Chapter 23: The Relic
The stone steps came to an end.
Lucian took the final step and stopped.
The space opened up entirely.
It was a vast underground hall. The vaulted ceiling rose so high its outline was nearly lost, as though it reached all the way to the surface. Soft light poured down from every direction, with no clear source, yet it filled the entire space as if the room were bathed in early morning sun.
The light was warm, carrying a faint golden quality, as though filtered through countless layers of fine silk — not harsh, not dim, falling at exactly the right measure across every inch of the stone walls.
The air was dry and clean, carrying a faint, barely-there fragrance, not the blended ceremonial incense of a temple, but something older, something that seemed to have grown naturally out of the stone itself. With each breath, that clean quality settled into the lungs.
Lucian drew a slow breath and took in that particular comfort, entirely at odds with a place buried underground.
"This place..."
"This is the holy sanctuary the Six Great Gods opened themselves. The Theocracy's sacred ground."
The Supreme Pontiff's voice resonated through the wide hall, carrying an echo, but not a harsh one.
"Every arrangement here was completed by the Six Great Gods' own hands."
Lucian let his gaze move across the hall.
Then it stopped.
On the eastern side of the hall, a crystal display case stood in silence. It was not large, somewhat unassuming among the larger cases holding other relics, but it had been placed with great deliberateness: a position unto itself, the soft light falling on it at exactly the right angle, as though drawing attention to its particular significance.
Inside the case was a single object.
A feather.
It was not large, roughly the length of a palm. Its color was a strange silver-white — not an ordinary white, but a silver with a metallic quality that was somehow still soft, as though it had just fallen from the wing of some divine bird. Along its edges, a faint golden glow shimmered, barely visible, as though breathing.
Lucian stared at the feather and quietly let out a breath.
There it was, just as he had expected.
[Icarus' Feather].
This was a divine artifact he and Silshana had crafted together in the early days of YGGDRASIL.
They had both been beginners then, still clawing their way out of a pile of trash-tier gear. They had scraped the materials together over a long time and stayed up night after night to finish it.
The body of the feather had been his design. The anti-detection magic array engraved inside it had been Silshana's work. They argued all the way through the process — he kept saying they should add another layer of protection, she kept saying it was enough, that if they pushed the materials any further the whole thing would fall apart.
When the finished piece finally came out, both of them were thoroughly exhausted. But when they looked at that softly glowing silver feather, neither of them could help smiling like idiots.
It was the first divine artifact they had ever completed together.
Afterward, Lucian left their original guild in pursuit of greater combat power and joined Cathedral of Faltil. When he left, he gave the feather to Silshana.
"Does the God of Judgment recognize this sacred object?"
The Supreme Pontiff's voice came from beside him, carrying a careful, tentative note.
Lucian gave a slight nod and walked to the display case, reaching out.
"May I?"
"Of course."
The Supreme Pontiff opened the case himself and lifted the feather out with both hands, holding it with reverence as he offered it to Lucian.
The moment the feather settled into Lucian's palm, a faint warmth came from it, moving through his fingertips.
That feeling was familiar.
It was Silshana's anti-detection array, still running.
Lucian focused on the flow of magic inside the feather: anti-divination barrier, anti-prophecy, anti-detection, anti-scrying. Layer upon layer of protection nested within each other, precise as a miniature fortress.
This was Silshana's style.
She was a chatterbox and carried herself like someone who had never worried about a detail in her life. But when it came to the details themselves, she had never been anything less than meticulous.
Lucian's mouth curved into a faint smile. He held that familiar warmth for a moment.
With this, at least, he would not be entirely exposed when the time came to stand in front of Ainz Ooal Gown.
He placed the feather back in the case and turned his attention to the murals.
The murals began at the entrance of the hall, followed the arc of the walls all the way around, and met again on the far side.
Lucian walked along them slowly. The Supreme Pontiff followed behind, offering a quiet explanation of each panel in turn.
The first: The Age of Darkness.
The scene depicted humans kept like livestock. Beastmen in rough armor, carrying crude weapons, driving a crowd of humans forward. Those humans had ropes around their necks, their eyes blank, no different from cattle. In the corner of the painting, the small bodies of children lay at the roadside, left where they had fallen. Further back, several large cauldrons sat over fire, steam rising from them, the shapes visible inside leaving nothing to imagination.
Lucian's steps slowed.
He knew that humans had been kept as food by beastmen in this world's history. But knowing it from text was one thing. Seeing it rendered like this was another entirely.
Those blank eyes. Those fallen bodies. Those steaming cauldrons.
Even across the span of centuries, the despair and degradation still came through the painting and hit him squarely, cold as a wave breaking over ice.
Lucian breathed in and kept walking.
The second: The Descent of the Six Great Gods.
The image shifted entirely. The sky split open and six figures descended from above, surrounded by brilliant radiance. The beastmen fled in terror from the light. The humans fell to their knees, faces tilted upward, and something appeared in their eyes for the first time.
Hope.
Lucian's gaze settled on the central figure. The painter had rendered the Lady of Death with extraordinary solemnity — Silshana holding her scythe, the skull face beautified into something that read more as mysterious authority than anything else.
"Narcissist," Lucian said, with the perfectly impartial tone of a judge delivering a verdict.
The third: War.
A fierce battlefield. The six figures moved through the enemy lines, magic and blade intertwined, and wherever they struck, enemies fell in waves.
Lucian looked at that scene and felt something complicated settle in his chest.
Once upon a time, his guildmates had been the ones thrashing beastmen.
And now?
Now he was the native. Waiting to be thrashed by a different transmigrant.
A thought occurred to him suddenly.
Would the Great Tomb of Nazarick one day paint its own conquests onto murals and hand them down to posterity?
Probably, he decided.
Knowing Demiurge, it would be done in exceptional detail — every expression of despair on every two-legged sheep captured for the historical record, as testimony to Nazarick's great conquest.
The corner of Lucian's mouth twitched.
He kept walking.
The fourth panel. The fifth. The sixth.
Each one told some part of the story of how the Six Great Gods had saved humanity, passed on knowledge, built the Theocracy. The painter's skill was considerable, the figures alive, the scenes sweeping in scale.
But as Lucian looked at those images, the question turning over in his mind was something else entirely.
What advantages did natives have over players?
He walked, and let the answer unspool in his head.
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