By the window where the moonlight is bright. Rosalyn, lying on the ivory bed, opened her eyes, panting like someone in a nightmare.
"Just a rose? A cup of tea?"
Yes. It was just an obvious nightmare. She was so frustrated and angry that shr couldn't breathe.
'How can this be?! How can I be so despicable, so insignificant!'
Rosalyn felt like screaming, but she couldn't. She wasn't alone in this bedroom.
Hannah, who shared the same bedroom as Rosalyn, was asleep on the ivory bed across from her.
She had a high fever, and she was in a cold sweat.
Rosalyn looked at Hannah in vain. The faint glow surrounding Hannah's body showed that what she was suffering from was an awakening fever.
'I... I didn't even have a slight fever.'
It was the first time the World Tree had chosen a Daughter of God, but it was enough to guess that it was the Awakening Fever.
The monsters of the gods also suffer from an awakening fever proportional to the power of their intellect when awakened. The more fever suffered, the higher the level of the monster was born, and the more likely it was that the Daughter of the God would do the same.
That made it all the more frustrating.
It was clear that Hannah would awaken as a daughter of a god superior to herself.
"Ha, haha... Does this make sense..."
Rosalyn wanted to cry. It was cylindrical. Isn't the world supposed to do this to her?
Soon, the light around Hannah faded, and she opened her slowly closed eyes.
"... Truncated?"
"Hannah, you...You dreamed, didn't you? The dream that the World Tree has shown you?"
Rosalyn asked Hannah, barely suppressing her bubbling emotions.
"Mmmm... Rosalyn."
"What kind of dream was that?"
"Filled with water... There was a fountain. It looks like it's in the square... A big fountain."
If it's a fountain in the square... It is a source of drinking water for city residents. A place where water flowing along the city's waterways gathers. Rosalyn clenched her fists at the thought of its size.
"Instead of a statue in the middle... A camellia tree was planted. Water gushes out from the roots of the camellia tree... I've never seen so clean water. How clear it was, as if bathed in light."
Her voice was hoarse with fever, and there was an ecstatic admiration. Rosalyn's face hardened as the voice continued.
'How could you be like Hannah..'
The moonlight was unusually bright today, shining on Hannah's face. It was an ordinary face. It won't be memorable even if you pass by. It doesn't have any sense of presence.
"...By the way... Rosalyn. What happened...? Why do you look sad..."
Hannah asked, unable to open her eyes properly due to a severe fever.
"Why can't you sleep... Where... it hurt?"
Rosalyn looked down at Hannah as she managed to continue. It was unseemly to pretend to be nice.
Hannah reached out to grab Rosalyn's hand, but she avoided hers.
"I don't want you to get sick... our Rosalyn"
Hannah uttered a few more nonsense words, and then she blacked out and lost consciousness again.
Rosalyn staggered to her feet from the ivory bed. She just couldn't stay here.
"Huh?! You're out. Priest Rosalyn!"
But the hallway was even worse. The halls were filled with awake priests.
Except for Rosalyn, everyone was in a cold sweat. Rosalyn realized that every single priest in the Great Shrine had an awakening dream.
They talked excitedly about their awakenings. Some priests saw bathtubs, and some saw fish tanks. Some priests saw flower bushes, others saw shrubs.
But no one, not any priest... She didn't see a single shabby bunch of flowers or a teacup of purified water.
'Something's wrong.'
Divinity, appearance, popularity, and favor of the priests. None of the priests could keep up with Rosalyn's toes. How could she fall so suddenly beneath them?
God's monsters are classified from S-class to F-class. The Daughter of God was also likely to be classified as such.
She couldn't live with an F grade. To be labeled the inferior of these... She couldn't buy it.
'I have to make a move before daybreak.'
Rosalyn forced a smile on her lips.
"Oh my. Then I am the only one who has heard the commandments of the World Tree."
At the sound of Rosalyn's voice, the priests who were talking turned to her.
"The World Tree has given us all a stern commandment. Tell those who are not chosen to be God's daughters about the dream for 40 days."
At that, the priests looked at each other. He didn't seem to be suspicious of it. 40 days was considered to be some great significance in the Great Shrine.
Moreover, they never imagined that Rosalyn would dare to falsely recite the oracle of the World Tree.
Those who falsely deliver the oracle will never hear the oracle for the rest of their lives. It didn't sound like a lie to be stripped of her priestly qualifications from the very beginning.
"Don't worry, Priest Rosalyn. I will follow the commandments of the World Tree."
"Speaking of which. Rosalyn, what was your dream?"
Rosalyn flinched briefly at the question.
Everyone woke up, but only Hannah still has a high fever.
This means that Hannah has awakened the highest level of purification power in the Great Temple. If so, more refinement than Hannah. She had to pretend she had more purified water.
That's how she can maintain her position as the protagonist of the Great War.
Rosalyn mimicked Hannah's voice earlier. A dreamy voice that admired the brilliancy of things.
"I got a rose tree about 5 meters long. Water... It was a deep waterfall that fell endlessly."
There was a whoa-aa-wah gasp among the priests.
"It's Rosalyn, too."
The exclamation she always heard sounded like a mockery.
It was a lie she told in anticipation of the World Tree's retribution, but the condemnation of Rosalyn came much sooner than she expected.
Before morning dawned, she had another awakening dream.
She dreamed that the bees, who are called the messengers of God, would kill even a single rose.
***
"You are no longer a daughter of God."
The bees staring at her seemed to warn her like that.
The water in the teacup was no longer clear. Jealousy and hatred for Hannah melted away, leaving only a red, thickly contaminated liquid.
It was a severe punishment that would take away all the power she had left, but Rosalyn only laughed at it.
'What is the difference between deprivation and an F grade?'
Driven to the brink, Rosalyn was no longer afraid of God. Therefore, the warning from the messenger of God was ridiculous.
"God's lion is also a bee after all, isn't it? It's just a bug..."
Rosalyn paused for a moment.
'Bugs, bugs?'
Suddenly, she had a brilliant plan. Rosalyn counted the number of bees in front of her.
...I thought I could do it.
'Solitude.'
It is said to be used in the eastern continent across the sea, a curse using worms, and solitude.
Rosalyn, the next Priestess, had access to the forbidden books of the Great Temple. That's why she's read it.
A cruel curse that is performed by putting a jar full of poisonous insects into each other and then using the last of the last worms.
'Loneliness is a spell that robs others of their happiness and good fortune. If so...'
With frenzied eyes, Rosalyn grabbed the bees and plucked their wings. Rosalyn trapped the struggling bees in a teacup and forced them to drink water contaminated with resentment.
The bees' eyes glowed with an ominous glow as if they had been drunk, and they began to eat each other while trapped in the teacups.
'This... I think it will.'
Rosalyn chuckled at the success she saw.
"The Messenger of God is no big deal. It's no different from a poisonous insect that is the creature of the creatures."
Seeing God's messengers, broken by resentment, eating each other gave her a twisted sense of satisfaction. She felt a sense of pleasure as if she was punishing the World Tree for making a bad choice.
Inside the caged teacup, the bees changed as they ate each other. Bigger and bigger. The bee became a wasp. In the end, only one survived.
Only one wasp with heart-shaped wings.
"Do you want to try this? Messenger of God?"
Rosalyn fed the withered white rose leaves to the heart wasp, which would become the vector of the curse. It was a procedure to make the last remaining poisonous insect aware of its owner.
The heart wasp staggered and bowed its head in front of Rosalyn. It was proof that the spell of solitude had been successfully completed.
Rosalyn, who is no longer a god or a world tree, is the master.
"I don't know if you... I want you to bring Hannah's purifying powers."
Then, the heart wasp turned into a piece of grass on the spot.
Rosalyn picked up the leaf as if possessed. At the same time, she woke up from her awakening dream. When she woke up, she still had the grass in her hands.
'If you look closely, it looks more like a medicinal herb than just a grass.'
She knew instinctively about the power of medicinal herbs.
Since it grew up eating her terrible desire for the purifying power of others, this herb must be a medicine that robs her of the purifying power of others.
Rosalyn laughed.
'If the World Tree doesn't choose me, I can choose myself.'
Rosalyn had the same abilities as the World Tree.
***
"Damn. Damn!"
Bang, bang! Shion slammed down the transparent wall between him and Odette endlessly.
Beyond the wall, Odette stared blankly into the void. As if you were looking at an illusion.
"Bloody..!"
There is not a handful of light in the deep sea. It was pitch black, and ordinary people could not see it, but to Shion it was clearly visible.
The horrible World Tree stands in the middle of the abyss.
With that in front of him, it was too risky to leave Odette alone on the other side of the wall.
The body's recovery is strangely slow. Blood dripped from his right hand, which was still intact, but Shion didn't stop slamming against the wall.
How many times did he knock on the wall? By the time the walls were covered in blood. Finally, the wall that separated Odette and Shion cracked and collapsed.
"Odette... Huh... O...dette...."
Shion hugged Odette, who was still staring into the void. At the same time, he heard the voices of John and Victor.
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