Vol 3. Chapter 34: Riddled with Doubts

“Ah—huh?” Vinny stood off to the side watching Isatia and Aesphyra trade lines, scratching his own head.

Ah, so itchy. Don’t tell me I’m finally growing a brain??

Didn’t they just discover a secret realm ruin of the Marsmo civilization? By rights, given Marsmo’s scale, there’s no way they would leave only a single secret realm behind, right? Besides, whether this secret realm formed passively or was made by human hands—its nature hasn’t even been figured out yet.

“Hold up, if I’m not misremembering, weren’t we here to explore a Marsmo secret realm? How did this suddenly turn into an archaeology program? Isn’t that a bit ridiculous?” Vinny said, eyes blank with confusion.

It’s just a leftover secret realm—how does that automatically tie into Marsmo’s extinction??

“Is that conclusion coming from the Academy?” Vinny asked.

“As for Carillian Academy, they haven’t issued any judgment on this secret realm yet. Everything’s still pending,” Aesphyra said. “After all, the discovery was rushed, and it’s the first Marsmo ruin-realm we’ve found so far. Only a few months to work with—tight timeline. For something as big as Carillian Academy, just stabilizing the Transfer Anchors is already the limit.”

“There’s no way the very first Marsmo secret realm we find just happens to be the last secret realm their entire people made before they died out, right?” Vinny couldn’t help saying. “That’d be way too coincidental.”

“That can’t be ruled out,” Aesphyra arched a brow and folded her arms.

Vinny looked to Isatia. Yes, the Academy hadn’t had time for deeper investigation and analysis because of the compressed schedule, but plainly Isatia’s specialized knowledge might outstrip even the most professional archaeology teams—the experts who know Marsmo best.

Where did she learn so much about Marsmo’s deeds and secrets—and in such detail??

A sudden thought hit Vinny. Could this have something to do with Isatia’s “[Saint’s Favor]”?

“The one venerated outside and the one venerated inside are not the same deity,” Isatia murmured to herself, eyes on the statue fragments at her feet, as if sunk into thought.

Then she paced back and forth through the temple, examined the wall murals, and pulled out a notebook and sketchbook to record.

Vinny used the time to look over the temple’s layout and the murals on the walls as well.

You could tell the temple’s interior was very spacious, except the front—for some reason—a pile of collapsed pillars and stones had sealed off the area ahead. Moving them on their own wasn’t really appropriate. These were artifacts of incalculable research value, useful for understanding Marsmo and the state of many developments on the continent at the time.

Second, no one knew how long this temple had stood. What if moving something threw the structure off balance and it collapsed? That could absolutely happen.

Vinny noticed that after Isatia finished recording the temple’s layout, the statue fragments, and the area around the altar, she went to the surrounding walls to study the murals.

Curious what the murals depicted, Vinny followed along to look.

The first mural closest to the main doors showed soldiers in golden scale armor cutting down enemies and campaigning on all sides, with a celestial banner—one that looked suspiciously like a diaper, the same kind of flag Vinny had seen back at the gate-tower—fluttering above.

This mural should be a scene of the Marsmo conquering on all fronts. It was the ancient era: the Tyrelis Empire hadn’t even been born yet; the Carillian family led only a few loose tribes and hadn’t expanded; and Marsmo had already stepped into a slave society early.

Mm. Judging from the painting, Marsmo skin tone was generally a deep brown. In war they liked to wear golden scale armor, making a stark contrast with that dark-brown skin—if the mural’s not lying.

Next came dark-brown-skinned Marsmo lifting the celestial banner and dropping to both knees before two divine statues, praying devoutly.

The two statues were the many-limbed, tail-biting Ouroboros he’d seen outside—and a towering idol wreathed by three planet-like spheres, with many hands and many faces.

The idol’s look was extremely strange. It had four arms, one set facing each of four directions, and four faces—but each face was almost entirely covered by a single enormous eyeball. Three orbiting “planets” revolved around it.

What kind of weirdo deity was that??

To Vinny, on the Tyrelis Continent—ancient or modern—lots of deities looked less like gods and more like demons.

Was this mural saying that, after conquering the lands, the Marsmo enshrined these two deities and treated them as their people’s own gods?

The Ouroboros represented the authority of “Eternity.” Then what authority did the other deity wield?

Vinny thought of “Continuance,” since the Marsmo’s pursuit boiled down to those two authorities.

So, the statue smashed inside this temple should belong to the deity that governs “Continuance,” shouldn’t it?

But why was the statue symbolizing “Continuance” destroyed? How would that connect to Marsmo’s extinction? What in the world happened here??

Vinny looked to the next mural and found the scene had shifted to uprisings by people of various races, with Marsmo troops dispatched to suppress them.

Sure enough, slavery always meets this ending in the end: slave revolts.

However, this world truly has magic and gods. Whether slaves in such uprisings could actually succeed—that hope had to be very slim.

Vinny looked at the next mural—the one Isatia was frowning at right now—and was startled to discover it couldn’t be viewed.

It had been completely charred, and was covered with dense scrape-marks from blades. You could tell the gouging came from many people hacking away at it.

A glance at the other murals showed many had the same treatment: weapon-strikes all over them, and plenty of traces of magical bombardment.

Ridiculous.

This didn’t look like a secret realm passively formed from residual cultural energy at all. It looked like Marsmo had actually lived here, that real war had happened inside this temple.

Looking past the mural they couldn’t examine, the murals beyond were likewise unreadable—blasted to black and shattered by magic, leaving not a shred of useful information.

So—in the end—did those slaves succeed? No one knew.

“Ah, I’ve got it!” Vinny smacked his palms together, suddenly wearing a look of dawning comprehension that drew both Isatia’s and Aesphyra’s attention.

“Oh my? Classmate Vinny has finally had a breakthrough? Rare. What did you find? Let’s hear it,” Aesphyra teased.

“Tch, don’t look down on people,” Vinny shot her a glare. “Didn’t Isatia just now hypothesize that this secret realm is directly connected to Marsmo’s downfall?”

“And now, I’ve figured out how Marsmo went extinct!” Vinny huffed.

“Oh? That impressive?” Aesphyra arched a brow; even Isatia beside her settled into a posture of serious listening.

“Hmph, isn’t it obvious? The way Marsmo died out is written right here! Clearly, Marsmo was overthrown by the other races they enslaved!” Vinny said, pointing confidently at the murals.

“Basis?” Isatia paused a beat—she didn’t think Vinny would be that shallow—and asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? The murals, look—aren’t they showing Marsmo conquering and enslaving other peoples, and then being overthrown? Start to finish?” Vinny said with assurance, then pointed at the statue rubble in the center of the altar.

“This wrecked statue is the proof! The slave uprising did all this.”

“And what else?” Isatia asked on.

“What else—what else would there be?” Vinny was baffled. “Isn’t that exactly what the murals show?”

“......” ×2

Aesphyra and Isatia fell into speechless silence.

Let’s just say, when it comes to collective silence, Vinny’s ahead of his time—a true grandmaster of ultimate awkward quiet.

“Huh? What? Did I say something wrong? Or did I misunderstand?” Vinny scratched his head.

“Classmate Vinny, could you share something the rest of us don’t already know?” Aesphyra said, half-amused.

“Er... er.”

“Then, by your logic, since the slaves succeeded in toppling the Marsmo, why were these murals still preserved—and still in the Marsmo painting style?” Aesphyra asked.

“Well—maybe those slaves left them to mock the Marsmo?” Vinny forced an analysis.

“That doesn’t track. Generally, when a civilization perishes or declines, what follows is a dimensionality-reduction strike in the arts. And why not smash the statue outside the temple along with it? Smashing only the statue that symbolizes ‘Continuance,’ but not the one that symbolizes ‘Eternity’—what does that mean?” Aesphyra pressed.

“Well—maybe the statue that symbolized ‘Continuance’ was just... too ugly?” Vinny started to talk nonsense.

Because, yes, his take was too rough—tons of points it couldn’t explain.

“But as of now, we still can’t say whether Marsmo was destroyed by a slave backlash,” Vinny went on.

Isatia lifted a Recording Stone and captured the interior scenes of the temple. When she’d recorded enough, she put the stone away.

“Anything else that needs a closer look?” Isatia asked.

“No,” Aesphyra shook her head.

As for Vinny—what would he need a closer look at? He couldn’t read any of it.

“Isatia, did you discover anything else?” Vinny asked, curious.

“It’s still too early to reach any conclusions,” Isatia shook her head.

Mm. For all anyone knew, Carillian Academy’s current progress might not even be half of Isatia’s.

“So how do we get out? Back the way we came?” Vinny glanced at the route in.

“No need.” Isatia walked to the base of the central altar, stepped several paces forward beneath it, stopped at a floor tile, crouched, and tapped. After a hollow sound answered, she lifted the tile away to reveal something like a lever inside.

She pulled it down. The temple’s side wall split apart to both sides, revealing a passage.

Vinny stared, utterly stunned.

“This leads to the back of the temple, likely reserved for the priests,” Isatia said.

“Isatia, were you Marsmo’s high priest in your last life?” Vinny marveled. “How are you this familiar—like you’ve come home?”

The three walked into the opened passage and, in no time, stepped out of a section of moving wall into the rear of the temple.

“Ka-ka-ka.” The instant they exited, the wall closed again.

Vinny looked out over the yellow sands and the clusters of buildings, then at Isatia at his side. His gaze shifted.

They continued forward through the dunes.

“Is this... a residential district?” Vinny asked, eyeing the houses surfacing from the sand.

Isatia didn’t answer. She stared at the rows of low houses ahead, wordless.

So this was where the Marsmo lived? As expected, each one was like a mole’s burrow—utterly inconspicuous—just a small earthen cap outside for blocking wind and rain, with the interior extending down underground.

They toured one of the little earthen huts. Inside were the most basic living fixtures—bed, cabinet, oil lamp, table and chairs, sacks of dried rations, and so on.

But all of these huts looked like they hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.

“Chaos,” Isatia said suddenly as she stepped out of one hut.

“Chaos? You mean the huts are all messy inside?” Vinny didn’t think they were that bad—but living long-term in the dark underground? That, he wasn’t sure he could accept.

“What Isatia means is that the layout here is extremely chaotic,” Aesphyra explained. “Generally, a temple for rites would be built away from residential districts and closer to the seat of rule. But we’d barely exited the temple before running right into a Marsmo residential area.”

“And earlier, the Ouroboros’s statue base had chipped spots, and it was placed in front of a temple that didn’t belong to it. Inside the temple was even more of a wreck.”

“This Marsmo secret realm is summarized by a single word: chaos.”

With that explanation, Vinny grasped what they meant.

This secret realm definitely wasn’t passively formed. But if it wasn’t—and it was artificially made—how could it be this chaotic? Especially for the Marsmo, who prized a sense of ritual. That’s very strange.

This realm feels like someone stuffed a jumble of mismatched things into it with no rhyme or reason at all.