Epilogue

1

Well, well, my lord Marquis!

What a pleasant surprise to see you in a borderland so distant as this.

I thank you again for your numerous heartfelt offerings and generous donations.

As you can see, this temple welcomes, in vast numbers, people who have nowhere to go.

We also give food and a place to sleep free of charge to the sick and injured who come here to be healed. We manage somehow.

There are attendants preparing tea in another room.

We want to hear all about your accomplishments, my lord.

They were grand enough for you to earn the honor of being named Defender of the Continent, after all.

You are owed a debt of gratitude not just from the Baldemost Kingdom but from the entire continent.

We all offered a prayer of thanks when we heard that you defeated the foreigners who came from across the sea.

Yes.

If I had to describe what we do here, it’s praying.

You’re probably wondering what all that prayer accomplishes.

I thought the same thing at first. That it is wrong for a person in service of the gods to do nothing but pray. That before they shut themselves away in a temple and make self-aggrandizing statements, they should go out into the streets and help people in need.

But I learned something when I met Father Raillura—that there is no work greater than prayer.

This temple has stood for a long time.

In the past, it was known as the Ocean Temple.

Praying was all Father Raillura did at this temple. Aside from taking meals and educating the shrine maiden, he devoted his every waking hour to prayer.

I’m not sure why, but the first time I beheld his visage, locked in prayer, I was moved to tears.

Before long, I settled down here and came to serve Father Raillura.

A number of other people arrived at the temple and had an experience similar to mine.

Father Raillura passed away only four months later. In his parting words, he asked the shrine maiden to pray for the suffering.

I was told that Father Raillura and the shrine maiden secluded themselves in the temple three months before I arrived.

That’s right. This sect started with just two people—Father Raillura and the Dragon Maiden.

Actually, I shouldn’t call it a sect. Father Raillura had a distaste for words that suggested we were some sort of organization. The sect just happened to form as people who adored both the Dragon Maiden and Father Raillura gathered here.

Huh?

Did you say Gondona?

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Where did you hear that word?

That is slang used by congregations in the west. It means something like a corrupt priest.

Yeah, yeah.

Father Raillura would sometimes refer to himself as Gondona as a joke.

He would do that because he hated being revered in any way. He even said that he fled the Gorenza Empire because it seemed like he was going to be recognized as a saint.

Huh?

Oh, I guess you didn’t know that.

Father Raillura was a high-ranking priest at the Elvetta Temple in the imperial capital. He is very famous. I didn’t realize who he was, either, until he told me his real name. If not for his hatred of nobles, he would have been made the head of the temple long ago.

But we don’t call him anything like saint or founder, as other sects would. We simply call him Father Raillura.

We would never call him Father Gondona, of course.

Ah, now that I think of it, a little earlier, you visited Father Raillura’s grave and left a lot of high-quality wine as an offering.

No, no, I think it is certain to make him happy. After all, no one could match his love for wine.

I’ve never seen the meat you offered with it.

What? That’s smoked ettin meat?

W-wow, that’s very rare. Thank you very much.

Oh!

I knew it. I thought that might be the case.

You met Father Raillura in life, my lord.

Apologies if this is invasive, but what kind of relationship do you have with the shrine maiden?

Whaaaat?

You say you named her?

B-but you don’t look like you could be old enough.

When I met the shrine maiden nine years ago, she must have already been fourteen or fifteen. She certainly doesn’t look over twenty now, though.

Ah, well, it doesn’t matter.

The shrine maiden is a strange person.

She is at once like a young girl and a loving mother.

She is at once innocent and full of wisdom.

She is beautiful like a goddess, and she has mysterious blessings that can heal any sickness or injury.

And she has gained powerful protection.

There have been many lords who have sent soldiers in order to forcibly invite the shrine maiden to their land. They have all been obstructed by rain, wind, and lightning, and they always end up crying and begging the shrine maiden for forgiveness. The rumor of her dragon form comes as no surprise.

Do you mind if I ask you one more question?

Just before, you offered what looked like an animal horn at the temple’s altar.

What was that?

Oh! Okay. I see, I see.

So you thought visiting the Dragon Temple and offering that symbol to the altar was the most appropriate way to show thanks for all the blessings of the gods and the people you encountered on the trip you once took for personal growth.

Ah!

I have no doubt that Father Raillura will be very happy.

Sorry for taking so much of your time.

Please enjoy a rest on this balcony.

The shrine maiden will finish her business and be here shortly.

How long the shrine maiden has looked forward to this day!

She even called this a fated day.

Ha-ha-ha-ha.

If you’ll excuse me.

2

“It took me a long time to get here,” said Arza Goran, the Marquis of Banust.

Borante was silently waiting behind him.

Arza had finally made it here.

This temple had once again come to be called the Dragon Temple, and it had also become the base of a new religious sect.

The fight in the deva labyrinth occurred in the year 1117 of the Baldemost Royal Calendar. His body finally recovered in the year 1119, and so he set off on his pilgrimage.

But then the Foreign War began.

On royal orders from the king, Arza took his seat as the Marquis of Banust, and he also changed his name from Zara back to Arza.

Borante and Himatra, Narillia, a gladiator named Worvargan who he met in the Gahra Mountains, the Red Knight Laura and her subordinates, and the pupils of the Divine Blade all raced to offer help.

In 1122, the Anpoan Covenant was established, and the war came to an end, but he was still consumed by his postwar duties. Before he knew it, the year 1124 had arrived, and Arza turned twenty-four.

Esseluleia had made a plea to the king of Baldemost. Her husband, Panzel, had fought the minotaur on orders from the king at the age of twenty-four, but he had to leave things unfinished. She said she wanted the king to order Arza to fight the minotaur once he turned twenty-four.

As promised, the king gave the order, and Arza headed off to subjugate the minotaur.

Then, when Arza stood in front of the minotaur, he realized that the monster before him was the giant he had fought with in the deva labyrinth.

By the end of the frantic battle, he had used up all the magic power in his ring, and his shield had been broken, but Arza managed to smash the minotaur’s sword, sever its right hand, cut off its right horn from the base, and finally drive his sword deep into the minotaur’s heart.

When the minotaur’s life was about to end, it twisted its body violently. The divine sword slipped from Arza’s bloodied hands, and after losing the divine sword’s blessings, he ended up unable to move from exhaustion.

As the minotaur fell, it used the remains of the sword it was holding in its left hand to smash Arza’s head. Arza didn’t even have the strength to use a potion.

Arza watched the minotaur’s body fall flat on the ground—watched the light fade from its eyes—and then he fell on top of it and lost consciousness.

When Arza woke up after what should have been a killing blow, the only thing he saw was that familiar horn.

No one had seen the minotaur since.

But if the minotaur had died and vanished, then it was peculiar that the right horn alone was left behind. It was also strange that the items hoarded in the minotaur’s Bag were nowhere to be found.

There was also currently no master of the boss room of the one hundredth floor of the Sazardon Labyrinth.

The strangest thing of all was that the level-up Arza obviously should have received from defeating such a great enemy did not occur. But even without a level-up, he had revived without injury.

The only way he could think to explain what had happened was that it was the grace of the gods at work.

He asked Julius for advice on how to process what had happened, and his answer was as clear and easy to understand as always. He said that the great, inhuman hero should be enshrined as a divine spirit.

Arza agreed completely. He thought about what temple the minotaur should be enshrined in, and he came to the conclusion that it had to be the Dragon Temple.

It took more than a little effort to obtain royal permission.

Many years ago, the minotaur killed Percival. It later wiped out an entire division of Imperial Guard knights who were sent to subjugate it. The minotaur had been a target of the king’s enmity for a long time.

But that did nothing to undo the fact that that creature defeated the devas and saved the continent. Julius reached the king’s heart by saying that if they extolled that monster’s skill, they would bring honor to his father and the knights.

A royal order was then given for Arza to visit the Dragon Temple. But because information about the devas could not be made public, they made his trip out to be a pilgrimage in which he would travel the path of the trip he once took for personal growth and give thanks to the gods.

Circumstances along the way led to a large number of people following him, and eventually, he made it to the temple.

He would now be able to meet the Dragon Maiden. Once he met her, he was going to petition her to have the minotaur worshipped as a divine spirit. After that, he would tell her about his memories of Alestra. He would tell her about how Alestra had transcended humanity and become a divine spirit, about how great and kind he was, about the personality Zara saw firsthand, and about his deep love for his daughter.

3

He looked out over the expansive blue ocean from the veranda.

He could see Yuto Island to the left.

Wind drifted toward the temple from the island. It carried the vivid scent of the ocean.

Yes, something new was coming from the ocean.

The humans who suffered from the cruelty of the world asked the gods for salvation.

The gods then gave people labyrinths.

Humans used the blessings of labyrinths to grow strong and wealthy.

The King of the Labyrinth was a shining example.

This warrior was born as little more than a feeble monster fated simply to wait for someone to arrive and kill it. But it fought and struggled against that fate and wished for greater strength.

The gods granted its fervent wish. It continued to fight and gain incredible power.

Arza felt that he was the spitting image of the humans who challenged labyrinths seeking blessings.

But would a human have been able to fight their way so single-mindedly and heroically through every battle the way that warrior did? Would they have been able to so proudly oppose fate and blaze their own path down which they should walk?

Arza wondered if the green-copper-skinned giant he saw in the deva labyrinth might have been the King of the Labyrinth’s true form.

He wanted that to be the case.

Far to the north of Yuto Island was the Anpoan Harbor. A ship would soon be completed there. It was a ship gained from the foreigners and remodeled into a state-of-the-art adventuring vessel.

The selection of the crew and training were both underway.

The continent the foreigners originated from was across the ocean. There were also other continents and a countless amount of islands.

By the sound of it, there was a great variety of peoples and countries.

New friends likely awaited out there.

New enemies as well.

They would probably encounter brand-new cultures and things they could never have imagined.

Labyrinths could be thought of as cradles that the gods bestowed upon humans for growth.

The era of labyrinths was coming to an end, and a new era of sea voyage was beginning.

King of the Labyrinth END