Rache-san continued to shout nonsense at the empty air. The atmosphere was so bizarre that none of us could find an opening to interject. I honestly didn't know what had come over her.
This behavior had started the moment we defeated the Shiny Gold Slime. Come to think of it, a black, haze-like substance had appeared just before the slime vanished. On reflection, the Evil Dragon had used a similar-looking attack. Back then, it had only made my strength drain away, but perhaps this had a different effect?
Honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails of the situation. Still, I knew that leaving her like this was a mistake.
"Halfa, could you use your Song of Soothing?"
"Oh, right. Yeah, I can do that!"
If that black haze was related to malice, then the Song of Soothing might be able to suppress it.
As Halfa’s voice began to weave a gentle melody, a change came over Rache-san. Light returned to her eyes, which had been hollow and distant. The aggressive shouting she’d been directing at nothingness finally ceased.
"...Rache-san, are you all right?"
"...Hehe... Fufu... A-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
The situation had improved—or so I thought—but she didn't answer me directly. Instead, she burst into a triumphant, high-pitched cackle.
What was going on now?! Had the haze not been fully dispelled?
I wasn't the only one who looked worried, but our anxiety turned out to be a groundless fear. Just as abruptly as she had started laughing, she stopped and made a proud declaration.
"I won against that weird voice, nya!"
Talk about misleading!
Apparently, her laughing fit had been a celebration of victory. I didn't quite grasp the details, but I took it to mean she had overcome whatever had been trying to corrode her mind.
When we asked for more information, Rache-san explained that a mysterious voice had begun speaking to her the moment the slime fell.
"It didn't feel bad, nya. It was the kind of voice that almost made me want to obey. That’s how I knew it was the voice of a swindler, nya!"
I had to admire her. Treating a being capable of speaking directly into someone’s mind as nothing more than a common con artist was a very "Rache-san" thing to do. Then again, Shiroru could do something similar, so perhaps it wasn't necessarily a being beyond all human comprehension? Well, Shiroru was a Holy Beast, so maybe that wasn't the best comparison.
Regardless, Rache-san had intuitively felt that accepting the voice without resistance would be dangerous, so she had expressed her rejection by shouting back at it. That explained the scene we had just witnessed.
"What was the voice saying, exactly?"
"It said something about how 'trials are necessary to lead humanity to new heights,' nya! Talk about none of its business, nya!"
Yikes. That sounded incredibly suspicious. I could see why she had labeled it a swindler.
"Trials? What kind of trials?"
"What was it again, nya? I wasn't interested, so I just tuned it out. It mentioned setting monsters on people or something like that, nya."
It was true that defeating monsters allowed people to level up and grow stronger. In a sense, you could call that reaching "new heights." However, forcing people into life-or-death battles by siccing monsters on them was nothing but a nuisance. As Rache-san said, it was entirely uncalled for.
"Did it say anything else?"
"Nya? Oh, right! The owner of that voice is a total idiot, nya!"
"An idiot?"
"Yes, nya! It called itself 'Garnalava, the Trial God,' nya! But that's the name of the Evil God! Imagine being so stupid you don't even know your own name, nya."
Garnalava?!
That name was coming up far too often lately. I felt a heavy sink in my chest, and looking at the others, their grim expressions told me they felt the same way.
I couldn't be sure if the voice really belonged to Garnalava. However, if someone were trying to win over a follower, there was almost no merit in using the name of the Evil God—the sworn enemy of humanity. Usually, that would have the opposite effect. If that were the case, was it the real Garnalava speaking? Or was there some hidden benefit to using that name that I didn't understand?
The fact that the voice called itself the "Trial God" also stuck in my mind. To us—and according to the world’s general perception—Garnalava was the Evil Curse God. But was it possible he was actually a deity who provided trials? How long had monsters and dungeons existed? If they had been around since the dawn of creation, it would mean the gods themselves sanctioned their existence. And since those things had Garnalava’s malice as their source, it was possible he wasn't actually an enemy of the other gods.
But if that was true, where did the Destiny God stand in all of this? The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. I wished I could ask for clarification directly, but Halfa was the only one who received oracles. Even when I got messages, they came through the Pandora Gift system, which was always cryptic at best.
While I was lost in thought, Rache-san muttered something that caught my attention.
"Still, a 'voice of God,' nya...? I wonder if that fellow Godfee heard the same thing, nya?"
"...Wait. Did Godfee-san hear the voice of a god, too?"
"Did I not mention it, nya? When that guy vanished, he left a resignation letter. It said things like 'I heard the voice of God' and 'I have found what I must do,' nya."
The voice of a god. It certainly didn't seem like a coincidence. If we followed that logic, the former Guild Master had vanished because he chose to follow the voice of the self-proclaimed Garnalava. But what was the task he felt he "must do"?
"The City of Death..." Halfa whispered.
The City of Death. That was the phrase the Evil Cultist had used back in the Garond underground waterway. His goal had been to turn the entire Royal Capital into a dungeon—a city where only the strong could survive. I had assumed the goal was simply to cull the weak, but if the true purpose was to force people to level up by fighting monsters, then everything started to line up.
"The man who was researching special individuals... The pieces are fitting together," Lowell added, his voice heavy with weariness.
It made sense. The Evil Dragon was a "special individual" variant of a Blue Dragon, and the goal was to forcibly impose trials. It felt increasingly likely that the man we had faced in the underground waterway was actually Godfee.
This was turning into something much bigger than we had ever imagined.