novelraw Chapter 573: Pisces
Chapter 573: Pisces
Fisher had already roughly determined the locations of several main gates entering the dynasty. According to what Eimhart said, there were still some portals built by demons in this world that could also directly enter the dynasty, just like the one deep within the Serpent's Head Street of Saint-Nazareth. And it seemed that when Eimhart previously entered the Demon Dynasty and met Helaire, he relied on exactly this method.
But because he had lost many pages within the dynasty, he also didn't quite remember the specific situation.
However, he feared that even if he did remember, those portals probably mostly couldn't be used anymore, including the one he had previously used.
Were there any usable dynasty portals left in this world?
Fisher naturally believed there were. But the situation was urgent now; unless his luck was truly outrageously good enough to let him stumble upon one in the recent time, it was better not to try his luck using this method. Going honestly to find a main gate of the dynasty was better.
The ten gates each had their own entry methods. The content written on the scroll was very vague, for example, the entry method for the "Gate of Carnal Desire" was:
"Indulge in pleasure to the extreme, love flesh in an instant."
Ghost knew what kind of entry method this was. He couldn't possibly truly follow the Death Minister's wild guesses and honestly run over there to strip naked and host a silver party, right?
Moreover, the location of the Gate of Carnal Desire was at the northernmost part of the Southern Continent. Fisher didn't want to cross such a vast distance; if he was too far from the frontal battlefield near the Southern Branch Mountain Range, in case something happened at the front, he wouldn't be able to look after it in time.
After pondering back and forth, Fisher ultimately decided to enter the Demon Dynasty from the Gate of Victory.Its entry method was: "Defeat the undeniable."
First of all, the distance of this gate from the Southern Branch Mountain Range wasn't far, roughly only a hundred kilometers or so. Plus, it wasn't a hundred kilometers north, but rather a hundred kilometers east. It was already outside the scope of the frontal war, but Fisher could also return quickly to coordinate with this side.
Secondly, according to what the scroll said, the region of the Demon Dynasty entered from the Gate of Victory was exactly where Eliog's true body slumbered.
After meeting several times in Saint-Nazareth, they had been separated for a long time. Regardless of what should be said, Fisher actually still quite missed that unexpectedly approachable Eliog who reeked of sulfur and loved to slack off and sleep (Actually, he quite missed all the ladies he had a relationship with, please take note).
Compared to a Demon God—except for the final moment when she descended during a Matter Of Life And Death to battle Erwind, where she fit this identity more—the rest of the time, she felt like a large, incomparably lazy, and Carefree and Casual cat to Fisher.
Even the summoning method surprisingly mixed in something like catnip. He also didn't know how the person who wrote this scroll formulated this summoning method.
In Saint-Nazareth, she gave up the chance to secure a sure kill on Erwind in order to save his life at the final critical juncture. Although after that, she threw the Death Rune along with the duty of hunting Erwind onto him, undoubtedly, Fisher remembered this debt of gratitude.
The final reason, or perhaps another unlikely hypothesis was: he wanted to try and get Eliog's help.
Even if it was true as the Lord of Fate said, and the two Demon Gods hadn't completely escaped from the Mother Goddess's seal, but after all, their true bodies could genuinely come out to operate, then Fisher still had to treat them as two substantial Eighteenth Tier opponents.
And on his side, besides himself—a Mythical Species—there wasn't a single Mythical assistant he could use. He needed an assistant to increase the probability of success for snatching the Base and restoring the seal.
Furthermore, he wasn't completely clear on Helaire's attitude right now. If Helaire was dead set on not wanting him to involve himself in the World-Ending Prophecy, then besides the two Demon Gods, Fisher would also have to face a Nineteenth-Tier Angel who he had an intimate relationship with. When that time came, Fisher's chances of winning would truly be even more infinitesimal.
Of course, saying all this now was still too early. It was just setting the underlying tone for the operation first.
Fisher told his opinion to the Death Minister. He had no objections to this... Or rather, to him, as long as it could let him go to his death, he didn't have any other requests.
And failure of the plan held no cost to him either; if it could let him die, he'd even be eager for it.
The key right now lay in Fisher having to hurry up. He didn't know when the World-Ending Prophecy would initiate. All he could do was try to draw all the danger upon himself and solve them entirely before the frontal war arrived, lest it harmed the two women of the Dragon Court...
Especially Raphaela.
He had to enter the Demon Dynasty to snatch the Base tampering with the Mother Goddess's seal before the Humans Allied Army of the Red Dragon Court and Green Dragon Court officially went to war.
The sky gradually darkened. Fisher brought the Death Minister back to the Dragon Court from the border defense line.
Originally, there was no need for this fellow to come, but because the wine in his Wine Flask was finished, it needed some replenishing.
Incidentally, only then did Fisher realize this fellow didn't eat or drink water. This process naturally also made him uncomfortable. Before arriving at death, he was No Different from an ordinary human; he would get tired, hungry, thirsty, and sleepy.
However, the moment he died, he would instantly recover to a normal, full state.
According to what he said, this was his "state at the moment he lost death." At that time, he wasn't hungry, thirsty, or tired. Thus, whenever he felt unwell, he would directly commit suicide to recover his state, just like how he was parasitized by the Lord of Fate just now.
Only alcohol and cigarettes were things he absolutely couldn't give up right now. These two things were temporarily ranked behind the importance of death by the Death Minister.
"Click..."
At this moment, in the wilderness of the Dragon Court at dusk, the Death Minister, who had already replenished plenty of fine wine, hunched his bizarrely tall body and followed behind Fisher, watching as he carried a large pile of oddly shaped materials, similar to crystals and spices.
He opened his jacket, pulled out two cigarettes from the inner lining that was packed full of them, and passed one to Fisher in passing, but he shook his head and politely declined.
With no other choice, he could only lower his head and light a cigarette with a match, holding it in his mouth and sucking on it. Concurrently, his expression also turned novelty, as he complained to Fisher,
"How rare, meeting a Naris gentleman who doesn't smoke... A person like you is as precious as someone not believing in the Mother Goddess in Kadu."
"I've given it up long ago."
In reality, Fisher's previous cigarette habit was entirely developed through doing research and writing articles; he liked to do this whenever his thoughts encountered a bottleneck. But he had been away from the Naris academic circle for a long time now, so naturally he didn't need this kind of thing anymore.
He didn't know how the Nari Royal Academy Research Institute was doing after he left. Roughly speaking, they must be a bit more comfortable.
Eimhart poked his head out from Fisher's embrace, looking at the Death Minister with dead-fish eyes and explaining,
"There's no way around it. How could cigarettes be as enticing as ladies? I see that he can't give up these Demi-human Girls... Ouch!"
Before he could finish speaking, he received a knock on the head from Fisher.
The Death Minister chuckled, taking a deep drag of his cigarette against the sea breeze. After calming down for two seconds, he suddenly said,
"Speaking of ladies... That young female Priest of an unknown Demi-human Race who made me wait here earlier likes you a lot."
The Death Minister was talking about Jasmine.
"..."
Fisher looked at him in silence, a hint of confusion in his eyes, but very soon, he heard him continue explaining,
"Her status in this godforsaken place shouldn't be ordinary, and moreover, it's wartime here right now; someone like her should be very busy. Yet after I said I came to find you, she still personally hurried over here to arrange a temporary place for me... Furthermore, she must have personally gone looking for you. You should know why she would personally go look for you so early at that time."
Because she wanted to see him...
These two students of his, one Karasawa and one Jasmine, were both like this, loving to do some actions that were Silent and Quiet yet incomparably warm.
Fisher didn't continue this topic. Instead, his earlier footsteps became a bit faster,
"...Hurry up, we have many things to get busy with."
"True, the aura of war is almost going to fill this place, letting out an uneasy restless sound like a boiling kettle. In the past over at my hometown, there would also be this kind of smell when nations launched campaigns against one another. Very soon, the aura of death will envelop the battlefield, snatching away countless lives."
The Death Minister was enveloped by the cigarette smoke he lit, appearing somewhat unclear amidst the gradually darkening curtain of night. But right at this moment, Fisher felt a slightly different chaotic aura on him compared to the Northern Border. He couldn't help but ask,
"You still read the Death Completion Manual?"
"Mm, just killing time, learned a little bit."
"I saw that you were also very familiar with the matters of destiny earlier. Did the Lord of Fate teach you?"
"Merely Influenced by Sight and Sound. When people get old, they like to Talk to Themselves. Especially for an existence like that immortal geezer who's neither human nor ghost, chatting with herself is a common occurrence, and they'll even argue. But to be honest, compared to the Death Completion Manual, I actually prefer the Destiny Completion Manual. Destiny might tell me when I'll be able to die, but the Death Completion Manual will only make me stay further and further away from fucking death... So throughout these years, I've always been praying for that immortal geezer to pass away so she can pass the Destiny Completion Manual to me."
"..."
"Let's not talk about this. Weren't you going to meet some Chaos-kin to ask about the President's whereabouts? Are these the required materials?"
"Mm."
Fisher glanced at the things in his hand and honestly wasn't too confident in his heart either.
Because the core spellcaster required in star magic needs to be female, and the Chaos-kin seemed to also be "Yin and Yang Reversal" similar to Trolls, so they also preferred human females...
Otherwise, for so many years, there wouldn't be only "Witches" and no "Demon Men."
But the method was universal after all. Even if this method couldn't form a Witch because he was male, it should still be able to attract the attention of the Chaos-kin, which was his objective.
He and the Death Minister quickly arrived at a place in the north of the Red Dragon Court near the Southern Branch Mountain Range. This place was relatively unpopulated and sufficiently high up. Even though the "stars" of the Spirit World didn't have much relation with the stars of reality, perhaps standing high up would let him be more conspicuous?
"Need help with anything?"
"Just take him and stay away from me temporarily."
He temporarily handed Eimhart to the Death Minister. However, because his body was entirely reeking of strong alcohol, Eimhart would rather fly himself than land on his body.
And the Death Minister also gained freedom, sitting on a tall tree, not even looking at Fisher, merely drinking heavily leisurely without much enthusiasm.
Facing the light breeze, Fisher took out the magical materials he brought one by one, manually ground them into powder, scattered them on the ground, and used a magic engraving method to write an approximately elliptical shape.
The Circle Head of this magic was the "∞" symbol representing the Spirit World.
The moon in the sky was already gradually approaching the zenith. As the moonlight grew brighter and brighter, the magic beneath Fisher's feet also began to grow profound.
That elliptical array originally resting on the flat surface of the rocks began gradually having volume in Fisher's vision, swallowing his body bit by bit like a rising water level. Fisher remained Motionless, sizing up his surroundings, and suddenly discovered that the space around him had already begun to distort...
No, or rather, it wasn't the space of reality that distorted, but the space of the Crevice that distorted.
He felt the Crevice, acting as the storage space for the collective subconscious, start to visually become thinner and thinner, thus allowing the scenery of the Spirit World beyond the Crevice to become a bit clearer... But only a bit. In Fisher's view, the Spirit World he saw seemed to be shrouded in a fog intermixing scarlet and purple.
But following closely, a tiny yet bright small dot started gradually approaching from the distant thick fog, resembling a shooting star, with the only difference being that past shooting stars streaked across the vault of heaven, while the star now was approaching Fisher.
As that star got closer and closer, in the next second, a giant palm resembling five pitch-black tentacles of unknown material pieced together slapped onto the edge of that fog with a "thud."
Fisher furrowed his brows, looked up, and only then discovered that right above the fog, there were so many "stars"... No, it should be eyes shaped like stars.
They all came from the same existence.
Now that they were close, Fisher finally realized that the "stars" that usually babbled in the Spirit World were actually a very small part of the Chaos-kin. Their true bodies were hidden in the dark shadows and appeared incomparably colossal.
And right now, when the magic was fully ignited, a Chaos-kin within the Spirit World truly answered his summons and appeared beside him.
Fisher took a deep breath. Following that, he seemed to hear strange sounds seemingly from Outer Space. The sound was blurry, like listening to someone on the shore talk while staying more than ten meters underwater. But fortunately, the words spoken by that Chaos-kin were directly conveyed into Fisher's soul, therefore there was no need for translation to directly understand its meaning.
Yet he heard that unknown Chaos-kin say,
"Scumbag..."
"..."
The wariness on Fisher's face turned into a blank stare. But when he looked around again, that incomparably giant palm had already vanished on the spot, leaving only countless starry compound eyes looking at Fisher.
From those bright eyes, Fisher didn't see any emotion, as if an audience with a malicious gaze was observing everything in this world with indifference from the Spirit World right now.
Fisher was Neither Agree Nor Disagree to its address, instead asking it in return,
"You know me?"
"...All of us... know you... You have... a very good relationship... with the Authority..."
"What Authority?"
"I can't... say... His honorific name..."
Although Fisher's guess was confirmed, and his intimate relationship with Renee truly would make the Chaos-kin know him, but the Authority it mentioned... If Fisher guessed correctly, it should be referring exactly to the "Infinity Authority" that Renee represented.
But this Chaos-kin said that the Infinity Authority belonged to a certain "He"...
What did this mean?
Wasn't the Infinity Authority owned by the deities themselves like the Mother Goddess?
Or was it because what this fellow said was too vague, thus producing an ambiguity?
Fisher suddenly grew curious about this, and hurriedly pressed on,
"Who does He refer to?"
"He..."
All the compound eyes of this Chaos-kin flickered for a moment before it said,
"I don't know..."
"You don't know?"
"I don't know."
"Then does He refer to the Mother Goddess?"
"I don't know."
"You..."
Fisher still wanted to ask more, but looking at those eyes coldly observing him within the blurry fog, before the question could exit his mouth, he seemingly foresaw that the other party would not answer him again.
Fortunately, he hadn't forgotten his objective of calling the Chaos-kin. Thus, changing the topic, he suddenly asked,
"How should I address you?"
"Zodiac... Pisces..."
Fisher's scalp tingled slightly because he still remembered the scroll recorded by the Phoenix he saw in the Northern Border.
One of the Phoenixes who fought head-on against the Chaos-kin recorded many of the Chaos-kin's traits and characteristics, which included records concerning the tier of Chaos-kin.
Chaos-kin had a total of five tiers, ranging from lowest to highest: Northern Sky Constellation, Northern Circumpolar Constellation, Southern Sky Constellation, Equatorial Constellation, and Zodiac Constellation. They respectively corresponded to the Fifteenth Tier to Nineteenth-Tier in reality.
But one had to know, because Chaos-kin didn't have bodies, they were forced to form a fleshly body when entering reality, thus suffering an attenuation in their tier. In other words, their true capabilities were higher than ordinary tiers.
And this Chaos-kin before his eyes happened to be one of the individuals with the highest tier and strongest power among the Chaos-kin.
Placed within the Spirit World, it was truly at the level of a Demigod.
"Hello, Pisces... It's very presumptuous of me to disturb you, but I have some questions I want answered. Yet there are rarely any existences in reality who can answer me, which is why I relied on the magic in the Mother Goddess's Source Magic Book to request your help."
"...Ask... scumbag..."
Speaking of which, was there really a need to repeatedly emphasize this address like this?
Fisher's smile was somewhat stiff, but he could only brace himself and continue speaking,
"I want to know if Origin Magic was truly taught to humans by the Mother Goddess as a proxy, and whether a portion of it was lost during the teaching process? I want to elevate the might of magic to the Mythical rank or above. Can you teach me the specific method?"
Pisces remained silent for a moment. Afterward, amidst Fisher's somewhat astonished gaze, countless strip-like tentacle hands abruptly extended from the greyish-purple fog nearby. They continuously churned within the fog, eventually gradually outlining a blurry shape.
That was the silhouette of a human female. And beside that female, hung a round-shaped existence resembling a full moon.
Upon seeing the silhouette of that human female, Fisher recognized that person's identity at first glance.
"Asuka..."
But Pisces ignored his speech. Instead, it answered Fisher's questions one by one,
"Yes... Yes... I can..."
Respectively corresponding to Fisher's three questions.