Chapter 201 – Not Enough Lives!?

“Please! Without it…without it. I’m!”

The hairy old man who appeared had now collapsed to the ground in a flood of tears.

Hesitantly, I questioned him.

“You…are you a dwarf?”
“!? You know about us!?”
“One of my friends is a dwarf… But you…”
“Yes! I don’t have a real body… I was killed by the humans who conquered these lands.”
“In other words, this is the place that you and the other dwarves originally lived?”

The dwarf nodded.

So it was the dwarves who had built the holy place.
And the ancestors of the Arnacian people had taken it.

“My comrades…three hundred of my own kin were murdered. And so I require flesh and blood to bring them back. I will use magic to condense and turn them to stone…”
“Surely you don’t mean…a stone to resurrect the dead?”

I had once acquired a similar stone.

The Dragon Sphere Stone.

I had found it in the Sheorl underground, and it was used to bring Mappa back to life.

“That is it. However with my method, I can only revive one person with the blood and flesh of a hundred. The one person who had the perfect skill to do it is…”

So the Dragon Sphere Stone had been a stone made from the lives of others… Was the one found in Sheorl the same?

I would not have been able to use it had I known. Though, Mappa’s resurrection was more of an accident if anything…

The old man shook his head to the side vigorously.

“But it’s too late now. In any case, what I must do is bring all of my comrades back…”

He then bowed to me.

“Please. Please return that staff to me. The humans of the holy place robbed us of our future.”
“The people that you had underground are their descendants.”
“Yes… And they were given a comfortable life, in spite of the circumstances. In spite of how the people suffered outside…”
“So you only meant to use the royal family and nobles.”
“Yes. I promise you.”

The people of the holy place had believed the prophecy and ignored their citizens up until now.
And so they could hardly complain when the dwarves wanted their revenge.

Indeed, this place was too advanced for humans to make. So it was natural to believe that it was built by dwarves.

That being said, I didn’t mean to put lives on a scale.

What was important to me was Sheorl… And those we formed an alliance with.

“I’m sorry. But I have no reason to trust you.”
“But why? Surely you yourself have witnessed the arrogance of these people?”

He must have been watching us when we first came to the holy place.

“You want to bring back your friends, yes?”
“…? …That is what I said. Why?”
“Aye. Of course, you do. You want to bring them all back.”
“…!?”

The old man covered his mouth as if realizing his mistake.

“You said a hundred lives for one. Will the people of the holy place really be enough?”

I asked. And then Fule started to make calculations with her fingers.

“It won’t be enough… Not with just the people of the holy place.”

If there were three hundred dwarves, then it would take the flesh and blood of thirty thousand to bring them all back. But there were only three thousand in the holy place. He would need at least twenty-seven thousand more people.

And there just happened to be about thirty thousand Arancians outside of the holy place.

If the dwarves had been manipulating the Arancian royals and adjusting the numbers…

I nodded to Fule.

“It was all according to their plan.”
“Tsk… Hehe… Ahahahahahahaha!”

The dwarf burst into laughter.

“I had thought that all humans were fools that could do nothing but take from others…but you can actually think.”
“Actually, it was your fault for prattling on…”

Fule pointed out. And the dwarf became red in the face.

“Shu-shut up! In any case, I have no intention of letting you escape alive!”

I then asked the dwarf,

“…Tell me this one thing. Do you believe in the end of the world?”
“Ah, you mean the great calamity? It is said that the ancient continent of Sheorl fell because of it. But our ancestors overcame it! People say that it was God’s judgment, but it was nothing but a phenomenon that could be predicted! And so we too overcame it! With our technology!”

…Overcame it?
What did he mean?
If that black miasma was the calamity, then we had not seen the end of it yet.

However, the dwarf had now disappeared.

The ground immediately started to shake, and a pillar of water shot out of the lake in the holy place.

What appeared after, was a golden statue that was enveloped in miasma.

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