Chapter 86: Eye of Wisdom (11)
“That’s a no-man’s land.”
Her voice was unique; she was tiny and had a youthful face. When she curled up beside me, she looked like a fifteen or sixteen-year-old little girl. Yet, her voice was always low and a bit hoarse, giving off a slightly androgynous vibe, as if a small girl was pretending to be sage-like—yet it didn’t come off as awkward at all.
“Located in the southern edge of Silgaya, it’s the most remote corner that no one ever pays attention to—not even the most desperate fur traders dare to visit. No church, no followers in sight; it’s unbound by dogma, and there’s no arbitration law either. Everyone lives in grass huts, and some even live in caves…”
“Our place doesn’t even have a formal name; hardly anyone talks about it… I guess you could call it ‘the wasteland beyond the Holy Wall.’ As for whether anyone lives there, who would care? We just live in a place like that. Me, my father, my mother, two older sisters… and I had a younger brother who died when he was really small. I was also quite young then, so my memories are fuzzy.”
Sword Demon Miss spoke at her usual slow pace, seemingly putting in a great effort to organize her thoughts.
I noticed that from the moment she started talking about her hometown, her words stumbled less. Even though she had shown reluctance to share just a second ago, once she opened up, it seemed she was on a roll and couldn’t hold back.
So, I closed my notebook to collect my thoughts, sitting on the bench by the fire, watching her profile and quietly listening to her story unfold.
“As I grew older and started to remember things… my two older sisters died one after the other. Starvation and being beaten to d*ath, pretty much… it happened when I was around five or six. At that time, I didn’t feel sad; I just thought, if I can’t find food tomorrow, I might d*e too. After getting used to it, I didn’t even feel scared anymore…”
“When my father was around, life was relatively better, even if we were always getting beaten. At least we had something to eat… We lived in a settlement, and there were many settlements like ours. People were always fighting; sometimes they’d fight outsiders, sometimes each other… Eventually, my father led a group out to steal food and got himself killed.”
She recounted these things with an incredibly calm expression, almost as if she were narrating someone else’s story—someone completely unrelated to her. Her small face illuminated by the fire and her deep-set eyes revealed little emotion.
“After my father died, it was just me and my mother… but by then, I had learned enough to survive on my own. I was just too frail to fight anyone, so I had to scavenge leftovers. My mother soon fell ill; she got a nasty worm infection that wouldn’t go away… but she didn’t d*e—she was just stuck in this half-life, not really human or ghost… and then later…”
She paused, perhaps growing tired of talking or realizing she shouldn’t be spilling such “nonsense” to me. She glanced at me, likely thinking I wouldn’t be interested in such trivialities and fearing I might get angry, so she stopped there.
“Anyway, that’s the kind of place it was.”
“I later learned a term in the city called ‘barren land,’ and I thought it perfectly described my hometown. The land can’t grow anything; I often stole leftovers from wild animals… I ended up with a lot of scars for that, but I didn’t mind. I had lived like that for over a decade; before I had the chance to leave, I thought that was just how the world was—everyone lived like that.”
“But once I got outside and saw more things, I gradually realized that the people out there… didn’t live like that at all. The few who knew about settlements beyond the Holy Wall called us ‘savages.’ They feared our place… because the land is very close to Cartelgarin.”
Cartelgarin…
The original outbreak site of the Abyss.
I learned about it in class at the Royal Academy. I remember Teresa was teaching the Abyss class back then. In her lectures, she described it as the battlefield where the original Pope Knight, Iris’ Angelica, fought against the Abyss named ‘Destruction,’ which was unimaginably powerful—the first time humans faced such monsters.
That place must have long since turned into a dead zone.
If I get the chance…
I’m definitely going to check it out.
“In my childhood memories, just standing on a higher hillside, I could see the towering golden wall in the distance. We didn’t really know what was inside that wall, nor did we care much, but sometimes from the elders, we heard that people couldn’t survive in there. I knew occasionally there would be clergy appearing beyond the wall, but they never came to our side…”
“It was only after getting out that I began to slowly understand what the ‘Abyss’ was, what hell was like inside the wall, and why nothing could grow in our place… Now I know a bit more.”
“Is it because of the Abyss’s corruption?”
It seemed she had said all she wanted to say, so I couldn’t help but interject.
“Yeah.”
Sword Demon Miss nodded at my words: “That Holy Wall is meant to stop the Abyss Mud from spreading out of Cartelgarin and consuming the entire Western Continent. I’m not sure if it’s effective or not, but the Church has always been very tense about it. Especially in recent years… I heard the wall can’t hold up much longer.”
“It can’t hold up?” I frowned deeply.
“That’s what they say, but I don’t know how true it is.”
Sword Demon Miss had a nonchalant attitude about it: “I don’t operate at a high level, so I don’t need to worry about these things… If it can’t hold up, then what? People can always find a way to live through desperate situations.”
“First affected would be your hometown, then, right?” I casually asked, not really thinking about the implications.
“I don’t have any special feelings for my hometown…”
“……”
If what she said was true…
The Abyss Mud from Cartelgarin was about to erupt again? And swallow the entire world—that’s what it sounds like? The Church wouldn’t be able to hold it back?
Then…
Were these crazy members of the Choir of Saints, their experiments at the ‘clinic’—was all of this connected to that?
I stopped conversing with Sword Demon Miss and went back to my notebook. I flipped through it haphazardly, ignoring the dense, convoluted, and seemingly indecipherable research records, and sought out the new notes to continue reading.
[The efficiency of the council is astonishing. I can tell how much the Pope cares about the experiment’s results. Just shortly after the new decree was issued at the end of December, more suitable patients have been continuously sent here by various people.]
[I understand that such a large-scale undertaking requires massive resources and determination. The Church is even going so far as to implement a new taxation system… Cardinal Michel is on his way back. The new sin flower has finally been cultivated successfully, but the experimental progress keeps dragging on. I’ve exhausted every method I can think of, yet I’m still at a loss. I feel unworthy of everyone’s trust; we’re almost all in a desperate gamble…]
[To resist that “filth’s” encroachment, we’ve sacrificed dignity and bottom lines, abandoning everything we could. In the distant future, whether we become sinners or heroes, our time is running out; it’s really running out…]
