Tim's POV
Hejinmal arrived from the south with the of presence that a large dragon produced when descending from altitude, the wind displacement, the shadow moving across the ground, the sound of wings at scale. The children who had been waiting in the road outside the Theocracy's capital looked up at him with the faces of wonder, as they never saw Hejinmal fly, as he landed.
The logistics of moving nearly three hundred children from the Theocracy's capital to E-Rantel by dragon required patient repetition. Hejinmal could carry approximately fifty children on his back with comfort and safety, I had assessed this during the journey from the dwarf kingdom, the weight distribution and the back geometry and the capacity for the kind of passenger movement that children produced when they were excited about being on a dragon, which was the constant movement, which worried me so I send a clone with them.
The first fifty went up with a clone riding alongside them to manage the inevitable enthusiasm of hero rank children discovering that altitude and a dragon's back produced a combination of sensations that nothing in their previous experience had prepared them for.
Hejinmal soon returned an hour later. Another fifty. Another clone. The pattern repeated until the road held twelve children and one very tired dragon who was nevertheless conducting each flight with the dignified care of something that understood it was carrying precious cargo.
The last twelve went up. Hejinmal's wings caught the air and he rose, the twelve remaining children making the sounds the previous groups had made, and now the road was empty.
I looked back at the city.
---
The paladin armour that I had taken from Zesshi resized itself when I put it on, which was the behaviour of equipment designed for a specific class of wearer rather than a specific individual, the enchantment recognising the class markers and adjusting accordingly. The fit, when it settled, the armour sitting against my body as I feel lighter.
I checked myself. Looked at my hands in the gauntlets. Flexed. The range of motion was better than the Adamantite armour the dwarves had made, which was not a commentary on the Forgemaster's craft but on the difference between the best work of this world's mortal craftsmen and equipment that had originated from somewhere else entirely.
I used *Perfect Unknowable* again.
I walked back toward the cathedral.
---
The magic barrier was back up. I could see it from fifty metres away, the shimmer of it in the night air, the specific visual quality of a significant defensive working maintaining its integrity after the damage I had done to it on the way in. Whoever had restored it had worked quickly, which suggested the Theocracy had repair protocols for barrier maintenance and those protocols had been activated immediately following my first visit.
I raised my hand and pressed it against the barrier.
My hand went through.
I stood for a moment considering this.
*Perfect Unknowable* was comprehensive enough that even the barrier's detection system couldn't find me. The barrier was designed to detect presence, and I had no detectable presence, and so the barrier's response to my contact was the response it would have to the contact of air or light, which was no response at all.
I walked through the barrier and into the cathedral.
---
The building was quieter than it had been. The priests who had survived my earlier visit were present everywhere, I could hear the distant sounds of the institution's continued functioning, prayers and movement and the specific ambient noise of a religious organisation maintaining its routines. But the Black Scripture was gone. The Cardinals were gone. The Pontifex Maximus was gone.
I moved through the floors methodically, *Perfect Unknowable* holding, the absence of the people I was looking for becoming more confirmed with each level I cleared. They had evacuated.
Reasonable. Frustrating, but reasonable.
The Cardinals and the Pontifex Maximus were people I needed to have a conversation with eventually. That conversation had been deferred by their departure, which meant it would happen on a timeline they had chosen rather than one I had, which was a tactical disadvantage I noted and accepted.
I made my way to the basement.
*Shadow Sneak* took me under the door with the practiced ease. The basement on the other side of the door was lit and occupied.
Zesshi sat in front of the tomb of the gods' door.
She was wearing thick black armour that was different from the armour I had taken, replacement equipment, sourced quickly, chosen for protection rather than the specific class benefits of the paladin armour she had lost. The cross-shaped War Scythe was beside her. She was sitting upright in the posture of someone who was maintaining a guard position, the specific stubbornness of someone who had decided that their post was their post regardless of their condition.
I looked at her for a moment.
She could not detect me. The *Perfect Unknowable* held against her senses the same way it held against everyone else's. She was guarding a door against someone who had already walked past her.
I used *Shadow Sneak* to go under the door of the tomb.
---
The tomb of the gods was a beauty.
The Slane Theocracy had been collecting for generations, artifacts, equipment, items of power sourced from conflicts and ruins and the various mechanisms by which valuable things changed hands over centuries. The room expressed this duration visually.
Player items. I could feel them, the specific magical signature that equipment from Yggdrasil carried, distinguishable from this world's enchanted items the way a different language was distinguishable from the ambient conversation around it. Not the same as the magic I had been learning and using for fifteen years.
Something older and different and operating on different principles.
I found a simple magic bag first.
It was in a storage alcove near the room's entrance, a carrying item of significant spatial capacity, the kind of equipment that existed in Yggdrasil as a standard adventurer utility and that this world's enchanters had attempted to replicate with mixed results. The original was better than any replica. I could feel the capacity of it, the interior space that bore no relationship to the exterior dimensions.
I began working through the room.
Every item, every weapon, every armour piece, assessed, identified as well as I could without extended examination, stored in the bag. The assessment was necessarily incomplete; some items had functions that weren't immediately legible from inspection and would require more careful study. But incomplete assessment was better than leaving things in a room that the Theocracy would eventually return to.
The great sword was near the back of the room, on a display mount over a grave, that suggested whoever had placed it there had understood it was significant.
White, the colour not paint or coating but something fundamental to the material. I picked it up and felt the class recognition happen, the paladin armour I was wearing and the sword I was holding communicating with each other in the way of a set that had been designed to work together, the enchantments activating in concert.
A spell name arrived in my awareness, the knowledge of it complete and immediate.
[Super Tier spell *Sword of Damocles.* ]
Super tier. The category above tier ten, the magic that this world's practitioners could not access and that existed in the overlap between what Yggdrasil had produced and what the New World's magical system could express at its theoretical maximum. An orbital strike designed to destory fortified structures, the description said, the best spell for destorying bases.
I held the sword and thought about what it meant to be carrying a weapon that could end fortifications.
Then I put it in the bag with everything else and finished clearing the room, and soon left for home.
---
I reach E-Rantel that night, the city sleeping, the orphanage dark except for the kitchen light that someone always left on.
I had been thinking about the Resurrection Wand since the tomb. The item had been in the collection, one of the things I had assessed and stored, and its function was legible from the name and confirmed by the magical signature, revival magic, comprehensive revival, with no level loss, but with limited uses.
I took it to the office.
The ash was where I had left it. Or where I thought I had left it.
I crouched in the space. Looked at the floor. Looked at the desk.
The ash was gone.
The room looked clean.
The particles that had been Sister Edna were wiped away days ago.
I stood in the office for a while.
The Resurrection Wand needed a body, something physically present.
She was gone.
The wand in my hand was the best revival tool I had encountered in this world, and it could not bring back someone who was completely gone.
I sat down on the floor of the office. The desk was above me.
I am now sad.
;(
---
Tim
LeveL [86] [plus 5]
Ninja: 5/5 [MAX] [Updated]