“Ah?” Vinny’s eyes opened a touch wider. “Didn’t expect this. Don’t tell me we really stumbled right up to the entrance of the deep-buried secret realm??”

“Vinny, you’re probably the only one who actually stumbled in, you know?” Aesphyra tilted her head.

“You’ve got the nerve to bring that up?? You two both flew down and left me up there—what was I supposed to do? It didn’t feel right to abandon you and head back alone, did it? Also what is with you two? Stop talking in riddles, will you? Can you at least tell me what on earth is going on??” Vinny said, none too pleased.

He wasn’t a descendant of the Old Tyrelis imperial clan, nor of the Tyrel Empire’s royals. Family fallen, he had no clue about all the inside stuff they knew, all right??

The information gap was just too big. Aesphyra’s and Isatia’s birthlines let them know plenty of things Vinny didn’t.

“But speaking of which, is the Yellow-Sand Abyss actually a passage??” Vinny looked back at the waterfall of flowing sand behind him. The colossal Gate kept spilling yellow sand without end, and it didn’t look like there was any chance of going back.

Vinny tried to approach and, on instinct, sensed the danger in it.

“Strictly speaking, it should have transferred us into another space. And it looks like a one-way transfer. Once you’re sent here, there’s no way to transfer back by the same means,” Aesphyra said.

“Not necessarily. If the sandstorm shreds someone, the Token auto-returns them, doesn’t it?” Vinny hefted the Token in his hand, joking.

“By the way, why has Isatia been standing there without moving this whole time?” Vinny looked at the black-haired girl before the colossal Gate-Threshold and asked.

“As for Marsmo civilization—or more precisely, the true history of quite a lot of things—Isatia clearly understands more than you do, and even more than I do,” Aesphyra said, not answering directly, her tone full of meaning."

All right then. This White-Haired Nut (Ball) really does get what’s going on.

Vinny knew it.^

Ever since last term, when he had contact with Isatia and played her shield for a while, just from their chats he’d felt that Isatia had an extremely intense interest in history, in the past, and in many saint-favored families.

You could even call it a kind of yearning.,

Vinny didn’t know the reason back then. Thinking on it now, perhaps all of this was tied to the saint-favor Isatia and the Lanteville line held.

As the former mistress of the Lanteville Family, Aesphyra would certainly know plenty about Lanteville matters.,

“Here we go again, here come the riddles again.” Vinny rolled his eyes. “Fine, keep your riddles. But are we just going to stand here like this? Not going to go lend a hand?”

“Even if we wanted to, we probably couldn’t help. Besides—Vinny, haven’t you noticed? Isatia is a very domineering person.” Aesphyra said, amused._

“So what? What about domineering? Don’t tell me your next line is you’re into that type—the more domineering, the better?” Vinny caught a whiff of something; he suspected Aesphyra was about to act up again.

“Eh? Eh? And how did Vinny know that?~” Aesphyra teased with a smiling squint. “That’s right—anything that’s harder to obtain gives a much greater sense of accomplishment when you finally get it. Don’t you feel the same way, Vinny?”

“I know exactly what you are, don’t I?? ‘Into that type,’ my foot. Which type are you not into? As long as the face is pretty enough, any temperament can be a ‘moe point’ in your eyes.” Vinny shot Aesphyra a glance.

Incurable—this one.`

“Vinny, I wasn’t finished talking. So quick to pass judgment?” Aesphyra smiled like a blooming flower.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I know exactly who you are.” Vinny said—then saw Aesphyra take something out from behind her.,

“What’s that?” Vinny asked.

“This is something I picked up on the east side of the palace earlier,” Aesphyra said.

“Huh? Looks kind of familiar?” Vinny stared at the cyan-green thing, feeling like he’d seen it somewhere. Looking closely, it seemed to be the claw of some kind of beast—slender.

“Does Vinny know what this came from?”

“Well... it does look familiar?” Vinny frowned.

“Forgot already? We saw its main body in front of the temple before.”

“Ah! I remember—don’t tell me it’s from that Ouroboros statue with a missing claw?” Vinny suddenly got it.

“That’s right. This is exactly the claw that statue was missing,” Aesphyra confirmed.

“But why would the statue’s claw show up in the palace?” Vinny couldn’t wrap his head around it. “If I remember right, there was a very large residential district in between, and some distance again before the temple. How would a claw end up this far from the statue??”

“That is the question. Vinny, what do you think?” Aesphyra asked.

“What do I think??” Vinny scratched his head, fell into thought, and only after a moment spoke. “The Marsmo throne hall was almost pristine, with no trace of war. It’s very likely they had a civil war, rather than being overthrown by a slave revolt.”

“Mhm mhm, has Vinny finally stepped out of that misconception? And the rest~?” Aesphyra pressed on.

“The rest? ......” Vinny saw Aesphyra deliberately raise the claw in her hand and grasped it in a flash. “Oh! I get it. The statue behind the throne that was rubbed out, and the statue inside the temple that got smashed, and the Ouroboros statue outside the temple—Marsmo’s civil war was driven by divergent worship of deities. They turned their blades on their own over their faith!”

“Mm. Barely correct~” Aesphyra smiled.

“‘Barely’?? Meaning that answer still isn’t final?” Vinny couldn’t help asking.

“Of course not. Vinny, the integrity of this secret realm is astonishing. You haven’t felt it?” Aesphyra weighed the broken claw in her hand. “Any broken thing—its fragments can all be found somewhere in the realm. For example, the statues in the temple from before—they were all there, completely intact, not a single piece missing.”

“What does that prove?”

“It suggests this secret realm was very likely a place where Marsmo people actually lived,” Aesphyra explained.

“But if that’s the case...??”

“Yes, I know what you want to ask. If that’s the case, why is the realm so jumbled that a statue’s claw winds up thrown far from where it belonged?” Aesphyra continued.

“Even if they worshiped rival deities, wouldn’t it have been simpler to smash the idol right there like in the temple? Why haul part of the rival idol all the way over here just to chuck it in the palace? That makes no sense.”

“Is there a chance that everything belonging to Marsmo was scrambled and reassembled by something? That’s why the realm is such a mess—the residential quarter jammed up against the temple, and then immediately the palace, with no rhyme or reason. It’s nothing like the layout an ultra-ancient, contract-minded civilization should have. There are even sixty-four randomized entrances to the realm.”

“Scrambled by what??” Vinny’s mind jumped to that ‘thing’ sealed inside the Order Spire.

It had turned a civilization into a wreck, with ninety percent of the palace swallowed up by untouchable sandstorm.

Probably, only the same thing that wiped out the entire Old Tyrelis Empire overnight could do this.

“So—what do you think it is?” Vinny asked.

Aesphyra didn’t speak. After a moment she lifted her eyes slightly and said, in a low murmur, “A kind of thing humans were never meant to touch.”

“Every nation that touched it and tried to use it, perished in the end.”

“BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!!” Just then, a rolling thunder of sound came from within the spacious stone chamber.

Vinny and Aesphyra looked in unison at that colossal stone door that looked like an open contract.

They glanced at each other and walked up together.

“Isatia?” Vinny called, testing the waters.

That commotion just now seemed to have been caused by something Isatia did.

Vinny suddenly noticed several empty glass vials rolling at Isatia’s feet.

Those looked like the stimulant elixirs he’d sold Isatia before??

Isatia didn’t answer, only stared in silence at the Gate that looked like an open contract.

Vinny noticed, with a start, that the scenery around them had changed. On the stone walls, the Marsmo script carved on each stone brick lit up one after another, brick by brick.

He couldn’t tell if his eyes were playing tricks, but as those bricks lit, he seemed to see slaves with iron chains around their necks, Marsmo characters carved into their faces, their bodies lashed to ribbons.

The characters on those bricks felt like slices of real history that had once happened—imbued with a kind of magic that, the instant your gaze touched them, ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) struck you with an overpowering sense of déjà vu.

“What... are these?” Vinny was stunned.

“The carvings on these bricks should all be personal names,” Isatia explained. “This place should be something like a Place of Contract for Marsmo. But judging by the structure and location of this Place of Contract, what’s stored here are not exalted contracts, but contracts Marsmo deemed utterly low.”

“Slave contracts,” Isatia enunciated. “The Marsmo carved the names of all the slaves they conquered into these bricks in Marsmo script, recorded by family bloodlines. Or, you could call it a curse—locking their fates here for all eternity, sealing them with this Contract Gate specially made by Marsmo priests from the gold of the royal stone, so they would be slaves forever, never to rise again.”

Just hearing Isatia’s explanation sent a chill down Vinny’s back.

How vicious were the Marsmo??

Looked at this way, Marsmo’s extinction seemed like cause for universal celebration.

A civilization like that—better it died early.

“By coincidence or not, the secret realm formed after Marsmo’s fall—the entrance isn’t at the place where contracts with deities were stored, but at the place where the slaves’ contracts were stored.”

“This should just be one stone chamber—the one closest to the Contract Gate,” Isatia said. “As for how many chambers hold slave contracts, the number is probably astronomical.”

“Confirmed this is the entrance?” Aesphyra asked, intent.

“Ninety percent probability. There are no absolutes in this world,” Isatia replied.

No sooner had she spoken than the small door before Isatia pushed open to both sides, revealing a recess.

Inside the recess lay a great many identifying objects: idols, Marsmo people, Marsmo soldiers in heavy armor, slaves hunched under loads with carvings on them, trees, buildings of all different types, and so on.

In addition, there were several frame-like panels.

“These are...?” Vinny hesitated.

“Restoration,” Isatia said, concise.

“Restoring the entire stretch of history of Marsmo’s demise—that’s the key to the deep-buried secret realm.”

“Restore? As in, place these things into these frames in their proper order?” Vinny asked.

“Exactly.”

Restore the whole process from Marsmo’s rise to its fall??

That gave Vinny a headache. He barely had a grasp of what happened in the middle; as for the beginning and the end, he knew nothing.

This was probably something only Isatia—who had studied and understood Marsmo in depth—could do.

“Then, the first frame?”

Isatia didn’t touch any markers related to slaves. After a moment’s thought, she moved the strong, along with some initial buildings, into the frame. In addition, she moved in a huge red stone that looked like a human heart and set it at the very center of the scene.

What was that?

Not just Vinny—Aesphyra couldn’t guess what that thing was either, the one that looked like an enormous human heart.

“In the primeval age, Marsmo people were born with divine strength and had an exceptional sensitivity to magic. This was tied to the soil they lived in. And the reason such soil existed was a divine stone recorded in their chronicles called the ‘Heart of Marsmo’—this enormous red crystal that resembles a human heart. At that time they did not worship so-called Eternity or Continuance; they believed only in their own strength,” Isatia murmured.

“Their powerful bodies let them conquer in all directions and found their civilization. However, every power in the world comes with a price. The blessing from the Heart of Marsmo did carry a price: the lifespans of the Marsmo grew ever shorter.”

“Once they had settled, the Marsmo judged they no longer needed the Heart of Marsmo. Thereafter, for the sake of their civilization’s everlasting continuance, they developed an intense yearning for the authorities of Eternity and Continuance.”

“So they brought in these two deities as the guardian gods of their people, hoping their empire would endure forever and their people’s lifespans would return to normal. Thus, when the Marsmo Royal Palace was built, Marsmo had two deities.” As she spoke, Isatia placed two idols and the palace marker into the second frame.

Aesphyra and Vinny stood by, listening without a word.

“After that, the effects brought by the Heart of Marsmo did not dissipate. Slave uprisings broke out one after another. The Marsmo, steadily losing ground and weakening, concluded that among the gods they worshiped, one of them must be an evil god—one who had not granted aid and was instead bringing calamity upon them. And so, a religious war erupted.”