NOVEL WEB Chapter 203: Time to go home.
I didn’t know whether to feel guilt over the barrier falling or not, to be honest. I had never even thought about the barrier’s existence in the first place in the first place, making this new development rather ambiguous.
Thankfully, the dry man and the pope left us to recover from our surprise and freshen up, as their arrival had, by itself, left us both filled with adrenaline.
When, half an hour later, the inquisitor walked in on the fours of us sitting comfortably at his dining table, Emeri and I were glad that he reacted even worse than we did. He had stood there, not believing his own eyes. It took a while for him to realise that this was all real and even when he finally came to his senses, his explanation did little to diminish the dangerous glint in the pope’s eyes.
I had hoped that the recent turn of events would exonerate him of any guilt in the eyes of the church, as had happened for us, but it seemed that his insubordination wouldn’t be forgiven that easily. At least he would live to see the consequences. Hopefully.
“So what’s going to happen now, your holiness?” Emeri eventually asked, interrupting the pope’s unsuccessful attempts at making small talk with the dry man. Even questions about his daughter, Alice, couldn’t get the stoic relic to open up.
“Something interesting, I should think.” He replied with a mad glint in his eyes. Though that impression might have been my imagination, as the glint disappeared as quickly as it had come. A switch had been flipped in the pope’s mind as he reverted to the kind grandfather image that he was trying so hard to emulate. “Oh, and call me Myers in private, you two. Something tells me you two will eventually earn the right to call me by that name anyway.”
At this point, the dry man extrapolated.
“What the pope means to say is that ‘conflict’ is about to happen. To what scale, we can’t yet estimate.”
Emeri cringed at the thought of causing this issue, but I had to admit that I felt excited at the prospect, rather than guilty. Imagining the sights one could see outside of the continent filled me with anticipation.
“Are there many people living in the lands beyond the barrier, then?” I asked, curious.
“It’s difficult to say, as none of us has managed to venture there. From the records, though, the ‘other continents’ are said to quadruple the size of our own. It stands to reason that just as many people live there, then. We can only hope that they stand just as divided as we do.”
I nodded, turning pensive.
“If we’re outnumbered so badly, shouldn’t we try to form alliances with the other countries along the coast?” I wondered aloud. “I know that Roa and the between lands are landlocked, but if our neighbours are conquered, we will follow and lose out on vital trade. Doesn’t Roa rely on an Elos-owned channel to reach the sea?”
The dry man nodded mutely, while the pope, ‘Myers’, seemed quite enthused by the idea.
“Oh yes! An alliance between sovereign nations! Why not go a step further and involve the entire continent? Such a show of unity should scare off any would-be colonisers.”
Hearing this, the dry man choked on his drink, nearly spitting it out in the process.
“Have you finally gone mad?! Do you have the faintest clue how long establishing such an alliance could take to form? We’ve only a few months to prepare before we make contact with the outside world, at best!”
Despite the dry man’s protests, Myer’s maintained a wistful look on his face.
“Don’t be so pessimistic, my favourite colleague. We could easily speed the process along by gathering everybody in one place, couldn’t we? A continental meet, if you will! Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
The dry man frowned, no doubt trying to figure out the pope’s angle. Truthfully, I couldn’t see why Myers was so enthusiastic about the idea either. I supposed that it had something to do with spreading the influence of the church beyond the continent? Either that, or Myer’s had something else in mind…
“You’re forcibly trying to involve Ostapor, aren’t you?” the dry man eventually asked.
Myer’s simply smiled, not denying the accusation.
It took a moment for me to think of what they were getting at. Ostapor was the largest country on the continent, an empire that had been formed even since its leader advanced to the seventh tier. Ostapor was famous for its militaristic culture that entertained few frivolities and saw traditions and culture as a waste of resources.
All of this made it a frightening variable, a sleeping giant that was only kept in check by the influence of the church. If the church sent a bunch of troops to go explore distant lands while Ostapor remained behind…
It only made sense that the pope would have his reservations. At the same time, the opportunity to convert a whole new continent, if not several, was too good to pass up on.
The dry man broke his stare down with the pope by shaking his head.
“So you have gone mad. You should know that the iron emperor won’t leave his seat. On top of that, no diplomat is capable of convincing him otherwise. Without his go-ahead, Ostapor won’t move an inch. No matter how much their clans struggle and bicker amongst themselves, they won’t disobey their ‘god’.”
At this, the pope spread his hands exuberantly.
“You are correct, of course! Thankfully, I know just how to convince that rusty old sword to abandon its sheath! With the right bait, anything can be lured. From there, all we need to do is awaken his competitiveness!”
“’We’?”
“…I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to cooperate just this once…”
Later that evening, Emeri and I were already on a boat back to Roa. The pope and the dry man hadn’t given us the details of their plan, but it turned out that we never needed them to do so in the first place.
This was because, apparently, they never intended to keep it a secret in the first place, as became evident when we encountered a commotion on deck, right before we were set to depart.
In the middle of the commotion, a man was holding up a newspaper with a bold title written on the front page.
The dry man of the between lands advances to the seventh tier- announces himself as the most powerful classer on the continent!
I couldn’t stop myself from doing a double-take, knowing such a declaration to be far outside of the dry man’s usual pattern of behaviour. All around us, people were gossiping about this new development. Being to close to Alterian, everyone seemed entirely convinced that the pope was by the strongest person on the continent. This didn’t stop them from gossiping about the possibilities, however.
There was a lot of back and forth about how the other classers of the continent would take this declaration, for example. The wandering wind, a lady that could summon powerful winds that carved mountains, supposedly wouldn’t care. She hadn’t even bothered settling somewhere and likely wouldn’t be interested in the title of ‘the strongest’.
Mulio’s sea-king, who was only a pseudo-tier 7 classer due to a failed trial, was thought to be the weakest of the 6 tier 7 classers on the continent, and therefore didn’t have the power to contest the dry man.
The last two classers were bound to care, however. The emperor of Ostapor, for one, would see the declaration as a challenge to his authority, while the earth elemental nestled right above Giurna saw personal power as the only thing that mattered. Not dissimilar to Dalius, in fact, now that I thought about it.
One could only hope that this ploy would work and attract all of them to the upcoming continental meet.
For now, though, I turned my sights to the ocean. It was time to go home.