Chapter 451: Forbidden World

"Are you sure this will work?"

Yelena knelt beside Celestina and asked it with an anxious expression, while Celestina herself looked rather less than certain.

"I am not, but we can only try."

Lumine, meanwhile, had been relegated to a spot beside the sleeping Jasmine, instructed to give them space. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest and his back against the wall, his face a portrait of quiet worry while impatience churned relentlessly beneath it. Every second squandered here was another second for the creature to draw closer.

"Are you ready?"

Celestina asked, her voice a shade softer. Yelena hesitated for a beat before nodding and drawing herself more upright so she could place her hand over Celestina’s chained wrist.

"Ready," Yelena said, pressing her nerves down and steadying herself.

She drew a deep breath and turned her mind back to the instructions Celestina had given her before she knelt. How to wield her [Greater Mana]. As she prepared to activate it, the already taut silence stretched tighter still, both Celestina and Lumine holding their breath as they watched.

Then a low voice cut through the room with the quiet precision of a blade finding its mark.

"You will fail."

"...!"

All three of them flinched. Lumine and Yelena were on their feet in an instant, Lumine with his sword drawn and Yelena with her bow raised, both of them fixing their eyes on the source with extreme caution.

There, leaning against the wall as though they were simply a continuation of the shadows themselves, stood a figure. Someone draped in a black robe that melded so seamlessly with the surrounding darkness that the mere sight of them produced an involuntary shudder.

How long had this person been standing there?

"Who are you?" Lumine demanded immediately, and there was no concealing the faint thread of fear beneath the words. He could perceive nothing from the robed figure. No presence, no mana signature, nothing whatsoever to suggest another living person stood there at all.

Was it a void creature? An enemy? Some new threat that would force him to reverse time once more?

But the figure never looked at Lumine. Its attention settled on Celestina and Yelena instead.

"You possess a mana so pure I have encountered it only in a rare few. But if you intend to fumble your way out of those chains with the aid of that girl, you will fail. And time will inevitably reverse once more."

"What..." Celestina’s voice came out far smaller than it ever had before.

They all stared at the figure, from which a distinctly male voice had emerged.

"You know?" Lumine asked. The robed head turned toward him, and Lumine found himself staring into a face obscured by what could only be described as pure and absolute darkness. The sight made something deep inside him shudder, as though whatever he was looking at simply was not there at all.

The figure turned back to the two girls.

"Even if her unique skill or affinity grants her dominion over Neutral Mana and Orderly Mana alike, Chaotic Mana is universally another matter entirely. She would fail thousands of times attempting to govern mana of that nature. For your own sakes, it would be wisest not to bother, and to set aside whatever pride is standing between you and that truth."

Yelena felt herself deflate slightly, stung despite the anger kindling beneath it. She hated that he spoke with such certainty about what she could and could not do. And yet, much like Lumine, she could not stop herself from shuddering whenever her gaze drifted toward that impenetrable darkness where a face ought to have been.

Celestina spoke slowly, keeping her voice as level as she could manage.

"...Who are you?"

The robed figure offered only a casual shrug.

"I am an Apostle. The Apostle of Hunger, to be more precise, though that title belongs to a life I have long since ceased to live. It appears I am dead now, and nothing more than a puppet dragged back into being inside this scenario."

"Apostle..." Lumine breathed the familiar word in quiet shock.

"I have been watching all of you since the moment you entered this scenario."

"Why?" Celestina asked immediately.

"Because I was curious."

"About us?"

"About everything. I understand the concept of scenarios well enough. It was not an unfamiliar thing even during my time. But this world, my world, was never meant to have become one."

"...Why?" Celestina asked again. Unlike him, none of them possessed any particular depth of knowledge regarding the inner workings of scenarios. Their understanding, it seemed, was far more limited than this Apostle’s.

"There are certain places the gods would never reconstruct. Not out of inability, but out of a very deliberate reluctance. Because of the knowledge those places carry within them. Knowledge the gods have no intention of placing before participants. And this world of mine... beyond those doors you are so determined to reach, immense knowledge waits."

The robed figure stepped out of the shadows then, though the revelation offered little. His form remained entirely concealed beneath the heavy folds of his robe, and where a face ought to have been there was only that same consuming darkness that made the eyes ache and the mind reel to look upon directly.

"This fallen world carries a name among those who condemned it. It is called a Forbidden World. A world deemed wholly unsuitable to be fashioned into a scenario. And yet, here it stands."

"Do not take another step, or I swear I will shoot!" Yelena warned, but the robed figure only chuckled softly, his pace entirely unchanged.

"Relax. I am not your enemy. I am here simply to make things somewhat more fair for you."

He continued his slow and deliberate approach, and Celestina tracked every step with careful eyes yet did not let it stop her from speaking.

"If this scenario is a so-called Forbidden World, why did the gods construct this particular one at all?"

She needed to know. And beyond that desire, if Azriel had been right that this scenario had been built around him somehow, what was the connection? She could not extend full trust to this figure, not yet, but knowledge was something she intended to extract from him as swiftly as possible and turn to whatever use she could.

"If the gods chose to use a Forbidden World as the foundation of a scenario, it signifies only one thing."

He paused.

"None of you participants were ever meant to complete it."

The words settled over all three of them like something descending with great and quiet weight.

"You mean..."

"You are all meant to die before this ends."