Chapter 122: The Advance
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 122: The Advance
Elesis made her way to a small church. Yohan followed her inside and realized just how shabby the place was.
Then again, religion was only powerful in the Holy Nation; in the Empire, it was a fringe movement with a cult-like reputation.
After all, the moment the Emperor, the head of state, employed a witch, a clash with the Church was inevitable.
“This way.”
After entering the rundown church, Yohan was led to the most dilapidated room within it.
It seemed to be where Elesis lived. Within the shabby church, this was the only room that smelled of a person actually living in it.
Yohan sat down in a chair and tilted his head at Elesis, who had taken a seat on the bed.
“So? What exactly happened?”
“...It is nothing of consequence. Where should I begin?”
With those words, Elesis slowly began to explain why she had come here.
“First, do you recall when your teacher invaded my city?”
“Uh… yeah. I remember…”
“Because of that incident, I was summoned to the headquarters on charges of tarnishing the Church’s dignity by fleeing from a witch.”
Yohan scratched his cheek as Elesis brought up an incident he could barely remember.
Was it the saying that the one who gets hit remembers forever, while the one who hits soon forgets? He had forgotten such an event had even occurred.
And it was only now that he learned she had been summoned to the headquarters to take responsibility for it.
It was an uncomfortable story to hear, but it didn’t end there.
“After being dragged to the headquarters, I was tortured there.”
“…Tortured?”
“Ah, I am fine now. Not a single scar, see? I received full treatment.”
Though my insides might be rotten.
Watching Elesis let out a self-deprecating joke with a chuckle, Yohan’s expression soured.
Whether she knew how he felt or not, Elesis continued her story.
“I was on the verge of death from the torture when His Majesty saved me.”
“…Who?”
“His Majesty. Ah, you do not know? I speak of His Majesty the Emperor.”
“…Frederica did?”
“Do not speak His Majesty’s name so carelessly.”
Elesis’s eyes sharpened as she glared at Yohan. Seeing her display the fervor of a zealot, Yohan could indirectly grasp just how distraught she must have been.
She had been betrayed by the Church she believed in, tortured to the brink of death, and then saved.
If he were in her shoes, he would also follow his savior with his life.
“In any case, after being saved by His Majesty—I established a church with her help. I am one of the few official clerics in the Empire.”
“One of the few… but I’ve seen a lot of churches.”
“Those are all pseudo—no, they are merely places established by untrained lay believers. How can they dare to spread the word of God when they cannot even use divine power?”
She launched into a tirade, her inner traditionalist on full display, saying that clerics who couldn’t use divine power weren’t clerics at all, and that she pitied the believers who trusted such people.
Coming from Earth, where he doubted church pastors had any faith, let alone divine power, Yohan couldn’t really sympathize.
“Unfortunately, the citizens of this Empire seem to think a church run by a woman is bad luck.”
“I guess so. The Emperor herself is hiding the fact that she’s a woman…”
“…Her Majesty is a woman?”
“Ah, you didn’t know?”
She walked around so confidently that he’d assumed it wasn’t a secret, but it turned out the Emperor’s gender was, in fact, classified.
Seeing Elesis’s shocked expression, Yohan realized his mistake.
“Um. Just pretend you didn’t hear that.”
“No, more importantly—the fact that you know Her Majesty is a woman… does that mean you have met her in person?”
“I just came from meeting with her.”
“—God, have mercy.”
Elesis’s face took on an expression she had never shown in the Holy Nation as she clutched her rosary and began to pray.
The pious sight made her seem all the more divine. Yohan watched her pray, looking quite surprised himself.
After a long moment of prayer, Elesis looked at Yohan as if everything had worked out.
“…I, I have a favor to ask.”
“You want to meet the Emperor?”
“Yes, embarrassingly—I have not seen her even once since that day.”
“Doesn’t that mean the Emperor has no business with you?”
“In that case, it would be more than enough if you would simply relay a message for me.”
Yohan nodded, gesturing for her to go on, and Elesis immediately conveyed her words.
“My thanks. Your Majesty, I will prove to you that you did not merely save a single person, but an entire faith.”
Her eyes were filled with determination.
*
After hearing Elesis’s message, Yohan returned to the hotel.
Learning that someone he knew had been tortured left him feeling deeply unsettled.
He went back to the hotel and lay on the bed, replaying her words in his mind.
‘A holy knight overflowing with faith… abandoned the Church and defected to the Empire…’
Honestly, he thought the Emperor just had good timing. If Elesis hadn’t been tortured, if she hadn’t been dragged to the headquarters, if Evangeline hadn’t invaded the city.
If even one of those things had gone differently, Elesis would have remained a faithful holy knight of the Holy Nation, and it would have been nearly impossible for the Emperor to sway her steadfast faith.
But at the same time, it felt inevitable.
‘The Church and the holy knights… I knew they were insane, but torturing their own comrade for running from a witch?’
Moreover, she hadn’t fled out of fear. She had succeeded in saving tens of thousands of people in her city.
Was upholding a few lines written in some holy scripture more important than tens of thousands of lives? It was an incomprehensible act.
It was an organization he wanted to crush, even with his own flimsy sense of morality and justice. As he thought about it, Yohan realized he could actually do it.
He could ask his teacher and the other witches, or even the Emperor, to wipe the Church and the Holy Nation from existence.
‘…That’s going too far.’
But even to Yohan, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens of the Holy Nation felt too sinful. So, he decided to choose the option that would leave him with less guilt.
That is, just as the Emperor had requested. He would create countless doll soldiers and send them to invade the Holy Nation.
He knew that many of the kingdom’s people would die in the process, and that they would be exploited by the Empire for decades, even centuries.
But fewer people would die than if he wiped them out himself, and he considered being plundered a sin they had to bear for their inaction.
The people who had been too afraid of the Church to act could simply fear the Empire instead.
“Beatrice.”
“Yeah.”
“What we talked about before, I need your help.”
“—Yohan is my friend. A friend’s request… I’ll do anything.”
Beatrice said as she sat up. Yohan stroked her hair.
Having made his decision, Yohan immediately called the Emperor. As soon as she answered, she got straight to the point.
—What is it?
“I’ll accept your offer from today.”
—Good. Is there anything you need?
“Dolls.”
—Dolls?
As the Emperor repeated his word, Yohan continued to stroke Beatrice’s hair and replied.
“Yes, dolls. A whole lot of them.”
*
The Holy Nation’s border needed no defense. The lands near the border were teeming with monsters, which had turned the kingdom into a natural fortress.
Thus, the border watch’s only duties were to send a carrier pigeon to the kingdom when the overflowing monsters occasionally flooded over, and to threaten those who risked their lives to cross the border to squeeze some extra pay out of them.
“Business has been slow lately…”
The watchman muttered, thinking about his empty pockets. His salary alone wasn’t enough to live on, so he relied on this side income, but even that had been scarce recently.
For some reason, the number of merchants traveling to and from the Empire had decreased.
He knew it was irregular income, but there was still an average he had come to expect.
Having failed to make any real profit for the past few days, the watchman scowled slightly and gazed beyond the border.
“Oh boy, here comes something else. Is it time for a monster overflow?”
But it was winter. Like animals, monsters drastically reduced their activity in the winter. They lacked both food and the energy to move.
Thinking it was strange for them to be moving in such a large group, the watchman peered through his telescope and froze stiff at the sight of thousands of soldiers on the other side.
“…What is that?”
Soldiers with inhumanly long ears. They raised the long sticks in their hands to their eyes and pulled the triggers.
Craaack—!
A gunshot echoed from the distance, and a bullet pierced straight through the watchman’s head.
Having neutralized the watchman, the dolls instantly advanced toward the Holy Nation.
The Holy Nation noticed nothing until thousands of Imperial soldiers descended upon its capital.