Volume 7: The Hanged Man Chapter 36: The Picture in the Prophecy
Bernadette was silent for two seconds and responded through the Invisible Servant:
”Uncle Edwards, why are you here?”
She used the name she had called herself when she was young, as a way to reduce the probability of unwanted surprises.
When her voice echoed in the air around her through the Invisible Servant, it was dry, dull, and completely different from her normal state.
Edwards’ face was as pale as if he had just crawled out of a graveyard, without a trace of warmth:
”I don’t know.
”I woke up sometime ago and found myself back on this island.
”It may be my destiny to guard His Majesty.”
He paused with each sentence, without giving the impression that he was out of breath, as if he had not spoken for so long that his throat had “rusted” and was not quite used to it.
Without waiting for Bernadette to ask, the knight whose name was spread across the continent more than a hundred years ago added in a tone without much fluctuation:
”His Majesty’s tomb is nearby.
”I have been watching over it, waiting for k to be resurrected.
”But, after all these years, there has been no movement in the mausoleum.
”There has been no sign of resurrection.”
Bernadette had the Invisible Servant look around and said:
”This cabin is where you live.”
Edwards, his bare skin all slightly dried out, matching his pre-existing age spots, replied in a low, intermittent voice:
”Right.
”I built this house using the surrounding trees as materials.”
Bernadette’s “invisible servant” looked in the direction he had come from and said:
”Uncle William and the others are not with you?”
Edwards’ cold, wooden eyes twitched:
”They have long since suffered contamination and have died.
”The ones that are here now, although they are alive again, are closer to a monster than the original ones.
”Be wary of them, Your Highness, and avoid them.
”No one else can be trusted except Benjamin and me.”
Bernadette was silent for a while, turning to the question through the Invisible Servant:
”Where is my father’s tomb? I would like to visit it.”
Edwards’ neck stiffened slightly:
”Good.”
He then took step after step towards the wooden hut, from which he took out an iron black axe with many rusty stains.
”I’ll show you.” Edwards said as he looked at the Invisible Servant, who should normally be invisible.
His expression was dull and barely changed during the process.
”Good.” Bernadette responded from the edge of the forest, and with the help of the Invisible Servant, she made her dry and dull voice echo in the surroundings.
Edwards, who stood at nearly 5’9″ tall and looked quite a bit dry and thin at this point, carried his axe and took a step towards the back area of the cabin, saying in a tone that didn’t have any obvious ups and downs:
”It’s very close.
”Be careful on the way.”
Bernadette immediately took control of the Invisible Servant and made it follow behind Edwards, who was wearing luxurious clothes.
As they traveled through the primitive forest one after the other, Bernadette suddenly asked the Invisible Servant:
”Uncle Edwards, what were you worshipping in that clearing earlier?”
Edwards didn’t turn around, his pace maintaining a near-uniform frequency:
”Your Majesty.”
Bernadette, who was at least two kilometers behind him and the Invisible Servant, immediately twitched her eyebrows and took nearly three seconds to control her emotions.
Through the Invisible Servant, she continued to ask without the slightest bit of emotion:
”Uncle William and the others are worshipping him too?”
Edwards paused in his steps, but kept his back toward the Invisible Servant and the Prying Eyes.
”No.”
He slowed his pace as if pondering the answer:
”I don’t know what they’re worshipping ……”
Bernadette’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if she saw a slight shift in the river of fate.
She didn’t ask any more questions, letting the Invisible Servant quietly follow behind Edwards as he traveled towards the peak of the island amongst the dark green trees and dark, sharp shrubs.
In just four or five minutes, the trees in front of him disappeared.
It wasn’t the kind of disappearance that gradually transitioned from dense to sparse to blank, with an invisible line as the demarcation, the huge trees suddenly disappeared.
Outside of that invisible line was a several hundred meter high mountain peak, which was also covered with those huge dark green and black trees, so that when viewed from afar, it almost merged with the forest, making it difficult to distinguish between them.
However, the side of that peak facing Edwards and Bernadette was mostly devoid of trees, as the mountain had been hollowed out to a small extent.
In the belly of the mountain, a black mausoleum stood, extremely grand.
Most of it belonged to the mountain itself, while a small portion had traces of artificial construction and polishing, truly illustrating what it meant to “use the mountain as a mausoleum”.
Therefore, the shape of this mausoleum is not the common pyramid shape, more like a towering peak, not symmetrical, but absolutely majestic.
I don’t know whether it was the mausoleum itself that had an impact on the outside world, or whether Edwards had cleaned it up, but there wasn’t a single weed growing on its surface, and it wasn’t covered with the kind of vines that were common on the rest of the mountain.
This allowed Bernadette to directly see the various words and symbols inscribed on the mausoleum through the “Eye of Secrets”, and the heavy stone door that seemed to have been prepared for the giants, which was nearly thirty meters high.
Bernadette was not unfamiliar with those words and symbols, and with just a little recognition, she recognized that they either came from her father’s Civil Code, or belonged to the new social customs that he had created, or were directly the designs of certain inventions.
Just as Bernadette scrutinized it, Crane above the gray mist was absolutely certain that this was the last mausoleum left behind by Rossel the Great.
It was somehow similar to the one he had seen in the ruins of Tudor, with the majesty and distortion that belonged to the “Black Emperor”.
After stepping out of the primeval forest, through the invisible border, and not far from the mausoleum, Edwards stopped in his tracks.
He half-turned his body, aimed his greenish-white face and cold eyes at the “invisible servant”, and said with little change in his voice:
”Do not go in.
”That would interrupt the resurrection. ……”
Bernadette frowned slightly, thought for two seconds, and with the help of the “Eye of Secrets”, she locked onto the mausoleum.
Then, her azure eyes, which looked like the sea, became extremely deep, resembling the surface of the sea before a storm.
In such a situation, she had obviously lost focus, and her eyes were blank.
She was peering into that river of destiny, making a prophecy about the next action.
And above the gray mist, Klein tapped the long, mottled table once more, amplifying the probability of her success and preparing herself to fight against the contamination of the stars.
Of course, the latter was not necessary, as Bernadette had a “0” level seal that she could control.
In the next second, Bernadette raised her right hand.
Her skin became as white as snow, her lips as red as blood, and her hair as black as ebony.
In her hand was an illusory, ancient mirror.
This is the “Snow White” in fairy tale magic, Bernadette used it to enhance the success rate and accuracy of her “prophecy”.
Without a sound, she “saw” a scene:
The majestic deep black mausoleum shook visibly, and the heavy, tall stone door opened.
Then, a huge black arm stretched out of the door.
This arm was close to the scale of those trees on the island, and was more like a part of a shadow in terms of color and condition, but instead of being a thin layer, it was filled with flesh and blood, which made it look extremely grotesque.
It supported itself on the ground with its elbows, and moved forward with difficulty, as if it were trying to pull out the subsequent, even larger and more horrifying part.
Rumble!
The entire island began to shake.
Bang!
The pair of transparent “peeping eyes” violently shattered.
Bernadette’s eyes then closed, as if she had seen a bright light that she could not see directly, or had suffered an unbearable injury.
The corners of her eyes then dripped with blood, and her face paled considerably.
And on her body, a pair of illusory and holy wings unfolded, neutralizing some kind of invisible contamination with the fall of white feathers.
”Indeed, there is the ability to fight against it, the legacy of the Great Emperor is truly rich ah …… Oh, before she was educated by me, Ms. ‘Hidden One’ liked to use the ‘peeping eye’ to to scrutinize the people and things around her, there is definitely a certain element of tutelage …… In short, it’s all Russell’s fault!” Klein above the gray mist secretly breathed a sigh of relief while he couldn’t help but slander the Great Emperor a few times.
Immediately after, his thoughts turned electrically, analyzing the scene that Bernadette had seen in the prophecy:
”After the stone door opened, a terrifying creature seemed to crawl out from within the mausoleum.
”It might have been the resurrected and returned Rossel, or it might have been a symbolic image of some catastrophe, such as one of the Outer Gods that once encroached on the island, or the ‘primordial moon’ that quietly contaminated Rossel ……
”Well, even if it was Rossel, it was definitely not a human image, closer to a mythological creature, closer to a god …… Also, there is no way to know for sure if that horrible creature was sane and could communicate ……
”Another important question is whether the stone door being opened was done by Bernadette or someone else, or whether that horrible creature inside the mausoleum did it on its own? If it is the latter, even if we do nothing, things could go as far as the prophecy suggests ……
”Prophecies are so full of ambiguity.”
Klein casually materialized a gold coin, clanked it up and did a divination.
The results of the dream divination showed that the mausoleum was both dangerous and safe.
”How am I supposed to interpret this?” Klein contemplated while returning his attention to Bernadette.
It took Bernadette several tens of seconds to slow down and stop looking so weak.
However, for the time being, she couldn’t make a pointed prophecy about the images she saw, and could only be sure that the problem was definitely complicated.
Because the “Eye of Secrets” was broken, she could no longer use it to see all sorts of hidden secrets, and could only check the basic situation around her through the perception that came with the “Invisible Servant”.
She found that Edwards remained silent and motionless when she was unable to manipulate the “invisible servant”, and did not seem to notice any abnormality.
After thinking about it, Bernadette said to Edwards with the help of the Invisible Servant:
”Do you remember the years you spent in Lemberg?”
Edwards’ indifferent light blue eyes twitched:
”Remember.
”I seem to ……”
As he said this, he seemed to remember something, and his expression twisted for a moment, as if he was suffering from some kind of unspeakable pain.
In such a state, his eyes suddenly glowed with a strange luster:
”I seem, it seems, to have died ……”