Chapter 530: The Academys Weapon Replicator |
As Frondier listened to Sigurd, he recalled the various writings he had seen in Manggot.
─Ragnarok has failed.
─We couldn't protect Fenrir.
─We witnessed Olympus.
─A surprise attack from Nastrond.
There was definitely a mention of Olympus. He hadn't understood what 'witnessed' meant at the time, but now...
Frondier asked, "Wasn't Olympus originally uninvolved in Ragnarok?"
"Involvement wasn't even a consideration. We didn't even know they existed. Well, excluding the fact that we didn't know, Olympus joined Asgard in the midst of our war."
If that was the case, then the 'witnessed' in that writing wasn't just a simple statement. It was a far more urgent sentence than Frondier had thought.
It would have been even more so if they hadn't known about the Olympian gods.
But wait. A strange thought struck Frondier.
"But Sigurd, if Olympus intervened later, what would have happened if they hadn't?"
Sigurd replied as if it was obvious.
"Then we would have won."
"....Really?"
"It was a close fight, but the advantage in the war was definitely on our side. If it weren't for Olympus, victory would have been ours."
Indeed, if Asgard was winning, there was no way Olympus would have joined later. Perhaps they were allied from the start. They wouldn't join a war that was already won.
'But even so, to win against gods like Odin, Thor, and Baldur...'
The gods back then wouldn't have been mere possessions. They would have used all of their power. If the giants had won against such gods...
"You were incredibly strong. To defeat the gods..."
"It wasn't like that. It's just that her strategy worked."
"Her?"
"Loki."
Sigurd replied calmly.
It took Frondier even longer to process.
"....Loki, orchestrated a plan to defeat the gods?"
"Yes. Don't you know Loki? It's been a while, but to forget that name..."
Frondier shook his head.
Of course he knew Loki. How could he not? But he couldn't understand why that name was being mentioned.
"Loki is a god too. Why would he help humans?"
"....Huh? No, that's not what I meant. You seem to have some misunderstandings about Ragnarok. Is that how humans are these days?"
Frondier kept his mouth shut, unable to answer.
Unfortunately, humans these days knew even less than Frondier did.
Sigurd scratched his head.
"This is... where do I even begin? I don't know what you know and don't know."
He sighed and said, "It would have been nice if I had Menosorpo right now. Ah, sorry. You wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Just a personal lament."
"...."
For Frondier, it was information that only added to the mystery.
But to solve this mystery, Frondier had to pull out his key.
Even if he didn't know what lay beyond the door this key opened.
"Sigurd."
"Hmm?"
"I have Menosorpo."
"What?"
Sigurd's eyes widened. He looked Frondier up and down again. His gaze was a mixture of suspicion and hope. But that expression soon turned into disappointment.
"It's no use just having it. Menosorpo is a rune. You know, right? I don't know how this place ended up like this, but I can't draw a rune."
Sigurd said, looking around.
This place was already completely erased by Frondier using Eclexis. There was nothing but a dark background. Sigurd didn't seem particularly surprised by the sight.
"Aren't you curious how this happened?"
"It's been a long time, so I thought it just got old. I didn't know the world of souls could age too."
Was that how it looked from Sigurd's perspective?
"Anyway, because Pantemonum is like this, there's no space to draw Menosorpo. It's fortunate that there's even space for you and me to stand."
Of course, he had erased everything except that space, but naturally, he didn't mention it.
Sigurd sighed.
"If only there was Weaving, but with Menosorpo in this state..."
"...."
How could he explain this?
Frondier felt like he was watching a morning drama.
All the necessary things, appearing just when needed.
And of all people, he had them all.
"I have Weaving too."
"Yes, if there was Weaving.... What?"
"I have both Weaving and Menosorpo."
Sigurd stared blankly at Frondier. It wasn't so much surprise as a lack of comprehension.
"Are you joking?"
"No."
"Do you even know what Weaving is?"
"Of course I do. Though I can't prove it."
Frondier wanted to show him Weaving, but he couldn't use magic here.
No, wait.
Whether it was Weaving or Menosorpo, he couldn't use them here anyway. Why was Sigurd even...
Grab!
Sigurd grabbed Frondier by both arms.
"You can really use Weaving? Together with Menosorpo? Are you saying both of those are truly within you?"
"Y-yes."
"Can you swear to the heavens that you mean that?"
Frondier didn't know why Sigurd was so agitated, but he answered.
"I don't swear to the heavens. I don't believe in God."
"....!"
Sigurd's eyes widened.
Whatever thought had crossed his mind, he closed his eyes and bowed his head.
"....It took a long time, but it has arrived."
"...."
Frondier didn't understand how Sigurd was feeling.
But there was a memory associated with this conversation.
Joan of Arc had said.
─Ideally, one person would possess both Weaving and Menosorpo, but that was both ideal and unrealistic.
─The best we could hope for was for the strongest individual of that era to possess Menosorpo.
According to her, the 'ideal situation' was for one person to possess both Weaving and Menosorpo, and the 'best realistic scenario' was for two people, each possessing one, to cooperate.
According to her words, Frondier was currently in the ideal situation.
But he still didn't know the exact reason why.
"Then you must prove it."
Sigurd said.
"....I can't use Weaving here."
"No, there's no need for that. The proof is simple."
Sigurd shook his head and said, "You have the Workshop, right?"
"Yes."
"Then when you first saw the Workshop, what was there?"
"Huh?"
"It's a simple question."
....What was there?
Frondier recalled the past. When he first came to this world and saw the Workshop.
There wasn't anything particularly special.
So Frondier spoke as it came to mind.
"....Just an ordinary iron shield, and..."
"There must have been a crude hammer."
"How did you..."
He asked reflexively, then it hit him.
The meaning of the question.
"....Don't tell me, the skills..."
"That's right."
Sigurd nodded.
"Weaving inherits the contents of skills. The information stored by the previous generation can be seen by the next."
Frondier's jaw dropped.
When he first opened the Workshop, there were various things inside. The shield and hammer he had just mentioned.
He originally thought that the previous Frondier, the one he possessed, had stored them.
But thinking about it, that couldn't be true.
According to Joan of Arc, 'Weaving' wasn't a skill of Frondier's. It was something he received when he came to this world. An ability that Frondier himself didn't even know existed.
In other words, the items inside the Workshop weren't stored by the previous Frondier. They were stored by the owner of this skill, from a time far in the past.
"You would know if you have Weaving. What the function of the Workshop is. The Workshop is just a warehouse for storing information about weaving objects."
That was right. The principle of the Workshop was simple. It just stored what was weaving.
Conversely, there shouldn't be anything else.
"But you would know. What's inside the Workshop, which is supposed to be just for storage."
That was right.
Frondier knew, and he had already seen it.
"....The basement."
The Workshop had a basement. A hidden space that Frondier discovered after he brought out the Workshop with his Transcendental reward.
And in there,
"There were statues of heroes gathered."
"Yes, now you understand what I'm trying to say?"
The Workshop was just a storage warehouse.
So those statues weren't 'originally' in the Workshop either. The previous owner of the Workshop had recorded the statues.
And to record the statues, they would have had to actually see them.
But Frondier had never seen such statues in all his time playing the game "Etius." There were depictions of heroes from time to time, but nothing like what he saw in the basement of the Workshop.
And above all, such elaborate and well-crafted statues couldn't exist for every hero.
"....Don't tell me those are..."
A chilling thought crossed Frondier's mind, and he voiced it.
"Those aren't statues, are they?"
"....Hahaha!"
Sigurd burst into laughter.
From Frondier's perspective, it was absolutely nothing to laugh about.
Sigurd smiled but spoke with a serious look in his eyes.
"Listen carefully, Frondier."
"What is it?"
"I don't know what the current state of humanity is or how they remember us. But 'Ragnarok' is a little different from what you think it is."
"It's not a war between gods and humans?"
"It's not that it's wrong. It's just that it's not enough."
A war between gods and humans. That alone wasn't enough to describe Ragnarok.
"Go back to the Workshop when you leave this place. You'll be able to discover something else now."
"....Can't you just tell me now? I've had enough shocks for one day."
Sigurd shook his head.
"It's not something I can tell you."
"....Is it forbidden?"
The 'forbidden words' that Joan of Arc had also mentioned. Sigurd nodded.
"Don't worry. The answers you seek are not far off. But remember this."
"What is it?"
"Ragnarok is not over."
Frightening words, and words of immense scale.
Frondier tried to swallow them down, then asked a question that came to mind.
"How can you say it's not over?"
"Because Ragnarok is destined to succeed."
"....Deciding things based on destiny..."
"I know you don't believe in fate. This isn't about that."
Sigurd said in a firm voice.
"Can you stop the waterfall from falling, the sun and stars from rising and setting? Do you intend to refuse to age and die with the flow of time, to become ashes and scatter?"
In other words, destiny here meant that.
It wasn't about individuals being swept along, about conforming or resisting.
It meant that Ragnarok's success was a given.
"As long as there are gods in this world, they are still at war."
"If it's war, then who are they fighting?"
"They are fighting humans, of course.”
Frondier couldn’t understand.
Fighting humans? Humans weren’t fighting gods right now.
To begin with, this wasn’t something Sigurd, who had been trapped here, could know.
“Humans aren’t fighting gods.”
“Yes, if it truly seems that way, it’s because they don’t know. They don’t know they are fighting the gods.”
Frondier’s mind spun.
He struggled to grasp Sigurd’s words.
“Frondier, this is an ancient tragedy.”
Sigurd spoke to the struggling Frondier,
Seemingly believing that he would understand everything someday.
“We must end this tragedy.”