After bidding farewell to Cyril Cardinal, Iver returned to the Fifth Ring.
On the way, Iver fell into deep thought.
—What had flashed through his mind earlier was probably not delusion.
He separated every matter from the others and extrapolated each faction's position solely from the premise of "Iver ascending to the papacy."
At once, everything became clear to Iver.
The tangled knot of densely interwoven clues immediately began to unravel.
Pure White had already crystallized, after all, so having her serve as Pope would easily lead to trouble. Whether scandal or danger, either would be a risk the Theocracy could not bear. Freya's research into crystallization also had to be accompanied by the development of livelihood technology to atone for her crime of leaking the "Tears of Time."
This would undoubtedly extend the time required for Pure White to undo the crystallization... In other words, Pure White had actually already abandoned any plan to cure it before March 3.
As a human, Iver could not command the Theocracy, whose elves formed the absolute majority of its people. He had no connections within the Church either, so he could not command the Church... Therefore, nothing would materially change for the time being.
At the same time, with none of the Cardinals ascending to the throne, the Cardinals whose views differed from his, as well as the Pure White Saintess, could at least accept this "moderate" outcome. Controlled Fire had achieved their objective—preventing the Saintess from controlling the Theocracy from generation to generation and weakening her influence. The Nine Pillars God Church, which had a high proportion of short-lived races, would also be delighted, because they would have a short-lived-race Pope.
At the same time, the Stibnite People would be satisfied, because as Pope, Iver would stop Avalon's endless aerial bombardment