The Speedrun Manual of Miss Witch

Chapter 295: Faith, Lies and Truth (2 in 1)

Listening to that final, clear note of confusion, Ciel focused all her attention on the creature before her and let out an equally puzzled sound."Hmm?"

So weak...

But why... could it possess such a strong sense of pressure?

Unless that pressure did not come from the entity itself...

The giant, cracked-skin monster before her was not strong in its own right... The reason it possessed such powerful suppression and presence was entirely derived from "Uniqueness"...

It might not even possess the strength of Tier 3, yet it wielded "Uniqueness"?

In the Old Days, was "Uniqueness" such a cheap commodity?

However, the other party appeared... as if it could be reasoned with...

While Ciel was thinking about how to escape her current predicament, the opponent was the first to speak.

"Please follow me... Lord Divine Envoy..."

Thud, thud——

The monster retreated step by step. Once it moved beyond the range of Ciel’s candlelight, the candles on its body abruptly extinguished, and it vanished into the darkness.

Merely a few seconds later, a tiny speck of green light ignited in the distant gloom, like a minuscule lighthouse in the dark.

It just… left?

Having expected a fierce battle, Ciel watched the distant point of green light in confusion.

She confirmed repeatedly that nothing was wrong with her mind… the other party had truly departed.

What now? Should she run?

As Ciel considered this, pale green candlelight began to ignite one by one within the village.

From within those dilapidated houses, over a dozen men and women—pale-faced and as thin as skeletons—emerged. They held candles, looking toward Ciel with anger on their faces. Most of their gazes were fixed intently on Heini, whom Ciel was carrying, and on Flower, who lay inside the house with her broken limbs.

The middle-aged man who had been prostrate on the ground rose with his reignited candle. He shot Heini a resentful look and cursed under his breath: "Betrayer…"

Run... could she even get away?

Ciel looked at the eerie green firelight in the distance, deep in thought.

A monster of low transcendent rank, one that possibly wielded "Uniqueness," seemed to have no hostility toward her, even though she had killed its "Divine Servant."

"Charm" definitely played a significant role; Ciel was certain of it.

Go then.

Ciel knew nothing of the Old Days, and she wouldn't be able to learn much from a civilian like Heini.

Perhaps she could learn something from the mouth of that obese, giant monster…

Risk and reward went hand in hand; in this situation, Ciel was more inclined to talk.

The fact that they could converse at all was a good sign.

Ciel placed Heini back in the room and lightly snapped her fingers, causing the ropes on the girl's body to dissipate.

"If there is danger," Ciel pointed to the rune stone clenched in Heini's hand and told her, "use this to call me."

"O-Okay, Time-…" Heini wanted to say more, but Ciel cut her off.

"Do not call me by that name," Ciel said, interjecting. "Just call me **."

Ciel noticed that when she spoke her name, a hint of bewilderment appeared in Heini’s eyes.

She… couldn't understand what Ciel had said?

Interesting.

In the Other Side, saying "Time-Binder" would trigger a system warning, but in the Old Days, Time-Binder was a term that could be spoken, while her own name had become a taboo erased by some unknown power.

"Forget it, call me whatever you like." Ciel rose with a smile and walked straight out the door, looking once more at the green luminescence in the distance.

Holding her illusory pale green candle high, she walked directly toward the distant glow.

...

Ciel stepped onto the foul, muddy earth, walking along the wretched road, her candle held high.

Crack——

A crisp snap.

The sound did not make Ciel stop. She had lost count of how many times she had stepped on bleak white bones, and the frequency of these bones increased the closer she got to the green light.

Ciel looked back; the green lights of the village were already far away. From her perspective, only a few nearly invisible points of green light remained.

She turned her gaze back to the direction she was traveling. This time, she could finally see what lay ahead.

Skeletons stained with earth were piled upon the road. At the end of this bone-paved path, a dilapidated church towered. An emerald-green torch burned at the top of the church, with burning grease dripping from it occasionally, making a sizzling sound as it landed on the skulls below used to collect the fat.

Several subhuman monsters, crouching on the ground and bearing some resemblance to the previous Divine Servant, watched Ciel with hostility. They parted to form a path, but their antagonistic gazes never left Ciel’s body.

Ciel stopped before the church's decaying wooden door. She reached out and lightly tapped on the plank.

Tap, tap——

Wooden residue fell from the door.

With a sharp creak, the three-meter-high wooden door was slowly opened, exposing the scene inside to Ciel’s vision.

It was a church that was almost entirely empty. The giant, obese monster sat right in the center of the church, watching Ciel with its candle-pupils burning with fire.

"Please sit... envoy of a foreign god." The monster raised its parched right hand, pointing to a wooden chair with peeling paint in front of it.

Thud——

The wooden door closed behind Ciel. She did not move further forward but looked up at the monster's face and said slowly, "What do you want to talk about?"

In conversation, Ciel always preferred to be direct.

"That is what I should be asking... what do you want to talk about?" The fissure on the monster's neck opened, stretching into a bizarre smile. The firelight in its eyes shimmered as it said, "Long ago, I discovered one of my believers being corrupted by a foreign god... I have been waiting, waiting for your arrival..."

It had known since Heini first obtained the rune stone?

Then why had it tolerated the continued existence of this "heretic"?

"Why wait for me? Do you know who I am?" Ciel asked.

"No... I do not know who you are... I am merely waiting for an Ascended One who can help me..."

The monster's viscous voice drilled into Ciel’s ears. The words spoken by this unpleasant voice made Ciel even more confused.

Looking for an... Ascended One who can help it?

This was a rare word that could be matched with Old Ansu, and it allowed Ciel to instantly understand the meaning of the term.

Ascender.

Wait, this monster was a person?

Ciel continued to speak, asking it the doubts in her heart.

For instance, where this was, why it needed to wait for an Ascended One, and what was going on with this village...

The "monster" gave a detailed answer to almost every one of Ciel’s questions, and Ciel began to gradually understand the true situation here.

This was the Abyssal Ruins, a land of deep abyss where no sun ever shone, the birthplace of Moros, the Throat of Eternal Silence.

The Abyssal Ruins, situated underground, were not originally like this. Although almost isolated from the surface, the presence of the "Cocoon of Light" ensured the underground was equally filled with light. Resources were abundant here; the land and plants were incredibly fertile under the catalysis of the "Cocoon of Light," and various creatures established vast kingdoms within the Abyssal Ruins.

The "Cocoon of Light" did not just ignite the spark of life; it also ignited different civilizations.

As the guardian of the "Cocoon of Light," Moros generously shared His power with the world, spreading His path—an unimaginable, gentle power of nature.

But one day, Moros suddenly seemed to fall into madness. During a festival, He tore open the "Cocoon of Light." The shattered core lost all its power and scattered throughout the Abyssal Ruins. Darkness enveloped the underground, and the Abyssal Ruins became a literal abyss.

All the Transformed Ones who originally followed Moros's path fell into absolute madness due to the god's collapse. In a mere instant, the Abyssal Ruins became a purgatory filled with maddened Transformed Ones and Ascended Ones. As long as one fell into the darkness, the gloom would be filled with Moros's deranged whispers...

At that time, some who had not gone mad and were struggling within the Abyssal Ruins began to use fragments of the "Cocoon of Light" for self-preservation, hoping to create another path of light different from Moros.

In the beginning, some did succeed, and some even established vast cities of light within the dark Abyssal Ruins. However, without exception, every one of those people's paths ended in extreme madness.

Without the nourishment of the "Cocoon of Light," the resources of the Abyssal Ruins were depleting at an unimaginable speed.

And the triangle-headed monster before her had utilized the remains of the "Cocoon of Light," smelting the corpses of those maddened Transformed Ones and Ascended Ones to create medicine. Under extreme circumstances, it had forged its own path...

But all it could do was gather a village of a few hundred people, lingering on the breath of life in a corner of the Abyssal Ruins.

And now, deranged whispers almost entirely filled its brain, its body had completely collapsed and mutated, and the loss of its sanity was only a matter of time.

It was then that it discovered one of its believers had lost faith, and a rune stone of a foreign god had appeared in her hand.

This stone was a sliver of hope. It had endured until now, waiting for the moment the rune was activated…

"What is the deal with those sacrifices?" Ciel asked upon hearing this.

"We... need... light..." The monster’s hollow eyes watched Ciel. It slowly raised its hand, thrusting it into the cracks of its parched skin, and pulled out a mass of green wax. "My path... can use flesh and blood... to create light that resists the whispers..."

Its ability was to refine corpses into this wax... and use it to burn and resist Moros's whispers in the darkness?

Earlier, while submerged in darkness, she had felt her sanity rapidly slipping away—was it because she had heard these whispers of Moros?

A bloody and bizarre ability... yet Ciel felt not the slightest surprise.

Ciel applied the logic from reality, and it was easy to understand how such a situation occurred.

Smelting the flesh and blood of maddened transcendents and Ascenders to create a secondary potion of one's own private formulation... even Ciel wouldn't dare drink that lightly.

This monster before her had drunk it and managed to maintain its sanity until now; Ciel felt it was already a miracle.

There might be one reason it hadn't gone mad instantly.

That was the fragments of the "Cocoon of Light"... those fragments were very likely scattered "Uniqueness."

Compared to the story of this "Moros" and the "Cocoon of Light," Ciel was only intensely interested in one thing.

That was faith.

In this world… faith seemed truly able to form a kind of power, and with its blessing, one could even create one's own path…

What were the prerequisites for creating a path? How did one truly absorb faith? These two questions swirled in Ciel’s mind.

Creating a path was precisely one of Ciel’s primary goals in coming to the Old Days.

"You want me to help you?"

Ciel looked into its hollow pupils and asked slowly: "Help you save these people?"

All of this was merely the other party's side of the story; Ciel wouldn't take them at their word based on this one "tale" alone.

"I want you to help…" it rasped, "kill me…"

Kill it?

"I can give you the fragment of the 'Cocoon of Light,' provided you kill me..."

"The 'wax' on my body will allow them to resist the darkness for a long time..."

"I can no longer maintain my sanity... so... before I become one of those dark creatures... I beg you to kill me, envoy of a foreign god..."

The other party spoke with great emotion, but Ciel remained unmoved.

"Before that, I need to ask a question." Ciel looked at the other party calmly and spoke.

"Since you have been waiting for my arrival for so long..."

"Then, at the very beginning."

"Whose divine envoy did you mistake me for?"

Ciel would not forget the final note of confusion it had when it first saw her.

"You had better tell me the truth."

Ciel slowly raised her hand. An illusory blood array rapidly took shape behind her, and two bloody vortices emerged. A simulated, terrifying aura of the Other Side began spreading through the area.

A humanoid creature shrouded in robes of shadow, with several pairs of insect wings on its back, and a suit of exquisite, pure white armor stepped out from the bloody vortices behind Ciel, one on the left and one on the right.

Though they were only phantoms, Ciel wanted to test the suppression power of the Grim Worm and the Pure White Armor in the Old Days.

She was utilizing her "Subverter" ability to replicate their Other Side auras as accurately as possible…