally, I was hoping they'd all be beautiful girls.

"Mash-sama. I have come to think that I would like my first to be you. How about you grant me to another after I have conceived?"

"What kind of person do you think I am? I'm not that great, nobody would be happy about it, and both you and I would be resented."

"Is that so? I believe many would rejoice at having a child who carries Mash-sama's blood,"

she replied. It seemed she was serious, but I wondered if she was in her right mind.

"Besides, once is all it takes. I would never hand you over to another man."

"I-Is that so... But you have started relationships with many people in the mere month you have been in this world. At the rate you are acquiring lovers, won't it become a serious problem?"

She had a point; I did feel like I'd gotten a bit carried away. I remembered Mizuki asking if she and Famu weren't enough for me.

"You don't even like me yet, do you?"

"Actually, what Mash-sama did to me, and the act between you and Laciel-sama... I cannot forget it. I want to be pierced by you as well, Mash-sama,"

Kalpana said with a deep sigh.

"...At that point, isn't it fine to just say you like me?"

"That is true, but the more I think about it, the more confused I become. But I have learned that a person's charm and falling in love with them are two completely different things."

So her feelings of not liking me hadn't changed. And yet she was talking about wanting me to hold her. I thought she was a truly strange person, but she carried the burden of the wandering folk and was facing the prospect of a nightmarish clan tradition, so perhaps it couldn't be helped.

"Anyway, you should have just kept it to yourself. It's impossible unless Famu agrees. She'll see right through you."

"I cannot be insincere with you, Mash-sama. ...But she is truly loved, isn't she,"

Kalpana murmured.

We reached the lowest level. There was a door there, like one you'd find in an Area Guardian's room in a dungeon. The priest opened the door. We stepped inside.

The room was, as expected, a domed space just like an Area Guardian's room. It was illuminated from an unseen source, so the lantern wasn't necessary. I could see a door at the far end. There was no six-person limit, nor did the door shut on its own.

In the center was a marble pedestal, and on it rested a coffin, also made of marble. It was a heavy, solid-looking thing. The surface of the coffin was adorned with intricate carvings of flowers and plants.

"Linaria,"

Mizuki said upon seeing the carvings. It was the name of the flower that had been blooming in the plains before we reached the city. I looked around, but there were no other burial goods to be seen.

"The hero from a hundred years ago... if I recall, they led an army, invaded the Demon Kingdom, and defeated the Demon Lord, right?"

I'd heard that Aidan had served in that army. They won that battle, but afterward, the Demon Kingdom launched a counter-offensive, and the old imperial capital, located even further east than Miglutt, fell. Long ago, the old empire had ruled over all the lands. As time passed, the empire split. The Demon Kingdom in the east, the current empire in the west, and a kingdom further west. The old empire's territory shrank to just the land sandwiched between the current empire and the Demon Kingdom. The fallen city was the last bastion of the once-glorious old empire.

"Yes, we call it the Holy War."

"What happened after that, and why is the tomb here?"

"The hero married and settled in this land, Nieren. They then founded this church and donated it to the city. The current Consul is a descendant of the hero,"

the priest answered my question. So the city's Consul acts like a king, wielding the authority of being descended from the hero.

The priest touched the lid of the coffin. The name 'Akitsuki Uta' was inscribed there.

"This is Lady Akitsuki Uta,"

the priest said, his voice filled with deep respect for the one resting within.

"I'd like to check inside, if that's alright."

"You are the hero sent by Lady Laciel. I ask only that you do not forget your reverence for Lady Uta."

The priest stepped back. I nodded, then tried to move the stone lid with Chihiro's help, but it didn't budge an inch. My back started to hurt a little.

"..."

The women, who had been watching, silently came to help.

Inside the stone coffin, on a bed of what looked like silk, lay a woman, clutching a sword to her chest. I looked at Myra in confusion.

"I had just assumed the hero was a man."

"As did I,"

she said, equally surprised.

"When she commanded the Holy War as the hero, her silver hair was not long as it is now; she kept it short and presented herself as a man,"

the priest explained. Even so, I had expected to see bones or a mummy, but Uta looked as if she were still alive, merely sleeping.

"There should be someone else who transferred to this world with her..."

"I do not know of such a person. I believe she was likely alone."

Hearing the priest's words, I looked at Myra.

"I agree. All I have heard passed down is about him... no, about her."

I nodded at Myra's words. Something must have happened to her partner, the other transferee, before the Holy War.

"The hero Laciel transferred a hundred years ago..."

"How do you know she's a transferee summoned by Laciel?"

Mizuki asked as I gazed at Uta.

"Just a hunch. She looks like you, Mizuki. An incredible beauty. It might be her type..."

Uta looked like an adult version of Mizuki. Perhaps when Laciel looks for transferees, she finds a woman she likes and then assigns a potential partner to her. Looking at Uta's sleeping face, I got that impression. She was dressed in a pure white peplos, so it was hard to tell her figure, but she seemed fuller than Mizuki. Her stomach, in particular, seemed slightly swollen. As I was lost in these thoughts, I noticed Mizuki staring at me, her face bright red.

"What's wrong?"

"N-Nothing!"

Mizuki averted her gaze.

The priest, who had peered into the coffin, had a puzzled look on his face.

"There should have been a mirror and a sword placed as her burial goods."

The priest searched, but the only things in the coffin were the sword she held, and what was probably her smartphone. Other than that, there was a silver necklace and small diamond earrings she wore.

"Could it be the mirror Lady Laciel mentioned?"

Kalpana said.

"That might have been what Mii's group was after,"

I replied. There was nothing else of note.

"May we take out the burial goods?"

At Myra's words, the priest nodded. She carefully lifted the sword from Uta's grasp. I picked up the smartphone. Mizuki snatched it from me.

"I'll check it!"

"..."

She glared at me. I wasn't going to check a dead person's search history, of course. But I was curious what a beauty like her searched for.

Mizuki tried pressing the power button, but there was no response. As expected, a smartphone left for a hundred years wouldn't work.

"I'll try charging it."

She placed the smartphone in her storage.

Myra drew the sword from its sheath and examined it. It was a double-edged sword. A one-handed sword, perhaps? It was an ambiguous size for a two-handed one. The blade was free of rust and shone beautifully. It certainly didn't show the passage of a hundred years. It was likely a magic-infused sword like the one Aidan made for me. There seemed to be characters carved into the blade.

"Our Lord God is the One and Only, Without Form, Void Yet Spirit-Filled,"

Myra read aloud.

"What does that mean?"

"My interpretation might be wrong, but: 'God is the one and only existence, has no form, and exists as spirit.' I believe it's the opening of the Inari Daishinpi Bun."

"From an Inari shrine?"

Mizuki, Hyakka, and Chihiro looked surprised.

"What are you surprised about?"

Myra asked.

"Most of the shrines in our world... churches, you would call them... they enshrine a god with ties to that particular land from among the eight million gods. In other words, it's a polytheistic religion, just like this world. But this text seems to deny the eight million gods and state that there is only one God,"

I explained.

"How d'ya know somethin' like that?"

Hyakka gave me a suspicious look.

"Well, I went sightseeing once, got curious, and looked it up. That grand shrine was said to have been built about thirteen hundred years ago by a clan of foreign origin. They claimed to be descendants of an emperor who once ruled the continent and used his surname, but they were apparently a clan that worshipped a monotheistic deity. The name of the temple where they worshipped that god on the continent became the name of the place where they lived in Japan. Uzumasa."

I decided not to mention the difference between the characters '太' and '大'.

"...That's surprising, but what's the point of that story? Just showin' off?"

"Well, it's corroborating evidence."

I told them how the Ark of the Covenant from the Bible of a certain Eastern monotheistic religion was brought to this world and called the 'Ark.' And how mana flowed from the jar that was stored within it, enabling magic in this world. I added that the clan that brought the Ark of the Covenant to Japan was the very same one that built that grand shrine, and that someone with a blood connection to them was being summoned to this world. I also explained that the transferees summoned by someone other than the five goddesses were told by a god that if they defeated us, their wish would be granted by the power of the Ark.

This was all my own hypothesis. I didn't know how Uta had obtained this sword. But since she seemed to have been pursuing this matter as well, I figured it was safe to proceed with this as a premise.

"So what does it all mean?!"

"I don't know for now. But Laciel told Kalpana to find a mirror. The Ark and the items stored within it. I'm sure they're planning to do something using these. Of these, aside from the broken jar, the Ark is in the Imperial Capital, and the Emperor has the staff."

"Got it. Ya wanna secure whatever ya can, right?"

"As for the remaining mirror, there should be two, and Famu has one of them."

"Eh? You're awfully well-prepared..."

Hyakka looked suspicious.

"The special skill Famu acquired is likely one of those mirrors."

"I didn't know where the other one was, but apparently Uta had it."

"So someone stole it... This is tough without any hints,"

Hyakka murmured.

"The staff the Emperor holds is likely a katashiro. The original was held by the emperor of the old empire,"

the priest said.

"So that means it's in the current Demon Kingdom."

"There's no proof,"

the priest replied to Hyakka, but he seemed confident.