The Village That Was Forgotten

In the quiet night, only the chirping of insects provided accompaniment. A crescent moon, Gold Silver Orange in color, hung in the sky, casting its beautiful moonlight upon this remote little village.

Under the moonlight, more than twenty small wooden and stone houses were arranged in a pleasing, staggered pattern. In the center was a simple chapel, surrounded by wheat fields that had not yet fully turned yellow. A small river flowed gently by, propelling a somewhat old waterwheel, and fireflies danced among the fields.

The rural scenery is textbook-perfect; there are no breathtakingly beautiful, secluded landscapes, nor are there any impoverished, desolate places that would make you want to stay away. Its greatest characteristic is its lack of distinctive features.

But all of this changed because of the existence of a girl.

The peasant woman, who was getting up in the middle of the night, quietly got out of bed, being careful not to wake her sleeping husband. She was reluctant to use the precious stone lamp that was very valuable to the country folk, so she lit an old-fashioned oil lamp and left the bedroom to go outside.

Actually, it's perfectly acceptable to urinate directly under a tree in the dead of night, but the peasant woman still had some sense of propriety as a woman, and preferred to walk an extra ten meters or so to the earthen toilet between the house and the wheat field.

Then, I saw a girl who was not yet ten years old.

Beside an endless wheat field, on a makeshift railing made of scrap wood, the girl sat gazing up at the night sky.

She wore the most common coarse cloth clothes found in the countryside, and rough straw sandals, but none of this could conceal her charm. Her black hair, which had been tied up during the day, was now loose, like a black waterfall reflecting the moonlight. Her features were flawless, and she possessed an astonishing charm that belied her age. Her whole body seemed to be enveloped in a shimmering light, like an angel descended to earth.

No matter how many times she looked at it, the peasant woman would still have doubts.

Could such a beautiful woman truly be the daughter of this plain-looking country woman?

If it were just her looks, that would be one thing, but what about her demeanor? Every gesture, every expression, exudes elegance and grace. Even so-called royalty wouldn't be quite like her. You know, a person's demeanor is influenced by their environment. How could this girl, born and raised in a small village, possess such a noble and elegant air?

Perhaps influenced by her appearance and demeanor, even her own mother couldn't help but lower her posture when speaking to the girl. Every boy in the village was smitten with her, but even the boldest among them would become meek and flee after exchanging just a few words with her.

No—now is not the time to think about these things!

"Ai!"

"... Hmm? Oh, Mom, do you need to get up at night?"

"None of my business, shouldn't you be sleeping? It's the middle of the night!"

"I suddenly felt like going out for a walk... but Mom, making so much noise in the middle of the night might disturb other people's homes."

The girl nodded and whispered, then gently leaped down from the railing, like a fairy in the moonlight.

"Ah... I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter."

The farmer's wife quickly apologized, but after a few seconds she realized that she didn't seem to need to apologize to her daughter. She frowned, but quickly stopped thinking about it; she was used to this kind of thing.

What are you looking at?

"There..."

Even after getting off the railing, the girl was still looking up at something. At first, the farmer thought she was looking at the night sky, but following her gaze, she realized it was—

"Are you looking at the mountains?"

"Um."

It was a gigantic black shadow, as if a piece of the starry sky had been scooped out with a spoon. The majestic mountain was only two kilometers away from the village, a quick trip on foot. There was nothing special about the mountain; it was mostly bare rock and gray soil, with sparse vegetation, no need for cultivation, no rare herbs, and no large carnivores or monsters among its inhabitants. Because the mountain had nothing special about it except its size, the villagers often joked that it was a "useless waste mountain," and apart from mischievous children running up there to play, no one ever went there.

"... What's so interesting about that?"

Something is calling to me...

The girl's murmur was so soft that the peasant woman couldn't hear it at all.

"What did you say?"

"It's nothing... Go back to sleep, Mom."

At that time, no one knew that the girl would become Saintess eight years later, let alone that she would become the most vicious and heinous criminal in the history of the Vatican ten years later.

On the vast wilderness, a rather old van was bumping along like a small beetle crawling on concrete. This wilderness was truly a "barren" place; as far as the eye could see, even grass was scarce, only sand and bare rocks. This shouldn't be the climate at all.

"What kind of place is this... Is this really the right direction?"

"Don't consult me about such matters."

"I wasn't asking you..."

"Because I have no sense of direction."

"... Why do you explain it so matter-of-factly?"

I listlessly held the steering wheel—actually, I didn't even need to hold it. Although race cars use steering wheels and gear levers, civilian cars mainly use touchpads that can be controlled by placing your hand on them. My Earth Science driving skills were completely useless. It took me quite a bit of effort to rent a used car that could be controlled by a steering wheel.

The journey from Kasser City to Serrano was smooth, and we arrived in just two days. However, the trip to Dunwich Village proved quite difficult. The 7th Diocese of Kasser Province is adjacent to the mountains, and apart from the main city of Serrano, there are no other major cities worth mentioning; it's no exaggeration to say that the area is sparsely populated. Its territory consists mostly of remote towns, market towns, and villages, an astonishing number of them all, making it extremely difficult to find even a small village near the mountains.

What really drove me crazy was that after spending countless hours studying the detailed map of the Seventh Parish provided at the station, I finally came to the conclusion that Dunwich Village wasn't even marked on the map! Asking around yielded no results! In the end, I had to dig deep into the city library to find a map of the Seventh Parish from two hundred years ago. After studying it, I discovered that the village was on the map before a certain year, but after that year, it was just a blank space.

It's not hard to guess that after Blood Fiend openly rebelled against the Papacy, the enraged Papacy must have thoroughly massacred her hometown, treating it as a breeding ground for villains. Wiping a small community off the map was a piece of cake for the Papacy, but it was the fellow villagers who were implicated by Blood Fiend who suffered the most.

Right now, I'm comparing my current location to a map from almost two hundred years ago, heading in roughly the right direction, relying on a fairly strong intuition, towards the ruins of a small village that still seems to exist. Should I change my name to Zhang Bayi or Hu Qiling?

"How boring... the same old wilderness..."

"Then, my Husband, you focus on driving, and I'll give you oral sex."

"... Although I was tempted for a moment, I decided against it; I had a feeling it might backfire."

"It won't take long. With my skills, it won't be long before I've got my Husband going on and on. Or how about we try something different, like a breast massage?"

As she spoke, she cupped her disproportionately large breasts, and the swaying of those enormous white rabbits completely caught my eye, making my body uncontrollably hot—Hey, wait a minute! This is supposed to be suggestive! Do you want to learn how to masturbate to the point of bleeding?

"I don't want this, I don't want that, my Husband is so bored..."

"If you're bored... oh, right!"

"?"

"From what you've said, the six Divine Item that make up the World Crossing Gate all have self-awareness, right? Tell your Husband about them, what are they like?"

"We're all girls."

"... Huh?"

"Although objects shouldn't be gendered, when it comes to manifesting self-awareness in human form, everyone unanimously chose female. It seems that's where gender lies."

"Uh... so they're all obsessed with American shochu..."

"First and foremost, of course, is—my Rakshasa True Word, whose looks, figure, charm, and temperament all rank number one! As my Husband can see, I possess—"

"Yes, yes, I understand. Continue."

"Ignored!?... Well, who should I start with... It seems like no one wants to talk to me much."

You're being isolated, aren't you?

"Let's start with the main body of this guy in my Husband's clothes. Boundary Breaking Armor is a glutton. She likes to eat everything and wants everything she sees. She always says things like, 'Oh ho ho ho ho ho, I am the great inorganic life form. You all kneel down, hahahahaha.' She usually looks like a little girl, but when her mouth is fully open, she looks incredibly ferocious with sharp teeth. It's really annoying."

Inorganic organisms and such...

"Then comes the Crystal Realm Fruit-- "

"Wait a minute, I've been wanting to ask this for a while now. Shouldn't the Crystal Realm Fruit grow from the World Crystal Tree? So it was originally part of the World Crossing Gate?"

"The important thing is the 'fruit,' not the 'tree.' The fruit has been there from the beginning. Although it explodes, its existence itself doesn't perish. The tree is just the 'process' that gives form to its existence—that's not important. Anyway, Crystal Realm Fruit is a very lazy person. She's always lying there emitting blue light, too lazy to move, saying things like, 'I don't want to move, I don't want to move, I don't want to move. I really hope to be a stone buried underground in my next life,' which is really annoying."

So this ruthless character who created so many crystal giants and Gustav is actually this cute?

"And then Gleaming Gold South-Pointing Compass... that blonde woman with a great figure, long legs, and a curvy bust. Judging by appearance alone, she seems to be the most mature one. She's clearly a seductive mature woman who makes you want to pin her down and gang rape her, but her personality is incredibly weak. Whenever the concubines have a dispute, she yells, 'Don't fight, everyone! We should all get along peacefully! Why doesn't anyone listen to me...' and what's with that 'I'? It's really annoying."

You, who refer to yourself as "this humble servant," have no right to speak to her like that.

"Finally, there's Karma Fire... That guy... He doesn't talk much, but he's very active, hates staying in one place, and has schizophrenic tendencies. That's probably why he exists by transferring between different containers. And he occasionally says things like, 'I am the strongest, you don't need to bother with me,' what an egomaniac, really annoying."

You've said "It's really annoying" four times already.

And your self-references are all so fancy! You're "this humble servant," the Boundary Breaking Armor is "I, the lonely one," the Crystal Realm Fruit is "I, the humble one," the Gleaming Gold South-Pointing Compass is "this slave," and the Karmic Fire is "this seat"—what's this? Are you all just being chuunibyou (delusional)?

Wait, she doesn't seem to have finished speaking yet?

"Wait a minute, there's more than that, there's also the Truth Incantation!"