031 Eight People

After a while, everyone had finished recording most of what they had seen, and the mentor summoned them to his side and asked two questions.

The first was how many statues there were in all.

The second was what kind of statues they were.

“One hundred and sixty-seven,” said the blond novice. “There are one hundred and sixty-seven in total—wizards and apprentices.”

Wallace smiled. “I have never studied statues, but all one hundred and sixty-seven of these seem to depict heroes... Judging from their poses, many of them appear to be fighting something.”

The red-haired novice was unwilling to be outdone. “I have studied statues. These were carved according to Verrocchio’s principles, which gave their figures an extremely commonplace quality. That is why they create the illusion that we have all known one another for a very long time.”

Roland’s pupils suddenly contracted.

In an instant, he realized what had been wrong.

No, that wasn’t it. They had not been hallucinating! They had not been studying empty air just now. They, too, had been studying statues!

What I saw were the statues of twelve knights suffering. What they saw... may have been the statues of other sufferers!

It turned out that, in different people’s eyes, the number and appearance of the statues in the passage were not the same.

Roland had just felt that Reynard and the others were studying empty air.

Yet in Reynard and the others’ eyes, Roland had been studying empty air as well!

Reynard nodded. “Come to think of it, these statues do look very familiar. As if I have seen these people before. What about you, Roland? What did you see among the statues? Don’t be shy.”

Roland hesitated briefly before choosing to tell the truth.

“I saw only twelve statues—twelve angels clad in knightly armor.”

Everyone was stunned.

“It seems there is something wrong with Roland’s mind,” the blond novice said with a laugh. “There are no statues like that here.”

“There are,” Catherine said. “There are twelve statues of knights. Of course, there are also statues of wizards, apprentices, and priests. Their number is one hundred and sixty-seven.”

Roland thought to himself:

Twelve plus one hundred and sixty-seven, plus eight... A total of one hundred and eighty-seven people came with us on this journey into the Yellow-Brown Fern Forest. Of them, one hundred and seventy-nine suffered the ultimate fate!

Their forms have been recorded in the passage!

At that moment, Wallace frowned. “Lady Catherine, are you saying that there are actually one hundred and seventy-nine statues here? Yet the rest of us can see only one hundred and sixty-seven of them, while Roland can see only twelve... Why is that?”

“You can see only one hundred and sixty-nine statues because your fates intersected with those of those one hundred and sixty-nine people. They should all have been wizards from our academy.”

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Roland can see only twelve statues because his fate intersected with those twelve people alone.

I can see all the statues because I was the organizer of the group. Before we entered the Fern Forest, my fate had intersected with all one hundred and seventy-nine of them.

Everyone was utterly bewildered. Reynard and the others no longer remembered those one hundred and sixty-seven people. They knew nothing of what had happened to them, and thus remained confused.

Catherine paid them no mind. She believed it did not matter whether they understood. It was enough that Roland did.

So she did not dwell on the matter any further. Instead, she turned to Baron Hall and asked, “Hall, how many statues of sufferers are there here in total? I mean, how many people have come here altogether?”

The baron shook his head. “There are thirty-seven thousand five hundred and seventy-six statues in all. They fill the passage densely, and all of them glare furiously at the Garden of Suffering at its end... Yet I do not recognize a single one of them.”

Over the years, the baron no longer knew how many times he had come here.

He had always assumed that whenever he came, the party consisted only of himself and either Julie or Anthony.

But in truth, every party that came here had contained a great many people.

“When I first came here,” the baron said, “Julie told me that she had used her compass to count the statues. There were more than seven hundred thousand of them—each statue no larger than a fingernail, all glaring furiously at the sealed land at the end of the passage.”

“But when I took the compass and counted the entire passage, I saw only 3,287.”

“When I came here a second time, there were 1,936 more statues in the passage.”

“After that, every time I came, the number increased a little. At first, it increased by thousands and hundreds. Later, the increases were in the hundreds and tens. Today, the number of statues has increased by only 179.”

“With those 179 added, there are 37,576 people in all... No. There are 786,530. They were all heroes who once fought against the Abyssal Lord. They have been utterly forgotten by this world.”

The baron shook his head. “I have forgotten who they were, but I think all of my friends—all those I was able to gather—have died here.”

Baron Hall had not been the group’s original organizer. He had merely been an unfortunate man who joined because of Julie.

But gradually, he became the only one left in the group.

He took up the burden left behind by the pioneers and became the group’s organizer.

In fact, when the baron explored the Yellow-Brown Fern Forest three months earlier, he and Anthony had not been the only survivors. More than three hundred people had gone that time, and fourteen had survived.

Those fourteen were Baron Hall, Anthony, and the twelve holy knights—the angels had descended into the bodies of the knights.

After entering the ruins, Baron Hall had once said to Catherine:

“My life has been a complete failure. You are the only friend I have who is willing to accompany me to my death.”

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How could he have had only one friend, Catherine, who was willing to die alongside him?

He had tens of thousands of friends willing to accompany him to their deaths!

Those 37,576 people had all been warriors willing to follow the baron here.

But humanity had completely forgotten everything about them.

Roland thought to himself:

No wonder. No wonder the matter of the Yellow-Brown Fern Forest was so serious, yet only the baron, Anthony, and the baroness knew of it anywhere in the world!

Because apart from them, everyone who knew about the Yellow-Brown Fern Forest had suffered the same fate!

Those heroes had vanished completely, severed entirely from this world.

Their numbers had been countless. They had come here one after another, only to plunge amid their suffering into that abyss forgotten by the world!

At that moment, Roland finally understood how the demonic hand in the sky had withered.

Once, seven hundred and eighty thousand heroes had come here one after another. They had stopped the Abyssal Lord from descending and sealed Its final lingering fragment of consciousness in this world within the Yellow-Brown Fern Forest!

Now, most of the Abyssal Lord’s will had been driven back into the abyss through the sacrifices of countless heroes. Only a sealed fragment of Its consciousness remained in this world.

But one final group of heroes willing to come here and die was still needed to drive that fragment away completely.

Today, 187 heroes had come to this place.

Of them, 179 had given their lives along the way, building a path to the sealed land.

Only eight people remained in the party.

In the days ahead, some of those eight might be killed by demons, while others might be killed by their companions. But none of them would suffer the same fate as those who had come before.

Those eight were Roland, Catherine, Nahl, Anna, Baron Hall, the blond novice, the red-haired novice, Wallace, and Reynard.

They were the final eight. Some among them would complete the last mission on behalf of those heroes.

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