chapter 27
A white temple reminiscent of a paradise and a woman wearing a matching dress smiles meaningfully.
Morione, Goddess of Destiny, who can twist even the fate that is inevitable for existence while listening to the happenings and future events of herself and others.
It’s like a word from a god who can accurately predict someone’s future.
A fallen knight who will become his loyal servant.
Those words were too appropriate to cause confusion by filling my head with question marks.
“What do you mean?”
It raises the voice of negative yet suspicious emotions.
If it had been someone other than the goddess who was looking down from the high altar, he would have kicked his tongue offended and lightly ignored it.
It was a wish for me as well.
However, her opponent is the goddess of fate, and if she doesn’t take any action, it means that her words are an immutable truth that will actually happen.
Such a being treats me friendly as if it has known me from the beginning, calls me a knight who will later fall, and calls me his servant.
“Literally, you are the one who will be disqualified as a servant of the goddess for some reason in the future and will fall and become my knight.”
The confident, confident words brought my nerves to a standstill, and Erina and Mir also made somewhat serious but unclear eyes as if they sensed something unusual.
“What the hell did you see to say that to me, the first time I met you?”
I try to ask the question carefully, but with a rather mean-looking face, I grin and shake my head slowly.
“I can’t tell you that, because my fate could be twisted and the future I saw could be changed, so in the not-so-distant future there will be a chance to get a loyal servant.
You see it from a rather bad point of view, but if you change your mind, you will automatically shut your mouth even though you have something you want to say in a very realistic rebuttal.
“……”
A moment of silence came, and as time passed, I realized that I had a scroll of paper that I kept in my arms, so I took out a letter of recommendation from an honorary believer, who I realized late, and gave it to her.
“Here is a letter of recommendation from an honorary member of your congregation. Please give me some advice.”
He bit his lip with a lot of tension as if he had beaten the game, but Morione was full of leeway as if he had expected this.
“I already knew you were going to get it out, because Harold had been looking forward to meeting the old woman and coming here with a letter of recommendation from her.”
Did you know too…
“Then-“
“Even if you get it, it’s not easy to give advice, but I can give the two girls the answers they wanted.”
“Who connects with Harold.”
At those words, the eyes of Erina and Mir, who were looking at Morione with a negative gaze, loosened up a bit.
“Hmm… that’s interesting.”
“What is the answer to that?”
It was as if he had already lost interest in Morione’s words and had forgotten to some extent what he had to say about me.
In my eyes, it was as if they were acting to cover something up, so the aftertaste was somewhat bitter.
“And I’ll try to give a little hint of the meaning of what I said, how about it? I think it’s not a bad condition.”
Whether he used mind-reading magic to look into my head, or even foresaw the fact that I was going to complain, he immediately offered me such a suggestion.
He was able to foresee the fate, and he was inducing a conversation situation that was favorable to him by coping with the problem that others would recover from first.
The type of person who is quite tired of talking for a long time in many ways…. He didn’t seem to have a good personality with me.
“Then… I see.”
When he reluctantly agreed to the proposal of Goddess Morione, he smiled satisfactorily, nodded his head, and pointed out two women except me.
“Black dragon and female adventurer, will you come up to me for a moment and come up to me? I’ll answer the question about which woman Harold is dating first.”
I’m a little skeptical of those words, but one by one they start going up the stairs.
At the same time, a question naturally arises.
“Why am I excluding you?”
“That’s to tell the truth as much as possible. If you know your destiny through me, you can overcome and change your destiny according to your will.”
“The question I’m going to answer is which woman the man named Harold is connected with, so I’m only calling the two of you, because if you, at the center of the case, find out, the fate I’m talking about can easily be twisted.”
Without knowing it, I accepted the fairly plausible logic, and the feeling of injustice subsided and I felt a little more comfortable.
“Well then, I’ll tell you.”
As Erina and Mir stood in front of Morione, she lowered her posture to meet eye level, and soon began to whisper in their ears so that they could not hear me.
I had nothing to do because we had been talking for quite some time, but I was distracted by my surroundings and somehow got rid of my boredom.
“For now, I understand… Let’s try to believe it.”
“That’s not a lie, is it?”
Erina and Mir hear what Goddess Morione has told them, and they begin to make impressions with the feeling that they can’t believe it at all.
“It may be hard to believe, but believe me. I, Morione, swear by the name of Goddess of Fate.”
Morione, who understands the psychology of the two, responds with a serious face to their questions as if she is not lying either. Erina and Mir, too, make a dark expression that they are not sure about. .
“What did you hear?”
They came up to me and asked me some unpredictable questions.
“……”
“The Goddess said you shouldn’t tell me, and… no…”
For some reason, he even gave me a bad look and felt as if he was doubting the very existence of my country.
What the hell did Morione say with such a dark expression on her face…
I couldn’t have expected it.
“Then I’m done dealing with the two women, and now I’ll tell you what you’ve been curious about, even vaguely.”
Then, she smiled again and gave off a suspicious atmosphere that seemed to get tired of it.
“You will become a fallen knight whose vows have been broken by your goddess due to some sort of incident, and no one can serve you.
What Morione said was daringly shocking.
I have no questions about it, but one of the most representative questions is that I am being abandoned by the goddess I currently serve, Eleanor.
Even if the sky perishes, she takes me as a servant and calls me an ‘eternal knight’ and ‘my one and only knight’ and shows a fanatical obsession.
That Eleana like that would break the oath of her own will?
I don’t know what will happen in the future, but it was advice I couldn’t understand at the moment.
“No way, my Goddess will not abandon me.”
Despite such objections, she smiles as if to wait and see, amplifying the anxiety.
“I promise you, if you don’t come to your senses, none other than the goddess you serve, Eleanor, will weep and ask you to take me away.”
I came here to hear the answer to my fate, but I felt rather uncomfortable because I only spoke words I couldn’t understand until the end.
“That’s all I can give you. If you can tell me one last thing, remember what I said earlier.”
What did you say…?
“I said it was for some reason, right? In the future, terrible things will happen to many people, including you, and if you deal with that kind of reason well, everything I have said so far will be a vain lie.”
“Are you sure you said you didn’t want to miss the chance to get a Loyal Seed? Then why are you saying that?”
When I looked back at the words of Goddess Morione with more information than I expected, the relaxed atmosphere had subsided and her eyes suddenly changed.
“Of course, I’m sure it’s my unmistakable greed to get a loyal knight, but…”
He stares into the air with his delicate eyes filled with lingering feelings and sympathy, spit out words that do not understand the meaning.
“I am a goddess who can see even the fate of the gods, so this is what I say.”
“There is a God who wants you just as much as me… or more desperately than that, so it’s a little burdensome to take it away, but I don’t like giving it away either.”
“So, it’s just the feeling of wanting to give you some chance.”
The perception of Morione, who had completely distrusted him with his words and appearance, faded, and instead the boundaries disappeared and he looked at him with a little bit of trust.
It was as if she had something to do with it…. It was a feeling that she couldn’t easily hate her.
“Well… that’s all I have to say, for today, that’s all, but if we ever meet again, I’ll let you know in many ways.”
I still don’t know what truth she’s hiding, so I can’t completely trust her, but at least I can be sure that she doesn’t seem hostile to me.
“Good luck, I hope to see you with a better expression next time.”
After receiving a rather friendly smile, the door to the audience begins to open automatically as if there is no more business.
The structures that felt pure white supported us, and we too had nothing more to say, so we quietly left the auditorium.
“……”
Even before leaving the temple, it was difficult to make a good expression because of the questions that kept interfering with the thoughts in my head.
What was Morione’s gloomy face that she built at the end, is she hostile to me or is she benevolent?
What did he tell them, and what the hell happened in the future, would Eleanor cry and beg her to hand me over to Morione…?
It was just frustrating to ask questions that were seldom answered clearly.
“Harold.”
After going down the many stairs and getting out of the realm of the temple, Mir whispered my name in a somewhat calm voice.
“Why are you doing this?”
He tilted his head slowly at those words, and after maintaining silence for a while, he looked into the air.
“Does Harold not want to be with me?”
He could not easily open his mouth to a rather profound question that could be interpreted in several ways.
“What are you talking about…”
“Herald, as I said before, meaning in my life is in you. Without you I can’t do anything.”
It was as if his energy had been submerged in the water from a while ago, not sure what he had heard from Goddess Morione.
“I heard something from the real Goddess, did you both have a strange atmosphere from before?”
Conversely, he asks them questions, but he hardly ever keeps quiet, letting only silence flow, and no answer comes back.
“Harold, shall we leave for today? I have something I want to prepare a little bit.”
Breaking the heavy atmosphere that continued, Erina first smiled once with a smile that felt a bit sad, and then ran away.
“I’m thinking of something, so I’ll just go ahead and leave.”
Mir also spread her wings and flew away to disappear.
“What is it…?”
Since I met Morione, I felt a sense of alienation in the atmosphere that had changed so quickly, and only the anxiety of unknown reasons was amplified from before.
◆◆◆
Back in time, Erina and Mir were listening to Morione.
At that time, their faces were slightly red from the inflated mood and tension.
He had a shaky expression on his face because of the anxiety and anticipation that he would be able to connect with the person he loved.
“Please tell me, Goddess, with whom Harold is connected.”
Erina carefully opened her mouth and pursed her lips, asking Morione to advise her on fate.
“……”
Mir just kept silent and waited anxiously for Morione’s words.
The atmosphere of these two was full of joy, but on the contrary, Morione seriously folds her eyebrows as if she was in a crisis of identity crisis.
“It’s hard to believe, but you both need to listen.”
Morione spit out those words with a stern tone and took a deep breath.
“If you stay like this, Harold will leave you forever, within a short period of one or two years.”
Although it is somewhat difficult to understand, he speaks out shocking content.
“what?”
Although everyone narrowed their eyes in a feeling that Mir couldn’t quite understand Morione’s words.
“What does he mean to leave? Does he mean to die?”
Erina, who was strangely calm, swallowed dry saliva and opened her serious eyes.
However, Morione answers with an unsure expression as if it was a slightly vague question.
“Honestly… I don’t know.”
“If you, the goddess of fate, don’t know, how do you know?!”
He calms Mir, who is becoming more and more harsh, with gestures, and suggests to listen to the end.
“Calm down a little! I’ll tell you everything I know.”
After barely holding back his anger at those words, Mir quietly kept silent again, and he continued to speak in a cold sweat.
“Herald’s fate takes on an alien form that is completely different from the existence of this world.
At the same time, he corrected them again with a serious and confident expression and sentenced them.
“But I can be sure of this one thing, whatever the reason or any meaning, if left as it is, he will be completely annihilated from this world in the not too distant future, as if he was a person who never existed in the first place… Disappear as if you weren’t from the world.”
At those words, the two were drenched in doubt and anxiety.
“Does that mean he could die… or leave for some reason?”
Erina, whose reason is about to break down, desperately grabs hold of her own mind, barely squeezing out words.
“Yeah… So now you have to take what I said and twist your fate, you don’t want him to leave forever, do you?”
“How can I catch Harold… please tell me…”
Morione put her hand on her forehead as if she couldn’t answer that question, and thought about it.
“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how, but I think it’s probably best to create a reason for him to stay with you.”
At those words, Mir and Erina were lost in thought and the ominous stillness faded for a moment, but they kept their heads together as if something clever had come to mind.
“If you ask me to create a cause… is this even possible?”
“I have one question for you.”
Full of twisted confidence, the two ask her a question in a low voice that he can’t hear.
“If he likes it or hates it, if he locks him up somewhere and watches him forever, wouldn’t he never leave?”
“Whatever Harold’s opinion is, if a child is born between him and me and a life to take care of exists, how long will you stay by my side?”
“Uh… what?”
They start to tremble in embarrassment at the words that they can’t dare to bring out in common sense, but soon they are crushed by the dark atmosphere they feel, and they confide in the truth they shouldn’t have told them.
“Well… I’m not sure… Maybe that’s the way it is…?”
As soon as Morione’s words fell, the atmosphere of Mir and Erina was instantly consumed by darkness comparable to the abyss.