"The god who made this pendant has no intention of letting me see through it. A god's omniscience only applies to things outside the realm of the divine. This pendant has already gone beyond that boundary."
Meeting Alfia's questioning gaze, Zeus smacked his lips, sounding distinctly annoyed.
"In other words, there's a possibility beyond anything Orario knows. How do we use it? Put it around the neck? Alfia, try wearing it."
Chardo's eyes lit up. The unknown meant possibility. Compared to all the known methods they had already exhausted countless times, this unknown thing inspired far more hope.
"…Chardo. Here."
After taking the pendant from Duncan and turning it over in her hand for a moment, Alfia confirmed that she, too, could not see through its true nature. Then she extended her hand toward Chardo.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm perfectly serious."
Alfia shook her head, cutting off his refusal.
"Setting aside what this pendant does or how it works, my illness is rooted in my Falna and my Skill. I've never once heard of a Skill being cured. But you're different. Behemoth's poison is terrifying, yes, but it's still something within the realm of known afflictions. If even the old man can't see through this thing, then there's a real chance it could cure you. Rather than waste that chance on someone like me, who's already beyond saving, it's obviously better to use it on you."
"Cut the nonsense!"
Chardo exploded.
"One headache after another—you lot never let me rest. I'm just an old failure. So what if I'm cured? Will that let me fight the Black Dragon? Will it let me avenge Maxim and the others?! At a time like this, do you really think I still care about my own miserable life?!"
"You're not the same. You're Hera Familia's treasure—one of the few people who might actually be able to bring down that damned Black Dragon. If there were no hope, that'd be one thing. But now that a chance is right in front of you, you want to throw it away? Even your little sister, bedridden all those years, never gave up—not until the very end!"
"If you want to start talking about ending your life early, wait another few decades! An adventurer should die in an adventure—not close their eyes on some damned bed! So start carrying the burden you're supposed to bear, Alfia!"
Furious in a way he rarely ever showed, Chardo snatched the pendant from her hand and hung it around her neck by force.
"Well? What now?"
Then he turned to Duncan.
His sudden outburst had stunned not only Duncan and Bell, but even Alfia herself. Her hand was still half-extended, forgotten midair. She had not even reacted when Chardo forcibly put the pendant on her.
They were all so used to seeing him bicker with his niece like that that they had forgotten, for a moment, just how terrifying the man called Gluttony could be when faced with monsters.
"Uh… let me see…"
Duncan responded automatically, but the interface in his mind contained no instructions for how to use the thing. It was like some sketchy product with no manual.
Just as he was racking his brains, a thought surfaced in his mind as naturally as if it had been placed there.
"May the holy light be with you."
As though it had heard a voice-activated command, the diamond-shaped crystal set into the pendant gave a crisp crack. The starlike light within it spilled out, and under the guidance of the runes, transformed into a circular magic formation that enveloped half the cabin.
"Damn it!"
Zeus's expression changed instantly.
Without bothering to explain, he turned and bolted out of Alfia's room. What had spilled out of the crystal was not just light and runes, but the faintest trace of transcendent divine power.
It was an ironclad law that gods could not use divine power in the Lower World. If he got dragged into this nonsense and got sent back to Heaven for no reason, he'd have no one to blame but himself.
The moment Zeus fled the room in a panic, white light flooded the house.
Once the formation had completed itself, the sliver of divine power within it acted like a key, and the spell was fully unleashed. A pillar of light shot straight into the sky, piercing through roof and clouds alike as though nothing in the world could obstruct it. It was like a proclamation to all creation that something extraordinary was taking place.
"Lady Artemis?! What is that?!"
"Divine recall? No… that direction is… Duncan?!"
In Campbell, Artemis stared at the pillar of light stabbing into the heavens and murmured in shock.
There was none of the sensation that normally accompanied divine power being used, and yet magic on this scale defied every rule people knew.
It was almost as if…
"A miracle?"
…
"AAAHHHHHHHH!"
Compared to the whispers and speculation outside the cabin, inside it was utter chaos.
Wrapped within the magic circle, Chardo and Alfia screamed at the same time.
Even as Level 7 adventurers, even when gravely ill or mortally wounded on the battlefield, they had never once cried out in pain. But now, stripped of every shred of composure, they could do nothing else.
Black smoke—like curses, like disease itself—poured from their bodies. The moment it touched the white radiance emanating from the circle, it vanished without a trace.
"W-What's happening?! Duncan?!"
Bell stood in the middle of the light, utterly at a loss.
Unlike the two of them, unlike his grandfather who had fled in a panic, Bell himself felt nothing at all in the radiance. That contrast made him instinctively turn to Duncan for help.
"It's fine," Duncan said, his face shifting with alarm and awe alike. "It's just treatment."
He himself was being washed by the same light.
Old injuries, misaligned bones, hidden damage he hadn't even fully noticed—everything was being mended and corrected with miraculous precision beneath the spell's glow.
His body moved without his mind's permission, rearranging itself by force. The sudden waves of pain drenched him in cold sweat. Fortunately, the process was astonishingly swift. Before he could even properly react, his own treatment was over.
Unlike him, however, Alfia and Chardo seemed to be enduring something far more brutal. Judging by the desperate screams tearing from their throats, the healing process was anything but gentle.
The light continued to scour them.
Their cries gradually faded—not because the pain had lessened, but because they no longer had the strength to scream. From the veins standing out across their skin, it was obvious they were still suffering terribly, reduced to enduring it in silence.
The black smoke grew thinner and thinner under the relentless radiance.
Then, all at once, the weakening presences of Chardo and Alfia began to surge violently, as though the full power of Level 7 adventurers were erupting from their bodies. The burst of force blew apart half the cabin.
Bell, caught unprepared, was sent flying at once.
Fortunately, Duncan had sensed something wrong a split second ahead of time and braced himself. Otherwise, he would have ended up just like Bell.
For one fleeting moment, Duncan's heart leapt. He thought they had truly recovered.
And then the last of the black smoke vanished.
The remaining light sank into their bodies, and the terrifying aura of Level 7 that had just exploded outward abruptly collapsed.
Everything had happened too fast.
When the radiance finally faded, both of them had already lost consciousness.
Alfia slumped back onto the bed.
Chardo fell heavily to the floor.
....
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