Informal Meeting 7

Vampire Child's perspective

I have no family.

If pressed, Melazofis comes closest—but there is no blood relation between him and me.

I have no family bound by blood.

Because they were killed by the Divine Word Sect.

The grandparents I met only once might still be alive, but meeting them now would not evoke a sense of blood relation.

Even my biological parents felt like strangers to me, having been reincarnated—there was no sense of kinship, no real feeling of blood relation.

Still, my parents loved me.

Without war, living in peace, perhaps I might have continued to live untroubled under the care of those kind parents.

Perhaps Melazofis would not have become a vampire, and Noiria, who sacrificed herself to let me escape, might have survived.

Not just Noyria.

Many servants in the mansion had made peace with dying alongside their parents.

If there had been no war, perhaps I could have lived in that town, in that mansion, hidden as a vampire, surrounded by parents and servants, living as an ordinary human.

That future might have existed.

I can no longer abandon being a vampire.

But if another future had been possible, perhaps there had been a way to live as a human.

I cannot determine, with my limited imagination, whether that alternative would have been happiness.

Still, one possibility of future has been taken from me.

Before, wars between nations were too vast in scale to know whom to blame.

It is undeniable that the vague dissatisfaction I felt was redirected toward my master.

I could not have processed the swirling black emotions within me otherwise.

The emotions, carefully sorted over time.

Yet here, before me, stands the origin of it all.

Not the anger directed at my master.

The genuine culprit behind the war.

The one who took my parents’ lives, stripped me of my home, and stole my future.

"Why did you start the war against the Saliera Kingdom?"

Suppressing the surge of murderous intent, I demand answers.

Until now, I believed the war had arisen from religious conflict.

But today’s meeting, and prior discussions with Lars, revealed that the Godword Faith is not merely a religious organization.

That is the source of my question.

Why was it necessary to initiate war at that precise moment?

Religious disputes are trivial to the Godword Faith.

They wear the guise of religion, but in truth, they are a collective dedicated to saving the world.

It may sound like religion at first glance, but they do not pray to gods and wait for salvation.

They act directly, moving to resolve problems with their own feet.

The reason the Godword Faith seeks to diminish the power of the Goddess Faith remains unclear.

Religious wars inevitably become mired in mud.

That would be precisely the desired outcome for the Godword Faith, which benefits from prolonging conflict and breeding warriors only to have them die.

Yet in that war, the Godword Faith clearly acted to crush the Goddess Faith.

The Godword Faith should have preferred the Goddess Faith to retain a certain level of strength.

It was not merely a slight weakening.

I am certain of this because, when Ariel saved me, she explicitly stated the Godword Faith intended to destroy the Goddess Faith utterly.

That she stated it so firmly implies there must be substantial grounds for it.

I recall this because Ariel said the war was an unstoppable current of fate.

Next, what to do afterward is what matters.

At the time, I was an infant. I could do nothing.

Ariel said that, when something similar occurs again, whether to resist or surrender will be the crucial decision.

And I replied.

To resist.

Since then, my status has grown significantly.

I am certain I can handle everyone present here—except for my master and Lars—without issue.

The outcome depends on the Pope’s response.

"The Goddess Faith worships the Goddess. It contains truths meant to remain unknown to ordinary citizens. To crush those truths, the Goddess Faith itself must be destroyed. That is likely the thinking of the higher-ups in the Godword Faith who are not present here."

I blinked, startled by the Pope’s words.

Was it truly for this reason that my parents were killed? — my sudden surge of emotion faltered, abruptly deflating.

“That was one of the objectives, but the essence lies elsewhere.”

The Pope’s words struck like a blade, piercing through my deflated emotion.

The weight in his voice startled me, catching me off guard.

“We of the Godword Faith, having anticipated the goddess’s demise, chose to dismantle the Goddess Faith in advance.”

A shiver ran up my spine.

The Pope’s resolve.

And, faintly, the anger emanating from beside me.

I felt both, and found myself without words.

If this continues, the Goddess will inevitably deplete her own essence to replenish MA energy. That much is clear to anyone who sees it. Her lifespan, therefore, is expected to be short. After the Goddess passes, the Black Dragon will assume her role.

Lars startles, glancing at his master.

His master ignores Lars’s reaction, continuing to stare at the Pope.

Eyes closed, yet utterly focused.

"If the Black Dragon becomes the system’s sacrificial pillar, then naturally, the voice of our divine doctrine will shift—from the Goddess to the Black Dragon. At that moment, the Divine Doctrine will face great upheaval. We must prepare for that event. To announce the transition of divinity without incident."

The Divine Doctrine holds that system messages are the voice of God, and thus one must strive to hear that voice.

Should that voice change abruptly, it would constitute a major event, threatening the foundation of the Divine Doctrine.

Doubt toward the Divine Doctrine would inevitably take root.

Preparing for such a scenario is understandable.

But what connection exists between that and destroying the Goddess Cult?

"To minimize disruption, it was necessary to announce the Goddess's departure from this world. Therefore, the Goddess Cult, which venerates her, had to be inevitably weakened."

The Pope continued.

It would extinguish their will to live, he said.