Chapter 605
I had grown accustomed to being hated and despised by those who didn't know me. I thought it was inevitable.
But this time, it was quite the opposite.
Those who didn't know me were worshipping and loving me. And this was happening within the Five Great Religions.
Just as Ellen was revered as a hero, they believed that I was the rightful champion of Als and Tu’an, even if the world hadn't recognized me yet.
Many had witnessed my final plea.
Among them were high-ranking clergy and holy knights belonging to the Five Great Religions. They knew that the Gate incident had been caused by my subordinates, but they also knew that I had never wanted this.
Therefore, it was inevitable that a faction supporting me would secretly emerge within the Order.
Rowan was a radical among them.
To begin with, if there were radicals, there must also be moderates.
If the moderates believed that the Demon King had his reasons,
Then the radicals would claim that the Demon King was absolutely right.
Both factions were predicated on supporting me.
Did this mean that, at some point, the majority of the upper echelons in the Five Great Religions supported me?
Did the popes act not out of betrayal to humanity but in accordance with the trend of the times?
Even Eleion Bolton, who had been busy with battlefield matters, spoke as if he was not unfamiliar with the situation. It was as good as settled.
The Five Great Religions had been waiting for me to appear, and had essentially become my support base.
"What is the argument of the radicals…?"
"They claim that the root of all these problems is not you, but the Empire and humanity."
Those who couldn't trust me.
Assuming that I had done no wrong, they argued that the responsibility lay with everyone who couldn't trust me.
"Some of them even wish for the collapse of the Empire."
In the end, it was the same.
They sought to hold someone accountable.
Only this time, it wasn't me.
Rowan was a person who revered me.
And she hated the Empire.
Such a person had tried to investigate the Empire's corruption, only to be hindered by the Holy Knights' commander, who even attempted to kill her.
"Rowan must have despised me for not being able to expose the Empire's corruption…"
The fire.
Someone had intended to show that scene to others.
To an unspecified number of people.
"Now, not only do I mistrust and despise the Order, but so does Rowan."
The radicals believed that the responsibility didn't lie solely with the Empire but with humanity as well.
This meant that the Five Great Religions couldn't possibly be entirely clean. After all, their ranks included holy knights, priests, and popes.
What if the sinister actions of the Tu’an Order, notorious for its poor reputation, had been revealed to the world? Actions like capturing civilians, torturing, and killing them in their temple?
Public sentiment would have run wild.
And the Empire wouldn't have remained silent.
Without people, there was no empire, so the Empire would have had no choice but to turn its sword against the Five Great Religions.
"Is it not an exaggeration to say that a civil war almost broke out in the Empire…?"
At my words, Eleion Bolton nodded.
"It's not certain, but it could have happened."
Rowan, from the start, was not only investigating this incident but fundamentally believed that the Empire bore all the responsibility. She was an Empire-blaming theorist.
Eleion Bolton must have deemed Rowan a threat and sought to eliminate him for that reason. Rowan would have wanted to bring down the empire if given the chance.
Therefore, it must have been the best option for the Holy Knight Commander to eliminate Rowan. If left alone, the friction between the Holy Order and the Empire could have escalated into actual bloodshed. Rowan was the type of person who would want to detonate a bomb instead of avoiding it, so Eleion Bolton's decision was not entirely unreasonable.
Leaving Rowan alone would lead to dangerous actions.
That's why they attempted to intervene, but their failure only made Rowan more dangerous.
It was absurd to expect Rowan to remain sane after the order she had been loyal to her entire life tried to kill her.
That must have been the meaning behind Eleion Bolton's words about needing me.
Rowan considered me a prophet, and by meeting her, I could resolve everything.
I needed to find Rowan.
Before she tried to do something I didn't want in the name of helping me.
Bertus led Ellen and her party to the underground research facility of Temple Magic University.
It was a horrifying sight.
They all watched the events unfolding underground.
Reanimated corpses and corpses in the process of being reanimated.
They saw where and what they were doing now, and how they were intended to be weaponized.
Not long ago, the Demon King had witnessed this scene. Now, Ellen, Ludwig, Louise, and Heinrich could see it too.
Everyone was at a loss for words.
Not only warriors, but long-dead heroes of the past were being resurrected as well.
They saw it.
"As I said before, I have no intention of abandoning this plan, no matter what you say," Bertus insisted after revealing everything, making it clear that he would continue with the project.
"So, from now on, if someone dies, you're going to keep bringing them back to life like this?" Ellen asked.
Bertus nodded at her question.
This carried significant implications.
Even if Ellen died.
If Saviolin Turner died, they would resurrect and deploy them on the battlefield.
This shouldn't be happening.
But in the end, what value does a corpse hold beyond its weight?
Shouldn't it be utilized if it can be of use?
"Was Asher... resurrected like this too?" Ludwig asked.
They looked no different from a living person.
If they could talk and remember just like when they were alive, wasn't that truly coming back to life?
Bertus shook his head at Ludwig's question.
"It failed."
"So... you couldn't really bring them back to life...?"
"That's right."
This was a half-baked resurrection at best.
Nothing more than weaponizing the dead.
It was impossible even to attempt with Delphin, as her body couldn't be found.
What if they could genuinely resurrect the dead, not only in their full form but with their complete memories as well?
This half-hearted resurrection made people cling to false hope because it succeeded in part.
Louis Ancton, Anna de Gerna, and Christina.
These three were the core members of the research.
Ludwig spoke quietly.
"I want to see him."
"... It's better not to."
As Dettomorian had said, finding Asher would reveal everything.
But they had not yet reached Asher.
"How did it fail, then...?"
They had not yet seen the full extent of it with their own eyes.
"I think we need to see it..."
Bertus sighed deeply, looking at Ellen and Heinrich, who seemed to share Ludwig's sentiment.
As it was not necessary for everyone to leave their posts when the Demon King arrived, the four of them observed the mages engrossed in their tasks in the underground laboratory.
Their attire did not reveal whether they were alchemists or dark mages.
Regardless, they were all intently doing their work with stern expressions.
If a single evil mage creates a dungeon and conducts horrifying experiments, then hundreds of mages are involved in conducting terrible research on a national scale.
In an isolated area of the underground laboratory, they encountered familiar faces.
Christina.
Anna de Gerna.
Louis Ancton.
"You guys... how...?"
Louis Ancton's face paled upon suddenly seeing the three visitors with the Emperor. Christina and Anna were equally surprised.
However, there was no need to be surprised about encountering them in an unexpected place.
There was only one port in the isolation zone.
"Is this... Asher?"
Ludwig stared at something in the port with a blank expression.
Other corpses had been restored to a seemingly intact state, but what lay before them could only be described as a grotesque mass of flesh.
Ellen's face turned pale, Heinrich's too, and Louise looked away, covering her mouth.
"What is... this...? This can't be Asher. What... what did you do? What is...?"
Anna and Christina were initially flustered by the sudden appearance of the others, but soon grasped the situation, knowing that Bertus had granted them access.
Christina had always maintained a cheerful demeanor.
But as if all of that was a mask, she shook her head firmly with a stern expression in the lab.
"It's not a success yet."
"What... did you say?"
"There are still many methods to try. Not long ago, it was able to speak. It just repeated what it was told, but still... it could."
Anna and Louis bit their lips, watching Christina's attitude.
They had tried to bring their friend back to life.
But they had failed.
However, there was someone who would not admit defeat.
Inside the port was something that could hardly be seen as more than a trace.
Everyone saw it as a failure, but there was still someone searching for a possibility.
"Nothing is impossible in this world."
Reviving the dead halfway was possible.
So why would reviving them completely be impossible? Christina believed that she could do it.
An uncertain possibility drives people into despair and fosters false hopes.
Christina had lost her reason, immersed in that possibility.
"If you want to talk about failure, get out."
The Christina inside the lab was a completely different person from the one outside. In the face of the possibility that she might be able to reverse her friend's death, Christina must have kept touching Asher's corpse.
After failing, she tried again, approaching it in a different way.
And if that failed, she tried another method.
Again and again.
She believed that if she tried dozens or hundreds of times, she could eventually bring her dead friend back to life.
The result of those countless attempts had been this grotesque mass, so bizarre that it could not even be called a chimera.
And yet, Christina had no intention of giving up.
Anna and Louis had already accepted failure, but Christina couldn't.
Ellen stared at the mess with a stern expression.
It was probably impossible, but what if they succeeded?
Let's say they could revive the dead.
Would such a thing be allowed in this world?
Ellen couldn't make that judgment.
However.
She could tell that Christina, who had seemed fine at the garrison, had already fallen apart a long time ago.
If she were to die before the Gate incident was resolved, she might end up like this as well.
The ability to fight even in death.
Even after atoning for her sins through death, she could still be a source of strength to others.
Should she be grateful for that, or should she despair?
But she never wished to become a useless lump of flesh that couldn't help anyone.
Ellen couldn't bear to watch Christina desperately search for non-existent hope amidst this horrifying scene.
"This... This isn't right..."
This couldn't be right.
They shouldn't be doing this.
In the end, both the living and the dead would only experience pain and despair.
It was clear to Ellen that Anna and Louis were reluctantly by Christina's side, not to help with the research, but to try and stop her.
Bertus had also tried to stop Christina's actions but failed.
It had to stop.
If it continued like this, she would only go mad.
Find Asher.
Asher was found, but it was only a trace.
"Stop... This isn't..."
Ellen spoke the words everyone wanted to say.
Christina stared at Ellen, her eyes shifting to meet Ellen's.
"Why?"
As if to ask for an explanation, Ellen stared back at her.
"You know it won't work... You're only hurting yourself..."
In the depths of Christina's dark and bottomless eyes, Ellen could only see despair.
There was no way the eyes of someone truly searching for hope could be like this.
No one who truly believed in the possibility would have such a gaze.
They couldn't help it, they had to try just in case.
There was no way they would have the mechanical eyes of someone clinging to the only thing they could do.
Even if they succeeded.
Even if they spoke like Asher, even if Asher's memories were there, could it really be called life?
But if they managed to gain those memories in a clumsy way, if they could speak.
From that moment on, it would become something that must not be done.
Christina was trying to do that right now.
At Ellen's words, everyone remained silent but agreed.
The fact that Anna and Louis, who had witnessed this scene all along, were hanging their heads in sorrow was evidence enough.
They wished for Christina to stop now but couldn't bring themselves to say it, so they reluctantly helped.
Christina’s stubbornness was tearing her and the other two apart in real time.
At Ellen's words, urging her to stop, Christina's dark and bottomless eyes grew even darker.
"You."
“If it were Reinhardt who had died.”
“Wouldn't you try to resurrect him?”
“Just like I did for him.”
With that single sentence.
"...What?"
The mere mention of that name caused the air to freeze.
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