Chapter 255
Side Story – Earth in Those Days (3)
Though the systems of supernatural abilities varied from world to world, similar in some ways and different in others, there was one field that most of them shared.
Transcendent Beings, gods, spirits, or demons.
The art of contracting with such entities, ceding a portion of one's mana, the power of the soul, or the soul itself in exchange for wielding powerful spells.
The names given to this art were equally diverse.
From the most common term, Contract Magic, to miracles, transcendental summoning, dark sorcery......
Since the beings whose power was borrowed were entities that influenced the laws of multiple worlds beyond just one, the methods were broadly similar as well.
When the people of Earth first began absorbing all manner of supernatural abilities through other worlds, they naturally took notice of this art too.
"If we worship these great spirits you speak of, can we wield that kind of power as well?"
"Of course. Offer a sacrifice, and even more becomes possible."
The reason Contract Magic was treated as a wicked art in many worlds was that most Transcendent Beings preferred the souls of the living as payment.
First, a Contractor who offered up their own soul was dangerous because the divine entity could then manipulate their body like a toy. Second, the soul used in the transaction didn't necessarily have to be the Contractor's own, which made it dangerous for another reason entirely.
But then, weren't people capable of boundless cruelty when they could foist the cost onto someone else?
The people of Earth were no different. Before long, individuals appeared who seized remote villages by force of overwhelming firearms, slaughtered the inhabitants as offerings, and pursued power through their deaths.
"Now, stand right there."
"Please, spare us, please......."
"Quit your sniveling, you primitives. O Primordial Seeker! I offer these humans as sacrifice!"
With the cry, sharp gunshots rang out, and the people bound upon the altar died screaming.
Amid the stench of blood, death, and gunpowder, an eerie voice echoed.
[Fresh souls indeed. I accept them.]
Helpless humans, slaughtered upon an altar carved with the symbol of the god they served.
When their souls reached the Transcendent Being of another world, The Primordial Seeker bestowed payment upon its Follower.
The Earthling man holding the rifle, Kanzaki Hayato, felt the spells being etched into his soul and cackled with delight.
"Yes, this is it. This is the stuff!"
Born with a pitifully small soul, he was limited to C-rank at best by Earth's Ability User standards, but through this method, he could keep growing stronger.
Perhaps someday he might even reach S-rank, the domain reserved for those regarded as a nation's foremost military asset.
After laughing until his lungs nearly burst, he turned his gaze to his companions nearby.
"How about you guys?"
"Incredible. Want me to show you?"
"Save it. We need that power to round up more sacrifices from the next village."
Such activities were carried out unofficially within the expeditionary teams of multiple nations, tacitly condoned by their governments.
They were too afraid of inviting the Cradle's wrath to run it as an open project.
However, those who had roamed several primitive settlements, slaughtering every last survivor and offering their souls, returned to Earth through the Transfer Gate only to be met with an unexpected and crushing revelation.
"Thousand Blades...... What? The spell isn't working?"
"Same here."
The spells they had obtained through various means by contracting with divine entities only functioned in that world. Once they returned to Cradle through the Transfer Gate, the spells ceased to work entirely.
Communication with their contracted entities was also impossible, and those who had surrendered their souls completely could no longer even cross through the Transfer Gate.
Before long, an envoy from the Cradle arrived and delivered the reason to the Earth side as if issuing a notice.
"From now on, Soul Contractors will be unable to return to Earth. Nor will Contract Magic function on Earth."
"Don't tell me you people did this?"
"The great Turan willed it so."
"But why......."
"This world is already drawing the attention of far too many extraplanar Transcendent Beings. This is for your benefit as well."
After learning of Contract Magic's existence, Turan had used his ability to wield Essence, invoking the power of the Lawmaker that Monarch had once favored, to append a new rule to the Transfer Gates.
A rule preventing Contractors' spiritual connections from carrying through the Transfer Gates.
His reasoning was twofold: allowing those contracted with extraplanar divine entities onto Earth could give those entities an opening, and it would also prevent the countless problems that Contractors created.
He had also suspected, with near certainty, that people would resort to vile acts in pursuit of power.
"Wait, if you were going to do something like that, you should have at least told us beforehand..."
"Why should we have?"
At the Cradle wizard's retort, delivered as though the objection were genuinely incomprehensible, the Earth-side officials opened their mouths to protest but could not utter a word.
After all, the opening and maintenance of the Transfer Gates between worlds was sustained entirely by the Cradle's goodwill.
If they voiced their complaints and were told the gates would simply be closed, what could they possibly say?
In the end, all the people of Earth could do was silently grind their teeth at this supremely unequal relationship.
"Damn it, we need to find a way to open Transfer Gates on our own, and fast."
"There are supposedly a few similar techniques among the ancient magics of other worlds, but......."
"Keep looking and we'll find an answer eventually."
Fortunately, traces of world-crossing techniques could be found across multiple magical systems, but no one was capable of properly executing them.
Generally speaking, crossing between worlds was not only horrifically difficult to reverse once undertaken, but demanded enormous resources and carried a high probability of failure.
The theory existed, but there was no way to confirm success unless the person who crossed over came back, and the number of people who had crossed and then repeated the process to return was vanishingly small.
In any case, once word spread widely that borrowing power through contracts with Transcendent Beings was impossible on Earth, interest in the method naturally plummeted.
"What, you can't use the power on Earth?"
"That's right. Apparently, if you enter a Soul Contract, you can't even come back to Earth at all."
"Then what's the point?"
It wasn't as if no Earthlings wanted to emigrate to other worlds brimming with all manner of mystical natural wonders, but most still preferred to live in the world where they were born and raised.
Setting aside what might change further down the road, the social infrastructure of each world was still far behind Earth's for the time being.
And contracting just to wield power freely in another world was unappealing in its own way, since most civilized societies across the eight worlds connected to Earth either outlawed such contracts or enforced strict regulations against them.
In short, whether here or there, it amounted to nothing more than squandering one's innate talent.
Unless one intended to live openly as a criminal, that is.
It was only after a very long time had passed since the Transfer Gates were first connected that Contract Magic, now reduced to a relic no one wanted, shone once more.
*
"O Shepherd of the Young Lambs, your lamb offers her prayer."
The quiet prayer of a young girl was easily drowned out by the clamor of the battlefield, the roar of guns and cannons, the buzzing of drones overhead.
But the result her prayer brought about was anything but quiet.
Crack. Electricity surged from her hands, rocketing skyward in an instant before amplifying and destroying drones spread across a hundred meters in every direction, paralyzing tanks reinforced with defensive magic.
"Is that......."
"It's a Cradle Religion Priest! Everyone, fall back!"
"Damn it."
The power she demonstrated was not overwhelming enough to instantly dominate the course of battle.
By Ability User classification standards, it was upper A-rank, enough to crush a company and then some, but a force with greater firepower could still push through.
Specialized Ability Users attached to each regiment could likely even assassinate her on their own.
Yet for some reason, the soldiers retreated with their morale broken.
Among them, several kissed the ash-gray golden eagle emblem hanging from their necks and murmured quiet prayers.
"O Master who wields the Key of Omnipotence, your servant has no heart to defy your authority......."
"You Cradle Religion bastard, is this really the time to pray? They're our enemy–"
"Enough! Stop riding him and just retreat already."
The noncommissioned officer who had been snapping at the praying soldier clicked his tongue with a "Tch" at the officer's rebuke and fell back.
Several hours later, the officer learned through an operational briefing that this phenomenon had occurred across the entire front line.
"Has the Cradle decided we're in the wrong?"
"According to their Priests, it's not their god who determines which side is just; rather, they follow their own conscience."
"So our country's Cradle Religion Priests feel this war is unjust."
"That's correct. In this day and age, I suppose they find waging a war of conquest under the pretext of once having been the same people to be out of step with the times."
It had been roughly two hundred years since the Transfer Gates opened.
Earth had originally been barren ground for Contract Magic, but the Shepherd of the Young Lambs was the sole exception, the only such power permitted on Earth, and it had spread rapidly. That the Shepherd of the Young Lambs was the ruler of the Cradle was common knowledge.
Those who contracted with him were able to wield virtually every manner of power, not by offering their souls, but under the condition that they save people in a way that did not go against their own conscience.
Of course, the innate limitations of one's soul meant they were never truly as powerful as the wizards of the Cradle, but.......
"Likely seven to eight out of ten soldiers on the front lines are Followers of the Cradle Religion. The same goes without saying for the officer corps. I believe further combat is pointless."
"......I'll report it up the chain."
In the early 21st century, just before the Cradle's existence was revealed, religion on Earth had been quite literally a setting sun.
As the advance of civilization explained away all manner of mysteries, people had come to regard the existence of gods as something on par with Santa Claus.
But ever since the first mystery was unveiled through the Cradle's existence, and ever since those beings were revealed to be Olympian figures who bestowed miracles upon Earth, manipulated the laws of nature, and bridged worlds, the religion that worshipped the Cradle's wizards as gods had flourished without end.
Thanks to this, by the time the 22nd century arrived, the Cradle Religion had displaced every existing religion to become the most thriving faith on Earth.
With Priests empowered by such a god serving on the enemy's side, it was unreasonable to expect frontline soldiers to pull the trigger.
It was no longer that they feared the Cradle's power as in the past; rather, the sheer number of people who worshipped them now exceeded those who did not, making the tide impossible to turn against.
[─This concludes our declaration that hostilities will no longer continue.]
"Yaaah!"
"It's over!"
At the ceasefire announcement transmitted through their terminals, every last soldier erupted in cheers.
Whatever the justification, for those who stood amid the shellfire, war was something they wanted to end at the earliest possible moment.
Several among them approached the Cradle Religion Priests nearby, those who had contracted with the Shepherd of the Young Lambs, and cried out.
"Thank you so much, Priest!"
"All of this was possible only by the will of our great Lord."
The Priest's words were not mere modesty.
Had the great Turan sided with the unjust aggressors in this war, had he stripped his Priests of the power to halt the fighting, such a swift ceasefire would have been impossible.
The subsequent peace negotiations proceeded rapidly.
The great power that had initiated the invasion accepted a degree of losses and pledged reparations, while the invaded nation also knew better than to overreach by exploiting the fact that the Cradle's Priests had sided with them, settling at a reasonable compromise instead.
They had enough sense to know that if they pushed their greed too far and the scales tipped the other way, it would be the end for them.
Strictly speaking, there had already been several such precedents in the past, so it would be more accurate to say they had learned that lesson the hard way.
After the peace negotiations concluded, the Priests who had participated in the war made their way to Korea, the seat of the Cradle Religion.
The largest temple of the Cradle Religion on Earth stood at the foot of Jirisan, where their Lord, Turan, had first appeared.
"Welcome, young sheepdogs."
"We greet you, High Priest."
The Priests who had participated in the war could barely contain themselves in the face of the High Priest's warm welcome.
The High Priest, who appeared to be in his sixties, was originally from Mexico and was renowned for having spent his entire life fighting to protect people from the drug cartels.
"Now, let us all pray."
When the High Priest raised his hand to pray, the bracelet on his wrist stood out conspicuously.
Its true nature was the Sacred Relic, the first and last one their Lord Turan had ever bestowed upon the people of Earth.
It had been donated by the order's saint, Kim Soo-ho, before his death. Thanks to it, the Cradle Religion's High Priest had been saved from heretical terrorist attacks on multiple occasions, even before gaining divinity through the contract.
After the prayer concluded, the High Priest looked around at the other Priests and spoke quietly.
"Today, I have very joyous news to share with our brothers and sisters."
"Joyous news?"
"Our Lord looked with favor upon those who stood against injustice this time, and has granted the privilege of visiting Paradise."
"...!"
The High Priest's words were so shocking that one of the Priests let out a choked gasp and collapsed on the spot.
It was no easier for the others, who were too similarly stunned to even help him up.
"P-Paradise, you don't mean......"
"Yes. You will be visiting the Cradle."
"Our great Lord!"
"Oh......"
At this truly unimaginable news, the Priests expressed their emotion in every way they could.
After a moment, one slightly more level-headed Priest raised a question with a puzzled look.
"But, as I understand it, Earth's people cannot travel to the Cradle......."
Unlike the people of Earth, whose souls and bodies functioned as entirely separate things, the life forms of the Cradle were a kind of information-based being, with both their physical bodies and Spirit Forms composed of refined Essence.
Therefore, when a Cradle human came to Earth, a barrier had to be erected to keep their Spirit Form from dispersing. Conversely, when an Earthling set foot in the Cradle, their very being was scattered to pieces.
Overcoming this phenomenon required a truly staggering degree of resistance, something impossible for an ordinary human.
Even for the most powerful S-rank Ability Users by Earth's standards.
"It is possible because our Lord has found a way."
"I raised an unnecessary doubt."
"No, doubt is not a bad thing. Rather, it is giving up the effort to understand under the guise of faith that is truly wrong."
The Priests listened to the High Priest's teaching with their heads quietly bowed.
Afterward, they cleansed themselves thoroughly one last time before their visit, then followed the High Priest's guidance deep into the inner chambers of the temple.
Inside a sealed room stood a green mirror, identical in design to the Transfer Gates installed around the world but smaller in scale.
"It was erected not long ago through divine grace. Step through, and you will enter the Cradle and be able to meet our Lord. I truly envy you all."
"What about you, High Priest?"
"I am old and have done nothing but guard our home base. How could I deserve such glory?"
"Ah......."
Every last Priest let out a sigh of sorrow.
That a man who had devoted his entire life to the order would not enjoy the glory of seeing their Lord in person... how could fate be so cruel?
To them, the High Priest offered a gentle smile.
"It's all right. Our Lord has granted me revelations and let me hear his voice directly on several occasions. How could that glory be any less than seeing him in person? Now, let us go quickly. We must not dare keep the glorious one waiting."
"Understood."
Gulp. The sound of someone swallowing hard echoed through the sealed room.
The Priests stepped cautiously beyond the Transfer Gate, and in that instant felt the world warp violently around them.
"What is..."
Their voices, their colors, their very existence scattering, transforming into a chaos of every sensation.
Just as they were about to scream at the horrifying alienness, their surroundings rapidly stabilized and the sensation faded.
After a moment, one Priest murmured in a low voice.
"This is...... the Cradle......."
They stood in a corridor floored with ivory marble, flanked on both sides by towering pillars.
Though they did not know it was the imperial palace of Kalamaf, they could tell well enough that it was a place like nothing on Earth.
The empire's civilization, having advanced over the past century and a half, had long since surpassed that of Earth.
"I see our guests have arrived."
At the sight of the man who addressed them, the Priests nearly cried out in rapture.
Judging by his appearance, he was unmistakably Ashiz, the God of Wisdom, one of the great Turan's Subordinate Gods.
"O he who aids our Lord with wisdom!"
"Now, now."
"That's far too grand. Come on in."
Guided by him through the corridor, the Priests could not stop their legs from trembling.
A great many of the Cradle's residents lining both sides to welcome them were figures whose faces were already well known even on Earth.
And at the end of the corridor, the Priests could finally meet the master of their souls.
When the young man with ash-gray hair, who had been sitting amiably across from Meisa, Goddess of Storms and consort of the great Lord God, rose and approached them, they dropped to their knees in unison.
"I called you here because I witnessed with my own eyes how you gave of yourselves to save the helpless. I hope you will spend joyful hours in this place."
"Oh......."
At the words of personal commendation from the god they had served their entire lives, the master of their souls, there was not a single Priest among them who did not weep.
They would have been content to die right there in that moment.
*****
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