Chapter 169: Pure White Space
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The days when they were trapped in the Gateway were considerably not too bad.
At first, the mages were terrified to see that more and more people were surrounding the Gateway. They gathered at one place and discussed whether there were any ways to escape. However, soon enough they realized that the enemy could not enter the Gateway. It also meant that they could not get out.
The entire Gateway had only three entrances. No matter which entrances they went to, they would surely be discovered out once they showed up. So, their only choice was to stay hidden in the Crusader Gateway. They must not show themselves.
However, after a few days, the mages had a change of attitude.
The people outside brought three artilleries and bombarded the Gateway for fifteen minutes in total. The entire Gateway showed no sign of damage at all. Those artillery shells hit the wall, but the force of the shells was cushioned by the sudden emerging Holy Light from the wall. They stayed inside for the entire time. Even though they could feel a slight tremor, it was nothing compared to an earthquake of 4.0 magnitude.
The mages now realized that the people outside had no way of accessing the Gateway at all. Their fear reduced by half.
Almost no one could threaten them if they simply stayed in this military fortress which was described as horrifying. The supplies in the Gateway were also adequate – be it clothing, lamp oil, water, food... Moreover, they had the new batch of wheat brought in by Varys. There were only slightly more than twenty people here. The supplies were enough for consumption for their whole life.
Thus, they completely set their minds at rest. For the sake of convenience, they made a little rearrangement of the rooms in the Gateway. The small church was changed to a dining hall, the praying room to the bathroom, the meeting room to the magic discussion room... There were only slightly more than twenty people here. The supplies in this Gateway would be sufficient for a living for them.
They had been enjoying a life of an immortal the past fifteen days in the Gateway. Every day, they focused on meditating. Sometimes, they would discuss magic and their respective progress. They had been enjoying highly nutritious quality food. Aside from the lack of sunlight and satisfactory ventilation, everything else was just perfect.
More so, some of them would say that there was no good in leaving the Gateway if queried about their condition. They would rather stay here and pissed those from the Church off.
As for Benjamin, he was not enjoying such a relaxing life.
He understood how strong the Crusader Gateway was, but... Human’s intelligence was limitless. He knew this very well. If a person had such will to resolve any difficulty, he would definitely eventually find a way to achieve it; especially when there was a group of people. Now, the Church was just attempting the standard ways of breaking through the Gateway. It would not be too long for them to use extreme methods to break in the Gateway.
Even without waiting for the Church to come to a solution, Benjamin himself could already think of a few ways here – digging a tunnel, insert poisonous gas at the ventilation holes that connect the Gateway from the outside world, set the Gateway on fire until everyone inside was burnt to death... Benjamin felt that they might already have begun digging the tunnel, linking to the inside of the Gateway.
He was not particularly worried about it. The truth was that he did not plan to stay here for a long time as well. He did not make any moves just yet because he was busy sorting out the reaped results from occupying the Gateway.
Yes, their "trophies".
The Bishop was always quartered at the Gateway. There were also quite a few priests who used to live here as well. Thus, Benjamin found many magic tools and books about Divine Arts that belonged to them. Most of them were the crosses that were capable of protecting their lives. Benjamin took a few and divided the rest of them to the other mages. As for those books on Divine Arts, Benjamin would need to sort them out properly.
He gathered the books and spent almost half a day to read through all of them briefly.
He had read "Introduction to Divine Arts" before so this book was of no value to him. He just briefly scanned through "The Complete Guide to Divine Arts and Incantations" to get a hang of the enemy’s skills. He guessed he could learn from "Embracing the Holy Light" since it explained the affinity to Holy Light. For "Contemplating the Spiritual Energy", he would need some time to thoroughly study it...
After sorting out around ten or more books and slightly briefing the other mages, Benjamin then gave these books to them. He would like to see if they could find some interesting things from these books.
As for himself, he took a book named "World of the Pure Holy Light". He found a rather quiet room and began reading it.
Why did he choose this book? This was because its author was the Pope of the fourth generation. He was the leading figure who cultivated the same method in practicing magic as him.
Actually, he thought the book was fake when he first saw the author’s signature. After all, a figure with such a status like the Pope had so much to do every day. How would he have the inspiration to write a book? After all getting a ghostwriter to help him publish a book in order to gain fame and reputation was common case among successful people.
However, when he flipped to the first page of the book and read the first paragraph, he realized that this book might just be written by the Pope... Or to be more accurate, it might be written by someone who had opened up a Space of Consciousness.
The first paragraph of the book was written in this way:
"While I am in the middle of a prayer, I often feel that I enter a different world. No, using the word ‘enter’ may not be accurate. It may be that the world enters me. I do not know. In short, it is a very strange place. Every time it appears, its surroundings changes. The only thing that does not change is that it is always purely white. It allows me to detect the energy that points straight towards the origin of the Holy Light."
After reading this, Benjamin immediately thought of the Pure Blue World that he entered for a few times.
It was not as if he was absolutely sure about this, but the way the Pope of the Fourth generation described that world – his wordings, his way of expression, and the characteristics he depicted... Every hints sounded extremely familiar to Benjamin. Even though, rationally, he did not have any evidence to prove that the Pure Blue World had any connection to the strange world depicted in the book, but his intuition told him that these two must be connected in some ways.
The Pure Blue World was undeniably important to him. He had a feeling that if he truly understood the Pure Blue World, he could decrypt the secrets behind the Magic Runes.
Needless to say, there was a very high possibility that the entity like the System now had come from the Pure Blue World. Just in case if it grew to become a powerful being, Benjamin better understood its weakness as well. If not, it would be the System who got to order him around then.
Therefore, he decided to find a place to properly finish reading this book.
During a wonderful afternoon after he enjoyed high-quality red wine and pasta, Benjamin sat in a quiet room that previously belonged to the Bishop, flipping through the book "World of Pure Holy Light" page by page.
Finally, after spending around two hours, he finished reading the book. The book was not thick, so he did not feel strained after reading. Actually, only after he finished the book, he realized that this was not a book about advanced theories. It did not give him any specific answer, either. Instead, it was more like an observation diary about that world by the Pope of the fourth generation.
Most of the content in the book described how during a certain day in a certain year, he entered the world out of the blue. It also depicted what the world was like this time, how long he had been in it and the change he experienced after he completed the visit...
These experiences were very similar to each other. Sometimes, the world was full of Runes he could neither understand nor remember; sometimes, the echoes in the world shook him out of the world; sometimes, he even felt like he was the world itself...
Reading it back and forth, Benjamin only found one rather unusual experience.
After the Pope once again went into the Pure White World, he suddenly felt something crashed hard into his soul and a strange feeling surged through his body. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave the Pure White World very soon and the unknown feeling disappeared as well.
However, after leaving that world, he noted rather shockingly that the Holy Light that was stored in his Zone of Prayer had suddenly become strange.
As if it was guided by something, the Holy Light gathered in five different piles. Each pile had totally different shapes and seemed rather strange.
The strange appearance of the Holy Light did not stay that way for long. After a minute, the Holy Light dispersed and resumed to its original appearance. But thankfully, the Pope of the fourth generation had good memory. He memorized the five shapes of the piles of Holy Light.
After leaving the Zone of Prayer, he jotted down the shapes of the Holy Light on a piece of paper and studied them for a very long time. But, those shapes showed no pattern at all. Thus, he tried to change his mindset. Gradually, he remembered that the third and fourth pile of Holy Light seemed to have the same amount of Holy Light despite having major differences in shapes.
So, following this train of thought, he recalled the amount of Holy Light of each pile through comparing the area of the shape of each pile. It had been quite some time since the strange happening, so his memory had faded. However, after doing some estimation, he still calculated a series of numbers that showed the differences between each pile of Holy Light.
He also wrote down the series of numbers in the book.
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