Chapter 5
“SOMETHING WRONG OVER THERE?” Solomon asked worriedly. He must’ve heard Mira react to the Spirit King’s claim.
“No… Well, you see, the Spirit King apparently knows something,” Mira said. “Wait a minute.”
She heard a boyish giggle from the other end of the receiver. “Oh, of course. I get it. Man, that’s incredible. It’s like having a knowledge hack. Okay, I’ll wait! Take as long as you need!”
The Spirit King’s presence overcame all effort with ease; he was like a walking spoiler dispenser. Some people might be unhappy with the mystery being revealed all at once, instead of unraveling bit by bit, but that was less important to Mira. And Solomon sounded happier than ever; as a king, he genuinely appreciated the help.
“Now, about that white pillar,” Mira said. “Between us, that’s what we’ve been calling those this whole time.”
Were the pillars really what the Spirit King called the “Onbashira of Earthly Reversal”? To determine that, Mira gave him the locations of as many pillars as she could. Before long, the Spirit King confirmed that they were certainly one and the same. The locations Mira listed matched the ones he knew of perfectly. According to him, there were fifty-two in total.
“Ooh, goodness. They really are the same!”
Having discovered that the white pillars were the so-called “Onbashira,” Mira reveled in unearned superiority at one-upping the kingdom’s scholars. Simultaneously, she realized something: The Spirit King claimed there were fifty-two pillars, yet she only knew of around twenty. Where were the remaining thirty-odd?
When she asked, the Spirit King replied that only half the pillars were on the surface. The other half were deep underground, and Mira only knew of the former.
“The underground ones are hidden,” he added. “I doubt they’re easy to find.”
“I see. So a bunch are buried in the same type of surroundings…” If she asked, Mira could probably learn exactly where those hidden pillars were, but that didn’t matter right now. She needed to know why they existed. “The point is, what are those pillars for, anyway?” she asked bluntly.
Nebrapolis contained a hole where a pillar should be, and the dark demon there was likely responsible. In other words, if they knew why the pillars existed, they’d know what had motivated the demon.
“Allow me to answer. The Onbashira of Earthly Reversal purify the world. The gods thought them up, and angels, demons, and we spirits worked together to erect them far and wide.”
He launched into the details. The reason they’d created the pillars traced back to the continent-wide war against the Monster-Ruling God. That war had engulfed humanity, spirits, angels, demons, and gods alike, nearly destroying the world itself. As a result, it left scars, even after good prevailed.
Worst among those scars was the contamination of the Celestial Shrine of Nirvana, where souls went to rest, and of ley lines.
The shrine’s contamination made it difficult for souls to reincarnate properly, leading to a sharp increase in stillbirths. Worse, many children who survived birth were heartless, loyal only to a desire to destroy all around them, much like monsters.
Meanwhile, ley-line contamination damaged the natural world extensively. Rivers dried up, the earth cracked, and natural disasters wreaked havoc everywhere. Worse, the mountains themselves began to desiccate, and odious, otherworldly plants infested the world. The plants were alien even to Martel; in fact, they infuriated her. She refused to acknowledge them as real greenery.
“The Onbashira of Earthly Reversal were built to purify that contamination. The ones on the surface and the ones underground perform different roles.”
Having summed up their reason for existence, the Spirit King finally got to the heart of things. First, the pillars on the surface purified the Celestial Shrine of Nirvana. They affected souls as well, slowly but surely returning the contaminated ones to normal.
The pillars underground purified ley lines and maintained their flow, exerting an effect on mana. They had been set up in pits where ley lines intersected, gradually repurifying contaminated mana.
The pillars’ cleansing effects gave Angel Drops harvested nearby similar capabilities. Martel welcomed that; as the progenitor spirit of flora, she was happy for the herb to evolve in such a way.
“That’s the role of the Onbashira of Earthly Reversal.” After concluding the explanation, the Spirit King murmured nostalgically, “Ah. We were so busy back then.”
“I see. Amazing.”
He’d revealed the truth of the mysterious white pillars. Since they were purification devices, it was easy to see why dark demons had targeted them. That led Mira to another realization: exactly what the dark demon she’d defeated had been up to there.
“In other words, a dark demon would destroy an underground pillar to interfere with ley-line purification and curse the world with natural disasters once more!” she guessed, hoping for the Spirit King’s confirmation. The place was ruined now, but Solomon’s investigators were superb, so there had all but certainly once been a white pillar there. Thus, the demon must’ve been after the pillar. Its plot seemed clear now that she knew the pillars’ function.
The Spirit King refuted her confident guess, however. “No, don’t think that’s it.”
According to him, the purification was complete. Impeding it now wouldn’t actually affect anything, and a demon would be aware of that.
“What…? Then why would that dark demon…?” Mira cocked her head, confused. She’d been so certain about her theory.
What had the demon’s goal been? The location suggested that it was related to the ley lines, but the mana circulating through them was so plentiful that only the combined efforts of gods, spirits, angels, and demons could alter it.
“Hmm…” After a moment’s thought, the Spirit King asked with determination, “A question for you, Mira. What exactly was the location of what you believe was an underground pillar?”
“Hmm? Location?”
However much she mulled the conundrum over, she couldn’t come up with anything else. As for the question the Spirit King had just asked her, she had to wonder what significance the location could have now. Still, if he was asking, there must be something.
Mira used a map to show him Nebrapolis’s exact location, describing the specific position of the underground chamber that would’ve contained a pillar. She also told him about the tunnel it had opened.
“So it is true,” the Spirit King murmured after a while. Then he corrected his appraisal of her theory; she was half-right. “The dark demon you defeated almost certainly did destroy the pillar. Still, I believe its motivation lay elsewhere.”
“What…?” What could its reason have been, if not the one Mira guessed? She waited expectantly for the Spirit King to continue.
A moment of silence passed. Then another voice entered her mind—one that seemed likely to know the truth.
“Sym, she has your blessing, so she’ll have to deal with it someday. I think you should just tell her.” That was Martel’s voice. It seemed the Spirit King was struggling over whether to explain the truth to Mira.
He couldn’t speak lightly of the white pillar they believed had been under Nebrapolis, which meant it was connected to some secret of a global scale. Martel’s words rattled Mira. What would she have to “deal with”? It was starting to sound like this was drawing her into a mess with massive implications.
“I’ve come this far. Lay it out…” Mira did her best to act tough, albeit only in her mind.
“You’re right. Now that things are in motion, we cannot keep the secret much longer,” the Spirit King told Martel.
Then, he unveiled that secret. First, he revealed that there were six hidden pillars in addition to the Onbashira of Earthly Reversal. The latter fifty-two pillars had been built with the help of those he’d mentioned, but the additional six were constructed by the Trinity—two apiece—and hidden so that nobody but the builder knew where they were. Indeed, one of those very pillars had been below Nebrapolis, unknown even to the Spirit King and Martel.
What were those six pillars for? The Spirit King explained that as well. The pillars the Trinity created had a built-in feature beyond purification or mana manipulation: sealing. Their power interfered with mana by scooping it out of ley lines, purifying it into divine energy, and then using that refined energy to seal things.
Since the six pillars’ function was to “seal” things, the next question was naturally what they sealed.
“As I recall, Mira, I once told you about the war against the Monster-Ruling God.”
“Right. Back when I met Martel.”
The Monster-Ruling God had been the lord of monsters, including many mutants and new breeds. According to legend, a human hero had defeated the god in one fell blow.
Mira quickly realized why the Spirit King had brought that up. “Could it be?”
What those six pillars were sealing was all too clear now.
“Indeed. The pillars seal parts of the Monster-Ruling God. Head, torso, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg—six pillars, six parts,” the Spirit King confirmed.
Mira had surmised that the pillars sealed the god itself—thoroughly, given that the Monster-Ruling God had been divided into six pieces. That brought a question to mind, however: Why had it been necessary to go to such lengths to seal an enemy supposedly killed in one strike?
“Seals… Don’t tell me.” Sealing rituals were common in fantasy, so Mira could imagine multiple reasons, one of which she offered as a hypothesis. “Is this Monster-Ruling God immortal?”
After a moment of thought, the Spirit King replied, “Immortal? Hmm…I’d call that half-correct.”
So Mira’s suggestion was partially right. What was the other half, then?
The Monster-Ruling God had indeed died, the Spirit King explained, but the problem was what happened afterward. The god’s corpse started making an eerie noise. Not a regular noise—one heard across the continent, regardless of the distance or obstacles between the sound and those who detected it.
What could that noise have been? The gods and spirits never found out, even with their combined power, and the sound continued ceaselessly.
“It was really weird,” Martel murmured, recalling the old days. “It was like the Monster-Ruling God was calling someone… Its parents or…”
When Mira asked her what the sound had been like, Martel tried imitating it. Was her impression poor, or had the corpse really sounded like that? Either way, all Mira understood from her answer was that the sound had apparently been a single note repeated with a certain cadence.
Hrmm, she thought. Sounds like some kind of signal.
“What the sound meant was unclear, but it was eerie,” continued the Spirit King. “We decided to destroy the corpse for good on the spot.”
When it came to the Monster-Ruling God, mysteries had still abounded, and they’d planned to use the corpse to investigate those mysteries. But the sound it produced was far too eerie, disturbing not just humanity but spirits, angels, and demons as well. After that, they quickly agreed to dispose of the corpse.
The real problem began there, however. The corpse couldn’t be destroyed through cremation, nor by any other effort the gods and spirits made.
“I see. No wonder you said I was half-right.” Mira’s guess that the god was immortal was close, since although the deity itself died, its corpse continued to exist.
“We even tried using methods that could destroy gods. That was the first time I’d ever seen dust return to its original shape.” The Spirit King muttered that he still couldn’t believe it, then continued.
What that sound had meant remained unclear, but given its source, everyone felt very uneasy. Since the corpse seemed indestructible, they had to seal it. However, even that had failed. The miasma billowing from the corpse was too much for the sealing coffin to handle. Its seal broke, and the sound—which was no doubt important to the Monster-Ruling God—continued.
That had only made the danger more evident, so they’d tried even more methods. Along the way, they discovered a ray of hope: Cutting the corpse apart dispersed the miasma. But they also discovered that, with each cut, the corpse diverted more power to repair itself. By the time they’d divided it into ten pieces, that power was too great to keep the pieces in one place, since the body parts automatically attracted each other.
Thus, the final method they arrived at was dividing the corpse into six. That was the most pieces they could keep away from each other.
“It wasn’t easy either. Even though the individual parts didn’t immediately break the seals, the miasma kept building up.” The Spirit King’s tone seemed to lighten as he recounted the hardships of that time, as if he was proud of how they’d solved these problems.
The solution had been using the white pillars to seal the corpse parts. That was what it had taken to finally seal the corpse. The pillars dampened the sound, weakened the parts’ mutual magnetism, and purified the miasma.
“Ah, and just the other day, we discussed why the stigmata appeared. This would be why. The six sealing pillars have much more divine power than the other fifty-two—quite enough to awaken the stigmata.”
“Goodness… What a surprising truth to learn here.”
Soul Howl was trying to save a woman with stigmata, which manifested when she came in contact with divine power. That apparently stemmed from the pillar that had once been underground. This important information coming up as if it were a mere afterthought elicited a bitter chuckle from Mira.
That white pillar was fundamentally the same as any other Onbashira of Earthly Reversal, made through the combined efforts of spirits, angels, and demons. The Spirit King recalled the memory fondly.
“Everyone was together back then,” Martel murmured, nostalgic as well.
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