Chapter 227: Aftermaths (3)

The following evening, Karnak set out from the inn with Varos and Leven at his side. Their excuse was to inspect the remnants of the battle with the cultists and see if anything useful could still be recovered. Serati and Lapicel were left behind at their lodgings.

"There’s no need for too many people," Karnak told them. "You two stay and rest. If anyone comes looking for me, just take the message."

It was a reasonable order, so Lapicel didn’t find it suspicious at all.

"Yes, Lord Karnak."

Of course, Serati knew the real reason.

—You’re heading there, aren’t you?

—Yeah, best to take care of it tonight.

***

It was deep into the night, and the streets were nearly deserted, especially in the areas ravaged by the fire. The desolation felt almost eerie. With Varos and Leven in tow, Karnak walked past the scorched streets.

Eventually, they arrived at a mansion, its upper floors half-collapsed into charred ruins. It was the Tecas merchant guild headquarters. Varos led the way inside, as if he were familiar with the place.

They carefully made their way to a room that had suffered relatively less damage, where Varos pushed aside the broken furniture. The furniture moved easily, and clear traces on the floor showed it had been shifted several times before.

Beneath the cleared debris lay a hidden door leading to the basement. After briefly scanning their surroundings, Karnak and the others opened the door and descended. In the basement was a middle-aged man, bound and battered.

His clothes were little more than tattered rags, his body covered in scars, and his face etched with exhaustion and despair. It was the look of someone who had endured long torment.

When the man spotted them, he groaned in fear. He was Waraine, one of Jedex’s subordinate necromancers. After Jedex’s death, Waraine had tried to flee but failed to escape Varos’s pursuit.

Since then, they had kept him imprisoned here, secretly interrogating him whenever time allowed. It allowed for a steady extraction of information about the Black God’s cult.

"What use is this one anymore, young master?" Varos asked, coldly eyeing Waraine. "Haven’t you already wrung everything out of him?"

"True, I’ve already gotten all the information I need." Karnak replied in an indifferent tone before flicking a finger at the prisoner. "He’s just a catalyst now."

As one of Jedex’s trusted disciples, Waraine had received necromantic teachings and retained a link to the dark arts. That connection made him an ideal bait to draw together the scattered fragments of Jedex’s soul.

"I see." Varos understood instantly. He stepped forward and drove his blade deep into Waraine’s throat.

A fountain of blood erupted as Waraine died on the spot.

Leven recoiled, startled. "H-Hey! Couldn’t you have given me some warning first?!"

"Ah, sorry, it’s become a habit," Varos replied, entirely unfazed.

Not that Leven had any real objections. Though he deeply valued human life, necromancers didn’t count as human in his eyes. Therefore, this wasn’t disregard for life, at least not technically!

"Step back for a moment." With a wave of his hand, Karnak motioned for them to retreat.

He reached toward the ground, and an unseen force flowed from his fingertips, stirring the blood into motion. "By the authority of the Netherworld, I summon thee..."

The pool of blood twisted and danced chaotically, etching complex sigils across the floor. As the blood glowed ever brighter, an ominous energy filled the air. His chilling incantation echoed faintly in the dark basement. "Come forth, Jedex of Tieland..."

A pale mist began to rise. Dozens of blurry human shapes hovered like afterimages around them. It wasn’t hard to recognize their identity. Even through the haze, their unnaturally handsome faces were unmistakable.

Leven blinked in surprise. "

Huh

, it’s not like, you know, his arms and legs coming in separately."

"Hey now, when we say a soul is shattered, it doesn’t mean it’s been dismembered, you know," Karnak explained.

The countless Jedexes each let out cries of chaos. Leven shuddered at the sound. Just hearing those screams was enough to make his skin crawl. Of course, Karnak and Varos didn’t so much as flinch. For them, this was just another day at work.

Karnak began to run his hands through the air. "Now to stitch these pieces together."

Dozens of the soul fragments overlapped one another. Slowly, light returned to the eyes of the ghostly forms. A moment later...

"Did... you... summon me...?" Though not fully conscious, Jedex’s awareness had recovered enough for conversation.

"This part’s not too hard," Karnak murmured.

The real challenge came next. Restoring a scattered soul depended entirely on the necromancer’s skill. It was an extremely advanced technique, but for Karnak, failure was unlikely. What he couldn’t predict, however, was how long the spirit would endure in its current state.

Which is why I need to ask the most important question first.

He had already decided what to ask. The first priority was, of course, this. "Is Tesranach the Dragon Emperor Grateria?"

No matter how unlikely, the possibility had been nagging at him. It was something he had to confirm before anything else. If anyone knew the truth, it would be Jedex, one of the Three Saints of the Black God’s Cult. He was one of Tesranach’s closest aides in this era. Perhaps he was privy to truths that even Demphis or Maloka weren’t.

Unfortunately, the spirit’s answer was disappointing. "That is... a name I do not know..."

"You don’t know the Dragon Emperor Grateria?" Karnak asked once more.

"No... I have never heard such a name..." Jedex replied.

"Well, I wasn’t expecting much." Pulling out a pitch-black cube from within his robes, Karnak showed it to the spirit. "What about this? Do you recognize it?"

Jedex hesitantly answered, "The Anti-Time-Space... Transcender..."

"Right. Then do you know what it’s for? Surely, it has a purpose beyond merely designating the point of return for those traveling from the future to the past?"

The spirit slowly nodded. "There is..."

"What is it?"

Jedex’s voice gradually grew clearer. "To prevent... interference from the goddesses... of this era."

"The goddesses?" Karnak frowned.

The goddesses interfering directly with the plan? That’s strange.

Although they were known as the seven goddesses, they weren’t beings with personalities, as humans imagined them to be. They were more like embodiments of the natural order—forces of existence, not deities with intentions. The reason they were called

goddesses

at all was mere tradition.

Since they birthed and nurtured the world, people instinctively envisioned them as feminine, much like how ships were called

she

. And as such, the goddesses never directly intervened in the mortal realm.

Instead, they bestowed divine power upon their clergy to guide and care for their faithful.

At least, that was what the church taught. The only known instance of their direct interference in the world was through divine prophecy.

That was why the arrival of the Prophecy of Doom had thrown every order into turmoil. An event of that magnitude, which so rarely happened, heralded a disaster of equal rarity.

Unless... they mistook the Dragon Emperor’s protection for the goddesses’ blessing?

If Grateria didn’t exist in Jedex’s timeline, it was entirely possible that they had misunderstood the source of their protection.

Either way, I’ll let him talk.

With a serious expression, Karnak continued his questioning. "Fine. And what exactly are the goddesses doing to interfere?"

***

Once the Anti-Time-Space Transcender had been prepared, Tesranach’s first test subject was Lapicel. He forcibly bound her tormented soul and used it as a sample for the time-reversal ritual.

"Tesranach believed it would be advantageous to use her up like that, since there was no chance she would ever regain her sanity," Jedex explained,

"

Huh

?" Karnak narrowed his eyes in doubt.

No chance of regaining her sanity?

Even with his current, meager power, Karnak had managed to restore Lapicel’s mind to a certain extent. Well, her memories had been wiped clean, so it couldn’t exactly be called full restoration...

But if I made her my vassal, it would be possible.

Of course, not just any necromancer could manage that. It was something only Karnak could achieve. So, then, what about Tesranach?

Did he simply have no intention of trying? Or did he lack the ability altogether?

Given Tesranach’s power, it wasn’t out of the question. He had plenty of other valuable subordinates, so perhaps he hadn’t seen the need to covet Lapicel as well. But what if that wasn’t the case?

Does this mean I have the upper hand, at least when it comes to necromancy?

At any rate, it seemed Tesranach had planned to send all his remaining subordinates at once afterward. The Three Archmages, the Three Martial kings, the Seven Popes. He planned to send every last one of them.

He hadn’t cared much for the order. From the start, the plan was to send them all in a single sweep and wait until they had all arrived. Even if the timing of their arrivals differed by decades, he judged it would make no real difference in the grand scheme of things. On this point, Karnak could understand well enough. He had thought along similar lines himself.

Afterward, Tesranach had sent Elezar back through time first. It wasn’t because of any particular reason. Any one of the Three Archmages and remaining Three Martial Kings could have been chosen first. Tesranach had just picked Elezar at random.

The problem only became apparent after Elezar was sent into the past. Once Lapicel and Elezar were both sent back, Tesranach realized that the tremors in space-time were growing dangerously large.

"When interference from the future exceeds a certain threshold, the goddesses take action. To avoid that, the tremors of space-time had to be suppressed."

The paradox created in space-time as the past selves had their bodies usurped and souls fused with those from the future was what disrupted the goddesses’ providence. This was the problem Tesranach had discovered.

"Wait a moment, young master." Varos, who had been listening from the side, suddenly asked, "Does that mean we were dangerously close to triggering it too?"

If Karnak and Varos themselves had returned to the past, then by this explanation, they would also have created such a paradox at that moment.

"Well, I didn’t notice anything off when I traveled back through time." But Tesranach, too, hadn’t noticed any problems when he sent Lapicel, so there was no way to answer that with certainty. "Maybe things only started to shift meaningfully after we returned, then Lapicel, and then Elezar as well."

At Karnak’s reply, Jedex muttered blankly, "I do not understand what you are saying."

In his current state, Jedex had no idea who Karnak or Varos even were. Of course, with his mind fractured as it was, such an answer was to be expected.

"Ah, I wasn’t talking to you." Waving a hand, Karnak pressed on with his questioning. "So, what happened after that?"

"Tesranach performed precise calculations regarding the repercussions of returning through time."

And he arrived at a conclusion. Barely two more people could be sent safely. Any more than that, and the paradox of space-time would swell beyond control, invoking the goddesses’ providence.

Yet for Tesranach’s plan to work, at least three were necessary. There had to be at least one person to represent magic, one for aura, and one for divine power.

"So, Dreltein and I were chosen."

Dreltein would fuse aura and necromancy. Jedex would merge divine power and necromancy. And with Elezar, already returned, set to merge magic and necromancy, the minimum conditions were just barely met.

"Thus, we arrived in this era first, laying the groundwork and waiting for Tesranach’s arrival."

Meanwhile, Tesranach positioned himself beyond the veil of time and space to devise a solution to this problem. That solution became the obsidian cube, the Anti-Time-Space Transcender.

Having heard this much, Karnak felt an old question finally resolve itself. "So that’s what this strange contraption was for."

The Anti-Space-Time Transcender undoubtedly served as a beacon across time and space. But Karnak had always sensed there was something more to it. Now he understood.

"I thought it was just a beacon... but it’s a breakwater too," he muttered.