Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 158

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 158.
The Voice of the Sealed Land (4)
I skimmed through the front section and opened the latter part I hadn’t yet read. After reading a bit further, I realized something peculiar.
There appeared to be a gap of at least several decades between the front section I had read before and these newly visible pages. It was as though a completed book had existed through long ages, and then someone from a later generation had appended several dozen pages to it.
The latter section contained the subjective account of a Ganapoli resident who had settled after completing a long journey, describing the land they had reached as time passed. The writing style and manner of speech differed starkly from the earlier pages.

…We who escaped the day of calamity came to settle in this barren land due to our own fault in not properly following the oracle that descended on the day of the eagle. The Four Islands, filled with cliffs covered in eternal snow, are surely not the broad lands the oracle indicated, yet the Gradius fleet of our ancestors reached this land and ceased to advance further. Thus, to us descendants, only a narrow island capable of sustaining a few thousand remains as our final refuge. Though countless descendants departed the Continent to escape the calamity, only a single ship ultimately weathered the storms to reach the shore of this island—this too is none other than the fulfillment of the oracle’s words.

As I read slowly, I reached a certain passage and stopped in startled surprise.

…Thus, not forgetting the faults of our ancestors, we named the Four Islands respectively ‘Memory Island,’ ‘Silence Island,’ ‘Loss Island,’ and ‘Origin Island.’

Why had I been startled? Only after turning it over in my mind once more did I understand the reason. If one took only the final characters of those four names, did they not become precisely the names of the Four Islands where they now lived?
A faint tremor ran through my fingertips before subsiding. According to the contents of this book, the ancient kingdom of the Pilgrims was none other than the Old Kingdom of the Land of Mortals—Ganapoli. The islanders were descendants of Ganapoli.
Was I the only one who had not known this fact?
That could not be. The Old Kingdom—a name heard from anyone’s lips at some point, yet no one had ever said it was Ganapoli.
Even Nauplion had said he did not know where the Old Kingdom was located, had he not?
The Old Kingdom, the Old Kingdom….
Suddenly, another memory surfaced. Nauplion had once said that The Regent or Zero, the Sage of the Tree Tower, might know the location of the Old Kingdom. On the day I received the name Daphnen, while sitting on the Hillside conversing, he had certainly said so.
I leaped to my feet. Just as on the day I had first read that book, I tucked it under my arm and rushed once more to the Library.
Zero had just finished his evening meal and greeted me while holding a worn wooden cup filled with warmed goat’s milk in one hand—a figure befitting the epithet of Sage of the Tree Tower.
The moment Zero caught sight of the book I had tucked under my arm, he laughed.
“So you’ve finally finished reading it.”
I was startled once more. His tone suggested he had known I would rush here after finishing that book. Of course, several seasons had passed in the interim.
I barely managed to speak.
“Did you… know?”
“I read that book long ago. There are few books here that I have not read.”
Once again, a new suspicion came to me. Had Zero’s giving me this particular book been a deliberate plan?
“Why did you give me this book? Did you perhaps do so intentionally?”
Zero suddenly laughed aloud. He scratched the back of his head as though concealing embarrassment.
“I apologize. You saw through it faster than I expected. Yes, I’ll admit it honestly. That book contains exactly what some of the islanders hide and some do not know. Though the possibility was small, I hoped you would read it and come rushing here like this.”
“Why? And if you knew such facts, why do you hide them from the islanders, and why do you reveal them to me? What is the reason others must not know, and what is the reason I must?”
Zero’s laughter faded. His voice that followed carried an unexpected sharpness.
“The reason they must not know is simple. The Regent does not wish it.”
Until now, I had thought of The Regent as a sinister figure who hid in a remote dwelling and refused to emerge while manipulating the affairs of the Island.
That he retained authority despite possessing no special ability and revealing no appearance was entirely due to the tradition passed down from the Old Kingdom. Yet he sought to conceal the true nature of that very Old Kingdom that granted him such authority?
Could it not be because the reality of the Old Kingdom differed in some way from what the islanders currently knew?
And could it not be because there was a possibility his authority would be threatened when this became known?
“If the true identity of the Old Kingdom is indeed Ganapoli…. I have seen books dealing with Ganapoli’s history even on the Continent. In other words, records concerning Ganapoli remain quite scattered in various places. Would something unfortunate befall The Regent if this became known?”
Zero looked around, then pointed his finger at the ladder leading up to this level. We climbed the ladder in turn and reached the round chamber where countless books were precariously stacked, just as before.
But with the window shut and only a single lamp placed in the center of the room, darkness stretched fathomlessly several meters above.
The two sat facing each other across the lamp. In the gloom, their faces flickered with a reddish glow.
“It’s exactly as you understood. But what did that book you read on the Continent say about it?”
It was an old memory. The first book Langie had recommended to me in Count Belnoir’s Library was “The History of the Magical Kingdom.” I recalled some of what I had read there.
According to that book, Ganapoli was a great magical kingdom where even small children could wield magic, its ruler was also a sorcerer, and all order in the nation was built upon the authority of magic….
In that moment, I realized that this account diverged sharply from what I had known about the Old Kingdom on the Island. Something crucial was missing.
The Moon Queen—where was the Moon Queen?
“The book I read said… that Ganapoli was a kingdom of sorcerers… and the most revered value there was magic. But now on the Island, magic has nearly vanished….”
Zero smiled with a dark expression.
“Yes. They worshipped magic. They did not worship the Moon Queen.”
“Then where did the Moon Goddess Faith come from….”
“Don’t you understand? Or have you already guessed?”
Zero’s expression carried a coldness and mockery beyond what I normally knew of him. This question was undoubtedly something he had devoted himself to pursuing for a long time.
“A creation of successive Regents?”
It was a statement that would have filled the Pilgrims of the Island with shock and fury.
Yet the fact that such a grave matter had never been revealed to anyone seemed utterly unbelievable.
Could records related to Ganapoli have survived only on the Continent? Surely they would also remain on the Island, as the book I had just read demonstrated?
If someone had seen even one such book… But now the Island’s people refuse to read books… Ah!
“Because people don’t read books, such manipulation became possible, and then perhaps… did the Regents secretly encourage people to shun books?”
I recalled Zero’s expression when he had spoken of how the Island’s people, long ago, had abandoned magic, literature, and music to pursue only the sword—calling it a “manifest decline.”
Save for today, it had been the day his expression was most grave and resolute.
“It’s too early to be certain. Daphnen, I trust you will keep secret what I am about to tell you. Originally, in the Old Kingdom—that is, Ganapoli—the Moon Queen was not entirely absent.”
Zero began his account without waiting for me to swear to keep the secret. I listened with the sensation of a new eye opening within me.
In Ganapoli, the Moon Queen was not a faith but a kind of primitive philosophical school.
Moreover, it was merely one among several philosophical currents that existed in the kingdom.
This was why the current Moon Goddess Faith, though it contains little about divine nature, appears closer to ethics or theories of justice.
Ganapoli was a nation where not only magic but also learning flourished greatly, so it was common for sects holding different philosophical positions to engage in public debate and establish their own halls to gather disciples.
Then came the Day of Calamity. To manage the disaster, most of the great sorcerers remained in that land, but to preserve descendants and transmit knowledge, they selected some ten thousand people to pioneer new territory.
Under the direction of the heir to the throne, they were to board flying ships and sail across the sea to distant lands.
The land they sought was a mysterious continent far beyond Moon Island. Once, the existence of that land had been prophesied through divine oracle.
At the mention of flying ships, my body trembled as I recalled what I had imagined reading in “The History of the Magical Kingdom.” Such ships were not mere fantasy—they had actually existed?
“…But of those ships, only one ever reached this Island. A mysterious problem arose near the Crystal Archipelago, and the largest ship carrying the heir to the throne fell and sank. That was the beginning of the catastrophe.”
That ship carried the fuel needed for the other ships to fly. Though what that fuel was has never been revealed.
Therefore, when that ship sank, the others lost all means of flight. The remaining ships had to navigate by sea, and in doing so, they scattered in all directions.
“But why did only one ship survive? They were all sorcerers—why couldn’t they maintain a safe voyage?”
“That is indeed a great mystery, but as they sailed northward, they seem to have gradually lost their magic. There is some kind of force field around this Island that clashed with Ganapoli’s magic. As a result, only a few magics embedded in objects barely maintained their existence. Like the sacred relics possessed by the Priesthood.”
Sacred relics… Now that I thought about it, nearly all the greatest magic on the Island seemed to come from those relics.
“But unexpectedly, some people actually gained even greater power. Those were the people of the Moon Goddess Sect.”
Originally, the four islands had only the names of each individual island, as written in the book I had read, with no name encompassing all of them.
But after arriving on the Island, people discovered that this place possessed an unusually powerful force of the Moon—the Moon Queen. It was because of this that those who followed the Moon Queen were able to reach these shores intact.
Exhausted from the arduous voyage and depleted of their provisions, they abandoned the notion of reaching the distant Continent. Or perhaps, having learned that the Moon Goddess’s power was formidable on this island, they had deliberately chosen to settle here.
The decision had been made by the commander who led that vessel, and he would become the ancestor of the house that currently produced the Regent.
After that, the only magic remaining to them was that which relied upon the Moon Goddess’s essence. Within a generation or two, they had become children of the Moon Goddess. And the island became Moon Island.
The Moon Goddess’s particular influence extended only as far as Ebb Tide Island. That sea region remained, even now, the domain guarded by the Pilgrims.
Even the descendants of Ganapoli could not uncover why the Moon Goddess’s power grew stronger in the waters surrounding this island.
Only the conjecture that there had once existed regions on the land of Ganapoli influenced by a particular celestial body could lend credence to the mystery.
“Daphnen, have you ever examined the reliefs carved into the Town Hall in detail?”
“Pardon?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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