Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 552 Seven Long Nights
"In that disaster, Marika and I were separated. A fifty-meter-long fallen star beast crashed less than five meters away from us. At that time, I was not very good at fighting, and I was severely injured and knocked unconscious by a tail lash. When I woke up, I found that the two Grand Masters had risked their lives to send me to the underground fortifications of the Eternal City, but Marika... they told me that she had been eaten by the star beast."

Hearing this, Lucia let out a heavy sigh. Perhaps fate sometimes delights in such cruel jokes. The two saints, who were once as close as sisters, embarked on two completely different paths from this moment on.

"After that, Estelle's seal completely severed the connection between the Eternal Race and the surface world. I personally experienced the century-long bloody war between the Star Moon Descendants and the evil god's followers, and I also witnessed the division caused by different ideologies in that dark and sunless world."

"We rebuilt the Eternal Church on the ruins, and my followers honored me as their first pope. I also led them to reshape the original order of the church—referring to the system of the former Eternal Temple, I established the Twin Saints above the many Night Witches, selecting the two most outstanding witches of each generation to cultivate the next pope. One of them will succeed as pope, and the other will inherit the title of 'Destroyer', command the swordsman army, and become the most reliable blade by the pope's side."

"The One Who Has Annihilated?"

Lucia thought of Adeline, the Black Moon Saintess who followed him around the same time as Tops, and asked, "But as far as I know, the current leader of the Eternal Church calls himself the 'Pope' and has abolished the twin witch system. Instead, he has established a system of three Saintesses based on the three chosen ones of the Moon God. Although there is one 'Destroyer' among them, compared to what you said, the power that the Saintesses hold in the church is probably much less than before."

"It's just another power struggle," the Queen scoffed.

"Where there are people, there is conflict. And the more scarce resources are and the less hope there is, the more ambitious fools will emerge to fight for those insignificant powers and interests. That is why the Eternal Descendants split into three Eternal Cities, and the Ude people turned themselves into that half-dead Uru Dynasty."

"For over two hundred years, I've had enough of all this, so when the ancient people of Kalia pushed forward with that seemingly foolish plan to find the weak point of Estée's seal and spend a hundred years carving out a path back to the surface, I became the only one in the upper echelons to support them. Fortunately, they actually succeeded."

"Two hundred and eighty-seven years after the Forbidden War, I, the former Pope, and the remaining thousand or so of the Carian ancestors, traversed the narrow tunnel that had been carved out by generations of people, and for the first time witnessed the starry sky of the Age of Resurrection. Perhaps out of fear, or perhaps because they felt they lacked the power and opportunity to take revenge, the vast majority of the Knox and Uru people chose to remain underground, waiting for the arrival of their so-called 'King of the Night,' but I could not wait any longer."

“On that land that has returned to its wild state, I desperately searched for traces of Marika and the other Eternal Remnants, while trying to re-establish contact with Sky City.” She glanced at the little fox who had fallen asleep behind a pile of stones, her eyes filled with complex emotions, and said, “Because when I was the Pope, my guards discovered a ruin located in the heart of the area where Estie’s retinue was active.”

"Around the same time that the Eternal City fell, a meteor struck through a rock layer tens of thousands of meters thick above the underground world, leaving behind a massive crater. The evil gods' followers within a radius of thousands of miles regarded that place as a forbidden zone. Even after they were completely defeated by the Eternal Remnants, not a single star beast dared to flee in that direction." "Only then did we discover that a broken wing bone was embedded diagonally in the deepest part of the crater, surrounded by dozens of drops of crimson-gold blood."

Lucia's expression changed drastically. Politics's conjecture about Sherry's background instantly surfaced in his mind—Caterpillar had said that she was born in the Eternal City, and Politics had once mistaken her for his mother's corpse. Now, the truth seemed self-evident.

Seeing the expression on his face, Carter Pella let out a deep breath and said, "Yes, I was also incredulous when I first saw that piece of remains. A skeleton from two hundred years ago still exudes the power fluctuations of a monarch, and the remaining blood is still as radiant as if it had just been sprinkled. Most of the Eternal High-Rankings present, whose strength is above the Hero level, could not withstand the overwhelming mental pressure and knelt down trembling all over."

"Perhaps it was your mother's arrangement that led me to have seven consecutive nights of long dreams afterward. At that time, my strength was comparable to yours today, so you should understand that for beings like us, there are no dreams that are purely coincidental. Every anomaly in the spiritual realm can be explained rationally. In those dreams, I sensed that Her Majesty Horary was still alive and that I came into contact with the Emperor's Plan through her. In other words, I was the guide she personally arranged for you."

"After those seven long nights, Her Majesty Horary's wing bone lost a certain spirituality and instead 'degenerated' into a material simply containing supreme divine power. The leaders of the Underworld at that time discussed and first held a grand sacrificial ceremony for her in Noklonn, and then, after a complicated and tedious apology, they begged His Majesty the Dragon God to grant them permission to use that wing bone to forge a god-slaying weapon. I did not object at the time, because in my dream on the seventh night, she smiled and told me that she had foreseen all of this, and that if a piece of bone could bring some long-lost courage to those fearful people, then it would be making the best use of it. On the contrary, she instructed me to try my best to preserve that ruin bathed in divine blood, saying that some kind of wonderful change might occur in the future."

"So I ordered that the ruins to be completely sealed. Now it seems that Sherry is a special creature born from that land. Her bloodline is very likely directly derived from the blood of those dragon gods. But the specific connection can probably only be known when you personally go to the Eternal City, retrieve the God-Slaying Blade, and set foot on that ruins."

Lucia let out a soft sigh and said, "After that, there was the assassination attempt in the Vania Valley and our first meeting."

“Yes,” the Queen replied. “Four years ago, I sent assassins to both the Kalia delegation and the Sky City delegation. However, the three nobles who formed the main force were actually spies planted by the secret envoys in my early years. Samuel never knew until his death that his real mission was to use his life as the first spark to help you open the battlefield of memories.”

"All of this should have come much sooner, but as I just said, my contact with Sky City went unanswered. Fam Azra has drifted from the skies above Nymgford to the Storm Sea in the Far East. The entire city is shrouded in His Majesty Platonsax's spacetime storm, which even monarch-level powerhouses cannot approach. Therefore, the original plan to find your sleeping Supreme Egg and advance the Emperor's Plan can only be postponed indefinitely."

(End of this chapter)