Chapter 84: I Think I Cuckolded the Goddess
"No wonder the false god is after you," Rhodes said, a new understanding dawning on him. "As long as the Sky-Winged exist, the true Goddess can continue to receive the power of their faith."
The magic circle on Olivia's back not only allowed her to move, but as long as she believed in the Goddess, it would convert that faith into power and send it back to her. It was a remarkable system. But he still didn't understand why the Goddess had split into two in the first place. Was it because both the elves and the Sky-Winged worshipped her? But that didn't make any sense. The elves' faith wasn't some kind of virus. How could it split a god in two? If that were the case, then each race could only worship one god, and there would be no wars over faith. And this was the end of the Age of Myth; as far as he knew, the Goddess was the only god left.
Hearing him guess the truth, Olivia closed her eyes in pain. "Yes... we were supposed to be the Goddess's most loyal servants... but we became a butcher's knife in the hands of the false god."
A silence fell over the room.
Rhodes was still processing this shocking revelation. "Why was I the chosen one?" he asked.
"Because..." she opened her eyes and looked up at him, "you drew the Divine Right Sword, Org. You have already touched upon the power that belongs only to the gods, the ability to see into the future."
So that's it. The power of foresight was a power of the gods. He had seen the future with Org, and so the Goddess had seen a future in which he raised his sword against her. To prevent this, she had sent the Sky-Winged army after him. But in doing so, she had only hastened that future's arrival.
For the first time, he understood why the Hero of the South had chosen to take his opponent down with him. To be able to see through each other's every move... it must have been exhausting.
Just then, Olivia's body suddenly pitched forward. She was standing right in front of his bed, and he quickly caught her. Her body temperature was dropping rapidly; she was on the verge of death.
"Serie! Get in here!" he shouted.
The door was thrown open, and Serie and the others rushed in. Seeing Olivia's condition, Serie frowned. There was nothing she could do. No one had ever had to treat a Sky-Winged before. They had their own healing magic; they didn't need the ordinary methods of the other races.
"To be able to deliver the Goddess's message to Lord Rhodes... I am content," Olivia said with a wry smile. And then she closed her eyes.
But this was not an ending Rhodes was willing to accept. He opened the original scripture and frantically searched for a way to save her.
Suddenly, his eyes landed on a page. The magic circle on it was remarkably similar to the one he had seen on Olivia's back. Is this... the life-creation magic of the Sky-Winged? Thanks to being the so-called 'chosen one', he could understand the complex text. It was a spell specifically for treating a gravely injured Sky-Winged.
Without a moment's hesitation, he began to cast it.
Serie started to say something, but then stopped herself. Rhodes was already injured, and his own mana was low. It seemed a waste to spend it on this Sky-Winged woman. But they still had many questions for her. It seemed they had no choice but to save her first.
As he cast the spell, Olivia's body began to change. Her broken wing grew back, but it was no longer pure white, but a shimmering silver. And even more surprisingly, the magic circle on her back was being rewritten, transformed into a new pattern. But no one could see it.
When the light faded, Olivia slowly opened her eyes. Her pupils had turned a soft, gentle silver.
"Lord Rhodes?" she called out, her voice no longer weak.
She knew her own body better than anyone, and she could immediately tell that something was different. Her wounds were healed, yes, but more importantly, the mark of the Goddess, the magic circle, had been... tampered with.
Serie had also noticed the change. The once golden-white wings were now a shimmering silver. "What... what did you do? You were supposed to be healing her. What is this?"
Rhodes closed the scripture and gave her a complicated smile. "I think... I might have messed up a little."
I think, I might, maybe, probably... have cuckolded the Goddess.
"This... this..." Olivia's mouth hung open, her divinely-crafted face a mask of confusion. The connection between herself and the Goddess was gone, and in its place was a connection to Rhodes.
"Ahem, well, the end result is a good one, isn't it? Don't worry about the details for now," Rhodes said, to both Serie and Olivia.
"No, but this..." Olivia was still having a hard time accepting it. "My..." She trembled as she touched her new, silver wing, her eyes filled with confusion and unease. She tried to channel her mana and found that the familiar holy power was now tinged with a strange new energy. "I'm sorry, my Lady," she murmured.
Serie was beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation. "Rhodes, don't tell me you..."
As the one who understood his magic the best, she had a good idea of what he had done. He hadn't just healed her. He had 'improved' upon the spell, just like he had with her light arrow.
Rhodes scratched his head, a little embarrassed. "I may have... accidentally turned her from a follower of the Goddess into a follower of my own."
"What!?" Norne and Eirik exclaimed in unison.
"Incredible! That's just incredible!" Even Somme was in disbelief.
And Serie, for once, was speechless. In all her hundreds of years, she had never seen anything like it.
"But... we Sky-Winged can only worship the Goddess. It's written in our magic... in our very being," Olivia said. She had wanted to say that the very magic circle that made up their bodies was encoded with a law that they could only worship the Goddess, but she didn't want the others to know that, so she had phrased it differently.
"In theory, yes," Rhodes sighed, holding up the original scripture. "But I've learned that you can't always trust theories." He had never imagined that the life-creation magic in the book was basically an administrator's account.
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