Chapter 47: Lady of the Night

Consciousness passed through layer upon layer of shadowy veils and returned to the body.

Hermione opened her eyes. In her deep black gaze, a madness born of ravenous desire kept surfacing.

Using her will to suppress that fierce urge to merge, Hermione rose from the altar and picked up the sacred yet corrupted black-and-white characteristic.

The instant she touched it, the entirety of the Hanged Man pathway suddenly revealed itself within her spirit sea, which was connected to the Blasphemy Slate.

Among its contents was the advancement ritual for the Three-Headed Cathedral.

“Church... corruption... sacrifice...” Hermione murmured the ritual’s key terms, committing to memory as well the auxiliary ingredients required to prepare the potion.

“Did it work?”

Sensing the disturbance in the study, Amanises’s figure reappeared within it.

Seeing the extraordinary characteristic in Hermione’s hand, she smiled faintly. “It seems it did. Are you planning to consume it directly?”

Hermione restrained the impulse to swallow it in one gulp. After dryly swallowing, she placed the characteristic in Amanises’s hand.

“Keep it for me first.”

She reluctantly tore her gaze away from the characteristic and sighed.

“Although actively manipulating the emotions of the crowd during my advancement to Manipulator helped me digest quite a bit of the potion within me... it still wouldn’t be suitable for me to consume the characteristic directly.”

“I still intend to turn the characteristic into a potion before consuming it.”

Amanises accepted the extraordinary characteristic of the Three-Headed Cathedral. A wisp of darkness flowed along her arm and concealed the mass of power. The characteristic vanished from her hand as if erased by a rubber.

“A prudent choice,” she said with a faint smile.

As Amanises concealed the characteristic, the ravenous desire it had stirred also disappeared from the depths of Hermione’s heart.

Hermione smiled, visibly relieved. “There is hope of advancing further.”

Amanises gave her a sidelong glance. “Then I should advance further as well.”

...

It was early spring. Tender shoots emerged from the branches, while brilliant starlight fell as softly as fine silk, illuminating the night.

The news that the Lady of the Night had slain a Devil caused an enormous stir among the tribe.

A divine creature such as a Devil would, upon appearing in a human tribe, ordinarily bring about the destruction of the entire tribe.

Even when the humans occasionally received timely protection from the deity they worshiped, countless lives would still be lost.

In the face of an individual who had given birth to divinity, humanity could only despair again and again, unable even to struggle.

Yet the Lady of the Night had dragged the corpse of such a huge and savage Devil back and hung it, bloody and dripping, at the tribe’s gate.

This was irrefutable proof that the Lady of the Night had entered the realm of the demigods.

“I never expected the tribe’s second demigod to be the Lady of the Night.” Leodero eyed the fresh corpse hanging from the gallows, then glanced askance at the young man beside him, who wore a radiant smile. “Oseikus, haven’t you been straining every nerve to discover a method of becoming a demigod? Any leads?”

Oseikus’s expression did not change in the slightest. Gazing at the Devil’s twisted, savage corpse, he continued smiling.

“I’m not in a hurry. Even if I find a clue to advancement, I’ll first seek out my Lord and discuss the method of becoming a demigod with Him. I won’t attempt it recklessly.”

“You and I have both studied the potion system organized by my Lord. Could you really fail to see how crude, inefficient, and dangerous our former attempts at testing potions were?”

Hearing Oseikus call Him “my Lord” again and again, Leodero wanted to roll his eyes, but he agreed with what Oseikus had said.

Ever since reading the sequences Hermione had compiled, he had come to understand the gap between himself and her completely. He had also begun to sincerely believe in her guidance of the tribe.

“Then tell me, do you think the Lady of the Night’s becoming a demigod had anything to do with Hermione?” Leodero asked.

Whenever he mentioned the Lady of the Night, his expression grew somewhat complicated. The affection he had not yet voiced had been blocked by the gulf between their powers.

“Perhaps. Who can say?” Oseikus smiled. Noticing Leodero’s complicated expression, he lowered his voice. “Come to think of it, the Lady of the Night seems to look at my Lord rather differently. She’s always cold and solitary when she’s alone, but in my Lord’s presence, it’s as if she comes alive.”

Leodero let out an even heavier sigh.

At that moment, Urolius said from nearby, “The Lady of the Night’s strength has nothing to do with Sister Hermione.”

Leodero grinned and reached out to ruffle Urolius’s hair. “When did you switch sides to the Lady of the Night, you little traitor...?”

Urolius casually dodged his hand.

Oseikus raised an eyebrow at Urolius and said with some surprise, “Urolius, a devout believer in my Lord, has actually spoken such blasphemous words?”

Urolius gazed up at the Devil’s corpse, ignoring Oseikus’s probing.

Leodero gave an awkward laugh. “Urolius, have you gotten stronger too?”

Oseikus looked around beneath the bright night sky before saying, “Even such a magnificent feat by the Lady of the Night failed to draw my Lord out of that Ossuary Cathedral?”

The Ossuary Cathedral was a structure resembling a scenic monument that Hermione had built in the wilderness during this period by hunting Corrupted Ones and gathering their remains.

None of the councilors could understand why the first human demigod behaved this way. But there were far too many things about Hermione that they could not understand, and as a result, no one dared question her.

In any case, her efforts to clear the Corrupted Ones from around the tribe served to protect it.

“It seems she didn’t come.” Leodero also surveyed the surroundings. The lamps burned brightly, yet he could not find any sign of Hermione. He turned back to Urolius and asked, “What is your Sister Hermione doing with that creepy Ossuary Cathedral?”

More and more torches flared to life, illuminating Urolius’s devout profile. He murmured, “Communicating with the spirits of the Corrupted Ones, comforting their souls, bearing their sins, understanding their sacrifices, burying their fates...”

Leodero turned the words over in his mind, but could not make sense of them.

Oseikus held his breath and listened. Though he did not understand either, he vaguely felt that these incomprehensible and bizarre actions resembled the sequence advancement rituals mentioned in the notes Hermione had compiled.

Surely that human demigod was not advancing again...

Oseikus pondered this with mixed emotions, then whispered, “Praise be to my Lord.”

At that moment, Severus, who had already withdrawn from the council hall, climbed onto a high platform beside the towering Devil’s corpse, dressed in a black robe.

He loudly praised the Lady of the Night’s feat in slaying the Devil before the gathering crowd. He proclaimed the protection she had offered the tribe all this time. A faint halo enveloped him, lending his words even greater persuasive power.

Oseikus looked up at his grandfather, who appeared to be a devout follower of the Lady of the Night. Questions began to pour from his rather proud mind.

After a moment, he understood.

This was... the shaping of humanity’s second god.

But when had Grandfather begun worshiping the Lady of the Night?

At that moment, the voices of young women rose together in song.

Oseikus followed the sound and saw that the girls were dressed in nun’s habits resembling the black robes worn by Severus.

They were all new Beyonders who had embarked upon the Sleepless pathway over the past six months. What astonished Oseikus was that this group, calling themselves the Night Watchers, had quietly grown to such an astonishing size.

This kind of formation had clearly been prepared long in advance...

Oseikus thought with some alarm that the Lady of the Night had probably become a demigod long ago.

Vaguely, he felt that the age was truly undergoing a cataclysmic transformation.

He slightly restrained the radiant smile on his face. Then, along with the Night Watcher girls and the ever-growing crowd, he began to sing the verses of the night—repeated, melodious, and easy to remember.