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Translator: Snorri
Proofreader: theunfetteredsalmon
Amon quickly improved at controlling the boat. He pointed the staff into the distance. Waves appeared around the Ironbacks, sending them towards the boat. Then he flicked the staff upwards and an invisible force dragged the Ironbacks onto the boat.
The boat was spacious enough for five big Ironbacks.
Exhausted and afraid of this strange space, the four big ones sprawled on their stomachs cautiously. The king seemed to feel something familiar towards this invisible boat, looking around doubtfully, but finally, it swept its tail gratefully towards Amon before lying down to relax.
These Ironbacks were at least as intelligent as human children. They knew that Amon had saved them. In fact, Amon rescued them because he was sure that he could keep them under control. He could see that these beasts had used up their strength fighting the flood. Moreover, he was now able to control the inner space of the boat so he could toss the beasts back into the water if he so desired.
With the weight of five Ironbacks, the invisible boat became much heavier. Fortunately, the boat was large enough to float on the water, and Amon didn’t find that he had to use any more power to navigate. The boat continued to stagger forward in the rain and finally reached the high mountain on the other end. The cliffs were shaped as if they were split by a sword. Grotesque, sharp rocks hid in the torrents quietly, waiting to cut everything passing over them into pieces. Amon found the spot Schrodinger had been pointing to, a smooth cliff.
The boat was about to hit the rock wall, so Amon subconsciously slowed the boat down. But Schrodinger suddenly started to purr with discontent and threw a glare at Amon. It unhesitatingly waved the paw at the front, seemingly to tell Amon to run straight at the cliff.
After so many bizarre experiences, Amon had no intention to disobey this cat’s order. If it wanted him to hit the cliff, then he would hit the cliff. After all, this boat seemed to be quite solid, Amon thought he could stand a shock if he was ready. The boat rushed right into the cliff. Amon gripped the staff harder. All of his muscles were taut. He arched his back to brace for impact.
The boat knocked into the cliff. However, there was no shock as Amon had expected. In fact, the boat entered the cliff smoothly!
In the next second, the passengers on the boat tripped. The entire boat tipped over, though fortunately, the fall distance was short. The boat landed on dry ground. The Ironbacks bounced with fright. They watched around in horror, trying to figure out what had happened.
Penetrating the cliff along with the boat as if the hard rocks were just thin air, Amon subconsciously looked back and saw the most surreal scene in his life. From inside, the cliff was a transparent curtain. Behind it was a wall of water as tall as several men. Waves hit on the transparent rockface, sending back white sprays. Not a single drop of water could enter the huge cave they were now standing in.
Was this hollow some expanded space like the inside of the boat? Amon was still confused when he heard Schrodinger meow excitedly, jumping off the boat and running deeper into the cave at full speed.
Turning around, Amon began to study this place. They were standing on a platform at the bottom of a huge hollow. It seemed to have been excavated by an immense force instead of having naturally eroded. The cave narrowed to an aisle leading to the interior of the mountain. By the end of the aisle, he could see a vague golden light. Schrodinger was running towards the light, its fur standing up distinctly, reflecting a golden gloss.
Amon waved his staff and the invisible boat shrunk back into a bone and flew into his outstretched hand. It was the first time he had used such a magic artefact, so he had forgotten to disembark the Ironbacks before the transformation. The beasts were thrown out by the bone automatically, rolling on the ground. They took some effort to get up from dizziness, watching Amon pitifully.
The king recognized the bone in Amon’s hand. It had been in its cave. But it didn’t show any desire to take it back. Instead, it growled and lowered its head down over its paws, as if greeting a lord. It seemed to be a sign of submission. The king was more intelligent than common beasts, but now it felt that was likely to have made a mistake.
It had just seen Amon save them in the flood with an invisible boat, then penetrate the cliff, entering a mysterious space. And the invisible boat turned out to be the bone it used to have. To the king Ironback, Amon knew the bone’s usage, so the bone must have belonged to him. It reckoned that Amon must have mistaken it to be a thief, so he attacked its cave. Now with all that had happened, it decided to show total obeisance to Amon.
But Amon had no idea about all this. For him, he had just been following Schrodinger’s orders all day. Nevertheless, the King Ironback didn’t know how to speak, and Amon didn’t think of explaining anything. He had lost Schrodinger’s trace. He pointed the staff at the Ironbacks and said, “You wait here. If anything happens, shout!”
The king Ironback was confused, the four big ones showed no reaction. Being aware that he just tried communicating with a random beast like Schrodinger, Amon couldn’t help but laugh at himself. These Ironbacks had never heard of human language. it would be a miracle if they could understand what he said.
He first performed simple earth magic to fix the five Ironbacks, then covered them with a vague white light. It was basic curing magic to maintain consciousness and dismiss fatigue. The Ironbacks felt much better, and the king seemed to be smart enough to understand what Amon had asked them to do. It growled to order the four big ones to turn around to face the water walls and lay down quietly.
Amon held up the staff and turned to the aisle. He felt his throat dry. Although he was looking forward to what he was going to find, he was also nervous. Was this the place where he was supposed to find the answer? Was Bair here? The answer was awaiting him in the deep.
Schrodinger seemed to be so excited that it had forgotten Amon. The cat was even more eager to find this place. Amon even question the cat’s intention to lead him instead of using him in the first place! If it had wanted to come here, why hadn’t it led Crazy’Ole to this place in the past thirty years? An eighth-level supreme sorcerer would be much more resourceful than a child.
The aisle was short. Amon soon reached the end before he could sort out the questions in his head. Then, he was frozen by what he saw. For a good while, he couldn’t even breathe. Before him was a huge space lit by a dazzling golden light that almost had him believe that all he was seeing was just an illusion. The light came from a parangon on top of a splendid sceptre. Amon knew this parangon. It was the Gods’ Tear.
In this huge cave, there were many ‘people’. A man in a black cloak stood on a high altar in the centre of the cave, holding high a sceptre. Embedded on the sceptre was a Gods’ Tear. Just below it was a golden ring, with four special parangons inlaid: Terroculus, Aquaticore, Ventussalte and Pyrosprite.
The light from the Gods’ Tear illuminated the space, gilding every person in the cave. Everything was displayed vividly. The man in the black cloak was tall and mighty. He was holding the sceptre high with his left hand, and in his right hand was a longsword. Under his cloak, Amon saw silver armour. His face was covered by brilliant glory. Leaning on his chest was a woman, embracing him gracefully yet tightly as if she wanted to protect him or stop him from doing something. Her face was deeply buried in his shoulder. Her brown, long hair spread from her curvy back over his chest.
The instant he saw them, Amon instantly deduced that they were Bair the ninth-level sorcerer, and Troni the Adoratrice of Isis.
Around the altar were a multitude of people. They encircled the couple from three directions. In each direction stood a mage holding high his staff, accompanied by two warriors on their flanks, with shield and sword in hand. Apart from these nine people, there was a dozen warriors and mages scattered in all positions, wielding their own staffs and weapons.
Amon didn’t recognise these attackers. The chasers were led by three supreme mages and six great warriors. Twenty-one pursuers eventually cornered Bair in this cave, triggering the last fight.
It was a strangely frozen spectacle, everyone looked alive. Amon could see emotions on their faces, magic being cast, lights breaking the air like arrows. But he couldn’t feel the least bit of power. This should be just a recorded image.
However, looking closely, he found that it was more than just an image. The people were likely to be ‘real’! They were standing the same way they had done thirty years ago. They were fixed at the last motion of their life, like sculptures. An unimaginable force had perfectly preserved all of them for thirty years.
It seemed that what had happened was that Bair took the sceptre from the Adoratrice and threw out one last strike, killing everybody in the cave, including himself. Troni, the Adoratrice, seemed to have known what he was going to do. Whether she wanted to embrace him or to stop him from doing so would be a mystery forever.
Schrodinger was sitting a few steps in front of Amon. It was also watching the scene silently, its eyes were beyond description. Nobody knew what it was thinking. A long time passed before the cat gave out a soft sigh.
The sigh awakened Amon from the shock. He had to get close to see what Bair had left and whether he had left anything about the secret of the gods. That was why Crazy’Ole had told him to find Bair.
Amon had just advanced a few steps before he felt a strong force in the golden light, pushing him away. Along with the force was various information 一 shouts, cries, pain, fear, suffering from hesitation. They came from the people in the light. Amon instinctively waved his staff to disperse it. To his surprise, it was much easier than he expected.
What happened the next moment astonished him again.
Clanking sounds arose from everywhere. Staffs, weapons and armors fell to the ground. Some broke into pieces, looking rusted. Everyone’s body turned to ashes, including the couple on the altar. In the end, Amon couldn’t see their faces in detail.
The last strike thirty years ago had instantly killed everyone, including Bair. The last thing he had done was to fix the whole space, which remained unchanged for all these years. But even then all the people had been smashed into particles by the mighty power, even some top of the line armors were destroyed from the inside.
Amon was the first one to disturb all of this. By breaking the balance, it was like turning a sandglass. The fixed scene faded to reality. He had no idea what magic it was. It seemed that Bair was waiting for someone to come and witness his last moments.
Amon didn’t know how to describe this feeling. Too many shocks at once had flooded his head. Still panting, he couldn’t feel any astonishment or amazement, but tried his best to calm down and examined everything he saw carefully. The blond parangon didn’t drop along with the scepter. It was still floating high in the air. It’s light shone on everything. Amon closed his eyes, and started to feel it with the Detection Eyes. As he expected, he couldn’t sense it with the Detection Eyes. The light seemed to be coming from another space.
Climbing up to the altar, Amon picked up an elegant gold crescent crown of lotus petals. It was Troni’s accessory, one of the symbols of the Adoratrice. He also found a broken armor, made with Damasc iron, covered by a layer of unusual silver metal, etched with hieroglyphs and formation patterns. It was obviously an outstanding piece of work, but had been badly damaged in the fight.
A long sword lay beside the armor. Amon recognized this sword. It was identical to Gabriel’s sword. The silver blade was sharp and tensile, a parangon was set on each side of the crossguard. The sword was intact. Perhaps Bair didn’t have a melee before the final fight.
Beside the sword was the Adoratrice’s scepter. The Gods’ Tear was no longer affixed to its top. Amon picked it up and tried to touch the four special parangons on the golden ring. The parangons turned to ash. Bair’s last strike had even exhausted their power. With the breaking down of the parangons, the scepter also broke into pieces.
Amon stood directly below the shining Gods’ Tear. Looking up, he found some texts carved high on the wall behind the altar. The texts were written both in wedge writing and pen writing. The first text was about how to read and write the hieroglyphs in wedge writing and pen writing. They should have been left by Bair. What a daring sorcerer he was, carving the secret of nobility in an abandoned cave.
At the end of the first text, Bair marked out that all the texts about magic he had ever seen had been written in hieroglyphs, and magic scrolls also had to be written in hieroglyphs because the character themselves were used to construct the formation, as the carrier of the magic power. The content of the next paragraph was what Crazy’Ole had cared the most about.
Bair wrote 一
“The superior deities have been hiding a secret from the commoners, that the latter could become the same beings as they are. Extremely difficult though this path can be, the destination of immortality is clear. I have found the beginning of this path, but sadly I cannot verify it myself. I’ve left all I know in the Gods’ Tear. The information can be read with Osiris’ rib.
I dropped the bone in the nameless mountains. It’s a test. Anyone who wants to acquire this secret must first find the bone, so as to pass my restriction and obtain the Gods’ Tear. If the restriction was broken by force, the information inside the Gods’ Tear would disappear at the same time.
My dear teacher, if you are the first one to reach here, Osiris’ rib won’t be necessary. You can use the token to read the sealed information. The test is for other people who want to find me.
I didn’t send you the things that I haven’t thought through then. You can find my last thoughts and conclusions here. “
The rest of the text was about the usage of Osiris’s rib. Osiris’s rib was a sacred item in Isis’ Shrine, and Osiris was the father of Horus, Isis’ brother and husband. So the eternal god can also fall? And leave a rib? This item was the shrine’s secret relic, but Bair somehow had stolen it from the shrine too.
Bair didn’t explain too much about the rib’s history. He only wrote down his own conclusions on it, which was not far from Amon’s findings. It could be used as a special parangon of every attribute, like a universal special parangon. It could be used as a staff, but couldn’t be inlaid to other artifacts.
It was also a spatial artifact. Some called it a [deitifact]. Activated and controlled by advanced magic, it could be used as carrier, like the vessels on the Nile River. Theoretically, it could be controlled by a third-level mage that could smoothly perform advanced magic. But this possibility only existed in theory, Bair believed that in reality, no third-level mage could actually use it.
Activated by supreme magic power, it could even fly. Theoretically, a sixth-level mage could fly with it, but Bair believed that possibility also just existed in theory.
Bair couldn’t imagine, that when he had written down these remarks, that a third-level sorcerer managed to navigate this deitifact with the help of Crazy’Ole’s wonderful staff, and drive it right into this very cave. In fact, Amon couldn’t even have arrived here by any other means.
The most amazing part of this rib, however, was that it could be used directly as a spatial artifact. Amon didn’t find that out until he read it in Bair’s message. It was like the space in a processed Ventussalte, such as the one given by Crazy’Ole. But Amon couldn’t use the space in the Ventussalte until he mastered spatial magic, which was a supreme magic.
The space in this rib also required it to be operated by spatial magic, which is to say a sixth-level mage who has mastered spatial magic at the very least. But Bair provided another way to activate it, which according to him, theoretically allowed a third-level mage to open it, although he didn’t believe that someone could actually succeed.
Bair’s message on the wall finished there. Another paragraph was also written in hieroglyph. Amon struggled to understand it with the help of Bair’s first paragraph. It should have been left by Troni the Adoratrice 一
“Great Isis, the goddess that I’ve adored all my life. I hope your glory can ease the Pharaoh’s fury. Ever since the day I decided to leave with Bair, I am not expecting any forgiveness or pardon from you. Bair was like a flame in the sky. I knew that he would burn himself to néant. I only wished to stop more disasters from happening. Please forgive my curiosity to you and to the divinity. This curiosity comes from my lifetime of reverence for you. I’ve not betrayed my belief in you for even one second. I want to know more about you. I don’t know if you regard this prying as an offense…”
Troni didn’t seem to have been able to finish her message. The last characters were hastily written. Perhaps she was interrupted by the chasers who launched the final fight immediately.
A detail observation puzzled Amon. Bair didn’t mention a word about Schrodinger. Crazy’Ole had told him that when fleeing with the Adoratrice and the Gods’ Tear, Bair had taken a sacred item and a cat along with him, which the Isis Shrine had secretly searched for. The sacred item was Osiris’ Rib, but the cat’s identity was unknown.
Bair had sealed a message to Crazy’Ole in the token and hung it around Schrodinger’s neck, sending it to Duc to find Crazy’Ole. So if Crazy’Ole had obtained the rib, he could have found Bair’s last place and his real final message. But in the following thirty years, Schrodinger hadn’t lead Crazy’Ole to this place. It was not until recently that Schrodinger had started to lead Amon, first to the rib, then finally to this place. The flood was indeed Amon’s only chance if he wanted to arrive here with his own ability. If the water hadn’t been so high, he couldn’t have reached that cliff even with the boat.
So it was all Schrodinger’s choice. After years of waiting, it had finally chosen to guide Amon to this place, ignoring Crazy’Ole. Why would this cat have waited thirty years? Why did it think it was worth waiting so long? Amon had no idea.
He took out the token from Crazy’Ole, activated it with magic power and projected it to the Gods’ Tear. As he expected, something happened.
A huge curtain of light spread out from the high air. Glittering characters emerged in the curtain from top to down, like water gushing out of a fall. It was the final message about the secret of the gods.
[List of Deities]
Osiris: The god of death and life in Ejypt, the patron of the Nile River. In the legends he was the father of Horus, the King of the Gods. He was also Isis’s husband and brother.
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