Chapter 3
Chapter 3
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Meeting with the Wolf
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“Ah!”
I let out a sharp gasp upon seeing the child. His face was deathly pale without a trace of blood, and his head was completely bald from hair loss. His frame was nothing but skin and bones.
Misinterpreting my gasp in some other way, Mr. Rubelt shook his head.
“The temple called it a disease where the child’s own blood devours him from within.”
According to Mr. Rubelt, the child’s illness could not be cured by divine power.
It wasn’t caused by some external agent—rather, the child himself had brought it upon his own body.
Divine power that bolsters healing, immunity, and regeneration cannot cure ailments like this.
When one’s own body turns against oneself, simply strengthening that same body won’t resolve the issue.
I gazed at the child and murmured softly.
“You must have suffered so much.”
“Mr. Kyle. Not to boast, but I’m a rather wealthy man.”
Mr. Rubelt spoke up.
“Countless people came to me claiming they could cure my child. Some were even priests like you, able to wield divine power. But not a single one succeeded—and afterward, they lashed out at me instead. They claimed my child was under a divine curse!”
“Even if the gods themselves had laid a curse, how could a mere human like me dare utter such words?”
I sighed as I listened.
If a cure proves impossible, the failing lies with me, not the patient.
To think a child of merely seven years or so must hear such dreadful accusations—what crime could he possibly have committed?
“You might end up saying the same thing once you realize you can’t cure him. That my son is cursed. That it’s his fault. Or else that his father or mother must have sinned somehow, enraging the gods.”
“If I fail, it will be no one’s fault but my own.”
I could declare it with certainty. Should I prove unable to heal this child,
It would not be because his family are sinners denied the Lord’s aid, but because my own faith falls short, failing to please Him.
“So let me give it a try. The divinity bestowed by my Lord may differ from that of other gods.”
I reached out and placed my hand on the child’s belly.
Then I prayed. To my Lord I prayed.
Please do not let the potential nestled within this child fade away. Allow him to unfurl his wings toward the future and live on.
The Lord offered no verbal reply,
But in its place, He granted His will.
The vitality of human life is truly wondrous.
No disease, not even one where the body turns against itself, lacks some faint chance of the affliction receding on its own, sparing the victim’s life.
In most cases, that chance is so vanishingly small it earns the name of miracle.
Yet my Lord’s will renders such miracles ordinary.
His divinity bars every path of deterioration, permitting only trajectories of improvement.
So long as any illness continues to get better and better,
Its conclusion must inevitably be full recovery.
Thus, I can do this. I felt His gaze upon me.
With Him standing at my back, to speak of failure would be the height of absurdity.
Flesh began to fill out the child’s skeletal joints, color returning to his pallid cheeks.
Even the lost hair sprouted anew. All things advanced toward their utmost potential.
The Savior’s power knows no bounds, though the limits of His agent—myself—are all too real.
Even so, healing a single person was something even the child I once was, shortly after first beholding the Lord, could manage without strain. Now, after countless adventures and growth, it is simpler still.
“Oh, oh! Heavens! Th-this... this is a miracle! A miracle from the gods!”
I continued channeling His power until no further changes remained,
Until the body had attained its pinnacle, with no need for further progress.
The power of the Lord I serve may not truly be “power” at all.
It could be that I am simply too foolish, too lacking, too shallow in learning and discernment,
Unable to grasp it as anything beyond mere force. His capacity to shift possibilities and select futures—perhaps I can only perceive it as power.
Does His power choose and propel us toward the finest future,
Or elevate the patient’s condition to its zenith, allowing the disease to heal naturally,
Or fabricate possibilities that did not exist, manifesting them into reality by sheer will,
I cannot say which holds true. These are merely the interpretations I have arrived at.
“Hmm...?”
As I withdrew my hand and collapsed exhausted into a chair, the child stirred awake, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
With the sickness banished and healthy color in his cheeks, he parted his lips and spoke haltingly. In that moment, I heard the proclamation of my triumph.
“Daddy...?”
“Yes, it’s me, your father. Are you all right?”
“Uh... Daddy. My body doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s... it’s amazing... I think I can walk!”
“Heavens... H-how can this be! Priest, I don’t even know how to begin expressing my gratitude.”
Mr. Rubelt threw his arms around me in a fierce embrace. It took some doing to pry him off.
“For a clumsy oaf like me to dare doubt a noble soul like you! I treated you with such arrogance, blind to the possibility that you could work a miracle, refusing to trust in your abilities. Please, forgive me now.”
“Get up. I’m not anyone so remarkable.”
Even raising Mr. Rubelt from his knees, begging pardon for his discourtesy, proved a bit of a struggle.
I am not so remarkable. Only the Lord is.
“For the time being, it would be best to monitor him for a day.”
“I-is something wrong?”
“No, but it might prove only a temporary reprieve.”
He nodded repeatedly in assent. Deep down, he must have harbored his own anxieties.
After all, he had admitted as much himself: divine power offered only fleeting relief before the condition worsened again.
But his fears were groundless. A day passed, then two more, and in the end a full week went by—yet his son remained perfectly hale.
With the Lord’s power, I had snatched one soul back from the jaws of death. Few moments bring such fulfillment and pride. I was overjoyed as well.
“We owe you an immense debt. I’d love to repay you with gold, but that would only put you in a bind. The Church of the Three Gods cracks down on healing by rival faiths, after all.”
One month later, Mr. Rubelt returned, bringing his son—who now bore a striking resemblance to him—to pay their respects.
As he said, even the Church of the Three Gods cannot forbid acts of charity healing offered without recompense.
Receiving payment for one’s services, however, is another matter—they pursue that relentlessly.
“So instead, I’ve prepared a different gift. A man living alone would find it far more convenient to have someone around to tend to the household.”
I had no desire for monetary reward and moved to dissuade him.
But what he produced was no coin or jewel.
“I called in every favor from my merchant contacts to acquire this child.”
A race from the empire’s frontier lands, utterly unlike humans.
A race doomed to perpetual division, rife with strife and bad blood.
Among the beastkin tribes, a wolf beastkin stood there collared, her blue ears twitching faintly as she regarded me.
“A slave, purchased entirely legally. Please, accept her. Saint.”
“I’m not anyone so remarkable. A gift like this is far too much.”
“When I asked about the god you serve, Saint, you described Him as nameless.”
After the healing, Mr. Rubelt had inquired about my Lord.
What answer could I give, when I myself know Him so imperfectly? I merely call Him the God of Hope—His true divine name He has not revealed.
“The only devotee of that God of Hope across the empire... no, the entire continent... is you alone, Saint. Standing solitary beneath His gaze—what else could you be but a saint?”
Not so exalted as the saints and saintesses of the Church of the Three Gods, lacking their grand authority.
Yet Mr. Rubelt insisted that one directly chosen by a god was remarkable enough.
“A god bereft of faithful cannot fully manifest His divinity. Yet the one you serve bestows vast divine power upon you—His sole believer.”
“That suggests...”
“He may be a forgotten god of antiquity, predating the Three Sovereign Gods, or perhaps one of the primordial deities who embodied the very laws of the world. That would explain His indifference to mortal worship. In any case, you are a truly special individual, Saint.”
Ancient Gods.
Beings closer to cosmic principles than conventional deities, who existed before the Three Sovereign Gods.
They crop up only in fairy tales, seldom treated with any gravity.
So I merely smiled. Perhaps so, perhaps not.
What matters is not who He is, but what He desires.
“It’s a gift tinged with a touch of selfish hope—to forge a connection with such a figure. Refuse if you must; I’ll leave her here all the same.”
The gift in question: the beastkin slave girl.
As I looked upon her, she shrank back in fear. Whether the slavers had mistreated her I could not yet say, but any child thrust into slavery at such a tender age would cower like this unless possessed of uncommon spirit.
‘Did the Lord foresee that I would meet this child?’
The nine apples. Bestowed the instant I parted ways with Yurinel’s party.
Never before had He granted such unsolicited miracles.
Had He anticipated even this? Quite possibly.
“I will gladly accept your gift.”
And that was why I welcomed the girl into my home.
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