Chapter 337 - The Late Savior

“We should be safe now, I think, the attacker left,” Sofia told the students who just stepped out of the bone pyramid.

“I- I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lola stuttered, pointing at the sky.

“He’s an ally, everything is alright,” Sofia reassured her.

Sofia had felt the sudden disturbance happening behind her, but she knew by instinct that it wasn’t the masked elf returning, the person who just appeared had many times more mana. She turned around to see Leverle in his white robes stepping out of a black and jagged cross-shaped tear through the sky. Slowly, he walked down, platforms of solid mana forming under his feet.

“That’s the doctor!” Topaz exclaimed, “Why is he here?”

“You know Leverle?” Sofia asked reflexively before it dawned on her that they must have seen him for Opal’s handicap. He couldn’t fix it?

“Truly your master’s apprentice. Have you lost anyone?” Leverle asked as he landed in front of the group without a sound.

Does he mean the students?

“No, everyone is unharmed, luckily.”

“Good.” He turned toward Opal, “Has your condition deteriorated?”

The girl shook her head.

“Very good. Keep leveling at a steady pace, your genome will soon fix itself. Now, care to explain all this?” he said, extending one of his weird black arms out of his robe, pointing at the wasteland of rot. “I lost track of the doll, which was surprising. Did you perhaps just meet your namesake?”

Aphenoreth?

“No, nothing like that. We got attacked. One masked person with pointy ears, probably some kind of space mage. They trapped us inside of a weird spatial skill and were preparing a siege spell with a giant ritual circle. I broke out of the trap and destroyed the thing with rot, it was the size of the entire barren zone. They teleported away then before I could [Identify] them.”

Leverle’s mask-like head rotated to the side like a clock’s hands as Sofia spoke, then it snapped back to its original position. “I understand now why the guardian paid so much. Someone powerful is after you. They knew about the doll. Did you tell anyone about it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then they had the means to spy on our conversation in the cathedral. No small feat, no lesser than cutting me off from the doll completely. They fled, you say? Give me a moment.” Leverle turned around, scanning the rot-covered wasteland, and teleported right where the attacker had been standing when Sofia saw them; a second later, he was back. “They covered their tracks. Unsurprising. There is not much we can do to find them. Have you memorized the siege ritual?”

“About two thirds of it.” The collapsing barrier behind me blocked my view. Still, the reading speed really helped, I can copy most of what I saw without too much trouble I think. “It might take a while if you want me to draw it, the thing was really huge.”

“Then please do so right away. It might hold important information. But first,” Leverle turned around, and another tear in space appeared in front of him, “follow me to the Cathedral.”

Sofia urged all the girls to follow Leverle and entered the fissure last as it started shrinking.

“You are safe here, students. Rest,” Leverle ordered, Sofia’s eyes needed a second to adapt to the sudden change of luminosity. Judging from the orange of the sky showing from the glass dome roof above, it was either dawn or dusk, but the cathedral’s interior was brightly lit. They had teleported right into a small but very tall hexagonal room with large stained glass artworks adorning half the walls, and towering bookshelves covering the other half. There were a few sofas and seats around clean low tables. Leverle waved a hand and the tables were suddenly covered with countless drinks and pastries. “I will have a word with your teacher.”

Leaving the flabbergasted students behind, Leverle left through a side door.

“What he said, rest here, we’ll return to the academy soon.”

“W- wait,” Shaily stopped Sofia right before she followed behind Leverle, “I don’t really get it but, are you in trouble because of us?”

“No, you got in trouble because of me. Sorry about that. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a teacher at all…”

Sofia sighed and left, closing the door behind her. The room right next to that one was a small office, with the orange light filtering from the light white curtains, it reminded Sofia of her first meeting with Astelia at the Vasperian embassy.

“You may sit, Daughter of Sorrow. Please produce a sketch of the ritual circle as best you can. Do you have any idea about the attacker’s motive?”

“First… Are we absolutely certain that I was the target? Could the doll being cut off be an unlucky coincidence from being trapped within a spatial barrier?” Sofia asked, already bringing out a large bone plate to draw the siege ritual on.

“Highly improbable. You were undoubtedly the target, your students would have been nothing but collateral damages.”

“I see… Then I have two ideas, maybe three.”

“Did you already offend so many?”

“It wasn’t… Anyway, my first guess is the Empress. I believe she has been investigating me due to the name on my ID.”

“Delivia? She would undoubtedly send a few probes your way, you have likely interacted with several already. As much as I would like to say she is not behind this incident, she could definitely go there. That is, if she believes you a threat to the empire.”

“Well, maybe we should hope it is her, because the two remaining options are both Gods.”

“Gods?”

“The attacker looked like an elf, and I may or may not possess five of Sun’s essence. I think it almost impossible that Sun Herself would want my death, She lends one of my heroes Her blessing to this day, but perhaps an overzealous follower might think I do not deserve the essence and want it back to their Goddess.”

Sofia’s words left Leverle speechless for a bit.

“There are some decrepit elves around, perhaps one has succumbed to insanity. It is a frail possibility, but a possibility nonetheless,” Leverle carefully assessed.

“The last and more probable possibility is Scripture, the ‘God’ who gifted my sainthood. He wants me dead, that is for certain, but what bothers me is that if he had the means to pull this off when I was protected by your doll, he could have killed me a thousand times over by now.”

At Leverle’s demand for more details, Sofia explained her tumultuous relationship with Scripture and his Church.

“Quite the situation. Another God roams the land. Defeating His incarnation seems foolish, but you bear His essence. Perhaps it may be possible, if you reach my level.”

“Not level 500?”

“You fail to grasp the power differential at play. Those who reach these heights can easily contend with most of the strongest Gods and Recessed, only a select few can claim to stand above them, such as Sun or Death. But it is only a matter of numbers. Should all the level 500 band together to cleanse the Deities one by one, none would survive. They would be born anew, clean slates, assuming anyone is left to produce the essence. Scripture may prove challenging to someone at my level, but not impossible, if I trust what you say.”

“What about ‘my namesake’?”

“I do not know, and I do not wish to know.”

“Too bad. Well, I’m about done with the ritual circle. This should be mostly accurate to what I managed to see.”

Leverle grabbed the bone slate and looked it over for a good minute before setting it down on his desk.

“Unlucky. This is of no help. It could exonerate doubt from Scripture, but it might not. This is mostly mana gathering and consolidating arrays. It was in large parts meant to gather mana, to fuel whatever the center part was, but most of the center is incomplete. There is one certitude only, this sharp corner is part of a Divine rune,” he said, pointing at two lines joining at an angle near the very center of the circle.

“Because it cuts through all the smaller arrays like a wall? This angle… It does look like the lower point of Sun’s rune…”

Leverle shook his head, “That is the issue, unfortunately. Most Divine runes are very alike, either triangular or spiraled. Delivia is a follower of Talent, I cannot show you, but Talent’s rune fits as well.”

Knowledge was kind of a spiral I guess… I can see it. “Then Scripture?”

“I have never seen Scripture’s rune. It may also fit or it may not. I fear the ritual is of no help, Daughter of Sorrow. Perhaps Sorrow Herself may bless you with divine knowledge about the matter.”

“No, the ritual does help, it confirms that a God was willing to kill me, even if it’s uncertain which. I think this rules out Sun completely. So it was either the Empress and Talent, Scripture, or I have somehow walked on someone else’s shoes without even realizing.”

Leverle turned and opened the curtains, he gazed at the sun rising over the city.

“Five stones for your protection might have been too cheap after all.”