The Successor from the Mountain Pass
The light reflected from the moon illuminated the signet ring of Galua, now bereft of its owner's life. Roberta felt a sense of irony as she looked at the crest engraved upon it. The human symbolized by that emblem had loved his own kind more than anyone—yet the ring's owner had hunted humans.
Roberta checked the corpse's belongings. She wondered if there might be other evidence, but aside from a blood-soaked handkerchief and a single dagger, there was nothing of note.
A half-blood of human and fairy, Galua had died because a blade pierced and tore through his heart. And yet—why was it that the corpse wore a smile? There was no way he had felt no pain.
"They said it was the karma of the Pantheon, didn't they?"
Roberta asked Ulrich, who stood beside her. When she had asked about the culprit's motive, he had answered: karma.
"Roberta, there are still many sects within the Holy Church."
"There are. The name 'Pantheon' isn't for nothing."
That was because the Holy Church had begun as a union of countless sects.
The Holy Church, commonly called the Pantheon, was born alongside the Third Empire—the Jokuster Dynasty. When the Second Empire, the Isturia Dynasty, fell, many lords rose up, and Jokuster was one of them.
Unlike the dynasties of the previous two empires, Jokuster could not rise on its own. It was only because the Kormillius clan extended a hand that they were able to wear the imperial crown. With a lineage that traced back to the very first emperor as their progenitor, the clan acted as patrons and secured the agreement of the lords—thus establishing the Jokuster Dynasty.
At that time, Kormillius stepped onto the forefront of history, backing the Third Empire and convening the First Council. They gathered every sect of the human world, and that marked the beginning of the Holy Church.
"Unless everyone believes in and follows a single god, it's impossible. There are simply too many gods. No one can believe in the same one. The Pantheon tried to unify them, but that was never going to be easy."
Before the Holy Church existed, each temple had different scriptures—or even if they were the same, interpretations varied greatly. Even today, after the Pantheon established a canon, disputes over heresy between sects still erupted.
"Don't tell me… this person belonged to the Pantheon?"
Ulrich shook his head.
"No. He was one of those who rejected the Council."
"So… a heretic."
"By your standards, yes."
She looked at him, her gaze asking what he meant.
"Do you know why Kormillius never took the throne themselves?"
Ulrich asked why a clan of such immense power had chosen to hand the throne to Jokuster.
"I heard their influence was weaker back then than it is now."
After a long period of chaos, servants of evil gods had roamed freely, and many mocked the divine.
"That's incorrect. Even in those times, divinity was not ignored. In fact, people clung to it even more because of the chaos. Kormillius simply couldn't monopolize it."
Couldn't monopolize it?
"That makes it sound like there were other clans."
"You heard correctly. There were several clans that shared the same progenitor."
Her eyes widened.
"What?"
As always, this was something she had never heard before.
Even among priests, she had received an elite education. With a recommendation from Alonso, the bishop of the Great Cathedral of Nua, she had once served in a high institution known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
That place was filled with documents even priests could not easily access. Though it primarily preserved human-centered texts, its records were so rare that no amount of gold could obtain them outside.
Yet even she—who had belonged to such a place—had never once heard that there were other families carrying divine lineage besides Kormillius. She had been taught that only Kormillius was the legitimate line.
"Think about it. The progenitor of Kormillius ruled the empire for over a thousand years. How many descendants do you think there were? Even if they weren't as obsessed with bloodlines as Kormillius, there were still those who remembered their origin."
As Roberta fell silent, Ulrich pointed at the signet ring.
"If I remember correctly, the crest on that ring belonged to one of those clans. No one knows it now, but they were the representatives of the faction that opposed the Council convened by Kormillius. They were branded heretics for it."
He explained that a conflict had broken out between the legitimate heirs of divine blood, and as history recorded, Kormillius emerged victorious—while the other clans met their end.
"They were called separatists, returnists—sometimes even servants of evil gods. They bore many names. Those who rejected the Council and kept their own interpretations left behind no records at all. Kormillius made sure of that."
"It's… hard to believe. Not that I doubt you—it's just so far removed from everything I've learned."
"That's only natural. Even after studying at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there's still much you wouldn't know. It's a truth only those with divine blood—or those whose faith is acknowledged at the level of an Inquisitor—can access."
Roberta let out a faint, helpless laugh.
"Don't blindly trust the knowledge you gained from the Pantheon. It doesn't reveal everything. And not all truths exist there—if anything, there are more things missing than present."
Suddenly, Bishop Alonso's words came to mind. He had said the same thing—that although she would gain vast knowledge at the Congregation, it would not be the whole truth.
Had Alonso heard those same words from Ulrich when he was appointed chief priest of Dithmarschen? She thought it was possible.
After a moment, she broke the silence.
"…Why did they oppose the Council?"
"Think about the main agenda of the First Council."
She retraced her memory for a moment—then her eyes trembled.
'To elevate the human Hestio into a divine being.'
At the time when Kormillius first convened the Council, there was not just a single agenda. There were many matters—distinguishing canonical, apocryphal, and forbidden texts; unifying all sects; electing a pope. Among them, the most important was the elevation of Hestio's existence.
"How can a mere human raise another human to a seat among the heavens? That was the reason for their opposition."
Naturally, their argument was not accepted. And the dissenters refused to accept the Council's decision. They believed the Third Age created by the Pantheon to be false and hollow, and that the Holy Church itself was flawed.
"But how does that lead to what happened here today?"
"As much time as has passed, just as much blood has been spilled. The cause no longer matters. Two children who were once brothers now try to kill each other over a single thing."
Ulrich let out a short breath. Roberta could sense the deep fatigue within it. His expression had not changed, but having stayed by his side, she could tell.
Ulrich's group continued searching the village. They tried to find survivors, but there was no one left alive. Only traces of people being hunted by monsters were scattered everywhere. The monsters controlled by Galua had shown no mercy.
Until the morning sun rose, they gathered the bodies and performed cremation. They did not have enough hands to bury each one individually, and fortunately, cremation was the common funeral practice in Osnover.
Ulrich explained that burial had once been the norm, but due to the influence of the Ice Peninsula, the dead would sometimes rise again. Combined with the long civil wars, cremation had eventually become established.
Roberta knelt before the flames and formed a hand seal. Reciting a prayer, she wished for the sins the villagers had committed in life to be forgiven, and that they would be sent to heaven after judgment.
"Roberta."
As she finished her prayer and stood, Ulrich called her. She turned her head. Fritz, who stood behind her, also looked at him. The dwarf Toruhel and the surviving villager stood on the opposite side of the fire.
"Do you remember what you said to me when we first met?"
You asked who I was. That was what she had said. She had heard he was a three-hundred-year-old man, yet he looked like someone her own age—and he had even undergone the sacrament of infancy. There was no way she could not be suspicious.
"Since then, you've heard many names from me. Among them, is there one that stands out in your memory?"
Laurent, Oscar, Selim—she named them. Laurent had saved the great king of the Kingdom of Carbonihar and revived a fallen nation; Oscar had made a dragon take interest in humanity; Selim had turned a desert into a forest.
"I've used many names. Most of them left only ordinary traces compared to those you just mentioned. Leaving behind such grand footprints is actually quite rare."
"Even so, you've left behind several traces that others couldn't achieve in a lifetime."
Ulrich continued as if it were obvious.
"Let's suppose something. Imagine you have a handful of seeds in your pocket. As you walk along, you scatter or plant them at different moments. If you checked the next day, would anything be different?"
At the word "seeds," Roberta flinched, but realizing it was only a metaphor, she let out a small laugh. He was likening relationships—or encounters—to seeds. What a poor metaphor, she thought to herself.
"…No, nothing would change."
"What about after a month?"
"They'd probably sprout and grow a little."
"And after a year—or several years?"
"By then, they might have borne fruit a few times."
"To me, names are like that."
Roberta quietly looked at him.
"Now let's stretch time far beyond that. Suppose you planted seeds in a place you passed by without much thought, and then returned to that same spot after thousands—tens of thousands—of years. What do you think would have happened?"
"If you were lucky… it might have become a forest."
"Like Kuiania," she added.
"If you were lucky. Most of the time, that's not the case. They sprout, grow into a single tree, and take root firmly. But sometimes, they become a forest—like the names you mentioned earlier."
Ulrich said he had witnessed such cases from time to time. After all, he had lived a long life. An ordinary human could never see a desert become a forest—they would turn to dust long before that.
"But seeing those old connections I likened to seeds flourish into something worthy of being called a forest is not always a good thing. If they remember me, that bond exerts a very strong force."
Roberta understood what he meant.
"Like Count Meyer?"
"Yes, Wilhelm is a fitting example."
Three hundred years ago, he had merely taken in children captured as slaves together with Hilde Dithmarschen. Among them was a boy named Hohenlohe.
He had never intended for Hohenlohe's descendants to serve him for generations. But Hohenlohe had passed down that will on his own, and the current Count Meyer, Wilhelm, continued to uphold it.
"It's not just Meyer. I often witness the results of connections that others would never see in a lifetime. And each connection doesn't remain separate—they grow, like forests expanding and meeting other forests. Just as Kormillius tempted Wilhelm, they influence one another."
Roberta understood.
"I am here, unchanged. But the way others look at me—and what they expect from me—is becoming something I cannot accept."
What had she thought of him at their first meeting? A liar—or perhaps an impostor. After some time, she had simply thought him a strange man.
But Ulrich had been Laurent, Oscar, and Selim. As she came to understand each of those names, her perception of him naturally changed—and it could not help but change.
The meeting of forests, the influence between Kormillius and Wilhelm—it all referred to this shift in how people viewed him and what they expected of him.
No matter what he called himself, people would no longer care. Had not the Pantheon tried to offer him the imperial crown, even though he refused it?
"Sometimes… I feel that the past is heavy."
Just as he said. Because his past had piled up endlessly, he had become too great a person—so much so that the gap between how he saw himself and how others saw him could no longer be bridged.
Roberta watched as Galua's signet ring melted in the flames, and silently offered a short prayer in her heart.
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