Chapter 176

Grave of Incarnations (1)

The poison in the eyes of the Adgon Commissioner didn't fade away easily.

Seeing that, I clicked my tongue.

All of his escorts were dead, and their plans had been ruined, but his spirit was still going strong.

Where was that confidence coming from?

No matter how hard the wick was, breaking it would do the job.

"Hmpf!"

Although his skin was boiling and melting, he shouted in a tone that told me his spirit remained unwavering.

"I am the commissioner that represents the Adgons!"

"So?"

He replied brazenly.

"According to the agreement between the Union members, you owe me fair and proper treatment as a prisoner!"

Was that so?

I held back the profanity that was about to come out.

"Such stupidity..."

I glanced at Genograche.

Although it didn't look like there's a high probability of success, we had to try the easiest way first.

Then the golden armor placed the devil's sword, its true body, closer to the Adgon.

His eyes widened, thinking that Genograche was about to slice his neck open.

Rip!

"K-argh!"

He immediately sent off a ripping scream.

Genograsche had "stretched" his scorched, crushed finger, forced it to open, and then took it.

[Whisper of the Sword]

After checking the results for a while, the devil shook his head.

Mental manipulation didn't work on him.

In that case, I had no choice but to interrogate the body itself.

I gathered Mana in my hands.

"Why don't you tell me everything before you end up with a horrible death?"

He kept glaring at us with an evil-spirit-like look.

The will to never cooperate flashed in his eyes.

'This is going to be bothersome.'

As soon as I reached out for the prisoner...

"Are you torturing him?"

I heard a voice that was processed by interpretation magic behind me.

I turned around, my eyebrows raising due to the identity of the person that spoke.

Rosuelen, the incarnation candidate, absentmindedly looked at me after having said such words.

Bishop Briam, standing beside her, was also surprised by her unexpected remarks. He somehow looked helpless.

"I mean to do so. Why?"

It was quite strange that she had stayed still until that moment, then suddenly stepped in.

'Could it be that there is an instruction in the teachings of the god of war not to torture or torment incapacitated opponents?'

But my concern was for naught.

She stepped forward, rolling up her sleeves.

"Then, let me do it. I'm confident that I can finish the job quickly."

"... What?"

Rosuelen gave an explanation.

"Ever since I was connected with the great being, I was granted great knowledge and enlightenment. As if the god's whispering in my ears, teachings come down in my head. Regardless of the opponent's species, I can see the quickest and most efficient way to piece, disable, and kill them. If I applied that information a little differently, I'd be able to cause maximum pain without killing him."

"..."

I certainly didn't know how to torture the Adgon species effectively.

I was a little embarrassed, considering I was just trying to use a dimensionally universal method: beating him as much as I can.

"Is it a power available to those that officially offered their souls to the god of war and became its subordinate?"

"Yes, perhaps."

Indeed, in essence, warfare was a methodology of how to move one's body efficiently and at the same time a study of how to attack the enemy's body.

It was no wonder that the god of war's incarnation candidate had the power to identify the opponent's biological weaknesses.

When I nodded and stepped back, dozens of thin Mana needles emerged from Rosuelen's hand.

The commissioner mockingly laughed at it as if it's futile when he saw them.

"Do you think such small pricks will make me...."

Before he could even finish his sentence, Briam and I were forced to cover our ears.

The commissioner was screaming like crazy.

When Rosuelen shook her hand, the needles flew all over the prisoner's body, and he immediately repeated to bend and fold his back like a struggling fish that had just been taken out of the water.

Cr-ack! Drr-ack!

It was also visible to the naked eye that bones were being twisted and muscles were repeatedly contracting and expanding.

His eyes rolled upside down as his mouth foamed.

'Oh? How can poking with a few needles create such a dramatic effect?'

Interested, I looked inside the commissioner's body with Penetration.

The skill didn't allow me to see the structure of his nervous system and chemical reactions, but at least I was able to observe that there was no immediate inflammation or serious bleeding in him.

She tortured him in a way that gave him terrible pain without putting his life at risk.

Rosuelen, who had been waiting for a while after exposing the commissioner to hell, retracted the Mana needles.

She then gave me a look as if to tell me to start the interrogation process.

"Okay, do you feel like talk-"

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything!"

Like a prisoner who had barely breathed air into his lungs after being waterboarded, the commissioner hurriedly began to abandon his will.

Genograche expressed his admiration.

- Wow, that's impressive. Is that possible for any other race besides Adgon?

Rosuelen nodded slowly.

"Yes."

While the devil and the incarnate exchanged conversation based on "academic curiosity," I listened to the confessions of the commissioner.

What he said didn't deviate from my assumptions.

They planned to assassinate Rosuelen, so they left a reserve force in the place.

I was, of course, recording all the statements with magic.

I asked a question after securing enough amount that could be used as evidence.

"But I just don't understand. Since there's already the System that plays the gods' role, do you mean that there's no need for real gods to intervene?"

That's why they even tried to kill the incarnation candidate.

When they lost her in the process, they instead turned the problem into an opportunity and planned to invite me since I could easily find their target. Afterward, they were going to kill both me and Rosuelen.

Adgon replied in a voice still mixed with fear and gasp.

"... Yes, that's the conclusion we've reached."

"Then why the hell were you all so passive with the Mercadius suppression?"

I thought that the Adgons were already aware of the identity of Mercadius, that the bizarre species was actually the divisive incarnate of the 'god of the mind.'

If rejecting and keeping the gods in check was their absolute objective, the Adgons would've had to search and kill Mercadius more than others.

That species was also a trace left by a god, after all.

However, the Adgons actively misled public opinion, saying that the species were harmless.

What the hell?

"That's..."

The Adgon hesitated for a while.

When I looked at her, Rosuelen created a needle again with Mana.

Shuddering at the thought of being put through the same hell again, he continued.

"Wait! Wait! I'll tell you everything. So that thing, please..."

The following words were surprising.

"That's because the 'administrator' of the system instructed us to do so."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"Administrator?"

As far as I was aware, it was my numerous reincarnates of the past that created the System.

They designed the System to have autonomy and evolve on its own.

That was because the successor, who lost his memory every time he was reincarnated, couldn't manage the System in every life. Whenever he died and crossed over to the next reincarnation, a gap was made between being born again. He could only be reborn after a few years at the minimum or hundreds of years at the maximum.

But then... someone's managing that System?

"Are you talking about the 'Ministry Spirit?'"

"How do you know that name?"

The commissioner looked at me in surprise.

"It is not them. The Ministry Spirit and the Administrator are different."

The commissioner confided the secret that was said to be unknown to the other Union species and known by only a few, even among the Adgons.

As I guessed, he was quite a high-ranking official in the Adgons' internal hierarchy.

"If the Administrator isn't a Ministry Spirit, then do you mean the creator of the System?"

"No, no one knows who designed and developed the System. The Administrator is the one who holds the helm so that it can function well, even when it was just beginning."

"Continue."

"The System has a sense of purpose to help the mortals thrive and the power to actualize it, but it does not have the ego to judge its value by free will. Our new god, to put it simply... is more like a mechanical device. If you observe the 'control cognition,' which is the System's usual method of communicating with the mortals, you'll notice that such a characteristic is evident."

By control cognition, he was referring to the System Message.

It exuded mechanical comments such as 'Quest Completed!' or 'Select Item!'

My guess was that the Ministry Spirit couldn't even monitor the control cognition comments in real-time.

Then [The Successor's Eyes] would have already been revealed.

The moment a comment along the lines of '[The Successor's Eyes] resists' appeared, my identity would've already been disclosed.

Therefore, I deduced that the Ministry Spirit couldn't manipulate the control cognition.

Rather, it was more like the control cognition summoned the Ministry Spirit.

"The Ministry Spirit intervenes in situations where the System's mechanical information processing and the conduction of business according to regulations cannot resolve the issue at hand."

Like the time the control cognition called the Ministry Spirit when an error occurred.

"And the Administrator... refers to the entity in charge of the Ministry Spirit."

"Who else knows of this?"

"As of now, only the Adgons, the sole survivor among the first five species that founded the Union... The only one that can contact the Administrator is the Adgons, and it is only us that knows of its existence as well."

In the ensuing interrogation, the commissioner returned to talk about Mercadius.

"The Administrator had told us that we don't have to mind the Mercadius. That all of them... Were the tools set aside for the future."

What kind of future was it talking about?

I was left with more questions and confusion.

But one thing was certain.

'Adgon, Mercadius, and even the 'Administrator' of the system... they're all in it together.'

*

After interrogating until there was nothing more to reveal, I knocked out the commissioner and took out an item to seal him.

"Then, shall we go back?"

I was about to return to the area governed by Bishop Briam with everyone.

"... Wait a minute!"

As I was about to activate Teleport, I stopped because of Rosuelen's sudden exclamation.

"What's the matter?"

The moment I said those words, I immediately felt it.

"Huh?"

The divine power of an incomparably different level from the ones I had ever felt before was emanating from her body.

A mysterious light lingered in her eyes.

She spoke with a deep voice, rich with echo.

"It's calling us."

Her gaze was directed at the Grave of Incarnations, which we used as a shelter.

Bishop Briam asked a question.

"Could it be... Did you hear the god's voice again?"

Rosuelen nodded without hesitation.

"Yes."

Then she spoke with an appealing look.

"We have to go to that place."

The Adgon threats had been killed and suppressed, so there was no need to leave in a hurry.

And since there was no reason for the god to threaten us in that situation, I decided to heed Rosuelen's words. We head back in there.

Leaving the grumbling Genograche outside the Grave of Incarnations, of course.

'What on earth is going on?'

Shhh!

The tightly sealed stone door opened, and we entered the tomb for the second time that day.

"It's indeed still intact."

We used it as a bomb shelter earlier, but there was no single crack on the walls despite the uproar outside.

were also undamaged.

'Wait. This is an unnecessarily strong barrier to construct if the only purpose is to protect the tomb even if it was intended to keep the thieves off the place.'

Furthermore, when the incarnation died, the world's civilization was said to have already begun to decline due to the extensive war.

Would it have been possible to make that much investment to honor the incarnation when there was a fire just around the corner?

I asked the Bishop about it.

"That's a fair question. It was right after the end of the war that the former incarnation was enshrined here. However, this cave itself predates that event. No detailed records have been passed down, but it was said to be already considered a sacred place for our congregation back then."

Since only those who believe in the war god could enter the place, its qualification as a sacred place was sufficient.

"Then this barrier itself is..."

"I don't think our ancestors made it. There's also a saying that it was here even before history was recorded."

While we were exchanging conversation, Rosuelen led us to the middle of the site.

There was a large coffin made of stone.

"This way...!"

Rosuelen beckoned at me like she's possessed by something.

As we followed her down the stairs...

Ch-wack!

'What's that?'

Among the patterns on the back of my hand, the one that represented the war god emitted light and shot it forward.

Shake!

The lid of the heavy coffin opened.

"Gasp!"

Frightened, Bishop Briam landed on his butt.

"T-that's...!"

Rosuelen stared forward with a blank look as I distorted my face, unable to understand the situation.

I asked quietly.

"When did you say that the incarnation committed martyrdom, Bishop?"

After a moment of silence, he answered with a dumbfounded look.

"... I know it's been at least a thousand years."

The Bishop and I looked at the coffin, unable to believe our eyes.

Above the newly opened coffin, the former incarnation's body, which hadn't decomposed at all after a thousand years, was floating in the air.