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“What do you want to say?”
“What do you mean?”
Rizello, who had only been talking about incomprehensible things, smiled and placed his hand on the wall at the dead end.
The next second, I looked around with wide eyes.
“Some of the cathedral’s devices are said to have been made with the magic of our Magic Tower.”
A golden halo of light rose from the wall Rizelo’s hand touched.
The light moved and wriggled as if it were alive, and soon it turned into a magic circle with intricate designs.
“What is this….”
I blankly watched the scene.
The moment the light that had been moving quietly completed the magic circle, the wall began to vibrate low.
The stones that made up the walls interlocked with each other and shifted. The walls, which began to operate like sophisticated mechanisms, lifted little by little, revealing the space beyond them before long.
“Ah…”
My mouth fell open involuntarily at the mysterious sight.
Beyond the removed wall, a new sight was unfolding.
The bookshelves were tall enough to reach the ceiling and filled the entire field of view. At a glance, the chestnut-colored bookshelves seemed to have been buried for a long time, but they looked so profound and antique.
I knew without having to ask. This is a shelf in a restricted space.
As soon as I realised that, I hurriedly turned around. Fortunately, there were no signs of anyone here.
“Haha. Are you nervous?”
“Of course. What does it mean when it says “restricted area”? It’s a place where people who aren’t supposed to be there can’t go!”
“Then shall we go in? so that no one would notice.”
After saying that, Rizello put one foot inside the wall quickly.
I yelled out in surprise.
“Excuse me!”
“Are you going to say no because you have a husband again?”
Rizello tilted his head.
“You won’t go to the ballroom balcony by yourself, right? It’s just a library. Isn’t it the most inhospitable place in the world?”
Risello pointed at me while I was hesitating. He had an innocent look on his face as if he didn’t know why I was hesitant.
“I can promise you that if you look around for an hour or so, they won’t find you out.”
It was unfounded persuasion.
However, as the subject of the talk was the Master of the Magic Tower, I was puzzled by the insincere persuasion.
I cast my eyes over the restriction area book.
It was clear that those endless bookshelves were simply a treasure trove of knowledge. I had a hunch that the knowledge of the stigma I was looking for would also be spread there.
“By the way, I don’t deserve to go in any more than the Master of the Magic Tower does, but shouldn’t he come in here more than I do?”
“No way. God Elune taught us that knowledge should be shared equally with all.”
Rizello talked to me, a saintess, about what the god Elune taught without any shame on his face.
“The creation of the restricted area shelves was intended to isolate books that are difficult to manage, not to hide knowledge itself.”
Come to think of it, it seemed like I had heard about the philosophy of the knowledge of the god Elune in the catechism. I don’t know why that person is learning the tenets of a religion he doesn’t even believe in.
‘But no matter what, they shouldn’t find out that I entered the restricted area with the help of the Magic Tower Master.’
“What are you doing, saintess? Don’t you have a lot of time? If we take an hour as a safe amount of time, we have 57 minutes left.”
Rizello skillfully picked me up. I decided to clench my fists tightly.
‘… Wait, I’m just looking around for a second.’
I gulped, swallowed, and stepped into the restricted area. Goosebumps rose at the thought of stepping into a forbidden space. Rizello, watching me, smiled.
I just came here to help my customer, and I have no intention of spying on you, so I will just stay still.”
Surprisingly, Rizello didn’t seem to have any intention of reading the books. He just watched me with curious eyes.
I didn’t like being looked at like that, but I couldn’t pay attention to anything else right now.
‘Stigma…It’s stigma.’
From what I could see, the bookshelves seemed to be arranged in order of publication year.
It made me think of what the head priest said about how stigmas were mostly seen in ancestors. Naturally, I moved my steps deep inside, where the older books were gathered.
The spine of the book had a lot of names that were hard to read. Starting with theoretical books such as 『Basics of Rhetoric』 and 『Introduction to Guardian』, and even writings that cannot be read at all.
As I quickly looked at the spines, I stopped for a moment to look at one place.
‘……This.’
I had already read the book. But the cover and writing style were different from the books I read back then.
I reached out for the book as if possessed.
As I opened the bookshelf, the musty smell of worn-out books filled my nose. I didn’t care and read the table of contents. Fortunately, the book is in a very good state of preservation, so there was no difficulty in reading it.
Most of the table of contents consisted of the names of saintess I had never heard of. Since they lived a long time ago, it seemed like most people had forgotten about them.
After reading the table of contents to the end, I hesitated at the last line.
‘Saintess Agnes… ?’
It’s a familiar name. Where did I hear it.. Ah. Right.
I soon remembered that I had read about this name not too long ago. Likewise, it was when I read The History of a Saintess.
‘She was The Saintess of Wisdom.’
Saintess Agnes was a very old figure at the time, so she was put at the beginning of the book.
However, when this book was written, it seemed to be the opposite, Agnes’s name was written at the very end.
「Agnes Blois. Born as the third daughter of the Countess of Blois, she suffered from short delirium and memory loss around the time she was a teenager, such as claiming that she was someone else… 」
‘What?’
I blinked once, then took another look at the section.
Delirium and memory loss?
When I read it before, this stuff didn’t exist. At that time, it was just a summary of her achievements about how she played an active part in the Great Horse War with the power of foresight.
‘Since Agnes was still living when the book was written, it might have more information.’
The story that the old saintess Agnes had such an unfortunate puberty is probably new to most people in this era.
I continued reading the book.
「…She led the Great Demon War to to victory with such accuracy as if she had read through the devil’s operations, and was nicknamed the Saintess of Salvation beyond the nickname of the Saintess of Wisdom. However, the power of Saintess Agnes was not only foreknowledge.」
What else is going on here? Could she have been a saintess with two powers?
“Whoa.”
Rizello, who was looking over the book with me, made a sound as if he was interested, but I ignored it and moved on to the next line.
「The sight of the monsters being controlled by Saint Agnes’s words was captured. Among the utterances of Saintess Agnes, the words that have been found to be effective so far are as follows.
―Do not come!
―You’ll die.
―(Censored) I told you to get out of here!
Upon hearing the above remarks, the monster immediately acted as if to carry out her command.
The Church has decided to call this new ability ‘The Spirit of Word’.”
“……”
I stared blankly at the bookcase.
What just did I read.
‘What’s it all about?’
The two-letter word caught my eye.
The power to control the monsters as she says it?
I had never heard of such an ability. The most confusing of all…
‘You guys get lost!’
‘Don’t come!’
There was a similarity between the words I shouted at the clowns and the lizards and the words that Agnes said.
Maybe, maybe not.
Those words occupied my mind.
‘The words I shouted… no way.’
I unknowingly groped my neck.
Clowns and lizard collapsed as if they were pushed by a strong typhoon. That’s…… Maybe, maybe not.
The sore throat, which had remained weak, was once again noticeable. I fumbled through my throat and tried desperately to organise my mind.
What exactly was going on when I saw the clowns fall? What about the lizard?
But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t remember what was going on at the time. Both times, I started with my eyes closed.
‘Now that I think about it, every time my throat hurts.’
I didn’t notice because it wasn’t too painful, but when I thought about it, I remembered how I couldn’t stop coughing after yelling both times.
I read the next paragraph of the book hastily.
“However, this power also had a big downside. Saintess Agnes always complained of a sore throat after using her commandments.」
After reading that far, I became as stiff as a rock.
‘Neck pain…….’
A few hours ago, when I was worried about reflux esophagitis, I felt far away.
At the unbelievable possibility, I just stared blankly and wrapped my arms around my neck.
“Isn’t it amazing?”
When I turned my head to the voice I had forgotten for a moment, Rizello was looking at me with expectant eyes.
“That’s great, huh?”
“If the story in this book is true, that means that the customer is a saintess like the second coming of Saintess Agnes!”
“……”
“The situation is a little different, but each Magic Tower master has become much stronger than they were before as if they were waking up as soon as they found out how powerful they really were. Wouldn’t the same thing happen to the customer?”
What the hell are you talking about, this guy?
Although Rizello reacted as if he knew something, I was overloaded with too much information, so I couldn’t afford to deal with him.
I turned the bookshelf with a confused mind. The next sentence caught my eye.
「These side effects became more serious as Saintess Agnes became fully aware of her own commandment.」
‘…Huh?’
「Although her power was fully awakened with her awakening, the reaction that followed was also proportionately more severe.」
Awakening?
The words Rizello had put in his mouth just now were written in the book.
I reflexively looked at Lizello. Rizello had his eyes fixed on the book. It was as if I was reading the very sentence I had just read.
Unlike the excited child he had looked like just a moment ago, he looked shocked, as if he had been hit in the head with a hammer.
Rizello looked at me with blank eyes when he saw me looking at him.
A moment of silence passed.
How much time has passed? Rizello spoke up all of a sudden. Pointing behind me.
“…..No, Sir Ian, how can you be here?”
“Hm.”
“Ian?”
Frightened by that name, I looked back.
But still, only the two of us could be seen on the bookshelf.
I swept my chest down and corrected my almost reeling position.
“What, what is it? there’s no one… Huh?”
While whispering to Rizello, I suddenly felt strange.
The existence of the book, which had been holding my hand heavily until just now, had disappeared. At some point, the book was in Rizello’s hands, not mine.
“…Master?”
Rizello, who snatched the book 『History of a Saintess』, was smiling with the most embarrassing face I had ever seen.