339 Mother Goddess Faith in the Dark Age
Reminiscing made Remides realized how long ago it was. If she hadn’t set foot on this land again, if she hadn’t come here again, she might have completely forgotten the past.
That was after the Twilight Fortress’s last meeting ended catastrophically, announcing the disintegration of Judgment.
Before Remides left the Twilight Fortress, she rejected Byron Lionheart’s invitation and Macas’s pious request. Although they were comrades who had resolved the Moon Realm crisis together in the past and were willing to entrust their lives to each other, Remides wasn’t interested in their future plans and promises, nor did she have any illusion that they might succeed.
However, she also didn’t want to change the minds of her former comrades. After all, to the Vic Continent, as a High Elf, she was only a foreigner.
Therefore, after disbanding the Sentinel unit that belonged to her, she chose to travel the Vic Continent again and return to being an unrestrained Ranger.
This time, she was alone.
Before she returned to Ava State by ship because she didn’t want to be involved in the turmoil happening among the continent’s countries, she traveled the Vic Continent for about ten years.
As for the memories of that decade or so, they became blurry after nearly a thousand years. Recalling everything she had experienced in those years felt surreal, as if it was a scene from a dream. However, there were only two things that she still had some impression of.
Deep in the Holy Sepulchre of Thorn City’s graveyard, the desperate ruler of the Blackwater Kingdom tried to awaken the ancient King of Blackwater and descend on the mortal world with the might of the Rotten Moon Tide of the Undead. Remides, who was traveling in Nakuland, immediately rushed there after receiving Blake’s request for help after being missing for many years. However, she was still a step too late—a step too late in every sense.
When Remides and the other Judges arrived at the scene, Blake and Coles had already killed the budding crisis at the cost of their lives. In the end, all they could do was take care of the funeral and engrave tombstones for their deceased friends.
Of course, it wasn’t until many years later that she realized that the so-called crisis was only a trap Coles had set up to advance to become a Void Sovereign. However, she had already experienced many things back then. At the same time, she had lost more. Her heart had long turned cold, and her dead emotions wouldn’t be stirred by such matters.
As for the other matter, it was inextricably related to the current turn of events.
That was when she returned to Ravenwood following the Doomsday Watchers’ path of salvation back then. Nehe, who had been missing for many years, took the initiative to find her.
“Help me…”
She still remembered that it was deep in Ravenwood Forest, under an uninhabited subtree. The strongest Frost magic chanter in Vic Continent had gone straight to the point and requested her help along with Sibylla Silence’s, who had also been invited over.
No… It was more like him beseeching them than making a request.
“Please help me regain my breathing.”
Remides also remembered that it was the first time they had seen Nehe’s soul box—it was ancient in shape and it exuded a heavy feeling of imprisonment. Even Sibylla, who had Eyes of God, couldn’t see through the essence of the soul box.
Nehe told the two of them what had happened in the past—the Presiding Judge had tried to strip him of the right to die before he left. He didn’t understand why the only person in the world who could possibly understand him would do such a thing. However, in order to repay the Presiding Judge’s kindness in the past, he was willing to give it one last try.
He would die after putting in one last effort.
After years of investigation and research, he planned on completing a feat that no one had ever achieved and creating a true miracle comparable to reviving the dead—converting himself from an undead to a resurrected.
This was something that couldn’t be done under modern magic framework theory. Even though Nehe’s Undead and Frost magic had reached the peak and his realm wasn’t inferior to the Presiding Judge when he left, he couldn’t complete his reversal from death to life.
However, apart from modern magic, he also found a path that had a chance of success.
That was to rely on the Forest Elf’s faith system to complete his reincarnation.
“The Rebirth ritual originates from the faith of the Mother Goddess in the Dark Age.”
After he revealed his plan, Remides and Sibylla were stunned. They couldn’t believe that Nehe was someone who could come up with such a crazy plan.
In the stories passed down by the Forest Elves, a mother discovered that she was pregnant again after devouring a child accidentally killed by the father during a hunt. Moreover, it was a legend that she gave birth to the original dead child seven months later.
This was an extremely short story. Moreover, in the first half of the story, it had to focus on the father’s mistake of killing his son during the hunt. This story was only circulated in the ancient families of a few hereditary members of the Oak Council as a fable to warn future generations to be careful of hunters.
However, using this strange story as a clue, Nehe traced its possible origins and carried out many years of secret investigations. Finally, he was led by ancient documents and discovered an ancient god faith that had existed for millennia.
It was the image of a terrifying Earth Mother that constantly devoured her children—She symbolized the primitive urge of all things to return to their mother, as well as a mother’s endless desire to control her children.
As well as appetite…
Childbirth and feeding, birth and return.
They were each other’s cause and effect, as well as mirror images.
Nehe speculated that the Holy Communion ritual passed down by the Forest Elves was very likely a remnant of this faith—to maintain such a vague image of a mother to a certain extent and not be completely forgotten by the Forest Elves.
Moreover, this image of the Earth Mother was probably the dark side of the Holy Spirit, Mother, that the Second Order had sought out for centuries without success.
In the development of the Seven Holy Spirits system to this day, after integrating almost all the mainstream faiths in the Vic Continent, every Holy Spirit more or less had a dark side that symbolized evil—Father had a tyrannical and arrogant side of a tyrant, Lady had a goddess side that symbolized jealousy and promiscuity, and Child had the image of a trickster god formed by the intersection of innocence and cruelty…
However, only the destructive dark side of Holy Spirit, Mother, couldn’t be found by the Church over the years. The Second Order even once believed that this was because of Mother’s loving characteristics. Therefore, other than interim doting, it couldn’t have much negative impact on Currere.
However, She existed in reality.
The faith in Earth Mother had never been lost. Instead, it had always been hidden in the shadows of the Forest Elf history.
“After all, once faith is lost, it can no longer be called faith,” Nehe said.
The concept of a god included believers, just like the concept of a mother included a child.
“The necromancer society that converted me into a lich is actually believers of the Earth Mother. Behind them are a few ancient families in the upper echelons of Holy Tree City’s regime. If one looks into their family history, they will discover that almost every generation has an ‘unlucky fellow’ who died from an ‘accident’ and whose corpse needs to be devoured.”
That was their inheritance.
This was what Nehe said to Remides and the others.
“Then, what do you need our help with? To completely eliminate that sect together?” Remides asked eagerly back then.
“No… I need to become the new leader of that Church.”
Nehe gave a surprising answer.
“They’re too inefficient. They haven’t awakened Earth Mother in so many years. If I receive your help, I believe I can do it in less than a year.
“After awakening that Mother Goddess, I will feed my rotten and smelly soul to that crazy and terrifying mother, allowing me to fuse with her again before being born again.”
Using the legend as a prototype to set up the ceremonial magic, if the resonance succeeded, he could be born again after being devoured by the mother like the child who had been accidentally killed by his father.
“In my opinion, using a legend that has almost no circulation as a prototype, and being delusional that doing so can achieve the greatest miracle of rebirth, the success rate of this entire matter isn’t much higher than zero.”
That was what Sibylla, who was proficient in all kinds of ceremonial magic, said back then.
“It’s fine. If I still die after doing everything I can, this eternal slumber will be the peace I seek.”
This was Nehe’s answer back then.
“I’ve already gone so far. Even if the Presiding Judge returns in the future, he has no reason to blame me, right?”
