Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 40

Chapter 40

“Oracle.” Also known as “Lars’s Perverted Notes,” “Worldview-Destroying Guide,” “On How I Broke”… It recorded the entire process by which Holy Archmage Lars destroyed the world. It had appeared early in this story as an important plot device, then been collectively forgotten by both the party and the author over the course of their long adventure. Now, at long last, it had once again entered everyone’s field of vision.

Wasn’t this elusive, infuriating style of showing up whenever it felt like it the very mark of its status as the strongest escape item in this story?

Galahad and Vigia gathered around the book, their faces full of excitement. Although it was only a thin, blank little booklet, both of them firmly believed that these few sheets of paper could unleash a power greater than Vigia’s breasts and greatsword combined!

Indigo ink slowly spread across the parchment, finally twisting into words everyone could understand. The very first word was, shockingly, “Galahad.”

“Look, look!” Galahad shouted in excitement. “The Oracle… The Oracle has something to say to me! I really am the Silver Knight chosen by the heavens!”

The indigo ink hesitated, then slowly dotted a colon after “Galahad.” Immediately afterward, under everyone’s expectant gaze, the first line of text appeared.

“Please return me to Ruiyin. This is not something you should be reading.”

Vigia looked at her knight, who had instantly weathered into dust, with a compassionate gaze that said, Of course.

“…Screw that! I won’t return it!” Galahad shouted in embarrassed fury. “It’s just some lousy notebook! What right does it have to order me around?”

“I am the Oracle,” the lousy notebook declared solemnly, defending its dignity. Then it continued solemnly, “Please return me to Ruiyin. Even if you possess my body, you will never be able to change my soul.”

“…”

“Please return me to Ruiyin. Return me to Ruiyin. Ruiyin…” The lousy notebook repeated mechanically, as if it had crashed.

Galahad silently stood up, raised both hands high, and made as if to tear the book apart.

“O Silver Knight chosen by the heavens, is there anything you wish to ask the great Oracle?” The spam stopped instantly.

Galahad shot his dragon a smug look that said, Easy. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “We need to leave this forest right now. Do you know how?”

The little booklet fell silent for a moment. Then messy handwriting began appearing rapidly across the page. “This forest is still part of Antik and is covered by the Dark Elves’ magic. If the magic does not disappear, no living creature can leave. There is only one way to get out of here…”

Once the page was full, the little booklet flipped to the next page on its own. Galahad and Vigia craned their necks, staring wide-eyed at the blank sheet after it turned. The messy handwriting continued to spread. “Are you really not going to consider returning me to Ruiyin? You’ll regret it, you know~”

You know~ my ass! What kind of slutty Oracle was this?!

Vigia and Galahad exchanged a look and reached the tacit agreement of Tear this trash apart! in the shortest time possible. Both of them advanced with dark expressions, one rolling up his sleeves while the other ignored the little booklet’s trembling (?!) and attentively turned its pages open. And then…

“What do you think you’re doing?” An incomparably icy voice rang out ominously from behind them. Along with that voice, the little booklet seemed to receive divine aid. It twisted hard under Galahad’s hands, opened its pages, and leapt straight into Ruiyin’s arms, rubbing its spine against her face with all its might.

Ruiyin, who had woken up at some unknown point, was standing behind them. Her face still carried an ominous bluish tinge. To the idiot squad, this green-faced, fang-baring Ruiyin was practically more terrifying than pursuers from the Dark Elves.

“R-Ruiyin! You’re awake?” Vigia stammered. At the same time, she fawningly sidled over and used her round, spherical body… er, her breasts, to rub against Ruiyin’s calf… er, shoulder… It was only a difference in height. It didn’t affect the cuteness at all!

Ruiyin took a step back, avoiding the sexual harassment from the silver-haired, golden-eyed beauty, and looked over in confusion. “Who are you?”

After freezing for a moment, she looked even more confusedly at the lousy notebook currently rubbing itself against her face. “What is this?”

Finally, she turned her most bewildered gaze toward Galahad. “Where’s Lars? Why haven’t we gotten out yet?”
…You missed one chapter, that was all. Did you really have to get amnesia that fast?!

“…That was Vigia’s transformation. That moving booklet. I think it’s the Oracle…” Galahad explained weakly and concisely. “Ruiyin, do you know how we’re supposed to get out?”

Ruiyin frowned. With one hand, she pinched the parchment booklet that thought it was being cute and, following Galahad’s explanation, flipped noisily to the page with writing on it. Then she froze after a single glance.

It did not contain the long-winded nonsense Galahad had described. On the contrary, there were only three short lines, but their contents were horrifying beyond words.

“Evelyn, died in Light Calendar year 389, on the third anniversary of the Orcs’ invasion of Kandel Castle.”

“Juvina, died in Light Calendar year 394, when the Dark Elves built the Dark Moon Tower on the Sea of Roses.”

“Galahad, died in… Light Calendar year 396.”

Things Holy Archmage Lars had once said flashed through her mind like lightning. As if enlightenment had been poured straight over her head, Ruiyin finally realized something extremely important. Why had she always felt that some of the names around her sounded familiar? Why had they felt familiar, yet somehow indescribably wrong?

Because every one of these people had been mentioned to her by Holy Archmage Lars! These were people once depicted in legends with an incomparably artistic flourish, yet in reality they were this broken. And… all of them were cannon fodder on the road to world destruction, destined to betray Lars in the future and be punished with death!

Ruiyin abruptly lifted her head and looked at Galahad with an intense, overwhelming sympathy. That look of pity scared Galahad so badly his mighty frame jolted. Stammering, he asked, “Wh-what is it?”

With a complicated expression, she withdrew her gaze. “…Nothing.”

“…” That was obviously the look of someone who had plenty to say!

“You said there was a barrier set up by the Dark Elves in this forest?” Ruiyin changed the subject.

“That’s what the Oracle said,” Vigia said, blissfully unaware as she followed the new topic, staring eagerly at Ruiyin. “I… I don’t know magic yet. Ruiyin, you have to protect me, okay?”

Ruiyin tried hard to recall what Holy Archmage Lars had once told her about the Dark Elves. “If that’s the case, then we have to make them remove the barrier themselves. The Dark Elves are a very cunning race, so chances like that are rare. But today happens to be one of them.”

Vigia froze for a moment, then also remembered a certain habit of this race that was as ancient as dragons. “Right! The Dark Moon Festival! During the Dark Moon Festival, they remove all their protective barriers. Then we’ll be able to escape! But… if we’re the sacrifices and we’re here, how are they going to start the Dark Moon Festival?”

“Then we’ll just let it start on time,” Ruiyin said lightly.

The purple full moon had already risen to the very center of the sky above the forest. The moon, already enormous to begin with, was now astonishingly huge. All the stars had been swallowed by it. Only that round disk hung high in the air, cold and proud as it looked down upon the earth.

This night was the Dark Elves’ grand feast. Those beings that could usually live only in the cracks of darkness silently crept out from underground. The carrion owls and Jungle Giant Python in the forest all trembled and curled into the narrowest corners they could find. Beneath the moonlight, silver hair and blood-red eyes were everywhere. The layered barriers enveloping the entire forest had been fully opened, and this deep, labyrinthine place revealed its full appearance for the first time. In the center of the forest, there was no soil beneath the trees. Jagged black rocks were piled together like skulls, and from the eye sockets of those skulls grew savage roots. Those roots coiled and curled, finally arching up in a gesture of welcome around the tall tower at the center of the rocks.

“Hi. Long time no see. Nice view here, isn’t it?” the man hanging like a pendulum opposite Ruiyin greeted her amiably.

“…Is that really the opening line you should use in a situation like this?!” Galahad, tied up in the same posture, burst into tears of grief and indignation. He struggled with all his might, swinging his suspended body. “If you’d told me earlier you were here to be sacrificed, then I wouldn’t have had to come be the ‘male sacrifice’!”

“Oh dear, I accidentally got caught.” Baozi-face Juvina chuckled. He looked at Vigia across from him with some curiosity. “Huh? Wasn’t this lady able to transform? Why hasn’t she left yet?”
Vigia, who had been tied up along with them, shot her a cold sidelong glance. “I am not a lady. I am a ‘neither-male-nor-female sacrifice.'”

“Don’t be picky. If I’d known a ‘both-male-and-female sacrifice’ had already been caught, the three of us wouldn’t have needed to come at all,” Ruiyin said, sounding somewhat vexed.

Just as the conversation was getting lively, the curtain separating the sacrifices from the outside world was suddenly yanked open by one hand. A stunning, mature beauty with an incredible figure, dressed in a low-cut, skintight, outrageously seductive uniform, twisted her gorgeous face in rage and roared, “Be quiet! Even if you can’t add a little fun to the festival with fear and despair, you are not allowed to be so noisy that I can’t even memorize the sacrificial chant!”

With that, the mature beauty turned back with icy dignity and continued presiding over the sacrifice that had now been interrupted five times by the nonsense squad.

Probably to keep this bunch from chatting away as though no one else existed, the curtain was never closed again after being pulled open. They were hanging from the very top of a tower. Anyone with good eyesight could clearly see the Dark Elves gathered below: exquisite faces, lithe and battle-hardened bodies, and, without exception, expressions full of malice. The priestess presiding over the festival was the current Dark Elf Queen. Though she had also kept up with fashion by taking the name “Tio,” this mature beauty was clearly far more competent than that flat-chested fake boy. In one hand, she held high a narwhal-bone goblet filled with blood. In her mouth, she slowly chanted strange and mysterious ancient prayers. Carrying a Dragonbone Blade, she walked toward Ruiyin and the others step by step.

Ruiyin quietly leaned closer to Vigia, her lips moving in an almost imperceptible curve. “…Ready?”

Ruiyin’s plan was this: have the three sacrifices pretend to be captured, opening the curtain on the Dark Moon Festival. Then, using the fact that Vigia was slimmer in human form than in dragon form, wait until the Queen reached them, have Vigia rapidly transform and slip free of the rope loops, kill the Queen as quickly as possible, and take advantage of the chaos to escape the jungle after its barrier protection disappeared.

It was indeed a stupid and dangerous plan, but with their current combat strength sitting at zero, Ruiyin, who had never been the brainy type to begin with, had no other choice.

“…Aren’t girls supposed to just dress up prettily and act cute? Why do I have to do something this terrifying TAT…”

Of course, for the sake of the group, Ruiyin ignored certain faint protests.

Vigia nervously clenched her claws. She closed her eyes and began building up the constipation-like agony that came before transformation.

Then, as if all at once, every Dark Elf beneath the tower fell silent. The earlier uproar seemed like an illusion. In the span of a breath, the entire place became so quiet that even breathing could be heard clearly. Queen Tio looked at the equally abnormal expressions on the sacrifices before her, froze for a moment, then slowly turned around.

She happened to see the last sliver of the purple full moon in midair being swallowed by darkness.

The sky seemed to have been replaced by the eye of the God of Darkness. A darkness deeper than night churned like a whirlpool in the depths of the sea. It was as though the moon was no longer another celestial body high above, but had become a door within arm’s reach, connecting to another unknown world. The Dark Moon Gate, which had not opened for over a century, abruptly appeared before this race abandoned by the gods before the sacrifices had even been offered.

Under Queen Tio’s shocked gaze, a foot clad in a black metal battle boot stepped out from the Dark Moon Gate.

Long legs wrapped entirely in soft yet resilient fine dragonscale armor, a tall and powerful body, a longsword in hand radiating blood-red light, and a cold, cruel aura utterly devoid of humanity… From bottom to top, the person stepping out of the gate from another space-time slowly revealed his full form. His long black hair began to drift in the night wind first. Finally, he bent and lowered his head slightly, and his entire body emerged.

The handsome young man, wearing an unbelievably flashy villain-boss uniform and unfamiliar everywhere except his face, looked confused and innocently bewildered. He tilted his head adorably. “Huh? Did I take the wrong way again?”

…Lars, it has been a long time, but could your cool moments please last more than three seconds for once!