Chapter 212 “Blessing”
Chapter 212 “Bestowing Blessings”
The familiar car overturned on the road, as if it had been involved in an accident midway to the cathedral, and her own uncle was apparently in the car – Vanna’s spirit, already a little dazed from exhaustion, tightened at that moment, and she rushed over to the car almost in the blink of an eye.
She then suddenly noticed the arm that had fallen out of the car window twitching slightly, the blood-soaked palm seeming to lift slightly as she approached.
Uncle was still alive!
Vanna reacted instantly, rushing forward to stabilize the car’s stance with one hand, pinching off the already deformed door frame with the other, and then probing in to prop up the deformed interior while checking Dante’s injuries, rescuing her uncle from the car with as little secondary damage as possible, and then immediately casting her divine spells, calling out for a moist sea breeze with the support of the little energy she had left to try to bring the life back into the already delirious Dante.
The almost suffocating hot winds still raged through the streets, scorching ashes and falling sparks made the city-state look like an inferno, and Vanna held up the power of shelter around her, warding off the deadly environment around her with a strong mighty pressure, as she laid Dante flat on the ground, and after a bit of resuscitation finally saw the eyes of this loved one, who had been with her for eleven years, faintly open.
“Ah …… Vanna …… you’re back ……”
These were the first words Dante said after opening his eyes.
“Yes, I’m back,” Vanna didn’t notice anything wrong with Dante’s “back” at first, but just subconsciously went up and held Dante’s hand, “How do you feel now? Can you still get up? I’ll take you to the cathedral ……”
“No …… no need to pay any attention to me as a burden,” Dante, however, shook his head slightly as he took Vanna’s hand in a reverse grip, his fingertips exerting a slight pressure, “I should’ve thought that there would come a day like this… …they will come to collect this price …… you leave, before they find you …… leave Prand, to a place where no one knows you… …”
Listening to her uncle’s whispering, Vanna was suddenly stunned, and she suddenly realized that her uncle seemed to know something that even she didn’t know, which caused her tone to even tremble slightly, “What do you …… mean? Who do they mean? Collect what price? Did you …… already know what was happening in the city-state?!”
Dante propped up his eyelids, his prosthetic eye made of ruby had shattered at some point, blood running down the wound at the edge of the socket, while the fires roiling the streets were reflected in what was left of the human eye, and it was only after a few seconds of silence that he finally spoke softly, “The Final Preachers …… And the subspace behind them …… Vanna, do you remember the fire eleven years ago?”
“The fire eleven years ago ……” Vanna’s eyes widened slightly, “You actually remember that fire?!”
“How could I not remember …… it burning in front of my eyes every day,” Dante revealed a bitter smile, “and yet I thought I could fool myself for the rest of my life.”
Confused thoughts boiled in her mind, Vanna seemed to forget the exhaustion and injuries she was carrying at this moment, she stared closely at her uncle’s eyes that had begun to cloud over, all kinds of information about the Great Fire, the Black Sun, Subspace, and the Final Preacher continued to float in her mind, and before these clues almost buried themselves, she finally opened her mouth and asked, “But what does this have to do with Subspace and the Ultimate Preachers have anything to do with …… and me, what does this have to do with me? Why are ‘they’ coming for me? What ‘price’ are they trying to collect!?”
Vanna regretted this series of questions, she felt that she wasn’t talking to her uncle, but rather as if she was judging a prisoner, but Dante obviously didn’t care about that, he just gasped softly for a few breaths before he spoke in a low voice as if he were talking in a dreamy voice: “While that fire was burning, I spied… . a glimmering projection of subspace, and as that extreme and dangerous truth descended, I made a wish to subspace.”
“You made a wish to subspace?” Vanna looked at Dante in shock, “What wish?”
“I wished that nothing had happened and that you …… would come to life.”
All expression on Vanna’s face froze instantly.
Dante quietly gazed at his niece in front of him, the expression on his face seemed to be crying, but with a hint of a bitter smile, he slowly raised his hand, as if he wanted to caress Vanna’s hair, his lips opened and closed, his voice was low: “Vanna …… you’ve grown up… …I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, uncle is useless, back then …… I couldn’t save you ……”
“But I remember you brought me to escape from that fire ……”
“All I took out of the fire was a cloud of ashes,” Dante recounted softly, “It was just a split second, there was no time to react, and you turned into a tiny cloud of charred ash …… I was frantic to get out of that nightmare I was frantic to escape from that nightmare, to get everything back to before the catastrophe, to get help from anyone, gods or demons, even subspace …… And then something answered my wish, and it took me years after that to understand exactly what it was that answered me in that moment… …”
Vanna no longer seemed to be able to hear what Dante was saying in the words that followed.
She just slowly raised her hands and looked at the flesh and blood body that she was.
It was only after an unknown amount of time that she finally broke the silence, “So, my survival is, in a sense, actually the result of subspace blessings?”
Dante closed his eyes slightly, he couldn’t answer this question and could only acquiesce in this way.
“And …… how did I become a Saint?” Vanna asked immediately after, she was asking her uncle, yet it seemed as if she was asking herself, “How could the Storm Goddess allow someone who only survived as a result of subspace blessing to become her own believer, and even bestowed great power and shelter?” “I …… don’t know,” Dante shook his head slowly, “Perhaps only the Goddess herself can answer your question, but …… how do we ……”
Vanna was silent, her thoughts were more confused than ever, the beliefs that had sustained her for so many years appeared to have an unbridgeable crack in this instant, leaving her at a loss as to how to face her beliefs, or even how to face her own “existence”, but after a few moments of silence she slowly stood up, as if she were talking to herself. Softly said: “No matter what, someone must stop this reality invasion, must …… let everything we are familiar with back to the real world.”
“Vanna, you’re going to die,” Dante’s eyes suddenly widened, and with all his strength he managed to hold up his upper body, “You can’t stay here any longer, the roots of reality are breaking down here, you have to get out of Prenland, get out of this vision until it fades away completely from your memories –Listen, if your survival is truly the result of subspace’s blessings, then the act of correcting history may very well lead to your own ashes, a paradoxical conflict that is beyond the capacity of mere mortals ……”
Vanna, however, simply gazed at her uncle in silence, that gaze gentle and calm.
“Uncle, didn’t you say you loved the city-state, and everything in it?”
Dante was slightly silent as a steely expression returned to his face, “…… Of course, so I will stay here and face my fate with the city-state, whether I end up surviving or dying I’m ready for that, but …… But you are different, Vanna, you can’t ……”
“So am I,” Vanna interrupted softly, “I too love this place and am ready for anything …… Just like you taught me as a child, duty calls.”
Dante looked silently at Vanna standing before him, at the only family he had left on this earth, the latter’s figure as tall as ever, firm and composed as a sea wall ready to meet a huge wave.
He knew that his words would have no further effect.
So he sighed softly, and with the last of his strength to support himself, he slowly moved aside and leaned against a nearby streetlight.
“Go on, then,” he said softly, “I’ll be here …… for your return.”
Vanna lowered her head and looked at her uncle in front of her.
In her memory, her uncle was still a tall, resolute mountain, but since when had he dwarfed himself so much?
She gently bent down, her voice low and gentle, “…… If everything goes well, your familiar Prand will return to the real world, and at that time …… you don’t forget me.”
Dante did not say anything else, just nodded gently.
Vanna straightened up.
The very next moment, however, a disturbing jolt suddenly came from the distance, interrupting her movements, followed by a horrific thud and the teeth-rattling, ear-splitting sound of a building structure being torn apart and collapsing.
Vanna looked in the direction from which the sound had come in dismay; she had never felt more fearful and uneasy than at that moment, and the next moment the sight reflected in her eyes confirmed the source of that uneasiness.
She saw a blaze of fire rise in the direction of the cathedral, an explosion that nearly dispersed the clouds of scorching smoke high in the sky, followed by a blinding, grotesque flash of light, as if a miniature sun were rising from the ground, devouring and melting everything from the bottom up.
Immediately afterward, something even more terrible happened.
She heard more explosions, more piercing noises, and she saw one rushing flame after another rising from all parts of the city-state, huge balls of fire floating above the sea of fire like rounds and rounds of miniature suns, and each of those fireballs rising represented a church.
The bells that never stopped ringing even when the living fire melted the city finally faded to a halt, and the sheltered islands in the city-state were falling one after another.
Vanna felt her mind almost go blank, and in the next instant, she was driven by instinct to rush in the direction of the largest flash of light that had erupted, to the Storm Cathedral in the center of Prand.
(End of chapter)