The Gamer Chapter 1628 – Raid and Adventures 23 – One of the Great Mysteries of the Past (Patreon)

Momo’s doubles placed blocks of metal on the corners of the map to assure that it stayed flat on the table. The decision to etch the map into rubber made more sense the more John looked at it. Much of the map was more than just outlines of landmasses or villages. There were grooves, three-dimensional and quite intricate. There were also craters that were obvious burn marks and a gash so deep that it must have gone straight through whatever the original object was.

“Did you ever ask yourself why the Purest Front went to South America specifically?”

“Geopolitical reasons offer plenty of explanation on that front,” John answered.

“They had many enemies in Europe and, as allies of the Final Sun, they also had many enemies in Asia. Africa and America were the remaining choices,” Lydia added. “North America still had lingering influences of the Illuminati and the British at the time.”

“You’re obviously leading us somewhere with that though,” Rave pointed out.

John could already guess where, considering the preamble, but kept his mouth shut to let the brilliant woman gloat.

“Granted, the Purest Front had many reasons for their wish to vacate to a land with low resistance. However, I have it straight from the horse’s mouth that Mengele had a great interest in South America specifically.” Momo reached into her inventory and pulled out a black, leather-wrapped book. It was encrusted with runes of such a dark blue they almost vanished into the colour of the cover.

“Oh, you did more than kill him, did you?” Lulu asked, her interest turning from mild to intense.

“We probably should have told you earlier,” John confessed. “After we disposed of Mengele, we snooped around his ship for everything useful that we could find. Intel on the Purest Front, research notes, basically anything we could find.” He turned his gaze to Momo. “I wasn’t aware you had deciphered his research notes?”

“I haven’t, there’s no such thing as deciphering that creature’s research notes.” Momo put the book away again, before its stench could reach the nostrils of Eliana elsewhere in the house. “He used a different code for every page. That being said, I’ve gone through some of it and this.” She tapped the mat on the table. “Was a map engraved in a plank of wood in his personal gallery aboard the ship. I have the original stored away somewhere else…” she sighed, gesturing at the gash at the centre, eliminating much of Yucatan’s jungled centre, “…pretty sure we did that during our attack. I think Rex Magnar slammed into it.”

“Pretty lucky it stopped there,” John considered.

“It must have been important if Mengele held onto it even during his travels,” Lydia thought out loud.

“Ya wanna go on and tell us why ya led with that ominous quote?”

“Sure, sure.” Momo gave a self-satisfied nod. “As we all know, Mengele was always quite interested in empowering humans. His research eventually led him to the usage of the strongest of all energies that exists untapped around us: Faith. Although human gods were unheard of and deemed theoretically and practically impossible, individuals with the correct Innate Abilities, often Latebloomers or demigods, wielding some amount of Faith were known before. Romulus does it, John does it, and a number of people in the ten millennia in between doubtlessly also did it. Most importantly… Remus did it.” Pausing for a moment, Momo looked at the Heavenly Jade Empress. “Do you know about Remus’ story or…?”

“We were informed of the true happenstance by the Apex a long time ago,” Lulu answered.

John was a bit disappointed at the revelation, but it would have been much weirder if they had been the first people Romulus ever told the story. Equally interesting was whether Lulu knew of the true nature of the world, but he wasn’t willing to derail this moment for that particular piece of existential dread.

“Then, moving on, Remus made contact with all the people of the Earth shortly before Romulus locked him away, spreading the knowledge of agriculture. This has been basically stated by the Apex himself and is born out through various mythologies around the world. A man with a pouch came to them and offered them seeds that sprouted into a great harvest and the cities prospered. According to Mengele, and I have double-checked what of the sources I could find to verify, Remus stayed for a prolonged period in the area we now call Yucatan.”

“I’m following so far,” John said. “He might even have sown seeds there similar to what he did with Prometheus.”

“What does Remus have to do with Prometheus?” Lulu asked.

“…We really should just tell ya everything,” Rave stated. “After we’re done with this meeting, ya just pull me aside and imma tell ya everything.”

“We will tell you everything,” John hastened to add. Letting his first fiancée explain what they knew was bound to create misunderstandings. With a waving gesture, he bid Momo to continue.

“Of course, Remus eventually left, having sown the seeds and all of that. He probably wanted to continue one day, to further the beginnings of civilization he had engineered, but that’s all theory. Fact is that Remus left them with a couple of gods on their own and then… something happened.”

“Not the something!” Rave cried out. No one laughed. “Tough crowd,” she grumbled.

“Just not the right mood for it,” Lulu stated apologetically. “So… something?”

“Yeah… Something.” Momo let out a long sigh. “A great calamity occurred. Neither my own research nor Mengele’s notes give me any details on it. There was internal strife and resource shortage and sea people and… you know, the bronze age collapse stuff.”

John nodded a few times. “And in that chaos the gods died?”

“Exactly,” Momo stated, her enthusiasm rapidly surging again now that she was past the gap in her knowledge. “Abyssals perished in droves and so did the gods that Remus left them. Knowing of the legends of the Godmaker, the people of Yucatan and their many cultural brethren splintered into many tribes, all trying and many coming together to make their own gods to replace what was lost. And, to some degree, they succeeded.”

“Did they now?” John asked, getting more interested.

“So the legends say and it makes some degree of sense. Whether we like it or not, the largest concentrated release of Faith occurs when a person meets their demise, so ritualistic mass sacrifice would have some effect.”

“Morbid,” John muttered, even as he nodded. Whether or not the tales of Mesoamerican human sacrifices were embellished or not hardly mattered in this case. Fact was that human sacrifices had occurred in that civilization and, more than likely, the Abyssal side had taken it to a whole different level of extreme. “If they succeeded, why did their civilization fail?”

“Fantastic question, that.” Momo crossed her arms and leaned back. “I don’t know. By the time the Spaniards started to take over, the whole process was already diminished to a large degree. Notes reiterate that the Abyssal Aztecs, the largest of the groups, came to look at the process in a thoroughly religious light. They truly did believe they had to keep sacrificing in order to feed the god that keeps the world from ending. It could be that they failed to meet the quota, causing that god to forsake them. It could be that the god never really existed. The successes described are more avatars of gods than gods themselves and they typically lived short lives before turning to stone. It could also be that their eagerness to sacrifice more eventually got them to commit… unwise actions.”

“They sacrificed mundanes?” John asked immediately.

“That is a theory. There’s some proof for it, but nothing I can say definitively. If they did, even assuming they were smart about it, Gaia would have gradually cursed them and then the entire civilization with bad luck. It could be that they brought about their demise that way.” Momo shrugged. “What I know for certain is that Remus came to them. There was a great calamity. They tried and, in some form, succeeded in utilizing Faith via mass sacrifice, making empowered warriors and maybe more. A time of prosperity followed, which slowly ebbed away, and then the Europeans came and finished them off.”

“Then, following the second World War, Mengele went with the Purest Front to South America… but why Brazil?” Scarlett wanted to know.

“For one, he probably did not want to have his initial power struggles on top of the ruins he wanted to find,” Momo suggested. “More importantly, I think he genuinely had no idea where to start looking. We have the benefit of hindsight when it comes to the location of many native American tribes and their temples.”

That was true enough. Now that the preamble was gone through, John turned his attention back to the map. “So, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say that Mengele managed to discover some of these temples, learn enough from them to stay interested, but never quite found the old heart of civilization. This is the latest and greatest clue he had in his possession.”

“Precisely,” Momo stated, fidgeting around. “Doesn’t it make you all excited? Grabbing ancient mysteries from Nazis and exploring them to properly eternalize them for the future?”

“If you put it like that…” John smiled and studied the map a little more closely. “You want us to cover this entire area in a month?”

“Shouldn’t be too complicated, between your ability to sense barriers at a range and our seer here.” Momo turned her attention to Lorelei. “You’ve been awfully quiet, by the way? Something the matter?”

The seer was indeed the only one at the table who had not said anything the entire time. Hands put into loose fists in her lap, she sat there, prim, proper, and quiet. Her blind eyes stared at the map. “I see nothing.”

The whispered words set off alarm bells in John’s brain that could not have been louder. “What do you mean?” he asked the question on everyone’s mind. It could just have been a silly prank, even if her demeanour suggested nothing of the sort.

“I have been studying this map in anticipation of questions where to begin our search. I see nothing. The Lady grants me no visions, no clarity, not even a hint.” Lorelei stood up, gliding her hand over the surface of the map. “I see nothing… I have never felt this blind… It’s cold and…” She shivered and snapped back. “The absence of her presence is in and of itself a warning from the Lady. We must investigate.”

“Can someone fill me in on what’s so terrible about seeing nothing?” Rave had to ask.

“There’s three possibilities when Rel doesn’t have a vision,” Scarlett was the first to answer. “One, she’s failing to conjure a vision. Two, there is nothing to have a vision about. Three, someone or something is keeping her from formulating a vision of the future.”

John continued from there, “At her current power, Lorelei not getting a vision is incredibly unlikely. There might be nothing of interest to have a vision about, but I’d expect her to at least see images of us wasting our time. That leaves only the last option.”

“And, correct me if I misunderstand,” Lydia chimed in, “typically when your vision is clouded, it manifests as a muddled image, rather than no images at all – am I accurate in my recollection?”

Lorelei nodded.

John chewed on the inside of his cheek. This had just turned from something that Momo had brought up for her own entertainment to an international security threat. Something existed within Yucatan, something powerful enough to blind even Lorelei. The question was what. It could have been the Lorylim, for all John knew. It could have been an unrelated force that occupied the area. It could have been a contingent of the Purest Front sent by Mengele to cover expedition sites. It could have been a remnant from the Aztec civilization, perhaps even the very god they made.

‘I’m not even sure which one of these I would find most unnerving to deal with,’ John thought. “Guess that makes it official. We’ll have to check this out in detail. We’ll make the necessary arrangements after we get out of here.”

“Maybe we’ll find out what killed the Aztecs,” Rave hummed.

“This was supposed to be a fun harem vacation!” Momo lamented. “How come I can just accidentally stumble over Lorelei-blinding threats?”

“Well, you decided to pick the place on Earth that had a track record of sacrificing tens of thousands of people to keep their gods fed,” John pointed out. “Maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t the best civilization to pick for a place for a fun vacation.”

Momo grumbled and he patted her head. “At least there’s no way you’ll find another woman out there,” she said, then froze. “Oh no, I just jinxed it, didn’t I?”

They would not know for several weeks at best.