Chapter 58

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Along with the sound of pounding footsteps, the sound of vulgar laughter grew closer and closer.

The mercenaries hired by the temple were approaching to catch me.

There seemed to be more than five people.

I stopped sending out the divine power and released my hand from Devan.

“Can you move?”

As I lowered my voice and whispered, he cautiously got up and nodded his head.

He looked more sluggish than usual, but not to the point that he couldn’t move.

Will he be able to kill five with this body?  Moreover, he didn’t even have a sword.

“I have a dagger.”

As he rummaged through his pockets, he spoke slowly.

I looked around quickly.

I could see the faint blue moonlight coming in from the high window.

The moonlight shone on the beautiful plaster pillars that lined the room.

Pillars… ? Why are the pillars in such awkward positions? I frowned.

They weren’t pillars.  They were statues in the image of a god.

Men, women, old men, children….A number of statues of various shapes stood tall like pillars and looked down on us. Arrogantly.

“…God.”

“What?”

“…  God can help us.”

Devan looked at me with an expression of what stupid thing to say.

At that moment, a rattling sound was heard everywhere as the doors opened and closed.

Fortunately, it wasn’t this room, but they seemed to have reached the vicinity. There was no time.

“Listen to me.”

I quickly explained the plan to Devan.

When the story was over, he looked up at the statues.

“Indeed. We’re in desperate need of God.”

Nodding our heads, we jumped up from our seats. Then we started to move in a hurry.

It wasn’t a matter of being caught or not. Because it was a race against time now.

I could hear the mercenaries opening and closing the doors here and there, searching for me.

Apparently, the temple didn’t tell them which room they had locked us in.

It must have been because they didn’t want to give them the detailed geography of the temple.

Well, if I hadn’t used my divine powers, we wouldn’t have woken up.

They only needed to find me before dawn, and it was still quite some time before the sun would rise.

So, the fact that we were awake now was a variable that they did not expect.

Standing in a dark corner right in front of the door, we held our breath.

The sound of footsteps was getting closer.  Now it was their turn to enter this room.

“If you make a fuss like this……  It can’t go on like it never happened, right?”

I asked a strange question.

Devan, who was standing behind me, shrugged his shoulders.

“We have to. They started first. Whatever happens, we just face it.”

“I have a reason for liking you.”

He smiled softly.  Perhaps it was because he had no strength in his body, and even that smile seemed more languid than usual.

“… Can you do it?”

At that moment, the door opened. I held my breath.

“What is so suspicious here?”

“Search.”

“There is nothing to search, look at this.  Only statues are lined up here. Is it a warehouse?”

The men approached the statues lined up in a row.

I held my breath a little more.

“These things I didn’t learn.  Isn’t this all Almighty God?”

The bearded man who came closer and stared at the statue as he said so.

“Are they all different?”

“Because God can descend around us in any form.”

“Then what is that?”

“What is what?”

A man’s gaze turned to the statue covered in pure white cloth just below the window.  It was the cloth which we had just laid down on.

The room was still dark.  How dark it was-

“… is it human?”

It was enough to confuse a statue with a person.

Unlike the other statues, the suspicious appearance of the cloth covered alone only intensified their suspicions.

“Is that a woman?”

At one man’s words, everyone’s eyes were focused on it.

They placed their hands on their swords and slowly headed towards the statue.

The statue was in the innermost part of the room, so the more they walked, the further away they were from the door.

I lifted my heels and crept towards the door.

It was when they had just reached the statue and swish- removed the cloth.

“Now!”

Bang— Devan, who was standing in front of the first statue, kicked violently.

At my shout, the eyes of the men were focused on the door.  In the meantime, the statue of Devan was starting to tilt.

Thump- Thump- Thump- Thump- Thump-

The statue quickly fell on the statue next to it, and so, one fell over the next, shattering into pieces.

By the time the men grasped the situation in the dark room, the biggest God in the room was already descending on them.

“Ugh, ahhhh!”

Boom!

A dull sound was heard. The statue was shattered.

There was nothing more to see.  I left the room and ran down the hallway.  Devan soon followed me.

I was out of breath, but somehow I was happy.  Maybe it was because I had smashed all the gods that the temple worshiped.

“Do you know the way?”

Devan, who suddenly passed me, grabbed my hand and dragged me.

“Haa…..haaaa…….”

I could only breathe and didn’t answer.  It was exhausting just to run.

Tsk, Devan clicked his tongue and suddenly grabbed me and lifted me up.

My vision was turned upside down. Before I knew it, I was up on one of his shoulders like luggage.

“What…  !”

“I want to be efficient, so be quiet and tell me the way.”

“I can’t see the front, haaa, how can I tell you!”

“Look at it.”

The hallway could be seen through the crack in his arm, but it was turned upside down.

I felt like I was going to get motion sickness.  Nevertheless, in terms of efficiency, Devan was right.

“You have to go down the stairs over there.”

Devan heard me and quickly turned to the stairs.

I lifted my head and looked.  Fortunately, the mercenaries did not follow us.

It might be impossible to follow us.  Because the statue was pretty heavy.

“You didn’t even look at the map?” (Evelyn)

“Because you lived here.” (Devan)

“… More than ten years ago.” (Evelyn)

“You were confident in your running form earlier.” (Devan)

“That… Oh, right in front of this.” (Evelyn)

I looked back at the drawing Devan had shown me.

Since the drawing was a floor plan, there was no way to know where the hidden space was.

To be precise, I knew which side it was, but I couldn’t tell what floor it was.

So we decided to check the place by going to every floor.

But…Just recently, when I found a statue in the room looking down on me arrogantly, there was a place that immediately came to my mind.

“One more floor down.”

Devan went down the stairs quickly.

He hadn’t yet fully recovered, but I couldn’t believe he was carrying a person on his back and walking this fast.

“Go one more floor.”

Devan, who was about to go down the stairs, suddenly stopped walking.

Where the stairs were supposed to be, it was an end wall.

“The stairs are….”

“I know where we are.”

I patted Devan on the back to put me down.

Devan carefully put me down. I straightened my outfit and looked around.

The room we were locked in was on the first floor as we could see the window. We went down the stairs twice, so this was the second floor of the basement.

“Doesn’t the temple consist of two floors underground and two floors above ground? They say that four is the closest number to God.”

Devan asked. Obviously, the temple had only two floors on the ground, unlike its high appearance.

It also had a two-story structure, so the tall building was full of useless windows.

Everything was to look up to God.

“Externally, it is.”

I looked at both sides quickly.

There was still no sign of the mercenaries, but we could not let our guard down.

Perhaps they would disappoint the temple to which they had been entrusted with the task—or, to be precise, that there would be no more work for them, so they would come after us, keeping it a secret from the temple that we had woken up and ran away.

I rather deal with them then the priests, who knew more about the geography of the temple.

“We have to go inside.”

How far did we walk? I was able to find a large pipe organ without difficulty.

It had an innumerable number of pipes, reaching up to the high ceiling.  Each size was about my height.

”In there…..?”

Devan did not hide his absurd eyes.

I bent a little and entered the lower part of the organ.

There were two small doors. I pushed the door on the right side of it.

“Hurry up.”

Upon entering, there were stairs.  It was a dark, narrow spiral staircase.

I grabbed the handle and slid down the stairs.

Devan still looked perplexed, but he followed me without complaints.

As we went round and went down one floor, a hallway filled with rooms appeared on either side.  It was dark with no windows.  Unlike the previous appearance of the temple, it had a pleasant smell.

I gently brushed the dust off my hands.

“The left door is where the organist enters, and the right door is the stairway leading to the third basement level.”

“How did you know about this place?”

Devan frowned.

“… Because that’s where I lived.  To be precise, it was a place where children with divine powers lived instead of living with their parents.”

“Did you live here?”

“Yes, and maybe even now… The children are living here.”

The hallway, where all the children were sleeping, was quiet. I quickly walked down the hallway, muffled the sound of footsteps.

It was a place I couldn’t help but remember, even if I didn’t want to.

Five children lived in a room that could barely fit an adult.

We always had to sleep on top of each other.

I had to get up as soon as the sun came up, and when I got up I had to clean the whole temple.

Instead of eating a meal containing the nutrients necessary for growth, I had to drink a potion that could boost my energy.

I had to treat the wealthy nobles, and the temple took all the money.

After suffering endlessly and having all our powers robbed in the name of training, we would be sold somewhere.

There were close to a hundred children who lived with me like that.

Ten years had passed since then, and I did not know the whereabouts of any of them.

“Wait.”

Devan stood tall and suddenly stopped walking.