Chapter Three Hundred: The Goddess’s Stairway 2
“Karen… what is it you’re holding?”
At Julius’s question, Karen startled and looked at him.
“You can’t see it?”
“I can… see something, I think. But it’s blurry—I can’t quite focus on it…”
“I see. So it’s hard to focus on it. Maybe that’s why no one found it—it’s difficult for ordinary people to see.”
There had been a time when Julius was left behind by Karen. He hadn’t been able to follow her as she moved toward a zero-magical-power zone. But now Julius knew how to follow Karen wherever she went.
Karen’s expression shifted to one of alarm as the realization clicked.
“Julius, there’s absolutely no need to break your soul just to see it—it’s just an egg! A tiny egg! The kind that looks like a chick small enough to fit in your palm would hatch from it!”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t think it’s dangerous.—But it’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“It feels like everything about it is wrong. Beyond having no magical power—it’s almost like it has negative magical power? It’s unnatural, impossible, and yet it’s here.”
The white egg was perfectly round and white and beautiful, and yet something about it was twisted, tangled, and deeply warped.
“A zero-magical-power zone just had no magical power—but this is different. It’s deeply unsettling, and somehow… I think I understand why monsters want to destroy it—”
At that moment, cutting Karen’s words short, a scream rang out from beyond the tent. A moment later, the guard knight came rushing inside.
“Monsters are attacking again—more of them than before! They appear to be heading this way! Both of you, please evacuate immediately!”
Outside the tent, screams broke out in waves. They were probably the voices of commoner merchants and servants with no means to protect themselves. Casualties might be mounting even as Karen stood here. She understood that the monsters were converging here because of this egg. Which meant she had to destroy it.
“Karen, this egg has to be killed, correct? Let me do it.”
“You can’t even see it clearly, Julius. Besides, I’ve defeated weak slimes before, and I’ve even wrung a chicken’s neck, so I’ll be fine.”
Still, this was different from fighting back against something that attacked her, or killing for food. This was her first time killing something for any other reason, and Karen swallowed.
It was different from ambushing a monster with magic or arrows. The shell containing the unborn creature looked so thin that even Karen could easily crush it.
“Karen?”
“I’m fine.”
Fortunately, her gloves prevented her from feeling anything. Karen took a deep breath and crushed the egg in her grip.
“—Pii.”
A cry came from inside her closed hand, and with a sharp intake of breath, Karen opened her palm. In her hand lay the broken eggshell and a tiny, tiny monster hatchling.
It was a hatchling of some kind of pure white monster. A small bird-type monster, wrapped in fluffy white down. Whether the hatchling was sturdy or Karen’s grip had simply been too weak, it showed no visible injuries.
The chick opened its pure-white eyes wide and tried to chirp again. Its white beak opened, its white tongue trembled—but no sound emerged, and it went still in Karen’s palm.
Tears spilled from Karen’s eyes.
“Karen, are you all right? Perhaps if you had left it to me after all—”
“No. These tears aren’t because killing it was painful.”
Julius stared in surprise. Karen wept as she gently cupped the hatchling in both hands.
“What’s heartbreaking is that it was made to hatch at all…!”
“Made to hatch is heartbreaking…?”
“It’s a monster, but it has no magical power. That’s impossible for a monster—it shouldn’t even be able to exist. Yes, even the black dragon said the egg had no magical power, so I knew that from the start—but this little one must have been in so much pain.”
For something that should not exist, this world was a cruelly painful place. Surely this hatchling had suffered from the very moment it was laid as an egg—far more than Karen, who, for example, would have appeared on the fiftieth floor without a shred of magical power. Because it was far too wrong as a monster.
“I should have gotten here sooner.”
Karen held the hatchling to her chest—the pitiful hatchling that had only been able to die once its shell was broken. Julius gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Whatever it is you have come to understand, you have done nothing wrong. Isn’t that right?”
Karen nodded with tears still in her eyes. She could feel the magical power beginning to surge within her body clearly now. The black dragon had, through its own intent, forced upon Karen an understanding of the truth of monsters—and she was on the verge of ascending a step. But it felt different from all the times she had ascended before.
“Ugh.”
“Karen, what’s wrong?”
Julius supported Karen as she bent double, pressing her hand to her mouth.
“…I feel… sick, maybe. This is different from all the other times I’ve ascended.”
“If this is not a curse, what is it?”
“Yeah, honestly, maybe this is the black dragon’s revenge on humans?”
Julius ground his back teeth as Karen went pale.
“…Why did it have to be you, Karen? It could have let me understand instead.”
“I think… understanding the absence of magical power was necessary. Maybe it couldn’t make you understand that… which is why it said I would be able to find it.”
Assaulted by a nausea that resembled euphoria but was nothing like it—more like being drunk—Karen’s head began to spin.
“No matter what grudge it held against humans, to do this to you after you offered to help—”
“It’s all right, Julius.”
“Karen, you are far too kind-hearted.”
Julius fixed her with sharp eyes.
“I love your gentleness, Karen. But I cannot accept the way you sacrifice yourself for others—even for monsters. If at least it were for your own sake—”
“It is for my sake, Julius.”
Karen smiled despite the cold sweat breaking across her skin. Julius looked down at her with an expression of complete surprise.
“Karen…?”
“Thanks to this, I’ve figured something out. I’d been half-aware of it for a while, actually. Whoever ruined Weiss… that baby pegasus and this little bird… they’re trying to create the Philosopher’s Stone.”
By blackening monsters into decay, or by purifying all of their magical power until they were bleached pure white. The process was somehow similar to what Karen had learned about making the Philosopher’s Stone in her previous life.
Tormented by nausea that felt like the worst hangover imaginable, drenched in cold sweat, she set aside the suffering of her body, and her tearful eyes lit up with brilliant light.
“But the method is wrong!”
The air itself trembled, as if in answer to Karen’s understanding.
“It’s wrong—and the understanding the black dragon gave me made me realize it…!”
Particles of rainbow-colored light poured down from the sky, passing through the tent and showering down onto Karen. Immediately, her pain began to ease—as if the black dragon’s curse were being painted over by the goddess’s blessing.
A band of light pierced through the tent like a stairway sent down by the goddess for a soul in need of salvation. So that the small bird resting in Karen’s hands could reach the stairway, Karen gently raised her hands.
“I’m sorry. And thank you… You helped me understand. Even as a B-rank alchemist, no matter how much I researched, I couldn’t figure it out—but now I have a glimpse of how to make the Philosopher’s Stone—”
When the particles of light touched it, the little bird monster hatchling seemed to take on a peaceful expression, as though its pain had eased, and Karen felt a wave of relief and smiled—then collapsed where she stood.
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