Chapter 395: Pope and Dimension

The four people from Room 10 evacuated from the Count Padawan mansion.

It was 3am.

The gates of the Holy Capital are open twenty-four hours a day.

As if no door is closed to believers…

However, even though you can come and go freely, there are guards and a golem at the castle gate.

Passing through the gates of the Holy Capital at such a late hour, or rather at a time when it was almost dawn, would be quite conspicuous.

They had to avoid any suspicious behavior.

They also had the holy swords they recovered.

Therefore, the four of them were taking a break in a place slightly off the main road.

“Etho, is it true what you said earlier?”

Niels asked Etho.

Of course, that question was not only Niels’, but also Amon’s and Ryo’s.

“Elena-san’s baby? I’m sure there’s a baby in her belly. Elena-san seems to know that too, as all she was drinking was water.”

“I see.”

Ryo nodded at Etho’s explanation.

Come to think of it, what she was stirring during the conversation wasn’t alcohol, but water.

“Well, I honestly don’t know if Tommaso is the baby’s father, but I guess it’s a good fit.”

Etho smiled a little and said so.

It happened in an instant.

“”

Ryo shouted without having time to stand up.

Almost at the same time as the ice wall covered the four people, countless earth spears attacked.

“What!?”

Niels looked around from the gap between the earthen spears attacking the four of them.

However, there was no change in the surroundings.

There was no change, but even he, a swordsman, could sense that something was wrong.

Priest Etho, who could feel the flow of magical power, felt even more threatened than Niels.

“What’s this… this unusual flow of magic power? This is the first time I’ve seen something like this… no, since that Explosive Blaze Magician? By any chance, someone of that class? No, there aren’t many people like that, right?”

That was his first experience since being exposed to the magic power of Oscar the Explosive Blaze Magician in Whitnash.

He couldn’t stop cold sweating.

Amon was also shaking.

However, were they tremors of fear, or warrior’s tremors… tremors of excitement.

The joy of being able to meet a strong foe…

Although he couldn’t see the opponent yet, he understood that there was someone who was frighteningly strong.

“”

Ryo re-covered the all-around defense package with a laminated ice wall.

A wall of ice that automatically thickened from the center outward.

The earth spear attacks were getting so severe that he had to do that.

At the place where the earth spear collided with the ice wall, light from pair annihilation danced wildly.

In other words, each spear had the same power as twenty layers of ice wall.

Frankly speaking, it was impossible.

The wild dance of thousands of lights lasted for a full three minutes.

After the rain of earthen spears had stopped, a voice echoed.

“Leave the holy swords behind.”

With that voice, a person dressed in white robes appeared…

“Eh……”

“No way, hey…”

“It can’t be, the Pope…”

Amon was at a loss for words, Niels was shocked, and Etho blurted out who it was.

It was the current Pope whose inauguration was to take place in a few days.

“Leave the holy swords behind.”

The Pope spoke again.

Words without emotion.

“I see. Some people said they didn’t think he was human, but he might actually not be human…”

Ryo whispered.

However, he felt somewhat different compared to golems…

But either way, the overflowing magical power was real.

That was completely different from the empty Pope that he saw from a distance when the envoys arrived.

He looks the same on the outside, but on the inside… that overflowing magical power…

Even though it rained so many earth spears, he still had that much magic power.

In magical warfare, having a large amount of magical power is the differentiator.

“Leave the holy swords behind.”

The Pope’s third call.

“We refuse.”

Niels stated.

The Pope chanted without a moment’s delay.

“”

As the Pope chanted, three flames swirled from the tip of his outstretched right hand and headed toward the ice wall.

They then began to gouge through Ryo’s ice wall.

“”

While strengthening the ice wall in front of them, he rained ice spears on the Pope.

“＜Magic Barrier＞”

However, while maintaining the flame whirlpool attack, the Pope put up a magical barrier and repelled Ryo’s attack.

“Deploying two magic at the same time! And earlier it was earth, then fire… two attributes…”

Etho shouted in surprise.

The sight of Etho shouting was extremely rare, but neither Ryo, Niels nor Amon could afford to be surprised by it.

The Pope’s frontal attack was powerful, and his defense was strong enough to block even Ryo’s attack.

“Ryo, Amon, and I will rush in from the left and right and cut him down.”

Niels announced.

“Understood. I’ll support by distracting him.”

Ryo nodded and answered.

Ryo could pull up Murasame and charge in, but if he did that, the defense of the three would inevitably become weaker.

Rather than doing that, he felt it would be better if the two who were originally in the vanguard attacked.

“Let’s go..”

After Ryo chanted, steam mines were placed around the Pope.

Then, the steam mines and Blade Lang Trident came into contact, and pair annihilation occurred.

The light from the pair annihilation robbed the Pope of his vision.

After confirming that, Niels and Amon rushed in.

They quickly closed the distance and tacitly agreed to attack the Pope from both sides.

Crack, crack.

However, their swords were deflected loudly.

The Pope fired a in front of him, blocked the ice spear from above with a , and deployed on his left and right to block the two’s slashing attacks.

“How is that possible!?”

Even Ryo was surprised.

“”

The Pope chanted.

At the same time, held his staff with both hands.

It was not a staff that Etho and the others carry, but a staff with something like a jewel attached to the tip.

He swung it.

Amon dodged and Niels parried the attack with his sword.

“Uwah”

The moment Niels received it, his body was blown away.

Unbelievable physical strength.

And faster than he could imagine.

“He said Enchant.”

“He did. It feels somewhat… blended?”

“Oh, Etho thinks so too?”

Etho and Ryo were whispering to each other.

Of course, they were still being attacked by the Pope’s flame vortex, but they were able to have some time to talk.

No matter how frightening an attack is, it seems that people will eventually get used to it.

“What are the attributes of the four missing magicians in the hero party…?”

“Earth, Fire, Wind, and Enchanter. Ash Khan, the enchanter, has Wind in terms of his attributes.”

“This magic is extracted from those four people?”

Ryo listed the attributes of the four people, and Etho deduced what he did with them.

“Even if he isn’t a human, I don’t think it is possible to contain this much magical power.”

“Ah, yeah… Ryo has been blocking it all by yourself for a long time though.”

Ryo thought while nodding, but Ryo didn’t hear Etho’s murmurs.

“But if there is a constant supply, it’s possible?”

“In other words, it’s not that the Pope absorbed the four people, they’re still being absorbed and their magic are just being released through the Pope. If that’s the case…”

“Yes. I think there is something like a ‘line’ that supplies the Pope with that magical power.”

Ryo had been searching for it. But he had not found it.

“If Ryo can’t find it, does that mean it’s not in the air?”

“Not in the air? I see, from the ground!”

Etho’s words caused a flash of inspiration in Ryo.

The rock-like wild golem that Ryo fought with Abel when they traveled from the Rondo Forest to Rune came to mind.

It was as if they were being supplied with magical power from the ground.

When Abel knocked one down, it stopped moving.

On the front line, the Pope was still firing his towards Ryo and Etho, blocking the ice spears with his , and clashing with Amon’s sword with his staff.

“Amon, move away!”

When Amon heard Ryo’s shout, he leaped backward.

He probably didn’t understand why he told him to leave, but he had complete trust in Ryo.

“”

As Ryo chanted, ice spread on the ground where the Pope stood.

Furthermore, a wall of ice appeared in a radius of about three meters around the Pope, and the thickness of the ice wall rapidly increased toward the center, that is, the Pope.

“”

While the Pope used his staff to break the ice wall that was approaching him, the Ice Bahn extended toward the sky like a pillar of ice.

Naturally, the Pope on the Ice Pillar rose and gained distance from the ground.

As the Pope moved away, his movements gradually became weaker…

The Pope was surrounded by a wall of ice and was frozen in ice.

The Pope was frozen about 20 meters from the ground.

It wasn’t easy to see from directly below.

However, Niels, who was blown a little further away, could see it clearly.

“Amazing, what is that?”

Niels asked Ryo.

“His Holiness the Frozen Pope.”

Ryo replied with a smug look on his face.

However, at that moment, light from the heavens struck the ice.

When the four of them looked at the ice in surprise, the Pope who had been trapped had disappeared.

“What…”

Ryo was shocked and speechless.

The other three were speechless too.

The ice shrunk and returned to the ground.

The place where the Pope was was now empty.

It seemed that the ice did not break and only the Pope’s body was transported to another location.

“The being behind the Pope is quite troublesome.”

“Well, that’s why they want the holy swords back.”

Ryo said and Niels answered.

Although Ryo nodded to Niels’ answer, it didn’t sit well with him.

The being behind the Pope, a Fallen…

Even if they really are originally an angel-like being, would it be possible to defeat them with holy swords?

Naturally, the first being that comes to mind when Ryo thinks of an ‘angel’ is Michael (pseudonym), whom he met in the white space.

He said it himself. That he is like an angel.

And that sense of presence, or rather the level of existence… it felt like he was on a completely different level from that of a person like Ryo.

For example, if you ask him if he could defeat Michael (pseudonym) with these holy swords… he doesn’t think he could defeat him.

He literally felt like a different dimension.

An unimaginable existence on another level.

Why is it so unimaginable?

Because just by changing one dimension, it becomes a completely different thing.

For those of us who live in the three-dimensional world, it is almost impossible for us to imagine what the four-dimensional world is like just by looking at space without the addition of time.

Even if there’s a sense of understanding something when it’s explained in mathematical formulas or words, it’s impossible to picture it.

That’s because we had never experienced four-dimensional space.

In the first place, does space with more than three dimensions exist?

The answer is yes.

On Earth, its existence is confirmed by physics.

In the first place, the world in which humans exist has more than nine dimensions.

But we only perceive three dimensions.

Where are the remaining six dimensions?

That’s the problem with extra dimensions.

Is it close to us in a compact state as represented by the so-called Calabi-Yau manifold, or is it expanding in the opposite direction like Brane cosmology?

We don’t know.

That is because we who live in the third dimension cannot recognize or grasp the six other dimensions…

Eh? Why can we say that something is definitely there even though we cannot recognize it or see it?

Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.

What we derived was ‘String Theory’, said to be the cutting edge of theoretical physics.

In the 21st century, string theory is a theory that genius physicists around the world are working on, so much so that it can be said that there are almost no theoretical physicists who completely deny it.

It was derived from such cutting-edge theory.

Although it’s not recognizable.

But we would like to understand.

We would like to understand what the higher dimensions look like when viewed from the lower dimensions…

How should we do it?

It’s easy. Just think about it by subtracting one dimension.

For example, if you think about it in the three-dimensional world we are in, you will understand.

The three-dimensional world can have three axis: length, width, and height. Hence the ‘three’ dimension.

Below that, two-dimensional is a plane-only world where only two axis, vertical and horizontal, can occur. Therefore, it is ‘two’ dimensional.

Drop one dimension.

Let’s imagine that we are in a two-dimensional plane, and consider what happens if we try to interfere in the next higher dimension, the third dimension.

We are on a plane.

It’s flat. There is no height.

Trying to grab a ball that is one centimeter above the plane… In other words, trying to grab a ball that is three-dimensional… Of course, you can’t grab it.

Because we live on a plane. Because we are a two-dimensional person.

In other words, we cannot interfere with things in the higher dimensions.

However, if the ball stops floating and falls onto the plane we are on… we will be damaged.

It would hurt if it hit.

In other words, if they feel like it, the upper dimension can interfere with the lower dimension…

All power over life and death is held by those at the higher dimension.

However, you should notice it now.

The two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds do not necessarily exist in different places.

There are some areas where they intersect.

There are some areas where the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds are in contact.

Even the theoretical we, who are in the two-dimensional world, can grab the ball that comes into contact with us… probably.

No, even if we can’t grasp it, we can still interfere.

It’s possible to touch it.

Only at that moment does something in the lower dimension have a chance to influence something in the higher dimension…

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